ChaosOmega's Mini Normal Review, September 2021

[implosion]

Setup (13 players):
1x Mafia Simple Goon
1x Mafia Complex Goon
1x Mafia Goon
1x Mafia Traitor
1x Town Doctor
1x Town Jailkeeper
1x Town Vigilante
1x Town Roleblocker
5x Townie

Role PM's:

You are a

Townie

.

Passive Abilities:

n/a

Active Abilities:

n/a

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one member of the town is still alive.

Confirm by replying with your role name.

You are a

Town Doctor

.

Passive Abilities:

n/a

Active Abilities:

Doctor: Each night, you may target a player. If successful, that player will be protected from one kill that night.

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one member of the town is still alive.

Confirm by replying with your role name.

You are a

Town Jailkeeper

.

Passive Abilities:

n/a

Active Abilities:

Jailkeeper: Each night, you may target a player. If successful, that player will be simultaneously roleblocked and protected from all kills that night.

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one member of the town is still alive.

Confirm by replying with your role name.

You are a

Town Vigilante

.

Passive Abilities:

n/a

Active Abilities:

Vigilante: Each night, you may target a player. If successful, that player will be killed.

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one member of the town is still alive.

Confirm by replying with your role name.

You are a

Town Roleblocker

.

Passive Abilities:

n/a

Active Abilities:

Roleblocker: Each night, you may target a player. If successful, that player's active abilities will be blocked that night.

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one member of the town is still alive.

Confirm by replying with your role name.

You are a

Mafia Goon

.

Passive Abilities:

Factional communication: Your partners are XXXX and YYYY. You are also aware that another player in the game is a traitor. You may communicate together in a private topic at any time, located

here

.

Active Abilities:

Factional kill: Each night, you may target a player. If successful, that player will be killed. Only one member of your team may use this ability each night.

You win if at least one member of the mafia is alive and all other players are dead, or if nothing can prevent the same.

Confirm by replying with your role name.

You are a

Mafia Simple Goon

.

Passive Abilities:

Factional communication: Your partners are XXXX and YYYY. You are also aware that another player in the game is a traitor. You may communicate together in a private topic at any time, located

here

.
Simple: Your active abilities will be roleblocked if you target a player who is not vanilla.

Active Abilities:

Factional kill: Each night, you may target a player. If successful, that player will be killed. Only one member of your team may use this ability each night.

You win if at least one member of the mafia is alive and all other players are dead, or if nothing can prevent the same.

Confirm by replying with your role name.

You are a

Mafia Complex Goon

.

Passive Abilities:

Factional communication: Your partners are XXXX and YYYY. You are also aware that another player in the game is a traitor. You may communicate together in a private topic at any time, located

here

.
Complex: Your active abilities will be roleblocked if you target a player who is vanilla.

Active Abilities:

Factional kill: Each night, you may target a player. If successful, that player will be killed. Only one member of your team may use this ability each night.

You win if at least one member of the mafia is alive and all other players are dead, or if nothing can prevent the same.

Confirm by replying with your role name.

You are a

Mafia Traitor

.

Passive Abilities:

Traitor: You know that XXXX, YYYY, and ZZZZ are aligned with the mafia.

Active Abilities:

n/a

You win if at least one member of the mafia is alive and all other players are dead, or if nothing can prevent the same.

Confirm by replying with your role name.

Opening post:

Mini Normal XXXX

Reviewers: xxxx & yyyy

Players:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13

Spoiler: Alive

Spoiler: Dead

Rules:

Rules

1. Obey all site-wide rules.
2. Have fun.
3. #0080FF is my color, please do not use it.
4. No small or invisible text or cryptography.
5. To vote someone, either bold your vote or use vote tags. If your vote isn't bolded or vote tagged, it will not count. Unvotes are not necessary to change your vote.
6. During the day, a player will be eliminated when they have more than 50% of the players currently alive voting for them. Once that amount has been reached, they're dead; no unvotes will save them. Players can post in the thread up until I post the end of day scene and the thread is locked. You may also VOTE: End Day if you wish for the day to end without an elimination. Voting to end the day only requires 50% of living players to be locked in.
7. Once it has been posted by me that you are dead, you're dead. Do not post any more, not even a bah post.
8. Every day will have a deadline of 12 days. Extensions will be given for extreme circumstances.
9. Nights will have a deadline of 2 days. If you have a night action and do not send one, you will do nothing. You may also send me Fast Night; if I receive this from all living players, the next day will start immediately.
10. If 36 hours pass without a player posting or saying they will be V/LA, I will prod them. For the purposes of this rule, the weekend counts as 24 hours. Players will be replaced if they would receive a 4th prod or do not respond to the prod with 24 hours.
11. Please PM me if you have any questions about the game.
12. If anyone breaks any of the aforementioned rules, I have complete control over the actions that will be taken. Additionally, any situation not explicitly covered above is subject to my discretion and will be handled as I see fit on a case-by-case basis. I may modify the rules at any time, you will be notified if this occurs.

Setup Information:

All players with access to a PT may talk in the PT at any time.

Sample Townie Role PM

You are a

Townie

.

Passive Abilities:

n/a

Active Abilities:

n/a

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one member of the town is still alive.

Confirm by replying with your role name.

[implosion]

Primary: Isis
Secondary: implosion

[implosion]

4:9 is a hard sell; I think my inclination is that it should almost certainly be accompanied by some kind of public setup information or an informed role or something that it's 4:9 (possibly including that one of those is a traitor) because the norm being 3:10 means that town will assume they're not yet in MELO at 9 players alive, and they'll be potentially very annoyed if they lose before they think they should (and conversely if they eliminate 3 scum and still don't win).

That's before considering balance and obviously there's a lot of negative utility in scum. I'm not 100% sure if simple goon/complex goon work as roles, because e.g. I feel like a mafia simple watcher would have simple apply only to the watch and not to the factional kill. I think it's a problem that the setup as written can (and isn't even all that unlikely) to become hellish for the town on day two, via one miselim + one misfire from the vig leaving it at 10p.

One other thing is I know there's been criticism in the past of setups that have a ton of kill-blocking abilities (one specific setup I'm thinking of) for essentially not letting mafia play the game; you might run into an issue with this kind of design where the scum feel like they're not allowed to play because they have so many considerations between having 3 ways their kill can be blocked and 2 scum who can't even properly make the kill, and town feel like they're not allowed to play because 4:9 becomes very constricting as soon as you make one mis-elim.

[implosion]

A lot of the time when I secondary I give a bunch of feedback upfront and then it goes fully off my radar and i forget i secondaried :p

It's probably in the realm of balanced but it is exceptionally swingy; follower, jailkeeper, and simple watcher all have the potential to dead-to-rights catch one of the scum at which point they're at the mercy of immediately losing if the other scum also goes down. This is mitigated because those roles (follower/jailkeeper) might find the traitors scummier than the real scum though.

Ultimately it's Isis's decision if she wants to pass, my signoff isn't required; I think I might in theory replace one of those roles but town needs a fair amount of power and I'm not sure exactly what I'd replace any of them with. Jailkeeper is probably the most suspicious of them because the only other parity-flip in the game is the bulletproof traitor. Isis might have differing opinions on any of this though.

[implosion]

first off, let me just say: "argh"

second off, thank you for correctly formatting the message

third off... y'know, i don't actually have a strong opinion on whether or not you should clarify. I think it's easy to argue that it isn't mod interference because it's clear based on the message that they have a misunderstanding of what the mailman role does, and you didn't *explicitly* say in your role PM that "messages look like "You received a message from a mailman: MESSAGE"" or however they're phrased.

So if you want to clarify it you can IMO.

[implosion]

Like, if a gunsmith sent you a PM saying "i'm targeting X, hope no one protects them" i think i'd be okay with a clarification PM that gunsmiths aren't firing guns, just searching for them.