borkjerfkin Micro Normal Review

[callforjudgement]

Rules look fine (a very pedantic reading of "days will be exactly two weeks long" implies you have to hold twilight out until the original deadline ends, but I don't think anyone would interpret it like that). I'm assuming this is not a daytalk setup because you didn't say it was (and in a Normal, you'd have to), but you should probably be more explicit about that.

The balance, however, is highly townsided. I was trying to work out if the Mason pair was too townsided by itself for a 7:2, and then I saw that Town had a Roleblocker too, which makes it unambiguous that town is too strong. (For what it's worth, Roleblocker + 6 VT versus 2 Goon is fairly close to balanced; possibly a little scumsided, but not by much. Your setup is way more townsided than that.) I don't think giving the Mafia one or more Rolecops would fix this, as a Rolecop takes too long to produce workable results. (I suspect what you're doing wrong here is trying to give town the same amount of power in a 7:2 that they'd need in a 10:3; I can certainly see a Mason-pair-plus-Roleblocker setup being viable in a Mini. A Micro is smaller than a Mini, though, so power roles tend to have more of an impact.)

What do you consider to be the important elements of the setup? We can preserve those and try to modify the rest to fit.

[callforjudgement]

Actually, 2 masons (no communication) + 5 VT versus 2 goons is comparable to the most scumsided subsetup of My Name Is Earl (although rather more townsided as scum can't reasonably fakeclaim mason, whereas they can reasonably fakeclaim Earl), so it's probably close to balanced. If you want to make it more interesting, one way would be to add roles that don't do anything (e.g. give scum a Watcher – they'll never see anything, but it's not bastard because they still can draw information about the setup from concluding that a player wasn't targeted), but that might not fit your idea of a good setup. Voyeur is a town role that could probably fit into the setup without unbalancing it (they can't gain any information that implicates anyone), although it runs the potential risk of being confirmed as town purely through setup speculation (and thus swinging things over to the town side again).

[callforjudgement]

The near-unwinnable version of C9 had a purely vanilla town; it didn't have any players who could confirm by claiming. My Name Is Earl was an attempt to fix it by ensuring there were always two townies with power roles, even if those roles didn't do anything. I'm not sure how successful it was.

[callforjudgement]

Actually, Motion Detector is about as strong as possible in this setup. Scum who are detected by it have the choice of claiming targeted, or fakeclaiming a power role. If they claim almost any power role, the Masons will counterclaim them on the basis of too much town power, and the town will win that 2v1. If they claim targeted, well who's targeting them? It's not going to be the town, as nobody's going to claim a targeted role. So it must have been the scum, but what did they target them

with

? Nothing really makes sense opposite Masons. They might get out of it, but once we're talking in terms of "might be able to claim out of a Motion Detector guilty", we know the role's doing much better than its normal useless self.

Interestingly, adding a town Vanilla Cop might make the setup more scumsided. Unless scum fakeclaim role (inadvisable in this sort of setup, and something that scum normally only do in a 9p at lylo or if they're desperate), I don't see how the role helps town at all, and the player claiming it may well be mislynched for the claim. (Also, it may end up forcing out the Masons early, which would also help scum.)

[callforjudgement]

I think 2 Masons + 5 VT versus 2 Goons is doable and close enough to balance, although it's hard to assess the balance of because it's hard to fit Masons into a game this small.

I guess you can reasonably compare it to setups like Cop + 6 VT versus 2 Goons; in that setup, the Cop confirms two players if they live until D3, in this setup we have two players who can confirm each other. The difference is that that setup leaves room for fakeclaims and counterclaims and this one doesn't really (more townsided); however, that setup also allows for the Cop to potentially confirm themself, and to potentially catch scum directly (more scumsided). This one still leaves room for PR hunting (scum benefit from killing a mason early), though, so it's not entirely dayplay.

[callforjudgement]

Sure, /approve.