Wake88's Large Normal Review, December 2019

[PenguinPower]

Oh boy...I did not expect this when I opened the thread.

I will get to this....soonish.

[PenguinPower]

I'm thinking I was expecting to review an 18ish player game, not 45, so it's taking some time for me to look at all the interactions (w/up to 4 kills per night). Ultimately, this is going to be hard to get the balance just right so priority is normality > best we can do w/balance.

I might need to draw it out on a piece of paper to visualize it.

This is actually what I'm in the process of doing

What makes this a semi-open?

What are you trying to accomplish by making your roleblockers unable to be blocked? Solve roleblocker interaction issues?

[PenguinPower]

I was told like 4 years ago to make the RBs unable to be role-blocked. Tbh I don't entirely remember the reason for it. Would it be better to make them blockable?

That's why I wanted to understand your intent. If it's just to solve RB/RB or RB/JK interactions, I think there's a better way to do it by defining priority in your ruleset rather than adding the positives of acestic to the RB without the potential negatives. Or, just make the RBs ascetic

[PenguinPower]

If you use Wake's version of NAR, then the RB blocks the JK meaning the JK doesn't act. RB gets vigged. Tracker would see the RB visit the JK. The JK does not visit anyone since it doesn't act. The vig visits the RB.

[PenguinPower]

Still mapping everything out. I'll try and finish before the end of the day.

[PenguinPower]

Agree with FL and Ircher re: balance/swing given the size, but I think it's reasonable enough based on what interactions I could put together. Roles and ruleset look normal.

Go ahead and draft the role PMs, and once we've had a chance to review those for normality, I will pass.

[PenguinPower]

I haven't read through all of them, but I noticed your examples for certain modifiers include other roles (e.g. Announcing Motion Detector has an example for an Announcing Doctor). If you are going to provide an example of usage, I would use the role that is being modified.

[PenguinPower]

I don't think it's normal to include the "Neighborhood" line in everyone's role pm. It basically informs everyone that at least one neighborhood exists. That being said, I think it may be okay for you to announce such (that there is at least one neighborhood in the game) in your ruleset in which case you can keep the role pms as-is.

+1

[PenguinPower]

(Also, I'm not sure what the current rules regarding backups and modifiers is.)

I don't believe that modifiers transfer, just the active role.

[PenguinPower]

Ah - but he explicitly states that they do.

[PenguinPower]

Ok...back from holiday.

I would err very strongly against including the "neighborhood: ____" line in role PMs. It's not the way that the neighbor role is conceptualized in normals, typically, and it could have implications about the game especially for players that aren't familiar with site meta or normal game meta.

Agree.

The standard way to resolve something like a backup (usually universal backup) that could inherit multiple roles is just to have a pre-defined ordered list of what role they will inherit, I believe.

Modifiers shouldn't transfer to a backup; keep in mind that the standardizations of normal roles are standardized absoltuely, and anything in the setup that bends them could come back to bite you extremely hard if someone notices it and says "oh, the backup cop is claiming something inconsistent with normal guidelines, they must be scum".

That's how I viewed it as well. You could assign modifiers to the Backup role itself if you want to nerf it.

Standard for rb/jk afaik is that they mutually block and neither one does anything, so no protection.

He outlines his version of NAR specifically, so I'm okay with it the way it currently is. RB takes precedent over the JK in Newbie queue so as long as it's announced what order things happen, it's fine.

There's some formatting inconsistency between role PMs. For instance, in the loud roles, some of the loud modifier descriptions have a paragraph break and others don't.

Agree. It may seem nitpicky, but some players will overanalyze role pms.

I think the copy pasting from the wiki to explain roles like loud and psychologist (at least I think this is what you did with a bunch of them) is another thing you may want to change. I could imagine that phrasing being very confusing to a new player, because the writing on the wiki was not written to be a summary of how to use a role, it was written as detailed explanations and examples of how they work. For example, if I'm a mafia loud psychologist, and I see a role PM that says "for example, a loud psychologist would..." and I were a new player, I would probably be confused why my role PM says "for example" and is written in the third person when it's talking about my own role. There are other examples of things written in the third person that could be confusing in a role pm, like "The target's night action will not be performed -- that is, the Roleblocker blocks the target's role from working." The mailman PM is phrased weirdly for a role PM. Novice should, instead of being phrased as "A role modifier that doesn't allow power roles to use their ability Night 1/Day 1", be phrased as something like "You cannot act on night 1." There are various other examples as well.

Also agree. I didn't want to be overly strict since it's your game, but since implosion brought it up (and I kinda did with the examples being for different roles), it would be best if they were direct about each role and the actions.

[PenguinPower]

They currently block each other out?

Not according to what you have in your rules. The RB would act first, so the JK action would be blocked.

Natural Action Resolution
Commute - {Commuter}

Blocking - {Roleblocker > Rolestopper}
Jailkeep - {Jailkeeper}

Protection - {Doctor > Bodyguard}
Miscellaneous - {Neighborizer > Friendly Neighbor}
Kill - {Mafia factional kill = SK factional kill = Vigilante}
Role Investigation - {Cop > Gunsmith > Role Cop > Neapolitan > Vanilla Cop}
Action Investigation - {Tracker > Watcher > Voyeur > Follower > Motion Detector}
The '>' represents internal priority between the roles.
The '=' means that internal priority between the roles is the same.
All Night Kills have the same priority/speed.

[PenguinPower]

That's your decision. The Normal guidelines just require the interaction between the to be planned during the review. Just update your Resolution list if you are going to have them block each other.

[PenguinPower]

11.) You should post what results they will get in the PM similar to the cop (Vanilla Townie, Not Vanilla Townie, No Result)
38.) Should read: Cannot be targeted by any abilities (actions) other than killing abilities (actions). Obviously, this is negated by the BP, but Ascetic should still read correctly if you are going to separate out by each ability. Otherwise, they may infer that any other claimed ascetic roles cannot be targeted by any abilities as well.

Scum Role PMs: Since they are going to have a factional PT, you should include something regarding that in Scum Role PMs so that it is distinct from the Neighborhoods and will differ between scum factions.

[PenguinPower]

I'll take a look at them tomorrow. I've got a lot going on today.

[PenguinPower]

Sorry. Just add the Factional PT stuff to the Mafia Role PMs and you should be good to go.

[PenguinPower]

/pass

[PenguinPower]

I'll back it up if Wake wants to maximize his potential participants.

[PenguinPower]

Wake88 specifically posted his version of action resolution which describes interactions and variants to NAR are allowed as long as they are explicitly stated.

[PenguinPower]

You don’t need to make any changes with regard to the Roleblocker. This was accounted for in the setup review.

You probably should change your flavor since it’s in the realm of theme games but that’s implosion’s call. Just remember you can’t add flavor to role PMs or have it affect the game in any way.

Also, please add both implosion and I to your PTs with editing permissions.

[PenguinPower]

Oh hi implosion. Pagetop++

[PenguinPower]

I mean - we review the setup with your specific version of NAR...

[PenguinPower]

It will count votes, but you manually have to post them.

Also, in case you missed my PM and the post above, please add me and implosion to all of your PTs with editing privileges.

[PenguinPower]

That's fine as long as that's the only replacement needed. I thought I saw that TrueSoulEnergy requested replacement (against site rules) in the thread, but I don't know if he pm'd you or not.

[PenguinPower]

You should replace players into the game in the order that players replaced out. So, if TSE replaced out prior to kagesong, then Titus should take TSE's slot not kagesong's.

Given TSE's multiple statements of replacing out, I would just go ahead and replace him imo.

[PenguinPower]

Did these players confirm?

hersho
Golden Robster
UltimatePlank
clidd
QuantumQuasar
BBMolla
ar98mubarik
eth0s
Non Imh
Emperor FlippyNips

[PenguinPower]

Probably should announce that I'm your backup mod...I seemed to have spooked some people with my ego posts in the PT.