"villager" terminology

[callforjudgement]

Asking people if they're scum is rarely helpful anyway. (And we have the "scum" abbreviation here which works just as well for wolves as it does for Mafia.)

EDIT: Huh, new Mastin alt? I was expecting mastin3, but I like this one too.

[callforjudgement]

A trust tell is any pattern you establish that allows yourself to prove yourself as town, and then refuse to follow the same pattern as scum because it would prevent you using it to win future town games.

Always telling the truth is a trust tell unless you refuse to answer questions about your alignment regardless of what your alignment is (because as soon as you say "I am town" and expect players to believe it, not saying "I am town" as scum is basically sacrificing your chance to win this game in the hope of winning future games).

Trust tells have been banned here for a while.

[callforjudgement]

IIRC Werewolf flavour used to be explicitly allowed in Normals (except Newbie games, which still technically fall under the rules for Normals even though nobody cares about whether games outside the Normal queue are Normal nowadays; we stopped enforcing them for Opens ages ago). Nowadays, having Werewolves as the only scum faction is explicitly allowed, and using Werewolf flavour elsewhere in the game is implicitly allowed. I interpret the list of legal VT synonyms as a list of suggestions for what sort of names are allowed, rather than an exhaustive list. (However, it's possible that other NRG members disagree with me on this.)

The rules requiring Mafia flavour are specific to Newbie games, and don't apply to the Normal queue.

[callforjudgement]

Yeah, I'm just wondering about the normals. I have a large theme I want to host eventually, and other theme ideas in my head I want to eventually work on. So, gotta do the hosting of 2 normals first, which I'm looking forward to, but am trying to work out the settings and what terminology I can use before I get too far along with working on them.

The general advice for Normals is that a) any flavour you have must be entirely original and created for the game (you can't do, say, a Harry Potter themed normal, but you could do a pirate-themed normal set in your own fictional pirate universe); b) the flavour should only be in posts in the game thread, not in role PMs or night action results; c) roles that play identically must be named identically; d) there should be no way for the players to be able to use hints from the flavour to gain an advantage in the game. What this amounts to in practice is that you design an unflavoured Normal, then post extra flavour in the thread while the game is ongoing.

It wasn't in the Normal queue, but here's an example of a game (one of mine) that follows the Normal flavour rules. It's set in a fictional universe that I designed just for that game, the flavour is restricted to modposts in the game thread (mostly lynch posts), and the role PMs (which are visible in post #1) are unflavoured.