osuka's Mini Normal Review, June 2021

[Isis]

It's not any one PR, no, they're all kept from realizing full potential as ungated investigatives. But mediumish power spread across so many slots can be really good. Keeping mind that having a traitor slot instead of a goon slot is very very powerful for town itself, even with the neighbor shot that's in the setup now

[northsidegal]

definitely agree with isis that you should keep in mind that having a traitor is actually a pretty serious downside to the scumteam, and historically has a tendency to produce a lot of resentment towards the setup

so how about

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1x odd-night traffic analyst
1x non-consecutive 2-shot town jailkeeper
1x town weak visitor
1x town even-night gunsmith
1x town neighbor
5x vanilla townies

1x traitor combined cop neighborizer
1x mafia even night commuter
1x mafia odd-night rolecop

the town neighbor here is stranded, there isn't any other corresponding neighbor (the neighborizer doesn't start in a neighborhood with the neighbor by default, that's not how it works)

i personally would remove the scum commuter—seems somewhat out of place with the "core" of the setup and doesn't seem to provide a lot of utility, so i default towards less complexity. i'd also agree with isis in cutting the weak visitor.

[northsidegal]

wait, sorry, i have been completely reversing the idea of what a traitor is – in a normal, the traitor knows the scumteam, and the scumteam doesn't know the traitor. up until just now i was thinking that it was vice versa, that the traitor didn't know the team but the team knew the traitor, but that isn't how it works.

in terms of balance i don't think that this actually changes a

ton

, although it does make the traitor neighborizer better, and it does actually make the traitor cop a bit more of a role likely to cause some anger. in terms of a setup "vision" or the sort of idea i had of how that person might use their role it does change things though, but that kind of thing is really more up to you than me.

[osuka]

when you say cop traitor might cause anger, do you mean it'll anger town, the traitor, scum, or a combination of the above?

[osuka]

definitely agree with isis that you should keep in mind that having a traitor is actually a pretty serious downside to the scumteam, and historically has a tendency to produce a lot of resentment towards the setup

so how about

Code: Select all

1x odd-night traffic analyst
1x non-consecutive 2-shot town jailkeeper
1x town weak visitor
1x town even-night gunsmith
1x town neighbor
5x vanilla townies

1x traitor combined cop neighborizer
1x mafia even night commuter
1x mafia odd-night rolecop

the town neighbor here is stranded, there isn't any other corresponding neighbor (the neighborizer doesn't start in a neighborhood with the neighbor by default, that's not how it works)

i personally would remove the scum commuter—seems somewhat out of place with the "core" of the setup and doesn't seem to provide a lot of utility, so i default towards less complexity. i'd also agree with isis in cutting the weak visitor.

doh i removed the mafia neighbor but forgot to remove the town neighbor - that's my bad.

we can get rid of the town neighbor and the visitor. how about making the maf commuter a traffic analyst? that would give

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1x odd-night traffic analyst
1x non-consecutive 2-shot town jailkeeper
1x town even-night gunsmith
7x vanilla townies

1x traitor combined cop neighborizer
1x mafia traffic analyst
1x mafia odd-night rolecop

if you think this is still a bit town sided, i think i like the idea of adding a negative modifier to the gunsmith or the jailkeeper (macho gunsmith?)

[northsidegal]

when you say cop traitor might cause anger, do you mean it'll anger town, the traitor, scum, or a combination of the above?

probably mostly town.

something else to at least consider which i have the unfortunate tendency to sometimes overlook is what it could feel like if a newer player were to roll traitor cop. traitor is already a pretty high-stress role to roll, and i think that for a newer player it's sort of confusing to also have rolled cop, much less combined neighborizer cop – i'm not sure i'd really understand what i should be doing with my role. (to be fair, i'm not sure i'd completely understand it if i myself rolled that role, but i could probably guess some stuff)

idea for you: remove the odd-night rolecop, change it to just a traitor neighborizer role-cop. no combined, so the traitor can choose to role-cop or neighborize every night. this way you keep the situation going on where both the TA and the gunsmith get these weird non-false false-positives, which i think is sort of preserving the setup vision you have. just an idea though, feel free to build on it however you want.

[osuka]

to explain a bit, the idea behind the cop neighborizer was that they would have a powerful check with the side effect that it added them to a neighborhood. because nobody starts in a neighborhood, the traffic analyst would actually be more powerful than i wanted it to be - the traitor will have to make a choice _between_ checking and neighborizing, which makes the role significantly less powerful, and which also significantly decreases the possibility of a false positive for the traffic analyst

i think my brain short-circuited for a second - a traitor cop makes no sense, because the traitor knows the identities of the mafia team and, by exclusion, knows everyone else is town (because this is a mini, so no multiball or neutral roles are allowed)

perhaps traitor combined rolecop neighborizer is better? i really want the setup to have a bit of flair, lest we end up with "just another setup" - which may be a good thing, but, you know?

[osuka]

so effectively that means that the mafia rolecop should be changed. what about a mafia strongman?

also: if the traitor is a combined neighborizer rolecop, making the traffic analyst even-night favors scum ever so slightly (since there's probably one slot that will give a false positive, versus zero). that would give:

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1x even-night traffic analyst
1x non-consecutive 2-shot town jailkeeper
1x town even-night gunsmith
7x vanilla townies

1x traitor combined rolecop neighborizer
1x mafia traffic analyst
1x mafia strongman

we could also say one of the mafia is informed that the traitor is capable of private communication - i think that adds depth to the setup and goes well with the rest of it

[Isis]

wow so I was the only one of the three of us that realized a traitor cop is someone who has a role that finds the answers the traitor cop already knows.

and then when I tried to explain y'all were like "Isis is a square who think Mafia Neapolitans can't be in normals or something"

lol

[osuka]

sorry i literally just played a misgame where i was the traitor and didnt know the mafia identities so yes i am an idiot and yes you were right

i didnt mean to make it sound like you were a square

[osuka]

and besides squares are great shapes

[northsidegal]

wow so I was the only one of the three of us that realized a traitor cop is someone who has a role that finds the answers the traitor cop already knows.

and then when I tried to explain y'all were like "Isis is a square who think Mafia Neapolitans can't be in normals or something"

lol

yeah i think some combination of just the idea of "traitor cop" leading me to think "oh of course the traitor wouldn't know so the cop thing is clever" and being almost certain that that had been done before in a normal lead me to think that, lol

gonna have to agree on squares being pretty great

[northsidegal]

don't tell implo, he might reduce my end of year NRG bonus by a few hundred thousand dollars for that mistake

[northsidegal]

perhaps traitor combined rolecop neighborizer is better? i really want the setup to have a bit of flair, lest we end up with "just another setup" - which may be a good thing, but, you know?

also, just a note on this—"just another setup" really means "a really good setup" here. kind of the entire philosophy behind the normal queue is a relatively standard, consistent experience. it's much much worse to try to have a really unique setup and end up with the players hating you than it is to just stick to something more standard.

[osuka]

perhaps traitor combined rolecop neighborizer is better? i really want the setup to have a bit of flair, lest we end up with "just another setup" - which may be a good thing, but, you know?

also, just a note on this—"just another setup" really means "a really good setup" here. kind of the entire philosophy behind the normal queue is a relatively standard, consistent experience. it's much much worse to try to have a really unique setup and end up with the players hating you than it is to just stick to something more standard.

i meant more like a standard experience that isn’t too bland. i agree that really weird setups aren’t fit for the normal queue, but i don’t want something that’s been done 100 times over

[osuka]

so do we like the setup in #32?

[Isis]

I think 32 is fine? It seems fine.

[osuka]

cool - should we inform scum that the traitor is capable of private comm?

[northsidegal]

i would change the strongman in 32 to a 1-shot or maybe 2-shot

also don't think informing is necessary

[osuka]

i don't think it's necessary either, but i like the idea. Do you think that adds too much power?

[Isis]

I don't like the informed. It's more of a quality of life thing than a balance thing.
Ungated strongman is usually bad but I'm pretty antsy about the power of jailing the even night power roles on odd nights so I kind of just want to keep it here. It's not like it renders the protective part of the Jailkeeper meaningless, it's meaningful so long as the strongman is eliminated.

[northsidegal]

i think that ungated strongman makes the setup too scumsided honestly

[osuka]

you think so? the traitor makes scums life a lot harder. in a scenario where the strongman dies, the jail keeper becomes much more powerful - but until then it’s still a role blocker.

what if we made it a non consecutive jailkeeper minus the 2 shot gate?

[osuka]

or we could add a jailkeeper backup

[Isis]

Lets do odd night strongman I think that's fine