Mini Normal 2283 - Game Over!

[Frogsterking]

Village played pretty badly, and I’m exiling myself from playing for another year or maybe forever. gg mafia.

That's too bad, if I could draft pick my dream village you would be one of my top picks. Let me explain:

I meant, what peopel have to say about it when I lay out the reasons. But you're right, I don't think I'm going to get much out of waiting.

The problems I have with that vote are

1) it was waaay too early to accuse Firebringer of not wanting to have reads.
2) it was also too early to accuse scum of not wanting to fill out your survey - barely half the game had posted at that time.
3) you didn't explain why scum would or would not interact with your quiz.
4) I purposefully ignored your quiz to see what you would do about it, and you didn't react at all, which makes me think that 2 was complete bull.
5) you townreading me right after that felt appease-y.

I left the thread because how am I--after delivering the best post-high school/non-livechat scum performance of my life--supposed to respond to this?

I guess I'll go ahead and answer it that way, because if that isn't it either then I really can't imagine what you actually want from me.

Individually, they aren't slam-dunk scumtells. They're quirks in his play that actively caught my attention and made me think that he wasn't approaching the game as a villager because of how many wires he tripped (for me). 1 is a BS reason to vote someone period (slightly scummy), 2 is him ruining his own alleged gambit (his read probably isn't genine), 3 is making up a reason to scumread someone (same reason as 2), 4 circles back to 2 and makes it even less of a genuine gambit, and 5 is kind of a classical/general scumtell.

Anyway, turns out Frog is probably just a goofball and was acting out an obscure inside joke? I dunno, I buy it for now.

I had you as a mark at this point because of your temperament. Your willingness to give me a chance despite my dodgy behavior is a sign that you are high in the Agreeableness superfactor of the 5 factor model, which I use exclusively compared to other "personality tests" like the MBTI or the Enneagram, because the 5 factor model is the only model with quantitative evidence that it's

predictive

of future behavior. Agreeableness contains factors like compassion, trust and cooperation. To illustrate what I mean, here is counter example from this game of a situation where your Agreeableness lead you to make an excellent decision:

Despite thinking I'm likely scum you're very happy to follow my vote

I don’t think you are. PoE just makes it really hard for me to see two mafia elsewhere. What does the game look like if we’re both town? And can you answer Aisa, because I have the same question.

I don't think Frog is scum

I'm not enjoying playing with them

:/

I'm not enjoying this game at all tbh, but that's more because it just feels like no matter how I flip my reads, they're all wrong somehow. I think I was better off not playing mafia.

But let's explore some worlds? Say you and I are spontaneous ICs. That leaves:

Aisa
Eiralox
Bellaphant
Enchant
NM
Frog

Bella is the Vig. I have serious doubts about Eira, but Bella supports him, and NM also spoke up for him. I'm making a big assumption there but it seems like Eira might be a townfirmable role? I dunno.

Aisa
Enchant
NM
Frog

I'm going to leave this as our scum pool, to be as generous with our options as possible. There are some factors at play (I think Aisa is town, NM could go either way, Frog claimed a town role), but assuming both of us to be town, this is what we have to work with.

Regardless of both of our alignments, there is guaranteed to be at least one scum in that list, unless the team is exactly Grib/Eira or Elements/Eira, so that seems to be the best place to start.

Aisa Enchant
Aisa NM
Aisa Frog
Enchant NM
Enchant Frog
NM Frog

And then these are all possible teams that include neither of us, Bella, or Eira.

Your willingness to reach out to Elements and cooperate with them lead to you two forming a solid Towncore together, which FMPOV was the last thing I wanted to see Town doing.

So why did Fire die instead of you? You both had my # early in D1. You with your case and Fire with his intuition that something was off.

The four most disagreeable (the reverse/inverse of Agreeableness) players in this game by a landslide were Shea, myself, Fire and Eiralox, roughly in that order. Shea was killed N1 for being a TPR read and that left me, Eiralox and Fire as the players most willing to be a dick (in a tough-minded way) to push our point of view across.

N2, I was anticipating a gamestate where my slot would live or die based on Town's willingness to believe my claim and my own ability to sell it. I didn't want to have to sell my claim to a Town containing Fire who I knew would be willing to be a dick about pushing any inconsistencies in my claim. For example, imagine if Fire had been alive to heckle me during this moment:

I don't want to touch frog yet either. Not because i town read him, because i don't, but because i feel like town is better off waiting.

Shea saw my crumbs D1 IMO. I thought Shea was crumbing Psychologist D1 which is why I saved him N1. I'm not outting my N2 target because they are TPR I think.

Why i don't believe you.

I mean you not telling target of N2.

Do you acknowledge there's living vigilante and you could just saved mafia target (SO THEY KNOW WHO YOU PROTECTED ALREADY) or Vig target?
Unless Vig have gate or choose not shot (WHICH I DOUBT).


I believe real doctor would understand that.

I was already scum frozen by Enchant's catch, it would have been a disaster if Fire were there to fluster me further, as I basically just flailed my way through this moment in the game.

I really couldn't care less what the dead thread thought or didn't think Town should be doing; that was why they were put in the dead thread, to shut them up.

Anyway, the point being that there were some residual clues left through NKA because it telegraphed a scum team who was planning to peddle some BS very soon, because we sacrificed the potential instability Fire can cause to a Towncore by fighting with them in favor of a Towncore who would be more trusting and less skeptical.

In a different game, where scum weren't anticipating a strategy to hide in the PR claims, I think it would be imperative to kill you (Grib) instead of Fire because of your good reads and instincts to consider other's point of view and pull together a Towncore. That's also why I would prefer to have you on my team if I rolled Town because I think you're the kind of player who is inclined to help others who are sinking to instead swim. In this particular game however (where I was scum sided instead of Townsided), your inclination to approach others in that way happened to be used deliberately against you.

[Grib]

And to think Shea dragged me through the mud for my case on you.

I'm actually impressed with that strategy and can definitely appreciate the effort that went into crafting a village that would be less likely to push your dodgy claims. And thanks for the kind words. <3

[HighPrincessErinys]

Wondering how much N_M being replaced by someone else would've helped town actually figure things out.

[Cat Scratch Fever]

Whatever the setup is, I absolutely hate it. No offense to CSF or the scumteam, but I think the setup (or rather, our attempts to game it) carried the scumteam more than their actual play, which always leaves a sour taste in my mouth. BBT and Frog both got caught early, and Frog wiggled out of it with his claim. Eiralox played really well up til Day 3 imo, but his refusal to claim was SO bad and scummy, and it drove me crazy at how nobody was interested in at least forcing him to claim, or just outright killing him. And then his vote pattern at the end of Day 3 on top of that convinced me that I was wrong and he was town.

The only people who played well in terms of actually finding scum were TSQ and Fire. And I guess a lot of us scumread Frog, so half credit to us for that. It sucked so hard when I realized TSQ was a Mason, and doubly sucked when Bella shot HPE. I can't blame her at all for that shot with the amount of heat HPE got Day 1, but at that point I think village was pretty much fucked. That's not even getting into NM being a Mason, the chances of which were high enough that I honestly should've let myself die instead of him. I felt trapped between "throw the game and let myself be voted out" and "throw the game and vote a maybe Mason who isn't actually playing."

That's fair! For more context, I did give mafia a doctor role with the intention of giving them a safe fakeclaim. The original setup I proposed was:
1 x scum doc
2 x goons

vs.

3 x macho masons
7 x vts

Perhaps it was too safe and misleading to the town given how this game played out, and town needed more power to compensate. given how misleading the setup was, I also think it contributed to this game feeling less "Normal" than maybe a Normal should, so I apologize for that.

Scum did make great nightkills, so kudos to them

Wondering how much N_M being replaced by someone else would've helped town actually figure things out.

I should add a mod rule to force replace players that continually prod dodge in the future

[Grib]

The power dynamics were too wonky imo, and is one reason I tinfoiled a scum JOAT with a vig shot. BBT was a free extra PR: essentially a loophole mafia bulletproof. The Masons were completely vulnerable and the Vig had limited access to the scum team. The worst case scenario of two Masons dying in the Night happened immediately, and it feels like that should’ve been one of the first balance-related issues to question. Mafia’s PR claims are more powerful because town is expecting -something- to balance out Masons and a Vig. I skimmed some of the recently completed mini normals and this felt like a really underpowered town in comparison.

Some of that isn’t the setup’s fault (we should’ve killed Eira for hiding his role). I think I would’ve liked to see how the Doc-and-Masons only setup played out. Seems like Friends and Enemies with a little spice added.

I don’t engage in creating setups or balancing games at all so this is all coming purely from a player POV. Thank you for hosting, though.

[Cat Scratch Fever]

If the vig were simple instead of complex, and i didn't add the mafia mailman, it might've been better

[Firebringer]

gg, don't rely on claims to solve.

[Firebringer]

i missed u aisa in the dead thread. i wanted to scumread u more

[Firebringer]

instead of Fire because of your good reads and instincts to consider other's point of view and pull together a Towncore.

i was lighting u and eiralax up lol

[Firebringer]

Firebringer had the game solved, rip. I think Eira and Frog were his top scumreads. I hate that we let him down.

naah u played fine, role claims fucked everyone up.
should have ignored them and looked at what people were doing.

[Firebringer]

and i had some glaring gaps in reads namely bbt and aisa. if we had limmed frog day 2. i feel conf eirlax was gonna go down but i could see scenario bbt coasts to victory and me letting that happen
bella to a less extent was a gap for me i think

[Firebringer]

The four most disagreeable (the reverse/inverse of Agreeableness) players in this game by a landslide were Shea, myself, Fire and Eiralox, roughly in that order. Shea was killed N1 for being a TPR read and that left me, Eiralox and Fire as the players most willing to be a dick (in a tough-minded way) to push our point of view across.

N2, I was anticipating a gamestate where my slot would live or die based on Town's willingness to believe my claim and my own ability to sell it. I didn't want to have to sell my claim to a Town containing Fire who I knew would be willing to be a dick about pushing any inconsistencies in my claim. For example, imagine if Fire had been alive to heckle me during this moment:

def right i would have never believed ur claim the moment it was produced.

[Thestatusquo]

I think frogs claim was heinous and I was shocked that town just...believed it completely?

Especially considering the claimed targets and him still being alive.

Allowing scum to say "this claim obviously works with mech for roles that we don't know are in the game and have no reason to believe are in the game" is just bad town play.

Shooting me was a good shot, I was pretty locked in and I'm pretty sure I would have never excepted that play from frog.

[Thestatusquo]

GG everyone, though.

[Aisa]

I think everyone is overcomplicating it. The moral of the game is that appealing to Sigmund Freud is a red flag

i missed u aisa in the dead thread. i wanted to scumread u more

Things went downhill after you died. Maybe I needed you waving a sharp knife at me to keep me focused.

Spoiler: talking about the setup

I personally don't mind this level of swing. I don't think two Masons dying on Night 1 impacted my enjoyment of the game. Even though it was the worst thing that could have happened after Night 1, Town still had plenty of fighting chances.

As a Town player, the existence of the Macho modifier primed me to believe Frog's claim. I wanted to believe that it meant something. By contrast, I think that if I had been a reviewer, my instincts might have been "the existence of a Macho modifier does not prove or disprove the existence of a Doctor. Therefore, at a first approximation, Town will view a Doctor claim as NAI." I wanna speculate that this is a systemic thing and reviewers / designers underestimate Town's capacity to screw up such a situation? I say this with no evidence or experience designing anything.

How much to correct / defend against the Doctor claim is partly a question of design philosophy, IMO. I find it pretty instructive (and... neat, masochistically) that I misread Frog in part due a classical bias like "I wanted the claim to be true", but you could argue that if MS design meta was different, I wouldn't need to learn this lesson in the first place.

[Thestatusquo]

I don't think "town believed a obviously fake claim by obvious scum for two days and lost because of it" is over complicated.

[Aisa]

Yes, I am joking. I agree that a more competent Town would have scrutinised the claim more closely, and that is partly on me.

[mastina]

Hi I reviewed this game.

[mastina]

Mafia’s PR claims are more powerful because town is expecting -something- to balance out Masons and a Vig.

Um, that's kinda backwards.

Masonx3 vs Goonx3 is considered balanced as an open setup, but in a closed is notably scumsided.
Macho Masonsx3 vs Goonx3 doesn't change the setup being scumsided. It makes it moreso.

A Complex Vig, with macho masons, necessitates that the scum must have at least one or two power roles--the vig becomes town because they can get a confirmed shot in, but if their targets were exclusively the town masons, then that would be trading the life of one conftown to have another conftown.

Ergo, four potential conftown in the game meant that the town wasn't going to have more power

on top of

that. It theoretically could have, depending on what the scum's roles were. Doctor worked in this game as a town role, IF the scum's roles were sufficiently strong enough to justify Doctor + Vig (Doctor can protect the vig) + masonx3.

But you had a Goon flip, which meant that the only way Doctor worked as a town role was if both mafia had insanely strong power roles.

Given the goon flip and the masons and complex vig, a town doctor would force the scum to spend three nightkills on the masons and then a fourth on the doctor before being able to hit the vig. Most mini normals don't even HAVE five nights, yet a doctor being town would require it unless the scum had a roleblocker or strongman to bypass the doctor protection and enabling them to take out the vig N4--which is still a hefty price to pay, mind you.

Mafia's PR claims are thus more likely to actually be mafia, because what are the mafia going to have to counter four conftown and then the mafia roles on top of all of that?
The mafia claims were claims that are

plausible

as being town roles in the setup--but they are not roles that should be treated as conftown when analyzing the setup especially not with a Goon flip. With a goon flip, it's confirmed not all three scum have power roles, which means limiting the complex vig targets further.

I skimmed some of the recently completed mini normals and this felt like a really underpowered town in comparison.

I mean most mini normals are more townsided than they should be, so.

I think I would’ve liked to see how the Doc-and-Masons only setup played out. Seems like Friends and Enemies with a little spice added.

The setup that would have been ludicrously scumsided compared to this one?

With just macho mason x3 vs mafia doctor, the setup is the Friends and Enemies setup as a closed (changing from open to closed inherently adds power to the scum), and then on top of that adding in a mafia role that makes the already-scumsided-as-a-closed setup even more scumsided?
The complex vig made the game less scumsided, not more.

That said,

If the vig were simple instead of complex, and i didn't add the mafia mailman, it might've been better

This is also my stance.

In effect, complex vig with two mafia PRs is nearly identical to simple vig with only one scum PR for killing mafia, since the mafia doctor will always be able to protect a teammate and there will always be two theoretical targets for the vig to vig. So I don't think it would've made much of a difference from a role-interaction perspective. But from a player perspective, it's definitely possible the other way would've been better.

The main difference would be simple vig couldn't kill the masons and could kill more slots, which would have made the town stronger, but I feel that would've been too oppressive against the scum. It'd be a near-guarantee of four conftown rather than a simple chance of four conftown. (For a complex vig to become conftown, they need to target the 25% of the game that's a PR, and dodge the doctor protection. For a simple vig to become conftown, they need to target the 75% of the game that's not a PR, while dodging the doc protect. The latter is obviously 50% easier to achieve.)

[mastina]

gg, don't rely on claims to solve.

(That said, yes, this too--Normals are not meant to be solved by claims alone. Power roles are designed to be tools that bolster the strength of the town to counter the inherent innate scumsidedness of the game were it mountainous. They are not meant to instantly give the town the answers, they are meant to give the town some advantages designed to counter the scumsidedness of things and have them loosely cancel out. If claims solve the game, then it is a very badly designed setup. Any game the town can win by massclaiming on D1 is poorly designed. So if you see the claims and think, "if these are all town then a massclaim on D1 would autowin the town the game", you are probably right about that thought and thus if the reviewer balancing the game was doing their job, that can't actually be the setup.)

[Bellaphant]

@sxum, was I chosen for mailman because of the likert score?

[Frogsterking]

@eir, come talk to me, not about me?

This is the second time in a row I've seen you say this to scum on D1 (previous time was red/implosion from Masque.) It seems like you have a good intuition for this?

@sxum, was I chosen for mailman because of the likert score?

It did make you one of the top candidates from the beginning iirc! The word we used to describe you (I think Eiralox came up with it) is considerate. I can pinpoint for you the exact moment in which you were unanimously chosen to become the mailman target:

Random catch up stuff:

I've looked back at hpe and some of the wishy washyness I fel about its reads might be because of its posting style. Im not seeing what I was. I'm not loving the throwing around of votes but again it might be a style thing.

Re: bbt and lost - I was saying that in that game you collected scum reads for some fairly poor reasons, and you were town. A consensus scum read on you is a really easy place for scum to hide. I personally think you get more readable as either alingment the further we go in the game. You played with klick recently as town and he thought you were scum but by mid game I was like 'no, town'.

Re: enchant, nm and eir
I've never read nm as scum when he's town. I'm not getting that here.
Enchant is a slot I wouldn't want to elim today.

Eir I was scum reading because their posts didn't leave an impact on me, but now they've reached out I feel better.

[Cat Scratch Fever]

Mafia PT
Mafia Discord
Mason PT
Dead PT
Mod PT

all PTs are open!

[Bellaphant]

@frog, this is like the third game (second) with you recently where my reads have actually been ok early (masque, here, and the voting for prs one), where I've then let myself be totally swayed by the consensus. I really need to work on my confidence!

[Aisa]

I read the PTs yesterday! I’m glad Frog doesn’t endorse Transference! Good job Mafia!