Changes to Normal Games (update September 2022)

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Post Post #155 (isolation #0) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 11:42 am

Post by Umlaut »

Is [Ability]-Immune (e.g. Track-Immune) a normal modifier? If not, should it be?
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Post Post #158 (isolation #1) » Mon Jul 02, 2018 9:59 am

Post by Umlaut »

This thread and the wiki are out of sync regarding Detectives in Normal games.

According to this thread:
In post 0, implosion wrote:Detective: target a player to investigate them and determine if they have attempted to kill someone, successful or not. Resolves after kills.
According to the wiki: "A negative result is returned from players that have never actively killed another player (including players who cannot kill, players who can kill but chose not to, and players who attempted to kill but have had all their attempts blocked or protected against)."
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Post Post #159 (isolation #2) » Sat Jul 14, 2018 10:38 am

Post by Umlaut »

Having now put a game through the new normal review process:

It's
so much better.


My last two normal reviews before this felt like they were never going to end and I considered at points just withdrawing because I was tired of waiting. Didn't feel like that at all with this game. None of the too-many-cooks feeling of the three-reviewer process, none of the delays of two reviewers agreeing and the third disappearing for a week, and I felt like the game that came out the other end of it was essentially
my
game, as opposed to say my first review where I kind of ended up running a game designed by the review team.

So, whatever my thoughts on the changes to the meaning of Normal itself, I 100% approve of the changes to the review process.
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and the other kind,
’ and those who
don’t
say. Well, then there’s me.” — J.R. “Bob” Dobbs
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Post Post #161 (isolation #3) » Sat Jul 14, 2018 11:43 am

Post by Umlaut »

According to the thread, a player who tried to kill but was blocked would give a positive result to the Detective ("they have attempted to kill someone, successful or not"); according to the wiki it would return a negative ("A negative result is returned from ... players who attempted to kill but have had all their attempts blocked or protected against").
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’ and those who
don’t
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Post Post #163 (isolation #4) » Mon Jul 16, 2018 3:42 am

Post by Umlaut »

Actually, should there be a standard place to suggest roles and modifiers for whitelist?

In addition to the [Role]-Immune modifier I suggested before, I can easily think of several other roles and modifiers that I don't believe would be out of place in a Normal game in that they have been used before, don't require any non-normal mechanics, and can be reasonably accounted for in balancing a setup. I'm sure others can think of even more. Instead of keeping this thread going forever and mixing those suggestions in with general critiques of the new normal, it would be nice to have a place to post them and guarantee they'd at least be considered.

I can create a thread for this purpose but I'd prefer to see something with an official stamp of officialness. Also if I want to get a role whitelisted it may be because I want to use it in a game and don't necessarily want to tip my hand to that, so designating someone to accept whitelist suggestions via PM would be nice as well. (And I would be willing to volunteer for that job, as long as it's limited to pre-screening out obviously-not-normal suggestions and posting the rest somewhere for further review.)
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and the other kind,
’ and those who
don’t
say. Well, then there’s me.” — J.R. “Bob” Dobbs
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Post Post #164 (isolation #5) » Mon Jul 16, 2018 4:00 am

Post by Umlaut »

Additional suggestion: have an explicit greylist for experimental purposes, where suggested roles that "could be normal" but that we're unsure how to balance or are otherwise undecided on whitelisting can be included with a restriction of one greylisted role per game,
a la
the old rules. After sufficient playtesting (say, after occurring in
n
completed games), greylisted roles can be reviewed and either promoted to the whitelist or removed. Encourage the NRG to include greylisted roles in NRG-designed setups so that they can be tested.

I think this might actually speed up the adoption of new roles, compared to the pre-change situation of lone mods coming up with their own roles and ideas spreading through word-of-mouth, since anyone who wants to try "something different" but doesn't have an idea can just pick some little-used greylist role. It will add some novelty to normal games since there will be an ever-changing list of new stuff that may appear. And it shouldn't complicate reviews since any given role is still either on the list or it isn't.

Since it's rude to suggest other people take on a bunch of extra work on one's behalf, I also volunteer to do the custodial work of curating such a greylist: reviewing suggestions for
prima facie
viability, adding them, writing standardized role descriptions, tracking their use to determine when they're up for review, and keeping the list up to date.
Last edited by Umlaut on Tue Jul 17, 2018 2:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
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and the other kind,
’ and those who
don’t
say. Well, then there’s me.” — J.R. “Bob” Dobbs
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Post Post #165 (isolation #6) » Mon Jul 16, 2018 4:11 am

Post by Umlaut »

In post 149, Nexus wrote:I think standardised rulesets should be mandatory for new mods - if someone has successfully modded before and their ruleset has not been a problem, then let them keep it.
This would in practice be a grandfather clause, since no new mods would ever have the opportunity to use their own ruleset and have it not be a problem. Unless you want to include theme game rulesets that have "not been a problem," but those would still have to be reviewed for normality. I don't really like the idea of creating a permanent old-guard class that gets to do things new people don't.

A longer-term way to allow variety without undue extra burden on the reviewer would be to allow itemized changes to a standard template ruleset, so that reviewers can see the changes at a glance instead of digging through the whole text (most of which is boilerplate "how Mafia works" stuff) and can give clear instructions like "1 is good, 2 should be struck, 3 should be worded in this different way."
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Post Post #172 (isolation #7) » Thu Jul 19, 2018 1:31 pm

Post by Umlaut »

In post 151, davesaz wrote:Question: I'm thinking about diving into modding my first normal, and the idea of making a custom setup is appealing.
But so is the possibility of tweaking a premade one, or at least choosing from among several so that I'm at least somewhat involved in the setup.
Have you considered looking in the archive of completed normal games for a setup that seems appealing, and tweaking or riffing on that? Many of them would no longer be normal under the new whitelist-only rules and so would need some tweaking to pass review anyway.
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Post Post #180 (isolation #8) » Sun Jul 29, 2018 10:01 pm

Post by Umlaut »

Since this was bumped again I'll point out that, as I mentioned elsewhere, named townies don't appear to be explicitly whitelisted.
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Post Post #518 (isolation #9) » Wed May 27, 2020 9:06 am

Post by Umlaut »

I don't know if this is still the place to suggest roles that could be normal, but I feel there's a place for a role that targets another player and is informed only of whether their action successfully took place or not -- a bit like a visitor except that they are told whether they successfully visited. (I'm open to ideas on what this ought to be called.)
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Post Post #521 (isolation #10) » Thu May 28, 2020 7:20 pm

Post by Umlaut »

Actually, I think I like Tagger. With results of form "You tagged [player]" or "You failed to tag [player]".
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Post Post #527 (isolation #11) » Fri Jun 12, 2020 7:03 am

Post by Umlaut »

I actually agree with conceptualizing Tagger as an investigative role: it's the simplest or least discerning possible investigative, with only one possible result (not counting "no result" as a result).

I'm second-guessing the name though, because it's a bit too close to Tracker and because tagging sounds like doing something
to
the tagged player, marking them or something. I don't love the Fruit names either because they imply a relationship to Fruit Vendor that I don't think is really there (how can I connoiter fruit from someone who doesn't have any?). I'd want something that implies a sort of "checking-in" that just verifies the person could be found. Spotter?
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Post Post #532 (isolation #12) » Fri Jun 12, 2020 8:25 am

Post by Umlaut »

Checker is good too. The PM results of "You spotted/failed to spot X" are a bit more natural and flavorful than "You checked/failed to check X" but that's a minor thing.
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Post Post #534 (isolation #13) » Fri Jun 19, 2020 6:50 pm

Post by Umlaut »

Thanks for the updates!

Would a Tracker-Finder (for example) get a positive result on a JOAT one of whose abilities is tracking, or only on someone whose role name includes the word "Tracker"?

If someone is targeted twice by the same player at night (say there's a Mafia Multitasking Roleblocker who both roleblocks and kills them) will that player's role appear once or twice in the Role Watcher's results?
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Post Post #536 (isolation #14) » Fri Jun 19, 2020 7:59 pm

Post by Umlaut »

"Yo dawg, I heard you like Finder-Finders so I made you a Finder-Finder-Finder so you can find your Finder-Finders while they're finding your Finders."
^ role PM for my next game
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Post Post #605 (isolation #15) » Mon Feb 08, 2021 10:53 am

Post by Umlaut »

This still seems to be the usual thread for general questions about Normal rules, so here's a general question.

If a Traffic Analyst targets a Night 2 Mailman on Night 1, or an X-Shot Mailman who has used all their shots, my understanding is they should get a negative result. Is this understanding correct?
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Post Post #623 (isolation #16) » Fri Jun 04, 2021 3:10 pm

Post by Umlaut »

I doubt that redirection of any kind will ever be normal.
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Post Post #627 (isolation #17) » Fri Jun 04, 2021 4:55 pm

Post by Umlaut »

If Superstar announces the full role it's actually pretty cool. You could have e.g. a Cop who can mod-confirm themselves to be a Cop (but not necessarily Town).
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Post Post #640 (isolation #18) » Tue Jun 15, 2021 4:08 pm

Post by Umlaut »

Does a Mafia Nurse have a gun? If not, should this be specified on the Gunsmith page?
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Post Post #642 (isolation #19) » Tue Jun 15, 2021 5:27 pm

Post by Umlaut »

The only roles on the no-gun list for Mafia are Traitor and Doctor, and I don't think anyone's likely to include a Backup Traitor in a game1, so just adding Nurse explicitly ought to be fine if it's supposed to be there.

1. Though now that I've thought of it I kind of want to.
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Post Post #661 (isolation #20) » Sun Jun 20, 2021 4:27 pm

Post by Umlaut »

I can't conceive of a normal setup in which Moonlight Dancer is a useful role that couldn't equally be filled by some other role.
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Post Post #666 (isolation #21) » Tue Jun 22, 2021 5:31 pm

Post by Umlaut »

In post 663, Cook wrote:isn't moonlight dancer just a superstar?

can you even attach modifiers to roles that have no powers (e.g. vanillas)?
Bulletproof Townie, Ascetic Townie, and Macho Townie are all uncontroversially normal.

Which I suppose means we can also have:
Multitasking Townie
Lazy Townie
Personal Townie
2-Shot Townie
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Post Post #672 (isolation #22) » Wed Jun 23, 2021 8:00 am

Post by Umlaut »

I agree with Implo's disagreement with me, actually, and I certainly wasn't advocating in that "2-Shot Townie" should ever be something allowed in a normal game, but more to illustrate by
reductio ad absurdum
exactly what he is saying: that we don't actually have, nor do we need, a perfectly precise definition of 'normal' that decides all cases unambiguously. I don't much like the analogy to thinking of it as a programming language since that IMO is exactly what could lead to the kind of conceptual error that makes something like 2-Shot Townie sound plausible: how exactly would you program a machine to reject that while accepting Bulletproof Townie? You would need a classification system more intricate than what is actually specified in the wiki, at least. But this is not a real problem except for a handful of pedants, because we have human reviewers who are able to apply common sense to cases like this, and "normal" means in practice "whatever normal reviewers will accept, as determined by a combination of legislation (the wiki) and case law (past reviews)"

Case in point: One of my recent normal setups included a Day 4 Innocent Child. "Day-specific" does not appear anywhere in the list of normal modifiers. This point did not even come up as a concern during review, nor did anyone playing the game express any disbelief that the role was normal. I think this decision was exactly correct on the reviewers' part even though I could never possibly have gotten that setup through some "tell me if my setup is normal" algorithm.
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Post Post #676 (isolation #23) » Wed Jun 23, 2021 8:10 am

Post by Umlaut »

Another example:
  • It seems mostly agreed that e.g. a Mafia Loyal Rolestopper can still carry out the factional kill against town, mostly because that's how everyone wants it to work. This means the Loyal modifier attaches only to the abilities of the role it modifies.
  • There is precedent that Mafia Loud Goon is an acceptable normal role and that it will commit the factional kill loudly, implying the Loud modifier attaches to all active abilities including factional ones.
Is this a contradiction? Only under an overly formalistic interpretation where each modifier must fall into one of a number of categories and all modifiers in that category have to have the same scope. In practice no one cares, and this is just resolved by the obvious intent of the setup designer.
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Post Post #678 (isolation #24) » Wed Jun 23, 2021 8:17 am

Post by Umlaut »

In post 677, Jake The Wolfie wrote:this is all just semantics
Yes, the process of assigning meaning to syntactically well-formed expressions literally is semantics
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Post Post #681 (isolation #25) » Wed Jun 23, 2021 10:05 am

Post by Umlaut »

Actually the comment about modifiers that should be roles is a good excuse for me to segue into the point that Enabler is almost certainly misclassified as a modifier rather than a modular role. In particular I think most people would agree that e.g. a Cop-Enabler should not be considered a kind of Cop, for the purpose of questions like "do they have a gun?" or "what result will they return to a Cop-Finder?" or "should a Deputy become a (disabled) Cop if they die?"
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Post Post #686 (isolation #26) » Wed Jun 23, 2021 3:21 pm

Post by Umlaut »

The wiki page Normal Game lists it as a modifier.
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Post Post #742 (isolation #27) » Wed Jul 21, 2021 5:49 am

Post by Umlaut »

It's interesting that these would elevate the concepts of elo/melo into actual "rules of the game" territory, rather than being derived concepts emerging from the rules as I have always considered them to be.

I'm worried that any attempt to define precisely when a game is in ELo/MeLo is likely to have annoyingly counterintuitive edge cases. For example it could occur that Mafia would choose to no-kill in a situation where any kill would win them the game because they are worried about some possible combination of roles getting them in trouble if they kill the wrong person (even though that combination of roles doesn't actually exist in the setup, they might think it does). In that case has the Mafia already won or not? We can give general guidelines but in the end it is always a moderator judgment call, which means that whether the game was in ELo/MeLo the day before is a judgment call too, which means that as it stands the operation of a role with a ELo/MeLo modifier is subjective.

(Also ELo and MeLo are usually descriptions of a day phase whereas most roles function at night)
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Post Post #950 (isolation #28) » Thu Feb 17, 2022 5:05 pm

Post by Umlaut »

In post 636, implosion wrote:I've been kinda, out of it lately, mostly because, well, covid world does that to you. I just finished my last quarter of the school year though and summer should afford me a fair amount more mental space to allocate, I should be able to throw a new batch of roles out at some point.
Looks like summer has come and gone, which is fine -- we're not owed new roles at any particular rate -- but I'm wondering if any progress was ever made on this?
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Post Post #955 (isolation #29) » Sun Mar 06, 2022 2:31 pm

Post by Umlaut »

Ridiculous questions about backups that will probably never come up in practice but that made me say "hmmm":

If a 1-Shot Backup Tracker tries to track someone before a Tracker has died (who knows why, maybe they misunderstood the role PM), does this failed attempt use up their one shot?

If there are two Backup Trackers, does one dying activate the other one (since a Backup Tracker is a Tracker with a modifier)?
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Post Post #973 (isolation #30) » Mon Mar 07, 2022 10:23 am

Post by Umlaut »

I think it would make more sense to amend the definition of the modifier than to change its name; and I think if the official ruling is that a Backup [Role] ‘should’ only activate when a non-Backup [Role] dies, the definition should in fact be amended to state that explicitly, so that we don’t have the opposite scenario of what implo described: players being at a
disadvantage
because they carefully read and interpreted the rules according to their literal meaning. It would really suck for a player like me or TemporalLich to discover and tease out the implications of some surprising interaction like this in a game we were playing, only to be wrong not because we misread but only because “oh everyone knows what that’s
supposed
to mean.”
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Post Post #977 (isolation #31) » Wed Mar 09, 2022 3:51 am

Post by Umlaut »

In post 974, Ythan wrote:Are there any other modifiers we don't want triggering a backup? If it can just require a non-backup that would be a pretty simple solution.
Enabler is currently listed as a modifier on the Normal Game page, but I think it's generally agreed this is just incorrect and Enabler is actually a modular role like Finder.
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Post Post #988 (isolation #32) » Wed Mar 16, 2022 10:04 am

Post by Umlaut »

In post 984, TemporalLich wrote:speaking about base roles:

Am I right in thinking a Jack-of-all-trades (Cop, Doctor) can activate a Deputy, gives a positive result to a Cop-Finder and Gunsmith, and can lose their Cop shot from a dead Cop-Enabler?
This question is more complicated than I expected on reading it.

At first glance it is tempting to say that "Jack-of-All-Trades (Cop, Doctor)" and "1-Shot Cop 1-Shot Doctor" either are or should be synonyms, in the same way that "Deputy" and "Backup Cop" are synonyms. However, this cannot actually be the case, because the two roles function differently in a setup with implicit multitasking. In such a setup, a 1-Shot Cop 1-Shot Doctor may decide to use both their actions on the same night, whereas a JoAT may not. Since to my knowledge there is no normal "Non-Multitasking" modifier, there is no other Normally definable role that works identically to a JoAT (Cop, Doctor) in all circumstances.

Because of that, the question of whether the JoAT “is” a cop, for purposes of gunsmithing/finders/etc., is something that as far as I can see is not explicitly answered in the written rules and would need an explicit ruling from implo and/or the NRG.
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Post Post #993 (isolation #33) » Wed Mar 23, 2022 2:37 pm

Post by Umlaut »

Given that both game review precedent and the Normal listmod's opinion have come down in favor of Backups not backing up Backups, I've just gone ahead and edited the role page and role fragments on the wiki to correctly reflect the status quo.
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Post Post #1074 (isolation #34) » Thu May 11, 2023 4:59 am

Post by Umlaut »

Maybe this is a silly question, but does it even make sense to maintain a list of roles that are explicitly Non-Normal on the wiki given that Normal has been by whitelist only for some time?
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Post Post #1077 (isolation #35) » Fri May 12, 2023 4:21 am

Post by Umlaut »

Another question: if an Indecisive (e.g.) Tracker is blocked from carrying out their action one night, can they attempt to target the same player the next night since they didn't actually take that action?
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Post Post #1079 (isolation #36) » Fri May 12, 2023 4:44 am

Post by Umlaut »

I should try actually reading before asking questions sometime.
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Post Post #1083 (isolation #37) » Tue May 30, 2023 2:47 pm

Post by Umlaut »

Is it legal to use two or more names/aliases for the same role in a game? For example, giving some players the role of Vanilla Townie and others the role of Town Citizen. I would assume not but I don't think this is made explicit anywhere.
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Post Post #1086 (isolation #38) » Mon Jun 26, 2023 4:58 am

Post by Umlaut »

0-Shot Vig and Backup Vig
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Post Post #1088 (isolation #39) » Mon Jun 26, 2023 2:46 pm

Post by Umlaut »

Maybe not (I'm really not sure) but you could get the same effect in a number of other ways, e.g. Night 100 Vig
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Post Post #1090 (isolation #40) » Thu Jun 29, 2023 5:51 am

Post by Umlaut »

Does a Mafia Doctor Cop have a gun? I would say yes, because being a Doctor only negates the "factional gun," but I don't think the rules cover this case unambiguously.
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Post Post #1108 (isolation #41) » Tue Jul 18, 2023 12:38 pm

Post by Umlaut »

I think in normal games Monk is a legal variant name for a Mason, like using Gaoler instead of Jailkeeper. It's typically used in games with werewolf flavor but works identically, and in particular doesn't distinguish between Mafia and Werewolf factions in terms of how it works.
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Post Post #1109 (isolation #42) » Sun Jul 23, 2023 5:07 am

Post by Umlaut »

So I think everyone agrees that day talk is now the de facto standard for all games across the site. This is great because people clearly enjoy those games more, and ultimately we should be in the business of running games people want to play. That said it could present a bit of a problem for mods wanting to run closed setups that need to exclude it for a specific mechanical reason, such as doing something cute with Encryptors. Specifically, the very absence of day talk becomes a reliable signal that its presence would have either been impossible or at least had meaningful mechanical implications.

Would it be worth considering running some fraction of closed games (incl. closed normals) without day talk, just to reserve the right, so to speak? I don't think this is something that could be imposed from above, but maybe reviewers could request (but not demand) it from mods once in a while.
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