Plum wrote:Hi, thanks, I was just about to send my setup to you!implosion wrote:Subject: Normal Queue Thread (Players and Mods)
Hello - would you like to design a setup, or run a pre-designed one?Plum wrote:/ in to Mod a mini
If the former, send me the setup at your leisure so I can start the review process.
Thanks!
Spoiler: Setup
Spoiler: Vanilla Town
Spoiler: Town Indecisive Doctor
Spoiler: Town Bodyguard
Spoiler: Town Roleblocker
Spoiler: Town Night 3+ Vigilante
Spoiler: Town Tracker
Spoiler: Mafia Jailkeeper
Spoiler: Mafia Tracker Enabler
Spoiler: Mafia Roleblocker Enabler
Spoiler: Game PMs
Spoiler: Ruleset
Plum's Mini Normal Review, July 2019
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Plum's Mini Normal Review, July 2019
Last edited by implosion on Fri May 08, 2020 6:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.-
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Initial thoughts: neat idea for a setup and I wouldn't say it needsmuchfundamental changes, but as it is, this setup IS a little scumsided. If you turned the jailkeeper into a goon, and/or changed the vig into Novice (which is N2+), I'd call it more balanced. Tracker as a weak investigative plus strong kill denial plus a vig able to shoot a little bit earlier into the game.-
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Hmmm. I'm intrigued - I wasn't sure exactly how the balance fell on this one but I was assuming it was just a bit Town-sided, to be honest (largely because of how many named Town roles with some power there are, including both Roleblocker and Tracker in a double Mafia Enabler setup - I feel like Town claims here are strong, though only the Tracker does much to confirm any of them). I might also fall into a different camp than you with regard to Vig power - I think it wouldprobablystrengthen Town a tiny bit to have it start Night 2 vs. Night 3 (and increase swing a little more than it would strengthen Town) but it's kind of marginal. I get that it would get more chances to shoot Town powerroles by accident and even if it hits scum it's 2/3 to remove a Town power anyway (though the player and claim remain on the board). It's a little weird because you're saying that if this setup had a Novice Vig it would on balance be better for it not to shoot Night 2 and play as though it were a Night 3+ Vig. But you might be right - I did think of the role of the Night 3+ Vig in this setup as being able to help clear out an extra scum late in the game if one of the stronger powerroles was disabled but information was out there.
Not sure what you mean by "Tracker as a weak investigative plus strong kill denial"? If you feel strongly about weakening the scumteam, I would be more inclined to limit the Jailkeeper shots than cut it altogether. I would have said two shots, but if you think that downgrading all the way to Goon is appropriate, well, two shots doesn't mean that much more than "don't use it until you know what to aim at". I know that "free" shots are valuable, but they're definitionally the least valuable, on average ...
I want to confirm based on released setup review threads I've read that in Normal Games any living enabler for a role is enough, which is why I worded the PMs that way.
While I'm here, if I have a couple of thoughts on roles and/or modifiers that I think could potentially at some point be valuable whitelistable tools for Normal Games, what's the best way of bringing it up with the Normal Group (if any)?-
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Feels like too little town power.
Thought this was super swingy at first then I noticed that the enablers dealt with the swing, but I think that makes the setup complicated.-
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Both are fine afaik
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The town claims here are only strong with the accompanying flip of the scum whose role they are enabled. Town has no way of knowing a town tracker is town truthclaiming until they see a scum tracker enabler flip; similarly so for a roleblocker. Until such a time as those mafia roles are lynched (in which case, it's mafia lynched), town can and very realistically will lynch those claims in spite of them being, on the flip of a specific scum player, nigh-conftown.
In that sense, there's the self-balancing mechanism in play: get conftowned by a flip, but lose access to the role; remain not conftown, but have access to the role.
I was referring to the town's PRs as a whole: tracker, as a weak investigative.
Plus strong kill denial in the form of a bodyguard, indecisive doctor, and roleblocker. That's three methods every night of preventing the scum from killing who they want to.
This is where the town more or less needs to be in power; the need access to those tools. The problem comes from the fact that between the scum nightkill, the scum's natural access to information (they are going to be able to deduce that the setup has both a town tracker and a town roleblocker), and the scum's jailkeeper, the scum have access to 2.5 ways per night of hunting/shutting down those roles and have the safety net of knowing that if scum are lynched those roles are disabled anyway.
A scum jailkeeper is also particularly devastating against the vig thanks to the vig being so late in the game; if the jailkeeper survives, they can shut down the vig shot and prevent the vig from becoming known as conftown. (Which is why one of the ways to make the game not scumsided is to allow the vig the ability to shoot earlier.)
Similarly, the tracker is the town's only definitive investigative--if the tracker is permanently blocked, then they can't get results. There's also the disaster scenario; what if the town roleblocker roleblocks scum, but the scum jailkeeper jailkept the roleblocker? It can lead to falsely clearing a scum player. (It shouldn't, but it can.)
Or even worse than that: what if the town roleblocker claims, and the scum jailkeep the town tracker? Do you think that, reasonably speaking, the town is likely to conclude that the tracker was roleblocked by an unclaimed, unknown, roleblocker? Or is it more likely that they are going to assume that the claimed town roleblocker is simply a scum roleblocker that roleblocked the town tracker?
An ungated scum jailkeeper is anincrediblystrong role in this setup because it serves as the perfect counter to almost every town role. That's why I'd think that, as-is, the game would be slightly scumsided.
I'd say limiting the shots works as well for balance. A 2x scum jailkeeper has less opportunities to shut the town down, while still giving the scum some leverage.In post 3, Plum wrote:If you feel strongly about weakening the scumteam, I would be more inclined to limit the Jailkeeper shots than cut it altogether. I would have said two shots, but if you think that downgrading all the way to Goon is appropriate, well, two shots doesn't mean that much more than "don't use it until you know what to aim at". I know that "free" shots are valuable, but they're definitionally the least valuable, on average ...
There's a thread for it, would take a bit to track down the link for it tho.
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I feel that town needs more power? Yeah there’s some kill stopping and killing but I don’t think it’s enough to balance the setup by itself, and the tracker is quite a weak investigative. The only thing town has going is being able to protect their power roles, albeit temporarily.
I think bumping the vig up to N2 gives town sufficient power here.
Actually, I’m not even sure of the notion that an enabler flip conftowns the town PR: What’s stopping scum from having both a roleblocker and a roleblocker enabler?-
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I mean, I don't actually have anything against putting a Mafia Tracker Enabler in a Normal game with no Tracker, ditto Roleblocker Enabler with no Roleblocker. It's something I would do (well, propose and get reviewed, obviously). Both in one game might be a bit much even for me.
What I'm hearing is 1+ of the following: Limit Jailkeeper to 2 shots, change Vig to Novice Vig instead of Night 3+ ... I could also change Mafia Jailkeeper to Mafia Roleblocker so it gets disabled. I'm getting a ballpark of choose two of those three options and that's better balance. Does that sound about right? If so, do you have a balance preference for which two to choose?-
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Vig to novice + limiting shots of the jailkeeper to 2 would be my recommendation. I'd be comfortable with passing the setup with those changes.-
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Mostly I just considered the utility of a couple of things:
A faction-specific backup or a cross-faction-specific backup. Like a Universal Backup but backs up only the first power role from their faction to die (or for cross-factional, from a different faction). The main utility this would add would be to keep Town at the same number of power roles if one got killed early without respect to which one died.
A Watcher except it cannot detect kills - target a player and see all players who targeted that player with a non-kill action. Has utility confirming claims and detecting odd things like Roleblocks that wouldn't come from Town, but it doesn't get to see the scum kill just for guessing who will be the target and doesn't have the Cop/protect aspect. If you guys like it, my brain spitballed Gumshoe as a potential name, even though it really only suggests sleuthing in general.
These both might be, like, okay ideas but not really filling gaps that need filling (or filling them but not well enough to justify them, or the gaps are just not really big enough to warrant worrying about filling them), but they're things that occurred to me when sketching out setup ideas.-
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FYI, the current universal backupisfaction-specific; it only backs up roles of its own alignment. I think it's the kind of area where having too many different roles can get potentially cluttered/confusing (backup that inherit specific/any role x backups that inherit their own/other/any alignment already = 6 different kinds of backups). It's nice to have but I'm not sure it's worth the design space.
I like gumshoe though. Could spitball it forward in the nrg at some point. Maybe also a tracker variant. Both would be really weak roles, though. Could be good for multiroles (eg combined gumshoe voyeur)-
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Oh, if Universal Backup is faction-specific, well, that already exists then and I just misunderstood Universal Backup? Huh. Okay.
I feel like Tracker is a good role that's not too powerful at baseline but Watcher is very powerful and it can be hard to make it feel fair without workarounds like giving access to Ninja or something, because of how it counters the scum kill so heavily - but I think if it couldn't detect the kill, it would baseline be weaker than a plain Tracker but it could still be valuable in the right circumstances (like the example you gave).-
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yeah, it's just sort of natural to give tracker the variant if it's also being given to watcher. I agree it conceptually makes more sense as a watcher variant. Might want to not even make the tracker variant bc it'd potentially be just bad design to give a tracker without the reward of being able to find kills. That said I can imagine utility for it in like, setups where the town already has a role like jk/rb that gets stronger with fewer scum.-
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Only the primary reviewer needs to sign off, and that’s not me.In post 14, Plum wrote:Okay, well, if BulletNLynchproof signs off on it, I guess that's that. Thanks so much! I'm looking forward to running the game
By the way, about those role and modifier proposals I have ... just the Normal Game change thread in MD, or somewhere else?Copyright © MafiaScum. All rights reserved.
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