Datisi's Mini Normal Review, July 2021

[implosion]

I despise the way the wiki is phrased on this but I’m pretty sure the answer should be that they’re blocked and rolestopped for everything but kills but not protected. At least that’s how I understand macho.

[implosion]

At least, that is what the answer ought to be since that’s the point of macho.

[Datisi]

they’re blocked and rolestopped for everything but kills but not protected.

i will go by this, then. i figured the wiki's phrasing was potentially off, so i wanted to check.

[Datisi]

1x town macho combined checker loyal mailman
1x town alien
1x town 1-shot bodyguard
1x town night 3 informed (each member of the mafia is ascetic)
1x town ascetic 2-shot disloyal fruit vendor
5x vt

1x mafia informed ascetic (there is a town night 3 informed that will know that each member of the mafia is ascetic)
2x mafia ascetic

is this being an asshole? the town ascetic 2-shot disloyal fruit vendor (that is a role name) is obviously meant to be a cursed version of a miller / suspicious claim, to the point i'm not sure.

[Datisi]

"here is your role pm. you will think that your role is useful in finding scum and can get a guilty. however, not only is your role completely useless, you cannot be cleared by the real cop, you *also* appear suspicious as fuck for your claim after the setup gets revealed, and the cop will then see you as a miller. ...have fun?"

[northsidegal]

I despise the way the wiki is phrased on this but I’m pretty sure the answer should be that they’re blocked and rolestopped for everything but kills but not protected. At least that’s how I understand macho.

At least, that is what the answer ought to be since that’s the point of macho.

i also agree with you that this is how it should work but after having checked i actually think this would be a change of precedent. we ended the debate last time with one of the all-time great quotes from CFJ, which then turned into RC's signature for a while:

If you're Macho and someone tries to rolestop you, you never realise you're being targeted for a kill, so your machismo never gets challenged.

[mastina]

(For the record, I do not agree with the "rolestop is a protective and therefore shouldn't be able to protect a Macho" viewpoint; I agree with the "rolestop is not a protective and therefore should protect a Macho" viewpoint which the famous quote encapsulates. Machos cannot be protected by babysitters, bodyguards, doctors, or jailkeepers because all of those are classified as protective actions. But a rolestopper is not classified as a protective action; it is classified as a roleblocking action. Because it in many ways acts as gifting what amounts to a combined ascetic+bulletproof, or multitasking-commute. It stops actions from succeeding on the target, rather than protecting the target from the actions.

Separately, but loosely related; I also believe that, technically speaking, Macho Bulletproof is in fact technically possible, too. Macho means you cannot be protected by protection actions, but bulletproof isn't a protection action, it's a passive kill immunity. But I'm not as sure about this combo and its legality, I may be wrong about the technicalities involved. But IF I were right about it technically being possible, of macho-bp being possible, then a role which effectively serves as making their target ascetic+bulletproof would in fact still work on a Macho, further supporting the rolestop-works-on-macho.)

[Datisi]

wouldn't it be really funny if mastina, northsidegal, and implosion had this big discussion on the interaction of an alien and a macho role, only for me to then realize that i don't like the proposed setup that sparked that discussion, and would rather try to review an almost completely different setup that's a rework of the original one i proposed, and that has neither an alien nor a macho role in it?

1x town 2-shot joat (neapolitan, rolecop, gunsmith)
1x town combined bodyguard tracker
1x town n3 informed (each member of the mafia is bulletproof)
1x town disloyal vigilante
6x vt

1x mafia bulletproof informed (there is a town n3 informed that will know that each member of the mafia is bulletproof)
2x mafia bulletproof

(i'm assuming that if a bodyguard guards a bulletproof player who gets shot, the bodyguard dies anyway)

my worry about this one is whether the majority of town roles are confirmable purely by claiming. since i feel like there's obviously going to be some synergy between an investigative who is supposed to be targetting scummy players but will die if their target gets shot, a vigilante whose shot can only go through on scum, and an informed townie who will be aware that all scum is bulletproof, i did think about possibly informing scum about the whole setup outright - but hey, that's why we're here, so.

[mastina]

(i'm assuming that if a bodyguard guards a bulletproof player who gets shot, the bodyguard dies anyway)

This, explicitly, depends on the wording used in the bodyguard's role. (Situationally, it could also matter what the bulletproof's wording was if the bp was x-shot, but ungated, doesn't factor in here pretty sure.)

If you word your bodyguard as "if your target were to die during the night, you will prevent their death but you will die" (or something to that effect), then the bodyguard would NOT die when protecting a bulletproof player or for that matter, a player being protected by other means (e.g. doctor, jailkeeper, babysitter). The BP / other protective roles' protection would take priority in protecting the bodyguard.

If you word your bodyguard as "if your target were to be shot at during the night, you will protect them from the shot but you will die" (or something to that effect), then the bodyguard

should

die when protecting a bulletproof player. (Although not relevant for the setup proposed, this interaction is a lot more muddy in a game with other protectives e.g. doctor, jailkeeper, babysitter, with both protecting the same target. Is why I personally don't like this wording.)

Semantics in this case are actually hugely important as they make a big difference. (Incidentally, semantics in wording is actually how you can break a bodyguard-doctor loop. For years it was thought that if a bodyguard protected a doctor and the doctor protected the bodyguard, it was an unbreakable loop without one of the two being roleblocked or a strongman. But actually, with the right wording in the doctor and bodyguard PMs, the loop can be broken with the bodyguard guaranteed to die if the bodyguard protects a doctor who the mafia shoot at. The key there is for a doctor's wording to involve protecting against being shot at and the bodyguard's wording to involve death if they successfully protect, which does not involve them being shot at.)

[Datisi]

This, explicitly, depends on the wording used in the bodyguard's role.

huh, i thought normal roles and interactions should always be the same and shouldn't depend on the wording. or rather, the wording should be made according to how the role is supposed to work, not the other way around.

[mastina]

In theory, yes--all wording should be made to account for how the role is supposed to work and be standardized.

However, given the literally hundreds of roles + modifiers and their literally thousands if not millions of interactions with each other, we don't have literally every single possible interaction standardized and documented. In the case of roles which haven't had an interaction standardized and documented, it's usually a game-by-game case-by-case, wording-by-wording situation, where after the game ends if the reviewers remember "this actually isn't standardized, but should be", they bring it up and hopefully after a while we fix the lack of standardization and establish one.

Basically, we can't account for every role's interaction so some slip through until a setup brings up the interaction in question. This would be a case of that;

to my knowledge

, we don't have a standardized bg-protecting-bp interaction for Normals, not yet. After this game finishes (regardless of if the interaction exists in the final game, probably safest to wait just in case), if we remember, we can bring it up in the NRG and seek to standardize it.

But currently lacking the standardization, it's a bit of mod-call, implosion-call, and imo wording used to describe it.

[Datisi]

wait, you're trying to tell me that implo doesn't have all of possibly-millions of interactions between normal roles worked out in his head and ready for applying at any moment that it's needed? damn.

looking back to my previous normal games with a bodyguard, i worded the role as "if your target were to die", but in those games, they were the only protective so it didn't matter. if this interaction isn't precisely defined yet, i want to go with the bodyguard dying if they're protecting a bulletproof getting shot at. and i think it also makes sense flavour-wise - if the bodyguard is meant to be "taking the bullet for their target", that should "trigger" before the bulletproof, no?

[Datisi]

so, at what point should i start getting worried about northsidegal?

[mastina]

so, at what point should i start getting worried about northsidegal?

About a week ago was when I was worried.

For the setup in 32 I think it's within the balance margins albeit with a lot of extreme swing involved but I was hoping nsg would've chimed in by now as it was nearly two weeks ago that you proposed that setup.

Granted, I would state again that my preferred interaction with the bp-bg is the bg not being killed, but I realize that with it not standardized yet and with the balance relying on the bg being killed, you have the right to having it work the way needed to balance it, but feel I should at least state my opinion there.

[Datisi]

hm. considering that i don't think i'd want my game to be described as "a lot of extreme swing", the queue itself is moving pretty slowly, and we're stuck in review limbo anyway... i might try to rework it again? or scrap it completely? i'll see during today if i come up with anything.

[mastina]

I do apologize the review is taking this long. Sorry. <3

[Datisi]

it's alright, not anyone's fault. <3

i'm currently a bit out of it, but i do have another idea for a setup if this one turns out to be way too swingy.

[northsidegal]

1x town 2-shot joat (neapolitan, rolecop, gunsmith)
1x town combined bodyguard tracker
1x town n3 informed (each member of the mafia is bulletproof)
1x town disloyal vigilante
6x vt

1x mafia bulletproof informed (there is a town n3 informed that will know that each member of the mafia is bulletproof)
2x mafia bulletproof

okay okey dokey let's take a look at this to stop forcing dats to wait in an endless line, so sorry about that.

uhhh, unfortunately i don't think i can really pass this. i think that too much of town power (if not all of it) rests on the JOAT, with the combined BG/tracker being like a three-step process for even getting any information. i think that the way this game would actually go down probably >50% of the time is that the JOAT gets results, the BG/tracker either dies early or just never gets any real results, and every TPR is basically just a named townie. probably some scum fakeclaim like bulletproof-finder gets believed 100% of the time; the mafia would probably end up claiming something like that even without the informed, but with the informed they get the entire game to come up with the perfect fakeclaim. looking purely at the actually relevant information town gets this game, basically all of it comes from the JOAT. so i think that this setup is probably in the unaccaptable ranges of both scumsidedness and high swing.

really sorry to come back to just say something like this but yeah.

suggestions: making the vigilante just a regular vigilante somewhat surprisingly i think actually does push the needle somewhat measurably closer towards balanced. it turns the process of getting information from the disloyal vig into one that only requires like one or two interactions (vig shoots someone, they don't die -> informed claims -> major suspicion on shot target). from there, i think i might also find a way to add some kind of complex role or vanilla cop into the setup – maybe a complex fruit vendor? just a regular VC might be stronger for town, but whatever. that would probably give town more of a fighting chance when it comes to massclaim. i might stick that role onto the n3 informed, but it's up to you.

[northsidegal]

i guess the tracker also is an information gathering role that i sort of glanced over, but without any scum night actions other than just the nightkill i don't think it warrants affecting the evaluation of the balance all that much.

[Datisi]

suggestions: making the vigilante just a regular vigilante somewhat surprisingly i think actually does push the needle somewhat measurably closer towards balanced. it turns the process of getting information from the disloyal vig into one that only requires like one or two interactions (vig shoots someone, they don't die -> informed claims -> major suspicion on shot target). from there, i think i might also find a way to add some kind of complex role or vanilla cop into the setup – maybe a complex fruit vendor? just a regular VC might be stronger for town, but whatever. that would probably give town more of a fighting chance when it comes to massclaim. i might stick that role onto the n3 informed, but it's up to you.

i don't think i'm down for this. i feel like an ungated vigilante is likely to get the town an extra yeet there, considering he can get rid of yeetbaity townies. and a vanilla cop, coupled with the informed of all mafia being bulletproof, essentially turns into a neapolitan? so that feels like potential for way too much town power. i'll go back to the drawing board.

[Datisi]

i have a question that i don't think is answered properly on the wiki - is a backup of a role bound by the modifiers of the role that dies and that they inherited? for example, if a 1-shot cop dies and there's a backup cop in the game, will the backup cop only be able to use his ability once or will he be a full cop?

i just got a setup idea, but the whole thing depends on the answer to this, and i can't find it.

[northsidegal]

so i think that the normal interpretation (or my interpretation at least) is that backup is actually a modifier attached to a role which says "you can't use your role until another player with the same role dies". i think that this actually allows for some stuff that probably doesn't have precedent and maybe should be more clearly standardized, but isn't

super

unintuitive.

for instance, i think that you could have a loyal backup cop which would become a loyal cop if a normal cop died. alternatively, you could have a backup loyal cop, which would only be able to use its role if another loyal cop died. does that make sense?

so, to answer your question more specifically, it depends on how you set the role up, but i think you could set it up that way of you want.

[Datisi]

so if i had three mafia backup ascetics, and one of them died, the other two would become full ascetics, right?

(this is one of those posts of mine where i imagine nrg rolling their eyes when they read it)

[northsidegal]

haha, mostly i just laugh a little when people go for unique interactions like that, they're sort of fun to work out. the truly eye rolling experience is seeing a setup that someone sent you where every single role has four prefixes and there are only three vanilla roles in the whole setup.

my answer to that i think would be no, because a backup ascetic would only active when an ascetic died, not when a backup ascetic died. so, to go back to my example, if you had a backup loyal cop and a cop died, it wouldn't activate, just the same as it wouldn't activate if you had a backup cop and a loyal cop died.

again, this is just my interpretation (cough cough

@implo

), but i'm decently sure that this is how it works?

[Datisi]

four prefixes on every role and only three vanilla townies, you say? i can do that.

anyway, hm. i see, i thought it was needed that just any ascetic died. back back again to the drawing board, unless implo swoops in.