Normal Roles

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Post Post #25 (ISO) » Tue Dec 05, 2017 11:15 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

I'd probably ban Vengeful as scum for the same reason that Vigilante is banned as scum. However, I have no problems with it as a town role.
I'm uncomfortable with any "this role works differently in lylo" modnotes being present in a Normal. Those are more the province of Theme games, I think (and often imply that the role was badly designed in the first place).

(Incidentally, it's nearly always a bad idea to fakeclaim Vengeful as scum. Either people ignore your claim, or you get lynched. Neither is really a good result for you.)
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Post Post #26 (ISO) » Wed Dec 06, 2017 12:14 pm

Post by mastina »

In post 18, callforjudgement wrote:I consider the Fruit Vendor to be so inherently tied to the "cannot kill and action" mechanic that the mechanic comes along with the role, even if it isn't in use elsewhere in the game. (That is, even in a game where scum normally can kill and action, they can't kill and fruit-vend.)
I don't. In my experience that is an outdated definition of the role--the role evolved. It may have originally had that function, but has since gained new functionality in other ways it has been utilized.

Nowadays, fruit vendors where mafia cannot both kill and action are in the minority--not the majority. Fruit vendors where the mafia cannot both kill and action are how the role originally began, sure. But they are not how the role functions most commonly in its
current
iteration. That being said, thanks to the history of the role not to mention how some mods DO still use the "cannot both kill and action" clause, we shouldn't just boilerplate rule out either version of the role. Again, I feel very strongly it should be left to the game moderator.
Besides, if a Fruit Vendor can perform other actions at the same time, the role is just a Visitor; you can confirm you're a Fruit Vendor but you can't confirm that you don't have another role too.
My impression of the Visitor role is that the visit is not announced to the player being visited. As in, Visitor A visits B; B does not know of this. This makes it a distinctly different role from a fruit vendor, where Fruit Vendor A visits B, and B is told they received a piece of fruit, thus telling them they were visited.
A confirmed fruit-vend doesn't mean anything unless it's mutually exclusive of
something
.
You're forgetting that these days, fruit vendor is such a common and universally-understood role that moderators have begun to modify it and utilize it in other ways with modifiers, both whitelisted and graylisted ones.

A loyal fruit vendor acts as an investigative role, but one which is weaker than most and much weaker than a loyal friendly neighbor. (A loyal friendly neighbor is basically absurdly powerful.)
A loud fruit vendor acts as a slightly-nerfed friendly neighbor: it tells the person NOT ONLY that they were visited, but the exact identity of the visitor, simply lacking the confirmation of alignment.
I'm sure mods have begun to play around with other modifiers for the role as well. It has seen usage on JOATs as a third power, for instance, as just a "little bit extra", while still being mostly filler that doesn't add much. Just that final extra bit to push the game to being balanced.

I also feel you underestimate the value of confirmed role in mini normals if nothing else. In mini normals, there are certain balance guidelines we use. 3-5 town roles (average of four moderately-powered ones) with 0-2 mafia (average of one moderately-strengthed one) role(s) is the general guideline we use for them. A fruit vendor is a weaker, "filler" role, and confirming its existence in the game confirms that it is one of the roles in that chart, allowing for towns to narrow down (be it correctly or incorrectly) what they believe the setup for the game to be.

There can only be so many roles in a mini normal.
And if you confirm that a fruit vendor is one of those roles, then you confirm that either the mafia got a nigh-worthless role, or you confirm a player as town, essentially.

These "confirmations" are not as strong as a friendly neighbor, but that's the whole POINT. The fruit vendor
isn't
alignment-confirmed, but IS role-confirmed. Leaving players to speculate on whether the alignment for the confirmed role is town or scum.
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Post Post #27 (ISO) » Wed Dec 06, 2017 12:21 pm

Post by mastina »

In post 25, callforjudgement wrote:I'd probably ban Vengeful as scum for the same reason that Vigilante is banned as scum. However, I have no problems with it as a town role.
I'm uncomfortable with any "this role works differently in lylo" modnotes being present in a Normal. Those are more the province of Theme games, I think (and often imply that the role was badly designed in the first place).
I'd echo this, and with it as a caveat, would in fact support adding Vengefuls to the TOWN whitelist. I feel Something_Smart's : it is a common role, universally understood, which has a definitive utility and is not severely altering the mechanics of the game. In fact, it's another one of those roles where I wasn't really aware it wasn't whitelisted, because it's a role so prevalent on the site I kind-of took it for granted it was explicitly (rather than as a graylist implicitly) allowed.
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Post Post #28 (ISO) » Wed Dec 06, 2017 1:28 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

In post 26, mastina wrote:
Besides, if a Fruit Vendor can perform other actions at the same time, the role is just a Visitor; you can confirm you're a Fruit Vendor but you can't confirm that you don't have another role too.
My impression of the Visitor role is that the visit is not announced to the player being visited. As in, Visitor A visits B; B does not know of this. This makes it a distinctly different role from a fruit vendor, where Fruit Vendor A visits B, and B is told they received a piece of fruit, thus telling them they were visited.
They know that they were visited, but what can they deduce from that? The visit might have been a random extra addition to any other role, and the user can safely claim it. In other words, it has exactly the same balance impact as if it wasn't used, unless you use modmeta to say "well, the mod
probably
wouldn't have given this Fruit Vendor an additional action".

What you're saying here is effectively "Fruit vending confirms that the user
does not have a role other than Fruit Vendor
". That's similar to my restriction (but not exactly the same), but if it's important, it should be spelled out (especially in Normals).

We used to have Masons which were
usually
Town, but that lead to trouble. Now we have Neighbours who aren't confirmed at all, and Masons who are 100% confirmed. A Fruit Vendor that isn't explicitly confirmed not to have a secondary role would be in a similar space to an unconfirmed Mason; yes, they probably don't have another role, but the role itself can do nothing to prove that, so you have to rely on what you think the moderator would do.

(Incidentally, if Loyal Fruit Vendor ever becomes commonly used, it'll be standard practice for everyone to report on whether or not they received fruit last night at the start of every non-Day 1 day of every game, with scummier players claiming first; I can't think of any situations where this would backfire for town, and it gains a clear advantage in the case where there does happen to be a Loyal Fruit Vendor in the game. I disagree with your classification of it as being a weak investigative role; it's actually stronger than Cop is, because it gets a venge-vestigation if killed overnight, and because the investigation results are revealed publicly without the Loyal Fruit Vendor having to expose themself. In this situation, presumably regular Fruit Vendors would claim to avoid being confused with the Loyal version.)
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Post Post #29 (ISO) » Wed Dec 06, 2017 4:47 pm

Post by mastina »

In post 28, callforjudgement wrote:What you're saying here is effectively "Fruit vending confirms that the user
does not have a role other than Fruit Vendor
". That's similar to my restriction (but not exactly the same), but if it's important, it should be spelled out (especially in Normals).
I am okay with this definition, yes. We typically have one role be...well, one role.
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Post Post #30 (ISO) » Thu Dec 07, 2017 2:01 am

Post by callforjudgement »

It'd be a change from the standard behaviour; fruit-vend shots of a JOAT aren't unheard of, and in theme games, role absorption is also fairly common (especially on SKs).

One nice thing about "you can't fruit-vend at the same time as other actions" is that if the role gets absorbed or whatever, it still functions correctly.

That said, "Fruit Vendor implies otherwise vanilla" does make the role not entirely useless, so I'd be fine with it in a greylist sense. I guess it's just a case of deciding which of the two versions we'd want.
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Post Post #31 (ISO) » Thu Dec 07, 2017 7:43 am

Post by acidphoenix »

thought: "no
role
action may be used at the same time at vending fruit"
true evil is taking away the ability to choose

ms sux
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Post Post #32 (ISO) » Fri Dec 08, 2017 8:27 am

Post by Not_Mafia »

Remove Ninja, it's a very inelegant counter to an already limited investigative role, if there's a ninja in your set-up, it's probably poorly designed
Also, what is NM doing? Worst play I’ve ever seen.
I can't remember the last N_M post that wasn't bland, unimaginative and lame. Some shitposters are at least somewhat funny. You are the epitomy of the type of poster that nobody would miss if you were to suddenly disappear. You never add anything of value.
I'm guessing you haven't read the game and probably never will? Why even sign up to play?
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Post Post #33 (ISO) » Fri Dec 08, 2017 8:57 am

Post by Not Known 15 »

In post 32, Not_Mafia wrote:Remove Ninja, it's a very inelegant counter to an already limited investigative role, if there's a ninja in your set-up, it's probably poorly designed
Are we talking about Watcher or Tracker? A full mafia ninja is probably not ok. A 1-shot or 2-shot to prevent broken situations? That is ok.
Yes, Mafia Ninja and Tracker is not so good, especially because of the fake clear.
Ninja and Watcher is valid.
A Serial Killer Ninja on the other hand, that is fine.
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Post Post #34 (ISO) » Fri Dec 08, 2017 10:45 am

Post by Firebringer »

In post 32, Not_Mafia wrote:Remove Ninja, it's a very inelegant counter to an already limited investigative role, if there's a ninja in your set-up, it's probably poorly designed
Ninja is best scum role, get out
Show
"You are the Joker of mafia players" - Oversoul
"last time I was scum with Firebringer
his first post in the scum PT was "yes I rolled scum!"
I decided to post "haha just don't post that in the main thread", but to get up to date on the main thread first.

His first post in the main thread was "yes I rolled scum!" -popsofctown
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Post Post #35 (ISO) » Sun Dec 10, 2017 3:28 pm

Post by Marquis »

In post 32, Not_Mafia wrote:Remove Ninja, it's a very inelegant counter to an already limited investigative role, if there's a ninja in your set-up, it's probably poorly designed
I'm torn on whether Ninja should be Normal from a precedence standpoint (or more like I can't remember how we've addressed similarly functioning Normal roles) but anyway I essentially agree with this
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Post Post #36 (ISO) » Sun Dec 10, 2017 3:30 pm

Post by RadiantCowbells »

I agree except to me the main value of ninja in the current meta is to give role cops a guilty
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Post Post #37 (ISO) » Sun Dec 10, 2017 3:38 pm

Post by Espeonage »

I always viewed Ninja as a way to give town power over scum without fucking up an SK.

Or used with Strongman on another team in multiball.
Don't @ me.
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Post Post #38 (ISO) » Sun Dec 10, 2017 3:42 pm

Post by Not_Mafia »

In post 35, Marquis wrote:
In post 32, Not_Mafia wrote:Remove Ninja, it's a very inelegant counter to an already limited investigative role, if there's a ninja in your set-up, it's probably poorly designed
I'm torn on whether Ninja should be Normal from a precedence standpoint (or more like I can't remember how we've addressed similarly functioning Normal roles) but anyway I essentially agree with this
I see it the same way as godfather, a relic of the past that's been outgrown and should be dropped
Also, what is NM doing? Worst play I’ve ever seen.
I can't remember the last N_M post that wasn't bland, unimaginative and lame. Some shitposters are at least somewhat funny. You are the epitomy of the type of poster that nobody would miss if you were to suddenly disappear. You never add anything of value.
I'm guessing you haven't read the game and probably never will? Why even sign up to play?
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Post Post #39 (ISO) » Mon Dec 11, 2017 2:27 am

Post by Not Known 15 »

In post 38, Not_Mafia wrote:
In post 35, Marquis wrote:
In post 32, Not_Mafia wrote:Remove Ninja, it's a very inelegant counter to an already limited investigative role, if there's a ninja in your set-up, it's probably poorly designed
I'm torn on whether Ninja should be Normal from a precedence standpoint (or more like I can't remember how we've addressed similarly functioning Normal roles) but anyway I essentially agree with this
I see it the same way as godfather, a relic of the past that's been outgrown and should be dropped
How about dropping it from the Mafia, but not the Serial Killer?
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Post Post #40 (ISO) » Tue Dec 12, 2017 8:49 pm

Post by Gamma Emerald »

Several comments:
1: Not Known 15, unfortunately Vanillaiser is blacklisted due to being a role change in the middle of the game.
2: I'd be down for Activated being a Normal modifier. It's a common thing on another site I play on and I want to see how it would fare outside of it's native community (beyond Activated IC).
3: isn't Vengeful a Normal modifier? also I am staunchly against removing vengeful power in LyLo since the vengeful gambit is based on it being functional in LyLo.
4: I'd support making Ninja a neutral-alignment modifier, and making it sometimes mandatory. Any other changes to Ninja I feel aren't very justified.
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Post Post #41 (ISO) » Tue Dec 12, 2017 10:25 pm

Post by Not Known 15 »

1: Not Known 15, unfortunately Vanillaiser is blacklisted due to being a role change in the middle of the game.
???
In post 0, Nexus wrote:What roles that are currently non-normal, or greylist, do you want to see on the Normal List?
The opening post includes roles that are currently non-normal as possible additions.
Your post does not help...
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Post Post #42 (ISO) » Tue Dec 12, 2017 10:42 pm

Post by Gamma Emerald »

Nexus asked for greylist roles. Vanillaiser is blacklisted. Greylisted means anything not directly approved or unapproved, basically roles not in the Normal rulebook.
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Post Post #43 (ISO) » Wed Dec 13, 2017 1:29 am

Post by Not Known 15 »

In post 42, Gamma Emerald wrote:Nexus asked for greylist roles. Vanillaiser is blacklisted. Greylisted means anything not directly approved or unapproved, basically roles not in the Normal rulebook.
Read. Non-normal, OR greylist.
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Post Post #44 (ISO) » Wed Dec 13, 2017 7:35 am

Post by Gamma Emerald »

The comma in front of "or greylisted" tells me it's meant to define "non-normal", meaning they are not separate groups.
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Post Post #45 (ISO) » Wed Dec 13, 2017 7:51 am

Post by Nexus »

I don't care where the roles come from. I want to discuss any/all roles.

I reserve the right to reject any ideas though.
Trans rights are human rights.
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Post Post #46 (ISO) » Fri Dec 15, 2017 3:41 pm

Post by northsidegal »

i don't think that loud and novice are explicitly normal modifiers, but it seems to me like they should be. i don't think there's anything inherently unbalanced or poorly designed about them, and making them whitelist instead of graylist allows more freedom in setup design.
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Post Post #47 (ISO) » Fri Dec 15, 2017 3:49 pm

Post by northsidegal »

er, here it is more formally:

1. Role: Loud
2.
You are a [Town/Mafia]
Loud
[Role]. If you target a player at night, that player will be informed that they were targeted by you, but not necesasrily informed of what action you performed.
3. loud is an interesting and unique way of controlling the information available to players. it's uncomplicated and very easily, if not already understood by most. adding it to the whitelist allows more freedom in setup design, allowing other roles to occupy the singular greylist spot.
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Post Post #48 (ISO) » Fri Dec 15, 2017 4:19 pm

Post by hitogoroshi »

Hard agree on Loud. Actually it might be worth clarifying the converse version (where you know the role but not who), that one is interesting as well.

I'll also throw in something I did in Barkley: Shut Up And Jam: Gaiden: Mafia.

1. Modifier: Hideous
2.
You are a [Town/Mafia] aligned Hideous [Role]....You may only target a player you have never targeted before.
3. The modifier is mostly meant for Doctors and Bodyguards, because it's a way to avoid follow-the-cop but still allow more dynamic nightplay than non-consec (which is kind of a blunt tool.) It can also be nice to stop RBs from creating degenerate endgames.
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Post Post #49 (ISO) » Sat Dec 16, 2017 1:34 pm

Post by mastina »

In post 48, hitogoroshi wrote:1. Modifier: Hideous
2.
You are a [Town/Mafia] aligned Hideous [Role]....You may only target a player you have never targeted before.
3. The modifier is mostly meant for Doctors and Bodyguards, because it's a way to avoid follow-the-cop but still allow more dynamic nightplay than non-consec (which is kind of a blunt tool.) It can also be nice to stop RBs from creating degenerate endgames.
A more common modifier along those same lines is "Non-consecutive-target", wherein you cannot target the same player two nights in a row.
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