bugspray's Micro Normal Review, June 2020

[schadd_]

normally we don't like informs as to the identity of a power role because people go into normals expecting to have a choice with the nightkill - while you can have a setup that focuses on dayplay (i.e., just fewer PRs) it is pretty cut-and-dry too far to remove one nightkill choice

What if I dropped the masons

what would this setup look like

[schadd_]

soory

what if we keep masons but then the scum is only informed that there are masons?

this setup would be townsided - importantly, the setup as it was isn't really imbalanced, just weird to play

if the innocent child were a weaker role, like a 1-shot tracker, motion detector, bodyguard, etc. this would be balanced

[schadd_]

...soory

you've moved pretty far into scumsided by removing the masons. generally you want to have 2 medium strength town roles, especially when they are confirmable (because when there are 3 confirmable roles it's really hard to nightkill all of them and when there is only 1 it's easy to nightkill it)

i don't know how you mean survivor also. there isn't a normal role called survivor

[schadd_]

adding a tracker for instance would make this fine

[schadd_]

• with the rolecop i would call its investigative power inconsistent, in the sense that it has next to no power unless players are able to make a judgement about the information, i.e. that the informed roles are mafia. there are a lot of factors that affect this - how mafia claims (in particular, i believe there is a mechanically correct and maybe clear play where they both claim some inform on day 1, and maybe they come up with a good fake inform, maybe they do not claim at all), whether the town is generally aware that it is more likely for informed roles to be mafia (scanning the mini archives list it's about 1/2, much higher for informed vanilla; there is outguess-the-mod at play here though), general setup spec (again can be even counter-productive based on how mafia claims).
  
  these things are not generally a problem but when they make up half of town power in a small game in a normal (which is expected to be at least palatable for newer players) that's pushing it
  
• even if we can assume that the rolecop will Go Well, it is still scumsided. the rolecop can be understood to get a soft guilty on both scum and essentially nothing else - this is a weak investigative. i think i was lowballing by saying this needs a tracker - something like a jailkeeper, odd-night neapolitan/gunsmith/cop/watcher maybe would be more appropriate

[schadd_]

• jsyk: its allowed to have either of two variants of IC, where it is revealed to everyone on day one OR the IC can choose to ask the mod to reveal them at any time; the latter is the one usually used
  
• in micros: a large majority of the time, either there is only one mafian left by day 3 (and there can only possibly be one on day 4) or the mafia are simply winning handily if they have 2 left on day 3. that is to say, the d1 bulletproof makes the encryption kill a low-impact decision most of the time (it is not really a big deal to begin with, encryptor is not a huge power source)
  
• this setup remains woefully townsided. a town neighborizer is understood by the NRG to bear about as much town power as a gentle breeze, and killing an IC day 1 vs. day 2 is such a small difference (only theoretically confers town power by having the IC be alive longer, which i don't believe to be a very significant factor)

[schadd_]

scumsided i mean

[schadd_]

its allowed to have either of two variants of IC, where it is revealed to everyone on day one OR the IC can choose to ask the mod to reveal them at any time; the latter is the one usually used

nows the time to make this evaluation

it seems like you're doing the one that reveals instantly, in which case i'd hesitate with the balance on this one - it's essentially 2 masons mountainous but one of them is outed (mafia can kill the IC at leisure, and i'd expect that to be sooner rather than later - i don't think daytalk is that big of a convenience and something like half of teams will be barely using it at all) which feels hard for town (probably within some realm of balanced though)

i think this would work perfectly fine if the IC were just taken out of the equation - if the inform is just "this person is an encryptor enabler" that doesn't imply the absence of other roles (although you can feel free to make it something like "this person's role includes an encryptor enabler" or somesuch - in any case if they ask you should clarify that there might be more components to the role) and the tension of "do i wanna avoid killing this person i suspect to be a mason because they're an encryptor enabler" is more meaningful to the game i think

[schadd_]

inform is different but yes

need 2 see role PMs

[schadd_]

i dont see what the edit is btwn 38 and 39. it probably shouldnt say factional

in any case. I WILL LE PASS YOUR EPIC SETUP

[schadd_]

yes this is ready for signups

[schadd_]

pretty sure it's a normal guideline that role PMs themselves have to be flavorless