Large Normal 212: Korts' Geriatrics - Game Over @1831

[schadd_]

here's some setup spec for you

ye olde mini archive

ctrl f "korts", "town roleblocker", "mafia roleblocker" and then look at where the little yellow spots on the scroll bar are for each of those

i guess this is slightly less apt than i thought since town roleblockers are just called "roleblocker" for a lot of this

[Eddie Cane]

SK is in favour of town. You can call town underpowered, but mafia was underpowered too, we had a 1 shot role and a PR that is relatively useless and there are 2 more unaligned people than the norm. When you add a 3rd alignment, of course winrates drop, because 3 different parties can win instead of 2 so a balanced game would leave each team winning 33% of the time instead of 50%. SK hurts mafia significantly more than it hurts town, especially without a scum doctor.

I agree the setup is not great, but stacked for an alignment is not something I'd agree with.

An ability with no choice at night is a passive ability

Commuter being compulsive is a thing. It is weaker than an optional commuter, but making commuting compulsive is not some weird new thing, its pretty common. Commuting is an active action, not a passive. It resolves first in NAR but it is not passive. So, I would hope and expect the passive role disabler would not stop a commuter.

The Role Disabler was put in the set-up specifically to counteract the PGO. This very fact in turn makes the PGO even more anti-town than it was at the offset, as the Mafia can ignore it completely so long as the Role Disabler remains alive.

The Strongman role counters the Doctor, and the Role Disabler role counters the PGO. This is too many "counters" to a Town with such limited ammunition. I think the set-up would have been much better if the PGO an the Role Disabler were both simply not in the game, an the Town instead had another minor power role.

PGO is a neg util role, its meant to cripple town. Its with miller and ascetic. Taking away the neg util is +town ev, then adding another minor role is even more...


points 3 and 4 from PJ are very true and probably the biggest issues here.



~

game wise, scum thread'll be released but it was pretty simple. I was salty asf at the team I drew (no offense fire and tywin), probably the worst two scummates I could have got in this playerlist originally as we were all the newest people with the least influence by a significant margin. I don't think I had a single active teammate through all the replaces. PJ made this game super unenjoyable for me at a time, it was mutual and I don't think it was intentional on his part but blah blah caught for the wrong reasons whine whine doesn't matter.

The biggest issue with why this game became so apathetic was the fucking deadlines. I guess this is why I don't play geriatric games, I'm not happy with people posting once every 3 days and taking a month to decide on the lynch but that's my fault for /inning here. I tried it out cause it was a bomb PL originally. FWIW, @Math you were killed a little because you were the only player suspecting me but I was super confident I could talk you out of it. I thought you were the doctor and thats what your insistence against mass claim was (and btw I genuinely think mass claim was optimal there), and on top of that you were the only active player left and killing off all of the voices town had made the latter part of this game super easy.

Can ya'll not fucking sub so much like jesus fucking christ its not fair to anyone

[Kison]

Good game, everyone! I had fun despite the lethargy that hit mid game.

Old Man lying hurt us. That was a big factor in lynching roflcopter(believing he was role blocked) & then lynching Old Man himself.

Axelrod, you got done dirty. Sorry for my part in it!

Thanks for modding, Korts. See ya'll around.

[Firebringer]

I was salty asf at the team I drew (no offense fire and tywin), probably the worst two scummates I could have got in this playerlist

thats offensive.

[Korts]

I thought me being alive didnt end the game

what the fuck?

Yeah, I debated whether to start Day 6 or not, but there was no way mafia would have been lynched at 1:2:1, which means you would have gone into Night 6 with a kill and no commute, and two scum to kill. The mafia kill would not have swung towards the PGO, so you would have died without being able to kill both remaining scum.

At least, that was my thinking this morning, but now I realize I made a big assumption in the mafia attitude to the PGO claim. I should have given it a chance to play out, just in case my assumptions were wrong, and I apologize for cutting it short.

I've agree with the setup concerns, but I feel like it was balanced, if not particularly fair to anyone. The PGO sucks, but had to be in there for the geriatric theme, and otherwise the town has protection, investigation, and backup; the neutered/limited roles for the mafia don't really give them much advantage; and the SK's tradtitionally poor chances are somewhat improved by the commute. For reference, the passive disabler would not have worked on the commute, or anything other than the PGO.

As for PJ's point 3, that was indeed an oversight in the rules. I did not intend to lie about any of the game to the players.

[Korts]

Also, Old Man is officially blacklisted from any future games I may or may not be modding, for extraordinarily dumb play and unearned arrogance. I don't know if it was deliberate sabotage or not, but I think his antics had a significant effect on morale, as well as ruining his faction's chances.

[hitogoroshi]

for what its worth if I had a tree stump able to keep playing, I woulda got eddie but only after mislyching pine. kinda sad people didn't remember that the whole thing about tywin being scum also really heavily implied at least one of eddie/pine as scum.

I would have lynched Old Man also, probably even sooner than y'all ended up doing, because it was pretty clear he was lying as soon as he audibled to gunsmith. But I guess he was just lying because he has brain worms or whatever. I would say blacklisted but if he made an anon alt to dodge whatever bad decisions he made before once, I'm sure he's just going to do it again. (He's probably going to be responsible for me being more strict about letting new accounts in my games, though.)

hard agree that passive role disabler is a gross way to use the "new role" functionality for a normal game, because it just means that someone who DOES have a normal role has it rendered inoperable in a way they can't possibly anticipate. Love ya korts but I just really disagree with the decision to use the new mechanic allowance on a

counterplay

role. Playing around unknowns is just not what folks sign up for in normals.

[Lycanfire]

I don't think town replaced out over toxicity, besides you, PJ, but you weren't town . I sort-of enabled that because I had nothing to say to Josh early game because I was "doing something else" with the early game drama that people will see in the mafia thread. Making commentary on it wasn't going to gel, so I asked him if he had bludgeoned anyone yet, then he immediately smacked you with a post. I was trying to present in the thread whether he was acting like he usually does, and I drew parallels to how he usually acts to his suspicion of KMD-I don't think I called him town for it but I said that Josh scumreads KMD from his position and it was nothing unusual. My question was vital to developing some kind of a read on Josh's play without poking at stuff I didn't want to.

I think they were replacing out because the latest adventure of Old Man reeked of bullshit or outed two PRs, but nobody knew what about it was wrong. This is around the time I stopped having to work against the town and started working in the town, so it seems like no coincidence to me that both Insanity and Tammy left when both of them had healthy suspicion of me.

Somebody messed up, or two scum just claimed together, but people didn't want to take the effort to decide which it was.

At least, that's my impression of what happened: I certainly wasn't going to win by mod kills, so my replace out was AI.

Interestingly when I was breaking down my case against Josh when I was under the impression he was "sticking to the plan" I said the exact opposite of what I said about him on D1. That I didn't believe Josh believes what he's saying when he does X, because he really wasn't at that point. I still had access to the mafia pt after replacing out and he lamented at some point that the bus was off and wanted me to clue in. We should have made a phrase to call off the plan, and I was the only one that felt threatened by Old Man on the team, while I mentioned he could be walking into day with a guilty, we were taken off guard when Old Man made another dubious claim that allowed me to get out of it. I know that Josh and Woofy both commented IN GAME THREAD that they disagreed with my decision, but at that point I was half believing Old Man was a traitor and half believing that town was misplaying. If I counterclaimed, it could have been me going down, and Old Man going free, and I was more ambitious than that.

[Lycanfire]

Ginngie the game was over. We established N1 that Cooldog was not lying. You were the second choice behind Kison, but were not shot because Kison was already proven. The next night you were going to be shot on your killing night and it would have been a scum win. Or PGO would have been shot with their role disabled: the team wavered on whether this was possible after I left, but the PGO was killable with the Fire/Momrangal slot alive.

I'm not in the mood to judge the setup but you were always losing if you didn't get shot on a commuter night with 3 towns alive. Korts made the right call.

[Lycanfire]

(Yes I know there was no way for OM to be a traitor with our graylist role being used by Fire/Momrangal. I still asked Korts on the last day if there was any mod mistake and cried over Momrangal/Eddie missing one another by 20 minutes and how hammering a traitor was still a win here.)

[Ginngie]

Or PGO would have been shot with their role disabled: the team wavered on whether this was possible after I left, but the PGO was killable with the Fire/Momrangal slot alive.

I would have killed Mom, which was the roleblocker

and then Eddie is left with a PGO

Also I dont remember if it was answered or not, but what would happen if mom targeted PGO, why would that not count as a kill from the PGO.


Seriously there were so many possibilities that could have occurred, that it would have been best to let the game resolve itself instead of assume.

It's not fair to the players and I'd rather have lost to being mechanically beaten so I could improve instead of praying the mod god says I can win.

[Lycanfire]

Momrangal wasn't a roleblocker, she was our graylist role that could turn off Pine/Michel's roles.

The mafia actually had super strong roles but was dependent on the strongman and disabler, y'know, being alive. That's why I was a big advocate of using our PRs early to avoid a mess like Michel was suggesting (also I was guessing Old Man was definitely a PR-certainly not an IC, but BP or cop).

[Lycanfire]

Yes Old Man was a VT and even lied about being roleblocked. Another reason why I thought he was a traitor the mafia were not informed about that could not exist.

[mastina]

I planned out the entire game and it all worked up to this point

Ginngie, if you're gonna copy my strategies (no-killing as a SK), then don't copy the derp (overlooking that it has ALWAYS been site standard that SKs get endgamed by mafia if there's more than one mafiate).

Btw, I reviewed this game!

[mastina]

1.)

First, the presence of the Paranoid Gun Owner clearly warped the entire set-up of the game. I am not going to try and do research again, but I believe the last instance of a Paranoid Gun Owner in a Normal Game was approximately seven years ago, when the ruleset for Normals were very different. What didn't change, though, is the fact that Normal Games are supposed to represent what players should normally expect to see in a "normal," no frills game. A PGO I think defies those expectations.

Large Normals, under the Normalcy Guidelines this game was reviewed/passed under, allow for two graylisted roles; PGO was one of them, and its counter the passive role disabler was the other.

Which also covers the second complaint.

Graylisted roles were allowed, and those roles were graylists.

This is a lie to the players of the game, which is explicitly disallowed in Normal games. I certainly hope this was an oversight.

It was indeed not something I was aware of in the review. I'd have to check the thread to see how the oversight came to be.

5.)

This set-up appears to be quite anti-Town on the whole. The Town essentially has to rely on the Tracker and Doctor (with the backup role) to carry them to victory; and the presence of a Serial Killer also means the Town pretty much has to hope for some cross-killing, which is something they can do very little about.

All the reviewers involved did note the town was somewhat weak--but the town did have an edge of two extra town players. The game was originally envisioned as 9:3:1 town:scum:SK, with almost the exact same setup minus a few changes, which was even worse on the town. (The original setup was town doc, town tracker, town pgo, versus 1x strongman, roleblocker, goon, with sk as odd-night kill, even-night commute.)

Also, note that because this was a serial killer game which was designed as ALMOST a mini, it can be considered pseudomultiball. Multiball games are, notoriously, difficult to balance and inherently reliant on swing to some extent. All variables can't be controlled. That's why the town got the backup to help them out, even.

Keep in mind to some extent as well, the NRG method is "close enough" as a metric, and to try and preserve the vision of the moderator as much as possible.
Korts wanted the PGO.
Korts wanted the Mafia Roleblocker.
Those were roles he wanted in the game, and were part of his design for it; the game was specifically bumped up to a Large in part to allow him to have the two graylisted roles. As a reviewer, as much as possible, we should work with the moderator's intended vision rather than telling them to go back to the drawing board, and that's what I was aiming to do. Work with him to refine the setup.

[mastina]

I'd also like to point out that technically if everyone died, it's a three-way tie:
The mafia wincon was to eliminate all other players; it didn't specify a mafiate had to be alive.
The town wincon was to eliminate all threats to the town; it didn't specify a town player had to be alive.
The SK wincon was for all other players to be dead regardless of whether the SK was alive or not.

So if everyone died, the mafia fulfilled their wincon; the town fulfilled theirs; the serial killer fulfilled theirs.

It was a technically valid wincon for all to use, albeit in hindsight not an ideal one.

[petroleumjelly]

1.)

I don't think town replaced out over toxicity, besides you, PJ, but you weren't town

You're forgetting chamber, and I also think it was a partial reason for Tammy. It seems rather evident that the attitude of some players (and the constant enablement by others...) caused players to both leave and avoid the game. And while I was technically a Serial Killer, I was still trying to catch the scum just the same as the Town.

2.)

Large Normals, under the Normalcy Guidelines this game was reviewed/passed under, allow for two graylisted roles; PGO was one of them, and its counter the passive role disabler was the other.

Which also covers the second complaint.

Graylisted roles were allowed, and those roles were graylists.

"Graylist" is an iffy term, as there was certainly not a "list." The language was:

New/variant roles may be included in limited number (no more than 1 in a Mini, 2 in a Large), and should be based on the usual role mechanics: Killing, Protecting, Investigating, Blocking, Voting, Enabling and Communication.

But more importantly, the guiding principles for Normal Games also states:

These guidelines are intended to enforce common expectations of games, such that all games called "Normal" are reasonably balanced and not deviant from what one would reasonably expect in a standard game of Mafia.

->

a.)

First, PGO is a questionable "Killing" role in that it has no choice in when it kills, who it kills, or how many players it kills. The role in fact has no choices at all except for how it plays during the Day. This is not a feature of play that should be encouraged in a Normal game.

The results of having one in a game also leads to all sorts of issues. The most basic scenario are multiple deaths in a night when the PGO goes off. I don't think anybody is realistically going to think "So hm, what's a likely cause of a this? Oh yes -- a Paranoid Gun Owner!" Minds are going to go to what a "Killing" role actually

should

be; a Serial Killer, a Vigilante, or potentially a second scum group.

->

b.)

The Role Disabler is flat out bad, and there is

no chance

I would allow it to pass in any Normal Game.

The role was specifically created to counteract the PGO, a role which at best is questionable to use in the game in the first place, which is a clear red flag (for

both

roles).

The role itself is nonsense; "roleblocking" passive abilities is

not a thing

. Passive abilities include Masons/Neighbors, Millers, Encrypters, and several types of modifiers that are apparently Normal (Macho, loud, bulletproof, weak, etc.). Heck, even a Traitor is technically a "passive" role. I would even argue that the Universal Back-Up used in this game is a passive role (at least until it has gained a power; unless that power is a PGO, in which case things are just getting ridiculous).

Then there's the whole issue with what happens when a "passive" ability might also be an "activated" ability. As an in-game example: a Strongman. The Strongman ability by itself is a passive ability, but it turns into an "activated" ability once you limit the number of times it can be used in the game... and boy is

that

is a mental mess to deal with! It's still technically a passive ability that's been "turned on," so... can it still be blocked?

The fact that players would not be able to easily anticipate how a "Role Disabler" would interact with

so many

potential roles (including roles

actually

in the game) means it does not belong in a Normal Game.

Ultimately, I would even argue that "blocking" a passive role is more akin to "Vanillizing" (an ability explicitly banned in Normal Games) a role than "blocking" it. It leads to similarly incredibly misleading results. Even in instances where players

can

figure out how the role should work in retrospect (i.e., if it were lynched and the role PM were posted), that still does not excuse the fact that a Town has no way to anticipate that a role like this would be in the game to begin with.

A "Graylist" does not mean anything under the sun can "technically" be slotted into a Normal Game just so long as it it isn't "explicitly" banned. The basic tenets of Normal Games should always be the guiding force. Is this a role that players could reasonably expect in a "standard" game? Because if not, you shouldn't use it.

[mastina]

First, PGO is a questionable "Killing" role in that it has no choice in when it kills, who it kills, or how many players it kills. The role in fact has no choices at all except for how it plays during the Day.

I don't see this as a valid argument seeing as how the same can be said of any negative utility passive role, e.g. Town Ascetic; Town Miller. They have no choice in their role, except how to play it during the day. In the night, it is out of their hands. Changing the consequences of the role doesn't change the basic mechanic. It negatively impacts those visiting, just in a different way than that of ascetic or miller. And both ascetic and miller are explicitly Normal mechanics.

For that matter it'd also apply to a role like a bomb, or a supersaint (although not as much for the latter since that does involve a certain type of dayplay, but it's still loosely the same issue). They can't control their role, yet their role has a definitive consequence towards others. (That said, neither of those roles are whitelisted right now, but under the graylist rules they'd have passed review in the appropriately-designed setups for them.)

On another note--because mafia killing roles are explicitly blacklisted, a confirmed PGO is conftown. No amount of it being a graylist role would allow for it to count as a mafia role in a Normal game; you'd be damn right that a mafia PGO would never pass review under the old guidelines, but I maintain that a town PGO, especially given that it is a commonly-used, universally-understood, widely-established role, is within the spirits of the guidelines as they were back then.

->

b.)

The Role Disabler is flat out bad, and there is

no chance

I would allow it to pass in any Normal Game.

The role was specifically created to counteract the PGO, a role which at best is questionable to use in the game in the first place, which is a clear red flag (for

both

roles).

The role itself is nonsense; "roleblocking" passive abilities is

not a thing

.

The role, as was designed, can be thought of as "disables roles that have an effect which could be active but is instead a passive". Not the best wording, but I can explain by example:

It's a shitty role interaction, but an example; Ascetic is basically a reflexive-Roleblocker (except to kills), who can be thought of in a sense of "actively roleblocking the person visiting the ascetic". (That's not quite how the role works in practice, but I'm trying to show the logic here.) A passive roleblocker would disable the reflexive-roleblock.

Miller is basically a reflexive-self-framer to a Cop, who can be thought of in a sense as "actively interferes with the cop visiting, to change their result to a guilty". (That's not quite how the role works in practice, but I'm trying to show the logic here.) A passive roleblocker would disable the reflexive-self-frame.

Bulletproof is a role that can be Active instead of Passive. (And can be thought of in terms of a "self-protect".) A passive roleblocker would disable it as if it were an activated ability being roleblocked.

Thus, a Paranoid Gun Owner, which can be thought of in terms of being a "Reflexive Vigilante", is treated as if it were an activated vigilante, in being roleblocked.

The passive roleblocker would then, not disable masonries, neighborhoods, encryptors, any of the modifiers listed except BP, and definitely not the universal backup.

It may by this logic have blocked the commute as worded in this game, which I confess would be a case of reviewer oversight on wording as I was under the impression the commute was optional rather than automatic (just something that the sk would presumably always use anyway but in theory could choose not to).

But the role was, at least as intended in design, within the spirits of a modification on an existing role. Temporarily preventing a role from functioning is a mechanic we have, in the form of numerous roleblocker-type actions; shifting it from preventing actives to preventing specific types of passives (those being, passives that can be thought of as an active) is a variation that I feel is acceptable, just not well executed with exact wording/understanding.

Then there's the whole issue with what happens when a "passive" ability might also be an "activated" ability. As an in-game example: a Strongman. The Strongman ability by itself is a passive ability, but it turns into an "activated" ability once you limit the number of times it can be used in the game... and boy is

that

is a mental mess to deal with! It's still technically a passive ability that's been "turned on," so... can it still be blocked?

An ungated strongman is a passive ability, but not one I'd classify as being an active and thus, it'd not be disabled by the role as was my understanding of its designed function. YMMV on that regard though.

An X-shot, and thus activated, strongman is not a passive ability at all, and thus, unambiguously, could never be blocked by the passive-disabler.

A "Graylist" does not mean anything under the sun can "technically" be slotted into a Normal Game just so long as it it isn't "explicitly" banned. The basic tenets of Normal Games should always be the guiding force. Is this a role that players could reasonably expect in a "standard" game? Because if not, you shouldn't use it.

I maintain my stance on the matter: you feel it is not within the boundaries of a role that could be expected, but to me it is within the boundaries of creating a variation on an existing role.

Roleblockers disable active abilities for a single night.
This roleblocker disabled specific types of passive abilities--specifically, the one which can be thought of as an "can be an activated ability, just not in this game"--for a single night.

As per the old guidelines, graylisted roles were allowed, and most graylisted roles were either existing roles that weren't whitelisted (which, PGO definitively is), OR, a variation on an existing role new to the game. A passive roleblocker for me was the latter. The mechanics of a roleblocker are known; shifting the mechanics from an active to a passive feels like an intuitive leap in logic to me.

[mastina]

On another note--because mafia killing roles are explicitly blacklisted, a confirmed PGO is conftown.

Mind you!
Conftown that

mafia can't kill without sacrificing a mafiate

.
In a setup where mafia have no protection from being crosskilled.

Imagine the town lynches so much as one mafiate.
Imagine instead of a game-long holster, the serial killer murders so much as one mafiate.
Imagine the PGO is confirmed as being a PGO.
The mafia then have to deal with the conftown PGO, and if the mafia try to kill the PGO, then they die and when they risk mortality from two sources already, a guaranteed death is something they can't afford to spare.

Of course, there were other ways to handle that.
For instance, while it'd lose some of the "geriatric" flavor to the game (and would have been distancing more from Korts's original vision), calling the PGO a Reflexive Vigilante and giving the mafia in place of the passive-roleblocker a Vigilante Enabler would be a little more elegant in that regard, albeit also leaving the serial killer more obviously a serial killer.

But that's not something I thought of at the time, so hindsight is 20/20 etc.

[mastina]

On another note--because mafia killing roles are explicitly blacklisted, a confirmed PGO is conftown.

Mind you!
Conftown that

mafia can't kill without sacrificing a mafiate

.

(That is, of course, without the role they were given, the passive disabler. I'm more explaining why the mafia needed that role in the first place. In hindsight, the mafia could probably have done without the 1x strongman given as how that weakens the already-not-strong doctor, but the serial killer we had, tracker, doctor, PGO vs. 1x strongman + goon x2 would be a game where the scumteam was at a disadvantage.)

[Pine]

Ewww, you used the word “mafiate”. *vomit emoji*

To put in a conciliatory word, I reiterate that I have no problem with the setup (it was a bit scumsided but around a standard deviation or so) or the players. Town misplayed their hand while scum played theirs well. The ending could have been a bit more tidy, but I don’t see how anyone but scum would win this. Sorry Ginny, but they would have had to do something extra stupid like no-kill to give you a win here.

[mastina]

Ewww, you used the word “mafiate”.

Mafia is the faction; a mafiate is an individual who is a member of that faction. I suppose it would be more geriatric of me to refer to an individual member of the mafia faction as a mafioso, but while I may be slightly sympathetic to geriatrics and hold some level of spiritual kinship to them (my whole reasoning for reviewing this game was because I wholeheartedly believe in the concept and support it, yet know myself well enough to recognize I would be ill-suited as a player in one), I'm no true geriatric so some new-person lingo does slip in.

Be glad I never refer to scum as wolves unless the game actually contains werewolves.
(I legit cringe when I see people use terms like openwolfing in games which do not actually feature werewolf flavoring.)

[Pine]

It’s not more “geriatric” to say “mafioso.” It’s more “I use words which are words and not suffixes tacked on arbitrarily to things.” Mafiate isn’t a word. Mafioso is.

[Pine]

Also I cringe at “wolf” being used as a generic word for scum. I do like the notion of “deepwolfing” though. That evokes the metaphor of “wolf in sheep’s clothing” to me, and so doesn’t bother me as much.

[hitogoroshi]

Imagine the PGO is confirmed as being a PGO.

the entire point of PGO is that this is impossible, save a decidedly not Normal "Role detector" role. Even confirmation gambits where a town PR sacs themself to the PGO (which already eliminates the whole advantage you're talking about) don't work because scum can always choose to just double-up killing that PR and then it STILL looks identical to scenarios where the scum are running a fake PGO.

I know this sounds weird since I called PGO town from the start but that was on my read of the situation, you can't mechanically conftown a PGO.