Foxbird's Mini Normal Review, February 2021

[callforjudgement]

(I'm the secondary reviewer so nothing that I say "officially" matters, but I'm giving thoughts on the setup anyway in the hope that they're useful to the primary reviewer in making a decision.)

I don't think there's enough town power here. I don't think there's anything wrong with the setup aside from that, though.

The basic problem is that – barring the extremely unlikely possibility that the Doctor single-handedly stops two kills – town's only real ability to gain power role information that helps them deal with the scum is an unreliable investigative. It's a well-designed unreliable investigative – there's counterplay for scum and the possible false positives and false negatives are clued very well – it's just that it isn't enough by itself to balance out scum's inherent advantage at the 10:3 numbers.

I think you probably want a fifth town role, but am not immediately sure what. A Rolecop would fit the rest of the setup, but I'm uncertain whether it would be enough. It wouldn't have been in 2018, but towns have been getting better since and they don't need as much power as they used to; it's hard to draw the balance boundary when the skill levels of players change over time.

[callforjudgement]

I'm worried about the town potentially getting too many clears early, but apart from that, something like a 1-shot cop would fit fairly well. (Cop shots are worth a

lot

, especially on N1 when the Cop is likely to still be alive, so it doesn't take many to balance a setup.) I'm not sure whether it's too much, and/or whether the scum would be upset because they perceived it as too much even if the game were balanced in practice.

I guess you could add the 1-shot Cop, and then gate the Doctor to some extent; the situation I'm most worried about is that town get two clears early and then scum end up bouncing off a Doctor protection because everyone knew they'd likely aim for one of the clears.

Another possibility is to gate the Cop to some specific night later than N1, so that town's power isn't happening all at once at the start at the game (and giving scum more counterplay in that they have time to try to find them).

[callforjudgement]

Well, that isn't going to happen very often because five sixths of the time, either the Mailman Enabler or the Mailman itself is going to die before the two Goons do, and even in the unlikely case, it's quite likely that there will be a claimed Enabler and a dead Doctor. So there's some built in counter to the negative utility there.

[callforjudgement]

You missed the "Odd-Night" modifier in the role PM.

As for balance, I think scum might get a little frustrated if town

do

manage to land the double-protect, but at least there are clues to help them play around it (when one NK fails, scum will know there's a protective in the setup, and play around the possibility of a second NK failure). I guess they might be annoyed if they kill one protective and then run into the

other

protective, but at that point there won't be any power roles worth saving so it would likely only happen due to a blocked kill on a VT.

How does Macho interact with Rolestopper? That's relevant here and I don't think we have any ruling on that yet.

[callforjudgement]

(To be clear, the double-protect possibility is a significant proportion of town's power in this version of the setup, so it shouldn't be seen as undesirable. It's just something that you need to keep in mind.)

[callforjudgement]

My position on Multitasking in that respect is specific to 9p setups; those need to have default-multitasking in the setup rules or it gives away much too much information to town (because there would be swing problems if a scum member died early and the scum power roles were relevant). In a Mini, that isn't a problem because you're OK with town winning easily if they manage to catch two scum early, so I'm happy to approve Minis with no default multitasking.

On another note: after reviewing all the documentation we have on role interactions, I'm inclined to think that our current interaction is that Rolestopping a Macho player will protect them from all actions other than kills, which go through normally.

[callforjudgement]

It's probably a good idea. My experience with no-daytalk setups with Neighbourizers is that players get quite surprised when they're added to a PT at the start of the Day, but don't get to talk in it until the following Night.

[callforjudgement]

Yes, the neighbourisation affects the investigation but not vice versa, so the investigation resolves last. (In general, investigative actions tend not to change the effects of other actions, meaning they always resolve last by NAR.)

[callforjudgement]

Yes, neighborizing players doesn't change their flip.

Your action resolution sequence seems correct. (In theory, I'd need to point out that killing a Mailman won't prevent their message going through; in practice, this isn't going to matter because scum aren't going to NK each other.)

[callforjudgement]

Traffic Analyst gets a positive on a Mailman, yes. (This contrasts with PT Cop, which gets a negative on a Mailman because a private message is not a PT.)

I think the bits in square brackets aren't part of the results PMs, they're just Foxbird explaining the situations in which they'd be used.

[callforjudgement]

About the role PM? The current version is fine for me.

I've only just woken up so might have misinterpreted you're asking; let me know if you want me to look at something else.