Changes to Normal Games (update September 2022)

[implosion]

Hello!

There are going to be some changes to normal setups, the normal review process, and the normal queue itself. These changes are effective immediately. These changes are designed to address a few key issues with the current process: reviews often take far, far longer than is reasonable, and demand more than is reasonable from both prospective mods and reviewers. This leads to frustration on both sides of the review process. With that in mind, most of the changes here are designed to either streamline reviews themselves, or simplify normal games to the point where reviews are easier.

Changes to the review process

In the previous system, three reviewers from the NRG were giving simultaneous feedback on a setup design. This led to a back-and-forth with many iterations and unclear expectations. The new system will see each review with two reviewers: a primary reviewer and a secondary reviewer. The primary reviewer will have all of the responsibility to actually conduct the review, while the secondary reviewer will provide non-binding feedback and be present to take over if the primary reviewer goes MIA. At every step of the process, the primary reviewer will be obligated to provide feedback that is actionable to the point that the reviewer would be willing to approve the setup.

We understand that this may lead to a reduction in thoroughness of reviews; however, we are confident that the gains in reducing latency and reducing the sheer stress of going through the review process are worth it.

Simplifications and standardization

1. We will be removing the greylist rule, which previously allowed one non-whitelisted role in mini games and two in large games. The whitelist will be expanded to compensate. To begin, the following roles are
   immediately considered whitelisted
   :
   1. Vengeful (normal for town only): if eliminated, you may kill a player as you die.
      
   2. Babysitter: target a player to protect them from kills. If you are killed that night, they will also die.
      
   3. Fruit Vendor: target a player to give them a piece of fruit. They will be informed that they received it.
      
   4. Psychologist: target a player to investigate them and determine if they are capable of killing anyone. If they have already killed someone or attempted to kill someone, this will return a negative result. Resolves after kills.
      
   5. Detective: target a player to investigate them and determine if they have attempted to kill someone, successful or not. Resolves after kills.
      
   6. Visitor: at night, you may target a player; this has no effect beyond targeting them.
   The following modifiers are also immediately considered whitelisted:
   1. Disloyal: if you target a player who shares your alignment, your action will fail.
      
   2. Loud: if you target another player, they will be informed that you targeted them, but not what you did.
      
   3. Ninja: your action cannot be detected by trackers, watchers, motion detectors, followers, or voyeurs. (Previously a mafia-only role, now whitelisted for all alignments as a modifier applying to any action that the ninja takes.)
      
   4. Multitasking: you may use multiple abilities, including factional abilities, in the same night.
2. Role PMs will be standardized. Moderators will no longer provide their own role PMs; instead, they can grab the standard PM from the wiki. This is a work in progress, so for now, you'll still need to write PMs, though the wiki has sample PMs already for most roles.
   
3. Serial killers and multiball are no longer allowed in mini normal games; they are still allowed in large normal games. These consistently bogged down reviews, because it's difficult to agree on what constitutes a balanced game with a third party, and the possibility of cross-kills increases swing in a way that is very difficult to create an effective setup around at the size of minis.
   
4. Mafia, by default, may no longer kill and use an ability in the same night. Previously, the mod would have to specify this. The multitasking modifier has been added to keep this option open, without adding an extra often-meaningless step of forcing mods to specify whether or not mafia may kill and act in the same night.
   
5. There will be a standard ruleset that all normal games must use. Moderators may add some additional rules, particularly with flexibility on:
   • Day/night length and prod timers, if they want to change them from whatever the default is (probably 2 week days/2 day nights/2 day prod timers; rules are work in progress)
     
   • Whether or not mafia have daytalk enabled by default
     
   • Mod text color, if they want to have a rule for this, since it's somewhat standard to
     
   • Any other additional rules they want to impose (to allow for things like geriatric games and other experiments that don't drastically change the game, but that we wouldn't expect to typically be used).
   The standard rule list will have a heading for "game-specific rules" that will include all this information, but will otherwise be identical across games. This will prevent mods from having to draft their own rulesets, and prevent reviewers from having to laboriously review them. This standard ruleset is also a work in progress, so for now mods must still provide rules.

Pre-designed setups

The NRG will now have a second responsibility in addition to reviewing games: to design and review setups for prospective mods to use.

When a moderator /ins to mod, they will have an option to either /in to mod a setup that they will design, or to expedite the process by choosing /in to mod a pre-designed setup. Moderators who choose this will, when their game goes into signups, be sent a normal setup designed by NRG members. This provides an alternative for moderators who wish to mod without having to design a setup, but would rather mod something closed.

These setups will be placed into a queue once designed, with some setups waiting to be used at any given time.

First-time moderators will not be required to use a pre-designed setup; however, they are strongly encouraged to do so, especially if they are unfamiliar with setup meta on mafiascum, as these setups will be designed by players who are very familiar with that meta.

(EDIT May 8 2018: hider, any-nights-specific, informed, and activated are all whitelisted. See this post for details.)
(EDIT May 28 2018: traffic analyst, alien, indecisive, and compulsive are all whitelisted. See this post for details.)
(EDIT July 30 2018: Hybrid roles are normal. See this post for details.)
(EDIT November 6 2018: PT Cop is whitelisted. See this post for details.)
(EDIT March 24 2019: mailman, simple, complex, combined, and announcing are all whitelisted. See this post for details.)
(EDIT June 19 2020: roaming, personal, lazy, checker, [role]-finder, and role watcher are all whitelisted. See this post for details.)
(EDIT September 12 2022: various updates, including a handful of new roles; see this post for details.

[implosion]

Four more roles/modifiers are being added to the whitelist:

Roles:

Hider:

target a player. You will be protected from kills, but if that player dies, you will also die. This version is essentially the inverse of babysitter, and is what will be considered the normal version of hider. if you want the most common variant of hider, use a weak hider. The variant which causes the hider to be targeted by all abilities that target the person they hide behind, and other variants, are not normal.

Modifiers:

Any-nights-specific:

you may only use your non-factional abilities on the specified nights. For instance, the following are all now whitelisted:

• Night 1 and 3 cop
  
• Night 2+ vigilante
  
• Night 1-4 jailkeeper
  
• Night 1 and even-night neapolitan

etc. This subsumes some already-whitelisted modifiers, particularly even/odd-night and night-specific. It also subsumes novice. You're free to call these versions of the roles by their common names (e.g., novice vigilante instead of night 2+ vigilante), but the more general versions are also whitelisted.

Informed

: You know (some information about the setup). This information may be related to the setup, or to other players. It must be objective and accurate. For instance, an informed townie (or informed mafia) could be given any of the following:

• You know that this setup has 10 town members and 3 mafia members.
  
• You know that there is a rolecop in this game.
  
• You know that there is a mafia rolecop in this game.
  
• You know that (player) is a tracker.
  
• You know that (player) is a town doctor.
  
• You know that (player) is town. NOTE: if something like this is used, it must be non-random what player-slot is referred to. For example, if an informed townie is told that someone is town, it should be part of the setup specification that the player they are told is town is a randomly chosen vanilla townie, rather than a completely randomly chosen town player. Or it should be part of the setup specification that they are told that a specific power role is town.

Activated:

You may choose each night whether your passive ability will be in play or not. E.g., activated bulletproof, activated ascetic.

The opening post will be updated with a note for this.

[implosion]

You and I seem to have very different philosophies.

I think all games should be unique or put something interesting forward in some way. Having a "standard" setup doesn't mean that it can't be unique, or that it has to be uninteresting or anything. Most graylist roles are some sort of combination of existing whitelisted roles anyways - I can think of very few examples of a game deviating in any serious fashion from entirely basically normal.

Like, in the strict sense of the word it is a loss.

It's worth noting that these changes are not actually a strict loss in terms of setup design space: you can now have multiple of the roles that are now whitelisted in a game, whereas previously you'd be restricted to just one as they were all greylisted. But beyond this, I believe the expanded whitelist will lead to a greater variation of setups that we see in the normal queue while still having those setups confidently be within the bounds of what people come to expect from a queue that is called the normal queue.

Additionally, as you point out, most greylist roles are very close to whitelisted roles - so by continuing to expand the whitelist, less and less freedom will be lost.

Did non-standard role PMs and rulesets really add a significant amount of time to the review process? If so, I guess I'll stop talking on that point, but it doesn't seem likely to me.

Yes, they do; they often add multiple additional iterations to reviews, and each additional iteration can often lead to several additional days of latency.

Here's a great example - I literally clicked on a random mini review in the completed reviews subforum, and you can see there was very significant burden on both sides due to both rule clarifications and role PM clarifications, with many several-day gaps caused by each iteration despite the proposed setup needing almost no work to be within the realm that the reviewers accepted as balanced.

If the issue is not enough reviewers, then the solution is getting more reviewers.

This is a misunderstanding. The number of available reviewers is an issue, but not the main issue that reducing the number of reviewers solves. The main issue that this solves is the issue of having reviews be four people (a mod and 3 reviewers) each trying to pull a setup in a different direction; *incredibly* often, one person would make a suggestion and the other three would simply disappear for days, even as long as a week, occasionally even longer than that at a time. This is because none of those people knew whose turn to talk it was. By reducing the number of reviewers, we reduce the number of competing voices all of whose demands must be met at once. By clarifying expectations and making one reviewer the primary reviewer, we make it clear that if the review is lagging, someone has responsibility behind that.

and when you design multiball games, you design/balance it within the confines of multiball.

by nature it's gonna have swing. and it's kind of a different game from mafia. you can argue that it's not reallllly mafia, sure. but there are still good multiball games and bad multiball games. it's possible to do it well. within the confines of "we're playing a multiball game".

As chamber pointed out, you list here a number of great reasons to leave these games out of what is called the normal queue.

By nature they have swing; by nature, we'd like normal games to have as little swing as possible. It's kind of a different game from mafia; we'd like normal games to be very clearly games of mafia in the most normal sense possible. It's absolutely possible to do multiball well, but it breaks the expectations of the normal queue, especially given how site meta has shifted over the years.

[implosion]

Another four more roles/modifiers are being added to the whitelist:

Roles:

Traffic Analyst:

target a player. You will learn whether or not they have the ability to communicate privately. This requires that they are in a private topic (neighborhood, masonry, or scum) with at least one other person also alive in that private topic. It should return a negative result if they are the only person left alive in any private topics they have access to, and should resolve after kills.

Alien:

target a player. That player will be roleblocked, and any actions targeting them will fail. Roleblock + rolestop, analogous to jailkeeper's roleblock + protect.

Modifiers:

Indecisive:

you may not use your night action on the same player two nights in a row.

Compulsive

: you must use your night action every night. This modifier has long been pseudo-blacklisted because resolving missed actions is difficult to do effectively. Therefore, this modifier has a couple additional rules if used: the role PM for a compulsive role must specify that the player with the role, when they confirm, must include an ordered list of all players in the game. If they ever fail to submit an action, their action must be resolved as targeting the first player on that list that is still alive. They are allowed to change the order of the list at any time, e.g. if they think they might accidentally fail to submit a night action.

The opening post will be updated with a note for this.

[implosion]

Question: I'm thinking about diving into modding my first normal, and the idea of making a custom setup is appealing.
But so is the possibility of tweaking a premade one, or at least choosing from among several so that I'm at least somewhat involved in the setup.
Is that doable? What's the wait time if requesting a ready-made one? Is there a "catalog" of closed setups?

Or should I just take the plunge and let a reviewer go at it?

Choosing from one among several might be possible in the future, but it has problems; if you see a bunch of setups, then suddenly you know all of them and can't play in any games that use any of them. In other words, we'd have to audit signups to pre-made setup games to ensure that no one tries to sign up for a setup they've seen before. Tweaking a pre-made setup is also potentially possible, but then we'd presumably need a formal review process like exists for mod-designed games already. While these might be possible in the future, I intend to keep the concept simple for now.

As mastina said, you can choose the size of setup you want from among those available. There should never be any wait time; there should always be some amount of backlog of designed setups available to take. There's no real catalog of closed setups, but you can peruse the completed normal game archive for inspiration if you like (though I don't recommend copying anything there wholesale).

That said, there haven't been a lot of normal game reviews in the past ~month, and so there shouldn't be much delay in getting reviewers if you'd like to design your own setup, and if you have some ideas that you'd prefer to build on, normal reviewers in general will be happy to provide suggestions. You should have a complete setup in mind when you enter the review, but it's fine if it's basically a complete first draft.

Any other questions, feel free to ask here or PM me.

[implosion]

Hello!

Some more changes. I'm just gonna make this thread the official place for me to announce any changes in normal games at all, not just those pertaining to the big shift.

An update on gunsmiths

From the wiki as of this post:

In Normal games on mafiascum.net, a Gunsmith gets guilties on all Mafia (except Traitors and Doctors), Cops, Vigilantes, Gunsmiths, Role Cops, Vanilla Cops, Backups of roles with guns and JoATs that have any of these listed powers. A Werewolf faction should be treated the same as any other Mafia family.

This list is being extended to include vengefuls, detectives, and neapolitans. Vengefuls and detectives naturally have guns in their flavor; neapolitans are being added for consistency as they're a slightly modified vanilla cop, and it's awkward for them to be given a different result than vanilla cop.

An update on detectives

There was a mismatch between the wiki and how I described the role in this thread; I've updated the wiki to align with what I described, which will be the canonical way for detectives to work (they return positive results on anyone who has attempted to kill, successful or not).

Hybrid roles

This has been a sort of ambiguous area in the past, but we are explicitly allowing what I'm going to call hybrid roles. This blurs the line between roles and modifiers to a degree, but allows some additional designs.

Hybrid roles are roles that have multiple roles. Here are some examples:

• Mason tracker. This featured in one of the first pre-designed normals, so it has precedent with mason technically being a role and not a modifier.
  
• Doctor vigilante. This role would be able to either kill someone or protect someone each night.
  
• Multitasking roleblocker doctor. This role would be able to roleblock someone and protect someone, and could do both on the same night, either with the same or with different targets.
  
• Cop 1-shot vigilante. This role could function as a cop on any night, and as a vig on one night of its choice, but not both on the same night.
  
• 1-shot Cop 1-shot Vigilante. This actually already exists as a jack of all trades with these abilities, and will continue to be called as such.

While this allows for some conceivably extremely powerful roles, of course, balance reviews will still apply.

[implosion]

That should be fine; modifiers applying to other passive modifiers is something that exists (e.g., odd-night bulletproof), and it seems generally acceptable. Technically day-specific isn't a modifier (day roles aren't normal), so you'd have e.g. a night 2 informed townie who receives information on night 2.

[implosion]

Is a traitor that doesn’t know their scum partners normal still?

No - refer to the Normal Guidelines section.

[implosion]

Hello!

One very small change.

In addition to the already-whitelisted Traffic Analyst, another variant of the role, PT cop, is now whitelisted. The distinction is explained on the wiki:

Traffic Analyst:

target a player. You will learn whether or not they have the ability to communicate privately. This requires that they are in a private topic (neighborhood, masonry, or scum) with at least one other person also alive in that private topic. It should return a negative result if they are the only person left alive in any private topics they have access to, and should resolve after kills.

PT Cop:

target a player. You will learn whether or not they have access to any private topics with other players. Other players in private topics do not need to be alive for this role to receive a positive result.

The opening post will be updated with a note for this.

[implosion]

Hello once more!

I have two orders of business: some clarifications, and some new stuff to put in your normal games if you so desire.

Updates and clarifications on existing normal roles

Encryptor:

Encryptor is being re-formalized as follows: "any private topics that you are in have daytalk". So for instance, in a game without daytalk, an encryptor mason would give their masonry daytalk; a mafia encryptor neighbor would give their scumchat and their neighborhood daytalk; and if a neighborizer targets an encryptor, their neighborhood will gain daytalk. In addition, encryptor is now whitelisted for all alignments, rather than just for mafia.

Neighborhoods:

The members of a neighborhood should be public knowledge. A list of current members should be kept in the OP for neighborhood threads; if a moderator neglects to do this, players may ask the moderator what players are in a neighborhood.

Tracker interactions:

This isn't strictly an update, but something there's been some confusion on recently. If a tracker targets a player that targets an ascetic, they should see the action. This has been clarified a bit on the ascetic wiki page, which has a sentence stating that ascetic players effectively reflexively roleblock (which would lead to the opposite result); the part of the page listed under "normal guidelines" should always take precedence in cases such as this.

New additions to the whitelist

Roles:

Mailman:

Target a player at night, and the mod will relay a message of your choice to them. Note that as this role can communicate privately, it should receive a "can communicate privately" result when investigated by a traffic analyst. The mod should make it explicit that this message is coming from a mailman, but not what player sent it.

Modifiers:

Simple:

Your action will only succeed when targeting a player that is the vanilla role for their alignment. For example, a town simple doctor would be able to protect vanilla townies (and mafia goons), but not power roles.

Complex:

Your action will only succeed when targeting a player that is not the vanilla role for their alignment. The opposite of simple.

Combined:

When acting, you must use all of your active abilities on your target. For instance, a combined roleblocker doctor would essentially be a jailkeeper (with the exception that a normal jailkeeper protects against all kills, while a combined roleblocker doctor would only protect against one). A combined tracker fruit vendor would track someone and also send them a piece of fruit.

Announcing:

When acting, whatever player you target will be informed that your role targeted them. For instance, if an announcing doctor targeted player X, player X would receive a message saying "You were targeted by a doctor ability during the night". It should not explicitly state the entire role, only the ability that was used (so the message shouldn't be "you were targeted by an announcing doctor"). If an announcing mafia made a kill and their target survived, the target would be told "You were targeted by the mafia kill during the night". This is a direct complement to the existing Loud, which informs a player of a player that targeted them, but not what role.

[implosion]

Yeah, I haven't updated the wiki with all of this yet, but it is in effect as of now.

[implosion]

Hello once more, friends!

This isn't a normal rules update, just an FYI: last night, I went through and released something like a year's worth of review PTs, both for regular reviews and pre-designed setup creation. If you're interested in getting a look at what the new normal review process has become, or what pre-designed setup creation looks like, head on over!

If you have any questions or comment, feel free to put them in this thread.

[implosion]

It is worth mentioning that vengeful was only greylist before. It was whitelisted when the greylist was abolished in the OP of this thread.

cfj's and Plum's arguments are essentially why supersaint isn't allowed. The reason vengeful is whitelisted is because it doesn't screw things up *too* badly - since the choice of who dies can only ever be made by town, you never get a situation where the game ends in a way that's unexpected and outside of the town's control. If an unclaimed supersaint gets hammered the day before lylo before they have a chance to claim, game's over and that's a lot of heartache for no real reason. Town basically feels cheated out of a game in that situation. And normal games are about making sure that hard expectations, such as "the town should never lose after mislynching outside of xylo, unless they screw up in some other way" are met.

Vengeful is a fairly rare role to see but that isn't necessarily reason to remove it. A role doesn't need to see the light of day often to serve a purpose from a design standpoint of being available.

[implosion]

There's some stuff recently in this thread that I think has merit (in particular I agree with the people that are saying the current incarnation of traitor is really unfun, and I've kind of thought that for a while, and there might be a good way to rework it or otherwise change it). I'll try to get another update to normal guidelines in at some point in the near-ish future.

[implosion]

I will basically be saying things totally piecemeal in this thread but this one I know the answer to already:

Basically, godfather is banned from normals while gunsmith is allowed to get a false innocent on doctors for a couple reasons.

1, sort of first and foremost, is mechanical reasons. Without this ban, there is no "reliable investigative" that can be put into a normal game, and this is something that makes sense to have from a design perspective. It makes sense when designing games to have the option of an investigative role that can't get wrong results. This is also a reason why framer is banned; the only exception to the rule is miller, which is allowed basically because it's so innocuous from that perspective because a miller always has the option to claim.

There's also mechanical reasons why it's useful to have a false innocent for gunsmiths. Since they're sort of designed as the "mid tier" of investigative reliability, weaker than a cop but stronger than a vanilla cop or a rolecop typically, it's reasonable to have it be the case that they might have one false innocent. Typically a setup with multiple mafia doctors isn't gonna be passed as normal.

2, uniqueness. Gunsmiths can get several kinds of false innocents: mafia doctors, traitors, and serial killers, and several kind of false guilties in vigs, cops and cop variants, etc. It's not that strange or norm-breaking for them to have another one. Godfather is the unique role like that for cops, again. Hand in hand with this is that this is the *only* function of a godfather; the town will often have additional information that may suggest the existence of a scum doctor. The most obvious example would be the classic triad of a scum doctor, a town gunsmith, and a town vig, which all interact with each other (doc blocks vig shots, gunsmith gets a false innocent and a false guilty). When the town sees there's a vig *and* a gunsmith, they get more of an inkling that there might be a doctor. This can be done in other creative ways as well, e.g. by giving town a backup doctor but no doctor, or using informed roles, or giving the town a rolecop, and so on, and so forth. Whereas there's basically no way to design a setup in such a way that it is "suggested" that there's a godfather without just being explicit that there has to be one, which puts cops in the awkward situation of being the strongest investigative role imaginable but still not really being able to trust anything at all. The very existence of godfathers as legal significantly skews any game with a cop in it significantly toward being scumsided.

[implosion]

For those interested, I just released a small number of completed reviews from june-august last year, that can be found here. I will be releasing more over probably the next couple days, and if not that then the next week - if you have a review PT for a game you ran/had reviewed that you don't want released for some reason, let me know.

I haven't replied to anything here in a while, and meant to do another round of whitelisting roles a while ago (as I claimed... half a year ago), but have been far sidetracked by life - I should have time to at some point soon, once I can catch up on releasing reviews and other RL stuff I've fallen behind on. To answer a random assortment of questions though:

Out of curiosity, who has final say in creating new Normal roles?

I have final say; I generally suggest things to/take suggestions from NRG members, look at collective feedback on what people think would be a good or bad idea, and base things on that feedback.

@Implo, is it possible you can get the roles listed on the wiki to be ordered alphabetically

It appears I actually never realized that they were organized alphabetically since they're alphabetical except for all the newer stuff I've appended. Just fixed it.

Is it possible that Mafiascum could make a new section where we can play Normal games BUT trial new roles and modifiers to see how they interact, and if they could be whitelisted?

I don't think a new section is needed for this; the theme queues serve this need. It's perfectly acceptable to run a theme game that is "normal-ish, but possibly not strictly to the letter". This has indeed been done plenty, most notably (at least off the top of my head) with Booneytoonz (which has also already been mentioned) since Boonskiies decided the new normal guidelines were too restrictive for what he was going for.

[implosion]

I will be releasing more over probably the next couple days, and if not that then the next week

I have apparently lied about this timeline because I am more behind on schoolwork than I thought I was - alas, I have not forgotten, and I will get to it this week.

[implosion]

Alright, new batch has been released! There were 17 normal reviews and 15 pre-designed setups just released, along with the other normal reviews I released 2 weeks ago. If you want to see how reviews and setup design have been going, please feel free to peruse! There's also hopefully a good amount of inspiration there if you're looking to design your own setup, and it's a good window into the current meta/how the NRG currently looks at balance.

If I missed a topic for a game that you ran or know of that's completed and should be released, shoot me a PM. If I screwed up and released something I shouldn't have, also shoot me a PM (I believe I was being careful and double checking, but it's *possible* something slipped through).

[implosion]

I finished my last academic obligation for the quarter today and so I have a full week of time to actually do things - expect an update within a week, just making sure everyone in the NRG has time to give last feedback.

[implosion]

And here's the update! There are three new modifiers and three new roles being added to the whitelist.

Modifiers:

Roaming: you may not target any player more than once.

Personal: your action will not interact in any way with factional abilities. For instance, a personal watcher cannot see a mafia or serial killer's kill; a personal PT cop would not detect mafia members whose only private topic is their factional topic; and so on.

Lazy: your action will fail if there is only one non-town player alive at the start of the night phase. Note that this is checked at the start of the night, so for instance, a lazy cop could still get a successful result even if a vigilante kills one of two remaining scum during the night.

Roles

Checker: target a player. You will receive a result of either "You successfully checked [player]" if your action succeeds, or "You failed to check [player]" if your action fails for any reason.

[role]-finder: target a player. You will receive a result indicating whether or not that player is [role], or you will be told that your action failed. This includes modified roles and multiroles; for instance, a cop-finder would get a positive result on a cop, a macho cop, or a fruit vendor cop.

Role watcher: target a player. You will receive a list of all roles that target them, or you will be told that your action failed. This ability sees roles, not actions; so, for instance, if a loyal cop targets someone, this role would say that a loyal cop targeted them. If a doctor fruit vendor protected someone, this role would say that a doctor fruit vendor targeted them, but would not be able to tell whether they were protected or vended to. If they are targeted by multiple copies of the same role, this role will see all of them; for instance, if someone is neighborized by two different neighborizers, a result PM could look like "PLAYER was targeted by {Neighborizer, Neighborizer}". If someone is targeted by a vanilla role (this should only be possible with the mafia factional kill, unless I'm forgetting something), then this role would see they were targeted by a "vanilla" (not a vanilla townie or a mafia goon). It interacts with roleblocks and such the same way as other tracker-like roles (so it cannot detect a blocked role's action). Ninja actions can't be seen by this role.

[implosion]

A quick note: role watcher shouldn't detect ninja actions. Changed it to say that.

Would a Tracker-Finder (for example) get a positive result on a JOAT one of whose abilities is tracking, or only on someone whose role name includes the word "Tracker"?

I'm not certain what the best formalism is here, I'll get back to you after consulting with the NRG.

If someone is targeted twice by the same player at night (say there's a Mafia Multitasking Roleblocker who both roleblocks and kills them) will that player's role appear once or twice in the Role Watcher's results?

Once. They see it for each player that targets them, not for each action, similar to how a watcher would only see the player once.

1. Is a Role Tracker (target a player, if they successfully act and aren't a Ninja you will learn their role, if not you will be told you didn't see anything, if your action fails you will get No Result) not a thing?

There was discussion of role tracker, but it's too similar in practice to a rolecop to be worth it.

2. Is a Finder-Finder a possible role? If so, does it get a positive result on say a Combined-Finder?

"finder" isn't a role, but you could have a cop-finder-finder, I suppose. I'm not sure if it'd be okay to have a role-finder-finder for general roles, since "role-finder" isn't a role... the idea that this is a modular role isn't new, but there aren't many of them (only other one off the top of my head is enabler). Will also ask NRG what they think here.

[implosion]

Correct!

[implosion]

I agree it's something that should always be unambiguous. I don't know if the best way to do that is with a standard rather than something like a strong suggestion/requirement that it be listed one way or the other in rulesets. It's not something that's typically particularly high-stakes in the sense that a rules misinterpretation will horribly warp the outcome of a game (since a no-lim is almost never going to be followed by the game ending in night). I can potentially be convinced though.

[implosion]

I believe Superstar is something we've discussed before (not with that name). The main problem with it is that it's hard to imagine it existing in a way that isn't explicitly, in some way, about setup-design-WIFOM. We don't want to encourage mods to make setups that are about players outguessing the mod on how the setup was designed (note that this doesn't mean that setups have to "fit together perfectly", or anything like that).

I've been kinda, out of it lately, mostly because, well, covid world does that to you. I just finished my last quarter of the school year though and summer should afford me a fair amount more mental space to allocate, I should be able to throw a new batch of roles out at some point.

[implosion]

I don't think something like x-shot townie is normal; there are

a lot

of implied semantics that exist in normal roles and modifiers. The point of this post will be to argue just that; that there are many semantics that people generally don't think about when designing roles because we usually don't need to, but that we have to respect those semantics. You can think of them like a programming language; the modifier "x-shot" expects to be modifying an active role, so something like 2-shot townie or 2-shot ascetic (without the word "activated" between them) would be like a syntax error. The semantics of a normal role are not "any number of modifiers, then either an active role or vanilla"; they have to fit together.

There are a lot of things like this that at minimum I would never pass as a reviewer and at most should never exist in a normal game. I think backup traitor also fits somewhere in there. Some other examples:


-Novice Macho Townie, Loyal Innocent Child, 3-shot Vengeful, etc. These modifiers are all supposed to modify roles that have an active ability; they're not allowed to modify a passive. There can be exceptions; a modifier like night 2 can apply to a passive role like innocent child or informed, for which there is a clear meaning and useful design space. This has precedent. But you can't just slap a modifier like loyal on a role that it has no meaning on.

-Combined cop. Combined is supposed to have two or more roles. I could probably make like a dozen different extremely specific ways to misuse combined. Like, combined even-night cop odd-night doctor. Good luck trying to figure out what that role is supposed to do. One example of a semantic at play here is that a role that is put into a "combined" clause cannot have targeting-specific modifiers attached (e.g. night-specific modifiers, indecisive, roaming, etc). It wouldn't make sense for you to have a targeting restriction on two different abilities that differ if the abilities are combined. But those abilities could have other modifiers! Combined Loyal Doctor Disloyal Roleblocker, for example, is a perfectly valid role that protects allies and blocks enemies, though probably pretty strong in the hands of town for various reasons.

-Serial killer enabler. What would it even mean for a serial killer to not be enabled? That's their alignment, not their role; their kill is essentially factional.

-Jack of all trades (Watcher, Bodyguard, Bulletproof Doctor). Jack of all trades is supposed to have active roles as its shots; it doesn't make sense for it to have a 1-shot "bulletproof doctor". Though you could do this by changing Bulletproof Doctor to Combined Doctor Activated Bulletproof (it's just that the complexity cost here would only rarely justify including so much verbiage).

I could rattle off a list of things that are ambiguously valid as well. Can you have a night 1-2 universal backup? What happens if a role dies during the day? Can you have a compulsive vengeful? Compulsive is supposed to modify activated roles, but it's obvious what is meant here, and while it's probably valid i can't think of a good reason to take that choice away from the vengeful. Even like, novice macho townie that I mentioned earlier could be considered valid. The point here isn't whether any of these is valid, the point is that there's such a combinatorially large number of ways to combine these words that we can't possibly decide all of them in advance. And also that I disagree with Umlaut's 666, and I think it gets at the heart of it: not all modifiers are the same in terms of how they can be used semantically, and one modifier being valid to attach to a vanilla townie doesn't mean all modifiers are. This ambiguity is also why there's reviewer discretion.

[implosion]

I don't much like the analogy to thinking of it as a programming language since that IMO is exactly what could lead to the kind of conceptual error that makes something like 2-Shot Townie sound plausible: how exactly would you program a machine to reject that while accepting Bulletproof Townie?

If you know about parsers (and if you do forgive me bc i'm going to sound rusty here), you could imagine a parser having types of words like "actionmodifier" and "genericmodifier" for 2-shot and bulletproof respectively, and a genericmodifier is a modifier that doesn't have to modify anything. Really bulletproof and ascetic act more like roles than modifiers. It's almost entirely arbitrary that they're classified as modifiers right now and honestly they should probably be reclassified as roles.

I do agree with this, though:

we don't actually have, nor do we need, a perfectly precise definition of 'normal' that decides all cases unambiguously.

I think *in theory* one could write a normal role parser; i think it'd be a bad idea, though, for various reasons. And you'd also run into a lot of cases where you have to make pretty arbitrary decisions.

The main case where this kind of thing actually matters is that it needs to be clear to a person who gets a role what it does, and in particular it should be clear whether that person is a veteran normal player (who might have strong notions of how the roles all work) or someone who's never played mafia before. It also needs to be clear from a role's name what it does, obviously so that if a role dies other people know what it does. This is why reviewer discretion is a useful catch-all.

[implosion]

It is an "implicit lie" sure, but I'm not convinced that really means anything. Moderators are not forced to lie to players; having a setup with a deputy and no cop is not a lie, because telling a player "you're a deputy" does not include info that there's a cop. It's only implied because it's usually the case; there's no rule that it is the case, and thus no lie. It's that simple in terms of whether the mod is lying to a player.

Whether or not these "implicit lies" are a *good* idea is generally a reviewer's choice. I think there are some reviewers who would object to, say, throwing in a random neapolitan enabler that has no interactions with any other roles in the setup, for instance. But it is useful from a design perspective to be able to make linked roles like backups without confirming the existence of the main role.

Like a fair number of choices in the current iteration of normal game design, I don't feel especially strongly about this choice; in fact I think the choice matters not all that much either way. The advantage to banning things like backup-without-main-role is that normals become a little simpler, and might have a little less implicit misinformation. But in practice this is a small gain, because setups with truly red herring roles are quite rare. The advantage of allowing them is also pretty small; it allows us to design the roles in such a way that they don't have extra info by virtue of their role. I think another important advantage that's been brought up is that there's no hard line for what constitutes a red herring; plenty of roles can serve a purpose in a game even if their linked role doesn't exist. A miller can, as mentioned, be a rolecop inno. A backup vig can serve as a false positive for a gunsmith. A jailkeeper-finder with no jailkeeper isn't a lie at all - it could, for instance, deconfirm a fakeclaim from a mafia roleblocker. A vigilante finder in a large could exist as a way to deconfirm a serial killer fakeclaim. There's lots of potential design space for roles like these without their explicit linked role, so we would have to pick a line that is to some degree arbitrary (which doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad idea on its own, but etc).

[implosion]

IMO, the answer to that question is simply "normal games should not be that large", for a variety of reasons; the gameplay in a game that large won't really resemble "normal" gameplay on this site, so it's hard to call it normal even if all the roles are normal. It's going to be ostensibly impossible to have any real notion of balance. Logistically, it would strain the supply of players who play normal games or on the site in general, it would probably take a very long time to fill and so some early signups may not even be there when the game begins, it would take very long to play and as a result would likely be wracked with replacements and strain the replacement queue. Straining the supply of replacements/players would harm the site at large.

[implosion]

I suspect 30 is too large for the queue in its current state. I understand you mass-invite people to fill games, but the replacement issue and its impact across the site is a big deal. Even in a 30-player game there could easily be upwards of 10 game days and even if you get a large number of people to replace in in advance, the amount of churn of players you'd likely get would make it hard to imagine the game having much integrity beyond a certain point. IMO slow-paced forum mafia simply isn't designed for very large player counts.

Regarding some of the normalcy suggestions; additional third party alignments and group actions both sound to me like theme mechanics. Yes, the definition of what is normal has changed and will change over time, but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be limits. Other third parties aren't normal because of the reasons NK15 and Dwlee pointed out, mostly because adding complex motivations that players need to understand in order to read and sort people add a kind of complexity that is above and different from what exists in normal games now; it fundamentally makes them different. There's a reason that many players historically would prefer that even multiball be publicly announced, because it changes the game fundamentally and there are players who want to play closed setups without those kinds of considerations.

Neighborhood actions sound to me like a theme mechanic rather than a normal one for various reasons. They're not a bad idea (I think that kind of thing has been done in the past, maybe even in team mafia) but they're not normal. First and more apparent, they viscerally feel like a theme mechanic (which is I think why Cook immediately suggested the theme queue) because they add new mechanics/considerations/complexity. But second and more strong of an objection is that they would add significant mechanical burden; there are a lot of interactions here that players would need to understand, which is a burden on both mods and players, but also on even the details of the design. How would a neighobrhood action interact with various other roles? If the neighborhood action is to cop, do they all show as having guns to a gunsmith? If there's a backup cop would they become a cop when one of the neighbors dies? Do the neighborhood members vote on both who takes the action, and who they target? What if they agree on who to target but not who to take the action? It's not necessarily that the answer to these questions is

hard

to design around, but the fact that they exist adds a lot of rules overhead, and normal games are supposed to be approachable for new players in such a way that they don't have to understand intricate mechanics in order to play the game at a level playing field. This is why e.g. compulsive was really hard to add effectively.

All this said, the queue is definitely overdue for an update, but I don't agree that adding entire new mechanisms is of benefit to the queue when games with those mechanisms can be run in the theme queue.

[implosion]

I don't see how complexity could make something non-normal. We aren't workshopping a Newbie Setup here, we're (partly) trying to create fair and balanced roles to aid in the creation of Normal setups for all (mostly veteran) users to play in.

Complexity is a relevant factor because a normal game should generally be something that a player new to the site or fresh off a newbie game could sign up for and understand without having to go out of their way too far. They should not be at a disadvantage compared to an experienced player by virtue of the experienced player better understanding, e.g., what kinds of interactions they may need to avoid or what kinds of motivations a more complex role might have. This is an argument against reflexive because, for instance, PGOs punish mafia players for what would normally be good play (killing a townie who is acting very aggressively) more than is reasonable.

Another example of a complexity issue with the role is in 833; a new player who gets a result PM like that will have no idea how to interpret or use it.

I'm not as strongly against reflexive as I am against some other more complex things but it has some problems. I think there might be some others that aren't coming to mind atm as well.

As for better defining normals in general/restructuring from the ground up, while there's no intrinsic reason not to do that (other than it being a lot of work) it isn't something I'd do unless I heard a lot of feedback from players that the queue was broken. The problem with some all-encompassing definition is that they serve a variety of purposes. Roughly and in no particular order:

-Normals provide an option for first-time mods other than open games.
-Normals provide an option for players who want to play closed setups where they can reasonably expect what kinds of things to see and won't typically be wildly surprised. They also provide closed games with a reasonable expectation of balance.
-They provide new players a kind of game with the kinds of mechanics that they might expect to see in any game on the site, acclimating them to what is "normal" for MS, rather than mechanics that might be more peculiar to a single game
-They provide constraints on the design process in the hope that constraints breed creativity, but enough freedom so that mods still enjoy designing them on the hopes that mod supply isn't a problem (it has been at various points in the queue's history, but not for quite a while; pre-designed setups helped a lot).
-They provide some amount of stability so that returning players or players from sites with different norms won't be confused by having a wildly different experience from what they're used to.

On the whole, they're supposed to provide a happy medium between open games (where you know exactly what you're playing) and theme games (where you could get absolutely anything) for players that don't like those extremes as much.

[implosion]

It's partially because of the genetic fallacy, except that it's not actually a fallacy because the point is literally that - that normal games are normal. Mechanics like protection and counter-roles (i.e. ninja) are normal because they're currently normalized; they reflect mechanics seen across the site, and across social deception games very broadly.

Sometimes there are competing interests here, and the obvious piece of history to point to is godfather being blacklisted after previously being whitelisted, partially because it punished players for using their ability (though also other reasons). But in the current normal meta there's an expectation that results from many roles can be incorrect if certain conditions are met, like the existence of a ninja or a mafia doctor for gunsmiths and so on.

Reflexive vigilantes or bombs also punish this "good play" a lot harder than a doctor does or a ninja does; abilities that kill are extremely powerful. I don't think this is the strongest argument against reflexive as a modifier tbf (one could argue it could be normalized but that the NRG should never allow a reflexive vigilante, similar to how right now they should never allow a multitasking cop vigilante gunsmith even though it's technically normal). The other arguments cover the modifier more broadly.

[implosion]

OK so what ARE you guys able to allow, because so far all you're doing is shooting ideas down.

For one example, Shield that TemporalLich just mentioned is something I personally like/think has potential. I think care needs to be taken in expanding the whitelist, because every role added adds some inherent overhead/advantage for players who are intricately familiar with normal games, so I only want to add roles and modifiers that both fit in with the idea of normalcy and serve some design utility.

In case the general procedure of an update is unclear, roughly I try to find ideas (from this thread, from other people in the NRG, from my own brain) and pitch them to/ask the NRG for more. I generally listen to consensus from the NRG on what ideas are good, and there's rarely perfect consensus on roles (because most of the "obvious" roles and modifiers have been added, but sometimes there will be one that everyone will be like "yeah that should have been added earlier" like disloyal for example I think everyone agreed on). If there isn't consensus I'll err on the side of leniency/strictness depending on factors like how big the update is/whether I feel like there needs to be much more added at that moment/etc.

(To Ythan's point yeah, this thread was created as a place for me to list new changes officially, but it's also turned into a place for normal game discussion in general which I encourage)

However, what about players who want to know what to expect, but at the same time want a more complex game? Your position seems to exclude them from playing in Normal games, which means they either move to Theme games (which means they might not always know what to expect, and they might not want to play a themed game), go to Mishmash (HaaH), or to go offsite completely (where Normalcy might vary wildly, or where none might exist.)

People have said most of this, but: there's no perfect answer to this because more queues thins things out. A partial answer is that there are some mods (e.g. Gypyx, Boonskiies back when booneytoonz was in the normal queue) who have a reputation for pushing the envelope on what normal means and I'm okay with that (Gypyx is the newest NRG member, after all). Another partial answer is that if there's demand for games like that, they can be run in the theme queue under absolutely whatever parameters the mod wants - there is precedent for plenty of "almost normal" games being run. But there is a degree to which I like the normal queue to be "homogeneous" in the sense that a player can just /in without looking at who's modding or who reviewed the game and know what to expect. It's the normal queue, from the name, the games should be normalized and there shouldn't be that much difference between how they feel to play. It's a balancing act (pun not intended).

If you want a game like that in the mini theme queue, ask around if anyone you know or any mods you like, especially who have modded similar games, would be interested in modding it. I could imagine that if there were demonstrably high player demand for that kind of thing then it could become an official or unofficial institution of sorts (unofficial in the way booneytoonz is).

[implosion]

Alas, yeah...... this still nags my brain from time to time but i'm doing a poor enough job at focusing on RL tasks right now that I don't really have strong intentions to do it soon. I made some progress behind the scenes back then in soliciting feedback from NRG folks but never really crystallized that into the actual update. That said: I have not forgotten about it.

[implosion]

I have thought for a long time that backups, if you go down the rabbit hole, are an absolutely endless quagmire of edge cases and contradictions. (Basically what Ircher said, but more strongly)

I think that the answer in this thread, that two backups of the same role should lead to one being activated if the other dies, is the more principled answer. And I definitely was at least partially wrong in my justification in the review Datisi quoted. But at the same time, I think the idea that two backups but no main role means that one backup becomes active if the other dies is deeply unintuitive to someone who does not understand the nuance of the formalization of "backup" that is being used. And one purpose that normal games are supposed to serve is as a mechanical middleground between newbies and themes. Like Ircher said it defies expectations, and the problem with this is that a player with no experience in playing normals should not be at a major mechanical disadvantage to someone who understands the nuances of every role on the whitelist.

[implosion]

I honestly had no idea that was true of JoAT and am going to just dictate that's not the case and update the wiki. JoAT should just be another name for a multirole of 1-shot roles, arbitrary withholding of info is something that isn't really normal on this site.

It's only reasonably expected to be known because of how Mafia has evolved on this particular site. Should things have gone differently, it would seem strange to suggest that we would reveal player's roles when they died.

This is true, but this is the normal queue; it's the queue that is based on site norms, which are based on how mafia happens to have evolved. Site norms are that it is unusual to withhold role info when someone dies, excepting cases where there's explicit reason to (e.g. mafia's teammates, neighbors' neighbors, informed roles' info). This isn't an intrinsically better way to play the game but it is how the game is typically played here.

Regarding the unstickying I did agree to it, I think this thread doesn't strictly need to be stickied at all times and I'll resticky it when there are updates. This thread has become a de facto place to discuss normal games but I don't think there's so much demand for that discussion that it needs to be permanently stickied.

[implosion]

It is defined by us, and I think the way that normal is currently defined on the site excludes arbitrary redaction of role information post-death. All the other examples of it are non-arbitrary, but denying info about what a JoAT's abilities are is arbitrary in that there's no specific need for it. Role info redaction has the potential for outsized influence on game swing or balance, because it can singlehandedly kill the ability for players to do meaningful setup speculation if that role dies before it can claim.

If there was a demand for that kind of mechanism in the queue, I'd consider it. But (1) I'm doubtful such a demand exists because it contradicts my current understanding of site norms, (2) it'd need to be a pretty large demand and there'd need to fairly little resistance to it from the site/the NRG because of its potential for outsized influence on games, and (3) I'd want to implement it in a more thoughtful way than just saying JoATs in particular have an option of having their abilities redacted, which feels very arbitrary that a setup designer who specifically wants to include information redaction would have to design around the restriction that this is the only way they can implement it. There have been significant changes to normal games over time, but those have been related to either simplifying the review process (e.g. eliminating the greylist) or trying to respond to things that players on the site seem to broadly want (eliminating godfathers, no multiball/sks in minis, adding new roles, etc) and I haven't seen a broad desire for this sort of thing, though people are welcome to say so if they do want it.

[implosion]

Hello everyone! For the first time in years, I'm updating the rules and guidelines for normal games. Feel free to discuss any of it in this thread.

Spoiler: Public setup complexity ratings

As a new optional feature of the queue, mods may elect to have me publicly declare their game as "simple" or "complex" when it goes into signups. This is not mandatory for any setup, though reviewers may choose to suggest or request them. Reviewers may not require them - a mod is always allowed to run a game with no complexity tag.

Complexity tags serve a few purposes. First, they allow a new player to know what they're getting themself into, and potentially sign up for a different game (such as a newbie or open) if they want to avoid something too complex. Second, they give players in general a better sense of what they're signing up for to their preferences. The normal queue has long been a place for a few different "flavors" of game: it's been a place for relatively simple closed setups with basic mechanics, but also a place where many mods have used the maxim of restriction breeding creativity as a means to innovate and push the bounds of "normal". This is also an attempt to acknowledge that duality.

Complexity is defined by the following collection of characteristics. The more of them that a game has, the more likely it should be labeled complex rather than simple. The reverse is true as well: the fewer of these are applicable, the more likely the setup ought to be labeled as simple rather than complex.

• Having several roles with modifiers, especially modifiers that affect targeting (e.g. simple, loyal) or fundamentally affect the way one would play the role (e.g. announcing, weak)
  
• Having some roles with several modifiers
  
• Having a large proportion of non-vanilla roles in general
  
• Having anything that could be construed as a red herring (e.g., two of the same town role, a backup or enabler without a main role, a neighborhood with only mafia, a miller without a cop, etc.)
  
• Having complicated interactions between roles (e.g. multiple blocking roles that may affect each other, generally anything that might make a reviewer need to think twice about how it would work)
  
• Having many roles that aren't seen as frequently in normal games
  
• Anything else that would potentially defy the expectations of a player who's played normal games before

These labels are optional. If a mod does want to use a label, a reviewer needs to approve it. The only labels are "simple" and "complex"; there is no in-between. This is an attempt to minimize the amount of information about the setup that is leaked by applying the labels - anything more granular risks players being able to evaluate claims in the context of the game's complexity rating with potentially high precision. There may be setups where neither label is appropriate to use; in this case, simply don't use a label. Unlabeled setups, as before, may fall anywhere on the complexity spectrum.

Spoiler: Mod messages' sources must be explicit

As a new rule, all mod messages that are being sent to players must explicitly specify where they come from. If a player is not sure why they were sent a message, they have a right to ask the mod, and the mod must tell them.

For example: a mailman's message should include something at the top that says, e.g., "The following message is being sent to you by a mailman:". If a friendly neighbor targets you, the message should be explicit that it's being sent because of a friendly neighbor role. If a loud player targets someone, the message should make it clear that it's because of a loud role. Etcetera.

Normal games should not be a place for players to try to cheese wins by sending a mailman message that's designed to look like a friendly neighbor message; this is an attempt to formalize that.

Spoiler: Modular roles

This is not a change so much as an attempt to clarify one of the nightmare areas of normal games. There are a few roles that it currently applies to: the most important is enabler, but it also applies to role-finder and JoAT (see below under aliases). This is simply an acknowledgement that these roles are not simply roles or modifiers: they are roles that need to include another role's name to be syntactically valid as a role name.

Specifically: previously, enabler was listed as a modifier. Now, it is not a modifier: it is a modular role, meaning "enabler" is not a valid role, but e.g. cop enabler is. However, since it's not a modifier, a cop enabler is not a cop: it will not show as having a gun to a gunsmith, its death will not turn a backup cop into a cop, and so on.

A modular role can be backed up; e.g., you can have a backup finder (who would become a cop-finder if a cop-finder dies) or a backup JoAT (who would become a JoAT whenever any JoAT dies, with the abilities of whatever JoAT died).

Spoiler: Role aliases

A few roles now have official aliases. You can use either name in any context.

The first two are to avoid forced gendered language:

Strongman: Unstoppable.
Mailman: Messenger.

The third is simply an explicit formalization: Jack of All Trades is explicitly an alias for a multirole where all roles have one shot. E.g., the following two roles are identical in every way:

Jack of All Trades (1x Doctor, 1x Roleblocker)
1-shot Doctor 1-shot Roleblocker

It can also be thought of as a modular role (where the thing you need to specify is the list of 1-shot abilities). There must be at least two abilities. A role counts as a Jack of All Trades (for the purposes of e.g. a backup JoAT or a JoAT enabler) if it is a multirole of at least two 1-shot active abilities.

Spoiler: New whitelisted roles

The following roles are now officially whitelisted. There are no new modifiers.

• Reporter: each night, target a player. You will learn a yes/no answer for whether or not they targeted another player.
  
• Inspector: each night, target a player. You will learn a yes/no answer for whether or not they were targeted by any other players.
  
• Shield: each night, target a player. If that player performs a kill, the kill fails and the shield dies instead. This has essentially the same mechanics as bodyguard.
  
• Security Guard: each night, target a player. That player is told who else (other than the security guard) targeted them. Note the above info box about mod messages: it should be clear that this information is coming from a Security Guard.
  
• Visionary: each night, target a player. That player is told a list of what other ability types (same rules as voyeur) targeted them. Note the above info box about mod messages: it should be clear that this information is coming from a Visionary.

Credit to TemporalLich for making me aware of all of these roles (I don't know if they came up with them).

Spoiler: Normal role tier list

This is a new guideline to help moderators and reviewers assess balance and come up with ideas for changing a setup. For instance, often in a review, a reviewer might say that a setup is scumsided and needs another moderate town power role to be balanced. Often, reviewers and prospective mods will have very different ideas of how much adding a role will affect game balance. This guideline is intended to help people estimate how much adding a role might affect balance.

There are some caveats: this is not a substitute for a proper review. There are many factors of balance that it does not account for. Most importantly: 1) interactions between roles, for instance, a gunsmith becomes weaker if the mafia have a doctor. 2) interactions with modifiers, which depend on what role is being modified (for instance, a loyal cop is not much different from a cop, but a loyal roleblocker is drastically weaker than a roleblocker). 3) setup-wide considerations like the number of power roles on each side and how players might speculate about the setup. 4) other setup-wide design considerations, like what a role's purpose within a setup is, how likely its claim is to be believable, and so on.

This is more of a thought-spurring thing, where if you think "hm, i could use a weak investigative role", you can look at this list and get some ideas. Also note that this is only for town roles - mafia roles' utility generally depends largely on what the town has (for instance, a roleblocker is more useful the more things it can block). There are generally different strengths to mafia roles, but it's more common for balance adjustments in setup design to be made by modifying the town side. Also, beware that roles within a tier are not equal in power (for instance, cop and gunsmith are in the same tier, but of course the former is stronger). Roles are listed very roughly in order within tiers.

• Strong: these roles will almost always significantly help the town, in pretty much any context. You'd expect to see these roles be gated, appear in small numbers, or be balanced out by mafia roles.
  
  Cop, Watcher, Vigilante, Gunsmith, Neapolitan, PT Cop, Traffic Analyst, Jailkeeper, Alien
  
  
  
• Moderately strong: these roles will usually contribute significantly, and generally have certain cases where they are comparably powerful to the top roles (and cases where they don't pan out). They can appear in a variety of setups.
  
  Tracker, Follower, Psychologist, Detective, Roleblocker, Doctor, Rolestopper
  
  
  
• Medium: these roles are useful, and adding them to a setup will pretty much always help the town, but are also very limited in their capacity to affect the game and are not really capable of swinging it hugely in town's favor.
  
  Mason, Innocent Child, Friendly Neighbor, Universal Backup, Reporter, Vengeful, Babysitter, Bodyguard
  
  
  
• Mild: these roles can have impact, but it's expected that in many games, their impact will be incidental, they require interactions with other roles to be useful, or they provide just a small amount of insight into the game. Reviewers will sometimes suggest adding one of them to tip the balance slightly, and you can usually add them to setups without them changing much.
  
  Motion Detector, Shield, Role cop, Hider, Commuter, Vanilla Cop, Security Guard, Finder, Role Watcher, Voyeur, Inspector
  
  
  
• Nil: these roles are typically not expected to help the town, unless there is some specific setup aspect that is designed to make them useful. They may still be powerful if given certain modifiers (for example, "loyal neighborizer" would probably be fit to place in the highest tier).
  
  Neighborizer, Visionary, Fruit Vendor, Checker, Mailman, Neighbor, Encryptor, Miller, Visitor

Spoiler: Newly released reviews

I've released a huge backlog of well over 50 normal reviews, for interested parties. I still have a backlog of pre-designed setups, which I'll release at some point this week (if you're interested in them and I forget to do this, feel free to shoot me a PM).

You can generally find these in the completed reviews subforum (https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewforum.php?f=123) but I'm listing them here, for convenience.

Reviews marked with a (*) were already public (most likely because the mod PMed me asking to release it), but I'm listing them anyway to make this list complete for at least roughly early 2020 to now (at least, all reviews that can be released now).

01/20:
gobbledygook large https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=81894

03/20:
Not Known 15 https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=82547

04/20:
bugspray https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=82743
Datisi micro https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=82744
schadd_ large https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=82880

05/20:
Kerset https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=82974
Micc micro https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=83141

06/20:
Not Known 15 https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=83206
Poyzin https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=83216
(*) Fredrick A Campbell https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=83273
Farkran https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=83276
Not Known 15 https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=83303
Umlaut https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=83391
bugspray micro: https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=83514
Kerset large https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=83529

07/20:
GeorgeBailey https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=83569
Datisi https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=83771
(*) NoPowerOverMe https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=83835

08/20:
Morning Tweet https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=84066
Gypyx https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=84067

09/20:
(*) Umlaut https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=84278
(*) Mizzytastic https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=84476

10/20:
JacksonVirgo https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=84579
The Bulge large https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=84684
(*) Sirius9121 micro https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=84685
TheGoldenParadox https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=84686
Micc micro https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=84712
Datisi micro https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=84766
(*) Gypyx https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=84767
GeorgeBailey https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=84768
(*) Mizzytastic large https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=84792
(*) NoPowerOverMe https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=84802

11/20:
Akarin large https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=84807
Sirius9121 micro https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=84930
Datisi https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=85083

12/20:
JacksonVirgo https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=85464

01/21:
(*) OutWorldER https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=85510
Not_Mafia https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=85564
Noraa https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=85565
Gypyx large https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=85726

02/21:
Sirius9121 large https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=85915
innocentvillager https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=85966
Foxbird https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=85967

03/21:
(*) Datisi https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=86073
Cook https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=86074

05/21:
(*) OutWorldER https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=86498
(*) Umlaut https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=86551
T3 https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=86560
Datisi micro https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=86594
(*) Gypyx https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=86659
Not Known 15 https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=86660

06/21:
(*) osuka https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=86790
The Bulge micro https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=86848
Cook https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=87007
TemporalLich large https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=87045
GuyInFreezer https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=87051

07/21:
(*) lendunistus https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=87209
(*) Dwlee99 https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=87280
Datisi https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=87281
Kerset large https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=87327

08/21:
Gypyx https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=87353

09/21:
ssbm_kyouko https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=87550
(*) ChaosOmega https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=87586
lendunistus micro https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=87682
T3 micro https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=87683
LicketyQuickety large https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=87736

10/21:
GeorgeBailey https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=88013
MegAzumarill https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=88042

11/21:
Not Known 15 https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=88220
DkKoba https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=88299

12/21:
(*) Micc micro https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=88340

01/22:
Shirou https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=88550
Datisi https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=88551
(*) Micc micro https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=88585
midwaybear https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=88596

02/22:
Greeting https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=88657
(*) Mizzytastic large https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=88696
Cat Scratch Fever https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=88965

03/22:
DkKoba https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=89078
(*) RH9 micro https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=89103
Umlaut https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=89167

04/22:
PookyTheMagicalBear https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=89246
NorwegianboyEE https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=89247
Datisi micro https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=89325
schadd_ large https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=89368

05/22:
KittyTacky https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=89455
Datisi large https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=89534

06/22:
Ausuka https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=89653

[implosion]

(p.p.s. I disagree with Shield being so low on the tier list, a Shield that crumbs its targets is quite powerful)

Yes, this was considered. The role has a lot of potential to be swingy with how well the shield plays - if they crumb too obviously scum might shoot them (or have someone other than their target make the kill). If they crumb too non-obviously then they give no info when they die. And they won't be alive to explain their crumb when it matters, and people are

going

to look for a crumb, which means there's potential for misinterpretation. If they claim, then they no longer give any info when they die. But they do have potential to be very impactful - it just requires them to play really well.

[implosion]

(Oh and thanks for updating the wiki!)

[implosion]

It's my next priority after releasing pre-designed setup PTs.

[implosion]

Detective makes sense as role investigation to me because it's not getting a result based on the action that the targeted player is performing that night. It's getting a result based on their role, specifically whether that role is a killing role, with the added clause that they've used their role at some point. It also makes sense to put it in the same category as psychologist, its complementary role, and psychologist pretty clearly isn't an action investigation - its positive result doesn't require the target to have ever taken any actions.

[implosion]

Wait, implo.
Why is Role Investigation seperate from Action Investigation for Normal games?

I don't know. It dates back to at least 2015 when N created the normal game NAR wiki page. Presumably from a design perspective it gives followers and voyeurs more fine-grained results, but I doubt that's the actual reason - probably the actual reason is just that someone made a choice at some point and it stuck.

I don't really think the details of which role goes where are all that important, so long as (1) things that could be affected by other things happen after them in resolution order (e.g. detective resolves after vigilante) and (2) it's consistent and players know where to find the classifications.

Both detective and psychologist are both role investigative abilities and action investigative abilities. Neither of them makes perfect sense in either of those categories, but those are the categories that happen to exist right now. If there's like, wide consensus that something should be moved, then it can be moved, but I don't think there's a particular impetus to do so.

[implosion]

I'm more than happy to discuss specific placements that are of interest. Some like cop should be self-explanatory. Others are a lot more nuanced. The "process" was that schadd_ suggested the idea, I liked the idea, and I made a tierlist offhand based on my personal opinions. I presented it to the NRG, schadd_ made some adjustments, and that's the list that we have. Statistics are, I think, fairly useless for something like this because the whole point of putting in a strong role is that the rest of the setup will be relatively weaker. If we were to look at statistics of what roles have what win rates, in theory we'd get something like a picture of how overrated/underrated certain roles are. For instance, if tracker had a 70% winrate, that wouldn't necessarily imply anything about its absolute strength - it would imply that people's perception of how strong tracker is is weaker than how strong it actually is.

Some like shield that was already mentioned have a lot of variance. A lot of investigatives are really dependent on what else is in the setup, like role cop or vanilla cop, and investigatives that are more universally useful are always good/always have a chance to just break open a game with a guilty, hence the near-complete lack of investigative roles in the middle tier. A *lot* of the middle tier is comprised of roles whose job is basically to confirm themselves as town and can do so either always, or with some consistency and some other utility like bodyguard and vengeful. That's kind of a good baseline for an average power role. This isn't like, something that I was super-consciously thinking about when putting roles in tiers, but it is a usefulguideline.

Those are some broad strokes, but if there's specific choices you're curious about, feel free to ask.

[implosion]

Role cop can be almost as powerful as a cop, for instance if you give the mafia 3 mafia-exclusive (or at least shady) roles and ideally town some that they can find. Still won't be as powerful because they can't clear vanilla players.

Unmodified hider is ultimately strictly weaker than a bulletproof, which itself is a very swingy role that depends on how townread the player who gets it is. It's hard to make it have much power without modifiers, and I can't think of much you could do to build around it.

Checker has the potential to be powerful but only if the setup is built *heavily* around it and it's given some way to know how powerful it is. For instance, you could make some of the mafia ascetic and make some player informed of that.

Visionary is hard to make particularly powerful; you'd want lots of scum with active roles that are hard to claim and town with active roles that are easy to claim, or something like that, but I'm not certain. Maybe someone else has a better idea, there could be some way.

[implosion]

Shield and motion detector both have the ability to impact the game significantly (by catching a scum); it's just that both of them require very precise circumstances for that to happen. Role cop is near the top because it's pretty typical for it to have

something

useful that it can find, be it a scummy-looking mafia role or some townie with a role that can't belong to mafia. And yeah, the things below role cop on the mild list are increasingly less and less likely to have that kind of material impact on the game, or require more and more of the setup to be designed around them in order for them to be useful.

I don't think there's a particularly cogent reason that visionary was put above checker in the nil list; probably just that visionary *can* "generate its own information" and checker is useful only in the context of setup that's built around it (or some modifier like loyal).