Mini Normal 2041 [Game Over]

[skitter30]

just the various links:

mod pt: viewtopic.php?f=90&t=77654
scum pt: viewtopic.php?f=90&t=77655
dead pt: viewtopic.php?f=90&t=77656
game thread: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=77657

i'll give scum ~48 hours to redact anything or whatever and then i'll open it

[skitter30]

Thanks for modding Skitter! Nice consistency with vote counts!

tyty

[OkaPoka]

those were some nice pagetops ngl

[Nako]

DVa, you found that Gamma bussing meta very well. However, if you haven't find it, I thought Gamma was right at D1 too much to be not TMI. The game you posted confirmed my thought and Gamma got cornered after that.

FTR, I wasn't planning to lynch Kokichi as a PL at D1, I was just trying to create a conversation.

[PenguinPower]

Sorry for real life, Gamma. Disappointed in your dead thread talk.

Take the loss as a team.

[PenguinPower]

i'll give scum ~48 hours to redact anything or whatever and then i'll open it

I'm good with releasing as is.

[Nako]

DVa was so powerful in this game.
NERF THIS!

[Nako]

By the way, this was one of the best games I played recently.
Even thought some parts were extremely boring, I liked it.
Thanks for hosting skitter, and thanks for creating the setup implosion and mastina.

[DVa]

[DVa]

Really glad two of my d1 townreads were actually right

one day I will dance with Gamma and we will both be town lol

[Nako]

I am the only town that was on all of the scum lynches BTW
LOLDVa

[Almost50]

By the way, this was one of the best games I played recently.

That's exactly

the inverse of

my sentiment about my own play.

[Almost50]

Well, You girls did pretty well. Shame on all the Town boys who went for each other.

[Almost50]

Thanks for modding, skitter. Nice VC formats too.

[Kokichi Oma]

Nice job everyone. Especially dva and nako.

[Mewtaph]

Very good lylo play. Well done.

[mastina]

Setup spec is a helluva drug

In a mastina-designed game, generally the worst one to possibly take.

[OkaPoka]

hey mastina could u give me access to the pt where u guys designed this setup

i just want to see how it actually transpired

[mastina]

i made the mistake of setup speccing without actually playing closed setups so i kinda just
haha

Closed setups inherently have different balance to them than semi-opens or fully opens.
In particular, a setup that is considered balanced as an Open would be scumsided as a closed, generally speaking, due to the level of reduced information. As a result, a mini closed game is going to be more heavy on power than an equivalently sized (semi)open.

[mastina]

hey mastina could u give me access to the pt where u guys designed this setup
i just want to see how it actually transpired

I don't have the ability to give access to it; that'll be implosion's job to release it. I could in theory give the link, but you'd have no permissions to read it.

I can however walk you through the process.

Setup:
Town Vigilante
Town Gunsmith
Town Jailkeeper
Town Voyeur (intuitively, I feel like vig+gunsmith versus doctor, even with the jailkeeper, is scumsided due to m.doctor being both a vig counter and a gunsmith godfather, so the voyeur here serves as an extra town PR to give them a boost and potentially signal the presence of the scum doctor if targeting the doctor's target but to otherwise be of little use)
VT x6

vs.

Mafia Doctor
Mafia Goon x2

At a glance looks good to me. Voyeur catching doctor becomes a pseudo-guilty on the person the doctor targeted if the doctor is ever flipped. Town PRs in isolation are all decently strong but have obvious negative synergy. I'd say it's either balanced as is or needs a touch more town power, though I'm not sure how I'd add that touch more town power.

Yeah after mulling it over a bit more I think it's balanced or close enough.

That was the review thread! (Most review threads aren't that long, but as far as setups go, this one is fairly balanced for a mini normal, so.)

[mastina]

You'd actually be surprised just how often a setup will have 2 rather strong roles/3 fairly strong roles/4 okay roles that all fit, yet fall short of giving the town what they need...and so, one extra role is added to the town which gives them the little boost they need. In this case, the 3 fairly strong roles were the jailkeeper, vig, and gunsmith, but the town needed a small boost in the form of a voyeur. A TON of setups are designed this way, but it's often designed in a way where it's invisible unless you have either full setup knowledge as the moderator/reviewer or hindsight bias of having seen it as a player.

[DVa]

This game featured:

The myth, the legend, the T+T mason fakeclaim.

Now I can't wait for the next 20 games that feature T+S mason fakeclaims to point to this game as a justification

[DVa]

I kinda feel like Voyeur is the type of named role NRG would throw into a setup because someone was complaining it felt just a touch scumsided so it could very well actually be out of place.

[mastina]

I kinda feel like Voyeur is the type of named role NRG would throw into a setup because someone was complaining it felt just a touch scumsided so it could very well actually be out of place.

You're not wrong! You were dead on the money; that is precisely what happens in a ton of setups.

Most setups have core roles inherent to their key design, and then satellite roles designed to fine-tune the balance; voyeur is a frequent satellite role. (Because in of itself, a voyeur with no modifiers is almost useless; it can have

some

utility, albeit limited, but it is never a role which will on its own singlehandedly give a faction a huge advantage. Making it perfect to give an extra "oomph" to the town or mafia, without significantly overpowering either.)

Of course, these rules go out the window when you adjust the setup's starting size or the queue, since larger/smaller games and games that aren't Normal use inherently different standards (or in the case of themes, no standards at all), but it's a nifty guideline which will always serve you well.

[mastina]

(Generally speaking, it is really, really hard to design a 13-player Normal that's a balanced game, low on swing, where literally every single role as-is, is equally essential to game balance...particularly because them being equally essential to game balance makes the game susceptible to breakage via massclaim, in that if the town can tell every single town role as-claimed is essential to game balance, it's too self-confirming. So designers compromise in some areas, to preserve the integrity of the most important areas.)