New Normal Guidelines - April 2017 update!

[N]

I changed things again!!

Update 5 July

Some more (minor) changes have been made to the guidelines. Again, this only affects any games that have not begun design.

• Any new roles (i.e., not on the wiki) should flip with their full role pm (redactions permitted)
  
• Rolecops investigating a new role (i.e., one not on the wiki) should receive the full role pm (minus alignment, redactions permitted) as their result
  
• Neapolitan is considered a Normal role
  
• Millers can only be Town-aligned

[SleepyKrew]

Neapolitan is considered a Normal role

omg

[vonflare]

Neapolitan is considered a Normal role

omg

But hider isn't.

I've never even

heard

of that role.

[Ether]

Yeah, we should really bring hiders back. They were pretty unambiguous when I was around? A bit complicated, but the exact same mechanics every time. The weird "every role that targets the person you're hiding with also targets you" thing came later.

Neapolitans are a new name for an old role, which were left orphaned when Vanilla Cop was standardized to mean something else. You should use a lot of them!

[pisskop]

I like hider. Even if you have to end up adding the weak part of it.

[Ether]

Man, the weak part is the

best

part of hiders.

Really, the weak modifier's pretty interesting in general, and it's a shame it's not used as much anymore. It's a nice unique approach to investigative roles.

[mastin2]

Yeah, we should really bring hiders back. They were pretty unambiguous when I was around? A bit complicated, but the exact same mechanics every time. The weird "every role that targets the person you're hiding with also targets you" thing came later.

Yeah, the problem with hiders became that no matter what standard used to exist, it had long-since been lost. It wasn't one or two common iterations; basically every hider was different from the last since there are like (I think) at least four if not five or six common ways for the role to be interpreted by current site usage and none of them were agreed on as being "right". That, plus the "weird" interactions = why they were removed, but I'm in favor of bringing back a standardized version.

My/mykonian's proposal was as such:
If they hide behind someone, it counts as a commute, unless the person they're hiding behind is nightkilled, in which case, they die.

This loses the most interesting part of the role, the weak modifier, but the weak modifier is currently considered Normal (at least I'm pretty sure we voted it Normal), so if someone wants

that

version of the Hider (AKA, the actually cool version that most people generally think of), inside a Normal, all they have to do is tack on the 'Weak' modifier, and bam, you've got it.

[Faraday]

Yeah, we should really bring hiders back.

Nah

[Ether]

I wouldn't want the commute to work, unless the hider can still be countered and safely killed by a mafia roleblocker.

I...don't think I'm a fan of decoupling the hider from the weak aspect. It's fine in theory, but in practice, the weak modifier is used very rarely, and with almost no connection to the role it was historically attached to. I'd rather just have the redundancy than explain the whole history of the role to every single mod who wants to use a hider, especially five years from now. I'd want

not

being weak to be a very rare exception if it happens at all, and I don't think there's a way to do that while making Weakness something mods choose to tack on separately.

[chamber]

Hider is just a poorly designed role. It's like a cop that has a built in doc protecting it.

[StrangerCoug]

Solution to the problem: Take Mastin's idea

[vonflare]

Yeah, we should really bring hiders back. They were pretty unambiguous when I was around? A bit complicated, but the exact same mechanics every time. The weird "every role that targets the person you're hiding with also targets you" thing came later.

Yeah, the problem with hiders became that no matter what standard used to exist, it had long-since been lost. It wasn't one or two common iterations; basically every hider was different from the last since there are like (I think) at least four if not five or six common ways for the role to be interpreted by current site usage and none of them were agreed on as being "right". That, plus the "weird" interactions = why they were removed, but I'm in favor of bringing back a standardized version.

My/mykonian's proposal was as such:
If they hide behind someone, it counts as a commute, unless the person they're hiding behind is nightkilled, in which case, they die.

This loses the most interesting part of the role, the weak modifier, but the weak modifier is currently considered Normal (at least I'm pretty sure we voted it Normal), so if someone wants

that

version of the Hider (AKA, the actually cool version that most people generally think of), inside a Normal, all they have to do is tack on the 'Weak' modifier, and bam, you've got it.

I'm behind this suggestion 100%

[FakeGod]

I changed things again!!

Update 5 July

Some more (minor) changes have been made to the guidelines. Again, this only affects any games that have not begun design.

• Any new roles (i.e., not on the wiki) should flip with their full role pm (redactions permitted)
  
• Rolecops investigating a new role (i.e., one not on the wiki) should receive the full role pm (minus alignment, redactions permitted) as their result
  
• Neapolitan is considered a Normal role
  
• Millers can only be Town-aligned

Good work.

Is it possible to have all-scum neighborhood in a Normal game?

disclaimer: I'm not in any games right now and I swear I'm not trying to Reinoe you.

[Ether]

I think that depends on the reviewers you get. Personally, I really dislike the idea that scum can get wrongly confirmed as innocent because the town didn't outguess the mod hard enough. In other cases there are good reasons to give the scum abilities that would normally go to town, but an all-scum set of neighbors...that seems like a thing that exists 100% to mess with people's heads, which is iffy.

In a semiopen setup you have more room to clarify things like that. If you specifically say beforehand that any and all neighbors could be scum, and the whole town can see it, then that would be kind of tacky but I wouldn't object.

[FakeGod]

I mean, it's definitely against the spirit of the game, and I don't recommend doing such a thing.

I want to know if it's banned explicitly in Normal games.

[Ether]

Yeah, it's one of those things that isn't explicitly banned, but that the reviewers can still subjectively refuse to pass.

[FakeGod]

Wait, I'm getting this strange feeling that you belong to the NRG from the gist of your posts.

[Psyche]

:]

[AngryPidgeon]

Since when are Hiders complicated?

Well. They are complicated in that they can be confusing for NAR if you have weird roles or don't know what you are doing. I don't recall seeing more than 1 variant of hider ever though.

[Marquis]

I don't recall seeing more than 1 variant of hider ever though.

this is pretty much my experience, off-site as well
if it was ever anything other than the "hidecommute behind target, die if they're scum or killed" then there were explicit modifiers in place to note that

i agree with hiders not being explicitly normal in the sense that each one is an incredibly specific/kind of convoluted combination of normal roles, but as for not normal due to hider variations i don't recall anyone thinking it worked otherwise in the past ~2 years

[Cheery Dog]

I don't think I've actually played with a hider, but I know the wiki used to say all actions targeting their target would get results for the hider as well. I see this is moved to the variations now.

My only problem with the hider was how it and the tracker were allowed to behave with each other in the Hard Boiled setup.

[pisskop]

Is it standard to not inform BPs of the use of their vest/kill attempt upon them?

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Yarr.

[mastin2]

Is it standard to not inform BPs of the use of their vest/kill attempt upon them?

Unlimited-BP, definitely.

X-shot, there's some debate there.

I'm not sure if there's an official Normal standard recognized, but personally in my games I will always, always, ALWAYS, 100% of the time, inform an X-shot BP how many vests they have left. (Which by proxy lets them know if they've been attacked.)

[vonflare]

Is it standard to not inform BPs of the use of their vest/kill attempt upon them?

Unlimited-BP, definitely.

X-shot, there's some debate there.

I'm not sure if there's an official Normal standard recognized, but personally in my games I will always, always, ALWAYS, 100% of the time, inform an X-shot BP how many vests they have left. (Which by proxy lets them know if they've been attacked.)

but if those two interpretations were normalized, the mod could get around the rule by giving an unlimited-shot BP a rediculous number of x-shot vests (e.g. You are a 999999-shot bulletproof townie)