Plum's Micro Normal Review, October 2019

[northsidegal]

wow!

[northsidegal]

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.

[northsidegal]

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

[northsidegal]

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.