Normal Roles

[callforjudgement]

Fruit Vendor

(which for some ungodly reason doesn't even have its own fucking page in spite of it being a standardized role we've used for literally YEARS that is universally known and understood):

You missed one of the most important parts: "You cannot use this action at the same time as another action." That way using the role confirms not only your own role, but also your actions that night, which is fairly important.

With that fix, I have no objections (and it's a role that I'd have no problems allowing in a game right now via the greylist mechanism; a quick archive check found at least five Normal games with one, although oddly it was as an SK in two of them?).

[callforjudgement]

Meanwhile, I'd like to argue against whitelisting/unblacklisting the Arsonist; it's a role that fundamentally changes the nature of the game (in that the set of doused players has a huge impact on the game's balance but isn't publicly known). In some ways, an Arsonist game is like a Cult game; although it's not as bad, because alignments don't change, scumhunting works very differently. It's comparable to no-reveal, except you don't even know who died.

The main reason Hider isn't whitelisted right now is that there are a huge number of different versions of it and people couldn't agree on exactly how it was meant to work. One potential problem with it is that it's hard to balance a setup around it because it's so strong; in particular, a Hider can safely claim without major downsides (the only real problem is that it then becomes harder for them to breadcrumb their target, as scum will naturally be looking for the crumb), meaning that you have a "follow the Cop" one-player combo (rather than needing two like in a regular setup). In most cases, Weak Cop (which is already whitelisted) is a more dayplay-focused replacement. That said, being overly powerful doesn't appear to be a reason to make a role abNormal, seeing as we have Watcher on there; a role can always be toned down with modifiers.


Incidentally, right now there are no roles that I'd really push for to be made Normal; I'd encourage people to keep experimenting with the greylist. Babysitter looks promising but it hasn't been tested enough yet to really be worth recommending. Activated would probably not be out of place – I'd give it a greylist approval without second thought – but it might be a bit too "mechanical" / "not a real role" to be worth actually putting on the list.

[callforjudgement]

I consider the Fruit Vendor to be so inherently tied to the "cannot kill and action" mechanic that the mechanic comes along with the role, even if it isn't in use elsewhere in the game. (That is, even in a game where scum normally can kill and action, they can't kill and fruit-vend.)

Besides, if a Fruit Vendor can perform other actions at the same time, the role is just a Visitor; you can confirm you're a Fruit Vendor but you can't confirm that you don't have another role too. A confirmed fruit-vend doesn't mean anything unless it's mutually exclusive of

something

.

[callforjudgement]

Dousing doesn't do anything until you ignite, so the number of currently doused players has a high impact on how powerful the role is. Additionally, the Arsonist doesn't want to reveal, or they risk getting killed before they can get a good ignite off. As a result, the balance of the game depends strongly on the alignment and number of the doused players (the number of doused players isn't predictable because they can die through other means).

A vig kills players and flips them. An Arsonist sort-of kills players without flipping them (yet), and with a chance that they won't die at all. Which one sounds more like a Normal role, and which one sounds more like a Theme role?

[callforjudgement]

I'd probably ban Vengeful as scum for the same reason that Vigilante is banned as scum. However, I have no problems with it as a town role.
I'm uncomfortable with any "this role works differently in lylo" modnotes being present in a Normal. Those are more the province of Theme games, I think (and often imply that the role was badly designed in the first place).

(Incidentally, it's nearly always a bad idea to fakeclaim Vengeful as scum. Either people ignore your claim, or you get lynched. Neither is really a good result for you.)

[callforjudgement]

Besides, if a Fruit Vendor can perform other actions at the same time, the role is just a Visitor; you can confirm you're a Fruit Vendor but you can't confirm that you don't have another role too.

My impression of the Visitor role is that the visit is not announced to the player being visited. As in, Visitor A visits B; B does not know of this. This makes it a distinctly different role from a fruit vendor, where Fruit Vendor A visits B, and B is told they received a piece of fruit, thus telling them they were visited.

They know that they were visited, but what can they deduce from that? The visit might have been a random extra addition to any other role, and the user can safely claim it. In other words, it has exactly the same balance impact as if it wasn't used, unless you use modmeta to say "well, the mod

probably

wouldn't have given this Fruit Vendor an additional action".

What you're saying here is effectively "Fruit vending confirms that the user

does not have a role other than Fruit Vendor

". That's similar to my restriction (but not exactly the same), but if it's important, it should be spelled out (especially in Normals).

We used to have Masons which were

usually

Town, but that lead to trouble. Now we have Neighbours who aren't confirmed at all, and Masons who are 100% confirmed. A Fruit Vendor that isn't explicitly confirmed not to have a secondary role would be in a similar space to an unconfirmed Mason; yes, they probably don't have another role, but the role itself can do nothing to prove that, so you have to rely on what you think the moderator would do.

(Incidentally, if Loyal Fruit Vendor ever becomes commonly used, it'll be standard practice for everyone to report on whether or not they received fruit last night at the start of every non-Day 1 day of every game, with scummier players claiming first; I can't think of any situations where this would backfire for town, and it gains a clear advantage in the case where there does happen to be a Loyal Fruit Vendor in the game. I disagree with your classification of it as being a weak investigative role; it's actually stronger than Cop is, because it gets a venge-vestigation if killed overnight, and because the investigation results are revealed publicly without the Loyal Fruit Vendor having to expose themself. In this situation, presumably regular Fruit Vendors would claim to avoid being confused with the Loyal version.)

[callforjudgement]

It'd be a change from the standard behaviour; fruit-vend shots of a JOAT aren't unheard of, and in theme games, role absorption is also fairly common (especially on SKs).

One nice thing about "you can't fruit-vend at the same time as other actions" is that if the role gets absorbed or whatever, it still functions correctly.

That said, "Fruit Vendor implies otherwise vanilla" does make the role not entirely useless, so I'd be fine with it in a greylist sense. I guess it's just a case of deciding which of the two versions we'd want.

[callforjudgement]

hito knows, lol

"still allow more dynamic nightplay than non-consec (which is kind of a blunt tool)"

hitogoroshi's talking about non-consecutive

night

, an existing modifier.
Non-consecutive

target

is rather less of a nerf to a role, and isn't commonly used here (although is on some other Mafia sites).

[callforjudgement]

Normals already ban duplicates (except in obvious cases like Neighbour).

Your use of "Automatic" is different from mine (when I use the modifier, it automatically triggers on the first target you kill, no choice involved), but it's a modifier that has some utility in Opens, and thus probably Normals too. I think it should be written as a general-purpose modifier, though, rather than being specific to Rolestoppers.

[callforjudgement]

People will assume that anyway, though.

This all boils down to how much you want outguessing the mod to be a relevant factor in games.