Changes to Normal Games (update September 2022)

[callforjudgement]

In terms of wanting the wiki page to be updated: if a listmod (most likely implosion or Nexus) gives me new text for the Normal Game page, I can update it. (I was given fairly wide-ranging powers on the wiki a while back in order to help deal with a spambot infestation, but am only supposed to use them to enforce the site rules. Changing pages on the suggestion of a listmod seems close enough.)

[callforjudgement]

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.

it was fairly common to approve a setup with a modified role, ask the moderator to give us the role PM for approval, and then the moderator to just disappear for weeks or even months. Apparently many mods really don't like writing role PMs. Having standardised role PMs should help skip that part of the process entirely. (From my point of view it'd be sufficient to have non-binding standardised role PMs, but it looks like the binding version is what was settled on. Not having standardised role PMs available at all is an issue, though.)

[callforjudgement]

It's not the NRG's

fault

, as it were. But it makes the Normal queue stall, and the Normal listmods don't like that (and the players who want to play Normals sometimes don't have a game to join).

[callforjudgement]

I've been trying to join the wiki standardisation committee for a while but nobody's been letting me in.

As it is, I have basically no idea how much progress you've made because none of it's public and it's not widely talked about. (For example, there are some mistakes you might or might not have made, mostly related to Opens, but I have no way to check if you have or haven't.)

[callforjudgement]

How does someone become a normal set up reviewer?

Start by reviewing Theme games (you need to have modded a Large Theme to be able to be counted as a reviewer for one, but there's no restriction for Minis, and you can also "unofficially" review a Large). There's seemingly always a demand for Theme game reviewers. Then when you have a good review record, ask the Normal listmod to join the group. (If you build up a good enough review record, they might even ask you!)

It also helps to mod a Normal or two to become familiar with the review process (and the Normality rules).

[callforjudgement]

they might even ask you!

this happens?

I was invited to the NRG. I didn't apply.

I'm not the only person who was invited to the NRG, either.

[callforjudgement]

I'd love to see an automated reviewer.

The problem, though, is that it'd make town setup speculation orders of magnitude more accurate, as town could just run all the known power roles through the reviewer to check for fakeclaims / hidden scum PRs.

[callforjudgement]

Can we have a modifier for an activated passive ability? So like a 1-shot Bulletproof but you have to choose the night you become bulletproof, or same thing with ascetic. Or would it be better just to call it a different role?

That was normalised as part of these changes: Activated. (1-Shot Activated Bulletproof does exactly what you're suggesting, as the 1-Shot modifier applies to the Activated activation.)

[callforjudgement]

Under current guidelines, we have Activated Innocent Child (triggers on request), and Innocent Child (triggers at the start of D1).

The main weirdness is that you can have an Innocent Child variant that becomes alignment-confirmed at the start of a Night, but not at the start of a Day other than D1.

(Also, Dayvig is not Normal, and IMO should not be Normal. It's a fine role for Themes, but IMO the day should be clearly separate from the night in a Normal.)

[callforjudgement]

That would have been greylist, I think, but the greylist just got abolished.

[callforjudgement]

The

previous

"the Normal rules have changed" thread is still stickied. We probably don't need two threads about Normals changing, one of which is out of date, and I occasionally click on the wrong one by mistake.

[callforjudgement]

It isn't.

I see it more as an Open modifier than anything; it's so specific you can't really make good use of it without knowing the rest of the setup (nor can other players really interact with it meaningfully).

That said, I would have allowed it as greylist under the old rules, which implies it probably should be whitelisted under the new rules, just in case anyone happens to need it. I can see one potential naming problem, in that "Investigation-Immune" means something else (specifically, it's a Godfather equivalent, not an Ascetic for investigations). That might be fixable though.

[callforjudgement]

You could use a ruleset that had been nonproblematic in, e.g., a Micro or Theme.

[callforjudgement]

Gunsmith is based on flavour.

I don't see it making any flavour sense for a Babysitter to have a gun. (In addition, the Babysitter doesn't kill its target; the flavour is that the person who kills the Babysitter kills the Babysitter's target too.) So I'd personally be against Babysitters having guns.

[callforjudgement]

Since this was bumped again I'll point out that, as I mentioned elsewhere, named townies don't appear to be explicitly whitelisted.

These are Normals, not Opens (where you know a named townie is in the setup) or Themes (where you can get flavour hints from a name).

The only way a named townie differs from a regular townie is in Rolecop results (and it's normally possible to find an appropriate non-vanilla role if you

really

need that interaction in your setup; Miller is a common choice). Named Townie might be a commonly used role, but it really doesn't make sense in closed, unthemed setups.

[callforjudgement]

I think the "assembled from components" name there makes much more sense. With a real-life jail, you can't take the walls with you, and lock someone else in place without them.

[callforjudgement]

Just to clarify: the members of a neighbourhood are public knowledge to people

in the neighbourhood

. You can't speculatively ask the mod for a list of all neighbourhoods in the game and who's in them.

[callforjudgement]

Masonizer is almost impossible to balance around.

I tried something similar once (balancing around Weak Neighbourizer), and it left the rest of the town power so weak that town didn't have much fun.

It might work a bit better in a Large, but it's unbalanced for the same reason that Cults are; if the recruiter doesn't die quickly, they nearly always win.

[callforjudgement]

It's still pretty difficult, but less so.

There's still an absolutely huge swing if the Masonizer dies (or is forced to claim, allowing scum to shoot them overnight) before they can use their shot.

[callforjudgement]

Ah right, I missed that the control over the scum kill was particularly valuable here. (This does imply a fairly bad interaction with scum roleblockers, though, who make

both

confirmations invalid, but at least you can avoid that particular design.)

Incidentally, a one-confirmation kill isn't all that small; most swings are smaller than that (e.g. a Tracker dying D1 rather than D2 is a swing, but not a big one, and that sort of swing happens all the time in setups).

[callforjudgement]

Supersaint makes vote/hammer order relevant; it normally isn't in Normals.

As such, I don't think this would be a good idea, because optimal play in a game that could potentially contain a Supersaint is to for town to leash who hammers on every single lynch (even if there isn't an actual Supersaint there). That would end up making all Normals worse, even ones without the role, for a very minimal game; so the role should probably be blacklisted.

[callforjudgement]

Supersaint makes vote/hammer order relevant; it normally isn't in Normals.

As such, I don't think this would be a good idea, because optimal play in a game that could potentially contain a Supersaint is to for town to leash who hammers on every single lynch (even if there isn't an actual Supersaint there). That would end up making all Normals worse, even ones without the role, for a very minimal game; so the role should probably be blacklisted.

I don't understand why Vengeful is allowed then, because the Vengeful modifier is far more powerful, allowing the lynched to kill literally anyone.

When you lynch a Vengeful, it doesn't matter who hammered. So there's no point in leashing it just because the setup might have a Vengeful: the potential existence of a Vengeful doesn't completely change the way most of the setup plays out (although it does have an impact on 2:1 lylo). When Supersaints are allowed, even if they aren't in the setup, it's always correct to make sure that the second-scummiest player is the hammer for every day's lynch – there's no theoretical downside, and a very small potential upside – which affects every single Normal game from then on, because nobody can know for certain that there isn't a Supersaint.

A similar example: compare a Vigilante who can kill anyone, to a Vigilante who can kill only people who have triple-posted. The first is Normal; the second is less powerful, and abNormal, because we don't want to discourage people from tripleposting altogether in Normals just in case there happens to be a Triple-Post Vigilante lying around.

[callforjudgement]

Why isn’t vanillizer normal?

It works best in role madness, so if a game wants a vanillaiser it probably also wants to be a Theme game. In games with only a few power roles, town vanillaisers normally backfire, and scum vanillaisers are hard to balance (roleblockers are hard enough to balance in games with few power roles, and vanillaisers have a much stronger version of the same effect).

There are also two versions of the role, so you'd have to pick one to Normalise if you were going to (the version where the player knows their role has changed, and the version which leaves a permanent roleblocking effect on them).

[callforjudgement]

I think maybe a new Normal role should be tried.

Let's say the play could tap into a player who's part of a neighborhood, and could listen in on their discussions. Not sure if the other players being eavesdropped on would be able to tell. 'Wiretapper' would be neat, and would not be able to see Scum PTs with that ability.

I think this is literally not possible with our current forum software :(. Well, the version where the eavesdropped victims are notified works.

You can do it by giving the player in question post access to the PT but banning them from saying anything. At least one Theme did. (However, there's currently a rule in Normals that the set of players with access to a PT must be known by everyone in that PT, which bans this sort of mechanic; setups that violate that would be moving away from what I think of as a Normal, at least.)

[callforjudgement]

i think an interesting role would be something like a town of salem jailor


or just the interrogation part and ability to execute

I think this isn't a good idea for multiple reasons: 1) it's a complex role making it harder for newer players to understand 2) it's a powerful role, which makes it difficult to balance around and 3) it's name is too similar to Jailkeeper that some confusion may arise from it. While the third problem could easily be solved by giving it a new name, the other two points still stand. Most normal roles avoid combining many actions into one role; those that fo generally have a long name (e.g.: Town Combined Friendly Neighbor Neighborizer), and this is considered importantly internally because it deters people from making setups that are "normal" by the physical rules but not "normal" in the spirit of the rules.

Also 4) timing issues. If you want it to work regardless of when people are online, you have to make selecting the target a day action, which means extra moderation complexity compared to the typical Normal.

(The other issues are real, too.)

[callforjudgement]

Just a note that Fragile has some bizarre action resolution situations (e.g. a Fragile player being targeted by two unrelated rolestops). That said, I'm sure it would be possible to come up with some consistent ruling if the modifier were popular enough.

I prefer mastina's variant (and have seen it used before, an Activated Combined Fragile Bulletproof Townie under the name "Weremuffin"). Presumably Fragile Bulletproof protects you from direct kills but not being acted on by non-kills.

[callforjudgement]

IMO the most sensible resolution to the double rolestop is that the rolestoppers rolestop each other and other actions go through (RAR produces this result, it's a bit less clear under NAR). In that situation, it seems strange for the rolestopped action to trigger the Fragile (unless you think that roleblocked actions would).

[callforjudgement]

Personal PT Cop is very close (the only difference is that it gets a positive on Masons too).

I'm not sure it has much design utility, though.

[callforjudgement]

Who knows? If there were, they wouldn't be visible in the signup post, because then they wouldn't be unannounced.

[callforjudgement]

I like the name Checker because it works on a lot of different levels. (Here's one that hasn't been mentioned yet: in Poker, a "check" is a zero-sized bet, used to fulfil the functions that betting normally fulfils but without actually risking any poker chips. In the same way as a check in poker is the simplest possible bet, a check in Mafia is the simplest possible investigation.)

[callforjudgement]

What's the benefit of null roles, besides modWIFOM?

We normally want Normals to be about playing versus the other players, not trying to see inside the mod's head.

[callforjudgement]

There are two considerations. The more minor one is that it effectively creates a role change effect (whether you use the hidden-vanillaise or Announcing variant), which is outside the space that Normals normally play in. The more major one is that if a setup actually wants a Vanillaiser, it is probably too complex to be a Normal and would work better as a Theme. (In Mafia hands, even giving them a Roleblocker tends to require a lot of town power to balance it; a Vanillaiser would require still more to balance, and at that point you're getting into role madness territory. In town hands, Vanillaiser isn't particularly broken but it's hard to see much design utility for it; if you're going around removing negative abilities then that's getting into Theme territory, if you're removing positive abilities then you have a setup where scum have powerful roles and town can somehow figure this out and yet not be able to lynch them for some reason, which is also Theme territory.)

[callforjudgement]

Town don't have factional abilities, so that would only make any sense in multiball.

[callforjudgement]

Actually the comment about modifiers that should be roles is a good excuse for me to segue into the point that Enabler is almost certainly misclassified as a modifier rather than a modular role. In particular I think most people would agree that e.g. a Cop-Enabler should not be considered a kind of Cop, for the purpose of questions like "do they have a gun?" or "what result will they return to a Cop-Finder?" or "should a Deputy become a (disabled) Cop if they die?"

Enabler isn't a modifier, it's a derived role. (If you look at the wiki page Enabler, you'll notice that the automatic role PM generator thing describes it as a "passive ability" rather than a "modifier"; it wouldn't fit into the normal role PM syntax if you tried to use it as a modifier, because the player doesn't actually have the role being "modified".)

If you're interested in this sort of thing, you might want to look at Template:Rcl on the wiki, which handles how the various components of a role interact with each other. (The only categories which are true modifiers, in the sense of not being able to stand on their own, are "s" schedule modifiers, and "m" action modifiers; pretty much everything else either can be or has to be a role.)

[callforjudgement]

It's interesting that these would elevate the concepts of elo/melo into actual "rules of the game" territory, rather than being derived concepts emerging from the rules as I have always considered them to be.

I'm worried that any attempt to define precisely when a game is in ELo/MeLo is likely to have annoyingly counterintuitive edge cases.

You can get outright paradoxes: some situations would be ELo if a given player is vanilla, but not ELo if they have a power role, so you can reach a situation where the players are in ELo if and only if they aren't in ELo. (A simple, if extreme, example: 2 Bulletproof Townie + ELo Bulletproof Vigilante vs. 2 Goon.)