Poyzin's Mini Normal Review, June 2020

[northsidegal]

i'm uncomfortable with the amount of power stacked onto so few roles

imagine the watcher mason has to claim day one, an occurrence that's really not that uncommon. where does that leave town?

ungated roleblocker + rolecop + kill is also a huge amount of PR hunting / disruption every night while all scum are alive

[northsidegal]

As an example, in a game where the only PR is a town cop, yet they play poorly and find themselves at the end of a wagon, would it be the setup's fault for that?

arguably yes. in micro games this is sometimes avoidable, but in mini games it

is

, in my opinion, an instance of a weakness of a setup if a single persons stands as a crucial pillar of the setup.

an argument could be made that town is weaker if the strongest role in any setup claims day one, yes. the point i was attempting to make was not that town is just weaker (true in basically any setup), but that it swings the game to an unacceptable amount.

i didn't say that the setup was scumsided (although i do probably think that). my main problem with this setup is the amount of power stacked onto the masons. i honestly consider it unacceptable.



I'll elaborate a little more. I'm looking at this setup with three elements of setup design: balance, swing, and skew. You certainly already know what balance and swing are. Skew is the tendency for one faction to be able to make massive gains if they play well or get lucky. This is a rare example of a normal game which is skewed in

scum's

favor rather than towns, and

very heavily

at that. Scum don't even have to be perfect to almost entirely negate town's power – using a Ninja shot each night already renders the mason active abilities useless until Night 4 (most masons die before this point). Basically, I think that for town to make any gains with their PRs in this setup they would need to make exceptionally good shots AND scum would have to misplay, whereas I think that scum would see a lot of benefits even without perfect mechanical play. This isn't how setups tend to be balanced.

As for swing, I've already said how much I dislike the amount of power stacked onto the masons. A setup this swingy can just create a lot of potential avenues where something goes wrong early and the rest of the game is basically a foregone conclusion. Finally, balance wise, I do think that this is probably scumsided, although it's an incredibly high power setup on both sides. Ungated roleblocker and rolecop are both super high power for scum, you don't tend to see both of them in a single game. A watcher and masons in the same setup is generally not something that I'd want to allow even if the ninja shots basically negate it. Neapolitan is also incredibly anti-synergy with the masons because even if they're doing a good job of hiding themselves the neapolitan could out the masons and out themselves and basically single-handedly lose the game for town with a single claim.


It might seem like I'm focusing too much on these random ways that things could go wrong, and that that isn't really a fair way to look at things. To that I would say that this setup has a lot more ways that things could go wrong than most setups, and that at least one of them happening is basically a certainty.

[northsidegal]

if you really want to keep the idea of mason PRs then my suggestion is to lower power across the entire game

[northsidegal]

Neapolitan is also incredibly anti-synergy with the masons because even if they're doing a good job of hiding themselves the neapolitan could out the masons and out themselves and basically single-handedly lose the game for town with a single claim.

(also, to clarify this – neapolitan + masons isn't

inherently

really bad in the same way that e.g. cop + doc, watcher + doc, or watcher + innocents is, but in this setup specifically it has incredible anti-synergy in a way that could sort of just end the game)

[northsidegal]

I agree that while the PRs are alive, the scumteam can do some serious PR hunting with their rolecop and roleblock. Assuming that none of the TPRs are mislynched, there will be at least one TPR alive by D3 if the scumteam plays optimally and kills a PR every night. Yet, the rolecop and roleblock abilities become more and more useless whenever they kill a TPR. I've played in many games where the 3-person scumteam is a rb, rc, and goon, and town won their share of them even when there were three TPRs. Town PRs more often than not die before endgame. There's a good chance that the masons would have to cc the mafia when they try to claim to be the team, which would spell d-o-o-m for the masons. However, losing the masons does not equal losing the game, as the game becomes more or less vanilla after the masons die.

The game becoming vanilla isn't really a balancing factor in town's favor. What I mean by that is that it isn't some feedback mechanism as you seem to think that it is. Yes, the scum abilities become useless once all TPRs are dead, but as far as I can tell, there is

no

role that would retain its use for scum after all TPRs are dead (barring a scum vigilante or something, which is not allowed per Normal guidelines).

D1: Mislynch a vt
N1: NK a vt
D2: Roleblocker lynched after mason watched the kill
N2: Mason dies
D3: Mislynch a vt
N3: Mason dies

The sequence of events you have here makes me think that you might think that scum can use any actions they have as well as perform the kill in the same night (given that you see the roleblocker as performing the kill n1). This is not the case – unless scum have the Multitasking modifier, they can perform only one action per night. Just in case you weren't aware – if you were, just ignore me.

If you're in charge, I'll trust your judgement. Would you accept the setup with an even-night roleblocker instead of an all-night roleblocker? (And to go further if an even-night roleblocker is implemented, would you add in an odd-night rolecop to replace the previous rolecop?)

I'm sorry, but I'm not accepting a setup with a Mason Watcher. That needs to be changed. Tracker/Voyeur is a step in the right direction – from there I would still want scum toned down (I agree with Ircher that sticking to only a single scum PR is probably the way to go) and I would still

prefer

that town power be spread out a bit more, but that might not be strictly

necessary

.

I really am sorry with how much I'm making you chop up your original setup. As reviewers I think we have a responsibility to try to stick close to your vision for what your setup should be, but we also have perhaps an even more important responsibility to the players of this game, and I can't in good conscience pass it with the aspects that I've talked about still being in the setup.

using a Ninja shot each night already renders the mason active abilities useless until Night 4 (most masons die before this point)

Figured I'd mention, the first version of the setup that was posted here was made incorrectly. Only the roleblocker and the rolecop should have 1x-Ninja abilities, not the goon. In addendum, I intended for the 1x-Ninja to only apply to the specific action, not the team's actions. (i.e. if the roleblocker uses his Ninja shot, but the rolecop doesn't, then while the roleblock would be invisible, the rolecop and the nightkill would still be able to be tracked.)

Good, that's how Ninjas work as per Normal guidelines.

[northsidegal]

Alternatively,

Town:
[1] Tracker Mason
[1] Voyeur Mason
[1] Neapolitan

[7] Vanilla


Mafia:
[1] Roleblocker
[1] 1x-Ninja Goon
[1] 1x-Ninja Goon

This setup is moving in the right direction, but I would still call it scumsided. Not

terribly

so, but still slightly scumsided. I also think that there are various anti-fun factors that don't prohibit the setup from being passed, but on a personal level (rather than as a reviewer) I think the setup would be better without. For instance, Ninjas make a lot of sense versus a Watcher – a Watcher is a super powerful role and Ninjas are one of the only balancing factors to avoid basically game-winning situations for town involving Watchers. Also, if a Watcher watches the person who gets killed by scum and gets "no result", they understand what's happened, and in that case the function of the Ninja was to hide the identity of who performed the kill. When you have Tracker / Ninja, it gets a lot uglier – you can get situations where the Tracker correctly tracks the person performing the kill and yet sees nothing, potentially leading to false clears.

Some people are outspoken about how Ninja should not be a normal role, because of its similarity to Godfather. To put my thoughts concisely, I think Ninja/Watcher is a fine interaction but Ninja/Tracker is potentially a really unfun one.

On a more setup balance level, Tracker and Voyeur aren't really so powerful that Ninja shots are necessary to counter them.


I think that if you removed the Ninjas I would pass this setup as is.

[northsidegal]

Eh. I say that. But I would still prefer one more low-power role be given to town. Turning the Voyeur Mason into a Follower would probably be fine although it would keep more of the swinginess that I would prefer to move away from.

I think my ideal here is like a day X something or other or an even night something, just some weak role. It's not entirely in town's favor because it also reduces the VT pool for the Neap, which I think is probably a better direction – putting the focus more on day play and the eventual massclaim rather than on the night actions.

[northsidegal]

Er, no, I don't think so. If anything, that would weaken town in a not insignificant manner – it's a lot of WIFOM (town visitor is basically useless on its own and almost never included in games), and it's a false positive for literally every town role: the tracker, voyeur, and neapolitan.

[northsidegal]

How about this: keep the ninjas and add a 1-shot Follower, or remove the ninjas and i'll pass it as is?

[northsidegal]

I agree that there is a difference if the players do not know that there is a ninja, but

because the setup is completely open

and the 1-shot ninjas are known to the tracker, it should be clear that just because they don’t see anything, doesn’t mean that they are ever cleared.

Hold on – I was not under the impression that this setup was meant to be completely open, and that completely changes balance considerations. It's also not really standard for the Normal queue, although you can do it if you want to, it just must be announced to the players during signups.

To be clear – you intend for this setup to be completely open? As in, all roles are publicly available information?

[northsidegal]

I was under the impression that the setup would be open, yes. Are open setups not normal?

Open setups

can

be normal. The majority of Normal setups are not open.

Basically, you can run this game as an Open in the Normal queue, but it's not a common occurrence, and it affects the balance.

[northsidegal]

It's an understandable mixup to make. Now that it's cleared up, it's up to you how you want to proceed from here. Basically any option should be fine, so really it's your choice.

[northsidegal]

okay, sorry, just need to get more into open-setup balancing mode rather than normal mode, and kind of take it from the start.


so, uh, i think that knowing that it's open, the setup as we last had it is probably the best incarnation of it so far?

Town:
[1] Tracker Mason
[1] Voyeur Mason
[1] Neapolitan

[7] Vanilla


Mafia:
[1] Roleblocker
[1] 1x-Ninja Goon
[1] 1x-Ninja Goon

three masons versus a vanilla scumteam in an open setup is at least approximately balanced (i believe this to be fairly uncontroversial)

minus one mason, plus a tracker and a voyeur is probably pretty strongly in town's favor, the roleblocker is a mitigating factor but also has the effect that if the voyeur correctly checks the block target then that's basically an innocent for the voyeur (assuming scum aren't WIFOM gods and roleblock themselves)

add on the fact that everyone, scum and neapolitan included, knows to look out for the masons. that probably ends up in scum's favor just because people are fairly bad at not revealing masons really early and the three eyes of the scumteam can PR hunt more easily


i think that a good scumteam probably eviscerates town this game but town already has more than enough power and giving them any more risks a less than stellar scumteam sort of getting destroyed

[northsidegal]

i'm sorry to say that i don't like this setup, and i think that there's a high chance of people being annoyed at me for passing it

that being said, i think that this is pretty much its best incarnation, so i'm going to pass it regardless

from here i'll need to see your role PMs, night result PMs, and rules

[northsidegal]

-shrug-

never underestimate people's ability to sign up for a setup without reading anything about it

[northsidegal]

well then they can't be justifiedly annoyed :p

"you're not allowed to be annoyed at NSG"
-Famous Normal Listmoderator, implosion "number boy" van hendricksson

[northsidegal]

i'm sorry, i didn't mean to be harsh, it's just that this setup includes some design elements that i'm personally not a fan of.

your ninja role PM should be titled "Mafia 1-shot Ninja", not just "Mafia Goon" (similar change should also be made to the other scum role PM which calls that partner a "Goon partner").

i think that to be more clear your voyeur role PM should say "...to learn what

type

of action(s) were performed on your target, but not by whom. You will receive results from the following categories: {Commute, Blocking, Jailkeep, Protection, Miscellaneous, Kill, Role Investigation, Action Investigation}". if you don't want to include that last sentence you don't have to, but i think it's nice. voyeur and follower are sort of weird roles and i think it helps to have it all written out there.


didn't notice anything other problems. from here it's just your night result PMs and your rules

[northsidegal]

i'm glad i was able to be helpful!