GuyInFreezer's Mini Normal Review, April 2019

[implosion]

Just gonna quote the entire correspondence.

Vanilla Townie
Town Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Visitor
Town Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Visitor
Town Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Visitor
Town Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Visitor
Town Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Visitor
Town Tracker
Town Doctor
Town Mason Compulsive-Fruit Vendor
Town Mason Compulsive-Fruit Vendor

vs

Mafia Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Jailkeeper
Mafia Multitasking Compulsive Fruit Vendor
Mafia Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Fruit Vendor and Visitor Enabler

General Rules:

1. Site-wide rules always apply here.
   
2. If you have a question for me, you can always PM me. If you need to talk to me in thread,
   please bold your question like this
   so I can locate it better.
   
3. You may not use hidden or encrypted text. I decide if the text is small enough to be count as hidden text.
   
4. If you have a power to edit/delete your post, don't do it. If you scumslip, just accept it and eat rope.
   
5. Play nice. Insulting players with using any form of racial/sexual slur or any kind of derogatory languages or excessive harassing in any way will result in immediate force-replacement.
   
6. Do not EVER discuss the ongoing games in this thread nor discuss this game elsewhere, no matter how informative it is.
   
7. Do not use provable randomization in this game. Saying that you rolled a dice is fine, using dice tag is not.
   
8. This is my color. (#408000) Don't use it.
   
   
9. If I find the certain factors/actions damaging the state of the game, I will intervene and/or take action.
   
10. If you break these rules, I have full rights to punish you at my will. This can range from simple warning to modkill/force-replace.
    
11. If I feel like it, I always have a full right to add/modify the rules. If I do, I will fully explain the reason behind such action.
    
12. Most importantly, have fun!

Requesting and Using Mod-Given Information / Clarification

1. You may ask for clarification or information about roles and mechanics on thread or via PM, case by case. However, all "hypothetical situation" questions must be asked via PM only.
   
2. Please refrain from saying things like "mod said" unless necessary. Don't drag me into this game.
   
3. When using the information I provided, do not quote it word-by-word. Paraphrase it.

Voting and Lynching:

1. You can vote by either using bold tag([
   b]Vote:GuyInFreezer[/b
   ]) or using vote tag ([
   vote]GuyInFreezer[/vote
   ]). However, try to use vote tag if possible. It's kinda hard for me to locate bold votes.
   
2. Unvote is not required to change your vote. Also, if it looks like a vote for someone, I will count it. No tricking me!
   
3. A player is lynched when the majority votes the same player. Once the player is lynched, the lynchee and the living players may talk until I get back and post the flip.
   
4. If the deadline is reached before the lynch has reached, the day will end with
   No Lynch
   , unless mentioned otherwise.
   
5. If you're nightkilled, you may post one information-less "bah" post.
   
6. If the game reaches endgame and I'm not around yet to resolve it, dead players may not post until I finish resolving the endgame.

Activity and Deadline:

1. Deadline for each day is 2 weeks. Deadline for each night is 2 days.
   
2. If you're on V/LA, please tell me beforehand by either post it in thread (bolded) or PM to me.
   
3. If you don't post here for 48 real hours, I will prod you. Failure to receive prod within 24 hours or receiving a 3rd prod will cause force-replacement.
   
4. If you do not submit an action before the day ends, it will count as
   No Action
   .
   
5. If I have to extend the deadline, I will. If I do, I will post it on thread.

Sample Role PM:

Sample Town Role PM

role pm

Role:

Vanilla Townie

Description:

You have no special abilities

Win Condition:

You win when all Mafia members are eliminated.

role pm

Role:

Vanilla Townie

Description:

You have no special abilities

Win Condition:

You win when all Mafia members are eliminated.

role pm

Role:

Town Multitasking Compulsive Fruit Vendor Visitor

Description:

During the night, you must give a fruit to a different player. The targeted player will be notified.
During the night, you must also visit a player. Your visit does not do anything.

Win Condition:

You win when all Mafia members are eliminated.

role pm

Role:

Town Mason Compulsive Fruit Vendor

Description:

During the night, you must give a fruit to a different player. The targeted player will be notified.
You are a Mason with

Name,

whom are confirmed as

Town

.
PT: link

Win Condition:

You win when all Mafia members are eliminated.

role pm

Role:

Town Tracker

Description:

During the night, you may target a player. You will learn whom your target visited.

Win Condition:

You win when all Mafia members are eliminated.

role pm

Role:

Town Doctor

Description:

During the night, you may target a player. You will protect your target from a nightkill.

Win Condition:

You win when all Mafia members are eliminated.

role pm

Role:

Mafia Compulsive Fruit Vendor

Description:

During the night, you must give a fruit to a different player. The targeted player will be notified.
You may perform a nightkill in addition to your role simultaneously.
You are

Mafia

with

Names

PT: link

Win Condition:

You win when your faction controls half of the town.

role pm

Role:

Mafia Compulsive Fruit Vendor Jailkeeper

Description:

During the night, you must give a fruit to a different player. The targeted player will be notified.
During the night, you must also target a player to jailkeep. Target will be roleblocked and protected.
You may perform a nightkill in addition to your role simultaneously.
You are

Mafia

with

Names

PT: link

Win Condition:

You win when your faction controls half of the town.

role pm

Role:

Mafia Compulsive Fruit Vendor Fruit Vendor Enabler

Description:

During the night, you must give a fruit to a different player. The targeted player will be notified.
If you are removed from the game, the role [Fruit Vendor, Visitor] in the game will stop functioning.
You may perform a nightkill in addition to your role simultaneously.
You are

Mafia

with

Names

PT: link

Win Condition:

You win when your faction controls half of the town.

i will warn you in advance that whichever member of the nrg gets this is going to say no!

Even if the setup is actually attempted to balance?

Yeah. The "at least one vanilla townie" piece is a strict rule, but a relevant guideline is that the game should reasonably be in line with what most people signing up for a normal game expect. And this isn't really that.

Ok. I actually used the sole VT for named townie aspect.

How's this then

Vanilla Townie
Vanilla Townie
Town Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Visitor
Town Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Visitor
Town Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Visitor
Town Tracker
Town Doctor
Town Neighbor
Town Neighbor 1-shot Vigilante
Town Neighbor

vs

Mafia Multitasking Roleblocker
Mafia Nurse
Mafia Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Fruit Vendor and Visitor Enabler

Oh I think I probably should point this out. If you are suspecting it, I wasn't planning on pushing any boundaries by putting 2 VTs instead of 1. It just happened like that when I was rebalancing it <_<

[implosion]

Primary: mastina
Secondary: RadiantCowbells

[RadiantCowbells]

Uh I think compulsive was made not normal at some point

[implosion]

no, compulsive was made normal. it just hasn't seen use.

[implosion]

But, as an important caveat:

This modifier is considered Normal on mafiascum.net if the following rules are met: 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. This is done to ensure that compulsive roles can have an action chosen non-randomly for them in the event that they fail to submit.

[RadiantCowbells]

I remember when compulsive was originally disallowed and I was sad I didn't realize it was reallowed

Is there a single place with all the normal rules and modifiers

[implosion]

the best canonical list is the normal game wiki page.

[mastina]

Yeah only one VT in this setup is a hard-veto.
Setup might technically follow Normal guidelines, but this is absolutely more of a theme game.

[RadiantCowbells]

Is that up to date nowadays

[mastina]

Is that up to date nowadays

Actually no, the best source is implosion's thread in tandem with the list, because implosion's thread has content that the list does not. The list SHOULD be the best source...but ISN'T because people are a bit lazy and haven't updated it.

(The main reason I haven't is because I'm always concerned that me updating the list could be directly correlated to games I reviewed, e.g. me updating the list now could be seen as something specifically tied to this review.)

[GuyInFreezer]

Yeah only one VT in this setup is a hard-veto.
Setup might technically follow Normal guidelines, but this is absolutely more of a theme game.

How about two

[RadiantCowbells]

Just do it and say I made you do it therefore unrelated gg

[implosion]

It contains all of the roles and modifiers from the latest update... a couple of them just don't have wiki pages yet

There was a period after the first normal game updates where the wiki page was horribly out of date because I didn't have permissions to it, i didn't know who did, & etc. But it is up to date now as far as I know. Let me know if there's anything there that isn't. (And if you do notice things and want to just fix them, *please* do!) I know the feeling of being unable to clarify wiki things because of an ongoing game very well. It's really annoying. But this conversation is a great excuse to fix anything you know of that's broken right now :p

[implosion]

(if there's anything that's ongoing-game related feel free to just not mention it or pm me or w/e as well)

[implosion]

And just to be clear there I am saying I agree that we can't really update the wiki in response to ongoing things. I've had mods contact me for things they're confused about or that they think are (or that are) contradictory, and my response is generally to tell them to remind me when their game is over.

[GuyInFreezer]

Vanilla Townie
Vanilla Townie
Town Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Visitor
Town Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Visitor
Town Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Visitor
Town Tracker
Town Doctor
Town Neighbor
Town Neighbor 1-shot Vigilante
Town Neighbor

vs

Mafia Multitasking Roleblocker
Mafia Nurse
Mafia Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Fruit Vendor and Visitor Enabler

I guess technically this setup can be

Vanilla Townie
Vanilla Townie
Vanilla Townie
Vanilla Townie
Town Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Visitor
Town Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Visitor
Town Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Visitor
Town Tracker
Town Doctor
Town 1-shot Vigilante


vs

Mafia Multitasking Neapolitan
Mafia Nurse
Mafia Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Fruit Vendor and Visitor Enabler

[GuyInFreezer]

no, compulsive was made normal. it just hasn't seen use.

Aren't you glad now

[implosion]

as the normal listmod, i'm not allowed to have emotions or regrets!

[GuyInFreezer]

Anyway for funsies

- Town Multitasking Compulsive Fruit Vendor Visitors are there for sole purpose of "disabling" tracker in fancy way until Mafia enabler is lynched.
- Town vig is only one shot it gives scum nurse claim a bit more credence when it comes to massclaim
- I just got rid of roleblock because Mafia probably won't need a roleblocker in this setup

[implosion]

Since i'm here, just from a pure balance perspective, if you were running this setup with all the town fruit vendor visitors replaced with VTs and all the scum replaced with goons, it would be quite significantly scumsided. I'm not sure what the effect of the fruit vendors will be, but if you're starting without them and adding them to make the tracker's job harder, that's the wrong direction to go in.

[GuyInFreezer]

tracker/doctor/1SV vs goon/neopolitan/nurse is significantly scumsided? Because the chance of mafia nurse > doctor doing anything significant balance-wise is very low.

[GuyInFreezer]

Vanilla Townie
Vanilla Townie
Vanilla Townie
Town Mason
Town Mason Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Visitor
Town Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Visitor
Town Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Visitor
Town Tracker
Town Doctor
Town 1-shot Vigilante


vs

Mafia Neapolitan
Mafia Nurse
Mafia Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Fruit Vendor and Visitor Enabler

[mastina]

Vanilla Townie
Vanilla Townie
Vanilla Townie
Town Mason
Town Mason Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Visitor
Town Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Visitor
Town Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Visitor
Town Tracker
Town Doctor
Town 1-shot Vigilante


vs

Mafia Neapolitan
Mafia Nurse
Mafia Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Fruit Vendor and Visitor Enabler

By the way, for clear role wording:
If both the fruit vend and visit are meant to be compulsive, I'd put "Compulsive fruit vendor, Compulsive Visitor" to clarify.
I'd also make the Mafia Multitasking Compulsive Fruit Vendor, Fruit Vendor/Visitor Enabler similarly clarified as,
Mafia Multitasking Compulsive-Fruit Vendor Fruit Vendor Enabler Visitor Enabler.

Normalcy wise, this is more in the zone of acceptable and not a theme game. It's still clearly thematic, but I'm not going to outright veto this because it's a step in the right direction.
Balance-wise, it's also a step in the right direction.

It'll take me a little bit of time to number-crunch it and run the mental math to see if it's actually balanced, but eyeballing it, it's PROBABLY within the 50%-give-or-take-10% range, albeit likely not dead-50%. (At a guess, probably ~57% scum? Like I said, need a little time to think it over.)

[implosion]

tracker/doctor/1SV vs goon/neopolitan/nurse is significantly scumsided? Because the chance of mafia nurse > doctor doing anything significant balance-wise is very low.

Yeah - tracker/doctor/1sv vs goon/goon/goon is significantly scumsided, I'd say. Maaaybe not significantly. But I think it's pretty significantly so.

I think my standard of balance if you only have 3 power roles against a goon team is that they have to be on average medium-strong. Something like, maybe, neapolitan+jailkeeper+watcher or cop+pair of masons (which is potentially even cutting it close? not sure. not important)

The problem with tracker/doctor/1sv vs goon/neapolitan/nurse especially is that both nurse and neapolitan become very viable fakeclaims, and they become extremely believable when the town has that little power. Tracker isn't actually a strong role, it's an investigative that has 1 person it can guilty every night, and that person can change. It's only powerful if it lives to 1 scum left. Doctor is medium-strong, 1-shot vig i'd describe as medium, but the thing to keep in mind with 1sv in a 13p is parity, and if the only role that can restore parity is a doctor, who will more often than not never actually get a save, then the kill from the vig is not worth much.

Note that this is not a commentary on the new setup you've proposed - just trying to give some insight into how I (and probably some of the nrg people idk) evaluate balance in a setup along these lines.

[RadiantCowbells]

hmm

as a secondary reviewer should i do something here