schadd_'s Mini Normal Review, July 2018

[implosion]

definitely didn't almost add "mastina_" to the private topic...

Hello!

Thanks for joining my queue! Please let me know, via return PM:

1. That you'll be ready to run your game when you get to the top of the list
2. How many players your game will have (13 or under for a mini; 14 or over for a large)
3. Whether or not you want the setup distribution to be open or closed, and what it would be - e.g. 10:3/9:3:1 etc. See this post for details.
4. Who your backup/co-mod will be, if you have one (compulsory for larges)
5. What, if any, other modding experience and/or commitments you have

Also, in order to ensure that Normal games stay "normal", we require that setups be evaluated. When it is ready, please forward your full setup to me, including the following:

1. Your opening posts (rules and flavor, if any). Remember: your opening post
   must
   contain a copy of your Vanilla Townie role, which will be public knowledge to all game participants
2. The complete text of all role PMs
3. Any hidden moderator information (this includes any possible result PMs)

As soon as they are available, your game will be assigned to a panel of reviewers who will check/discuss your game in a private topic with you. When they are satisfied that your game fits within the boundaries of MafiaScum's definition of Normal, they will let me know. Until I receive that go-ahead from them, your game will not enter the sign-up phase, even if you reach the top of the moderating queue.Once you've been approved, please post the role distribution in the PT so a co-/backup mod can take over in an emergency.Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks, and good luck

1. i will
2. 13
3. 10:3 (i have just noticed that serial killers and multiball arent allowed in mini normals. i think i knew that already but wow, excellent.)
4. i simply won't
5. mini 1982, 2003, site chat

setup

3 town masons
1 town 3-shot jailkeeper
1 town fruit vendor
5 VTs

2 mafia goons
1 mafia loud vanilla cop

welcome to mini 3: advice mafia!

u should floss your cat but only if its asleep bc it wont like it

modded by: schadd

reviewers: reviewers
shoutout to: the mcelroy brothers

Spoiler: alive

(living players in default text, order of signups)

Spoiler: dead

(dead players, in order of death, with alignment, role, time of death, color of alignment

Spoiler: events

"Day 1 starts: (post number)"
"Night one starts: (post number)"
"John Tyler replaces William Henry Harrison: (post number)"
"Richard Nixon converted to neutral survivor and modkilled: (post number)"

rules, adapted from nexus's

--most important rule: be nice and don't be mean--

general:

- Please adhere to the site rules.
- Do not discuss this game of mafia outside of this thread.
- Day phases will last 2 weeks (or until a lynch is achieved).
- Night Phases will last 48 hours maximum. On any given night, if all players PM me that they are okay to speed up the night, it will end sooner.
- During night phase, no talking may be done in the thread.
- Do not quote PM's from the mod at all (real or fabricated). Paraphrasing is acceptable.
- If you have any questions about your role, or the game, feel free to PM the mod.
- "Bah" posts are not allowed.
- If you break any of these rules, you will probably be modkilled.

voting / player actions:

- Vote either with vote tags (VOTE: schadd) or with bold (

vote: schadd

). Note that I didn't include the underscore in my username; you may choose to use a string that will uniquely identify a player to me instead of the exact thing.
- Don't try to confuse me with your votes.
- You may vote No Lynch to Not Lynch.
- A lynch will occur once a majority decision is reached. If no majority is reached by deadline, then no lynch shall occur.
- Following a lynch, it is twilight. You may continue to post until I lock the thread and declare it night.
- If nobody dies for 3 consecutive day and night phases, the town will win.
- If you have a Night Action, you may submit it from Night 1 and each subsequent Night (or whichever nights are specified by the role).

activity:

- You are expected to post at least once every 48 hours. If you haven't posted for 48 hours, I shall prod you. If you do not respond to the prod within 24 hours (either in thread if it's Day, or via PM during the Night) then I will replace you.
- As well, if you require more than three prods, I will force-replace you.

mechanics:

-

Aquamarine, 21B35F

is my color. Please don't use it.
- Confirm by how your Role PM tells you to once you are ready to play. Once there are 7 confirms, the game begins.
- Do not edit your posts.
- No impossible/hard to read text, or cryptography. For example, I would prefer that no font size smaller than the one you're reading now be used.
- The mod may make mistakes - please point out any mistakes gently. Mistakes will be corrected where possible, but sometimes mistakes are made that cannot be reversed. These will stand as final to be commiserated over after the game.
- If you need to get the mod's attention, either PM me, or bold the text you wish to draw to my attention.
- I reserve the right to alter/remove/add any rules as I see fit. You will, of course, be notified if that happens, however.

Mafia will be able to communicate with each other during day phases.

There will be 10 town and 3 mafia.

Nobody will be a cop, a psychologist, or a ninja.

sample VT PM:

Welcome to Mini 3! You are a

Vanilla Townie.

You have no abilities during night phases but may talk and vote during the Day.

You win when all threats to the town are eliminated.

Please confirm by telling me what the bolded green text says.

Welcome to Mini 3! You are a

Town Mason.

At any time, you may talk to [other mason] and [other mason] in [qt]. You know that these players are both also Town Masons. None of you have any extra abilities, but may talk and vote in the main thread.

You win when all threats to the town are eliminated.

Please confirm by telling me what the bolded green text says.

Welcome to Mini 3! You are a

Town 3-shot Jailkeeper

Three times, during a night phase, you may target a player to both block any of their targeting actions from succeeding, and to protect them from one kill.

You win when all threats to the town are eliminated.

Please confirm by telling me what the bolded green text says.

Welcome to Mini 3! You are a

Town Fruit Vendor.

Each Night, you may target a player; that player will be told "you have received a piece of fruit."

You win when all threats to the town are eliminated.

Please confirm by telling me what the bolded green text says.

.

Welcome to Mini 3! You are a

Mafia Loud Vanilla Cop.

Each night, you may target another player to learn whether or not they are vanilla (vanilla townie and mafia goon are vanilla). Anyone you target with this ability will be informed that "[playername] visited you last night." You may talk to your partners in [PT link] at any time, and you may also talk and vote during Day phases.

You win when either mafia control half the vote during a Day phase or when all townies are dead, or nothing can prevent one of these scenarios from happening.

Please confirm by telling me what the bolded red text says, or by posting in your mafia PT.

Welcome to Mini 3! You are a

Mafia Goon

. You may talk to your partners in [PT link] at any time, and you may also talk and vote during Day phases.

You win when either mafia control half the vote during a Day phase or when all townies are dead, or nothing can prevent one of these scenarios from happening.

Please confirm by telling me what the bolded red text says, or by posting in your mafia PT.

Welcome, goon1, goon2 and loud nillie, to your lair! This thread will be open to talk and submit actions at any time.

Spoiler: goon1's PM

Welcome to Mini 3! You are a

Mafia Goon

. You may talk to your partners in [PT link] at any time, and you may also talk and vote during Day phases.

You win when either mafia control half the vote during a Day phase or when all townies are dead, or nothing can prevent one of these scenarios from happening.

Please confirm by telling me what the bolded red text says, or by posting in your mafia PT.

Spoiler: goon2's PM

Welcome to Mini 3! You are a

Mafia Goon

. You may talk to your partners in [PT link] at any time, and you may also talk and vote during Day phases.

You win when either mafia control half the vote during a Day phase or when all townies are dead, or nothing can prevent one of these scenarios from happening.

Please confirm by telling me what the bolded red text says, or by posting in your mafia PT.

Spoiler: loud nillie's PM

Welcome to Mini 3! You are a

Mafia Loud Vanilla Cop.

Each night, you may target another player to learn whether or not they are vanilla (vanilla townie and mafia goon are vanilla). Anyone you target with this ability will be informed that "[playername] visited you last night." You may talk to your partners in [PT link] at any time, and you may also talk and vote during Day phases.

You win when either mafia control half the vote during a Day phase or when all townies are dead, or nothing can prevent one of these scenarios from happening.

Please confirm by telling me what the bolded red text says, or by posting in your mafia PT.

any of the three of you may perform the kill, but [loud nillie] may not perform the kill and use [their] secondary action simultaneously.

[player name] is not vanilla.
[player name] is vanilla.
You have received no result.

Welcome, [playername, playername, playername] to your masonry. All three of you are town and received the same PM, I promise. You may talk here at any time, and may not submit a factional kill during night phases.

some notes
-obvious parallel to friends and enemies. i think that setup is maybe slightly slightly scumsided bc of the existence of making friends and enemies but whatever.
-i think that loud vanilla cop and 3-shot jailkeeper cancel each other out, i would call both of them pretty strong. loud vanilla cop is rlly good for finding masons but if one of them gets targeted and then shot then i would call that a guilty for the other two. jailkeeper is only 3-shot but the role itself is excellent in this setup since it cant block anything for town and there are obvious protection targets.
-scum doesnt know to look for masons right away (but can maybe figure out about them?). town won't know to mason hunt and with 3 masons i think that it's reasonable they will look a little bit informed
-factional daytalk. im pretty sure thats still allowed but if not i'll change one of the goons to an encryptor. i plan to have factional daytalk in every mini normal i mod from now on so if somebody remembers that and i dont have it i would appreciate if u reminded me.
-fruit vendor is +.0001 town ev or whatever. it can confirm jailkeeper, hemi-demi-semi-confirm itself with 2 scum dead (since itd have to be multitasking and who uses that modifier anyway), and can in theory communicate with the masons somehow using trinary. it's just there for meta reasons, if u wanna have interesting fruit roles like weak and loyal u have to balance it out with regular ones.
-people like being masons right?

question
-if the loud vanilla cop does a kill (and the target gets protected) does it still make a sound?

[implosion]

primary: mastina
secondary: Ircher

[schadd_]

howdy

[Ircher]

My first thought is that this setup is townsided (though you may want to wait for mastina's response before you make any changes). While it does seem that the open setup Friends and Enemies seems to be fairly balanced, I think you underestimate the power of a jailkeeper for town (especially in this particular setup where the role poses no problem to town) and/or overestimate the power of vanilla cop for scum.

I would suggest minimally 1) dropping the fruit vendor; I am almost certain town doesn't need that, and 2) drop the loud modifier from the vanilla cop. (The issue with Fruit Vendor is that while its power is minimal, it can help town by acting as a named townie. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised that a town fruit vendor gets lynched in this setup, but I still don't think it is a good idea to keep it in the setup. As for dropping the loud modifier on the vanilla cop--loud decreases the power of the vanilla cop, and as I mentioned earlier, I am inclined to think this setup is townsided.)

As to your question--I believe the answer is yes. The loud vanilla cop still targeted the player with the kill; the kill target was simply protected. (It would be different if the killer was blocked.)

[schadd_]

-i disagree that fruit vendor is going to be townread; looking at normal archives + 2 non-archived games i remember, fruit vendor has been a town role 4 times, a mafia role twice and an SK role twice. two of the times it was town it was essentially an investigative (weak/loyal). i had a tracker get lynched in the game i modded (by a pretty competent list), i don't think fruit vendor will have really any effect on whether someone is lynchable.

-threemasons vs. loud vanilla cop is the mechanic that i want to be balancing the game around since it encourages interesting reasoning (in choosing who to cop and what to do with results; how to react to someone being visited and then dying for masons). i agree that the current setup is probably townsided if anythingsided but if i am pushing it towards the center i would rather change other roles (jailkeeper ->roleblocker or rolestopper; inform the mafia "there is a masonry"; give mafia additional 1-shot rolecop or something)

-i hesitate to say jailer is strong since its protective element only matters if it adds a mislynch (kinda tough with 3 shots) and it's harder for the 1-mafia-left bonus to work since jailer doesn't last very long with vanilla cop. it can potentially be reasoned to be a town role from setup spec (unclaimed loud role means scum has power which means town needs something to make it balanced compared to friends n enemies)

-daytalk (absent from friends n enemies) adds something like 3 percentage points to scum winrate? i remember it was like 10% higher with newbie games but that's a goofy sample

if "loud" automatically applies to use of factional kill then i need to change the PM. generally unrelated question at implo: can you have a "loud goon" or a "loud townie"?

[implosion]

can you have a "loud goon" or a "loud townie"?

Should be able to. Off the top of my head I don't think loud townie can possibly do anything with the current set of normal roles, but would be seen as loud by a rolecop for instance.

[mastina]

So history lesson time.
In mafiascum history, multiple moderators have run the 3-mason idea against a mostly-goon team. That's an existing Open setup.
Usually, the mafia do quite well in these, because the change from Open to Closed vastly negatively influences town's winrate.

So the town does need some power beyond 3 masons, just to deal with a baseline of 3 goons. I'd say that about a 2x jailkeeper would be right for masons vs. goons, here.

Since the mafia have the vanilla cop (I don't consider the loud modifier to vastly negatively influence the mafia here; to me, it's about net-neutral in that it can be either a boon or detrimental depending on the mafia's creativity), though, I would give the town extra. The fruit vendor and extra jailkeep shot add that amount; the question would be if the town needs both the boosts or just one.

So, my call here would be that it's either balanced as-is or is balanced by removing one shot from the JK to leave it at 2x.

[schadd_]

i think i don't wanna change it from the way it is if it is reasonably balanced then

[schadd_]

Welcome to Mini 3! You are a

Mafia Loud Vanilla Cop

. Each night, you may target another player to learn whether or not they are vanilla (vanilla townie and mafia goon are vanilla). Anyone you target with this ability or with a factional kill will be informed that "[playername] visited you last night." You may talk to your partners in [PT link] at any time, and you may also talk and vote during Day phases.

You win when either mafia control half the vote during a Day phase or when all townies are dead, or nothing can prevent one of these scenarios from happening.

Please confirm by telling me what the bolded red text says, or by posting in your mafia PT.

[schadd_]

we good?

[implosion]

FYI since I'm confident this will finish review before the next one fills it's up next before Nauci's pre-designed.

[mastina]

I believe we should be, yes.

[schadd_]

im also going to clarify in the big rules post that this doesnt have a traitor in it.

if "no cop no psychologist no traitor no ninja" feel too bulky implo u can just say "schadd's blacklist" which also sounds more official and cultural anyway

[schadd_]

also u told me to remind you to release old reviews after an arbitrary amount of time

if you want a longer arbitrary amt of time i already have a later date on my gcal