Large Normal 212: Korts' Geriatrics - Game Over @1831

[mastina]

I planned out the entire game and it all worked up to this point

Ginngie, if you're gonna copy my strategies (no-killing as a SK), then don't copy the derp (overlooking that it has ALWAYS been site standard that SKs get endgamed by mafia if there's more than one mafiate).

Btw, I reviewed this game!

[mastina]

1.)

First, the presence of the Paranoid Gun Owner clearly warped the entire set-up of the game. I am not going to try and do research again, but I believe the last instance of a Paranoid Gun Owner in a Normal Game was approximately seven years ago, when the ruleset for Normals were very different. What didn't change, though, is the fact that Normal Games are supposed to represent what players should normally expect to see in a "normal," no frills game. A PGO I think defies those expectations.

Large Normals, under the Normalcy Guidelines this game was reviewed/passed under, allow for two graylisted roles; PGO was one of them, and its counter the passive role disabler was the other.

Which also covers the second complaint.

Graylisted roles were allowed, and those roles were graylists.

This is a lie to the players of the game, which is explicitly disallowed in Normal games. I certainly hope this was an oversight.

It was indeed not something I was aware of in the review. I'd have to check the thread to see how the oversight came to be.

5.)

This set-up appears to be quite anti-Town on the whole. The Town essentially has to rely on the Tracker and Doctor (with the backup role) to carry them to victory; and the presence of a Serial Killer also means the Town pretty much has to hope for some cross-killing, which is something they can do very little about.

All the reviewers involved did note the town was somewhat weak--but the town did have an edge of two extra town players. The game was originally envisioned as 9:3:1 town:scum:SK, with almost the exact same setup minus a few changes, which was even worse on the town. (The original setup was town doc, town tracker, town pgo, versus 1x strongman, roleblocker, goon, with sk as odd-night kill, even-night commute.)

Also, note that because this was a serial killer game which was designed as ALMOST a mini, it can be considered pseudomultiball. Multiball games are, notoriously, difficult to balance and inherently reliant on swing to some extent. All variables can't be controlled. That's why the town got the backup to help them out, even.

Keep in mind to some extent as well, the NRG method is "close enough" as a metric, and to try and preserve the vision of the moderator as much as possible.
Korts wanted the PGO.
Korts wanted the Mafia Roleblocker.
Those were roles he wanted in the game, and were part of his design for it; the game was specifically bumped up to a Large in part to allow him to have the two graylisted roles. As a reviewer, as much as possible, we should work with the moderator's intended vision rather than telling them to go back to the drawing board, and that's what I was aiming to do. Work with him to refine the setup.

[mastina]

I'd also like to point out that technically if everyone died, it's a three-way tie:
The mafia wincon was to eliminate all other players; it didn't specify a mafiate had to be alive.
The town wincon was to eliminate all threats to the town; it didn't specify a town player had to be alive.
The SK wincon was for all other players to be dead regardless of whether the SK was alive or not.

So if everyone died, the mafia fulfilled their wincon; the town fulfilled theirs; the serial killer fulfilled theirs.

It was a technically valid wincon for all to use, albeit in hindsight not an ideal one.

[mastina]

First, PGO is a questionable "Killing" role in that it has no choice in when it kills, who it kills, or how many players it kills. The role in fact has no choices at all except for how it plays during the Day.

I don't see this as a valid argument seeing as how the same can be said of any negative utility passive role, e.g. Town Ascetic; Town Miller. They have no choice in their role, except how to play it during the day. In the night, it is out of their hands. Changing the consequences of the role doesn't change the basic mechanic. It negatively impacts those visiting, just in a different way than that of ascetic or miller. And both ascetic and miller are explicitly Normal mechanics.

For that matter it'd also apply to a role like a bomb, or a supersaint (although not as much for the latter since that does involve a certain type of dayplay, but it's still loosely the same issue). They can't control their role, yet their role has a definitive consequence towards others. (That said, neither of those roles are whitelisted right now, but under the graylist rules they'd have passed review in the appropriately-designed setups for them.)

On another note--because mafia killing roles are explicitly blacklisted, a confirmed PGO is conftown. No amount of it being a graylist role would allow for it to count as a mafia role in a Normal game; you'd be damn right that a mafia PGO would never pass review under the old guidelines, but I maintain that a town PGO, especially given that it is a commonly-used, universally-understood, widely-established role, is within the spirits of the guidelines as they were back then.

->

b.)

The Role Disabler is flat out bad, and there is

no chance

I would allow it to pass in any Normal Game.

The role was specifically created to counteract the PGO, a role which at best is questionable to use in the game in the first place, which is a clear red flag (for

both

roles).

The role itself is nonsense; "roleblocking" passive abilities is

not a thing

.

The role, as was designed, can be thought of as "disables roles that have an effect which could be active but is instead a passive". Not the best wording, but I can explain by example:

It's a shitty role interaction, but an example; Ascetic is basically a reflexive-Roleblocker (except to kills), who can be thought of in a sense of "actively roleblocking the person visiting the ascetic". (That's not quite how the role works in practice, but I'm trying to show the logic here.) A passive roleblocker would disable the reflexive-roleblock.

Miller is basically a reflexive-self-framer to a Cop, who can be thought of in a sense as "actively interferes with the cop visiting, to change their result to a guilty". (That's not quite how the role works in practice, but I'm trying to show the logic here.) A passive roleblocker would disable the reflexive-self-frame.

Bulletproof is a role that can be Active instead of Passive. (And can be thought of in terms of a "self-protect".) A passive roleblocker would disable it as if it were an activated ability being roleblocked.

Thus, a Paranoid Gun Owner, which can be thought of in terms of being a "Reflexive Vigilante", is treated as if it were an activated vigilante, in being roleblocked.

The passive roleblocker would then, not disable masonries, neighborhoods, encryptors, any of the modifiers listed except BP, and definitely not the universal backup.

It may by this logic have blocked the commute as worded in this game, which I confess would be a case of reviewer oversight on wording as I was under the impression the commute was optional rather than automatic (just something that the sk would presumably always use anyway but in theory could choose not to).

But the role was, at least as intended in design, within the spirits of a modification on an existing role. Temporarily preventing a role from functioning is a mechanic we have, in the form of numerous roleblocker-type actions; shifting it from preventing actives to preventing specific types of passives (those being, passives that can be thought of as an active) is a variation that I feel is acceptable, just not well executed with exact wording/understanding.

Then there's the whole issue with what happens when a "passive" ability might also be an "activated" ability. As an in-game example: a Strongman. The Strongman ability by itself is a passive ability, but it turns into an "activated" ability once you limit the number of times it can be used in the game... and boy is

that

is a mental mess to deal with! It's still technically a passive ability that's been "turned on," so... can it still be blocked?

An ungated strongman is a passive ability, but not one I'd classify as being an active and thus, it'd not be disabled by the role as was my understanding of its designed function. YMMV on that regard though.

An X-shot, and thus activated, strongman is not a passive ability at all, and thus, unambiguously, could never be blocked by the passive-disabler.

A "Graylist" does not mean anything under the sun can "technically" be slotted into a Normal Game just so long as it it isn't "explicitly" banned. The basic tenets of Normal Games should always be the guiding force. Is this a role that players could reasonably expect in a "standard" game? Because if not, you shouldn't use it.

I maintain my stance on the matter: you feel it is not within the boundaries of a role that could be expected, but to me it is within the boundaries of creating a variation on an existing role.

Roleblockers disable active abilities for a single night.
This roleblocker disabled specific types of passive abilities--specifically, the one which can be thought of as an "can be an activated ability, just not in this game"--for a single night.

As per the old guidelines, graylisted roles were allowed, and most graylisted roles were either existing roles that weren't whitelisted (which, PGO definitively is), OR, a variation on an existing role new to the game. A passive roleblocker for me was the latter. The mechanics of a roleblocker are known; shifting the mechanics from an active to a passive feels like an intuitive leap in logic to me.

[mastina]

On another note--because mafia killing roles are explicitly blacklisted, a confirmed PGO is conftown.

Mind you!
Conftown that

mafia can't kill without sacrificing a mafiate

.
In a setup where mafia have no protection from being crosskilled.

Imagine the town lynches so much as one mafiate.
Imagine instead of a game-long holster, the serial killer murders so much as one mafiate.
Imagine the PGO is confirmed as being a PGO.
The mafia then have to deal with the conftown PGO, and if the mafia try to kill the PGO, then they die and when they risk mortality from two sources already, a guaranteed death is something they can't afford to spare.

Of course, there were other ways to handle that.
For instance, while it'd lose some of the "geriatric" flavor to the game (and would have been distancing more from Korts's original vision), calling the PGO a Reflexive Vigilante and giving the mafia in place of the passive-roleblocker a Vigilante Enabler would be a little more elegant in that regard, albeit also leaving the serial killer more obviously a serial killer.

But that's not something I thought of at the time, so hindsight is 20/20 etc.

[mastina]

On another note--because mafia killing roles are explicitly blacklisted, a confirmed PGO is conftown.

Mind you!
Conftown that

mafia can't kill without sacrificing a mafiate

.

(That is, of course, without the role they were given, the passive disabler. I'm more explaining why the mafia needed that role in the first place. In hindsight, the mafia could probably have done without the 1x strongman given as how that weakens the already-not-strong doctor, but the serial killer we had, tracker, doctor, PGO vs. 1x strongman + goon x2 would be a game where the scumteam was at a disadvantage.)

[mastina]

Ewww, you used the word “mafiate”.

Mafia is the faction; a mafiate is an individual who is a member of that faction. I suppose it would be more geriatric of me to refer to an individual member of the mafia faction as a mafioso, but while I may be slightly sympathetic to geriatrics and hold some level of spiritual kinship to them (my whole reasoning for reviewing this game was because I wholeheartedly believe in the concept and support it, yet know myself well enough to recognize I would be ill-suited as a player in one), I'm no true geriatric so some new-person lingo does slip in.

Be glad I never refer to scum as wolves unless the game actually contains werewolves.
(I legit cringe when I see people use terms like openwolfing in games which do not actually feature werewolf flavoring.)

[mastina]

Fairly certain I would have been all over Momrangel after a Town RBer claim though and I'm not sure how that one sailed through so uncontested.

This is particularly true given Old Man fakeclaimed being roleblocked, and Momrangal claimed town roleblocker.

I was quite frankly baffled people didn't just think of the obvious (even if right for the wrong reasons) conclusion of Momrangal truthfully claiming role but not alignment.

[mastina]

No specator thread. I would post the review/mod thread, but it was opened by Nexus, and I can't modify the privacy settings. I've posted all setup and night action resolution material here already, though.

You can ask him to release it.