Foxbird's Mini Normal Review

[callforjudgement]

First, looking at normalcy:

"A lynch will occur when a majority is reached. A majority is half the players alive, rounded up."
No it isn't, if there are an even number of players. You want "rounded down, plus 1".

"The Mafia may or may not have daytalk. No questions about this will be answered."
Not Normal. The possible options are "The Mafia have daytalk.", and "The Mafia do not have daytalk (except possibly by means of an Encryptor)."

NAR stands for "Natural Action Resolution". (That said, there don't seem to be any hard-to-resolve interactions in this setup. The only thing I can see you potentially missing is that the Neighborizer's night action will succeed even if the Neighborizer gets nightkilled, inviting the target into the PT.)

Backup Protective is not explicitly Normal but I'm happy to allow it as a "greylist" (i.e. one-off approved custom) role. (This means that if the player dies, you need to post their entire role PM in thread, not just its name.)
Locking the thread when a Neighborizer dies is not Normal. Because you already have a greylist role, you're going to need to change this to a more standard model of Neighborizer. (See the wiki page Neighborizer for the Normal definition.)

The Tracker results could do with being a bit clearer (perhaps entire sentences). I'd recommend something like "[Your target] visited [their target] last night.", "[Your target] did not visit anyone last night.", and "Your action failed." Sending someone a PM that just says "No One" is going to be confusing.


Now, balance. We can basically divide the town power roles into two groups. The Innocent Child, Bodyguard, and Backup Bodyguard are basically "confirmable townies"; the Innocent Child is obviously confirmable, and the Bodyguards can confirm themselves by blocking a kill. (This is working on the basic assumption that the scum wouldn't kill someone who was likely to be lynched, so by redirecting the scumkill onto yourself, you're giving the town extra information because they get the flip of the Bodyguard rather than that of a likely townie.) Because it's possible that the Bodyguards survive all game (due to choosing the wrong targets), this adds up to a bit less than 3 confirmations.

Meanwhile, the Tracker and Neighbourizer are more suggestive than anything. The Tracker can identify one of the scum (the one performing the kill) as scum. This is worth maybe one confirmation on average over the course of the game; the Tracker doesn't exactly confirm themself, and it is quite possible that they die early or miss all game. (I can't see much of a way for them to get a misleading result; scanning pretty much anyone will either get a "visited nobody" or see them visiting a likely townie, which has too many possible explanations if the target doesn't die to be particularly informative. So the Tracker is likely to be averagely powerful for a Tracker in this setup.) Neighbourizer is fairly weak as a role, but tends to help town to a minor extent regardless of which faction uses it, as it's often possible to read someone more easily in a PT than you could in the game thread,

Without the Roleblocker, therefore, I'd assess this setup as townsided. (I'd say it has a little under 4 confirmations via power role actions + 1 via setup speculation; my current yardstick for confirmations in a balanced 10:3, based mostly on daytalk setups, is 3+1.) The Roleblocker, on the other hand, is a fairly powerful power role for scum, especially in this setup. The main reason Bodyguard is valuable is that they can take a bullet for a confirmed townie, thus narrowing the lynch pool. On the other hand, if a Bodyguard claims (for whatever reason) and then get blocked, they'll look like fakeclaiming scum, most likely being mislynched; a scum power role that correctly frames a townie is worth -2 confirmations. As such, the odds of this happening would need to be somewhat less than 1 in 3 or so for the setup to be balanced (and you also have to take into account the possibility that the Tracker gets identified and roleblocked). I suspect the total contribution of the Roleblocker to scum's win chances is a bit higher than that, so I'd place the setup as being mildly scumsided, although probably balanced enough to run. (Reducing the shots on the Roleblocker doesn't necessarily help here; it's likely to be fairly obvious to the scum when the correct time to use it is.)

Let us know how you're changing the setup in response to this post. (You need to at least ensure you don't have more than one non-whitelisted role, and might or might not want to change other parts of the setup depending on the balance feedback from the reviewers.)

[callforjudgement]

I think it's townsided without the Roleblocker but not by much. This is the sort of setup that comes down to how good the PRs (on both sides) are at targeting, which is a very hard thing to guess during a review, so I can understand why you (=mykonian) want to weaken scum, and would be willing to approve without the Roleblocker; it's not too townsided to run.

I kind-of like the idea of making the roleblocker alternate nights. Probably I'd be more comfortable with odd nights, based on when the town is most likely to claim (in particular, a revealed Bodyguard

and

revealed Innocent Child is unlikely N1, but much more plausible N2).

[callforjudgement]

Either's Normal, but you need to make the choice in advance (and it doesn't hurt to put it in your ruleset).
Allowing scum to perform the NK + additional actions makes sense in this setup to reduce swing; the only time it comes up is if scum are lynched down to one member with the Roleblocker still alive, and in that situation, I suspect they need all the help they can get (as the Tracker would be very powerful in that situation if still alive).

[callforjudgement]

The problem is that the Roleblocker is relatively low-powered most nights, but particularly powerful immediately after a Bodyguard claim (you block the Bodyguard, then frame them for not stopping the kill, and end up killing one player who "should" be confirmed town, lynching another, then getting an extra nightkill).

Having the Roleblocker action on a fixed schedule reduces the chance of that by not giving scum control over the timing. Meanwhile, a 1-shot variant would let scum save their roleblock for the perfect moment. Non-con is strictly more powerful than 1-shot (although it has the disadvantage of being less good at cluing to scum that they should save it).

[callforjudgement]

Players should flip with the role they had at the start of the game.

[callforjudgement]

They can deduce it from the fact that they saw a protective role die.

(In general, Backups in Normal games are always aware of what role they do and don't have, and other players are always aware of what role a hypothetical Backup would have, because they can see the flips.)

[callforjudgement]

I'm happy to approve this with the odd-night roleblocker. (I'd need updated role PMs before I can officially approve.)

[callforjudgement]

/approve

You need approvals from all 3 reviewers before you can run the setup. (Once you have the three approvals, we'll hand the setup back to N, who will allow your game to start signups once it's the first reviewed setup in the Mini Normal queue.)

[callforjudgement]

And right, N is in charge of it now.

By the way, could you let me know when it starts? (Just linking it in this review thread will do.) I like to watch games I reviewed, but often miss the start of them.

[callforjudgement]

I personally use 72. 48 is more common nowadays, though. It makes a lot of sense to make the night length equal to your prod timer (so that players can't end up missing the entire night unless they'd normally be prodded).

[callforjudgement]

Assuming the game hasn't started yet, it seems reasonable to change it. I think you'll need reviewer approval on that sort of change (if you reduced the prod timers to 2 hours, it wouldn't be Normal!) but I have no issue with minor changes to prod timers and night length within the 48 to 82 range.

[callforjudgement]

EBWOP: and by 82 I mean 72.