PookyTheMagicalBear's Mini Normal Review, April 2022

[mastina]

So the Simple roles have only four valid targets in the setup since Neighbors don't count as Vanilla. (I disagree with that interaction just as a sidenote but it's in the rules so even if I disagree with it, I need to enforce it.)

I do think the game is rather notably townsided in spite of that though.

There's two vigilantes--while one requires the vig to vig town and the chance of there being 2/3 kills in a night is lower than normal, that's still theoretically the potential for two conftown.
Friendly Neighbor adds a third potential conftown.
IC adds a fourth conftown potential.

Then you get the Traffic Analyst who knows to target outside the neighborhood, and while the TA can only get one guilty, the innocents are the issue. Swapping it to a Disloyal investigative gets rid of the problematic innocents, but makes it still able to get a guilty on all three scum.

[mastina]

So what's the currently proposed setup, again?

[mastina]

Not gonna lie, with this many moving parts in the setup, locking down if it's balanced or not is a little difficult for me.

The town has the theoretical chance to have three conftown come D3, but lacking that, they basically have glorified Named Townies. The nature of Simple/Complex acts as a form of making every claimed action effectively a Vanilla Cop claim (succeed as simple = vanilla, succeed as complex = non-vanilla), and that gives the town some extra information in that they effectively have four vanilla cops, but the information from those isn't guaranteed to be useful.

The mafia roles here also make the town's job much harder. They also have effectively two vanilla cops, and while the doctor/voyeur is fairly useless since all it can do is stop town from killing town, the bp traitor jailkeeper can absorb the complex vig shot and cause simple/complex roles to get the opposite of their intended result.

I'd say that if the town roles get the triple-clear, then their information in tandem with the vanilla cops would make the game fairly townsided...
...But if the town gets 0 clears by D3, then the game would be

notably

scumsided.

The latter is more likely to happen than the former, but either happening would make the side disadvantaged by it feel terrible.

However, if neither extreme happens and it's closer to the middle, I would say the game is more in the 50-50 range, with a lot of focus on dayplay, and scum having some counterplay to the town roles but not being able to counter everything they want to do.

I think that if the town gets no clears, it's near 60% scum-town, but if the town gets 3 clears it's near 57.5% town-scum, and that if it's somewhere in the middle, it's probably closer to 50% for both.

I'd prefer a gutcheck from Ircher on this though.

[mastina]

ok is that the setup we are going with?

If you're okay with that setup, then yes!

[mastina]

Once per night you may visit one player - they will be roleblocked and protected from one nightkill.

For the record, Jailkeepers actually protect against

all

nightkills.

Why do Jailkeepers protect against all kills but Doctors only protect against one?

Don't ask me, I was against it being standardized that way, but it was. (I've never liked that rule ever since it was made, but like. It was made so I gotta go by it.)

Otherwise as long as nothing else interferes with your action, you will be informed if they possess the ability to communicate outside of the Main Thread

I'd recommend having "if they currently possess" being here, to make it more clear.

I think the PMs are otherwise fine?

[mastina]

What are the voting mechanics you mention being modified later in the game?

[mastina]

I think it's good to go, unless I'm missing something?

[mastina]

Just the OP, OF COURSE, mastina is primary reviewer
She consistently passes the most wild BS setups

In my defense, I personally don't like setups which have this many moving parts (that this game was in review hell for so long should be proof enough of that), but I can't let personal bias keep me from doing my job.

The game has enough VTs to not be role madness, so the only argument to be made that it isn't Normal would be if you think having almost every role having a Simple/Complex modifier is a themed mechanic.

In that regards, if you feel it was then my judgement that it wasn't would be a conflict, I admit. But while I have hesitance, I feel overall comfortable sticking by my judgement call that it was still Normal enough to be passed.

[mastina]

(This is also a reminder to myself that I actually need to finish my NRG Member Insight article, it's sitting at like 60% completion.)

[mastina]

Just the OP, OF COURSE, mastina is primary reviewer
She consistently passes the most wild BS setups

In my defense, I personally don't like setups which have this many moving parts (that this game was in review hell for so long should be proof enough of that), but I can't let personal bias keep me from doing my job.

The game has enough VTs to not be role madness, so the only argument to be made that it isn't Normal would be if you think having almost every role having a Simple/Complex modifier is a themed mechanic.

In that regards, if you feel it was then my judgement that it wasn't would be a conflict, I admit. But while I have hesitance, I feel overall comfortable sticking by my judgement call that it was still Normal enough to be passed.

(That said, the convo did bring up a valid point; there

is

a shortcoming in my review, an oversight that Gamma actually got good takes from.

I didn't consider that, if all the players truthfully claimed, that it could potentially leave all four VTs as being seen as conftown. There's mitigating factors to this. 3 VTs is still passable. Heck, 2 VTs is in theory although I'd probably be too uncomfortable with that nowadays. So the 4 VTs aren't going to be absolutely conftown. And then there's also the chance that scum lie and claim VT, bringing the total number of VT claims up.

I don't think it affects the outcome of this game, and I don't think this significantly shifts the power balance dynamic of the game into being unreasonably townsided, but it is still notable as an oversight on my part that I do feel needs to be noted as a failure on my end. Sorry!)

[mastina]

Yeah Idk. There's a scenario here where scum could have already won if Datisi's claim is legit.

D1/N1: town mislims, StD shoots a VT, scum shoot a townie
D2/N2: town mislims, StD shoots a VT, Datisi shoots a town PR, scum shoots a townie

7 townies dead before D3 starts which would leave us with 3 scum/ 3 town, GG. This is assuming this isn't like a 2 scum game for some reason.
Odds of this happening are super unlikely and would mean a next level bad performance by town and vigs but it's still a possibility and I feel like that's a thing that might get brought up for review? But I don't mod or review games so maybe someone can correct me. This just feels like it may not be balanced.

Okay bump the failings in review up to two.

Like the other: I don't think it affects the game's outcome, I don't think it's something that swings the game to notably scumsided, so ultimately I don't think it'd have affected my judgement call on the setup and I'd still have approved it anyway.

But, I still

should

have noted it, when I didn't.

[mastina]

There’s a particular reason I have strong feelings on this setup but I can’t really explain in a way that’d make sense. Otherwise, I am mostly just taking a stand because I feel like person-who-will-remain-unnamed probably has had historically good criticism of mastina setups but it’s never sank in for anyone because he’s the one saying it. Hopefully my voice while enact some recognition that mastina sucks at making normal games feel “normal”.

I would like to once again remind players that as a reviewer, I am not the one creating setups. None of these roles were my idea.

The reviewer has two jobs, and only two; everything beyond those two jobs is extra.

To make the game fit the definition of Normal;
To make the game be within 10% of balanced.

I will defend the setup as the latter. It is ridiculously swingy. Swingy af. But it's overall balanced.

The former you can find more questionable, but it hinges solely on the concept of, "are this many simple/complex modifiers Normal, or are they themed?".
That, you can have disagreement with my call on them being Normal.

To be clear, I don't like setups this complex, but as a reviewer it is not my job to say "I don't like this therefore I won't pass it".
I already noted how it was a struggle on my end thanks to the moving parts.

But the main judgement call was on if it was Normal, which is one of the reasons I wanted a gutcheck from Ircher. If Ircher felt it was Normal, then I was comfortable enough passing it as being so. (Also implosion didn't complain either.)

That's one of the reason we have two reviewers (with implosion theoretically able to chime in at any moment for a third, far more decisive, voice) in the first place.

You can maybe say that I should've more explicitly voiced my concern in the review and more explicitly asked for the gutcheck on Normalcy of the core mechanic, but while I wasn't sure, I was still comfortable enough with my decision to move forward with it.

[mastina]

Spoiler: Excerpt from the planned article, for reference

THE FUNDAMENTAL JOB:

The fundamental job of a Normal Reviewer is to make sure that the game fits the requirements of a Normal Game in roles, mechanics, results, and rules,
And that the game is, within an acceptable margin, balanced.

That's it. Literally everything else is going above and beyond the call of duty.

And, obviously, while the above defines what the job is, it doesn't demonstrate how it is done.

So let's go on to what I consider some of the most important things.

THE CORE TENANTS:

Preserve the Game Designer's Core Idea/Design:

While this is not written anywhere in the

official

rules, a reviewer should be precisely that:

reviewing

what was already designed. The reviewer should not, barring the game being so out of the scope of a Normal Game, be telling a game moderator to scrap their entire idea and start over.

A Normal Reviewer should be working

with

the designer of the setup, not bullying the designer of the setup. This comes in the form of explaining what is an issue in the proposed game. However, ideally, this is done in a way where only minor shifts/adjustments are done. The NRG did receive a creed backstage (not sure if it was ever made public) that we are meant to make the minimal amount of changes possible, in order to speed up the review as much as possible.

So a reviewer

should

be

refining

what is already there, barring extreme circumstances. A reviewer SHOULD be looking to what they feel the game designer was aiming for with their setup, and to preserve as much as that core idea as is possible while still adhering to the standards laid out above, of being both Normal and, loosely, Balanced.

If a reviewer is tearing down the proposed idea rather than suggesting minor tweaks to the idea, then chances are they are overstepping their boundaries. (I'll admit that sometimes, a reviewer can see issues with a setup and not instantly know what would be the small tweaks needed to make it work. However, in those cases, it is important to be honest, and still respect the core idea, and try to troubleshoot to find the next step in refining.)

But there's another aspect to this. Related to that NRG creed,

Setups are still primarily designed by the setup designer.

While the NRG has the final say in

approving

the setup, it is the

game designer

(usually the game moderator, barring premade setups) who has the final say on

what the setup is

.
Their core idea should still be present.
They should still be happy at the time of the game's launch with the finalized setup. Yes, it's okay if in hindsight they're not perfectly happy with changes they in hindsight wish they had made prior to the game's start, but they should still be having a game that, at the point it got the pass, they were at the very least mostly okay with being run.

In reviews, I usually try to make it clear to the designer that it is okay for things to not be perfect and I explicitly ask them if they are okay with the setup that is final. (At least, I try to. Obviously, as I'm human, I sometimes forget, and I tend to be more lax around more experienced scummers so I might forget to ask someone who's modded 10 games this, just out of the assumption that they already know. But in theory, this is something that I feel should be done every review.)

A game reviewer should not feel they were bullied into having a finalized setup that they have immense dissatisfaction in being run.

As a game designer, you are

meant

to hold the majority of the power. The reviewers need to sign off on the final product, but the final product should still be

your

vision, or something reasonably close to what you are envisioning. Just as reviewers hold the power to say 'No' to a setup they feel fails to meet the requirements of being Normal and Balanced, the game designer holds the power to say "I am not satisfied with this setup", and to say that as many times as it takes until the final product, they

are

.

However, this is not something newer game designers are going to know.
A newer game designer is less likely to stick up for themselves, and more likely to accept that they need to just blindly accept the proposed changes of the reviewers.
While reviewers should be raising awareness of how the majority of the power lies in the hands of the setup designer, it is also important for reviewers to keep in mind that not every setup designer is going to

know

that they hold the majority of the power.

So it is my belief that a NRG member

should

be letting the game designers know of this at every stage. That a NRG member should aim to preserve the designer's core idea, let the designer know that they hold the power to run the idea they want to run, etc. We're far from perfect at doing this (even I, the one with this belief, have my failures in upholding this belief), but for the best experience all-around, we should still be striving to uphold this principle.

However, there is also a consequence to this;

A reviewer should still be willing to pass a setup that they are not perfectly satisfied with.

Perfection is the enemy of good.
To not have reviews take forever, the creed behind the scenes of the NRG is to get things "good enough", so the reviewer may pass a setup that they, personally, would never actually design themselves. Now, when doing so, they should still let the game designer know of this fact. "I personally would never design a game like this, but while I have concerns x y z, I feel it's passable enough, if you're okay with x y z".

If the game reviewer says they are in fact fine with the x y z that the reviewer brings up, then the reviewer should in fact pass the setup in spite of the flaws present.

To summarize, in the postgame, ideally:
The game designer should

not

say "I didn't like this setup", "I am not happy with this setup", "this wasn't what I envisioned", "I felt bullied", etc.;
The game reviewers should

not

say "I knew it wasn't great, but I didn't say anything about it";

Both the game designer and the game reviewer should be, in postgame, sharing basically their thoughts shown in the review. If a game designer wasn't happy during the review yet said nothing until postgame, that's an issue; if a game reviewer wasn't happy during the review yet said nothing until postgame, that's an issue.
It's okay for the final setup to have them not be perfectly happy and this to be expressed in the review as "not perfectly happy but it's good enough", and it's okay for the final setup to have issues brought up which the designer/reviewer bring up in hindsight (albeit not ideal, since obviously, ideally there's nothing seen only in hindsight). It's not okay for the final setup to have issues that one of the parties involved with the final setup felt, yet never expressed.

The Game Designer should design the game they want to see;
The Reviewer should accept Accountability for what they did, and didn't, do, during the review.

The review process is, effectively, a partnership between the reviewer and the designer, where both parties involved need the cooperation of the other. So both should be able to speak honestly about the game, both in the review process and after the game has ended, offering honest feedback at every stage. But the main power in the dynamic should lie with the game designer, because a core tenet of mafiascum games is that people should be running games that they

want

to run, which means that the final setup should be something the designer wants to run, not the reviewer.

(Keep in mind this is a very rough draft, and may be revised. And yes. This is an

excerpt

. The full article is getting to be a bit ludicrously long.)

[mastina]

(for the record; the nightmarish hell of me reviewing this game is why I wrote the "A reviewer should still be willing to pass a setup that they are not perfectly satisfied with" segment in the first place. I noted in this review my struggles with reviewing it, but why I was okay enough with it. Not happy, not satisfied, but okay enough.)

[mastina]

Oh that reminds me, something I should probably add to the article;
NRG members to a large extent get to pick which setups they do, and don't, review, but sometimes it can also come down to speed of being online vs. not online. (And sometimes, they get things that they simply...just weren't expecting.)

There's plenty of game mods who sign up to review who I would love to review their games--they'd be games that would be Normal and Balanced and be fast reviews.
But most of those games get snatched up before I have a chance to sign on as a reviewer for them.

So I get left with whatever isn't instantly snatched up.

Even then, I tend to still try somewhat to pick and choose which games I review.
I am

well aware

of the perspective that setups I review are seen as crazy/not very normal/balanced--so I

actively try to stay away

from reviewing game moderators who I believe will have a setup like that.

I deliberately aim for reviewing setups that I feel will help break that perspective.

I just have a combination of terrible luck and terribly misreading what I think of the game moderator in question beforehand. (Plenty of game moderators I assume will run some crazy shit end up having a tame setup, and plenty of moderators I assume will have a tame setup end up running some crazy shit that I am left to review.)

For instance, in this case, I saw Pooky was signing up and assumed, "oh Pooky has played hundreds of Normals, is basically an OG member of the site, modded dozens of games before, so he will probably have a setup that is reasonably easy to review".

Boy was I wrong about my assumption there.

[mastina]

I just have a combination of terrible luck and terribly misreading what I think of the game moderator in question beforehand. (Plenty of game moderators I assume will run some crazy shit end up having a tame setup, and plenty of moderators I assume will have a tame setup end up running some crazy shit that I am left to review.)

For instance, in this case, I saw Pooky was signing up and assumed, "oh Pooky has played hundreds of Normals, is basically an OG member of the site, modded dozens of games before, so he will probably have a setup that is reasonably easy to review".

Boy was I wrong about my assumption there.

(incidentally this is also why I have reviewed many of Datisi's games. I don't know why I didn't learn my lesson after the first, but I somehow assumed Datisi would have setups that were, so to speak, fairly sane. And yet per his own words, Datisi is the most unhinged Normal moderator, so instead...)

[mastina]

I am actually p happy about the balance of this game nothing has really run off the rails per se and it will be up to the skill of the players whatever may be

I happen to agree for what it's worth.

This setup isn't my cup of tea and I hate reviewing setups this complex, but I stick by it being mostly balanced, with a focus on dayplay over nightplay.

[mastina]

I feel like postgame someone is going to quote all these posts and be like "You deserved to lose because you speculated on the PRs, power roles aren't there to give town information they're there to fuck with the playerlist"

Actually, power roles

are

there to give the town information--but ideally, power roles serve as a small boost to the town. The game in its default vanilla state is absurdly scumsided; power roles serve as a method to give the town "extra", usually in the form of information, to give them an extra edge that brings the game closer to balanced. (At least, that's the theory.)

It's included in my article, but basically, ideal game balance for a Normal does not

revolve

around setup spec; the game shouldn't be a puzzle piece focused on solving which power role claims are most likely to be town/scum. The town shouldn't be able to break the game by massclaiming, and neither faction should be able to just outright win the game by correctly identifying the power roles in the game as being what they are.

But while the game shouldn't be a puzzle piece revolving around power roles and setup spec, a faction (beit town or scum) should still be

rewarded

for accurately deducing facts.

I realize there's a fine line balancing those factors. You never know how competent your players are going to be at guessing things in the design. Which is tricky, so it's not always possible to obtain. (Which, notably, is one of the reasons this isn't really a mandatory part of a review; I count these considerations mostly among the extra, barring egregious examples.) But ideally, optimally, every setup is in that fine margin where massclaims can't break the game for the town, the players don't need to focus on solving the puzzle, but the town still gets good information from their roles and both factions are rewarded for accurately deducing setup information.

[mastina]

A few years ago I played a scumgame where the last mafia alive had a Simple modifier and because of that they couldn't nightkill any PRs. I wonder if it would be the same for Johnny

was it a normal? if not idk if that would be allowed in a normal

For the record, yes, it was Normal because it was a valid interpretation of the Simple modifier at the time: if the modifier is placed on the player as a whole rather than a specific part of their role, then a mafia Simple cannot kill a VT. At the time, this was the interpretation used, that Simple was applied to every aspect of the mafiate in question, including the factional kill.

In this game specifically and what should be done in every Normal game though, is for the Simple modifier to specifically apply to a role the player has.

It's a formatting/syntax thing.

[Simple] [Mafia] [Role] applies the Simple to everything.
[Mafia] [Simple] [Role] applies the Simple to the Role, but not to the mafia factional powers.

I would never recommend the former because it is just Not Fun.

I'm not sure what the Normalcy policy on the modifier is now.
If we have an official standard, or if it's game to game.
But I will always encourage the version that doesn't make it so that mafia can't kill half the playerlist.

[mastina]

(Incidentally, I remember this because I'm pretty sure I was involved in the review of the game being mentioned. That, or a player. I was there to see it happen, and I remember it being Not A Good Time for the mafia so if I

was

a reviewer, then that was something present-me should be ashamed of past-me for. Serves as a learning experience if nothing else tho.)