Datisi's Micro Normal Review, May 2021

[callforjudgement]

I think one issue with this setup is that if there were a T/S neighbourhood, and there were also a Mafia who was informed of a masonry, then it'd narrow down the possible Masons for the scum to look for. So people may well expect the neighbourhood to be T/T on that basis. There's also something of an issue with balance perception: towns tend to see setups with lots of town power roles as being townsided, even if they don't do anything. (I think that T/T neighbourhoods generally do do something, though, and tend to make the game more townsided; sometimes they do nothing, but often the neighbours correctly read each other as town almost immediately.) Neighbours in particular are problematic because some players see them as very overpowered and other players see them as worthless, so you can never keep everyone happy with respect to how they view the setup.

I'm wondering if this would actually be more balanced with a T/S rather than T/T neighbourhood. The problem with that is that it rather runs the risk of players complaining that scum are overpowered, and gets rid of the original idea behind the setup.

In terms of Novice: bear in mind that Micros don't have many days, so Novice is actually a real drawback, and any design based around "players hunting for other players" will often be a shadow of what you expect (because there's not much hunting going on and players may well end up claiming and/or getting eliminated early). One issue with having a Novice Neighbour is that it's going to be very townsided if the neighbourhood is T/T/T, and if you run it as T/T/S, you run the risk of the scum in the neighbourhood getting eliminated early and effectively confirming the other two as town. Probably if you're going to go down the "new players get added to the neighbourhood" route, a Neighbourizer would make more sense; but I don't think you can fit it into this setup because players tend to just assume that Neighbourizers are town (and end up losing as a consequence when there's a scum Neighbourizer in a setup; a T/S/S neighbourhood would be similar, with town not expecting it and just losing as a consequence).

So I guess your thoughts on this and mine are pretty similar, overall; the thoughts I had about the setup are very similar to the thoughts you put in your commentary.

I guess on balance, this is probably too townsided at the moment. If you need something you can run immediately, I'd recommend changing the neighbourhood to T/S (replacing the goon), but I'm not really happy with that and would be interested in whether you have (or Isis has) other ideas.

[callforjudgement]

I would consider the setups in posts #5 and #7 to be too role-heavy to be Normal; it looks more like a Theme game. That said, it might well make for a good Theme game! Sometimes it isn't worth trying to shoehorn a setup into the constraints of a Normal. (From the Normal Game rules: "Games which are otherwise Normal may still be more suited to a different Queue. For example, a game with a large number of Doctors may be better run as an Open Game (after review in the Open Discussion Thread) or as a "Hospital" Themed Game." This is bordering on similar territory, but with communicatives rather than protectives.)

One problem with that sort of hard-to-believe setup is that the balance of the setup swings hugely depending on whether players believe the setup or not – they'll either modWIFOM themselves into a hole and be lost all setup, or else figure it out immediately and cruise to a town victory, and there's no way to balance the setup so that it works in both scenarios. That's another reason it works better as a Theme, because you can use the flavour and/or game advertisement to imply shenanigans and cause the players to be a bit more open-minded than usual.

[callforjudgement]

The modification you suggest to #7 still has way too many communicative roles (including duplicates of roles that aren't normally duplicated) for me to be comfortable running it as a Normal.

My only real concern about the setup in #13 is that the informed Mafia may claim their actual role (not realising that it looks like a scum role), which wouldn't work out well for them at all. If that doesn't happen, then the setup would be balanced, and it's probably within Normal bounds (although the information is somewhat esoteric so it's hard to predict how people will respond to it). I think if we were going down that path, I'd fix the Informed Mafioso to "you know that there is an Informed Mason who knows there is an Informed Mafioso" (and symmetrically, "you know there is an Informed Mafioso who knows there is an Informed Mason"); that setup should at least be runnable, because now both sides have the information they need to be able to avoid slipping.

[callforjudgement]

I think #15 has too many communicatives (and risks the setup falling apart very quickly if the Mafia Neighbour gets eliminated early). So I think it'd be best to either make it a Theme, or (if we're keeping it Normal) go with the setup in #14.

[callforjudgement]

Well, if you decide to run the game as a Theme you'd have to /in to the Theme queue instead (and it might help to make a separate review PT so that the flavour can be reviewed). There's no rule that says that Themes can't have started their life as a Normal, though.

[callforjudgement]

I don't mind if you hijack me. (Not sure about Isis.)

[callforjudgement]

Just for the record: this setup is now being run as a Theme, so this review thread is now over (and the setup isn't going to be run as a Normal).