Nahdia wrote:hiya N!
I'll be ready as soon as I hit the top of the queue.
Currently my design is for 12 players.
No backup mod.
I don't have any on-site modding experience. Four games off-site.
Opening Post(tried to put this and the rules in Spoiler Tags but Spoilers in Spoilers broke the formatting)
Welcome to Mini [GAME NUMBER]!
Player List:
Player 1
Player 2
Player 3
Player 4
Player 5
Player 6
Player 7
Player 8
Player 9
Player 10
Player 11
Player 12
* denotes a prod.
Spoiler: Alive
Spoiler: Dead
Spoiler: Events Log
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Rules Post
Rules & Mechanics
I reserve the right to modify these rules at any time. I will inform you if this happens during the course of the game.
Spoiler: The Usual (You've Probably Read This Before)
Spoiler: My Rules (Please Read These)
Spoiler: Setup & Mechanical Rules
Spoiler: Sample Role PM
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Role PM's:
Spoiler: Vanilla Townie
Spoiler: Town 1-Shot Day Vigilante Revealer
Spoiler: Town Doctor
Spoiler: Town Motion Detector
Spoiler: Mafia Encryptor
Spoiler: Mafia Roleblocker
Spoiler: Mafia Neapolitan
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Setup is
Results are listed in the role PM's, but just to list them off again.
The Motion Detector gets "Motion Detected", "No Motion Detected", or "No Result".
The Neapolitan gets "Vanilla Townie", "Not Vanilla Townie", or "No Result".
Nahdia's Mini Normal Review
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N Jack of All Trades
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Nahdia's Mini Normal Review
Nahdia has a 12p mini normal to review. Please be aware all reviewers must pass the final version and this topic will be made public after the game has ended.
Reviewers: callforjudgement, Cogito Ergo Sum, mykonian
Last edited by N on Wed Aug 03, 2016 4:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.-
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Nahdia They/ThemScheherazadeThey/Them
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i made a typo in the mafia role PM's because i added the encryptor late.
also p aware it's scumsided rn but not sure if the solution is switching the Motion Detector to a more powerful role or adding another town PR or both.we're all made of stories | remember to take your b12 | sign up for a GTKAS thread! (request access here)
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callforjudgement Microprocessor
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Oh wow, that's a lot more than just a little scumsided.
The normalcy is debatable here. I don't think your Day Vigilante Revealer needs the "Revealer" in the name; it's a common variant of Day Vigilante (one in which you have to make the post in-thread, which automatically reveals you as being responsible for the kill). The thing is, Day is not a whitelisted modifier, and as such it needs to be approved by the NRG as being within the "spirit of Normals" to be able to be run.
I should note that this discussion has come up before. Some members of the NRG are very much in favour of Day Vigilante (specifically) being permitted as a Normal role. Others, however, are against, and that includes me; especially as I'm one of the reviewers here, I'm one of the people you (and/or the other reviewers) will have to convince if you want to be able to run the role. I personally think that the role should be confined to Theme games, and doesn't have much of a place in a Normal. Part of the problem is that the mere possibility of a dayvig in a setup has a tendency to lead to annoying gambits day 1, and so is something that will potentially affect any Normal game, not just yours (if the role gets approved, I imagine people will try dayvig gambits in a lot more Normals). Part of the problem is that it interferes with the normal day/night cycle, which is something that Normals aren't supposed to do.
I have no other normalcy concerns; you seem to have no problem understanding action resolution or role wording. There are a few things missing from your ruleset that players would expect. One is deadline lengths, and what happens at deadline (I'd very much recommend "no lynch at deadline"). The other is voting/hammer rules; these work the same way in basically every Normal/Open on mafiascum.net, and thus experienced players can probably guess, but it's far from unheard of for a newbie to decide to play a Mini Normal as their first game, so it helps to explain it just in case someone's never seen them before. (You might also want to hyperlink the site rules; one thing I've discovered reviewing Normals is that many people, even those who meet Normal modding requirements, don't actually know where they are, and a link will help those people out.)
In terms of balance, the dayvig approximately cancels out the "missing" town member (this being 9:3 rather than the more usual 10:3), whilst confirming itself as town. So when determining balance, this setup can be considered much as a 10:3 with Innocent Child + Doctor + Motion Detector + 7 VT versus Roleblocker + Neapolitan + Encryptor. The thing is, that setup would be scumsided even if the scumteam were all Goons; Town simply don't have enough power to balance a 10:3 (or the corresponding 9:3). The Motion Detector is actually fairly strong for a Motion Detector in the setup, being able to detect two of the scum (and even the third if they target the Encryptor), but the problem is that a "motion" result is very weak as guilties go (it's trivially explainable away by the scum in question and can happen completely innocently to a VT), and a "no motion" result can still happen even to scum. (Note that a 1-shot nightvig is almost as strong as a 1-shot dayvig, and the presence of a Doctor makes the two roles even closer in power for reasons related to no-lynching at mylo, so until the normalcy's decided we can try to balance the setup around a 1-shot vig without having to worry about exactly what sort of vig it is.)
Given the amount of scum power we have here, I'd say that to balance this, town needs two power roles in place of the Motion Detector and one VT, each of which is by itself likely to gain information worth around the equivalent of 1 Cop investigation over the course of the game, taking into account the possibility that it dies or gets permanently blocked before any results can come out, and with the assumption that town roles can't confirm themselves purely with their claim (given the existence of a scum Neapolitan, it's very unlikely that town can confirm themselves in this way, as there are too many possibilities for which roles go on which teams). (You can't really balance the game without adding a power role because scum has both the ability to lock down the Motion Detector slot forever, and enough information to conclude that that's the correct strategy; with a Roleblocker on their team, a scumteam aware of theory should be looking for an investigative role that they can permalockdown, as permablocking ability is most commonly provided to the scum as a counter for an investigative role that would otherwise break the game for town if unchecked.) We can assume that in this setup, powerful investigative roles aren't going to live beyond day 4 or maybe 5 at the most before they get killed, permalocked by the scum, or disregarded because there's no time left to verify their claims (claiming a guilty on someone isn't exactly very convincing at lylo, because scum often do it in order to attempt to close out the game and try to "get in first" against a possible town claim). As such, the first change I'd like to recommend is toreplace the Motion Detector with a Follower; it's a very similar role (both in terms of what it does and how often it's used), but substantially more powerful (because it gets a fairly reliable guilty on the scum who makes the kill).
This change isn't enough by itself; you'd want to add another town power role, and ideally one that doesn't care which scum makes the kill (because otherwise you run into the effect in which town's roles tend to be better late and thus town gets major advantages from lynching scum early compared to late and scum gets major advantages from identifying town PRs early compared to late, thus small early advantages tend to snowball, causing huge amounts of swing). The most obvious change that comes to mind for me here is toadd a 1-shot Gunsmith for town; this setup looks pretty much tailor-made for it, as it naturally has a false-positive role (the Vigilante; this works rather better with a nightvig as a dayvig is as unlikely to be Gunsmithed as a Miller is to be Copped), and two other potentially Gunsmith-interactive roles elsewhere (the town Doctor, and the mafia Neapolitan who could be replaced by the equivalent Vanilla Cop). You might want to think about whether to give scum a Neapolitan or a Vanilla Cop; the two roles are identical in every way for scum even if you add a Gunsmith, but giving scum one or the other might influence what they claim. (In particular, scum might not realise that Vanilla Cop is an excellent Neapolitan fakeclaim for escaping a Gunsmith guilty, so this basically comes down to whether you want to support scum who aren't 100% brushed up on their theory or whether you want to punish scum who don't have all the theory worked out; this is basically a moderation style issue. Note that as you have an Encryptor, scum may be able to coach each other on the relevant theory if the situation comes up.)
My suggestions aren't the only way you could balance the setup; rather, they're one particular path you could take the setup down. If you have your own suggestions for balancing the setup, or other ideas about what you'd like to see, we can try to work with those instead, and most likely the other reviewers will have their own idea about how to balance the setup. (I think it's likely that someone will suggest reducing the amount of scum power; I considered this but it doesn't really seem to help balancing the setup based on the way that the other roles work out. Adding town power seemed to work better.)scum· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·town-
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mykonian Frisian Shoulder-Demon
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I don't particulary mind the dayvig here. It figures as an innocent child and gets the game uneven again. For me it doesn't do all that much new, and it helps make your game.
With a doctor and an IC of sorts, that gives town 3 mislynches of sorts before lylo. I think scum get a little bit too much help taking out the IC though, I suspect you could choose there, the RB or the neapolitan. I don't know how to judge the value of the motion detector here, so I'd be with cfj that that could easily become something a little more substantial, though adding info roles to a doctor could quickly become problematic?
idk, those were my first thoughts.Surrender, imagine and of course wear something nice.-
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Nahdia They/ThemScheherazadeThey/Them
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Thank you both for the quick feedback!
myko kind of saw what the idea behind the setup was; the faux-IC in the form of the dayvig and the doctor forcing scum to work around it. I understand the idea behind not wanting a dayvig. in the right hands a dayvig is really powerful role because it essentially acts as a doublelynch on d1. but more often than not someone just hipfires. What if I switched it to a standard 1-shot vigilante but made it an Innocent Child as well? are hybrid roles like that acceptable in Normal? I'm looking at the guidelines and it doesn't really say anything as far as I can see. maybe this is bad idea, just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. maybe adding IC to that is completely unnecessary.
Liking the idea of switching the Motion Detector for a Follower. A bit of clarification since I've never actually seen the role in play; possible results would be "Blocking", "Protective", "Jailkeeping", "Miscellaneous", "Killing", "Investigative", and "No Result"?we're all made of stories | remember to take your b12 | sign up for a GTKAS thread! (request access here)
"I’m going to harness love for epidemiological purposes."-Zaphkael, 2020-
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mykonian Frisian Shoulder-Demon
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yeah, that ic/vig role could work. It'd also be your one slot for roles that aren't strictly normal but have normal mechanics. And it might make cfj slightly less grumpy
And I'm not sure what the result of a follower would be on a JK, but otherwise, yes, that's accurate.Surrender, imagine and of course wear something nice.-
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Nahdia They/ThemScheherazadeThey/Them
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quick changelog so far.
A few restructuring things. Took called's suggestions for more detail for newer players into account. Added a couple things I realized I forgot but wanted to include.
yeah I'm not sure I just included "Jailkeeping" because it's listed as it's own type in Natural Action Resolution. if there's some better ruling I'll change that. Won't be directly relevant except for being complete in the role PM though, since no jailkeeper in this setup.mykonian wrote:yeah, that ic/vig role could work. It'd also be your one slot for roles that aren't strictly normal but have normal mechanics. And it might make cfj slightly less grumpy
And I'm not sure what the result of a follower would be on a JK, but otherwise, yes, that's accurate.we're all made of stories | remember to take your b12 | sign up for a GTKAS thread! (request access here)
"I’m going to harness love for epidemiological purposes."-Zaphkael, 2020-
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mykonian Frisian Shoulder-Demon
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Cogito Ergo Sum YARR!
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You need separate "Role investigative" and "Action investigative" results.
An IC 1-shot vig role would be fine.
In terms of balance, IC one-shot vig+Doctor+Follower isn't all that powerful, so having 3 scum PRs is definitely overkill. Having just the Neapolitan seems like it would be fine by me. Something like Odd-night roleblocker would also be fine.Scumchat is awesome. Yarr!
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mykonian Frisian Shoulder-Demon
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Nahdia They/ThemScheherazadeThey/Them
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I think I ought to just take out the roleblocker. gives scum a bit too much counterplay.
thoughts? for now I have the Innocent Child modconfirmed at the start of the game, but I might change that to being a player-triggered action depending on your thoughts.we're all made of stories | remember to take your b12 | sign up for a GTKAS thread! (request access here)
"I’m going to harness love for epidemiological purposes."-Zaphkael, 2020-
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Nahdia They/ThemScheherazadeThey/Them
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if it still seems scumsided I might add like, a backup to the follower? though that has the unintended consequence of confirming the follower. I could make it an investigative backup maybe but that would make it too swingy if the Neapolitan gets lynched early. maybe a Voyeur.we're all made of stories | remember to take your b12 | sign up for a GTKAS thread! (request access here)
"I’m going to harness love for epidemiological purposes."-Zaphkael, 2020-
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callforjudgement Microprocessor
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I have no objections to an IC 1-shot Vig. (Most likely for this setup it should use the day-1-reveal version of IC, which is equivalent to the day 1 reveal that a dayvig would have.) It probably won't make a huge difference whether the Vig is IC or not, as a Vig rarely has trouble confirming themselves via claiming their kill, but I think I prefer it with the IC to guard against the odds of town completely missing the idea behind the setup (or scum getting lucky night 1 and happening to kill the vig for reasons unrelated to power roles).
Follower on a Jailkeeper gives "Jailkeep". The full list of possible Follower results for a Normal is here. (CES is correct that "role investigation" and "action investigation" are separate categories. I'm not too fussed about the exact spelling of the categories, but we'd need to get the list right.)
I agree with the other reviewers that if town's power is the IC 1-shot Vig + Doctor + Follower, scum have too much power to compensate. I'm actually not entirely sure that this is balanced even with three Goons. Sure, town could play Follow the Follower, but even if town can ensure that all their power roles survive, they probably need the Doctor to save twice to avoid being at a disadvantage. This setup has more chance of two Doctor saves than most, but I still feel that the odds are rather against it. (I still like the version where the scumteam is powerful and town has extra power to compensate, but if you'd prefer a weaker scumteam and weaker town, it feels possible to make that work too. The town's going to need more than it has at the moment, though.)scum· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·town-
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Nahdia They/ThemScheherazadeThey/Them
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i could also beef up the vig and make it non-con instead of 1-shot.we're all made of stories | remember to take your b12 | sign up for a GTKAS thread! (request access here)
"I’m going to harness love for epidemiological purposes."-Zaphkael, 2020-
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callforjudgement Microprocessor
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Actually, I guess what we need here is a town role that can be confirmedbythe Follower, more than a town role that confirms the Follower. A full Neighbourizer has the advantages of a) being a fairly fun role, without being overly powerful; b) showing up as "Miscellaneous" to a Follower, something which doesn't outright prove Town status but does heavily imply it. The main issue here is that the Follower might die early. However, I expect the Neighbourizer to be eventually determined to be town via setup speculation, which makes it less of a problem, and it might give town the edge that they need.
PEDIT: An improved vig is an interesting idea here (non-con or odd-night will have very similar balance properties, although I think you have a good insight by making it non-con; vig is a role that often shouldn't shoot at every opportunity and non-con gives it a good reason not to). Let me think about this a bit more.scum· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·town-
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callforjudgement Microprocessor
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OK, so if the vig is non-consecutive and we have a vanilla scumteam, then assuming that the vig lives to an average of N3 or N4 and is not interfered with, the Doctor needs around a 50% chance of stopping a kill in order to balance the setup; assuming the vig lives to N5 or beyond, then the setup is townsided regardless of what the Doctor does. This is very encouraging because nothing's forcing us to have a vanilla scumteam here.
If scum have a Roleblocker (and no Neapolitan) then the game would be very much about identifying a town power role, but they probably wouldn't conclude that the Innocent Child would have a separate power role. Thus, we'd be looking at whether scum could find one of the other two power roles by N3 or so (wanting around a 50% chance for the setup to be balanced). This seems about right.
If scum have a Neapolitan (and no Roleblocker) then they'd be aiming to identify and NK the Doctor or Follower. They have maybe 5-6 chances to do so in a 13p player list, so I'd put the odds somewhere above 50-50 to pull this off. The counterpoint is that if town sees their role-investigative action, they're going to have to make something up or be caught at lylo (alternatively, they could just claim truthfully, which would be interesting but could lead to them having trouble explaining why the chose their targets). I'd assess this version of the setup as slightly scumsided, but am far from sure, and would likely defer to the judgement of the other reviewers if they disagreed with me on this. (You have to take various other things into account too, such as the odds of the Neapolitan getting lynched/vigged early, that make the calculation quite difficult.)scum· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·town-
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Nahdia They/ThemScheherazadeThey/Them
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personally i like scum having way to hunt for the PRs without just using their wits and claim trolling. especially if I make the vig non-con, they need hunt the doctor reliably or they're liable to get rolled. so I favor keeping the Neapolitan over the Roleblocker. ofc it's possible the vig just ends up with bad reads and kills a bunch of town but i want scum to have a way to retaliate if the IC is good.we're all made of stories | remember to take your b12 | sign up for a GTKAS thread! (request access here)
"I’m going to harness love for epidemiological purposes."-Zaphkael, 2020-
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mykonian Frisian Shoulder-Demon
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Nahdia They/ThemScheherazadeThey/Them
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at least 1-shot. making it non-con is just an idea to give town more power if you still feel the setup is scumsided in it's current state.we're all made of stories | remember to take your b12 | sign up for a GTKAS thread! (request access here)
"I’m going to harness love for epidemiological purposes."-Zaphkael, 2020-
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Nahdia They/ThemScheherazadeThey/Them
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its* grammar is hard.we're all made of stories | remember to take your b12 | sign up for a GTKAS thread! (request access here)
"I’m going to harness love for epidemiological purposes."-Zaphkael, 2020-
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callforjudgement Microprocessor
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I should point out (because many people don't realise it) that a town vig killing townies is normally a net benefit to town. They killed those players because they were scummy, so it makes them less likely to be mislynched, and it's better than mislynching them because scum don't get to respond by killing someone townish.
I'm not too upset with the IC nonconsecutive-night vig + doctor + follower + 6 VT versus neapolitan + goon + encryptor setup (that's pretty much yours). It's at least close to balanced; I'm not at all certain about it being scumsided. I guess that's the one we should be focusing on for the time being in terms of "trying to find one balanced setup that everyone is happy with".scum· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·town-
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Nahdia They/ThemScheherazadeThey/Them
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after thinking about it a bit more I think I like the idea of making the vig non-con so it can potentially be a factor late game as well.
so rn the setup is
thoughts as of right now?we're all made of stories | remember to take your b12 | sign up for a GTKAS thread! (request access here)
"I’m going to harness love for epidemiological purposes."-Zaphkael, 2020-
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Nahdia They/ThemScheherazadeThey/Them
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(forgot to change name in spoiler tag but the role PM is right)we're all made of stories | remember to take your b12 | sign up for a GTKAS thread! (request access here)
"I’m going to harness love for epidemiological purposes."-Zaphkael, 2020-
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Cogito Ergo Sum YARR!
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If you make the IC non-consecutive, I think you shouldn't reveal them at the start of the game. That probably leads to the doctor only ever making obvious protects and it'd make it relatively unlikely that town can get back to odds again after the vig kills twice. I'm not really fond of how much influence the IC would have on the game if he's revealed at the start and gets to kill multiple times.Scumchat is awesome. Yarr!
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Nahdia They/ThemScheherazadeThey/Them
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that's a good point, it puts a lot of power in the hands of one player. If I moved it back to a 1-shot vig, is there anything else you might add to balance the scales?we're all made of stories | remember to take your b12 | sign up for a GTKAS thread! (request access here)
"I’m going to harness love for epidemiological purposes."-Zaphkael, 2020
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