Changes to Normal Games (update September 2022)

[Cook]

Does a Traitor Vigilante surrender if the main contingent dies?

[Cook]

isn't moonlight dancer just a superstar?

can you even attach modifiers to roles that have no powers (e.g. vanillas)?

[Cook]

2-Shot Townie would be an example of a red herring modifier - do you really think "Twice in the game during night, you have no special abilities." makes sense?

was thinking about this, and it's like a gated death miller (which could be interesting for a scum role in a theme game)

Welcome! You are a

Mafia 2-Shot Activated Death Miller

.
• During the night you may activate your ability for this night and the day following.
• If you die when your ability is active, you will flip as a

Vanilla Townie

.

[Cook]

The term you're looking for is Death-Godfather

and the term i originally used!

but i swapped it out

[Cook]

the real question is not what a backup traitor would do, but what would a backup goon do in the hands of a traitor?

i'd say

Welcome! You are a Mafia Traitor Backup Goon.

You have no special abilities.
You are a member of the Mafia along with XXX and YYY. They know there is a Traitor. They do not know who you are.

Once a Goon dies, you will become a Goon and join the main contingent of the Mafia.

[Cook]

Is there a difference between those being roles and being a modifier for a vanilla townie?

Vanilla Cops.

[Cook]

i'm willing to run a few open games where this is the case

[Cook]

I also propose

Gunbearer

and

Gunless

, which have the following abilities/modifiers:

Welcome! You are a

Mafia Traitor Gunbearer

.

You do not have access to the Mafia PT. Your partners are XXX and YYY. They do not know who you are but know you exist. If you are the only remaining Mafia member you will surrender and the Mafia will lose.

You have access to the Mafia's factional kill. At night you may send me the name of a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player will die.

so then you can modify this ability.

Welcome! You are a

Mafia Multitasking Roleblocker 2-Shot Compulsive Gunbearer

.

You have access to the Mafia's factional kill.

Twice in the game at night you must send me the name of a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player will die.

In addition at night you may send me the name of a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player's action will be blocked.
You may perform both of these actions in the same night.

...or give it to a Townie/SK.

Welcome! You are a

Serial Killer 1-Shot Novice Gunbearer

.

At night you may send me the name of a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player will die.

In addition, once in the game (but not on Night 1), you have access to the Mafia's factional kill. At night you may send me the name of a player and indicate you are bearing the gun. Assuming no interference with your action, that player will die.

and Gunless is a modifier that does the reverse.

Welcome! You are a

Gunless Mafia Rolestopper

.

You do not have access to the Mafia's factional kill. The game does not end if you are the last member of the Mafia remaining.

[Cook]

You have notably interesting and clever thoughts on mafia mechanics (notably even in a forum about mafia) and I've thought so for a while now.

Thank you!

[Cook]

Pressured

Role ceases to function when eliminating a member of its faction would cause that faction's loss.

ELo

Role only functions when the town not eliminating scum would cause a loss.

MeLo

Role only functions when the town eliminating one of their own would cause a loss.

[Cook]

Vaporizer just functions as a Combined Goon Personal Alien.

That works.

I've used Personal Rolestopper in a game before for a traitor – it's fairly useful.

[Cook]

factional neighbor actions?

do it in a theme first, mini theme queue’s empty

[Cook]

I'd be interested in a just huge game with no special mechanics to make it bearable.

run a 30 player mountainous game

[Cook]

reflexive fruit vendor

[Cook]

1-shot activated reflexive fruit vendor

[Cook]

the only game that's in sign ups right now is Cook's Pick your

Poison

Policy game

YES GOOD FILL PLEASE

[Cook]

i would 100% be down for running "almost normal" games. mini theme seems to be my jam for a queue. push the boundaries. see what you can get away with.

or, in the opposite direction, take Basic roles. they're the roles and modifiers you should fundamentally know to start your mafiascum career. whitelist changes — i'm in charge of it — but it's really low-level stuff like 1-shot cop. you would expect to see 1-shot cop or an ungated doctor in your average mafiascum game.

is normal about being a cross-section of mafiascum? or is it about seeing how you can work within limits to create mechanics and dynamics interfacing?

[Cook]

gonna toss out the name suggestion Allies

[Cook]

can we alias

Alien

to

Abductor

to help differentiate the faction and the role?

[Cook]

instead of aliasing it to abductor can we add abductor as an alternate name for alien?

[Cook]

was asking to add another name to a normal role

i figured it would be good practice to ask the NRG before doing something to the wiki page

[Cook]

I am willing to test this idea in a game.

[Cook]

How about
Survivalist - role which contains this modifier will fail, if the caster dies while using it

what happens if a survivalist jailkeeper targets the mafioso who is attempting to kill the said survivalist jailkeeper

i would say the jailkeep roleblocks the mafioso, the kill is prevented

[Cook]

modifier, even if not ultimately normal, would still be useful to describe some action resolution, for instance my standard that recruitment is stopped by kills

[Cook]

Ridiculous questions about backups that will probably never come up in practice but that made me say "hmmm":

If a 1-Shot Backup Tracker tries to track someone before a Tracker has died (who knows why, maybe they misunderstood the role PM), does this failed attempt use up their one shot?

If there are two Backup Trackers, does one dying activate the other one (since a Backup Tracker is a Tracker with a modifier)?

i would resolve the targeting issue as if a backup was a scheduling restriction ("cannot target until someone of this role is dead") and thus the target is wholly invalid. no shot is taken.

the second, under your logic would result in the backup tracker's scheduling restriction being cleared. i'm not sure if this is Role As Intended, though.

[Cook]

is disabler normal

(disabler is reverse enabler, while alive, disabler prevents roles of its type from functioning)

[Cook]

logic here:

all Mafia (except Traitors and Doctors)

= Mafia Doctor does

not

have gun

Cops

= Cop

does

have gun

[Cook]

Mafia Combined Doctor Disloyal Checker

gets you the same thing as a Mafia Coptor, except it doesn't show up to Gunsmiths. Drop the combined part if you want them to be separate.

Welcome! You are a

Mafia Doctor Disloyal Checker

.

You have access to the Mafia's hideout, where you can talk with your scum buddies {SCUM BUDDIES HERE, IF THIS IS MISSING YOU SHOULD TELL ME} and submit your faction's one kill per night.
You additionally can send me the name of a player, prefixed by

CHECKER:

. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn if your check succeeded or not. Your check will only succeed on people who are not the same alignment as you.
You can also send me the name of a player, prefixed by

DOCTOR:

. Assuming no interference with your action, you will protect your target from kills the night you target them.
You may not do both of these things in the same night.

Your Mafia PT is {HERE, IF THIS IS MISSING YOU SHOULD TELL ME}. Confirm by replying with your role and alignment. You may also post in your PT and I will count that as a confirmation.

[Cook]

what's the normal status of geriatric rules

[Cook]

are/should Earls (named townies that know they are named townies) be normal?

you can emulate them with an Informed Backup X, where the information is "You are a Named Townie".

[Cook]

Parkinson's Law applies to mafia too, when deadlines are too long the days just stretch out a lead to player fatigue

every day should be a 72 hour blitz, got it

[Cook]

Why is it that a multiball game can be considered normal?
It’s a game type that I think only rly appears in open and normal queues. I don’t remember the last time a multiball game was ran outside of those queues (third parties don’t count here)

They used to, but they bring too much swing in smaller games, so are limited to larger games (which is fine). I'd prefer to keep the multiball option open in large normal games.

If there was some clever way to reduce swinginess in Mini Normal multiball games I would love to hear a solution. I wish that Normal games could incorporate (allow as an option) the accrual of $$$ each Day phase for either the "Town," "Townies," and "Scum." By calibrating it in such a way it could reduce swinginess quite a bit. Say for example Scum gets $50,000 each Night to do things, but a NK costs $100,000 to perform, thus making it so at best they'd have to wait two Nights to commit a NK without spending $$$ on anything else. I think if this layer of complexity could be introduced as a NORMAL function of Normal games, that, I think, could be quite beneficial.

write a theme around it

[Cook]

Why is it that a multiball game can be considered normal?
It’s a game type that I think only rly appears in open and normal queues. I don’t remember the last time a multiball game was ran outside of those queues (third parties don’t count here)

They used to, but they bring too much swing in smaller games, so are limited to larger games (which is fine). I'd prefer to keep the multiball option open in large normal games.

If there was some clever way to reduce swinginess in Mini Normal multiball games I would love to hear a solution. I wish that Normal games could incorporate (allow as an option) the accrual of $$$ each Day phase for either the "Town," "Townies," and "Scum." By calibrating it in such a way it could reduce swinginess quite a bit. Say for example Scum gets $50,000 each Night to do things, but a NK costs $100,000 to perform, thus making it so at best they'd have to wait two Nights to commit a NK without spending $$$ on anything else. I think if this layer of complexity could be introduced as a NORMAL function of Normal games, that, I think, could be quite beneficial.

write a theme around it

What do you mean, please?

you should write a theme game with this mechanic and then design a closed and otherwise normal setup above it too

i'm sure some people'd like to play it

[Cook]

point of order on "-Immune" 's wiki page: passive abilities shouldn't be phrased that way. assuming that "Ascetic-Immune Jailkeeper" is immune to ascetic stopping their actions, phrase it as "You are/this action is immune to effects of the role 'Ascetic'."

[Cook]

Ninja is a modifier, though interpreting the factional kill modifying version of Ninja as a passive role is a fair intepretation

I'm wary of modifying the factional kill (I'm the one who gave names to roles capable of using modified factional kills)... if a factional kill must be modified and there is no option to use an unmodified factional kill, that doesn't feel Normal to me.

I'd name the modifier Stealthy, though Silent is a good name as well. Ninja would be the passive role that modifies the factional kill.

Speaking of modifiers, I'd name the modifier version of Strongman Unstoppable, with Juggernaut being the non-gendered Strongman as a role alias.

pedit: yeah, I don't exactly agree that active and passive roles are separate domains considering you can turn a passive role into an active role with the Activated modifier and you can turn an active role into a passive role with the Reflexive modifier (note that the Reflexive modifier is not Normal!).

i would also like to propose Astral as an alternative rename, from Town of Salem. i think it is a little too "flavorful" to be used as a generic modifier, though.

"Silent" to me also feels like it'd do something else other than hide from actioncops.

[Cook]

Traitor I don’t think effects hunting that much but it is a very difficult role to play well.
U do bring up a point that I don’t rly remember the last time traitor or multiball was ran outside of the normal/open queues.

If the normal queue is supposed to be representative of what is popular on the site, why is something niche like multiball that is very rarely run outside of the normal queue normal? Just doesn’t make sense to me.

i've run multiball several times in semi-open setups

traitor... that's a bit trickier to say. maybe investigate and see if there's traitors in any games in recent memory?

[Cook]

Let me rephrase
Multiball is rarely seen in the theme queues.
I think you would have to break down how many large theme queues had multiball games.

Actually, I think the only place to really find multiball larges IS the normal queue.
I don't recall the last time a multiball game was ran as a mini theme but I think it would be rare to see one.

3d20, two years ago, comes to mind

[Cook]

I would like to once again propose a modular addition to Normals that disables Nighttalk rather than Daytalk for non-Factional chats.

made a role for that in GIM

[Cook]

what if you let mafia have multiple kills if they have membership above X number and banned multiball from normals

[Cook]

this loses the ability for scum to crosskill, but also makes reading the game possibly easier since all scum are fully informed of each other

i think 5:16 or 4:17 would be balanced for this maybe. you need a vig and probably a mafia doc as well

[Cook]

maybe something smaller

the goal here is the game always ends by d5 or 6

[Cook]

we've brought it up before but i would be interested in experimenting with Jingle's Earl idea (confirms itself as Earl to anyone who targets it)