Foxbird's Mini Normal Review, February 2021

[Isis]

No neighborizer role PM

[Isis]

There's some reasons to start shifting towards more scumsided setups, but the setup in the OP would be a bridge too far.

It might be an idiosyncracy but I dislike something about the setup besides just the balance, which is excessive incentives/consequences for the holster/fire behavior of the odd night neighborizer. I tend to feel like the punishments for using nothingburger power roles like Fruit Vender should be capped at Mafia Tracker or Mafia Watcher and this exceeds that.

My counteroffer will try to kill two foxes with one stone:

1x Mafia Mailman
2x Mafia Goon

1x Town Doctor
1x Town Macho Traffic Analyst
1x Town Odd-Night Combined Neighborizer Rolestopper
1x Town Mailman Enabler
6x Vanilla Townie

This setup has stronger town setup spec and a better chance of hitting a double protect. It's definitely way less aggressive than adding a one-shot cop but I think there is enough.

[Isis]

I'm rating the scum mailman as negative utility here, because I didn't see multitasking specified anywhere. Some percentage of the time the Mafia Mailman is going to choose to send mail and claim mailman later, then find themselves the final scum and be unable to perform nightkills unless they claim they sent the NK victim mail.

[Isis]

Well, that isn't going to happen very often because five sixths of the time, either the Mailman Enabler or the Mailman itself is going to die before the two Goons do, and even in the unlikely case, it's quite likely that there will be a claimed Enabler and a dead Doctor. So there's some built in counter to the negative utility there.

I forgot about the enabler but I knew it was already silly bean counting anyway. It's just not a very big deal.

In case it wasn't clear, I don't think a negative utility role is necessarily bad design. I don't see any need to add multitasking here.

[Isis]

I think CFJ has some kind of philosophical position that all setups ever are better with multitasking because the setup spec and fakeclaim space is more unbounded, but also some mods/reviewers prefer to use some singletasking and/or utilize the modifier.

I'd approve the setup with or without public scumteam multitasking, anyhow.

[Isis]

yeah the double protect feeling grating was one of my reservations about this design but i think it's just barely fine.

[Isis]

I think it's unambiguous that the asceticizing component of rolestopper isn't disturbed by the macho modifier, so the Traffic Analyst should always have an open mailbox

[Isis]

jinx joke you owe me a coke

[Isis]

I haven't looked over role PMs/rules closely yet, need to go to work now.

[Isis]

That's a correct application of NAR for the revision in the OP but when the neighborizer is converted to combined rolestopper the investigation simply fails because it was rolestopped

[Isis]

Oooh checking the neighborizer itself, not the target, aren't I clumsy. Yes, that makes NAR matter! And it's a positive the way cfj explained

[Isis]

Be sure to remove "You may only use one per night" from Mafia Mailman if you're adding multitasking

[Isis]

i don't see other rules or role pm issues

[Isis]

Last thing, it's generally part of the review process to specify investigative results PMs for review. You should have three here.

[Isis]

Ok that is why we do results PMs because I'm like niiiinety percent sure traffic analyst ignores mailman. CFJ do you know?

[Isis]

Nah I just don't know things wiki says you're right

[Isis]

Man that's trippy. In a different setup, would a mafia loyal mailman and a mafia ascetic traitor generate setup info like a quantum particle when the mafiosi gets traffic analyzed?
I would maybe change the parenthetical in the traffic analyst PM to be a little more general. It looks like that was copypasted from the wiki, but the parenthetical is kind of saying, "with respect to PTs, you can't tell the difference between people who can't communicate with another living player due to pragmatic concerns and someone who is just too vanilla", but it can be generalized to: the same thing without saying with respect to PTs. The mailman can be night 1, or one shot, or in the actual case of this setup could unhooked by enabler.

[Isis]

The parenthetical can probably just be safely cut. The role so clearly has binary outcomes that it's more of an excited gloat about interesting traffic analysts are than a necessary clarification, on its face it seems to only foreclose the possible that TAs get "can communicate", "can't communicate cause vanilla", and "can't communicate because everyone they could talk to is dead", which isn't a very tenable interpretation of the role anyway.

[Isis]

Oh, I'm not objecting to the bracketed part. I mean now that I understand precisely what TA does I think the template role PM for it is misleading due to the parenthetical include in the template role PM that describes how extenuating circumstances can modify the private communication effects of PTs, but not describing how extenuating circumstances can modify the private communication effects of mailman.

[Isis]

He pulled it right from the wiki so I'm reinventing the wheel, but I wouldn't be surprised if gated mailman has been run with TA 0-1 times

[Isis]

You could refactor the parenthetical to "you cannot tell the difference between a player who can send messages one way to other players, and a player who has a private topic with another living person in it"?

[Isis]

Yeah that looks good to me, would like to hear from cfj if he thinks I went off the rails with that

[Isis]

I don't think anything else needs to be looked at, I

pass

the setup

[Isis]

Drop him a message and brag that your game is in approved status. You don't have to re-provide him the setup beyond his having access to here, though