Not Known 15's Mini Normal Review, November 2021

[Something_Smart]

Feels kinda scumsided on the low end, especially if a PR dies N1 or has to claim early.

The balance probably isn't awful, but the swing is always gonna be high if you're concentrating power in so few roles.

[Something_Smart]

I'm wondering if there's a way to mitigate swing without really adding much town power.

Callforjudgement made a game with a N1 Universal Backup, which is a pretty heavy-handed way to do it; I feel like that wouldn't affect balance much outside of mitigating the worst case. How would you feel about doing something like that?

[Something_Smart]

Technically the gunsmith's result on the backup cop should be "no result" and not "your target has a gun"

This seems like an improvement, it solves the chance of very pro-scum swing. I'm still a little worried about pro-town swing where the cop gets a guilty N1, then the scum shoot the cop N2 because they have no other tools to deal with it and don't know the cop is odd-night, and then they get watcher guiltied. I see that you've already put the ninja in, ostensibly for this purpose, but given how much more popular tracker is than watcher, people may not get the message.

Simple watcher would be a solution to that, but that gives the watcher vanilla cop-like powers which I don't really like. Making the cop also ascetic is another option, or you could have some way for the scum to see the watcher coming. I don't hate giving scum either a backup watcher or a watcher enabler (they probably wouldn't need the backup gunsmith in that case). Or even just an informed "there is a town watcher". Do you like any of these?

Also, Ircher, do you have any thoughts?

[Something_Smart]

I'm conflicted.

On the one hand, this is an incredibly innovative way to provide scum the information they need without telling them the setup.

On the other hand, 90% of players are going to look at that role PM and go ಠ_ಠ and maybe 40% of them are actually going to read it through the whole way. And many of them, I suspect, are going to be confused or annoyed. That said, I think it would be manageable as long as you post the role PM's in the scum PT.

I'm gonna check with implosion and see if this feels too non-normal to exist in a normal game. I'm on the fence.

[Something_Smart]

In terms of individual bits of information, this one worries me, because the cop exists but it does have a modifier:

All Backups exist only if the role exists without modifiers.

[Something_Smart]

Sorry. I think it's good.

I might suggest adding the (You will get "no result" if this action is blocked.) clause to all of the investigative roles (including the gunsmiths), but that's minor, and either way /pass.