Changes to Normal Games (update September 2022)

[Yimmy]

can i make a fruit vendor fruit vendor fruit vendor that isn't multitasking? this would be mechanically significant somehow. maybe there's a rolecop or something

[TemporalLich]

Could that "Time-Limited" modifier potentially be named "Temporary" instead?

And then maybe there could be variations of it, like one that turns the player Vanilla, OR the player keeps the role name but still loses all active/passive powers.

Temporary

is a better name imo as Temporary sounds more elegant.

I am unsure if the vanillization variant of Temporary would be Normal. Vanillization-type Temporary would still potentially be Normal even if Vanillaizer is deemed to not be normal because of arbitrary role changes, as Vanillization-type Temporary only affects the player's role, but I'm unsure whether Vanillization-type Temporary should be Normal or not.

[implosion]

I think implosion explained somewhere (or maybe it was someone else, not sure) that Normal is supposed to represent what is considered MAFIA, rather than a variation of the game.

source

Ummm I will try to find this

People on this page basically are right.

Practically, the reason that multiball is currently normal in larges is that I banned it in minis 5 years ago (as can be seen in this thread's OP, along with reasoning, lovely historical artifact that it is). The game-warping impact of multiball (and SKs) in larges is much more dilute than in minis, and there is (as someone on this page mentioned) a very significant design benefit that having multiple killing roles prevents large normals (which I'd hazard a 0-data guess are the most historically replacement-plagued category of game) from going on forever. I think I have said something to that effect publicly before, probably somewhere maybe. Multiball is nice in that it's a more robust form of this than a vig or sk since the whole faction needs to die for its kill to be lost. But it does warp scumhunting to be somewhat different and it

dramatically

increases swing.

I'm passing the buck of course, and the new normal mod might decide that multiball shouldn't be allowed even in larges. My personal opinion is that it's a pretty close line between "it's worth it" and "it's not worth it" so I think either decision is perfectly reasonable. I disagree that removing multiball from large normals would be a "nail in the coffin" for the site. Part of the reason for this is, well...

While I'm here and saying words, might as well tangent that really, "large normals" are a pretty open category. There's a world of difference between a 15-17 player game and a 25+ player game. The former is, frankly, pretty easy to design and balance to be fun. There are two reasons for this that I see: one is that it doesn't have the problem that huge games drag on. Second is that these games are pretty similar to 13-player games functionally - you can even run 3:12 setups quite reasonably, and so the wealth of design knowledge that this site has for designing exactly 13-player games can be usefully tapped into. A "huge normal" almost needs sk/multiball to function because of the dragging-on problem (a 25 player game with 1 kill per night could enter 3 player eLo on... day 12. Good luck finding a replacement if you need one on day 8 or later.)

To that effect, I think one bad thing about multiball is that multiball encourages bad design patterns, namely that it belongs in huge games and huge games are really hard to prevent from just being full of design antipatterns, be it swing or an onslaught of replacements or just players getting bored. Forum mafia with week-long deadlines is not the right setting for a 25-player social deduction game - the right setting for that, depending on what kind of game you want, could be anything from two rooms and a boom to blood on the clocktower to a good old-fashioned in person mafia game around a campfire. This is to say, I don't think the loss of games like that would be a major blow to the site, because, while I appreciate that there are people who like games like that or for whom they're their favorite kind of game, those games do also have some intrinsic negative impact on the site. Random Nurse mentioned the 50 player game he ran a few years ago, and really, it was almost certainly a mistake on my part to allow it. I usually took a sort of let-what-happens-happens approach to questions of what additional restrictions I should impose on top of the written rules (another example of this would be that I essentially always let reviewer interpretations of ambiguous situations have the final say in reviews). But letting that game run was a mistake, on my part. As can be seen in the thread, the reason that the game ultimately couldn't go on was that replacements simply couldn't be found fast enough. The way that this site's infrastructure works is simply not able to support a game like that, even if you can mass ping people to find an initial player list. Even if there were enough players on the site to support the replacements, it's probably going to be a massive drain on the replacements available for other games, the quality of the game is going to be ultimately low solely because a huge fraction of the player list is going to have been replaced by the end of the game, there are going to be a lot of players who play on MS because of the long deadlines that are going to feel overwhelmed by the amount of content that they have to interact with when there are that many other players, etc.

(I've been in Japan for the past couple weeks, but I'm flying back tomorrow and am still around the site, so if anyone wants to know anything about why normal games are

currently

the way they are I'm happy to answer!)

[Cook]

what if you let mafia have multiple kills if they have membership above X number and banned multiball from normals

[DragonEater70]

Oh, I found the quote I was referring to:

By nature they have swing; by nature, we'd like normal games to have as little swing as possible.

It's kind of a different game from mafia; we'd like normal games to be very clearly games of mafia in the most normal sense possible.

It's absolutely possible to do multiball well, but it breaks the expectations of the normal queue, especially given how site meta has shifted over the years.

[DragonEater70]

I think implosion explained somewhere (or maybe it was someone else, not sure) that Normal is supposed to represent what is considered MAFIA, rather than a variation of the game.

source

Here you go.

[Cook]

this loses the ability for scum to crosskill, but also makes reading the game possibly easier since all scum are fully informed of each other

i think 5:16 or 4:17 would be balanced for this maybe. you need a vig and probably a mafia doc as well

[Cook]

maybe something smaller

the goal here is the game always ends by d5 or 6

[DragonEater70]

Forum mafia with week-long deadlines is not the right setting for a 25-player social deduction game - the right setting for that, depending on what kind of game you want, could be anything from two rooms and a boom to blood on the clocktower to a good old-fashioned in person mafia game around a campfire.

Well said.
(though I think there might be a place for something like that in themes).

(I've been in Japan for the past couple weeks, but I'm flying back tomorrow and am still around the site, so if anyone wants to know anything about why normal games are

currently

the way they are I'm happy to answer!)

Well, I am interested to ask why redirectors aren't normal.

what if you let mafia have multiple kills if they have membership above X number and banned multiball from normals

I think he just explained why he doesn't want superlarge Normals, so idk about multikills, but I guess banning multiball isn't a horrible option (thought I think at least SKs should be an option? Or maybe not, maybe they should only exist in themes).

[implosion]

what if you let mafia have multiple kills if they have membership above X number and banned multiball from normals

It's a possible answer. It might just be a band-aid, though, especially since scum are probably killing the most engaged players most of the time meaning that once you're down to 10 players from 30 you started with, you're down to largely the players who want to still be playing the game the least.

some stuff

Yeah themes above 25 players definitely can work in theory; I think it's somewhat likely that a lot of people who have historically designed them haven't really put much thought into the problem of high player count and just went with it, though. I've definitely gotten lost in the weeds in large themes on more than one occasion.

Redirectors aren't normal... well, first off the "these are explicitly not normal" list on the wiki has always been a little silly since the elimination of the greylist, since

everything

not explicitly normal is explicitly not normal presently.

The reason they're on that list is probably because, as a greylist role, they mess with things too much and also really cause too many ambiguities for my tastes. If you redirect a cop, do they get to know who their new target is, or do they just get a result of "innocent" without knowing that it's on the wrong person? I think historically the answer is the latter but that's... a pretty bad design pattern and a pretty negative play experience. Being able to redirect a mafia member to kill another mafia member is probably categorically broken because you basically get to kill one and guilty another at the same time. I think (especially with the latter interpretation for investigative roles) another big component is that they mess with night actions in a way where the person being messed with has no reasonable way to understand what's happening.

But really, the more true answer is probably just that someone a decade ago decided that they felt like redirectors just

feel

not-normal. After all, getting to use your night action how you want to is core to the game. This is in no way a logical argument but ultimately everything comes down to how things feel, and maybe redirectors feel normal now, that's up to the new normal listmod. My personal take on that one would be... eh, I think they still don't really feel that way. A town redirector has too much ability to ruin the scum's day completely, and a scum redirector has too much ability to just ruin the town's day completely. But redirectors easily could be normal in principle, in particular I'm sure there's a universe where a decade ago someone decided that redirectors seem fine but roleblockers seem too broken and the community feels the opposite way about the two roles.

[TemporalLich]

I'd rather make Vanillaizer normal over making Redirector normal, but I'd rather make Redirector normal over making Framer normal.

The variants of each of those two roles that are explicitly non-normal (I think this list is useful to anyone making Normal role proposals - it gives an idea of what is

NOT

Normal) but I'd make normal role proposals for anyway are these:

Vanillaizer - Doesn't roleblock (combine vanillaizer with roleblocker if you want a roleblocking vanillaizer), Informs player of their loss of role, shows up in flips as "town role turned vanilla townie" or "mafia role turned mafia goon".

Redirector - Investigative roles (including Checker) are informed of their actual target. Otherwise, a Redirector counts as arbitrary results interference (which is why Framer is not normal) and might be considered a bastard role for unforseen mod lies (about who you targeted). A redirector redirects actions performed by target 1 to target 2.

[Random Nurse]

I think Inventor would be neat to make Normal.

Give a 1-Shot PR gift to someone else, I think that'd be cool, and I'm sure there's variants too.

[TemporalLich]

Inventor kind of has a stronger version of Vanillaizer's "arbitrary role interference" problem. Add on to that the standard Inventor not affecting roles in any visible way unless you are a Gunsmith or Detective or Psychologist (inventions don't show up in flips or Role Cop results) and Inventor is actually not really Normal.

Also, a Inventor (Vigilante) would lead to a Mafia Vigilante existing, which isn't normal due to unfair endgames.

[Random Nurse]

Also 2 more ideas.

1) You know how we have Loud and Announcing? We should have the mirror modifiers added to Normal games where the player being targeted have those modifieres, not the player doing the action. So instead of a Loud Town Tracker, you've got a "Listening" player that is made aware of what happened to them instead.


2) You know how we have Vengeful for Townies only? What if we make variants of Vengeful where, instead of killing a player, you turn their PR to 1-Shot instead or, if they have any modifiers, their modifiers are completely nullified but their keep the name. Stuff like that.

[Cook]

we've brought it up before but i would be interested in experimenting with Jingle's Earl idea (confirms itself as Earl to anyone who targets it)

[TemporalLich]

A compiled list of normal role proposals (this is not curated, and likely isn't complete):

Active Roles:

Knifesmith - Not sure how this works, but I assume it gets a positive result on a Serial Killer.
Exploder - Performs a nightkill, but dies when using that ability.
"Loyalblocker" - Roleblocks a player if they are targeting a player of a different alignment.
"Follower-Cop" - Learns a player's role in terms of what a Follower would see if all actions were used that night.
Neighborhood Cop - Learns if a player is in a Neighborhood or not. (distinct from Neighbor-Finder, as Neighbor-Finder doesn't work for Neighborized neighbors)
Alignment Cop - Learns a player's alignment.
Universal Finder - Targets a player and specifies a role, learns if that player is the specified role or not. May be called Role Guesser instead.
Modifier Cop - Learns what modifiers apply to a player's role, but not their role or alignment.
Interceptor - Redirects actions performed by a player to you. Very unlikely to be normal because of redirection.
Paladin - Redirects actions targeting a player to you. Very unlikely to be normal because of redirection.
VIP - Protects self from a kill, and performs a nightkill on a target player if targeted by a nightkill.
Marker - Marks a player at the end of the night. Anyone visiting a marked player will learn that player is marked.
Mediator - Targets two players, and disallows them from targeting each other the next Night.
Role Guard - Notifies a player of the roles that targeted them.
Bulwark - Roleblocks killing abilities.
Peacekeeper - Roleblocks killing abilities and protects from kills.
Thaumaturge - Learns if a player is exactly one of {Town, Vanilla} or not.
Informant - Informs a target of some predetermined setup information.
Willbooster - Protects a player from roleblocks.

Unnamed role 1

- Removes a player's ability to talk in private topics during Day phases.

Passive Roles:

[role]-Immune - You are immune to the specified role.
Bomb - Reflexively kills their killer.
Superstar - Reveals their role (but not alignment) like how an IC reveals their alignment.
Fragile - Dies if targeted by any ability or performing an ability
Gravedigger - Appears to be using the Mafia factional nightkill on all players who died that night to action investigative roles.
Listening - You are informed of the players who target you (self-watcher).
Careful - You are informed of the action types that target you (self-voyeur).
Moonlight Dancer - Reveals that they are a Moonlight Dancer, but with no useful info.
Gunbearer - Can perform the Mafia factional nightkill.
Gunless - Can not peform the Mafia factional nightkill.
Enforcer - A role that roleblocks as it performs a factional kill.
Squelcher - A role that rolestops as it performs a factional kill.
Vaporizer - A role that uses alien ability as it performs a factional kill.
Wraith - A role that commutes as it performs a factional kill.
Marked - Anyone visiting you will learn that you are marked.
Scoundrel - Allows use of a Simple factional kill.
Striker - Allows use of a Complex factional kill.
Wrecker - Allows use of a Loud factional kill.
[role]-Disabler - If alive, disables the specified role.
"Sensor" - If eliminated, mod will confirm whether or not scum was on the wagon.
Famous - The existence of your role is confirmed.
Epicurean - Non-killing abilities targeting you will always succeed.
Vulnerable - All abilities targeting you will always succeed.
Earl - Anyone who knows your role knows your alignment.

Unnamed role 2

- If eliminated, may make a player only able to act once more.

Unnamed role 3

- If eliminated, may remove a player's modifiers without changing the role name.


Modifiers:

Unstoppable - Makes an action unblockable and unable to be protected from. Modifier version of Strongman role. Strong-Willed may be used instead, maybe.
Sacrificial - Using this ability causes your death.
Noticeable - Notifies the target that "You noticed you were targeted."
Regretful - You will die if the player you targeted dies.
Vain - You will die if you target a Town-aligned player.
Pressured - Role doesn't function if eliminating a member of that player's faction will cause a loss.
ELo - Role only fuctions when town not eliminating scum causes Town to lose.
MeLo - Role only fuctions when town eliminating town causes Town to lose.
Sleepy - Your role only functions if there are 5 or less players alive.
Split - Combines abilities into one action, but forces each constituent ability to target different players.
"Gun-shy" - Your action fails on a player with a gun.
"Gun-loving" - Your action fails on a player without a gun.
Gutless - Your action does not interact with killing abilities.
Provoked - Role only functions when a Provoked player is dead.
Recharged - You don't lose shots if your ability fails.
Procrastinating - Role only functions when 1 anti-town player is alive.
Publishing - Results PMs are posted in the game thread by the moderator.
X-Result - Counts shots only when a specific result is given.
Impersonal - Your action only interacts with factional abilities.
Skimmer - If you are visiting someone protected from kills, you are protected from kills.
Cursed - Your role will only work on other players who are also Cursed.
Obsessive - You will continually target the same player with your role until they die.
"Vote-Activated" - Your role only functions if you were the first vote on the previous Day's elimination wagon.
Temporary - Role stops functioning after a specified phase.
Double - Allows you to use the role twice.

[DkKoba]

I support:

Neighborhood Cop
Bulwark
Unnamed role 1(supposed to be a modifier)
[role]-Immune
Superstar
Gravedigger
Gunless
[role]-Disabler
Famous
Epicurean (personally i think the name is a bit too out there?)
Vulnerable


Unstoppable
Pressured
Gun-Loving
Gutless
Obsessive
Temporary

everything else is either non-normal IMO or too OP to see reasonable use.

[TemporalLich]

I prefer [role]-Locked over [role]-Disabler as its effect is obvious as opposed to appearing like being roleblocked.

Epicurean's role name is named after the philosophy of Epicureanism - though the role name is pretty tenuous and it was chosen for being somewhat of the opposite of Ascetic, as Epicurean is the opposite of Ascetic role-wise.

Here's the original post for Unnamed Role 1 (which is why I classified unnamed role 1 as an active role):

What if there was a Town PR that can disable all Daytalk for whatever slot they target, for the rest if the Day, Day and Night, or permanently?

That being said, a passive role that disables Daytalk seems too iffy to me but it is theoretically Normal.

[Random Nurse]

I support:

Neighborhood Cop
Bulwark
Unnamed role 1(supposed to be a modifier)
[role]-Immune
Superstar
Gravedigger
Gunless
[role]-Disabler
Famous
Epicurean (personally i think the name is a bit too out there?)
Vulnerable


Unstoppable
Pressured
Gun-Loving
Gutless
Obsessive
Temporary

everything else is either non-normal IMO or too OP to see reasonable use.

What does Gravedigger do?

[TemporalLich]

gravedigger is a miller for action investigative roles

it appears to be targeting the players who died that night

Gravedigger I believe. They passively visit everyone who dies, or a random person who dies, depending on who you ask.

I think it has merit, but it's a little skeevy on the grounds that they don't know who they're going to visit.

Gravedigger is not without Normalcy concerns however.

[DkKoba]

The way the role would play out is miller-esque and they would normally claim start of game, which helps quell such concerns.

[DkKoba]

more interested in the fact it brings it into the claimspace for mafia to claim

[Random Nurse]

Could there be a Cop that checks for Modifiers only?

[TemporalLich]

Out of the normal role proposals, I'm most hoping for Bulwark andThaumaturge.

I'd also want to see Role Guard, Impersonal, Vain, Pressured, Vulnerable, and Procrastinating.

Could there be a Cop that checks for Modifiers only?

I call that a Modifier Cop

[Random Nurse]

Out of the normal role proposals, I'm most hoping for Bulwark andThaumaturge.

I'd also want to see Role Guard, Impersonal, Vain, Pressured, Vulnerable, and Procrastinating.

Could there be a Cop that checks for Modifiers only?

I call that a Modifier Cop

Well, is the Modifier Cop already approved for Normal play? If not, it should be.