Changes to Normal Games (update September 2022)

[implosion]

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".

I don't especially see the need. There are plenty of roles and ways to make roles that exist right now that functionally do almost nothing and I don't think adding an explicit named townie would be encouraging good design patterns that don't already happen.

Is a

Combined Neopolitan Backup Reporter

normal, where the neopolitan ability is used alongside a Reporter ability if a Reporter has died?

Like most real edge cases, the answer is "uh, idk". I think probably most reviewers would be fine with this though, I probably would be. It is strictly breaking the rules a little bit in one way or another (either you're "using both abilities" but backup reporter does nothing until activated, which breaks how the backup modifier works, or you're not, which breaks how the combined modifier works) but it's a sensible enough formalism and it's obvious enough what it means just from reading the role name.

Is there any way Serial Killers could be allowed back into 13-player Normal games?

Probably not. If there were very clear consensus from the normal game player base that they wanted this then I'd definitely consider it but I am doubtful this consensus exists. In my mind, SKs and multiball are both sort of not really normal; they break conventional scumhunting because, e.g., partner tells are no longer necessarily meaningful and someone could be meaningfully scumhunting while also scum, etc. The reason that they're allowed in large games is because of a sort of necessity - a 21 player game with 1 kill per night that goes to 3p eLo will last 10 game days, which is untenable as something to happen frequently on this site because of the nature of how long games take and how hard it is to fill replacements for games that are that long. So you need multiple ways to have multiple kills per night.

[TemporalLich]

imo,

Earl

would be more elegant than 0-shot Friendly Neighbor or Negative Infinity-shot Friendly Neighbor for a Named Townie that tells Role Cops checking them they're a Named Townie.

As for

Named

as a role that is allowed for any alignment, Named doesn't really do anything except give Vanilla Cops and Neapolitans negative results.

Chocolate

would of course be an alias for this type of Named where Role Cops know they aren't Vanilla but have a role that does literally nothing. Of course, you could use 0-shot Roleblocker for this purpose (0-shot Cop and 0-shot Doctor would alter Gunsmith results), but Named as a role is more elegant.

That being said, Named roles require heavy setup spec to be interesting.

---

Finding out that Combined Neapolitan Backup Reporter isn't Normal because Backup and Combined are unresolvable is a shame... Combined Neapolitan Backup Reporter would be a role that checks for VT/not VT and checks if a player has acted or not if a non-Backup Reporter is dead in Theme design space. I can't really parse Combined Neapolitan Backup Reporter as something else other than a role that acts as a Neapolitan by default but starts acting as a Combined Neapolitan Reporter if a Reporter is dead.

---

I do think Multiball/SK presence should be announced in setups, as Multiball games don't work the same as standard alignment games and a game potentially being multiball has a large effect on strategy.

Another option worth considering: potentially allow

Mafia 1-shot Vigilante

(if you want a specific role name for this proposal, maybe

Fiend

?) in large normal games?

[implosion]

Since the functionality already exists (or close enough to it), I see the main reason to add a named townie role as encouraging people to design setups with it. And I don't think it's an especially important design pattern to encourage people to use.

I think scum vigs will never have a place in normal games. It's important that players don't get caught off-guard by having been in eLo when they didn't think they were (or, in the case of a town vig misfiring, that it be the town's fault).

[TemporalLich]

I think scum vigs will never have a place in normal games. It's important that players don't get caught off-guard by having been in eLo when they didn't think they were (or, in the case of a town vig misfiring, that it be the town's fault).

I am not sure how I'd rework the

Fiend

proposal to avoid surprise endgames (which yeah, that does indeed make scum 1-shot Vigilante not Normal due to destroying the Normal metagame) elegantly.

I could say that a Fiend can't act if there are less than 3 more townies than scum, but it would lead to situations where a Fiend isn't aware they can't act (especially in games that have alignments other than Town and Mafia). Oh and a Town Vigilante and Mafia Fiend acting could still result in a surprise endgame even with this change.

So yeah... even if scum Vigilante could be changed enough to be Normal, it still would probably be about as Normal as multiball games are Normal, which is barely.

I do think Normal design space should be wide, but roles that warp the metagame aren't Normal (if a role potentially existing has a large impact on strategy (e.g. Supersaint, Framer, Bus Driver, Diplomat), it isn't Normal).

[camelCasedSnivy]

Are Monks Normal? And are Masonries that could have Werewolves in them Normal either?

[usesPython]

Are Monks Normal? And are Masonries that could have Werewolves in them Normal either?

They're not

In Normal games, Masons are absolutely 100% Town

[usesPython]

Informed Neighbor is normal though and does basically the same thing

[camelCasedSnivy]

but what is informed isnt shown on death

[Umlaut]

I think in normal games Monk is a legal variant name for a Mason, like using Gaoler instead of Jailkeeper. It's typically used in games with werewolf flavor but works identically, and in particular doesn't distinguish between Mafia and Werewolf factions in terms of how it works.

[Umlaut]

So I think everyone agrees that day talk is now the de facto standard for all games across the site. This is great because people clearly enjoy those games more, and ultimately we should be in the business of running games people want to play. That said it could present a bit of a problem for mods wanting to run closed setups that need to exclude it for a specific mechanical reason, such as doing something cute with Encryptors. Specifically, the very absence of day talk becomes a reliable signal that its presence would have either been impossible or at least had meaningful mechanical implications.

Would it be worth considering running some fraction of closed games (incl. closed normals) without day talk, just to reserve the right, so to speak? I don't think this is something that could be imposed from above, but maybe reviewers could request (but not demand) it from mods once in a while.

[Invisibility]

how many people want to do something cute with Encryptors?

[camelCasedSnivy]

just make daytalk disabler a new role ez

[camelCasedSnivy]

omg thats the second post 1111 ive gotten now maybe I should hunt for those

[Random Nurse]

I know that the wiki currently states that no role that targets itself may be considered Normal, but...

...is there any way this could be re-examined?

For example, how about a 1-Shot "Examiner" /whatever, and basically it tells the user (who targeted themselves) what other actions targeted them that Night. It doesn't seem broken, does it?

[camelCasedSnivy]

what happens if 2 lazy traitors are the last scum players alive? would they both be endgamed, or would 1 be endgamed while the other joins the scum PT?

[Civil Scum]

Can anyone tell me what the typical Day length is on a Normal game?

Also am I the only person who hates mafia day-talk?

[Alisae]

Can anyone tell me what the typical Day length is on a Normal game?

Also am I the only person who hates mafia day-talk?

10-14 days.

Curious about anti day-talk arguments.

[Civil Scum]

Thanks!

I just prefer the old way I guess. Agreeing on a general strategy each night and having to think and play off of each other on the fly and navigate the day time organically. Having a continual back channel just seems to take that aspect of being mafia away.

[Not_Mafia]

I'm an advocate for Dayshitposting, mafia can daytalk but can only shitpost uselss nonsense

[usesPython]

I'm an advocate for Dayshitposting, mafia can daytalk but can only shitpost uselss nonsense

That's called the main thread

[biancospino]

Can anyone tell me what the typical Day length is on a Normal game?

Also am I the only person who hates mafia day-talk?

10-14 days.

Curious about anti day-talk arguments.

10-14 might actually be a bit high of an estimate, at least 7-days Days are not uncommon for minis.
To be a bit more quantitative, assuming that I've not messed up the count:

• Among all non-ongoing Mini Normals that ended in 2022 or later:
  • 10 had 10-days D1, and 7-days for other Days*
    
  • 6 had 7-days Days
    
  • 6 had 10-days Days
    
  • 4 had 10-days D1, and 8-days for other Days
    
  • 2 had 14-days D1, and 10-days for other Days
    
  • 2 had 14-days Days
  * one of those games actually also had 5-days Days in XLo. Curiously, another one of those games were the only one in this time period with 1-day Nights, instead of the far more common 2-days
  
  
  For those games as a whole, the D1 deadline was 238h24m on average, and the D2 deadline was 201h36m (around 8 days and a half) on average.
  
  
• Among all non-ongoing Large Normals that ended in 2021 or later (there are a lot less of those, so I've picked a larger time period):
  • 4 had 10-days Days
    
  • 2 had 11-days Days
    
  • 2 had 14-days D1, and 10-days for other Days
    
  • 1 game each had 7,12,13,14-days Days
    
  • 1 game had 10-days D1 and 8-days for other Days
    
  • 1 game had 12-days D1, then 10-days for the next days, and 8-days Days since when <=10 players remained
  For those games as a whole, the D1 deadline was ~270h52m on average (a bit over 11 days), and the D2 deadline was ~250h17m (around 10 days and a half) on average.

[Skygazer]

It would be interesting to run a game where the deadlines are (# of living players + 1) days. Day one in a 13p mini would be 14 days, 3p elo would be 4 days...

Would a lack of deadlines be considered normal?

[usesPython]

It would be interesting to run a game where the deadlines are (# of living players + 1) days. Day one in a 13p mini would be 14 days, 3p elo would be 4 days...

Would a lack of deadlines be considered normal?

Mechanical changes which must be announced beforehand include:

• Day phase deadlines shorter than 1 week or longer than 3 weeks

If it's not normal to have no deadline just make the deadline like 10 years or something

[Civil Scum]

When I first played here in 2007 there were no deadlines except those imposed during the course of the game by the Mod to keep the game moving. A couple years later, the Newbie games (and possibly other games though I’m not sure) changed to a 3 week Day 1.

This always seemed to be pretty reasonable to me. 10 days on the other hand…with how much lurking and replacing happens especially in Newbie games… it seems very short to me and seems like scum can lurk through an entire daytime with only a handful of posts for people to go on.

[Datisi]

This always seemed to be pretty reasonable to me. 10 days on the other hand…with how much lurking and replacing happens especially in Newbie games… it seems very short to me and seems like scum can lurk through an entire daytime with only a handful of posts for people to go on.

town winrates in newbies actually increased when the deadline got shortened, iirc