Skygazer's Micro Normal review, June 2019

[implosion]

01 Town Tracker
02 Town Fruit Vendor
03 Town Simple Doctor
04 Town Vanilla
05 Town Vanilla
06 Town Vanilla
07 Town Vanilla
08 Mafia Mailman
09 Mafia Goon

Welcome, [Player Name]. You are a Town Tracker.
Abilities:
Every night, you may investigate another player to determine who (if anyone) they've targeted. Your result will be in the form of [target] visited [player(s)], [target] visited no one, or no result.
Win condition:
You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

The game thread is [here]. Please send me a PM confirming your role and alignment.

Welcome, [Player Name]. You are a Town Fruit Vendor.
Abilities:
Every night, you may send a fruit to another player. This fruit does nothing, and the player will not know that they received it from you. There is no fruit flavor (the player receiving a fruit will just see "fruit").
Win condition:
You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

The game thread is [here]. Please send me a PM confirming your role and alignment.

Welcome, [Player Name]. You are a Town Simple Doctor.
Abilities:
Each night you may select another player to protect from a single nightkill. If your target is not vanilla, this protection will fail.
Win condition:
You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

The game thread is [here]. Please send me a PM confirming your role and alignment.

Welcome, [Player Name]. You are a Vanilla Townie.
Abilities:
You have no abilities other than your voice and your vote.
Win condition:
You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

The game thread is [here]. Please send me a PM confirming your role and alignment.

Welcome, [Player Name]. You are a Mafia Mailman.
Abilities:
Every night you may send me a message to send to another player. The player will know that the message was sent by a mailman, but not know that you sent the message.
You share a private topic with [Playername], a Mafia Goon. You may communicate with them during the night [here].
Your team has a factional night-kill. Each night your team can designate one teammate to perform this kill.
Win condition:
You win if at least one member of your group is alive and all other players are dead (or when your factions controls half of the votes).

The game thread is [here]. Please send me a PM confirming your role and alignment.

Welcome, [Player Name]. You are a Mafia Goon.
Abilities:
You share a private topic with [Playername], a Mafia Mailman. You may communicate with them during the night [here].
Your team has a factional night-kill. Each night your team can designate one teammate to perform this kill.
Win condition:
You win if at least one member of your group is alive and all other players are dead (or when your factions controls half of the votes).

The game thread is [here]. Please send me a PM confirming your role and alignment.

Last night you received a message from a mailman! Here is that message:

[insert message here]

Last night [target visited ???]

Last night you received a fruit!

Micro ####: Danny DeVito Mafia

[Danny DeVito pic goes here]
[game phase goes here]
Moderator: Skygazer
Reviewers: ??? and ???

Player List:
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Spoiler: Reveals

None yet!

Rules, adapted from schadd_ who adapted them from Nexus.

Be nice. It's a game.

General:
- Please adhere to the site rules.
- Do not discuss this game of mafia outside of this thread.
- Day phases will last 10 days (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 me.
- "Bah" posts are not allowed.
- Don't publicly talk about potentially replacing out, and don't publicly request for other players to replace out. If you have an issue that may need to be resolved through a replacement, please feel free to bring it up privately with me!
- If you break any of these rules, you may be modkilled (only with a listmod's blessing) or force-replaced.

Voting / Player actions:
- Vote either with vote tags (VOTE: Skygazer) or with bold (

vote: Skygazer

). You may use nicknames and abbreviations if you wish, as long as it's unique to the player and I can figure out who you intended to vote.
- 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 4 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).
- If you have more than one night specific actions, you may only use one per night unless specified otherwise.

Activity:
- You are expected make a game-state advancing 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 two prods, I will force-replace you.

Mechanics:
- 006688 is my color. Feel free to use it if you'd like! Just not to impersonate me or to mislead others.
- 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.
- I 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.
- This is a normal game and follows normal guidelines.
- Day-talk is not active barring the existence of an encryptor.

Sample Role PMs:

Spoiler: Vanilla Townie

Welcome, [Player Name]. You are a Vanilla Townie.
Abilities:
You have no abilities other than your voice and your vote.
Win condition:
You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

The game thread is [here]. Please send me a PM confirming your role and alignment.

Spoiler: Mafia Win Condition

You win if at least one member of your group is alive and all other players are dead (or when your factions controls half of the votes).

[Skygazer]

ego

[Skygazer]

Tracker is tracker and there's a lil bit of entropy from the fv/mailman/doctor but not really anything that's gonna stop it from being tracker
FV can semi-clear themselves later on i guess barring multitasking esp considering its a role that makes sense w tracker (granted it'd probs still probs mislynchable?)
Simple Doctor gives town a somewhat limited protective and dissuades any follow the invest strats

Scum Mailman forces scum to be creative w their role, i imagine it could b p powerful if scum know how to use it to manipulate but is gimped by the fact that they have to claim x-shot or something if the goon dies

[Something_Smart]

I feel like the increase in town power after one scum dies is too much. The tracker starts getting innos (innos that can't be killed no less, unless scum kill another uncleared player in the doctor), the FV becomes basically confirmed town (I don't think any but the most tinfoil-y players would expect scum multitasking FV), and the mailman, if alive, has to stop using their power and become hella suspicious for doing so.

A day 2 scum lynch can lead to scum autoloss if the tracker, tracker's inno, and FV all live to D3.

Whereas, on the flip side of the coin, if town mislynches D1 and D2 their power pretty much doesn't help them at all, unless the tracker or doctor gets lucky.

What's the point of the fruit vendor? It seems like its only purpose is to become confirmed town after a scumflip, which antisynergizes like hell with the tracker.

[RadiantCowbells]

I could pass as is even if I echo some of SS's concern that the game is really hard then really easy

[RadiantCowbells]

But like that's the game which is fine

[Something_Smart]

I was toying with tracker -> traffic analyst.

That would definitely fix the problem I brought up but it might make it too townsided.

I do think RC is right that it's probably in the realm of balanced, but imo it's likely to not be very fun for the losing team.

[Skygazer]

ye i can def see the concerns of the swinginess; im busy today but will try to brainstorm this tonight

[Skygazer]

i like the idea of town traffic analyst vs scum mailman w no other communicative roles but feels like that'd also open up some potential salt if town ends up falsely clearing the mailman

[Skygazer]

1. town 2-shot traffic analyst
   
2. town simple doctor
   
3. town vanilla
   
4. town vanilla
   
5. town vanilla
   
6. town vanilla
   
7. town vanilla
   
8. scum 1-shot mailman
   
9. scum goon

probs slightly more fun for the losing team? do you think this opens up any issues wrt accidentally innoing the mailman on set-up spec?

[implosion]

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm does a traffic analyst get a positive or a negative result on a 1-shot mailman who has used their shot lmao i hate how many damn edge cases there are in normals

[Skygazer]

oh geeze good question uhhhhh

[Something_Smart]

Negative, I'd think. The whole point of traffic analyst is that if you could communicate with someone in the past, but you can't anymore, you won't come up positive.

[Skygazer]

considering everything wrt my large i agree that the tracker just seems too swingy here though

[RadiantCowbells]

1. town 2-shot traffic analyst
   
2. town simple doctor
   
3. town vanilla
   
4. town vanilla
   
5. town vanilla
   
6. town vanilla
   
7. town vanilla
   
8. scum 1-shot mailman
   
9. scum goon

probs slightly more fun for the losing team? do you think this opens up any issues wrt accidentally innoing the mailman on set-up spec?

Dis scumsided I think

[RadiantCowbells]

What's stopping that from being a full traffic analyst?

[Skygazer]

hrmm

nothing ig lol

would it be more balanced w a full TA?

[Something_Smart]

It's exactly the same, there's no way the TA's results after N2 are useful

[Skygazer]

oh duh

hrmm

lemme think of something that may or may not be completely different that's both fun and balanced

[Skygazer]

not sure what i could add to that to make it more balanced w/o making it too townsided

[Something_Smart]

It's comparable to cop 9p, except that the cop stops working after a scumflip, but sometimes their clears can't be killed.

I think it's probably fairly balanced. Could be rough for town if the TA gets N1'd, but that's kinda unavoidable in setups with strong roles.

If you wanted to make it a bit more townsided, you could change it to macho 2-shot traffic analyst and regular doctor. It's exactly the same functionally, but the macho flip confirms the existence of a protective so the doctor will probably be conftowned based on claim (unless scum CC protective).

[Something_Smart]

You could add the fruit vendor back, that would add another potential conftown if a scum dies early and the TA becomes useless.

[Skygazer]

also scum mailman feels kinda dirty to have w a traffic analyst the more i think about it

[Something_Smart]

You could also put in a 1-shot BP; that would increase the odds of two no-kill nights (although it would also lead to confusion over why there was no kill)

[Something_Smart]

Idk, the whole point of traffic analyst is that it gets more reliable innos than guilties, and even then only early on. It's not as though the mailman will be locked as town, I don't think.

If you don't like the scum mailman, you could just do a scum/town neighbor pair. That would still render one scum TA-immune.