XnadrojX's Mini Normal Review the Second

[mastina]

mykonian's not gonna be the grouch this time; I am.

The miller double-voter is never getting lynched.
The two cops working together with a friendly neighbor give the town a lot of investigative power, and the one role that the cops fail on is a role that can get lynched because ascetic + miller claims in the game (and half of scum truthfully claim ascetic), with the miller being a double-voter = the traitor gets lynched 100% of the time. Also, because it's a traitor, the mafia are at a severe disadvantage.

I mean to be perfectly honest I think that if you play this game the town only has a 60% chance or so of winning it (rather than the more severe number), but when all is said and done by post-game I'd be calling the game ridiculously townsided because from a theoretical point of view, to me...this is ridiculously townsided. For the scum to win, the town has to make multiple misplays and/or the scum need to be on-point (virtually psychic) with their actions. The friendly neighbor is never getting lynched. (The only way for the friendly neighbor to get lynched is to be lynched before being able to send an action OR very very very poor night action choices--which the scum might still be put at a disadvantage for.) The miller double-voter is never getting lynched. These slots are both slots the mafia need to kill--and by killing those slots, the mafia are NOT killing the cops. And by NOT killing the cops, the cops are allowed to get results.

The only way the town can realistically fuck up is by lynching a cop claim, but a town can easily figure out odd/even-night cops are both in the game as a balance to one another. The town can get: four confirms on D2 (cop, result, double-voter, friendly neighbor), and six confirms by D3. (Other cop, result.) While, yes, there is the obvious chance for overlap (cop investigating friendly neighbor, cop investigating cop, cops investigating the same player), even a town playing sub-optimally has a hard time fucking this setup up. In any remotely-competent town (miller-doublevoter fullclaims, friendly neighbor actions, cop investigates), this is just not a game scum can win.

[mastina]

The setup would be swingy no matter what to an uncomfortable degree (like, major swing, not minor swing; there's a great many variables which HUGELY affect the game), but I'd be willing to pass it if the 1x ninja was nixed. The ninja to counter a gated tracker (when pitting up a tracker against a ninja is already unfair! Yet along, GATED tracker) is something I'm not comfortable with. (I know the ninja is itself gated, but it doesn't matter to me; one ninja shot is still absurdly powerful against a tracker, yet alone a gated tracker.)

[mastina]

3-Shot Gunsmith
Odd-Night Cop
Miller Doublevoter
VT x 7

Mafia Ascetic
Mafia Goon
Mafia Goon

I'd actually be okay with this setup.

The town has three very strong roles. The gunsmith is three-shot, but realistically you're not going to get much more than that in a mini anyway so it's pretty strong. The cop is odd-night, which realistically is probably only two investigations. In spite of that, having two VERY strong investigation roles helps the town a lot. The ascetic gives the scum some defense against the roles, and then the scum also have their nightkill, which in this setup is disproportionately powerful thanks to a lack of roles to stop them from killing the PRs. This is not a bad thing! (The only bad thing is if the ascetic chooses to publicly claim when the miller also does so, but even there with a cop/gunsmith combo the town may assume both are town negative utilities.)

I would admit the setup is still

slightly

swingy, because if the town loses one/two/all of their PRs early they're in for a very rough ride, and if they don't lose their PRs then the scum are going to face some rather nasty POE, but I don't think the swing can ever be eliminated and this level of swing is definitely acceptable to me. I genuinely think that this proposed setup has around 50-50 odds for each side.

[mastina]

52 is my latest thoughts and still applies for me.

[mastina]

Full roleblocker against only two investigatives is a definitive no-go for me. The scum have a nightkill with absolutely nothing stopping them from utilizing it. Give them a roleblocker and they are capable of entirely shutting down the town's power outside of the miller double-voter on night one. Night one, the scum can turn the game into basically mountainous. That would not be okay with me. I don't think an odd-night restriction to gate the roleblocker would be much better, either. Maybe X-shot roleblocker, with X being either 1 or maybe (MAYBE) 2.

The game has three, I repeat, THREE town roles. No method of stopping a nightkill. And we all know just how notoriously scumsided mountainous games are. The town NEEDS those roles. Scum can have

some

defense against them. But they don't need much.

[mastina]

Giving them a 1x roleblocker and the ascetic is still giving them too much immunity. One or the other is what I would say.

[mastina]

Yeah, need roles reposted and then we can sign off.

[mastina]

That was the consensus, yes. Post rules, post roles, and you're basically good to go for me.

[mastina]

I need to see the actual role PMs before I can sign off, but that's about it.

[mastina]

Question: does the roleblock refund an X-shot?
If not, then I'd change this:

your target will not have their night action carried out this night should they have one.

...To,
"your target will have their night action fail should they have one".
(It's an important semantics thing, because stopping the action from happening implies the shot is never used; causing the action to fail implies the action happens, just unsuccessfully and therefore the shot is burned.)

Otherwise good to me.

[mastina]

Double-voters use their voting method however the mod deems it worthy:
Privately submitted and showing anonymously,
Privately submitted and not showing (VERY uncommon),
Hidden attribute of the player (their vote is always worth two),
Activated hidden attribute of the player (they can make their vote worth two, but can't vote two different players; a bit uncommon),
Or requiring a double-vote in-thread.
The last one is probably slightly more common than the others and is also my personal preference for the role (less shenanigans), but all of these versions have been used.

[mastina]

Double-voters aren't a normal role (they're a graylist), so like hiders, there's no established rule behind how they operate. (Heck, hiders are actually closer to standardized than double-voters in my opinion since there's GENERALLY consensus on how they more or less work, just varying in the details. Double-voters have no such consensus and their mechanics vary widely.)

For personal reasons, I prefer the public double-vote (mainly because it being public makes it less of an alteration to fundamental game mechanics in my opinion), but there's no established standard.

[mastina]

Repost all roles/rules and interactions one more time for me please.
As in, full role PMs as they are finalized, not just a list of them.

[mastina]

The double-voter has the right version in code but the wrong version in text. Nitpicky, but still need to make sure you don't send the wrong version of the role.

[mastina]

Missed this earlier, but the 2-shot roleblocker is the other way around; it has the right version in the text, but the wrong version in the code. (I believe.)

[mastina]

You are also a 2-Shot Roleblocker, anytime during the night phase, you may send me a name, and your target will not have their night action will fail if they have one. You may do this up to two times.

Not quite fixed? "Your target will not have their night action will fail" kinda says the opposite of the intention; you need to remove the not. (Sorry for all the nitpicks but role PMs DO need to be 100% accurate when sent since they can and do effect the game if done wrong.)

[mastina]

Yep, looks good.