Radical Rat's Mini Normal Review, June 2023 (Released)

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Hello, I am looking to moderate a Mini Normal soon, and as such would like the potential setup reviewed ahead of entering the queue.

Proposed Setup:
11 Players
Mafia Goon x2
Mafia Miller Enabler
Town Cop
Town Complex Bodyguard
Town Miller x2
Vanilla Townie x4

Thank you, and let me know if there's anything else you need

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Primary: Isis
Secondary: Datisi

[Datisi]

while i cannot outright veto it due to being a secondary, i would... strongly advise against having two millers in the game.

i played in a normal like that a bit ago (viewtopic.php?t=82764) and what ended up happening was - one miller claims, the second miller counterclaims, day 1 becomes solely about which miller is lying, the first one gets yeeted, scum gets a free yeet. also, this was incredibly unfun for everyone - town was locked into a town elimination from the very start, scum was completely demotivated on d1. and since the meta around early miller claims hasn't changed yet from what i know, i reckon this is gonna play out the exact same way.

if you want a gimmick of "town investigative + 2 town red herrings", there are ways to do it that don't cause that ^^ to happen.

oh, and i just realized this is a 3v8, not 2v9 like i originally thought. not that it changes much wrt the above, but noted.

[implosion]

Another even much older example with two ascetics: viewtopic.php?t=68600

My distinct memory of that game is that d1 we got an ascetic claim, followed by a counterclaim, and i couldn't convince the town not to lim the first claimant and they flipped town and then the second claimant got quite irritated.

One choice quote:

Lol look at how eager is treating me as town. He is 100% scum.
2 town ascetics is so bastard don't get me started on it. Nobody would approve such a setup.

Point being while there is absolutely precedent for this, it is something that different people will interpret entirely differently and you can't really predict what people's reaciton will be.

[Isis]

I don't think two millers is a good idea

[Radical Rat]

The idea in my head was that the Mafia are likely to also claim Miller, and when it's not two claims, but four or five, Town should hopefully realize something's up, and then it becomes highly dependent on dayplay.

Do you think it would work better having a third Miller so that it at least guarantees it's at least not a 1v1 if Mafia doesn't try to claim Miller? I don't really want to knock it down to one if possible, because the gimmick here isn't just red herrings, it's seeing how people react to a large volume of Miller claims.

[Datisi]

i'm not sure i understand why mafia would ever claim miller here?

[Radical Rat]

Because having the Miller Enabler gives them the knowledge that at least one Miller does exist, and the existence of a Miller implies the existence of a Cop, so if they DON'T claim Miller D1 and get guiltied as a result, they have no real recourse.

[Datisi]

well, first - an existence of a miller does not imply a cop. there have been a bunch of setup red herrings recently, and anyone who's aware of the current state of normal games will know that.

but even if it was 100% sure there's a cop in the game - it still makes it a horrible idea to claim miller. scum would go from "maybe getting guiltied by a cop, IF the don't find the cop and shoot them before that" to "having a 50/50 chance of getting eliminated day 1", they're not gonna do it.

[Radical Rat]

Why is having two real Millers a free mislim then? If it's unthinkable that scum would claim Miller, why would the Town assume there must be scum in the Miller claims, especially if red herrings are so common lately?

I can of course see that this did happen in the example you gave, but I don't really understand how that Town making a mistake means there shouldn't be a setup where that mistake is possible at all.

[Radical Rat]

I will also clarify that I recognize all three of you are saying it's a bad idea, and I intend to respect that judgement, I just also want to properly understand it so I can work out how best to fix it, and/or avoid it next time.

[Datisi]

Why is having two real Millers a free mislim then? If it's unthinkable that scum would claim Miller, why would the Town assume there must be scum in the Miller claims, especially if red herrings are so common lately?

I can of course see that this did happen in the example you gave, but I don't really understand how that Town making a mistake means there shouldn't be a setup where that mistake is possible at all.

because town isn't going to think that way. they're going to think "oh look, a counter claim." even if an individual townie might recognize that there is something fishy going on, it's extremely likely that it won't be listened to and that town is just gonna blindly yeet a miller.

because it's really not fun. i know i came away from that day 1 frustrated as all hell that we misyeeted a miller. and we likely would've CONTINUED and killed the second miller, had there not been a rolecop that confirmed them as town. and then i got even more frustrated because i realized day 1 was a complete and utter waste of time. and i think i recall reading that scum was also really bored as well on that d1. it's not fun for anyone.

of course, normals aren't balanced for fun, they're balanced for balance, but. this is a big "please reconsider".

[Datisi]

like, there's mistakes town can make that aren't detrimental to fun. there are mistakes that ARE detrimental to fun, but would boil down to what i would professionally call a "skill issue", and thus aren't the reviewer's/designer's problem. but here there's nothing they can do, because figuring it out is not about knowledge or skill, it's about outguessing the mod. kind of like what people do with neighbourhoods, except... worse.

[Isis]

The problem is that when the apparent EV on outguessing the mod becomes considerably better than the EV on ascertaining the identity of the mafia through social deduction people are going to try to outguess the mod.
A lot of these discussions have a tendency to focus on how resilient the mod actually is to being genuinely outguessed but not how hard ascertaining the identity of the mafia through social deduction is. The latter is actually very hard, and it's also variable and difficult to control how hard it is, some Day 1s create strong leads and some don't, Day 4s are more likely to have some momentum and that can mediate modwifom for massclaim roles more than d1 claim roles. In particular many people don't think it's acceptable to do any game play before claiming miller so this setup spec is going to be competing with a low-information-phase that hasn't even germinated yet.

[Isis]

The EV thing is exacerbated by how mislimming a miller guarantees you don't mislim a PR or expose a PR claim, in a setup that has a cop.

[Isis]

Do you think it would work better having a third Miller so that it at least guarantees it's at least not a 1v1 if Mafia doesn't try to claim Miller?

I feel like this could work, and millers are enough like named townies you could maybe even go 4? You end up getting 13p divide and conquer with a copimmune group right?

[Datisi]

if we were to go that route, i'd give scum an actual piece of info that there's a metric shit ton of millers in play, so that they're not locked into claiming late/last if they end up wanting to do that

[Isis]

If I play the setup in OP I expect mafia to not actually claim miller, both millers to trueclaim, townies to speculate the first miller claim is scum with a role like "cop-finder" that went for an instant win at the risk of miller being present in the setup, mislim.
With 3 or 4 miller claims I'd expect players to assume a setup was designed with a subtheme of having a large number of millers, and for mafia to even feel comfortable joining in maybe

Pedit: good idea
High information scum is a pretty good new fad, have only seen it improve games afaict

[Datisi]

also, is there a specific reason why this setup is a 11p instead of 13p?

[Isis]

I uh, didn't notice that.

I think single investigative 3:8s don't work out even if Sherlock Holmes himself rands cop.

[Radical Rat]

I wanted to have three scum, but I also wanted a smaller amount of players to manage for my first time modding. Player count isn't integral to the setup or anything, so tacking on two extra Millers should I think preserve the spirit of what I was going for if that solves the concerns over mod guessing.

An earlier iteration of the setup also had a Backup Cop instead of a Complex Bodyguard, but I was worried that might be too Townsided since it lessens the value of Mafia successfully hunting the Cop. Complex Bodyguard was an attempt to make it a sort of race to identify the Cop faster, while avoiding enabling Follow the Cop with a proper Doctor. I'm fine going back to a Backup Cop if that's actually better for balance.

[Isis]

Because of the experimental nature of the setup I want to make Datisi's public info suggestion obligatory. Or something in that range.

Let me offer this, pretty close to #20:

1 Mafia Goon
1 Mafia Informed ("There are exactly four millers in this setup.")
1 Mafia Miller Enabler
4 VTs
4 Town Miller
1 Town Cop
1 Town Backup Cop

I think this should pan out ok. Town gets information from a divide and conquer aspect of the setup, cop and backup cop are mostly self clearing claims, and town has a cop all the way through. All of that sounds almost like a strong town, but then mafia gets a player immune to investigation. Mechanically it's optimal for the player who randed miller enabler to be the one to join in on the miller claims since that player cannot be investigated after the miller abilities turn off.

[Radical Rat]

That works for me. Thank you all for your help.

Would I start a Mod PT now, or wait for actual signups?

[Isis]

The final part of the process is posting role PMs for review and investigation result messages for review in the review PT

Since you'll probably also want those in your mod PT that results in a little duplication

[implosion]

Usually I give permission to make mod and game PTs when the game fills but I think I've given exceptions before for people who want to make them in advance