Plum's Micro Normal Review, October 2019
- implosion
-
implosion he/himPolymath
- implosion
he/him- Polymath
- Polymath
- Posts: 14335
- Joined: September 9, 2010
- Pronoun: he/him
- Location: zoraster's wine cellar
Plum's Micro Normal Review, October 2019
Hello i've been told this is a thing.
Primary: RadiantCowbells
Secondary: northsidegalLast edited by implosion on Sat May 23, 2020 1:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.- northsidegal
-
northsidegal Survivor
- northsidegal
- Survivor
- Survivor
- Posts: 11587
- Joined: August 23, 2017
- Plum
-
Plum Mafia Scum
- Plum
- Mafia Scum
- Mafia Scum
- Posts: 4519
- Joined: August 20, 2008
- Plum
-
Plum Mafia Scum
- Plum
- Mafia Scum
- Mafia Scum
- Posts: 4519
- Joined: August 20, 2008
- RadiantCowbells
-
RadiantCowbells He/himSmooth Criminal
- RadiantCowbells
He/him- Smooth Criminal
- Smooth Criminal
- Posts: 70855
- Joined: February 24, 2013
- Pronoun: He/him
- Contact:
- RadiantCowbells
-
RadiantCowbells He/himSmooth Criminal
- RadiantCowbells
He/him- Smooth Criminal
- Smooth Criminal
- Posts: 70855
- Joined: February 24, 2013
- Pronoun: He/him
- Contact:
- implosion
-
implosion he/himPolymath
- implosion
he/him- Polymath
- Polymath
- Posts: 14335
- Joined: September 9, 2010
- Pronoun: he/him
- Location: zoraster's wine cellar
- Plum
-
Plum Mafia Scum
- Plum
- Mafia Scum
- Mafia Scum
- Posts: 4519
- Joined: August 20, 2008
My thinking: Fruit Vendor can get hard innocent results on half the potential targets and PR/guilties on the rest (but is dependent on targets claiming fruit). N1 Informed is guaranteed a hard innocent result if they live to Day 2 (originally was just regular Informed but I guess I was thinking about early massclaim breaking strategies?) and can play out as soft-confirming themselves when they claim their information.
Mafia are essentially informed that Tracker is safe to claim, but if you massclaimed and had full Tracker, full Backup Tracker, Loyal Simple Fruit Vendor, and N1 Informed [X is Town Backup Tracker] claimed in a 9p, you'd expect something to be up because that would be hard to consider balanced even with Mafia Multitasking Roleblocker (assuming 7:2 I guess). It's a pretty good thing to claim if run up early but will have enough setup questions raised late game that it shouldn't be guaranteed. If they have to claim later it gives the Mafia interesting questions (maybe claiming 1-shot or other gated/limited Tracker would be better in some cases).
Note that with Encryptor and Informed Mafia, Encryptor has access to the relevant information Day 1 (so if they happen to be the one run up Day 1 they know the implications of claiming Tracker).- implosion
-
implosion he/himPolymath
- implosion
he/him- Polymath
- Polymath
- Posts: 14335
- Joined: September 9, 2010
- Pronoun: he/him
- Location: zoraster's wine cellar
- Plum
-
Plum Mafia Scum
- Plum
- Mafia Scum
- Mafia Scum
- Posts: 4519
- Joined: August 20, 2008
- RadiantCowbells
-
RadiantCowbells He/himSmooth Criminal
- RadiantCowbells
He/him- Smooth Criminal
- Smooth Criminal
- Posts: 70855
- Joined: February 24, 2013
- Pronoun: He/him
- Contact:
- Plum
-
Plum Mafia Scum
- Plum
- Mafia Scum
- Mafia Scum
- Posts: 4519
- Joined: August 20, 2008
- northsidegal
-
northsidegal Survivor
- northsidegal
- Survivor
- Survivor
- Posts: 11587
- Joined: August 23, 2017
hm. i don't think this game is necessarily unbalanced, but i do think it almost entirely comes down to massclaim and thus the town's collective NRG knowledge. considering the fruit vendor as a sort of quasi-neapolitan, i'd say that it probably swings a bit more in town's favor than it does in scums, at least depending on when town decides to massclaim.
an early massclaim (say, day two, assuming the FV lives to get an action off) seems to indicate to me that the rest of the game would be almost decided mechanically, and a late massclaim or one where, say, the FV dies early seems to me to indicate that scum almost always wins.
perhaps i'm thinking about this too optimistically or pessimistically and not considering intermediate possibilities, and i'm interested to hear any disagreements. again, i don't think this setup is necessarily unbalanced such that it can't be run, but i do think it's very swingy.- RadiantCowbells
-
RadiantCowbells He/himSmooth Criminal
- RadiantCowbells
He/him- Smooth Criminal
- Smooth Criminal
- Posts: 70855
- Joined: February 24, 2013
- Pronoun: He/him
- Contact:
I agree with your general thought process that it's a game that comes down to town correctly setup speccing the game more than anything and that isn't great but I'm still willing to pass it2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.- RadiantCowbells
-
RadiantCowbells He/himSmooth Criminal
- RadiantCowbells
He/him- Smooth Criminal
- Smooth Criminal
- Posts: 70855
- Joined: February 24, 2013
- Pronoun: He/him
- Contact:
- Plum
-
Plum Mafia Scum
- Plum
- Mafia Scum
- Mafia Scum
- Posts: 4519
- Joined: August 20, 2008
- Plum
-
Plum Mafia Scum
- Plum
- Mafia Scum
- Mafia Scum
- Posts: 4519
- Joined: August 20, 2008
- northsidegal
-
northsidegal Survivor
- northsidegal
- Survivor
- Survivor
- Posts: 11587
- Joined: August 23, 2017
no offense meant to you at all, but my first thought when i saw the mafia fruit vendor was "oh god". i designed a game once with a mafia fruit vendor PR along a town loyal FV and while i didn't follow it incredibly closely, from what i know scum stomped due to some clever fakeclaims. granted, that might have just been a particularly strong scumteam, but i think going forward my preference as a reviewer would be to minimize fruit roles beyond one, because i think for the most part all they do is add confusion.
the original setup—while it's possible it could come down in large part to massclaim and the town's knowledge of normal game balance—doesn't really have any "confounding variables" (unless you count the backup tracker/informed, but i would consider that more of a red herring and i would consider red herrings different than confounding variables).
i guess what it comes down to for me is that i can see the mafia fruit vendor making things a lot worse for the town and i don't think that's necessarily something that the original setup needed. interested to hear RC's thoughts- Plum
-
Plum Mafia Scum
- Plum
- Mafia Scum
- Mafia Scum
- Posts: 4519
- Joined: August 20, 2008
Lol no offense taken, I was trying to brainstorm something that left the red herring aspect mostly intact and important but made the game less about whether the Town can correctly figure out that the Tracker claim is scum in claim/massclaim situations, because that did seem less than desirable. So I toned back the information Mafia had so that they had more complex choices about what claims were good. But keeping Town Simple Loyal Fruit Vendor and the Informed getting a full inno Night 1, I wanted to bring the balance back (given that the issues brought up by the reviewers were essentially not about balance) by giving something pretty small but tactically useful, and I thought 1-shot Rolestopper was too strong and not really where I wanted to go with the setup. 1-shot FV seemed "safe" to me in that it could muddy the waters if used opportunely but didn't directly cause a misleading soft-guilty like Rolestopper could. But you're more experienced here and if Mafia FV is territory that scares you, that says something to me.
Maybe something else? Mafia Watcher? Mafia 1-shot Neighborizer?- RadiantCowbells
-
RadiantCowbells He/himSmooth Criminal
- RadiantCowbells
He/him- Smooth Criminal
- Smooth Criminal
- Posts: 70855
- Joined: February 24, 2013
- Pronoun: He/him
- Contact:
- RadiantCowbells
-
RadiantCowbells He/himSmooth Criminal
- RadiantCowbells
He/him- Smooth Criminal
- Smooth Criminal
- Posts: 70855
- Joined: February 24, 2013
- Pronoun: He/him
- Contact:
Like my issue with the original is 2 things
1) how much the game comes down to play around the informed mafioso
2) variance on the effectiveness of the fruit vendor which is essentially random
This doesn't really help with those and it introduces its own confision2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.- Plum
-
Plum Mafia Scum
- Plum
- Mafia Scum
- Mafia Scum
- Posts: 4519
- Joined: August 20, 2008
- Plum
-
Plum Mafia Scum
- Plum
- Mafia Scum
- Mafia Scum
- Posts: 4519
- Joined: August 20, 2008
Spoiler: Setup
This version replaces the Loyal Simple FV with Friendly Neighbor, which could address the "variance on the effectiveness of the fruit vendor" issue. Gives a hard innocent but only of one specific player, and doesn't vary in effectiveness based on whether they hit a Town non-Vanilla. The Town get a total of two hard confirmed innocents but no other direct power. In this version (as in the Mafia 1-shot FV one) the Town Informed and the Mafia are both aware that a Backup Tracker exists but have no information about whether a Tracker exists. Does this improve on the two major issues with the original setup?- Plum
-
Plum Mafia Scum
- Plum
- Mafia Scum
- Mafia Scum
- Posts: 4519
- Joined: August 20, 2008
- northsidegal
-
northsidegal Survivor
- northsidegal
- Survivor
- Survivor
- Posts: 11587
- Joined: August 23, 2017
oops, sorry about that. i think the friendly neighbor version is definitely a good setup. the confirmable nature of the FN should in some part reduce the reliance on balance knowledge / massclaim, although it's definitely still a factor (which isn't inherently a bad thing)
i would pass that version with the caveat that i think it's slight scumsided, but based on what i know of current site meta i think it's completely alright (if not outright the better thing to do) to pass slightly more scumsided setups. - northsidegal
Copyright © MafiaScum. All rights reserved.
- Plum
- Plum
- Plum
- RadiantCowbells
- RadiantCowbells
- Plum
- northsidegal
- Plum
- Plum
- RadiantCowbells
- RadiantCowbells
- northsidegal
- Plum
- RadiantCowbells
- Plum
- implosion
- Plum
- implosion
- RadiantCowbells
- RadiantCowbells
- Plum
- Plum
- northsidegal
- implosion