Changes to Normal Games (update September 2022)

[Not Known 15]

I’ve yet to see a good arguement made why using the Theme queue for nonstandized games is a problem.

There are

massive

problems with this, and they have all been already stated.
1. It clogs up the theme queue. Right now the queue balance is about equal.
2. There are very different interests between the Normal queue people and the ones who join theme games.
3. The greylist roles were spots for new roles to introduce into normal games- roles that are too normal for the liking of Theme games.

Another problem: The standard is now set to not both alignment and role actions in normals.
Correct me if I am wrong but that is not even a standard with the games.
Multitasking is a problematic modifier; I would not want it to be added in games with (town) rolecops, because there needs to be at least one Vanilla townie! Giving nearly everyone Multitasking also gives massive problems to Vanilla Cops or Neapolitans.

[Not Known 15]

I just looked at the last 10 achieved Normal games:
Out of these 10 games:
4had a greylist role/SK/Multiball.
5-6had double action for mafia enabled
2-3had double action for mafia enabled

and

a vanilla cop/Rolecop/Neapolitan

[Not Known 15]

i think more people will mod normals as a result of these changes

As a result of some of these changes, yes. Especially premade setups.
Other changes like the elimination of greylist will likely have the reverse effect...

Clarification needed/Inclusion proposed:

Informed

: Redact information upon flip or not?

Recommended: Redact.

Not redacting brings problems:
Informed Mafia turns from a good power role for Mafia to a Negative Utility Role. Informed is especially promising with Mafia... flip makes it way too swingy.
Informed town now has low risk and requires zero thought. They can freely wait until MYLO +2 and then drop the bombshell, potentially catching multiple Mafia. Redacted Informed town gives an incentive to claim early(because they could die and info would be lost).

Innocent Child:

There are 2 versions. Automatic and manual.
Recommended: Automatic Innocent Child/Innocent Child(both possible)
Day Specific is not whitelisted for Innocent Child. Maybe change this?

[Not Known 15]

I use Activated Innocent Child for the kind that you activate, and just Innocent Child or D1 Innocent Child for the automatic ones.

D1 Innocent Child is not whitelisted... unfortunately. Only Night Specific modifiers are... not Day Specific.
But Yes Activated Innocent Child would be ok, too.
What do you think about Informed?

[Not Known 15]

Gunsmith is based on flavour, definitely. This means gun to Alien, Detective, and Vengeful; and no gun to everyone else.

[Not Known 15]

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.

Encryptor is currently Normal for Mafia only. You might want to change that.

[Not Known 15]

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

ok

[Not Known 15]

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.

Same is true for a one-shot cop.

Well, not exactly. A one-shot cop is less powerful.

[Not Known 15]

I think it is not a good idea to use these alignments here. It is the exact opposite of what we want in Normal. There's town, there's scum, if there are MANY players there might be additional groupscum(or one of these almost never used Serial Killers). But town does not have to take alignments with more complex motives into account. And in a Normal it should not have to.
In a normal Town does not have to worry about redirection and vote manipulation.

[Not Known 15]

Informed Neighbors

Nope!
With Masons and Informed Neighbors are not the same.
Informed gets redacted upon flip.
Mason does not.
(the identity of the other Mason(s) is/are redacted, but not what the mason was informed of)

[Not Known 15]

Looking for feedback, all.

If one were to make a single-ball with 34 players, what's the highest number of Mafia members you would include while keeping it balanced?

8. for every 4 players in the game past 1, you want 1 to be aligned with the mafia.

5 players = 1 mafia
9 players = 2 mafia
13 players = 3 mafia
17 players = 4 mafia
21 players = 5 mafia
...

33 players = 8 mafia

That's more than I was anticipating. Sounds good to me. I was thinking singleball, 26:8.

Maybe a Mafia Encryptor and a Backup Encryptor. I'm the kind of game mod that would stuff the Normal game with many weak/even-odd PRs, so I'd try to balance it out. Like instead of Even/Odd Cops, break it up with 3 roles. A N1, N4, N7 etc Cop.

I really just want to see a larger group of Scum working together in an epic, drawn-out game. Thinking of making one soon.

At the same time a large theme would be interesting, too.

A word of warning: 8 are more than you were anticipating because 8 is wrong.
13p 10-3 Mountainous is roughly 21% EV.
33p 25-8 is much more terrible:5%.
That's a lot of difference. Even if you factor in that longer playtime means more evidence you might want to look at 6, maybe 7 if you really like swingy games, but 8 is terrible - even

4v3

has a bit more EV. 8 is too much swing, even if accounting for the large size.
If going for big size, it isn't 1 mafia per 4+1.For player sizes above 12 it is (with usual power) approximately the

square root

of the player size, minus 0.5.

[Not Known 15]

Consider refactoring Vengeful into a night role. This will reduce the power of Vengeful by making it vulnerable to active protection (but not roleblocks) and also lead to the possibility of multikills but will deNormalize Twilight actions in Normals and possibly open the door to the Venge modifier being Normalized.

Night Vengeful would be able to submit a kill action on the Night after they are eliminated.

Dead interaction is not normal at all. Vengeful is almost exclusively used in twilight outside normals, and has no history of being used in normals that way.
Night Vengeful is not normal.

[Not Known 15]

I should probably post the other Vengeful Normalization proposal here:

Vengeful must submit a target

before

they die, they can change this submission at any time. Not submitting anything will lead to a Vengeful holstering (unless they are a Compulsive Vengeful, though a Compulsive Vengeful is required to submit a compulsive list anyway).

That's a much better option.

[Not Known 15]

If there are two Backup Trackers, does one dying activate the other one (since a Backup Tracker is a Tracker with a modifier)?

i asked a similar question in one review for a completed normal (only with mafia backup ascetics instead), and i believe the answer is no.

I believe the answer is yes.
Backup is a modifier. The backup tracker is still a tracker.
A Night 50 Vigilante dying would activate a backup Vig regardless of night.

[Not Known 15]

(p.s. Announcing's wiki page implies you can modify factional kills with Announcing - modified factional kills are something that needs to be looked at closely for Normality imo -

especially

if they deny use of an unmodified factional kill)

That's because there was a time when they could be.

To explain, this is a syntax thing.

There's a syntax difference between [Modifier] Mafia [Role],
And Mafia [Modifier] Role.

In the case of modifiers like Announcing/Simple, Announcing/Simple Mafia [Role] would, as a formatting thing, mean that the mafia performing their factional kill is subject to the modifier. There have been Normal Games run where this was the case. It is...inadvisable, to say the least, to have this formatting as it is incredibly unfun for the mafia, bad for balance, basically just sucks. But it

was

a valid wording, and so, games were run with it. (I would never pass a game with it now regardless of legality tho, because the alternative is the only viable form imo.)

In contrast, Mafia Announcing/Simple [Role] would, as the formatting suggests, apply the modifier to just the role, not the mafia's factional power. This is what should always be done because fuck having the mafia's kill be subject to a modifier meant for a role, that is a mistake that should never have been allowed to happen (and any part I played in allowing it, I am ashamed of).

When I did this in the past (with Ninja) I treated Ninja affecting everything as the default and used e.g. [Ninja Rolecop] if it didn't.

[Not Known 15]

With Visionary and Security guard introduced I think there's enough reason to include another group in NAR for followers and the like, namely the communicative group.

The group is all roles who solely give information/messages to other players, so Visionary, Securiry Guard, Friendly Neighbor, Mailman, Fruit Vendor, and Neighborizer (maybe not Neighborizer since its a little different than the others)
Thoughts?

What's the benefit?