JaeReed's Mini Normal Review

[mastin2]

First question: can the mafia both kill and action?
Second question: how would you publicly respond to a question about non-mafia chat? That is, if someone asked you a question along the lines of, "MOD: Would any hypothetical neighborhood/masonry also have daychat?", how would you respond?
Third, how will you handle the backup inheriting power from a slot that has used up a shot? That is, what if the follower has used one shot? Both shots? Yet is the first to die. What if the JOAT has used one power, two powers, all three powers, and yet is the first to die? (Unlikely as that would be.)
Fourth, does the strongman bypass the BP?
Fifth, what roles get which results to the follower? For instance, what does activating the BP show as to the follower?
Sixth, if an ability is blocked, is the shot refunded or is it lost? The wording of "preventing" implies the former. (If you want the latter, then use "cause the actions to fail" rather than "prevent the actions". This is NOT a semantics difference, as the altered wording alters the effect for the game.)

Seventh, on balance:
I think the game as-is is swingy, but balanced: all the mafia's strength is placed in a single PR. If they protect that PR, then they can shut down the town entirely and even produce some extreme paranoia which could lead to the town self-destructing and imploding. If they fail to protect that PR, then they are placed in an incredible uphill struggle.

On the other hand, all the town's strength is gated: the follower has only two shots, and while it can confirm some abilities (which will not confirm alignment, simply confirming the role), the only guilty it can get is by successfully tracking the kill. Follower is like a tracker lite in power, and having it be limited further reduces its power, such that it is only a marginally useful role.

The JOAT has a gunsmith result which they know to be useful, but its other powers are situational. The activated BP with a doctor in the game means they have no way of knowing what stops a kill. Similarly for the jailkeep: was it the doc protect, the jail protect, or a jail roleblock? So while the JOAT's abilities are strong, they do not synchronize well with the other town roles, with the potential to interfere with the follower and the doctor.

The doctor is in fact a strong role, but given the lack of synchronization, I'm fine with it.

The only role in question here is the backup. I think the setup is balanced both with, and without, it, within the margin of error. Its presence does increase swing a bit (the less roles, the less swing; the less complex a role, the less swing), but not by too terribly much. Obviously, the more town power means the more likely the town is to win, but the reason I say the setup is both balanced with, and without, the role, is that it's balanced depending on your setup philosophy.

If you believe that towns should be forced to think more and that they only need a few power roles in order to win, then you can probably lose the backup: the town will have a difficult time, because their PRs are all gated and lack good synchronization, but they still have a fair chance of winning, if they use their roles in a reasonable way and they scumhunt relatively effectively.

If you believe that towns inherently suck, that as the stats show towns literally NEED PRs in order to win (because so many mountainous games end in a scum win), then the backup is probably fine: it gives the town wiggle room to fuck up, as it were, and yet, they're not being handed a guaranteed win; they're not being given a guiding hand towards victory, as it were. They still have to connect the dots correctly, and while they have a greater degree of freedom, because a kill/lynch on a PR hurts them a lot less, they still must be somewhat-competent in order to eliminate the scum.

Again, I can't say there's any way to make the game fully balanced. No matter what, it's gonna have swing. No matter which option you choose, you're gonna have players complaining in the postgame. But I subscribe to the philosophy of "close enough", and "as good as it can get", and I think that you're either already at, or really close to being at, that level, depending on which of the two you'd prefer.

[mastin2]

I also had the thought: one potential way of bridging the two would be to gate the backup as well.
This would probably be a modification to the extent where it might not strictly speaking be "normal", but you have the capacity to use one non-normal role anyway.

What I had the thought of is that maybe the backup is one-shot: if the doctor dies, it becomes a 1x-doctor. If the JOAT dies, it can use any of the JOAT's abilities/any of the JOAT's unused abilities (depending on your answer to question #3)...but can only use the Joat powers ONCE, even if all three were available.
If it inherits an unused 2x follower, then it loses one of those shots to become a 1x-follower.

I'm not quite sure if this is something that you (or for that matter, the other reviewers) would want, and it'd be tricky to word right (not to mention, answer when questioned about), but to my mental calculations, it does give a good bridge between worlds: it's not something that will necessarily be believed, it's not a role which gives the town a huge boost, but it is a role which gives them some leeway if they get an early disadvantage.

[mastin2]

Sixth, if an ability is blocked, is the shot refunded or is it lost? The wording of "preventing" implies the former.

Also, equally as important: if you're ASKED about whether an X-shot role being blocked would be refunded, how would you respond?

[mastin2]

Perhaps if I changed the bit about scum having daychat in the rules to just be "Daychat is enabled by default" so I could just quote that?

This seems to be a fine solution. It doesn't give away the existence of extra topics, but handles the question nicely.

3) Wiki said something to the effect of the shots wouldn't be refunded usually and the person wouldn't be told how many shots were left which I think is ass, personally, so if I could I'd probably have shots not refunded but inform the backup how many shots are remaining? It's kinda bastard to not know stuff about your own role, and inheriting the role would then make it the UB's role so imo that's the fair thing to do? Any results (like from the gs) wouldn't be forwarded though. Idunno if I'd be allowed to do that though?

So basically, they learn what has, and hasn't, been used, but don't learn the details of when they were used. That's definitely normal, yes.

Probably still wouldn't refund the shots in this situation

That's still fine.

But then ehhh idunno because being 1 shot uni backup and then getting a role with no shots left would suck.

The main thing you'll have to deal with here is questions in regards to the universal backup. Say, "MOD: would a theoretical universal backup role receive the original role, or the role as it was upon its death?" or something to that effect. You have the latter, it's just a matter of what you'll answer. If this situation does come up, well, it's tough luck...but keep in mind, if it comes up, that means both the JOAT and the follower lived for two nights at minimum, so by that point in time, if all the town's PRs have lived...the backup really isn't needed to give the town an advantage.

there's really strong potential power for the doctor to protect basically any outed PR (follower or JOAT or neighbor) with very limited ability for scum to counteract it (a single strongman shot and a single roleblocker and a single role cop to maybe get lucky and find the doc).

You say 'very limited', I say--especially given PR hunting and town players usually not being nearly as subtle as they should and maybe having explicitly claimed in-thread--'very likely'. Especially if the scum are smart enough to hold onto the strongman/roleblock shots N1 if they don't have any PR info. (About half of scumteams will waste those abilities early-on, and then complain post-game that they were screwed...because no duh, you wasted your abilities on shooting in the dark at a VT rather than waiting to be more informed and hit a PR.) Depending on scumteam strategy, there's literally a 50/50 chance of them using their powers precisely when they are needed to fuck the town over; a doctor claim looks a lot more suspicious if the claimed follower is nightkilled successfully for instance. Roleblocker is literally the strongest PR you can give a scumteam in a Normal (there's stats to back that up), so even one shot of it is immensely powerful (especially with no refunds); strongman's also near the top of the list in scumteam strength. There's a reason you never find full-strongmen in Normals; it's because a full strongman is stupidly powerful, so they always have a gate built in, usually in shots. (In this case, one.)

I think that town's power is actually highly synchronized, with no real false guilties or false innocents for the follower (except for the 1-shot role cop getting followed maybe)

The main thing there is, you're thinking as a moderator who knows the setup. Players don't, so they don't KNOW there's no false guilties or no false innocents. This gives the scumteam quite a bit of wiggle room to get out of a guilty (say, claiming JOAT with a vig shot--the very BP+Doc nature of the game means that a second kill not appearing makes that less absurd than it sounds), and an equal amount of wiggle room to lynch an innocent.

5) I think that a BP getting absorbed doesn't count as a night action for follower, so if a BP loses its vest, it's basically no action (or only whatever active action was taken).

The BP in this case is activated, so it does count as an action for the follower.

[mastin2]

So wrt the gated ub, would he get to choose which JOAT power he gets if inherited?

All of the unused ones, with the backup deciding which they get to use, is what I was assuming.

[mastin2]

Another question: will the powers of the JOATs be revealed upon their deaths?

[mastin2]

Having it as a commute locks scum out of strongmanning/roleblocking (thereby wasting the shot).

Actually, a strongman punctures through a strongman, and because commuting would be the only action done from the JOAT the night of the commute, scum using a roleblock on the JOAT would be wasting it.

The only difference comes if the roleblock can block a BP (which you need to have an answer for), because roleblocks can't block commutes. Though, most scumteams aren't gonna block and kill someone anyway.

[mastin2]

*strongman punctures through a BP

And for clarity, the only difference pragmatically between commute and BP is that commutes guaranteed will not be impacted by the RB, so an RB + Kill (stupid as scum would have to be to do that) would fail; BPs are more questionable when it comes to RB + Kill (stupid as scum would have to be to do that), so if you rule that activated-BP cannot be blocked then it's identical. The difference only comes if you rule the BP

can

be blocked.

[mastin2]

**Strongman punctures through a commute.
Commuting does not make one immune to strongman.
Any mod who says otherwise is, frankly, wrong.

[mastin2]

Well that's just stupid.
Literally nobody handles strongmen that way outside of the Normal queue. They pretty much universally puncture through a commute.

[mastin2]

With that stupid-ass rule for strongman/commute (seriously, who made that? I wasn't made aware of that change), yeah, keep it as a BP.
For rolecops, the solution I see most is to give them the information which would be included in the flip, so in this case, that would be the latter. I don't believe there's a standard though, so I think it'd be your choice.
As for results: it's not required to have the results in the role PMs, but it sure is appreciated by the players. It also saves you time in the long-run, because rather than asking you down the line, they have the answer already in their role PM.

[mastin2]

It looks good to me.

I can't think of anything.

[mastin2]

There's a reason I consider neighbors a net-zero in review.