biancospino's Mini Normal Review, March 2023 (Released)

[implosion]

Hello, me again.
I had this idea for a wacky 13p mini Normal. I don't think I will /in to mod again for at least a month or so, but I figured I could still ask for it to be reviewed in advance?

Anyway,

WOLVES

1 Werewolf Jailkeeper-Enabler Unstoppable
1 Werewolf Watcher-Enabler Ninja
1 TrafficAnalyst-Enabler Bulletproof Tracker lazy Traitor

VILLAGE

1 Neapolitan-Enabler Jailkeeper
1 (loyal Alien)-Enabler Watcher
1 Tracker-Enabler novice TrafficAnalyst
2 Voyeurs
5 Villagers

PUBLIC INFO

There is at least one Enabler.
At least a majority of Enablers enable an existing role.
More than half of the players have a power role.

SETTINGS

multitasking off
daytalk on

Thanks!

Hi,
my schedule cleared a bit so I'm /in'ing to mod.
Also, I've thought a bit about the setup and I want to change the Voyeurs to Visitors and make the Unstoppable disloyal (so that they can't accidentally kill the Traitor).

Spoiler: Role PMs

Spoiler: Villager

Welcome to Game!

You are a

Villager

.

You have no passive abilities.

You have no active abilities.

You win when at least one member of the Village's faction is alive and all members of the Wolves' faction are dead.

The game thread is located [here].
Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.

Spoiler: Visitor

Welcome to Game!

You are a

Village Visitor

.

You have no passive abilities.

You have the following active abilities:

• Visitor
  — each Night, you may target a player. This action has no effect.

You win when at least one member of the Village's faction is alive and all members of the Wolves' faction are dead.

The game thread is located [here].
Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.

Spoiler: Neapolitan-Enabler Jailkeeper

Welcome to Game!

You are a

Village Neapolitan-Enabler Jailkeeper

.

You have the following passive abilities:

• Neapolitan-Enabler
  — when you die, the role "Neapolitan" will cease to function for all players.

You have the following active abilities:

• Jailkeeper
  — each Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player will be protected from kills that night, but all their actions will be blocked that night.

You win when at least one member of the Village's faction is alive and all members of the Wolves' faction are dead.

The game thread is located [here].
Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.

Spoiler: (loyal Alien)-Enabler Watcher

Welcome to Game!

You are a

Village (loyal Alien)-Enabler Watcher

.

You have the following passive abilities:

• (loyal Alien)-Enabler
  — when you die, the role "loyal Alien" will cease to function for all players.

You have the following active abilities:

• Watcher
  — each Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn which other players targeted that player that Night. If this actions fails, you will get a "No result" PM.

You win when at least one member of the Village's faction is alive and all members of the Wolves' faction are dead.

The game thread is located [here].
Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.

Spoiler: Tracker-Enabler novice TrafficAnalyst

Welcome to Game!

You are a

Village Tracker-Enabler novice TrafficAnalyst

.

You have the following passive abilities:

• Tracker-Enabler
  — when you die, the role "Tracker" will cease to function for all players.

You have the following active abilities:

• novice TrafficAnalyst
  — each Night after the first, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn whether or not that player is able to privately communicate with another living player. If this actions fails, you will get a "No result" PM.

You win when at least one member of the Village's faction is alive and all members of the Wolves' faction are dead.

The game thread is located [here].
Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.

Spoiler: Jailkeeper-Enabler disloyal Unstoppable

Welcome to Game!

You are a

Werewolf Jailkeeper-Enabler disloyal Unstoppable

.

You know that the Wolves' faction is composed of you, XXX and a Traitor. You do not know who the Traitor is.

You have the following factional abilities:

• Wolf chat
  — you can talk with the other members of the Wolves' faction at any time [here]
  
• Wolf kill
  — each night, if no other member of the Wolves' faction use this ability, you may target a living player. Assuming no interference with your action, your target will die.

You have the following nonfactional passive abilities:

• Jailkeeper-Enabler
  — when you die, the role "Jailkeeper" will cease to function for all players.
  
• disloyal Unstoppable
  — killing actions performed by you that target a player who does not belong to your faction cannot be blocked in any way (they may still be caused to fail by effects that prevent targeting entirely, like Commuter).

You have no nonfactional active abilities.

You win when at least one member of the Wolves' faction is alive and all members of the Village's faction are dead, or when nothing can prevent the same.

The game thread is located [here].
Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role, or by posting the same in the Wolves' PT.

Spoiler: Watcher-Enabler Ninja

Welcome to Game!

You are a

Werewolf Watcher-Enabler Ninja

.

You know that the Wolves' faction is composed of you, XXX and a Traitor. You do not know who the Traitor is.

You have the following factional abilities:

• Wolf chat
  — you can talk with the other members of the Wolves' faction at any time [here]
  
• Wolf kill
  — each night, if no other member of the Wolves' faction use this ability, you may target a living player. Assuming no interference with your action, your target will die.

You have the following nonfactional passive abilities:

• Watcher-Enabler
  — when you die, the role "Watcher" will cease to function for all players.
  
• Ninja
  — actions performed by you are not visible to action-investigative roles.

You have no nonfactional active abilities.

You win when at least one member of the Wolves' faction is alive and all members of the Village's faction are dead, or when nothing can prevent the same.

The game thread is located [here].
Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role, or by posting the same in the Wolves' PT.

Spoiler: TrafficAnalyst-Enabler Bulletproof Tracker lazy Traitor

Welcome to Game!

You are a

TrafficAnalyst-Enabler Bulletproof Tracker lazy Traitor

.

You know that the Wolves' faction is composed of you, XXX and YYY, but they don't know your identity.

You no factional abilities.

You have the following nonfactional passive abilities:

• TrafficAnalyst-Enabler
  — when you die, the role "TrafficAnalyst" will cease to function for all players.
  
• Bulletproof
  — you are protected from killing actions that target you.
  
• lazy Traitor
  — when there are less than two player alive not aligned with the Village, you gain access to the Wolves' factional PT and to the Wolves' factional nightkill.

You have the following nonfactional active abilities:

• Tracker
  — each Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn who that player targeted that night. If this actions fails, you will get a "No result" PM.

You win when at least one member of the Wolves' faction is alive and all members of the Village's faction are dead, or when nothing can prevent the same.

The game thread is located [here].
Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role, or by posting the same in the Wolves' PT.

[implosion]

Primary: mastina
Secondary: Datisi

[biancospino]

Hello.

So, the idea here is to have multiple namely strong investigatives that in actuality are each substantially weakened. Both the Jailkeeper and the Watcher may get a (pseudo)guilty on exactly one of the Wolves, only if that particular Wolf kills, and only if the other is still alive, and the TA can potentially get a guilty on both but only if the third one is still alive, and to balance that they can get a strong false inno on that third one. On the whole, in whatever order the Wolves are taken down, the last one can in no way be guilted by mech, and one of them is effectly impossible to guilty by any role in the setup.

Since there is a lot of town power anyway, to counterbalance I added some red herrings in the false Enablers and a couple of identical TPR (ideally something useless, I thought Visitors but maybe Checkers would be better to avoid giving out feel-bad roles?).
The false Enabler are supposed to seem believable to their holders, but to be unbelievable to exist toghether with an actual existing role, so to maximize the possibility that town counterclaims itself. The info on the majority of enablers not being false serves to increase facilitate that.

[biancospino]

Primary: mastina
Secondary: Datisi

Also hi Dats, I'm actually doing a Mini because you asked but seems like you won't actually be able to play it :/

[mastina]

While I like the idea, I feel like a setup of almost exclusively enablers crosses the line into being more of a theme mechanic. Will wait for Datisi's feedback there though.

[Datisi]

Primary: mastina
Secondary: Datisi

Also hi Dats, I'm actually doing a Mini because you asked but seems like you won't actually be able to play it :/

well, your mini would be next in line to be run, and team mafia is starting Soon, and i'm really not able to play in more than one game at the time anymore :/ and i wanted to at least be present for the review

reading the setup now

[Datisi]

okay, so.

i love the idea of this setup. i really do. however, with both the existence of a ton of enablers, and the lazy traitor (i love that role btw), AND the possibility of the lazy traitor becoming a last-scum-standing groupscum WHILE being false-innoed...

i don't think this can be a normal setup, even with the complex modifier public.

the difference between "a setup with a lot of power roles" and "a setup with a lot of power roles, but a lot of them are enabled" is that the latter has many many more moving parts in it, which makes it more difficult to balance, and more confusing to play.

and as it stands, i think the town is way too weak here - and they're weak in a way where "adding more power roles" just doesn't fix the issue, because it pushes the setup even further from the realm of "normal".

i think a normal setup that has the mechanic of "a lot of enablers" can definitely be made. but it would have to be a bit simplified.

[biancospino]

What if, I change the Visitors back to Voyeurs (that way they can possibly verify the Watcher; or maybe even full RoleWatchers?), remove the Track from the Traitor, and make the TA a Bulletproof-Enabler instead of Tracker-Enabler so that they be hinted of the existence of a Traitor? Or maybe even straight out informing them that one exist

[Datisi]

if the lazy traitor were to work with a traffic analyst, i think they would have to be informed that they can get a false inno.

but i don't think that fixes the "this setup is too mechanically heavy" issue

[biancospino]

Mhm, I see. Perhaps this would be better just run as a theme? My problem is the Traitor kinda needs to be lazy otherwise there is the nightmare scenario that the Watcher and TA find the two main wolves N1 and N2 and it's autowin for the Village

[biancospino]

Or, other idea, make the Traitor a lazy compulsive Doctor, and replace the TA with a Gunsmith

[biancospino]

This would also make the Village much stronger since it could guilty a non-doc wolf even if the other is dead, idk if that isn't too much

[biancospino]

But idk, I prefer the version with the Traitor frankly. But I understand if that isn't salvageable

[Datisi]

i mean, my thoughts were along the lines of removing the unstoppable and the ninja from the scumteam, rather than removing the traitor. and potentially removing the red herring enablers from the town

that was my idea of simplifying the setup, at least

would still need to hear mastina's thoughts, tho

[biancospino]

Mhm, wouldn't removing Unstoppable/Ninja make the Village broken? That way they could potentially easily just nail both of them mechanically by N2

[Datisi]

theoretically? yes, they could

but you can't balance the game by assuming the best case but unlikely scenario for town will happen

(to be clear, i'm not saying the setup without unstoppable/ninja would necessarily be balanced, i haven't thought through it fully yet, and it'd be up to mastina anyway. but it is a potential way to tone down the complexity of the setup, which is our first goal here. actual balance discussion happens after that)

[biancospino]

Being honest, and that may sound a bit silly, the general concept of W-Enabler Ninja + Jk-Enabler Unstoppabler vs W + JK was really the core idea around which I plotted everything else, so if we remove that I wouldn't feel the setup to be really mine

[Datisi]

that is understandable

if that is the core idea, there might be a way to make the setup simpler elsewhere. i''ll wait to see what mastina thinks

[biancospino]

I had an idea.

WOLVES

1 Werewolf Jailkeeper-Enabler Unstoppable
1 Werewolf Watcher-Enabler Ninja
1 TrafficAnalyst-Enabler combined Commuter Rolecop lazy Traitor

VILLAGE

1 Jailkeeper
1 Watcher
1 novice TrafficAnalyst
1 Informed Neapolitan-Enabler (loyal Alien)-Enabler Commuter-Enabler
(at least a majority of enabled roles exist in the setup)
6 Villagers

PUBLIC INFO

There is at least one Traitor.
More than half of the players have a power role.

SETTINGS

multitasking on
daytalk on

[biancospino]

On second thought, I don't like the Commuter here.

WOLVES

1 Werewolf Jailkeeper-Enabler disloyal Unstoppable
1 Werewolf Watcher-Enabler Ninja
1 TrafficAnalyst-Enabler Bulletproof Tracker lazy Traitor

VILLAGE

1 Jailkeeper
1 Watcher
1 novice TrafficAnalyst
1 Informed Neapolitan-Enabler (loyal Alien)-Enabler Tracker-Enabler
(at least a majority of enabled roles exist in the setup)
6 Villagers

PUBLIC INFO

There is at least one Traitor.
More than half of the players have a power role.

SETTINGS

multitasking on
daytalk on

(I also thought of making the Village Enabler

also

a Seer-Enabler to be extra evil, but in the end maybe not, that would be a tad bastardly)

[mastina]

i''ll wait to see what mastina thinks

I'm too dumb rn to process changes to the setup in words, could the proposed ideas of changes you're thinking of be typed out? (That format my brain can process.)

WOLVES

1 Werewolf Jailkeeper-Enabler disloyal Unstoppable
1 Werewolf Watcher-Enabler Ninja
1 TrafficAnalyst-Enabler Bulletproof Tracker lazy Traitor

VILLAGE

1 Jailkeeper
1 Watcher
1 novice TrafficAnalyst
1 Informed Neapolitan-Enabler (loyal Alien)-Enabler Tracker-Enabler
(at least a majority of enabled roles exist in the setup)
6 Villagers

PUBLIC INFO

There is at least one Traitor.
More than half of the players have a power role.

SETTINGS

multitasking on
daytalk on

(I also thought of making the Village Enabler

also

a Seer-Enabler to be extra evil, but in the end maybe not, that would be a tad bastardly)

I'm a bit tired but first instinct is this is scumsided.

I'll give it a night's sleep and be back tomorrow to review.

[biancospino]

I'm a bit tired but first instinct is this is scumsided.

You'll probably going to reject this on the stop but. What if I replaced one VT with a second novice TA? (and maybe simplify the Alien-Enabler thing, the "loyal" made more sense in the og version)

Spoiler:

WOLVES

1 Werewolf Jailkeeper-Enabler disloyal Unstoppable
1 Werewolf Watcher-Enabler Ninja
1 TrafficAnalyst-Enabler Bulletproof Tracker lazy Traitor

VILLAGE

1 Jailkeeper
1 Watcher
2 novice TrafficAnalysts
1 Informed {Neapolitan, Alien, Tracker}-Enabler
(at least a majority of enabled roles exist in the setup)
5 Villagers

PUBLIC INFO

There is at least one Traitor.
More than half of the players have a power role.

SETTINGS

multitasking on
daytalk on

[Datisi]

bianco, would you be satisfied with a setup whose only enablers are the jailkeeper enabler and the watcher enabler?

mastina, do you think a setup like the one in 19 or 21 would be passable as normal, considering the number of enablers it has? i'm leaning on "no", but i'm not sure if i'm being too strict

[biancospino]

bianco, would you be satisfied with a setup whose only enablers are the jailkeeper enabler and the watcher enabler?

Yes, as long as there is some alternative mechanism to prevent the game being auto'ed by mech alone by N2. TA-Enabler lazy Traitor + TA seemed like a way to assure that which jived well with the rest of the setup, but I would be satisfied with alternative mechanisms, albeit perhaps I wouldn't find them as aestetically pleasing.

To that purpose, the town Enablers can be safely cut, however I do worry that the town PRs may become a self-confirming claim without some manner of confounding factor. If the problem is that an excessive amount of Enablers is too gimmicky, what if the town Enabler was turned into an Informed Alien-Finder Neapolitan-Finder Tracker-Finder (with the info "at least a majority of linked roles are linked to an existing role"), and at this point with multitasking off by default?

[biancospino]

I will be V/LA till monday, however I will likely be around to check this PT at least once or twice a day.

Also, bump?