GeorgeBailey's Mini Normal Review, October 2021

[mastina]

I'm pretty sure this is actually incredibly townsided--the town basically has two cops and a conftown-miller, against a scumteam that has basically zero counterplay aside from the nightkill. They don't have any way of knowing what the town has, they don't have any safety, they basically have nothing. They can win by making the right nightkills, but that's about it.

Even if it isn't townsided, I'd at least call it unhealthily swingy given the difference between the town roles being killed early vs. the town roles living to get results.

[mastina]

One possible fix: give one of the backup encryptors either a gated blocking action of some kind (rb, rolestop, jk, alien), or an unlimited ungated but not OP investigative (not rolecop, but a variant like vanilla cop, a Simple/Complex role, Neapolitan, or similar).

Not both, obviously, but one of the two would help give them some agency here. (To be clear, this would make them a Mafia [role] Backup Encryptor).

[mastina]

it ok

^

[mastina]

Yeah, pretty sure that is an executive call where the answer is the interaction, though THEORETICALLY Normal, isn't actually Normal.

Will wait for implosion to confirm tho.

[mastina]

I'm still a little bit uncomfortable with the concept because Normals explicitly ban role changes.
A traitor changing to Goon due to a traitor enabler's death more or less functions as a role change. They'd still FLIP as a traitor, and the traitor-enabler having flipped first will mean that the town knows they were a goon, so it's not something I'm hard-against as it's something the town can reasonably figure out the mechanics of.

It's something that they can understand intuitively without needing any handholding, it's self-explanatory, and it's an interaction that's technically Normal, but the role-change aspect of it still doesn't feel "Normal" to me. I'm willing to trust implosion on this call tho so will review on balance within 82 hours.

[mastina]

A traitor who can only become mafia after both the other mafia dies is another thing that honestly feels like it goes against the spirit of the game--the town when they see a 'traitor enabler' flip will, presumably, be able to figure out that a traitor can become factional mafia...

...But they will be hunting for the traitor the moment one scum flips, thinking the traitor was recruited, because it's NOT reasonable to expect TWO traitor enablers imo.

So to me, while the setup might be okay balance-wise, Normalcy-wise, though it has the technical go-ahead from implosion on a traitor enabler, I'm not comfortable passing it because it feels like it's too much of a violation of what's expected to be Normal, even if it's

technically

allowed.

Sorry.

[mastina]

according to this, the traitor will become a factional mafia when the first enabler dies, not when the last one dies.

I'm

fairly

certain that when there's multiple enablers for a role, the role is enabled until all enablers die.

It's rare because the interaction is incredibly infrequent (nobody puts two enablers for the same role in a game), but the last time I saw multiple enablers (in that case, multiple daytalk enablers), the enabled effect lasted until all died. (Granted, this was back in the day of the graylist, butstill.)

And from a logical stance, that makes sense. If there's more than one enabler for a role and one enabler dies, the other enabler is still enabling that role. It makes more sense for the role to be enabled until there's no way for it to be enabled.

The sample role PMs are written for a single enabler being in the game; they were not written to account for multiple enablers in a game (again, because basically nobody puts two enablers for the same role in a game). But I'm fairly certain that a role functions until

all

enablers for it die.

[mastina]

Balance-wise I would indeed say the setup is townsided because the town roles are all actually incredibly strong here especially into the scumteam--the scum DO have answers, but on that note, I'd just like to say:

Fun-wise, the setup is basically guaranteed to be a zero-fun game. Regardless of town doing well vs. poorly or scum doing well vs. poorly, I don't see the game generated from that setup being any fun to any alignment. If the scum can't negate the town PRs then they're going to be left feeling pretty shitty but if the scum DO negate the town PRs then the town is going to feel pretty shitty and even in those scenarios, there's a fairly good chance that the alignment who got the advantage still isn't really having fun.

The roles all

function

, so individually, there's no issue with them. But the sum of the parts creates a setup that just feels like the only person having fun would be the mod.

Again, not mandatory for balance, so the unfun setup

could

be passed--but even on the balance threshold, I'm inclined to think townsided overall. Not to mention, swingy as fuck.

[mastina]

That setup's definitely not townsided, I'll say that much. It

might

be potentially ever so

slightly

scumsided, but I don't think it's by an obscenely large amount if so. (The gunsmith can find the town PRs really well and is a good safeclaim, but the town roles are decently strong without being overwhelmingly strong, keeping swing fairly low.)

I'd say it's either balanced or within 2.5% of the balance. (As in, either 50-50 or 47.5-52.5, which is still passable range.)

[mastina]

I think this is good enough to /pass
(It does technically need the "You were targeted by" result as Datisi already mentioned but once that is posted, is a pass.)

[mastina]

"you were targeted by a rolecop during the night."

is this not it?

It is now that you've confirmed that's the wording.