New Normal Guidelines - April 2017 update!

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Post Post #113 (isolation #0) » Thu Apr 23, 2015 10:25 am

Post by callforjudgement »

I agree with GreyICE about Ascetic. (And yes, its existence in a setup normally helps scum, regardless of who has it, but you can take that into account when balancing.)

As a side note: it's day 1, and you're an Ascetic Townie. Do you claim? I'm really unsure on this issue myself.
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Post Post #129 (isolation #1) » Thu May 21, 2015 2:33 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Weak Neighbourizer is a very strong investigative role. I've placed it in a Normal before now, and the rest of the setup had to be designed around it. It's still less powerful than an unlimited-shot Cop, but not by much.

However, I'm glad that both strong and weak investigative roles exist. Sometimes your setup wants something powerful to balance around; other times, it wants something like Tracker that just gives the town an edge. (And Tracker is one of the weaker investigative roles around, although it's still strong enough to make a noticeable difference to the balance of a setup, unlike something very week like Voyeur.)
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Post Post #131 (isolation #2) » Thu May 21, 2015 2:56 am

Post by callforjudgement »

1-Shot Cop is a perfectly fine role that can be used in a variety of setups without balancing around it.

It's the unlimited version that causes problems, and even then it can be balanced, e.g. Cop + 6 VT vs. 2 Goon is reasonably balanced (possibly a little townsided, but not much). However it tends to be somewhat swingy (like that setup is).
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Post Post #139 (isolation #3) » Thu May 21, 2015 10:24 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

In post 133, mastin2 wrote:
In post 119, BROseidon wrote:Wait, duplicate roles can be normal?
Can and has been for many instances.

It's the fault of the players if they assume otherwise.


Although I have a side note on this: if two players both claim to be unlimited town cops, it's more likely that the setup contains zero town cops, than that it contains two. (I've seen this happen
twice
. As it happens, you moderated one of them.)

Another thing I've seen happen twice: if a player claims to have used a Cop investigation on a claimed miller, they are likely scum. (Admittedly, one time it was a Town Godfather – me – but that was a split role/alignment game, and claiming the role makes it effectively identical to Miller. In retrospect, I'm not 100% sure why my slot claimed the role; it's not like it proves the role's out of scum hands because if one scum gets it, another scum could claim it. Nonetheless, it was claimed before I replaced in.)
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Post Post #141 (isolation #4) » Fri May 22, 2015 2:25 am

Post by callforjudgement »

We removed some, but added more.
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Post Post #143 (isolation #5) » Sat Jun 06, 2015 9:44 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Roleblockers can't target themselves in a Normal.

Crossblocking is something that the current guidelines / action resolutions don't do very well at. As far as I know (although I might be wrong), there isn't an "official" answer. (Note that the answer rarely matters unless one of the players doing the blocking also has a second ability in addition to the block, e.g. a JK's protection or the scum factional kill.)
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Post Post #174 (isolation #6) » Wed Jun 10, 2015 7:38 am

Post by callforjudgement »

I know that I argued for VT cop (as opposed to rolecop that can't distinguish the role) for vanilla cop during the last Normal update, but got outvoted I think. Being unable to distinguish scum from power roles is very interesting because it basically gives you an investigative role that's pretty powerful, and yet shouldn't claim (because it helps out rolefishing scum so much).
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Post Post #208 (isolation #7) » Sun Jul 12, 2015 12:40 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Being immune to roleblocks (in addition to everything else) is part of being a Commuter. Otherwise, there'd be a conflict (Commute makes you immune to Roleblocker action, Roleblock prevents Commuter taking an action) which would be resolved via the list, due to the Golden Rule not giving a clear result in that case.

@Ether: Don't make me shout at you in bolded underlined allcaps font like I normally do when someone misunderstands NAR. Oh bleh, I'm going to have to do it anyway.

IN NAR, WHEN IT APPLIES, THE GOLDEN RULE IS THE
ONLY
THING THAT DETERMINES ACTION RESOLUTION.


THE LIST
ONLY
APPLIES WHEN NAR FAILS TO PRODUCE A CONSISTENT RESULT.


(In 99% of cases, the List will never come up in any given game. Do not resort to it unless you have no other choice.)

I'm actually tempted to make my own action resolution scheme that gives the same results in all simple cases, but doesn't need a special case like the List to resolve conflicts. (Especially because the List doesn't actually work for its intended purpose; the most common conflict is RB vs. JK and the List has no opinion on that either.)
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Post Post #210 (isolation #8) » Sun Jul 12, 2015 1:17 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Well yes, the Golden Rule is meant to produce the intuitive result (it's just spelled out in case people disagree as to what the intuitive result is). That's why it's called "natural" action resolution.
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Post Post #218 (isolation #9) » Mon Jul 13, 2015 3:08 am

Post by callforjudgement »

I wouldn't expect an X-Shot Miller to know they'd been investigated (which is presumably what'd use the shot).
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Post Post #220 (isolation #10) » Sat Aug 01, 2015 5:47 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

I believe backup backups are technically allowed by the rules, but I'd probably veto them anyway for being excessively sillly.
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Post Post #222 (isolation #11) » Tue Aug 04, 2015 11:17 am

Post by callforjudgement »

A backup backup would become a regular backup if the backup died. If the original role was also dead, they'd then take over the original role at that point (otherwise they'd have to wait for the original role to die).

I'd rule it that if the primary role died with two backups, both would be triggered. I'm not sure if there's an "official" ruling on this.

Both these rulings work nicely because it means that a backup player can always know (by looking at flips) whether they've been triggered, without the mod needing to tell them.
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Post Post #246 (isolation #12) » Tue Nov 17, 2015 6:37 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Mafia Vigilante used to be listed as explicitly Normal. This was almost certainly an oversight.

That said, if (under the old rules) someone had asked to have a game with a Mafia Vigilante in approved for normalcy (but not balance), I feel like I'd have approved it, because reviewing for normalcy is mostly a case of a) seeing if the rules are followed, and b) seeing if people are trying to crazily abuse the spirit of the rule. I don't think the setups that have been mentioned here are an abuse of the "spirit of the Normal regulations". OTOH, they're not really what people seem to want/expect in a Normal, and thus it makes sense to change the regulations to make it clear that we consider that to be more Theme territory.
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Post Post #255 (isolation #13) » Wed Feb 24, 2016 9:45 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

In post 252, Sméagol wrote:Can I ask why ninja isn't a normal town modifier? I definitely can imagine a use for town ninja power roles.

And the new night-specific modifier.. Can that one be used as "From night x and beyond" (since apparently you can specify a range of nights)? For example, I don't want something used on night 1, but don't want any restrictions beyond that, so: Night 2-and beyond cop, or what ever power role.


"Town Night 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 Cop" fits within the letter of the new rules, so "Town Night 2+ Cop" definitely fits into the spirit. I'd allow it.
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Post Post #278 (isolation #14) » Fri Apr 01, 2016 8:26 am

Post by callforjudgement »

It'd be pretty helpful for the NRG to get feedback about redlisting. There are three main options, which look like this:

1) All scum roles that interfere with investigative results are banned outright. As of N's change (which is April 1 so perhaps not 100% believable, but he at least said it was genuine), this is pretty much the current situation (Ninja is still a little uncertain).
2) A moderator can include a disclaimer in their setup that investigative results can potentially be interfered with via a list of scum roles (specifying the roles, e.g. "Lawyer, Framer, Tailor, Godfather"). With the disclaimer, the listed roles become legal for use in the setup, and might or might not exist.
3) A moderator can include scum roles that interfere with investigative results. If they do, all such roles must be listed as a disclaimer in the setup. This guarantees that the roles will exist in the game. Thus, town know explicitly which roles they have to play around.

Option 3 is gaining traction within the NRG but is far from decided on, so your feedback could make a difference!
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Post Post #304 (isolation #15) » Tue Apr 05, 2016 11:08 am

Post by callforjudgement »

The reason Millers are allowed is that a townie knows that the role is in the game already. Of course, the other townies might not believe them, but there's no incorrect information going round; the townie gets a Miller role, the townie claims (99% of the time), the cop doesn't investigate them (again 99% of the time).

If scum get a Godfather role, they obviously won't claim it, thus there's no clue known to any Town player that the investigation isn't reliable other than dayplay, and Townies rarely trust dayplay reads over Cop results. (I'm vaguely reminded of the Fairy Godfather gambit at this point.)
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Post Post #314 (isolation #16) » Sat May 07, 2016 2:14 am

Post by callforjudgement »

The whole point of Gunsmith is that it has potential false positives and false negatives, in a way that can be predicted / isn't bastard. So I guess it'd make more sense to blacklist Gunsmith if you're worried about that.
Really, Gunsmith is basically a Normalized version of an imperfectly-sane cop who knows that there are ways they can be mislead.
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Post Post #317 (isolation #17) » Sat May 07, 2016 2:38 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Plenty of games have greylist roles in. The main idea is to be able to try out new roles that aren't clearly inappropriate for Normals to see if they should be whitelisted in the future.
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Post Post #326 (isolation #18) » Sat May 07, 2016 8:50 am

Post by callforjudgement »

It's more that if you get a role PM saying "You are a Gunsmith" you're highly aware that there's a decent chance that there are roles in the setup that will give you misleading results.

If you get a role PM saying "You are a Cop" you're much less likely to suspect this (especially if you have a limited number of shots).
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Post Post #329 (isolation #19) » Sat May 07, 2016 9:54 am

Post by callforjudgement »

I've seen people call sane cops bastard in the absence of roles that confuse them, too. The main conclusion that can be drawn from this is that for pretty much any mechanic you can come up with, there will be someone willing to call it bastard.
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Post Post #338 (isolation #20) » Wed Jun 01, 2016 12:52 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Ninja is effectively giving scum the ability to send nobody in the night (so of course, there's nobody to track/watch).

In that respect, I don't feel that it's broken; unless scum has only 1 member, it's not giving town misleading information. I do feel that it has the wrong balance properties, though; you're taking a town ability (Tracker/Watcher) which is better in the lategame, and then entirely negating it until a particular scumteam member dies. Taking a lategame-focused ability and making it even more lategame-focused is basically just adding swing.

Godfather is different because no matter how many members on the scumteam, town can get a result that falsely clears a scumteam member, and scum can ride that to victory unless the presence of the role is suspected.
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Post Post #350 (isolation #21) » Sat Mar 04, 2017 11:48 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

It's normally called something like "Strong-willed" or just "Strong". (One problem is that similar names tend to be used for the unrelated modifier "cannot have alignment changed", which is clearly irrelevant in Normals, so we might need something of a name disambiguation push.)
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