drealmerz7's Mini Normal Review

[Nexus]

okay, done, now to have them ridicule it and tell me it's too scum-sided...I do think it is more balanced than it appears to most at a first glance (and do consider myself quite good at seeing balance!)

let me know if you need anything else from me

thanks!

Spoiler: ?s 1-4

1.) yes
2.) 13p
3.) Ircher
4.) I have modded 1 game on a different site, it was a 17player role-heavy extreme-flavor-heavy "theme" (heavily tweaked + semi-invented roles by me in a very complex-mechanic setup that experienced mods and players both were impressed by [though certainly not universally!] - not ego-boasting, just giving you the details - I can tell you more about it or show it to you, Tammy and Nacho both visited my HS to play it via invitation from a fellow from my HS that recently made a bit of a name for himself at the MU tournament and befriended them / got them and some others to come over and help me fill it , btw it was 10v5v1v1 and town won! - I've also hosted some 1NightWW at parties too!

Spoiler: post #00

RULES

(Universal Site Rules also apply)

General

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1.

Read everything I post, if it appears you have not, I will be PMing you

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2.

If you have

ANY QUESTIONS

for me during the course of the game, PM them to me. All questions posed to me in the thread will be ignored

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replacements

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all replacement requests must be sent to me via PM, do not mention anything about being replaced in the thread, ever

V/LA

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anyone going on V/LA must notify me via PM their anticipated amount of V/LA time, do not mention anything about your V/LA in the thread, ever

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DO NOT edit your posts

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No cryptoclaiming, no hidden or broken text, no spoiler trees >7

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Gamesmanship

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Have fun! Remember it is your fellow gamers' goals to also have fun

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once every 72hours

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Contention is part of the game, but don't let it get out of hand, if you feel someone is goading you, show others how scummy that is and try to get them lynched

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9.

Even the slightest referece or allusion to any ongoing games (even mentioning the fact that you are in them) is

STRICTLY FORBIDDEN

and you will be

MODKILLED

for the offense

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Game specifics

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10.

Days will last 10 days. Nights will last 3 days followed by a resolution period

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11.

To vote for a playe you

MUST

use the

VOTE: TAG

if you wish to not be voting for a player, you

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use the

UNVOTE: TAG

and their name to unvote them

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No exceptions will be counted

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You may

VOTE: No Lynch.

If no majority of votes are on a player at the time of deadline, No Lynch will be achieved

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example of how voting works

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VOTE: SuspiciousMan- to cast your first vote of the Day, then you must:

UNVOTE: SuspiciousMan- in order to clear your vote so that you may then:

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12.

Majority lynch with hammer mechanic is in effect

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You may request a votecount by entering

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I will do my best to comply in a timely manner

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Spoiler: Sample VT PM[area

-
Welcome to mini-normal ####, #player#!

you are

Vanilla Town

- your power is your vote, use it wisely!

- you win when all threats to town have been eliminated and at least 1 town player lives

ENJOY!!!

please respond with confirmation that you understand your role and alignment, or with questions if not

[/area]

Spoiler: post#01

a narrator starts, his voice a nasally thick New-English,

New Haven, Connecticut,

(he distinctly says it "CONNECTicut", and the tight CT sound pokes you in your ears)

, March 1922 (

all evidence of there having been an 'r' in "march", gone.)

Late evening hours.

A group of friends make their way down a sidestreet having just dined on a meal much to their liking. As they walk and discuss among themselves what is next for the night, a rain begins to fall. It quickly turns into a hard rain and they scurry down an alleyway and open the door to an establishment whose lights are on.

The smell of tobacco and alcohol is full in the air and as they shake the wet from themselves and cross the threshold into the speakeasy. Silence also fills the air as they enter. They look around with ill-ease, notcing the place went from lively to silent, and collectively turn to go back into the rain. Before they are even a step turned, a soft and friendly voice calls to them from a second-tier balcony.

"Welcome! Please, come in, you merely startled us. We don't get many un-announced visitors. Please, stay." His voice is disarming and welcoming. The group turns back into the establishment and begin to look around.

The rest of the patrons and members of the establishment are still focused on them and the silence is thick in the air after the apparent owner stops speaking. It's still a little awkward for everyone, except him, it seems.

He makes his way down the steps as the guests remove their coats and hats and set them on their respective racks.

"Sit, have a drink, this establishment is protected. There are no worries. Everyone, get back to what you're doing, you're making our guests nervous."

With that, things seem to return to normal and for a few minutes you talk with the owner about menial things.

Outside, the storm grows and becomes more and more violent. Lightning and thunder approach at a rapid pace.

"Well! It looks like you're here for a bit until this passes. Might I offer you all a game of poker with your drinks? Perhaps one of the single fellows there (he gestures to a few of the friends clearly not paired with females in the group) would like some company?" The inference is clear.

Suddenly, there is a simultaneous flash and loud crash and the electricity is out.

The storm is directly upon them. Thunder crashes and lightning flashes in a continuously rolling stream of power while the rain comes down in a torrent.

After a few moments the owner has lit a match and is lighting lanterns along the walls and counters.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" One of the women in the establishment screams. You all turn and rush to where she is. She stands over a man with a knife sticking out of his chest, he is dead. The owner rushes through everyone.

"Get out of my way!" He kneels down over the body.

"OHNO! Bill!? Bill!" Bill was the owner's best friend. He turns up and looks at the group of you. "Who did this? Did any of you see who did this!?" The only audible response is the sound of footsteps running into the bathroom, quickly followed by the sound of retching. Everyone else is staring blankly at him and at each other.

"We're getting out of here," someone says, and with that numerous people turn and begin to head toward the door.

There is a gunshot.

"Stop! No one is going anywhere! Not until we figure out who killed Bill! There are..." he takes a moment and counts the group around him "nine...stay here...if any of you attempt to leave I'm shooting you in the back!" He goes to the men's room, returns a moment later pulling the retching man by the arm "ten"...he says as he pushes him towards the mass group. He enters the lady's room, comes back out with a sobbing woman and shoves her into the group "eleven", goes up the stairs, opens a door where he apparently knows two people to be "get out here, someone's been killed...thirteen." He comes back down the stairs, following the only two occupants from upstairs.

"Okay, there's thirteen of you, none of you are leaving until you tell me who killed Bill. You have exactly..." he pulls a pocketwatch out "two hours from now to come to a decision among the thirteen of you on who did it, or help you all, I'm going to kill every last one of you."

Spoiler: post#02

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[spoiler=waiting out the storm

Spoiler: murdered in the Night[/spoiler

Spoiler: role PMs

-

Welcome to mini-normal ####, #Player#!

you are a

Town

Hooker

/

Prostitute

- at Night, you may select one player to target with your ability

- you also have the power of a vote! Use it wisely.

- you win when all threats to town have been eliminated and at least 1 town player lives

ENJOY!!!

please respond with confirmation that you understand your role and alignment, or with questions if not

-

-

Welcome to mini-normal ####, #player#!

you are a

Town 2x-Doctor

- two times during the game, at Night, you may select a player to target with your ability

- you also have the power of a vote! Use it wisely.

- you win when all threats to town have been eliminated and at least 1 town player lives

ENJOY!!!

please respond with confirmation that you understand your role and alignment, or with questions if not

-

-

Welcome to mini-normal ####, #player#!

you are a

Town 1x-Vigilante

- one time during the game, at Night, you may select a player to target with your ability

- you also have the power of a vote! Use it wisely.

- you win when all threats to town have been eliminated and at least 1 town player lives

ENJOY!!!

please respond with confirmation that you understand your role and alignment, or with questions if not

-

-

Welcome to mini-normal ####, #player#!

you are a

Town

Compulsive

BodyGuard

- at Night you

MUST

select a player to target with your ability

- you may also have the power of a vote. Use it wisely.

- you win when all threats to town have been eliminated and at least 1 town player lives

ENJOY!!!

please respond with confirmation that you understand your role and alignment, or with questions if not

-

-

Welcome to mini-normal ####, #player#!

you are a

Town BodyGuard

- at Night you may select a player to target with your ability

- you also have the power of a vote! Use it wisely.

- you win when all threats to town have been eliminated and at least 1 town player lives

ENJOY!!!

please respond with confirmation that you understand your role and alignment, or with questions if not

-

-
Welcome to mini-normal ####, #player#!

you are

Vanilla Town

- your power is your vote, use it wisely!

- you win when all threats to town have been eliminated and at least 1 town player lives

ENJOY!!!

please respond with confirmation that you understand your role and alignment, or with questions if not

^^ x3 ^^

-

-
Welcome to mini-normal ####, #player#!

you are a

1x Strongman Mafia 2xDoctor

- you MAY NOT use the Strongman modifier on a Night you use the Doctor ability

- your teammates are:

#player#2

,

#player#3

,

#player#4

- your team has acces to #Night-Chat#

- you also have the power of a vote! Use it wisely.

- you win when nothing can stop Mafia from being in control

ENJOY!!!

please respond with confirmation that you understand your role and alignment, or with questions if not

-

-
Welcome to mini-normal ####, #player#!

you are a

1x Strongman Mafia 2xJailKeeper

- you MAY NOT use the Strongman modifier on a Night you use the JailKeep ability

- your teammates are:

#player#1

,

#player#3

,

#player#4

- your team has acces to #Night-Chat#

- you also have the power of a vote! Use it wisely.

- you win when nothing can stop Mafia from being in control

ENJOY!!!

please respond with confirmation that you understand your role and alignment, or with questions if not

-

-
Welcome to mini-normal ####, #player#!

you are

Mafia

!

- your teammates are:

#player#1

,

#player#2

,

#player#4

- your team has acces to #Night-Chat#

- you also have the power of a vote! Use it wisely.

- you win when nothing can stop Mafia from being in control

ENJOY!!!

please respond with confirmation that you understand your role and alignment, or with questions if not

^^ x2 ^^

-

-
Welcome to mini-normal ####, #player#!

you are a

Serial Killer

with a 2x strongman modifier to apply to two NightKills

- you also have the power of a vote! Use it wisely.

- you win when all players are dead

ENJOY!!!

please respond with confirmation that you understand your role and alignment, or with questions if not

Spoiler: NA result PMs

You have successfully RoleBlocked your target!

-

You have failed to RoleBlock your target!

-

You have successfully healed your target!

-

You have failed to heal your target!

-

You were prevented from healing your target!

-

You have successfully BodyGuarded your target! You are dead!

-

Your NightKill attempt was successful!

-

You successfully performed a NightKill!

-

You were prevented from performing a NightKill.

-

Your NightKill attempt was blocked!

-

Your JailKeep attempt was successful!

-

Your JailKeep attempt was blocked.

-

You have been killed!

[Firebringer]

Yes this game is very scum sided.
First off, way too many scum powers:
1 strongman 2 shot Jailkeeper.
1 strongman 2 shot doctor

like the doctor is not needed, you don't need two strongmans.

Also two bodyguards is odd, and weak for the town.
2 shot doctor and 1 shot vigilante is alright.
But Hooker + 2 bgs (Which will basically claim and think the other is CCing them)

Also the use of "2x" can be a semi confirm with the way its typed out, I suggest modifying it to "2 shot" might seem semantic but it can change things.


Basically take out the strongmans or remove the jail keep and have just one scum be a strongman.
As far as town goes. I would definitely not go for this "2 bgs" thing your doing.

Then this game is closer to balance

[drealmerz7]

Yo so, a couple things.

- I realized I can do 1 mini-normal + 1 mini-theme as pre-reqs. to doing large-themes (I thought I had to do mini+large normal) - so I want to take this flavor and switch it with something more basic/shorter (which I already have done and will post here shortly) and then use this flavor for the mini-theme.

- I do consider myself to have a good "vision" of how things play out with balance and am not as "off my rocker" with the setup as it may appear (run through some permutations)

- I knew this was going to be viewed as scum-heavy, here are some thoughts:

when there are more scum in the numbers, it makes associations that much more harder to hide for scum AND increases the odds of them getting lynched - this helps with the balance a lot. I'm very interested to try this # mix and see what happens if I can get it passed (with some role-tweaking to make it better still.)

I want to make the 1 mafia a roleblocker instead of jailer and make the 1 town prostitute into a jailer

part of the role make-up is because as a moderator one of my philosophies is:

keep things ambiguous: I don't want people to be able to figure out who is scum based on mechanical interactions, I want everything to be a question mark of uncertainty and just be interesting + fun to play (I don't like overly heavy power, but I like a lot of power-presence that negates itself.) My goal is usually to almost nullify the existence of power where it seems like it is useful, but it only goes so far (because I believe in the scumhunt.)

I am a mod who will troll players, use MODwifom, and make the players feel dumb for assuming things like they *know* them when they DON'T KNOW - that's why strongman modifiers and a bunch of blocking roles - there will be lots of "hits and misses" and no one will KNOW where they came from/how they happened

also, I want to be sure we're not mistaking balance for swinginess - I like a good deal of swing and think this can get mistaken for bad balance at times

another thought I had, because I knew that this would be viewed as scum-sided is (on top of the role-changes I mentioned) just throw town another VT and make it 14p

[Nexus]

If you make it 14p then it'd be a Large and I don't think you can run a Large as your first game - if this is your first game, ofc?

Secondly - within the normal queue, mod trolling and WIFOM is generally discouraged - people come here for a certain type of game and it's unfair to fuck with them really.

[drealmerz7]

ya, as I typed the 14p I had that realization (dangit I want to be able to edit my posts!)

I was thinking the amount of wifom+trolling was minimal with the setup? Just a small taste for what is to come from me as a mod in the theme queues. It's just a bunch of kill-stopping roles, kind of fun I think? I really love the double-bodyguards.

[drealmerz7]

idea of having mafia doc+roleblocker is making them choose to be more defensive or offensive, since they can't use both

and to weigh their options of who does the kill or uses their ability vs. using strongman or not- it gives a lot of intriguing options to consider, and makes their choices matter/feel meaningful

[Firebringer]

also, I want to be sure we're not mistaking balance for swinginess - I like a good deal of swing and think this can get mistaken for bad balance at times

We try to reduce swing to give a reasonable game where both sides have a decent chance.

Your game as is unbalanced and swingy.

You can always try to go for the "Normalcy" route. Which is where we will not approve this on terms of balance, but instead just that it is a "Normal" game.

As far as that goes. I double checked and Compulsive is not a normal

Your hooker role, could still be put in place, but it and the Compulsive Bodyguard can't both be in the game.
Regardless if its Normalcy or Balance.

[drealmerz7]

I can just change the hooker to roleblocker and leave the compulsive in place (thought hooker was equiv. to roleblocker so it didn't matter as the 1 "grey" permitted)

and I would love it to be approved for normalcy but not necessarily guaranteed balanced if that is acceptable

[drealmerz7]

I will put a warning "may be unbalanced and swingy, but I think it'll be fine and good and fun!" or somesuch on the signupinfo

[Firebringer]

I can just change the hooker to roleblocker and leave the compulsive in place (thought hooker was equiv. to roleblocker so it didn't matter as the 1 "grey" permitted)

and I would love it to be approved for normalcy but not necessarily guaranteed balanced if that is acceptable

Okay, thats fine.

I will put a warning "may be unbalanced and swingy, but I think it'll be fine and good and fun!" or somesuch on the signupinfo

Thats good.

As far as specifics that would lead to this being not normal, ill take one more quick look.

[drealmerz7]

and yes I will change all the "1x" to "1-shot" - though I prefer using 1x (it's what am used to)

[drealmerz7]

or 2x whatever

[Firebringer]

Okay, you need to be more specific in the actual role pms what the players actions do. You just say the role and that they can use ability at night, but not what they do. You kind of have to spoon feed players what their abilities are.

Serial Killer should also have "2 shot Strongman" in front of it, not after it.

I really think town needs more than what your giving, or at least nerf the scum powers.

[Firebringer]

Okay also on your "results page"

None of these should be there.
You have zero investigations, so none of roles should give a result pm.

"You have jail keep successful" is not a normal thing.

The only times players get results is when they investigate a player with a investigative role.

[drealmerz7]

okay, yeah, that is part of the ambiguity with the wording

I always feel like I'm giving too much away otherwise because it's like do I say "attempt to kill a player" or "to kill a player" or what because I don't want them to assume 1.) that they are going to kill or 2.) that they might not succeed in their kill


ah yes, that is the sort of help I need for real (and what my assist mod will be there for for me) - is when to tell people what and what to actually tell them - that is where my noobness is really at its worst

[drealmerz7]

I actually didn't think I'd be telling the jail if he succeeded, I just popped all that in there quickly to send off to nexus because I wanted to be thorough because it said "night action PMs" were needed

where it's MUCH easier for me to create the NightAction PMs after I have all the actions in and the resolves done

[drealmerz7]

I'll be double-checking everthing with smith before sending it to players after the game starts

[drealmerz7]

OH that is the other thing I wanted to make sure of...not sure if it is in the rules (don't remember, it's beena bit, I can look)

I want 72hr Nights and after D1, shorter Days

[drealmerz7]

and it is Night Chat only~!!!!

[drealmerz7]

which also matters for balance

if you still think town needs something MORE after that...I can make it 3-shot Doctor?

[Firebringer]

OH that is the other thing I wanted to make sure of...not sure if it is in the rules (don't remember, it's beena bit, I can look)

I want 72hr Nights and after D1, shorter Days

You can't change the deadline as far as I know after its set for Day 1 in a normal game.

Id ask Nexus specifically on that, maybe it could be allowed.

Games tend to speed up after day 1 anyways, so i don't think it will be needed.

[Firebringer]

and it is Night Chat only~!!!!

which also matters for balance

if you still think town needs something MORE after that...I can make it 3-shot Doctor?

No, this is honestly still very unbalanced.

3 shot Doctor would not make much of a difference.

[drealmerz7]

can you help me run through some permutations? are you any good at that?

[drealmerz7]

ease of reference:

TOWN:

Jailer
3-shot Doctor
1-shot Vigilante
BodyGuard
Compulsive BodyGuard
VT
VT
VT
VT

MAFIA:

2-shot Strongman Mafia Roleblocker - can't use strongman+RB on same Night
2-shot Strongman Mafia Doctor - can't use strongman+doc on same Night
Mafia Goon


Serial Killer -

2-shot Strongman

[drealmerz7]

oops, another mafia goon

but, hey, 12 could be more balanced?

ugh, no, that looks too town-sided to me