hi, i'm large normal 242. and i'm over with.

[Enchant]

I thought we lost, but when i saw Luke opening at day, i decided we have fighting chance and Luke managed. I am amazed honestly.

Now i want to post it before titus comes to roast MathBlade: you did well, everyone.
Being wrong is part of this.

[Lukewarm]

That was the good things I had to say about the game. The players were all excellent.

However, I cannot fathom how this set up passed review

mafia 2-shot follower
mafia 1-shot loyal bodyguard
mafia night 3 voyeur
1x Goon

V

town novice disloyal vigilante
town fruit vendor
town voyeur
town novice joat (roleblocker, alien, tracker)
town rolecop
town 4-shot rolecop
town even-night combined doctor tracker
5x VTs

This is the most "fuck you scum team" set up I have ever personally seen in a game. The 2 shot follower was basically our only useful pr, with the night 3 voyeur being fairly useless, and the 1-shot loyal bodyguard was an actively harmful role.

If it the BG ever worked, we... still lost scum, and gave a guilty to the vig. If we holster, the loyal modifier means we are fucked if forced to coordinate with the voyeur.

and on the flip side, the town had a disloyal vigilante (which is possibly the strongest possible town PR?) + a doc + 5 invest type roles.


A Disloyal Vigilante existing, along side a protective, in a game where the scum team did not have any form or ways to influence (roleblock, jailkeeper, scum doc, strongman, SOMETHING) that is pretty messed up


And I kind of worry that since the scum team won, no one who approved this set up will even care to listen to the fact that this set up was bad for the scum team. But it was. We won DESPITE that, largely because town got so lost in the messed up mechanics of this game that they floundered for a few day phases.

This game makes me want to steer away from the Normal Queue so long as set ups like this are getting passed by review.

Anyways.

Rant over.

[Lukewarm]

before titus comes to roast MathBlade

lmao

[JohnnyFarrar]

something i plan to implement the next time i modorate a game is like some way for mafia to highlight stuff for their replacements. in principle, nothing is stopping mafia from literally just doing this themselves in the scum pt, but also nobody plans around having to replace out in the future and also nobody gives a fuck about the game the second they decide to replace out. here's a writeup of how i'd put it in the rules

[some note in the setup post] (starting) in this game, i'll be giving mafia the ability to make a diary of messages to send to any future replacements to their slot. this is primarily to aid in keeping track of things like fakeclaims, and should have limited effect on gameplay. Im simply disclosing it. mafia should still look out for things their predecessors forgot or neglected to highlight (i'm not helping with this*)

[in the mafia PT] you can keep a list of notes for any future replacements. if you put "

highlight

" at the top of any of your posts in this PT, i'll send a list of those highlighted posts in the role PM i send to anybody that may replace your slot in the future. you are encouraged to do this to record any roles or actions you fakeclaim in the main thread. (as always, i automatically inform replacements of actions you did truthfully take).

*i think it just barely leans towards mod influence if i literally just keep track of fakeclaims myself. i think the aspect of it where i'm like personally doing the players' job doesn't really matter if i do it consistently because it doesn't really have a way to tip off info to anyone, but of course i might forget to do it sometimes and maybe it causes me to be more keen on the players' claims which in turn puts me more at risk of accidentally communicating something to someone.

really, messing up a fakeclaim because you replaced is just something that shouldnt ever happen. it's just like annoying extra work to have to do when you replace into a scum slot which i think people already don't like doing, and it's easy enough to mess up, and it feels like out of game influence. theres a small extent i'm willing to let a good guy with OGI beat a bad guy with OGI and do the extra work myself but also i dont want to. lol.

this is something from the mod thread that i wonder if anyone would have thoughts about

I tend to replace into late stage games like this because the spots don't always get taken, and yeah this would be super helpful

[Lukewarm]

This is the most "fuck you scum team" set up I have ever personally seen in a game

Just to put more words to this. Because I cannot help myself.

There was no scum play around the super vigilante. It plus the existence of town a town protective is what really did it. I am aware that the protective was even night, but that does not matter, because once the scum realize there is a doc, they have to assume that the doc is going to be on the vig for ever, and can never target the vig until the doc dies. No way to know that it was even night

Also, 2 different (basically) full town role cop makes any and all fake claiming a death sentence, with no way for scum to know that in advance. Because, it turns out, by the end of the game, basically every slot will be role coped. And this could lead to a guilty even with seemingly "safe" fake claims, like just... not saying that your body guard effect was loyal because you don't want to be caught by voyeur coordination.

Scum had no counterplay for the super vigilante, were completely unable to fake claim with no way to know that, and basically all of their useful abilities locked into a single, 2 shot, role.

While town had a bajillion tprs.

[Big Chungus Gaming]

well played.

sorry i wanted to do a favor and help and broke my retirement and lost motivation to play altogether

[Big Chungus Gaming]

also yes this was townsided asf, where scum knew several PRs, shot correctly every night, miseliminated a strong PR, and still were in a really shit spot.

[Big Chungus Gaming]

something i plan to implement the next time i modorate a game is like some way for mafia to highlight stuff for their replacements. in principle, nothing is stopping mafia from literally just doing this themselves in the scum pt, but also nobody plans around having to replace out in the future and also nobody gives a fuck about the game the second they decide to replace out. here's a writeup of how i'd put it in the rules

[some note in the setup post] (starting) in this game, i'll be giving mafia the ability to make a diary of messages to send to any future replacements to their slot. this is primarily to aid in keeping track of things like fakeclaims, and should have limited effect on gameplay. Im simply disclosing it. mafia should still look out for things their predecessors forgot or neglected to highlight (i'm not helping with this*)

[in the mafia PT] you can keep a list of notes for any future replacements. if you put "

highlight

" at the top of any of your posts in this PT, i'll send a list of those highlighted posts in the role PM i send to anybody that may replace your slot in the future. you are encouraged to do this to record any roles or actions you fakeclaim in the main thread. (as always, i automatically inform replacements of actions you did truthfully take).

*i think it just barely leans towards mod influence if i literally just keep track of fakeclaims myself. i think the aspect of it where i'm like personally doing the players' job doesn't really matter if i do it consistently because it doesn't really have a way to tip off info to anyone, but of course i might forget to do it sometimes and maybe it causes me to be more keen on the players' claims which in turn puts me more at risk of accidentally communicating something to someone.

really, messing up a fakeclaim because you replaced is just something that shouldnt ever happen. it's just like annoying extra work to have to do when you replace into a scum slot which i think people already don't like doing, and it's easy enough to mess up, and it feels like out of game influence. theres a small extent i'm willing to let a good guy with OGI beat a bad guy with OGI and do the extra work myself but also i dont want to. lol.

this is something from the mod thread that i wonder if anyone would have thoughts about

I tend to replace into late stage games like this because the spots don't always get taken, and yeah this would be super helpful

I left a message on my exact actions before I replaced out, I advise reading the scum PT and your prior slot before posting

[Big Chungus Gaming]

That was the good things I had to say about the game. The players were all excellent.

However, I cannot fathom how this set up passed review

mafia 2-shot follower
mafia 1-shot loyal bodyguard
mafia night 3 voyeur
1x Goon

V

town novice disloyal vigilante
town fruit vendor
town voyeur
town novice joat (roleblocker, alien, tracker)
town rolecop
town 4-shot rolecop
town even-night combined doctor tracker
5x VTs

This is the most "fuck you scum team" set up I have ever personally seen in a game. The 2 shot follower was basically our only useful pr, with the night 3 voyeur being fairly useless, and the 1-shot loyal bodyguard was an actively harmful role.

If it the BG ever worked, we... still lost scum, and gave a guilty to the vig. If we holster, the loyal modifier means we are fucked if forced to coordinate with the voyeur.

and on the flip side, the town had a disloyal vigilante (which is possibly the strongest possible town PR?) + a doc + 5 invest type roles.


A Disloyal Vigilante existing, along side a protective, in a game where the scum team did not have any form or ways to influence (roleblock, jailkeeper, scum doc, strongman, SOMETHING) that is pretty messed up


And I kind of worry that since the scum team won, no one who approved this set up will even care to listen to the fact that this set up was bad for the scum team. But it was. We won DESPITE that, largely because town got so lost in the messed up mechanics of this game that they floundered for a few day phases.

This game makes me want to steer away from the Normal Queue so long as set ups like this are getting passed by review.

Anyways.

Rant over.

I helpfully "burned" my shot before the claims were out enough to force coordination

[Big Chungus Gaming]

adding disloyal to a vigilante and then giving power that prevents fakeclaiming + can protect the vig turns the game into a PR puzzle for scum, because the power level of a disloyal vig is so absurd because it removes the massive drawback of the role( that i feel makes it not very good) and also gives it a possibility to create soft innos.


mech wifom only works for so long but i guess it is good to punish townies for trying to game setups - but still, there ought to be a limit of balance thats expected, informed of at least some aspect of the setup would have been massive QoL of helping give mafia an idea of possible angles to avoid, or what to look out for.


also personally i thought it would be so absurd to have a disloyal vig that i assumed NM was a regular vig who was trolling and thats why i left him alive, because after pooky i felt he would shoot at town

[Prism]

This is another immediate first-ballot inductee into the NRG Hall of Fame. At some point we should just give up the ghost and play mafia the way god intended, spamming Mountainous and D&C/Coalition.

[schadd_]

However, I cannot fathom how this set up passed review

in various places, i've talked about the difficulties in making a normal setup that doesn't, uh, suck. maybe more specifically i think it might be true that every investigative role makes the game worse. i try to come up with fun ways for them to exist in setups, because people seem to want to have them - i think there's an appeal to feeling like "we can catch most of the wolves and then maybe the investigative can spot us the hard one". but that's kind of a Cop out, like a way to prevent towns from having to deal with the fear of any particular person being really good as mafia. and i think they're also just a bummer.

what makes investigatives a bummer for mafia in particular is that the #1 thing you always have to do in order to play around them well, is to figure out who has what role without them telling you. imagine a setup that's just 13 vs 4 where everyone is vanilla except for one cop. i dont think anyone would claim to have a problem with that setup (on non-balance reasons - in practice you'd call it scumsided), but it also sucks a lot for scum. sometimes the cop stays alive for a long time and gets a lot of results, just on the basis that scum weren't able to pick the right person to shoot. a common idea is to give scum a roleblocker to "deal with" whatever role, but what it actually does is just let you pick a next-best choice for who is a PR, and so the exact same problem remains: how do you figure out who is a PR? in all my time modding i can't think of a single person that could do that convincingly (probably it has happened but it's more of an exception. it's not a skill that visibly and commonly exists in the way that e.g. finding scum is)

i kind of like having vigilantes, because they publicly show information that helps identify them. if NM hadnt claimed n2, mafia could be like: who the fuck would shoot pooky? although, i guess they'd be working from partial information given that they didn't know the vig was disloyal.

adding a roleblocker to this setup has this enjoyability issue, where it doesn't actually change the outcome of the vig's action most of the time. meaning, even if you do the impossible and correctly select the right person to roleblock, most of the time they will emerge saying "aha! i have cleared this person as town" and be accidentally correct. and then on the other hand when they do it correctly and the vig shoots scum, it sucks a lot for town, possibly even up to the point of making the rest of the game just moot because there's an incorrect inno. i think doctor has similar problems although it's sort of easier for scum to use at least. i think it's a flaw in the setup that there's some occasions where the vig claims and then there's the whole doctoring problem, although those will happen rather infrequently. but to me, roleblocker and doctor don't seem like the way to do it. i could do something where i tape over the cracks a bunch of times by making the vig macho (i think strongman is problematic) and then informing scum that the vig is macho, and then doing something to the doctor that prevents them from wasting their shot on the vig (because that sucks to do), and then adding a bunch of pointless informs to town so that it doesn't seem like a scum characteristic to have "informed" in your role, and then etc etc. but more realistically i think i just eliminate a bunch of options from my future setups, which makes them blander but i guess i don't mind that. disloyal in particular just seems like it sucks. i've advised against it in past reviews but i thought id try it this time. woops. of course, the fact that i'm saying this in general tips my hand as far as designing future setups and there might be a time that scum fakeclaims disloyal in one of them and somebody remembers "oh schadd didnt want to use disloyal anymore" and so maybe i have to say in my rules post that i dont use disloyal. well, maybe i will. i dont know.

there's a bunch of other little quibbles i could make regarding the minor PRs in the setup - i think the voyeur and the rolecops don't actually help town very much (and they probably accelerate the rate at which town roles get revealed to the public), and chungus correctly notes that they found a way to deal with the baggage from loyal bodyguard (at which point they get to bask in the status of having what sounds like a town role). as scum you probably shouldnt ever actually use it. this is all what i think anyway. i kind of persist in thinking this setup is fine for scum in a purely numbers way but idk how i'd get anyone else to think so & i wouldn't really aim to controvert someone wanting to stop playing normals (when theme setups suck, they're usually interesting at least). and i've spent far too long here anyway. i always read people's complaints about the setup and i think about them whenever i make a setup i think about the potential problems it has and how i can mitigate the complaints people had from the last game, and then i run it and there's a new cycle of complaints. thats how it feels anyway.

[schadd_]

This is another immediate first-ballot inductee into the NRG Hall of Fame. At some point we should just give up the ghost and play mafia the way god intended, spamming Mountainous and D&C/Coalition.

if everyone agrees to join vanilla games i'll mod 100,000 of them. until then, viewtopic.php?f=5&t=72245

[MathBlade]

something i plan to implement the next time i modorate a game is like some way for mafia to highlight stuff for their replacements. in principle, nothing is stopping mafia from literally just doing this themselves in the scum pt, but also nobody plans around having to replace out in the future and also nobody gives a fuck about the game the second they decide to replace out. here's a writeup of how i'd put it in the rules

[some note in the setup post] (starting) in this game, i'll be giving mafia the ability to make a diary of messages to send to any future replacements to their slot. this is primarily to aid in keeping track of things like fakeclaims, and should have limited effect on gameplay. Im simply disclosing it. mafia should still look out for things their predecessors forgot or neglected to highlight (i'm not helping with this*)

[in the mafia PT] you can keep a list of notes for any future replacements. if you put "

highlight

" at the top of any of your posts in this PT, i'll send a list of those highlighted posts in the role PM i send to anybody that may replace your slot in the future. you are encouraged to do this to record any roles or actions you fakeclaim in the main thread. (as always, i automatically inform replacements of actions you did truthfully take).

*i think it just barely leans towards mod influence if i literally just keep track of fakeclaims myself. i think the aspect of it where i'm like personally doing the players' job doesn't really matter if i do it consistently because it doesn't really have a way to tip off info to anyone, but of course i might forget to do it sometimes and maybe it causes me to be more keen on the players' claims which in turn puts me more at risk of accidentally communicating something to someone.

really, messing up a fakeclaim because you replaced is just something that shouldnt ever happen. it's just like annoying extra work to have to do when you replace into a scum slot which i think people already don't like doing, and it's easy enough to mess up, and it feels like out of game influence. theres a small extent i'm willing to let a good guy with OGI beat a bad guy with OGI and do the extra work myself but also i dont want to. lol.

this is something from the mod thread that i wonder if anyone would have thoughts about

I think it comes down more to replacement experience and scum team health.
First thing a scum player should do on a replace in is “Hey tldr hit me with important crap before I read” especially in a game with a lot of content. It’s a learning experience. I feel his slot was doa anyway the mistake was just one thing.

If the scum team is apathetic then it doesn’t help. What we need is like a scum refresher on site imho.

[MathBlade]

I thought we lost, but when i saw Luke opening at day, i decided we have fighting chance and Luke managed. I am amazed honestly.

Now i want to post it before titus comes to roast MathBlade: you did well, everyone.
Being wrong is part of this.

Thanks Enchant I really have been trying to work on cooperating more. Glad it’s not a dunk on me fest.

Sorry I was wrong. I am also sorry I gave the impression I was sure on Maria I said I would be reevaluating if I lived.

[MathBlade]

That was the good things I had to say about the game. The players were all excellent.

However, I cannot fathom how this set up passed review

mafia 2-shot follower
mafia 1-shot loyal bodyguard
mafia night 3 voyeur
1x Goon

V

town novice disloyal vigilante
town fruit vendor
town voyeur
town novice joat (roleblocker, alien, tracker)
town rolecop
town 4-shot rolecop
town even-night combined doctor tracker
5x VTs

This is the most "fuck you scum team" set up I have ever personally seen in a game. The 2 shot follower was basically our only useful pr, with the night 3 voyeur being fairly useless, and the 1-shot loyal bodyguard was an actively harmful role.

If it the BG ever worked, we... still lost scum, and gave a guilty to the vig. If we holster, the loyal modifier means we are fucked if forced to coordinate with the voyeur.

and on the flip side, the town had a disloyal vigilante (which is possibly the strongest possible town PR?) + a doc + 5 invest type roles.


A Disloyal Vigilante existing, along side a protective, in a game where the scum team did not have any form or ways to influence (roleblock, jailkeeper, scum doc, strongman, SOMETHING) that is pretty messed up


And I kind of worry that since the scum team won, no one who approved this set up will even care to listen to the fact that this set up was bad for the scum team. But it was. We won DESPITE that, largely because town got so lost in the messed up mechanics of this game that they floundered for a few day phases.

This game makes me want to steer away from the Normal Queue so long as set ups like this are getting passed by review.

Anyways.

Rant over.

I tend to agree with that with the exception of all the “can’t this all be town there” really worked in scum’s favor.

I think maybe a 1 shot vig soup would balance but that’s not normal.

[MathBlade]

The BG just has to “miss” on a tow player early and not recommend themselves to guard a buddy.

It’s meant as an inno to rolecops not actually used

I don’t think people reviewing expected me to break the setup like I did

[MathBlade]

something i plan to implement the next time i modorate a game is like some way for mafia to highlight stuff for their replacements. in principle, nothing is stopping mafia from literally just doing this themselves in the scum pt, but also nobody plans around having to replace out in the future and also nobody gives a fuck about the game the second they decide to replace out. here's a writeup of how i'd put it in the rules

[some note in the setup post] (starting) in this game, i'll be giving mafia the ability to make a diary of messages to send to any future replacements to their slot. this is primarily to aid in keeping track of things like fakeclaims, and should have limited effect on gameplay. Im simply disclosing it. mafia should still look out for things their predecessors forgot or neglected to highlight (i'm not helping with this*)

[in the mafia PT] you can keep a list of notes for any future replacements. if you put "

highlight

" at the top of any of your posts in this PT, i'll send a list of those highlighted posts in the role PM i send to anybody that may replace your slot in the future. you are encouraged to do this to record any roles or actions you fakeclaim in the main thread. (as always, i automatically inform replacements of actions you did truthfully take).

*i think it just barely leans towards mod influence if i literally just keep track of fakeclaims myself. i think the aspect of it where i'm like personally doing the players' job doesn't really matter if i do it consistently because it doesn't really have a way to tip off info to anyone, but of course i might forget to do it sometimes and maybe it causes me to be more keen on the players' claims which in turn puts me more at risk of accidentally communicating something to someone.

really, messing up a fakeclaim because you replaced is just something that shouldnt ever happen. it's just like annoying extra work to have to do when you replace into a scum slot which i think people already don't like doing, and it's easy enough to mess up, and it feels like out of game influence. theres a small extent i'm willing to let a good guy with OGI beat a bad guy with OGI and do the extra work myself but also i dont want to. lol.

this is something from the mod thread that i wonder if anyone would have thoughts about

I tend to replace into late stage games like this because the spots don't always get taken, and yeah this would be super helpful

If you’re interested feel free to DM me

I have a script sometimes that helps me dive in. Won’t always work but it’s a good start

[MathBlade]

This is the most "fuck you scum team" set up I have ever personally seen in a game

Just to put more words to this. Because I cannot help myself.

There was no scum play around the super vigilante. It plus the existence of town a town protective is what really did it. I am aware that the protective was even night, but that does not matter, because once the scum realize there is a doc, they have to assume that the doc is going to be on the vig for ever, and can never target the vig until the doc dies. No way to know that it was even night

Also, 2 different (basically) full town role cop makes any and all fake claiming a death sentence, with no way for scum to know that in advance. Because, it turns out, by the end of the game, basically every slot will be role coped. And this could lead to a guilty even with seemingly "safe" fake claims, like just... not saying that your body guard effect was loyal because you don't want to be caught by voyeur coordination.

Scum had no counterplay for the super vigilante, were completely unable to fake claim with no way to know that, and basically all of their useful abilities locked into a single, 2 shot, role.

While town had a bajillion tprs.

I think with the current site meta this is very townsided for it.

The review team took the multipr as way more powerful than it should have.

Like I said needed a 1 shot soup or factionals.

[Lukewarm]

Spoiler:

However, I cannot fathom how this set up passed review

in various places, i've talked about the difficulties in making a normal setup that doesn't, uh, suck. maybe more specifically i think it might be true that every investigative role makes the game worse. i try to come up with fun ways for them to exist in setups, because people seem to want to have them - i think there's an appeal to feeling like "we can catch most of the wolves and then maybe the investigative can spot us the hard one". but that's kind of a Cop out, like a way to prevent towns from having to deal with the fear of any particular person being really good as mafia. and i think they're also just a bummer.

what makes investigatives a bummer for mafia in particular is that the #1 thing you always have to do in order to play around them well, is to figure out who has what role without them telling you. imagine a setup that's just 13 vs 4 where everyone is vanilla except for one cop. i dont think anyone would claim to have a problem with that setup (on non-balance reasons - in practice you'd call it scumsided), but it also sucks a lot for scum. sometimes the cop stays alive for a long time and gets a lot of results, just on the basis that scum weren't able to pick the right person to shoot. a common idea is to give scum a roleblocker to "deal with" whatever role, but what it actually does is just let you pick a next-best choice for who is a PR, and so the exact same problem remains: how do you figure out who is a PR? in all my time modding i can't think of a single person that could do that convincingly (probably it has happened but it's more of an exception. it's not a skill that visibly and commonly exists in the way that e.g. finding scum is)

i kind of like having vigilantes, because they publicly show information that helps identify them. if NM hadnt claimed n2, mafia could be like: who the fuck would shoot pooky? although, i guess they'd be working from partial information given that they didn't know the vig was disloyal.

adding a roleblocker to this setup has this enjoyability issue, where it doesn't actually change the outcome of the vig's action most of the time. meaning, even if you do the impossible and correctly select the right person to roleblock, most of the time they will emerge saying "aha! i have cleared this person as town" and be accidentally correct. and then on the other hand when they do it correctly and the vig shoots scum, it sucks a lot for town, possibly even up to the point of making the rest of the game just moot because there's an incorrect inno. i think doctor has similar problems although it's sort of easier for scum to use at least. i think it's a flaw in the setup that there's some occasions where the vig claims and then there's the whole doctoring problem, although those will happen rather infrequently. but to me, roleblocker and doctor don't seem like the way to do it. i could do something where i tape over the cracks a bunch of times by making the vig macho (i think strongman is problematic) and then informing scum that the vig is macho, and then doing something to the doctor that prevents them from wasting their shot on the vig (because that sucks to do), and then adding a bunch of pointless informs to town so that it doesn't seem like a scum characteristic to have "informed" in your role, and then etc etc. but more realistically i think i just eliminate a bunch of options from my future setups, which makes them blander but i guess i don't mind that. disloyal in particular just seems like it sucks. i've advised against it in past reviews but i thought id try it this time. woops. of course, the fact that i'm saying this in general tips my hand as far as designing future setups and there might be a time that scum fakeclaims disloyal in one of them and somebody remembers "oh schadd didnt want to use disloyal anymore" and so maybe i have to say in my rules post that i dont use disloyal. well, maybe i will. i dont know.

there's a bunch of other little quibbles i could make regarding the minor PRs in the setup - i think the voyeur and the rolecops don't actually help town very much (and they probably accelerate the rate at which town roles get revealed to the public), and chungus correctly notes that they found a way to deal with the baggage from loyal bodyguard (at which point they get to bask in the status of having what sounds like a town role). as scum you probably shouldnt ever actually use it. this is all what i think anyway. i kind of persist in thinking this setup is fine for scum in a purely numbers way but idk how i'd get anyone else to think so & i wouldn't really aim to controvert someone wanting to stop playing normals (when theme setups suck, they're usually interesting at least). and i've spent far too long here anyway. i always read people's complaints about the setup and i think about them whenever i make a setup i think about the potential problems it has and how i can mitigate the complaints people had from the last game, and then i run it and there's a new cycle of complaints. thats how it feels anyway.

I think that just... not having the vigilante being disloyal would have been the first step to fixing this setup. I have not put a lot of thought into the disloyal modifier on the whole, but on the surface I feel like it can work on a role other then Vig, but you are super charging an already strong PR. Like a disloyal vig is a magnitude stronger then a cop imo. Your comments on the issues that something like a scum doc or a scum roleblocker would create would be completely moot if that modifier was not on the vig.

But IF you are going ot give something like that to town, you NEED to give scum SOMETHING.

i kind of persist in thinking this setup is fine for scum in a purely numbers way but idk how i'd get anyone else to think so

I disagree with this, and it feels like your numbers have a built in assumption that town will play their roles poorly, which is a bad assumption to build into balance imo.

But I am going to skip past the numbers, because firstly, I don't care to sit down and run them. But also the numbers are not the only thing that matter in a designing a game.

Me, enchant, Koba, and pooky have all told you that this set up felt bad to play as scum in. "But the numbers say its ~fine~" does not change that. This set up felt BAD to be scum in, and this is coming from someone who PREFERS to be scum. I don't normally feel that way when I roll scum.

This is a setup design which makes an entire faction feel like it is a poorly designed set up. In my opinion, it making the entire faction feel that way proves that it is true.

[MathBlade]

This is another immediate first-ballot inductee into the NRG Hall of Fame. At some point we should just give up the ghost and play mafia the way god intended, spamming Mountainous and D&C/Coalition.

This definitely has changed some of how I play in the future for sure.

As for hall of fame I could see this for the scum team’s play (esp Luke) but for the setup no.

[Lukewarm]

This is another immediate first-ballot inductee into the NRG Hall of Fame. At some point we should just give up the ghost and play mafia the way god intended, spamming Mountainous and D&C/Coalition.

This definitely has changed some of how I play in the future for sure.

As for hall of fame I could see this for the scum team’s play (esp Luke) but for the setup no.

I think that she meant that sarcastically math lol

(See her conclusion that it would have been better to have just done mountainous)

[MathBlade]

Spoiler:

However, I cannot fathom how this set up passed review

in various places, i've talked about the difficulties in making a normal setup that doesn't, uh, suck. maybe more specifically i think it might be true that every investigative role makes the game worse. i try to come up with fun ways for them to exist in setups, because people seem to want to have them - i think there's an appeal to feeling like "we can catch most of the wolves and then maybe the investigative can spot us the hard one". but that's kind of a Cop out, like a way to prevent towns from having to deal with the fear of any particular person being really good as mafia. and i think they're also just a bummer.

what makes investigatives a bummer for mafia in particular is that the #1 thing you always have to do in order to play around them well, is to figure out who has what role without them telling you. imagine a setup that's just 13 vs 4 where everyone is vanilla except for one cop. i dont think anyone would claim to have a problem with that setup (on non-balance reasons - in practice you'd call it scumsided), but it also sucks a lot for scum. sometimes the cop stays alive for a long time and gets a lot of results, just on the basis that scum weren't able to pick the right person to shoot. a common idea is to give scum a roleblocker to "deal with" whatever role, but what it actually does is just let you pick a next-best choice for who is a PR, and so the exact same problem remains: how do you figure out who is a PR? in all my time modding i can't think of a single person that could do that convincingly (probably it has happened but it's more of an exception. it's not a skill that visibly and commonly exists in the way that e.g. finding scum is)

i kind of like having vigilantes, because they publicly show information that helps identify them. if NM hadnt claimed n2, mafia could be like: who the fuck would shoot pooky? although, i guess they'd be working from partial information given that they didn't know the vig was disloyal.

adding a roleblocker to this setup has this enjoyability issue, where it doesn't actually change the outcome of the vig's action most of the time. meaning, even if you do the impossible and correctly select the right person to roleblock, most of the time they will emerge saying "aha! i have cleared this person as town" and be accidentally correct. and then on the other hand when they do it correctly and the vig shoots scum, it sucks a lot for town, possibly even up to the point of making the rest of the game just moot because there's an incorrect inno. i think doctor has similar problems although it's sort of easier for scum to use at least. i think it's a flaw in the setup that there's some occasions where the vig claims and then there's the whole doctoring problem, although those will happen rather infrequently. but to me, roleblocker and doctor don't seem like the way to do it. i could do something where i tape over the cracks a bunch of times by making the vig macho (i think strongman is problematic) and then informing scum that the vig is macho, and then doing something to the doctor that prevents them from wasting their shot on the vig (because that sucks to do), and then adding a bunch of pointless informs to town so that it doesn't seem like a scum characteristic to have "informed" in your role, and then etc etc. but more realistically i think i just eliminate a bunch of options from my future setups, which makes them blander but i guess i don't mind that. disloyal in particular just seems like it sucks. i've advised against it in past reviews but i thought id try it this time. woops. of course, the fact that i'm saying this in general tips my hand as far as designing future setups and there might be a time that scum fakeclaims disloyal in one of them and somebody remembers "oh schadd didnt want to use disloyal anymore" and so maybe i have to say in my rules post that i dont use disloyal. well, maybe i will. i dont know.

there's a bunch of other little quibbles i could make regarding the minor PRs in the setup - i think the voyeur and the rolecops don't actually help town very much (and they probably accelerate the rate at which town roles get revealed to the public), and chungus correctly notes that they found a way to deal with the baggage from loyal bodyguard (at which point they get to bask in the status of having what sounds like a town role). as scum you probably shouldnt ever actually use it. this is all what i think anyway. i kind of persist in thinking this setup is fine for scum in a purely numbers way but idk how i'd get anyone else to think so & i wouldn't really aim to controvert someone wanting to stop playing normals (when theme setups suck, they're usually interesting at least). and i've spent far too long here anyway. i always read people's complaints about the setup and i think about them whenever i make a setup i think about the potential problems it has and how i can mitigate the complaints people had from the last game, and then i run it and there's a new cycle of complaints. thats how it feels anyway.

I think that just... not having the vigilante being disloyal would have been the first step to fixing this setup. I have not put a lot of thought into the disloyal modifier on the whole, but on the surface I feel like it can work on a role other then Vig, but you are super charging an already strong PR. Like a disloyal vig is a magnitude stronger then a cop imo. Your comments on the issues that something like a scum doc or a scum roleblocker would create would be completely moot if that modifier was not on the vig.

But IF you are going ot give something like that to town, you NEED to give scum SOMETHING.

i kind of persist in thinking this setup is fine for scum in a purely numbers way but idk how i'd get anyone else to think so

I disagree with this, and it feels like your numbers have a built in assumption that town will play their roles poorly, which is a bad assumption to build into balance imo.

But I am going to skip past the numbers, because firstly, I don't care to sit down and run them. But also the numbers are not the only thing that matter in a designing a game.

Me, enchant, Koba, and pooky have all told you that this set up felt bad to play as scum in. "But the numbers say its ~fine~" does not change that. This set up felt BAD to be scum in, and this is coming from someone who PREFERS to be scum. I don't normally feel that way when I roll scum.

This is a setup design which makes an entire faction feel like it is a poorly designed set up. In my opinion, it making the entire faction feel that way proves that it is true.

I enjoy way more scum as town
Town just feels like you get yelled at all the time and become numb to it.

But that being said I think this would have sucked to be scum in.

Balance is about agency.

This had the same problem as Calculasia. Scum don’t have the freedom to breathe.

[MathBlade]

This is another immediate first-ballot inductee into the NRG Hall of Fame. At some point we should just give up the ghost and play mafia the way god intended, spamming Mountainous and D&C/Coalition.

This definitely has changed some of how I play in the future for sure.

As for hall of fame I could see this for the scum team’s play (esp Luke) but for the setup no.

I think that she meant that sarcastically math lol

(See her conclusion that it would have been better to have just done mountainous)

Oh I thought she was serious in that play mattered over mechanics.

My sarcasm detector is broken.

[schadd_]

...

maybe it sounds like i'm trying to be dismissive, or not putting thought into the stuff youre saying. it maybe seemed like a throwaway comment but i was telling the truth when i said i always read and think abt peoples setup complaints. i guess i have to find where i disagree on the factual interpretation of things and then i also have to find where i disagree with how to remedy the issues that are there. but i actually think you and i have a lot of the same conclusions. i dont like disloyal vig either (though i kind of stand by testing it out - unmodified vig is like kind of weird and uninteresting if you think about it but ppl still like having vigs. its fun to have a random red flip). i care about how things feel for scum, when i was talking to pooky i think i said that i spend more time thinking abt the feeling of the game than the balance (or something like that). but theres this point both of you kept coming to, which is "scum needs to have something to deal with this." and i think there's problems with any something you'd come up with. when i give scum a roleblocker it creates a small amount of scenarios where they pick good blocks (i think this generally happens by luck) and then a large amount of scenarios where they don't, and it maybe feels like it was their fault instead of my fault and so they dont offer criticism. i dont like that. i want scum to have truly actionable decisions to make instead of aesthetic ones and i think those are rare, and come more often from tricky town roles than like traditionally strong scum roles.

historically i seem to get more complaints from scum teams, which maybe comes from the fact that i prioritize things being clear to town (since theres more of them and things are automatically already unclear for them), and maybe also some combination of my theory abt how i dont give them roleblockers etc. and me just not being good at designing games for scumteams. i usually like to have rolecoppy stuff (since it also just decreases the variance of how long prs get to stay alive) which also i guess helps that feeling of agency but in this setup i prioritized having scum roles that look innocent enough and it was to the detriment of them being functional for finding roles. i thinki just didnt think enough about the timing of the even-night doctor & novice vig vs. the 2-shot follower. if a different wolf died u think pooky would have had one result eliminating a candidate for who was the vig which is i guess something