Akarin's Large Normal Review, November 2020

[Akarin]

Spoiler: Revised Mafia PM

Mafia Informed Checker

Welcome, playername! You are a

Mafia Informed Checker

.

Abilities:

Each night you may target a player to check. If your action succeeds, you will be informed that your action succeeded.

If you successfully checked your target, you will get:
“You checked PLAYERNAME successfully! Good job.”
If your action fails for some reason, you will get:
“NO RESULT.”

Your team has a factional nightkill: at night one of you may kill another player.
You cannot both kill and check a player the same night.
You share an evil den of superior taste with your team

PLAYERNAME

and

PLAYERNAME

.
You may talk with them here any time.

Win condition:

You win when the entire

town

is dead and at least one

mafia

player is still alive, or when nothing can prevent this from happening.

You are Informed that the setup for this game is:

• 3x Mafia Informed Checker
  
• Ascetic Roaming Alien
  
• Ascetic Compulsive Loud Hider
  
• Innocent Child Psychologist
  
• Loud Loyal Fruit Vendor
  
• 8x VT

Sample Role PMs available upon request, but you’re not allowed to quote them.

This information will be redacted upon your flip.

Please confirm by replying with your role name and alignment, by PM or in your private thread.

Game thread is here.

I also wonder if I should strengthen the no-talking about mod communication rule given that Mafia knows the setup? Is this okay?

• You may not quote private communication (real or otherwise) of any kind.
  Paraphrasing the information is fine, but discussing the form of such information is off-limits.
  This includes role PM, night results, other mod communication, posts from private threads, etc. Writing draft posts for your own use is acceptable.

[Akarin]

Spoiler: Combined Loud Visitor Loyal Fruit Vendor PM

Combined Loud Visitor Loyal Fruit Vendor

Welcome, playername! You are a

Town Combined Loud Visitor Loyal Fruit Vendor

.

Abilities:

Each night you may target a player to visit.
Your target will be informed that you visited them, but not what you did.
If your target is on the same team as you, they will be told:
”You have received a piece of fruit!”

Your target knows you visited them whether they get the fruit or not.

Win condition:

You win when all threats to the

town

have been eliminated and at least one

town

player is still alive.

Please confirm by replying with your role name and alignment.

Game thread is here.

The role PM actually might be simpler this way even though the role name is longer.

[Akarin]

The Innocent Child Psychologist is likely to not ever get any results in the game. If they are protected by the Alien, they get No Result, and the scum knowing precisely the night that the Innocent Child was protected means that they can just off the IC the next night.

Honestly that's... kinda my intent.

At first I just had Innocent Child by itself. But I realized the ideal strategy for scum was just to leave the IC alive until either N2 or N3, checking them each night and killing the night after they get a No Result. Alien could try to WIFOM them into leaving the IC alive until N3 (and probably should) but that's all there was to it.

So I wanted to give Mafia a reason to consider wasting a shot on the IC on N1. Starting at odds it's not

totally

crazy because town also has to make them miss an NK to get an extra day, it ups the stakes on future NKs but I want it to

maybe

be worth trying, depending on other factors like how afraid they are of the IC. Psychologist has always seemed like a neat role to me, but a) it feels bad if the scum don't know it's there and b) because it's completely useless after a couple nights if they know it is. The Alien knows the mafia know the setup, the IC has no real reason

not

to claim Psychologist too, so I feel like giving it what amounts to a slightly worse 1-shot cop gives the Alien and the Scumteam a bit more WIFOM to play with on N1. But yeah, if the IC doesn't get to investigate N1, they die without ever getting to use it.

Basically I want scum to at least be tempted to waste a shot on the IC on N1 in exchange for definitely not getting investigated.

So do you think that's going to feel too bad for the IC?

And do you think that makes the setup scumsided?

[Akarin]

Innocent Child Watcher also occurred to me, but I worry that could make scum feel hosed if it does get a shot off and probably is strong enough it means the Alien should just flip a coin, whereas I feel like a weaker role tempts the Alien to risk letting them get a shot off a bit more, and tempts Mafia to not take their chances but still worry about it.

Not sure about this, just my thought process.

Also, honestly, I laugh every time I type "Innocent Child Psychologist" and that might contribute to my attachment to the role, but I really do want to aim for balance & fun (which no one wanted to discuss the difference between in my MD thread despite people always saying "well I think it's worth sacrificing balance in the name of fun sometimes.") So yeah, balance trumps role names that make me giggle.

[Akarin]

Note also that the Fruit Vendor is basically a Neapolitan, but Mafia can gambit by claiming fruit when they get visited and hoping it's not the Hider (or once the Hider is dead, but people should be

mostly

disregarding the Fruit as evidence at that point once claims/flips happen.)

I guess I have trouble estimating both what having an extra Day is worth to Town, and what knowing the setup is worth to scum. Which is even harder because I kind of want to play with a setup where Scum knowing the setup is critical to them to really take advantage of the idea.

Oh, I had these notes, maybe posting these here is helpful?

Spoiler: Other 15p 12v3 games

Games at this size:
198
Macho Day 3 IC, Neapolitan, Even-night RB, Doctor, JOAT (Tracker, Follower, Voyeur) vs Goon, Encryptor, Combined Tracker+Rolecop
Town sweeps but largely due to one player hitting guilties N1 and N2
Hard to tell how balanced it was because everyone was sour about the lucky town sweep and saying obviously dumb stuff like scum needing 4 players despite the 17p 4 scum games being mostly all scum wins, much less 15 player games.

219
Scum win, but Masons were apparently very bad/actively anti-town
mason x3, motion detector vs. 3x goon
no setup complaints

225
Town win
Indecisive Alien, Novice Neapolitan, Neighbor x2, Watcher vs Goon, Tracker, Watcher Enabler
Basically everyone agrees it was townsided because of the Watcher.

By the way, when I was looking at other games in this range trying to pick a player size I wanted, it's crazy how different the response to town wins vs. scum wins tends to be. Complaints about townsidedness on town wins are on everything, often with crazy scumsided counterproposals, but scum wins very rarely have any "this was too scumsided" complaints. The salt imbalance is real.

[Akarin]

Too tired from election to write up stuff, need to sleep on it, but it's funny because I had Town Voyeur in an earlier version of this (before the fruit vendor)!

I do also want to say that because of the Alien, scum often are going to want to target the same player with the checking two nights in a row to see if they're really a PR, or at least that was my assumption and I wanted to not limit that idea.

Voyeur can't see Alien, but can see Fruit Vendor and Hider. Do you think an un-flipped Fruit vendor is much of an innocent? I mean I do actually like the idea, just wondering if it's enough. Hider would be really weird for scum in this setup, so that's pretty good at least. I like that it makes scum wonder if one should claim checker, or if none should and just let town realize all the checking is scum and claim ascetic something.

[Akarin]

Okay so new setup
15 players
3x Mafia Informed Checker

Ascetic Roaming Alien
Ascetic Compulsive Loud Hider
Innocent Child Psychologist
Combined Loud Visitor Loyal Fruit Vendor
Voyeur
7x VT

I'm happy with this, but is that enough for town?

Current version of role PMs coming in a minute.

[Akarin]

Spoiler: ROLE PMS

Mafia Informed Checker

Welcome, playername! You are a

Mafia Informed Checker

.

Abilities:

Each night you may target a player to check. If your action succeeds, you will be informed that your action succeeded.

If you successfully checked your target, you will get:
“You checked PLAYERNAME successfully! Good job.”
If your action fails for some reason, you will get:
“NO RESULT.”

Your team has a factional nightkill: at night one of you may kill another player.
You cannot both kill and check a player the same night.
You share an evil den of superior taste with your team

PLAYERNAME

and

PLAYERNAME

.
You may talk with them here any time.

Win condition:

You win when the entire

town

is dead and at least one

mafia

player is still alive, or when nothing can prevent this from happening.

You are Informed that the setup for this game is:

• 3x Mafia Informed Checker
  
• Town Ascetic Compulsive Loud Hider
  
• Town Ascetic Roaming Alien
  
• Town Combined Loud Visitor Loyal Fruit Vendor
  
• Town Innocent Child Psychologist
  
• Town Voyeur
  
• 7x Vanilla Townie

Sample Role PMs available upon request, but you’re not allowed to quote them.

Please confirm by replying with your role name and alignment, by PM or in your private thread.

Game thread is here.

Ascetic Compulsive Loud Hider

Welcome, playername! You are a

Town Ascetic Compulsive Loud Hider

.

Abilities:

Other than kills, any actions targeting you will automatically fail.
Each night you

MUST

target a player to hide behind.
Your target will be informed that you visited them, but not what you did.

If your action succeeds you will hide behind that player for the night, meaning you cannot be killed by actions targeting you but you will die if the player you hide behind is targeted for a kill and dies because of it.
If you ever fail to submit an action, you will automatically hide behind the first player still alive on the ordered list of players you sent me.

Win condition:

You win when all threats to the

town

have been eliminated and at least one

town

player is still alive.

Please confirm by replying with your role name, alignment, and

an ordered list of all players in the game

.

This is in case you fail to submit an action. You are free to update the order of this list by PMing me at any time.

Game thread is here.

Loud Night Result

PLAYERNAME paid you a visit last night.

Ascetic Roaming Alien

Welcome, playername! You are a

Town Ascetic Roaming Alien

.

Abilities:

Each night you may target a player to abduct.
If your action succeeds, any other actions targeting that player will fail and any actions your target attempts will also fail.
You cannot target the same player-slot more than once.
Other than kills, any actions targeting you will automatically fail.

Win condition:

You win when all threats to the

town

have been eliminated and at least one

town

player is still alive.

Please confirm by replying with your role name and alignment.

Game thread is here.

Combined Loud Visitor Loyal Fruit Vendor

Welcome, playername! You are a

Town Combined Loud Visitor Loyal Fruit Vendor

.

Abilities:

Each night you may target a player to visit.
Your target will be informed that you visited them, but not what you did.
If your target is on the same team as you, they will be told:
”You have received a piece of fruit!”

Your target knows you visited them whether they get the fruit or not.

Win condition:

You win when all threats to the

town

have been eliminated and at least one

town

player is still alive.

Please confirm by replying with your role name and alignment.

Game thread is here.

Innocent Child Psychologist

Welcome, playername! You are a

Town Innocent Child Psychologist

.

Abilities:

At the start of the game, I will publicly confirm that you are

town-aligned

.
Each night you may target a player to investigate.
If your action succeeds, you will learn whether or not your target is capable of killing but has yet to do so.

If your target can target a player to kill but has not yet done so, you will get:
“PLAYERNAME has the look of a killer.”
If your target has

either

already attempted to kill someone

or

is incapable of killing, you will get:
“PLAYERNAME seems innocent.”
If your action fails for some reason, you will get:
“NO RESULT.”

This investigation resolves after night kills.

Win condition:

You win when all threats to the

town

have been eliminated and at least one

town

player is still alive.

Please confirm by replying with your role name and alignment.

Game thread is here.

D1 Start announcement

PLAYERNAME is aligned with the

Town

.

Voyeur

Welcome, playername! You are a

Town Voyeur

.

Abilities:

Each night you may target a player to watch.
If your action succeeds, you will learn what actions were used on your target that night.

You only learn the actions performed, not the names of the roles performing those actions.
You’ll get results from this list of actions:

Roleblocked	Jailkept	Doctored	Bodyguarded	Babysat	Neighborized
Informed of Friendliness	Hidden Behind	Received Fruit	Visited	Received Mail	Checked
Killed	Strongman Killed	Vigged	Tracked	Followed
Investigated by a ...	Cop	Gunsmith	Role Cop	Vanilla Cop	Neapolitan
	Psychologist	Detective	Traffic Analyst	PT Cop	Finder
Watched by a ...	Watcher	Voyeur	Motion Detector	Role Watcher

Results will be in the form of:
”PLAYERNAME was Xed, Yed, and Zed last night.”
If nothing was done to your target, you will get:
”Nothing was done to PLAYERNAME last night.”
If your action fails for some reason, you will get:
”NO RESULT.”

Win condition:

You win when all threats to the

town

have been eliminated and at least one

town

player is still alive.

Please confirm by replying with your role name and alignment.

Game thread is here.

Vanilla Townie

Welcome, playername! You are a

Vanilla Townie

.

Abilities:

You have no special abilities other than your voice and your vote. Use them well!

Win condition:

You win when all threats to the

town

have been eliminated and at least one

town

player is still alive.

Please confirm by replying with your role name and alignment.

Game thread is here.

Trying to word the Voyeur PM was tough, I'm trying to stick with this giving specific results thing, and I find the NAR pages on the wiki pretty confusing so want to remove ambiguity.

Heck, I'm not even sure this is the form the results should be taking, but that's my best reading of the page. So really want to be unambiguous with the results the player should expect.

[Akarin]

My understanding is that the Alien is like a Rolestopper, so the Hider can't target the Alien-abducted player, right? And then the Hider would end up actually vulnerable to an NK that night.

Also, should I link the wiki on each of the relevant Voyeur results? It's not that big a deal to me if either of you think it would make the PM better (like if a player who isn't aware of the wiki gets the role???) Or does that just look bad at little benefit?

[Akarin]

Voyeur

Welcome, playername! You are a

Town Voyeur

.

Abilities:

Each night you may target a player to watch.
If your action succeeds, you will learn what kinds of actions were used on your target that night.

You’ll get results from this list of action types:
Blocking, Jailkeeping, Protection, Kill, Role Investigation, Action Investigation, Miscellaneous
You can see what actions fall into each category here.

Results will be in the form of:
”PLAYERNAME was Xed, Yed, and Zed last night.”
If nothing was done to your target, you will get:
”Nothing was done to PLAYERNAME last night.”
If your action fails for some reason, you will get:
”NO RESULT.”

Win condition:

You win when all threats to the

town

have been eliminated and at least one

town

player is still alive.

Please confirm by replying with your role name and alignment.

Game thread is here.

“PLAYERNAME was Killed and Blocked last night.”
“PLAYERNAME had 3 Miscellaneous actions performed on them last night.”
“PLAYERNAME was Killed and had a Miscellaneous action performed on them last night.”
“PLAYERNAME was Protected twice and Killed once last night.

Also, just want to check, a hypothetical Babysitter would register as a kill IFF it actually died that night, right? Otherwise it would just always be a Protect?

[Akarin]

And can I just say the Voyeur (and Follower) pages are really unclear. Are Normal guidelines on the wiki protected or can anyone change them?

And if anyone can, it'd be too much of a giveaway while I have a setup in review, but how do you get permission to update the wiki? In case I wanted to take matters into my own hands once the game is over.

[Akarin]

Spoiler: RULES POST SLIGHTLY REVISED

Rules stolen from PenguinPower and various other moderators, all of whom stole from various other moderators.

Rules

General Rules

• Since you’re on this site, follow site rules, obviously.
  
• Pretending to break the rules is the same as breaking the rules.
  
• Personal attacks, threatening to report people for game throwing when they don’t agree with you, etc. may get you force-replaced.
  
• Quoting
  or discussion
  of the
  form
  of private communication is forbidden, although paraphrasing the
  content
  is fine, as is using a PT to write draft posts for your own use. DO NOT QUOTE REAL
  OR FICTIONAL
  PMs or PT THREAD POSTS.
  
• Report attempts at out-of-game communication immediately.
  
  
• No ciphers, encryption, extremely small text, or similar tactics.
  
• No provable randomness.
  
• Once you tell me you’re replacing out, you are out. No backsies.
  
• Bold (or PM) all requests to the Mod.
  
  
• This is my color. You cannot has.
  
  
• If you think I’ve made a mistake please PM me about it, if you’re still not happy let’s drop it and talk about it after the game.
  
• Do not attempt to find or abuse loopholes in the rules. I’ll try to assume good-faith but loophole abuse will be punished and rules will be updated if there are problems. I’ll make a new post about changes to the rules if that happens.

Activity

• Post once every 48 hours or get prodded.
  
• If prodded, you have 24 hours to respond with a
  substantive post in game
  .
  
• A player who has been prodded 3 times may be replaced with no further notice.
  
• If you plan on being inactive for more than 48 hours,
  PM me and post in thread that you're going to be V/LA
  .
  
• When V/LA, your prod timer is 96 hours. Don’t abuse this.
  
• I might give you more time if you talk to me via PM ahead of time.
  
• If you plan to have regularly scheduled V/LA period (e.g. the weekend) please PM me about it.

Deadlines

• Days will last 10 days.
  
• Nights will last 49 hours.
  
• Extensions may be given out for replacements if it’s late in the day, or when I feel like it makes sense.
  
• If you have a role with a Night action, your action is due by 1 hour before night ends.
  Players with a Night action may submit a "No Action" PM to indicate you do not wish to perform your action, I'd really appreciate that. I'll still accept one later if you change your mind before the deadline.

Voting

• When a simple majority of all living players have voted for one person, that person is Dropped from the game and the day ends. If no one has a majority at deadline, no one is Dropped.
  
• When a player is Dropped the game enters twilight and everyone can keep talking until I post the final vote count.
  
• You may VOTE: No Drop — half of the living players voting No Drop is enough to end the day without dropping any of the players.
  
• If no one dies for 3 consecutive day/night phases, the game ends with a victory for town.
  
• Votes must use VOTE: Tags or
  Bold
  .
  
• Votes that use nicknames or have minor spelling errors will be counted as long as I unambiguously understand who you’re voting for. This counts for No Drop votes too.
  
• Votes in quotes, spoiler tags or otherwise non-obvious will not be counted.
  
• Stop talking once you’re dead, no bah posts.

Setup

• Daytalk: anyone with a private topic can use it whenever they like.
  
• ALL NON-TOWN-ALIGNED PLAYERS KNOW THE COMPLETE SETUP
  , just not the role randomization.
  
• Factional abilities can
  not
  be used the same night as role abilities without the Multitasking modifier. I promise I won’t do anything lame like giving everyone Multitasking.
  
• This is a normal game, so everything is normal.

Spoiler: Sample Role PM

A least one player has received this:

Vanilla Townie

Welcome, playername! You are a

Vanilla Townie

.

Abilities:

You have no special abilities other than your voice and your vote. Use them well!

Win condition:

You win when all threats to the

town

have been eliminated and at least one

town

player is still alive.

Please confirm by replying with your role name and alignment.

Game thread is here.

[Akarin]

Thanks!

So I already PMed someone about being a potential co-mod but they aren't getting back to me and I'm supposed to have one. Before I ask anyone else, either of you want to be the required co/backup mod since it's technically a large?

No pressure, you've both been really helpful already and honestly I find the review process kind of fun. Maybe I'm weird. But thank you both is what I'm trying to say.

[Akarin]

Thanks Flavor. I'll still hunt around for someone else as an official dedicated backup but I may take you up on asking you some question when someone gives me some weird rules question we haven't thought of.

I really appreciate whatever help you do have time for.