Fredrick A Campbell's Mini Normal Review, June 2020

[northsidegal]

ego

[northsidegal]

without even commenting on balance, i notice that this is a somewhat complicated setup – definitely in the upper percentages of complexity when it comes to normal games. if you don't mind, i'd be interested in hearing a bit of your thought process when it comes to designing it.

for instance, i'm a bit confused as to the purpose of the simple gunsmith – isn't that essentially just a slightly weaker vanilla cop?

[northsidegal]

Err, without trying to sound too snippy here, I understand how all of these roles work mechanically – it would be fairly concerning if I didn't as a reviewer. I was more interested in your thought process behind the setup's design. Basically, why you made things the way they are.

Mafia commuters cannot commute and kill on the same night unless they are multitasking.

[northsidegal]

Sorry about the delay. Yes, the first step is to balance the setup. With regards to the random roles, I wouldn't say that it's not okay, but I would say that it would probably be confusing to the players.

Typically in Normal games when you get to the stage of the game where everyone claims and you go from there, people try to think through what the mod must have been thinking when designing the setup. A large part of the game becomes arguments over whether or not a role makes sense within the context of the rest of the setup, and if the roles were decided randomly then I think that it'll leave people either fairly confused or sort of frustrated.

My personal suggestion to you would be to reduce this setup's complexity, both for the sake of the players and perhaps for your own sake in not having to keep track of a large amount of complicated night actions. So I guess just to throw out a setup that mostly builds off of what you already have and goes in the direction of less complexity:

Town Neapolitan
Town Tracker
Town Follower
Town Psychologist
Vanilla Townie
Vanilla Townie
Vanilla Townie
Vanilla Townie
Vanilla Townie
Vanilla Townie
Mafia Commuter
Mafia Indecisive Motion Detector
Mafia Goon

This is just an example setup, you don't have to take it into account at all if you don't want to (but if you do then feel free to!). If you'd like to retain more of your original setup then again I'd say my personal suggestion is to lower the complexity – say, by removing some of the modifiers.

[northsidegal]

There are a few things:

I'll need to see the rules that you're planning on using.
I'll need to see your role PMs for these roles (I can help you with this if you want)
I need to see all the potential night result PMs that might be sent out

[northsidegal]

a few things:

your tracker PM is a psychologist PM.

i would prefer more elaboration in the follower role PM. something like "you will discover what type of action the player performed that night, if any, from the following categories: {Commute, Blocking, Jailkeep, Protection, Miscellaneous, Kill, Role Investigation, Action Investigation}".

commuter isn't a passive role, it's an active one. that means that in the role PM you need something like "each night you may commute, causing any actions that target you to fail". it also means that commuters can commit the kill if they choose to forego commuting.

the indecisive motion detector cannot kill and use its ability on the same night, because it is not multitasking. that line should also probably be removed from the goon PM, because the goon does not have an ability.

[northsidegal]

i would prefer more elaboration in the follower role PM. something like "you will discover what type of action the player performed that night, if any, from the following categories: {Commute, Blocking, Jailkeep, Protection, Miscellaneous, Kill, Role Investigation, Action Investigation}".

by the way, this is sort of unintuitive, so just so you know the list of types of roles is on this page: Natural Action Resolution/Normal Game

[northsidegal]

err, the list of types of actions that can be performed for what you return to a follower. you get what i mean.

[northsidegal]

everything besides what i mentioned seemed fine to me, but i'll take a second look once you've updated.

[northsidegal]

you don't have to phrase anything, you're literally just supposed to return those category names. so for instance, if the follower targets the neapolitan, you would say "Your target performed a Role Investigation action". and you can verbatim copy what i wrote earlier to put in your role PM

[northsidegal]

(the usage of the word "literally" there might come across as harsh but that's not my intention, just trying to be clear)

[northsidegal]

i don't like how you have follower worded. a plausible reading of it could interpret it as implying a yes or no response – that is, the way you have it worded ("You will discover if that player did x y or z"), a plausible response could be "Yes, player did x y or z" when that's not how the role works.

i really think you should word it pretty much exactly "You will discover what type of action the player performed that night, if any, from the following categories: {Commute, Blocking, Jailkeep, Protection, Miscellaneous, Kill, Role Investigation, Action Investigation}".7

[northsidegal]

Those result PMs seem fine except you're missing a Tracker "Your target visited nobody" result (which is not the same as "action failed").

Your rules need to have a sample VT role PM in them. Apart from that I didn't notice any problems.

[northsidegal]

looks like a pass from me

[northsidegal]

As far as I know you don't need one, but if you'd like one and you think you might need one then it's a good idea, I suppose. I think it's a good idea for any first-time mod, personally.

[northsidegal]

i'd say probably not. tracker and follower are both high-skew (aka skill-intensive) roles that aren't really guaranteed to get anything useful, and psychologist is basically useless. on the flip side, the motion detector is sort of like half of a vanilla cop. (i actually really like mafia indecisive motion detector as a role because you can't investigate someone twice in a row to check if a positive motion detect was due to their role or them being targeted, and with the combination of the mafia commuter it means that the mafia can't just use it on themselves to see if anyone targets them)

if anything, i would say that this setup probably leans scumsided.

[northsidegal]

what made you start thinking that?

[northsidegal]

sure, that's fine.