borkjerfkin Micro Normal Review

[Nexus]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Micro Queue (Players and Moderators)
Date: Tue Dec 06, 2016 4:05 am
From: borkjerfkin
To: Radja

Spoiler: My Ruleset

General

1. Site-wide rules, as always, apply here.
   
2. I reserve the right to change any of the following rules at any time. I will also inform the players in thread and via PM in the unlikely scenario in which this is required.
   
3. This list is not necessarily all-inclusive. If you're unsure whether or not something is allowed, please PM me about it.
   
4. Disregarding the rules may result in consequences up to and including modkill and/or force-replacement.
   
5. If you need to talk to me in thread,
   please use bold.
   Additionally, feel free to PM me with any questions you might have.
   
6. DO NOT TALK ABOUT OTHER ONGOING GAMES IN THIS GAME.
   I've been seeing this happen in a lot of games recently. Don't do it -- it can ruin not only this game for others, but also other games. I won't be lenient about this rule in particular.
   
7. Please do not use hidden or encrypted text.
   
8. Play to win.
   
9. Please treat your fellow players with respect. At the same time, please try not to take comments personally whenever possible.
   
10. Please allow for your fellow players to go V/LA.
    
11. Please keep me in the loop about your own V/LA status.
    
12. This particular shade of brown (#804040) is my color. Please do not use it.
    
    
13. Have Fun!

Gameplay

1. The following vote formats are the de-facto standard on the site (aka votes should be enclosed with vote tags or bold tags. I don't care about caps/spelling/etc.)
   • VOTE: borkjerfkin
     
   • Vote: borkjerfkin
2. Unvotes are
   not
   required.
   
3. If it appears to be a vote for a player, I will treat it as a vote for a player. Please don't attempt to fool me or other players with regard to fake votes. Do not put votes in spoiler tags.
   
4. A lynch is achieved when half plus one of the current number of living players are voting for the same player. If this does not occur by deadline, a No Lynch will occur -- there is no plurality lynch in this game.
   
5. Twilight is the time between the 'hammer' vote being cast and the beginning of the night phase. All living players, including the most recent lynchee, may talk during this time.
   
6. Players' alignments will be revealed on death.
   
7. When killed, a player may make one informationless 'bah' post at the beginning of the next day phase and must be silent thereon until the conclusion of the game.
   
8. Please submit all night actions either via <b> tags in your quicktopic if you have one, or by PM if you do not.
   
9. If you have a night action and do not submit one, you will not take an action. I will not resolve your action on a random person.
   
10. Player List is ordered alphabetically by the initial players' names.
    
11. Role distribution is guaranteed to be random, determined with the aid of random.org

Deadlines

1. Days will be exactly two weeks long. Extensions may be granted at my discretion for what I feel are extenuating circumstances.
   
2. Nights will be exactly two days (48 hours) long.
   
3. Players will be prodded after 48 hours of inactivity during the day, excepting V/LA circumstances.
   
4. Failure to pick up a prod in 24 hours will result in replacement. Asking for replacement will result in replacement.

Spoiler: VT x 4

Welcome to Bill Wurtz Mafia!

You are a

Vanilla Townie!

Abilities:

• None

Win condition:

• All threats to the Town are eliminated.

Game thread: [LINK]

Please confirm by replying to this PM with your full role name.

Spoiler: Town Mason x 2

Welcome to Bill Wurtz Mafia!

You are a

Town Mason!

Abilities:

• Masonry: You know that
  • XXXXXXXX, is a

    Town Mason.
  Each night, you may communicate with them in [MASON PT]

Win condition:

• All threats to the Town are eliminated.

Game thread: [LINK]

Please confirm by replying to this PM with your full role name.

Spoiler: Town Roleblocker x 1

Welcome to Bill Wurtz Mafia!

You are a

Town Roleblocker!

Abilities:

• Roleblock: Each night, you may send me the name of another player. If your action succeeds, this player will be prevented from using any active abilities the same night.

Win condition:

• All threats to the Town are eliminated.

Game thread: [LINK]

Please confirm by replying to this PM with your full role name.

Spoiler: Mafia Goon x 2

Welcome to Bill Wurtz Mafia!

You are a

Mafia Goon!

Abilities:

• Factional Communication: Each night, you may communicate with the rest of your team, which consists of:
  • XXXXXXXX,

    Mafia Goon
  in [MAFIA PT]
  
• Factional Kill: Each night, you may designate one member of your team to attempt to kill a non-member of your team. If your action succeeds, this player will die at the end of the night. You may use other active abilities in conjuction with this kill, if applicable.

Win condition:

• The number of living Mafia equals or exceeds the number of living Town, or nothing can prevent this from occurring.

Game thread: [LINK]

Please confirm by replying to this PM with your full role name.

MisaTange is a pre-in.

I may have erroneously put 5x VT on an earlier PM I sent -- I meant 4, to make this 7v2.

[Empking]

Lynches are reached with a majority. With odd numbers of players, a majority is less than half the number of players plus two.

The set up seems strongly pro-town, with roleblockers being much more powerful in smaller games. Are there any similar set ups that makes you think this is fair?

[borkjerfkin]

I copied that from someone else's ruleset forever ago (and have used it in i think literally every game i have ever modded) I will just change it to say majority

[borkjerfkin]

I didnt say half plus two anywhere though

[borkjerfkin]

If its pro town its pro town. I have no prior art, just the knowledge that setups are generally more scumsided than they seem

[borkjerfkin]

i have no problem giving scum some power if we need to

[borkjerfkin]

If we give scum power, I would change 2x goon to (1x odd-night rolecop 1x even night rolecop) as something a little different from 1x rolecop 1x goon

[callforjudgement]

Rules look fine (a very pedantic reading of "days will be exactly two weeks long" implies you have to hold twilight out until the original deadline ends, but I don't think anyone would interpret it like that). I'm assuming this is not a daytalk setup because you didn't say it was (and in a Normal, you'd have to), but you should probably be more explicit about that.

The balance, however, is highly townsided. I was trying to work out if the Mason pair was too townsided by itself for a 7:2, and then I saw that Town had a Roleblocker too, which makes it unambiguous that town is too strong. (For what it's worth, Roleblocker + 6 VT versus 2 Goon is fairly close to balanced; possibly a little scumsided, but not by much. Your setup is way more townsided than that.) I don't think giving the Mafia one or more Rolecops would fix this, as a Rolecop takes too long to produce workable results. (I suspect what you're doing wrong here is trying to give town the same amount of power in a 7:2 that they'd need in a 10:3; I can certainly see a Mason-pair-plus-Roleblocker setup being viable in a Mini. A Micro is smaller than a Mini, though, so power roles tend to have more of an impact.)

What do you consider to be the important elements of the setup? We can preserve those and try to modify the rest to fit.

[Empking]

I didnt say half plus two anywhere though

Meant plus one.

I think you're liable to make a mess if you try to balance it by adding scum power. My reccomendation would just be to replace the RB with a VT.

P-edit: I agree with call.

[borkjerfkin]

Interesting how far off the mark I was. Micros are hard.

I really want the mason pair, and I want something else besides that that increases level of interest. If that's just to give scum power then so be it.

[borkjerfkin]

Rules look fine (a very pedantic reading of "days will be exactly two weeks long" implies you have to hold twilight out until the original deadline ends, but I don't think anyone would interpret it like that). I'm assuming this is not a daytalk setup because you didn't say it was (and in a Normal, you'd have to), but you should probably be more explicit about that.

There's no daytalk; I will add that to the setup-specific post I make.

[borkjerfkin]

I guess maybe my issue is I have a warped idea about how powerful a mason pair is; they're probably more power in smaller setups than I was budgeting for too.

[borkjerfkin]

could change the roleblocker to even night and give scum a 1x/2x day-rolecop or something, i dunno.

[borkjerfkin]

I would want to change the whole setup to yes daytalk if I did that.

[borkjerfkin]

or give an encryptor or whatever. it's not super important that the masons get daytalk -- i'd actually prefer the masons not to be able to talk at all.

[Empking]

What about 2 Masons, 5 Town, 1 Goon, 1 Even-Night Mafia Rolecop?

[borkjerfkin]

I would argue the value of that scum pr is essentially nil

Are we saying that 2 mason vs goons is townsided as a baseline? I am curious if there is any precedent there

[borkjerfkin]

Closest thing i can see to this setup is that 7p science one, which has scum winning 8 of 9. Town gets an extra lynch here.

[Empking]

An extra lynch is a very big deal, so SCUENCE isn't too informative.

I would argue the value of that scum pr is essentially nil

Are we saying that 2 mason vs goons is townsided as a baseline? I am curious if there is any precedent there

I think mason vs goons is fine. I was trying to think of the most interesting thing that doesn't mess with that.

2 Masons, 5 Town, 1 Goon, 1 Encryptor?

[callforjudgement]

Actually, 2 masons (no communication) + 5 VT versus 2 goons is comparable to the most scumsided subsetup of My Name Is Earl (although rather more townsided as scum can't reasonably fakeclaim mason, whereas they can reasonably fakeclaim Earl), so it's probably close to balanced. If you want to make it more interesting, one way would be to add roles that don't do anything (e.g. give scum a Watcher – they'll never see anything, but it's not bastard because they still can draw information about the setup from concluding that a player wasn't targeted), but that might not fit your idea of a good setup. Voyeur is a town role that could probably fit into the setup without unbalancing it (they can't gain any information that implicates anyone), although it runs the potential risk of being confirmed as town purely through setup speculation (and thus swinging things over to the town side again).

[borkjerfkin]

I thought they stopped running c9 because that particular variation was like impossible to win for town

[borkjerfkin]

I mean if you guys say 2 masons is balanced i am fine with that, i just really didnt think it would be

[callforjudgement]

The near-unwinnable version of C9 had a purely vanilla town; it didn't have any players who could confirm by claiming. My Name Is Earl was an attempt to fix it by ensuring there were always two townies with power roles, even if those roles didn't do anything. I'm not sure how successful it was.

[borkjerfkin]

Probably insufficient sample size anyway (only two documented runs of the setup, one of which is mistakingly labeled as a town win)

[Marquis]

I think Masons not having daytalk really struggle, especially if scum does. As in, with just that and VTs against scum I'd consider it scumsided - the strength in Masons imo comes equally from being able to coordinate votes/claims/reads strategies or whatever, as much as the "get out of lynch free" card that the Mason claim inherently provides does.

sorry if that made no sense it's late

but I also think a Town RB vs 2 goons is also townsided. in the sense that even though we might often call scumsided setups balanced, the potential guilting or clearing situations a RB provides are just so... clear-cut? that like it can instantly flip a game for town or turn a slight advantage into a steamroll. idk. I don't think I've ever been comfortable seeing that available right out the gate.