Skygazer's micro normal review, May 2019

[implosion]

I don't actually know the setup though!

[implosion]

Supposedly this setup exists though

primary: callforjudgement, Anointed Reviewer Of Micro Normals
secondary: schadd_, Titleless

[schadd_]

mason encryptor
mason mailman
bodyguard
4 VTs
2 goons

[schadd_]

i'm smooth operator thank you very much

[Skygazer]

wow schadd what if i just wanted a completely different setup

didnt think of that, huh?

[Skygazer]

01 Town Mason Mailman
02 Town Mason Encryptor
03 Town Bodyguard
04 Town Vanilla
05 Town Vanilla
06 Town Vanilla
07 Town Vanilla
08 Mafia Goon
09 Mafia Goon

Welcome, [Player Name]. You are a Town Mason Mailman.
Abilities:
You share a private thread with [Playername], a Mason Encryptor. You may talk to them at any time. You know them to be aligned with the town.
Each night, you may send any player a message. The player will not know that you sent the message, but will know it came from a mailman.
Win condition:
You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

The game thread is [here]. Please send me a PM confirming your role and alignment.

Welcome, [Player Name]. You are a Town Mason Encryptor.
Abilities:
You share a private thread with [Playername], a Mason Mailman. You may talk to them at any time. You know them to be aligned with the town.
As an encryptor, your masonry will be open during the day.
Win condition:
You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

The game thread is [here]. Please send me a PM confirming your role and alignment.

Welcome, [Player Name]. You are a Town Bodyguard.
Abilities:
Each night you may select a player to bodyguard. If that player is targeted by a killing action, you will die in their place.
Win condition:
You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

The game thread is [here]. Please send me a PM confirming your role and alignment.

Welcome, [Player Name]. You are a Vanilla Townie.
Abilities:
You have no abilities other than your voice and your vote.
Win condition:
You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

The game thread is [here]. Please send me a PM confirming your role and alignment.

Welcome, [Player Name]. You are a Mafia Goon.
Abilities:
You share a private topic with [Playername], a Mafia Goon. You may communicate with them during the night [here].
Your team has a factional night-kill. Each night your team can designate one teammate to perform this kill.
Win condition:
You win if at least one member of your group is alive and all other players are dead (or when your factions controls half of the votes).

The game thread is [here]. Please send me a PM confirming your role and alignment.

Last night you received a message from a mailman! Here is that message:

[insert message here]

Micro ####: Generic Micro Normal Mafia

[some sort of image or video here]
Moderator: Skygazer
Reviewers: ??? and ???

Player List:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

Spoiler: Living Players

Everyone is alive!

Spoiler: Dead Players

None yet!

Spoiler: Events

None yet!

Rules, adapted from schadd_ who adapted them from Nexus.

Be nice. It's a game.

General:
- Please adhere to the site rules.
- Do not discuss this game of mafia outside of this thread.
- Day phases will last 10 days (or until a lynch is achieved).
- Night Phases will last 48 hours maximum. On any given night, if all players PM me that they are okay to speed up the night, it will end sooner.
- During night phase, no talking may be done in the thread.
- Do not quote PM's from the mod at all (real or fabricated). Paraphrasing is acceptable.
- If you have any questions about your role, or the game, feel free to PM me.
- "Bah" posts are not allowed.
- If you break any of these rules, you may be modkilled or force-replaced.

Voting / Player actions:
- Vote either with vote tags (VOTE: Skygazer) or with bold (

vote: Skygazer

). You may use nicknames and abbreviations if you wish, as long as it's unique to the player and I can figure out who you intended to vote.
- Don't try to confuse me with your votes.
- You may vote No Lynch to Not Lynch.
- A lynch will occur once a majority decision is reached. If no majority is reached by deadline, then no lynch shall occur.
- Following a lynch, it is twilight. You may continue to post until I lock the thread and declare it night.
- If nobody dies for 4 consecutive day and night phases, the town will win.
- If you have a Night Action, you may submit it from Night 1 and each subsequent Night (or whichever nights are specified by the role).
- If you have more than two night specific actions, you may only use one per night unless specified otherwise.

Activity:
- You are expected make a game-state advancing post at least once every 48 hours. If you haven't posted for 48 hours, I shall prod you. If you do not respond to the prod within 24 hours (either in thread if it's Day, or via PM during the Night) then I will replace you.
- As well, if you require more than three prods, I will force-replace you.

Mechanics:
- 006688 is my color. Feel free to use it if you'd like! Just not to impersonate me or to mislead others.
- No impossible/hard to read text, or cryptography. For example, I would prefer that no font size smaller than the one you're reading now be used.
- I may make mistakes - please point out any mistakes gently. Mistakes will be corrected where possible, but sometimes mistakes are made that cannot be reversed. These will stand as final to be commiserated over after the game.
- If you need to get the mod's attention, either PM me, or bold the text you wish to draw to my attention.
- I reserve the right to alter/remove/add any rules as I see fit. You will, of course, be notified if that happens, however.
- Day-talk is not active barring the existence of an encryptor.

Sample Role PMs:

Spoiler: Vanilla Townie

Welcome, [Player Name]. You are a Vanilla Townie.
Abilities:
You have no abilities other than your voice and your vote.
Win condition:
You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

The game thread is [here]. Please send me a PM confirming your role and alignment.

Spoiler: Mafia Goon

Welcome, [Player Name]. You are a Mafia Goon.
Abilities:
You share a private topic with [Player Name], a Mafia Goon. You may communicate with them during the night [here].
Your team has a factional night-kill. Each night your team can designate one teammate to perform this kill.
Win condition:
You win if at least one member of your group is alive and all other players are dead (or when your factions controls half of the votes).

The game thread is [here]. Please send me a PM confirming your role and alignment.

[callforjudgement]

Normalcy of the setup itself seems fine (I'll need to check the rules and role PMs too, which haven't been posted yet). One thing that needs attention is with respect to scum daytalk (there's weirdness on the town side, which is fine, but you'll need to define how that works on the scum side of things).

Mason×2 + 5 versus 2 is something that looks like it should be a standard 9p configuration, but (AFAICT) hasn't actually been run enough to get a firm observed town winrate on it. Comparisons to similar setups, though (e.g. vanilla setups and setups with two named townies) put its likely town winrate in the 30-50% range.

This setup has more town power than that, though. The Mailman probably doesn't matter much balance-wise (and may well make the setup more fun), but adding a Bodyguard on top of the Masons makes me uneasy. Bodyguard's a pretty powerful role when it hits (unless it happens to be given to someone who scum would want to kill anyway), and the existence of Masons in the setup make it pretty likely that it'll hit. As such, I'm concerned that it'll tip the setup into being too townsided, although I'm open to being persuaded otherwise.

There's also the issue that scum have little scope to claim a power role here; Mason + Mason (both with secondary abilities!) + Bodyguard is clearly enough to balance (or more than enough to balance), so if scum claim power on top of that, then it'll be obvious that one of the power roles is fakeclaiming, and it's highly unlikely that it's the Masons.

You can probably fix the first issue with modifiers (e.g. Simple on the Bodyguard), but that wouldn't obviously fix the second issue. The setup feels like it needs some way to create doubt, and it's hard to do that with Masons.

Assuming that the rules and role PMs work out, I'd be willing to approve a version with a Simple Bodyguard, but think there might be a better way to design the setup that I haven't thought of yet. Any ideas?

PEDIT: I see Skygazer's just posted the rules. I'll post this now and then check them.

[callforjudgement]

The Mailman role PM needs to explain how to send the message (i.e. you send it to the mod, the mod sends it to the chosen player the following morning). As you've written it, there's too high a risk of players just sending the PM themselves. Role PMs are otherwise good.

A couple of rules nitpicks:
- "If you have

more than two

night specific actions, you may only use one per night unless specified otherwise." – should be "two or more", or "more than one".
- Likewise, "more than three prods" – did you mean this? That's one more prod than the normal number (three = force-replacement). You might want to also consider a rule for handling players who need prodding multiple times in the same day; that's not required, just a bit of advice in case you get a player who's persistently inactive.

I'd also like to point out a couple of site rules changes that you may have missed:
- Discussion of potential/current replacements is now not allowed in-thread (i.e. if a player wants to replace out, or is considering replacing out, or thinks someone else needs to be replaced, that can only be discussed by PM to the moderator). You might want to mention that explicitly in your rules, as there may be players who have missed it.
- Modkilling is no longer allowed without a listmod's permission (basically because if a player has done something warranting a modkill, it probably warrants listmod action too).

[Skygazer]

Hmm. I feel like changing the masons to be neighbors would introduce more doubt into the setup but would probably reduce the town winrate by a ton. I just had a neat idea involving a scum neighbor/encryptor giving both the neighborhoods and scum team daytalk but I'm not sure if I'd want to incorporate that here. I feel like even with the masons not leaving a lot of room for doubt in the setup, there's at most only two confirmed town (although the bodyguard isn't very lynchable) which isn't that townsided in a micro? The scum would have to mislynch 3 of the 4 VTs/possibly the bodyguard. I'm open to changing stuff (especially the bodyguard!) for sure though.

pedit: will address those for sure!

[Skygazer]

Welcome, [Player Name]. You are a Town Mason Mailman.
Abilities:
You share a private thread with [Playername], a Mason Encryptor. You may talk to them at any time. You know them to be aligned with the town.
Each night, you may send me a message to be sent to any living player. The player will not know that you sent the message, but will know it came from a mailman.
Win condition:
You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

The game thread is [here]. Please send me a PM confirming your role and alignment.

Rules, adapted from schadd_ who adapted them from Nexus.

Be nice. It's a game.

General:
- Please adhere to the site rules.
- Do not discuss this game of mafia outside of this thread.
- Day phases will last 10 days (or until a lynch is achieved).
- Night Phases will last 48 hours maximum. On any given night, if all players PM me that they are okay to speed up the night, it will end sooner.
- During night phase, no talking may be done in the thread.
- Do not quote PM's from the mod at all (real or fabricated). Paraphrasing is acceptable.
- If you have any questions about your role, or the game, feel free to PM me.
- "Bah" posts are not allowed.
- Don't publicly talk about potentially replacing out, and don't publicly request for other players to replace out. If you have an issue that may need to be resolved through a replacement, please feel free to bring it up privately with me!
- If you break any of these rules, you may be modkilled (only with a listmod's blessing) or force-replaced.

Voting / Player actions:
- Vote either with vote tags (VOTE: Skygazer) or with bold (

vote: Skygazer

). You may use nicknames and abbreviations if you wish, as long as it's unique to the player and I can figure out who you intended to vote.
- Don't try to confuse me with your votes.
- You may vote No Lynch to Not Lynch.
- A lynch will occur once a majority decision is reached. If no majority is reached by deadline, then no lynch shall occur.
- Following a lynch, it is twilight. You may continue to post until I lock the thread and declare it night.
- If nobody dies for 4 consecutive day and night phases, the town will win.
- If you have a Night Action, you may submit it from Night 1 and each subsequent Night (or whichever nights are specified by the role).
- If you have more than one night specific actions, you may only use one per night unless specified otherwise.

Activity:
- You are expected make a game-state advancing post at least once every 48 hours. If you haven't posted for 48 hours, I shall prod you. If you do not respond to the prod within 24 hours (either in thread if it's Day, or via PM during the Night) then I will replace you.
- As well, if you require more than two prods, I will force-replace you.

Mechanics:
- 006688 is my color. Feel free to use it if you'd like! Just not to impersonate me or to mislead others.
- No impossible/hard to read text, or cryptography. For example, I would prefer that no font size smaller than the one you're reading now be used.
- I may make mistakes - please point out any mistakes gently. Mistakes will be corrected where possible, but sometimes mistakes are made that cannot be reversed. These will stand as final to be commiserated over after the game.
- If you need to get the mod's attention, either PM me, or bold the text you wish to draw to my attention.
- I reserve the right to alter/remove/add any rules as I see fit. You will, of course, be notified if that happens, however.
- Day-talk is not active barring the existence of an encryptor.

Sample Role PMs:

Spoiler: Vanilla Townie

Welcome, [Player Name]. You are a Vanilla Townie.
Abilities:
You have no abilities other than your voice and your vote.
Win condition:
You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

The game thread is [here]. Please send me a PM confirming your role and alignment.

Spoiler: Mafia Goon

Welcome, [Player Name]. You are a Mafia Goon.
Abilities:
You share a private topic with [Player Name], a Mafia Goon. You may communicate with them during the night [here].
Your team has a factional night-kill. Each night your team can designate one teammate to perform this kill.
Win condition:
You win if at least one member of your group is alive and all other players are dead (or when your factions controls half of the votes).

The game thread is [here]. Please send me a PM confirming your role and alignment.

[Skygazer]

wow schadd ur rules i stole rlly sucked

(sorry, i had copy and pasted a lot of that from my other games, I adjusted the prods to two or more since its a micro and changed everything else as well)

[schadd_]

n1 bodyguard maybe? the only problem with a bodyguard here is that it produces a game where scum have very limited control over nightkills (n1 bodyguard, n2 mason, n3 other mason) but n1 bg mitigates a scenario where they inevitably survive really late if they claim d2 & also looks like a really sketchy claim after n1 since it's unverifiable and doesn't give a reason to kill it

[callforjudgement]

Hmm. I feel like changing the masons to be neighbors would introduce more doubt into the setup but would probably reduce the town winrate by a ton. I just had a neat idea involving a scum neighbor/encryptor giving both the neighborhoods and scum team daytalk but I'm not sure if I'd want to incorporate that here. I feel like even with the masons not leaving a lot of room for doubt in the setup, there's at most only two confirmed town (although the bodyguard isn't very lynchable) which isn't that townsided in a micro? The scum would have to mislynch 3 of the 4 VTs/possibly the bodyguard. I'm open to changing stuff (especially the bodyguard!) for sure though.

pedit: will address those for sure!

Yes, a Mason → Neighbour change would reduce town winrate too much by itself; it would make the setup easier to balance, but you'd have to add more town power to compensate.

The issue with this setup is that if a Mason claims early (which they probably will), there's about a 50:50 chance of it effectively having three confirmed town, which is too much. (The Bodyguard ends up dying in place of a Mason, leaving a confirmed player – the Mason – alive in place of a player who would have been unconfirmed, giving a "virtual" third confirmation.) The other 50% of the time, the Bodyguard is a player who would have died naturally.

You could change the Bodyguard to a role that doesn't have positive interactions with a Mason, and balance the setup that way. For example, Bulletproof would probably be balanced.

[callforjudgement]

n1 bodyguard maybe? the only problem with a bodyguard here is that it produces a game where scum have very limited control over nightkills (n1 bodyguard, n2 mason, n3 other mason) but n1 bg mitigates a scenario where they inevitably survive really late if they claim d2 & also looks like a really sketchy claim after n1 since it's unverifiable and doesn't give a reason to kill it

That pretty much works too.

The main issue with it is that if the masons play badly and one of them ends up having to claim D1, they end up being rewarded for their misplay rather than punished, which seems a bit backwards. Apart from the the balance should be OK, though.

[Skygazer]

This would approach some word vomit level roles but what about

1 Town Loyal Friendly-Neighbor Neighbor
2 Town Ascetic Mailman Neighbor
3 VT
4 VT
5 VT
6 VT
7 VT
8 Scum Goon
9 Scum Goon

w/ daytalk enabled

giving 1 conftown/decent investigative that needs to try and stay hidden and absolutely not claim and an unconfirmable PR that's mostly only useful for dayplay. That might be a bit too convoluted tho?

pedit: I like the idea of the N1 bodyguard but agree that it'd feel weird rewarding the masons if they outed D1

[Skygazer]

^ that looks stupider the longer i look at it but i cant put my finger on why

[Skygazer]

i like the idea of two town players deciding on messages to send out and that's probably the main idea i want to keep intact

[Skygazer]

I could probs settle for the N1 bodyguard idea

[callforjudgement]

Loyal Friendly Neighbour has a lot of investigative potential (players who received the message are confirmed as town after you die or flip, and you'll know they're town when they claim receiving the message). I think the original setup was more along the right lines; something like Town Mason Encryptor + Town Mason Mailman + low-powered town power role + 4 VT vs. 2 scum seems right.

The additional town power role has to be weak, possibly even inadvertent-vanilla. Something like Bulletproof, Rolecop, or Miller.

[schadd_]

1 Town Loyal Friendly-Neighbor Neighbor
2 Town Ascetic Mailman Neighbor
3 VT
4 VT
5 VT
6 VT
7 VT
8 Scum Goon
9 Scum Goon

real bad if 2 doesn't claim ascetic which some people don't do

[callforjudgement]

Oh, you could also make it an Enabler or Backup for a role that isn't in the setup. That'd add a decent level of uncertainty and we don't really do that often enough nowadays.

[Skygazer]

I like the idea of a town rolecop/miller/enabler/backup

I feel like a red herring enabler/backup would give scum a p dangerous fakeclaim if they catch on tho?

[Skygazer]

I'm thinking miller tbh

[Skygazer]

mason encryptor
mason mailman
miller
4 VTs
2 goons

any more thoughts?

[schadd_]

i'm pretty confident that just vanilla or near vanilla masons vs. goons is scumsided because e.g. jailkeeper + 1-shot bp vs roleblocker in an open setup has 2 confirmable town roles and role power while also being more than a little bit scumsided and masons in a closed definitely don't offset that