biancospino's Micro Normal Review, September 2023 (Released)

[implosion]

Hi,
I have an idea for a micro normal I'd like to run that would need to be reviewed; I have /inned in the Micro Queue. It would be a 9p, with 2:7 ratio.

setup

WOLVES

• 1 Neighbor combined Follower Neighborizer
  
• 1 Neighbor combined Mailman Rolestopper

VILLAGE

• 2 backup Neighbors
  
• 1 complex TrafficAnalyst
  
• 1 personal PTCop
  
• 3 Villagers

SETTINGS

• Daytalk ON
  
• Multitasking ON

Spoiler: Role PMs

Welcome to Micro XXXX, PLAYERNAME!

You are a

Werewolf Neighbor combined Follower Neighborizer

. You know that the Wolves' faction is composed of you and YYYY.

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 active abilities:

• combined Follower Neighborizer
  — each night, you may target a living player. Assuming no interference with your action, your target will be added to your Neighborizer PT, and you will discover what kind of actions your target performed this night.

You have the following nonfactional passive abilities:

• Neighbor
  — you are in a Neighborhood with YYYY. You can talk with them at any time [here].
  
• Neighborizer Hood
  — you have access to a Neighborizer PT. At the start of the game, no player other than you has access to it.

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

Welcome to Micro XXXX, PLAYERNAME!

You are a

Werewolf Neighbor combined Mailman Rolestopper

. You know that the Wolves' faction is composed of you and YYYY.

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 active abilities:

• combined Mailman Rolestopper
  — each night, you may target a living player. Assuming no interference with your action, the moderator will anonymously send your target a message of your choice (specified when you submit this action), and all other actions targeting your target will fail as if roleblocked.
  (N.B.: the message you send will be delivered in such a way to make it clear that it comes from a Mailman.)

You have the following nonfactional passive abilities:

• Neighbor
  — you are in a Neighborhood with YYYY. You can talk with them at any time [here].

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

Welcome to Micro XXXX, PLAYERNAME!

You are a

Village backup Neighbor

.

You have no active abilities.

You have the following passive abilities:

• backup Neighbor
  — the first time a non-backup Neighbor dies, you will be added to their Neighborhood.

You win when at least one member of the Village 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.

Welcome to Micro XXXX, PLAYERNAME!

You are a

Village complex TrafficAnalyst

.

You have the following active abilities:

• complex TrafficAnalyst
  — each night, you may target a living player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will discover whether or not that player is able to privately communicate with another living player. This action will fail as if roleblocked if it targets a Vanilla player. If this action fails, you will receive a "No Result" PM.

You have no passive abilities.

You win when at least one member of the Village 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.

Welcome to Micro XXXX, PLAYERNAME!

You are a

Village personal PTCop

.

You have the following active abilities:

• personal PTCop
  — each even-numbered night, you may target a living player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will discover whether or not that player has access to a nonfactional PT. If this action fails, you will receive a "No Result" PM.

You have no passive abilities.

You win when at least one member of the Village 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.

Welcome to Micro XXXX, PLAYERNAME!

You are a

Villager

.

You have no active abilities.

You have no passive abilities.

You win when at least one member of the Village 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: Result PMs

Follower:

• No action
  
  You discover that PLAYER performed no actions tonight.
  
  
• TA/PTCop
  
  You discover that PLAYER performed a role-investigative action tonight.
  
  
• combined Mail RS
  
  You discover that PLAYER performed a blocking action and a miscellaneous action tonight.
  
  
• No result
  
  Your Follower action failed and you get no result.

TrafficAnalyst:

• Can comm
  
  You discover that PLAYER is able to privately communicate.
  
  
• Can't comm
  
  You discover that PLAYER is not able to privately communicate.
  
  
• No result
  
  Your TrafficAnalyst action failed and you get no result.

PTCop:

• has PT
  
  You discover that PLAYER has access to a nonfactional PT.
  
  
• hasn't PT
  
  You discover that PLAYER hasn't access to any nonfactional PT.
  
  
• No result
  
  Your PTCop action failed and you get no result.

Mail:

You have received the following message from a Mailman:

...

backup Neighborh gaining hood access:

• Both backup gain access at once
  
  You gained access to a Neighborhood located [here]. Your Neighbors are WOLFNAME and BACKUPNAME.
  
  
• One backup already dead
  
  You gained access to a Neighborhood located [here]. Your Neighbor is WOLFNAME.

An update, Alianna is my comod; can she please be given access to the review when it fires?

Also, there is a small error in the PTCop's PM, the word "even-numbered" should not be there

[implosion]

Primary: DkKoba
Secondary: Isis

(Also here are Alianna and Lilith)

[Alianna]

Co-mod ego.

[biancospino]

Hi!

Anyway, the main thing about the game is the all-scum hood with two backup neighbors that can sneak in.

Everything else is just sugar to make the theme kind of work

[Isis]

I can't discern any town power in the setup

The lingo probably needs to conform to the mafia/town wording that most normal games use lest the first player to claim villager become conftown. There's high effort advance notice stuff you can do to fix it and make that not be an issue but I don't think the normal queue is the place to create that problem just to fix it.

[biancospino]

About the Villager/Wolf thing, I actually have used the Werewolf theme in the other normals I've run and it wasn't actually a problem. But I guess I can just change it to Mafia theme instead if you think it's dangerous.

You saying Town need some more power?
Would removing complex and changing the PTCop to something else, like a FN, help?

[DkKoba]

feels very swingy in nature ? like not in a mech way but in a setup meta way

[DkKoba]

I can't discern any town power in the setup

The lingo probably needs to conform to the mafia/town wording that most normal games use lest the first player to claim villager become conftown. There's high effort advance notice stuff you can do to fix it and make that not be an issue but I don't think the normal queue is the place to create that problem just to fix it.

I had raised the same concern in a prior bianco review and implo said its perfectly fine.

[DkKoba]

i see 2 ways the majority of runs of this setup will end up:

1) town guess the gimmick after massclaim and both mafia just lose, esp if a mafia gets killed early on and town learns there is a hood
2) mafia just stomp because town start killing within their own PRs assuming there has to be scum there

[DkKoba]

I think the setup MAY need a minor overhaul, just point at the things you wish to preserve as the base for the setup and we can probably work from there.

a protective probably fixes some issues and some level of restructuring the backup neighbors, perhaps only having 1 so mafia have the choice to kill the neighbor that joined

[DkKoba]

actually yeah 1) is super plausible because mafia do not know they need to fake content within their hood and thus end up outing the whole team if 1 goes down

[Alianna]

Arguably the Combined Follower Neighbourizer incentivizes mafia to fake content as they have to neighbourize if they want to get the investigation, but it could be devastating if they decide not to do that for whatever reason.

[biancospino]

i see 2 ways the majority of runs of this setup will end up:

1) town guess the gimmick after massclaim and both mafia just lose, esp if a mafia gets killed early on and town learns there is a hood
2) mafia just stomp because town start killing within their own PRs assuming there has to be scum there

I think the setup MAY need a minor overhaul, just point at the things you wish to preserve as the base for the setup and we can probably work from there.

a protective probably fixes some issues and some level of restructuring the backup neighbors, perhaps only having 1 so mafia have the choice to kill the neighbor that joined

Ok so the only thing that I want to happen is to have at least one backup neighbor entering a hood containing at least all the scum, and preferibly exactly them.
Now, would

Informing

a scum of the gimmick alleviate the problem? Like "There is at least a backup Neighbor"; that way they could prepare.

Proctective I assume for Town? I personally don't like at all straight out full Doctors tbh.
The PTCop is a bit redundant* so it can be replaced by something like a Bodyguard maybe?

(* the redundancy was actually intended to be a net negative here, to allow for the possibility that one may not believe the claim of the other. It's possible that is a bad idea thou, probably is thinking about it)

[biancospino]

Arguably the Combined Follower Neighbourizer incentivizes mafia to fake content as they have to neighbourize if they want to get the investigation, but it could be devastating if they decide not to do that for whatever reason.

The Neighborizer PT is separate from the hood thou, per how the normal role works I believe

[biancospino]

The reason there are two backup Neighbors (but I'm not adamant on that) is I'm afraid that if the one is limmed or killed early, then the main theme of the game just doesn't happen at all

[Alianna]

Arguably the Combined Follower Neighbourizer incentivizes mafia to fake content as they have to neighbourize if they want to get the investigation, but it could be devastating if they decide not to do that for whatever reason.

The Neighborizer PT is separate from the hood thou, per how the normal role works I believe

Ohhh.

[biancospino]

Yeah that would be indeed quite cool if it worked the orher way

[DkKoba]

Informed mafia neighbors when it's a mafia only hood with a backup is actually necessary yeah. Just to prevent that scenario where mafia choose to not utilise the good thinking it's safe

[T-Bone]

As your new overlord I rule using the terms village and wolves as fine.

[Isis]

The wiki says "a neighorizer without any neighbors at the start of the game is Normal".
I would parse that to mean "don't do this" moreso than to run neighborizers with neighborhoods that work differently from how neighborizers with neighborhoods always work in themes

[biancospino]

What about:

setup

WOLVES

• 1 Neighbor Informed combined Neighborizer complex Follower
  (there are two backup Neighbors. There are no neighborhoods other than yours.)
  
• 1 Neighbor combined Mailman Rolestopper

VILLAGE

• 2 backup Neighbors
  
• 1 TrafficAnalyst
  
• 1 indecisive Doctor
  
• 3 Villagers

SETTINGS

• Daytalk ON
  
• Multitasking ON

• added the Informed notice [+S]
  
• the Follower is complex which should help a little finding the backups if they want to try to kill them before they enter [+S]
  
• the TA is not complex [+T]
  
• the (mostly redumdant) PTCop is replaced by an Indecisive Doctor. Now, a full Doc I really dislike, but with this sort of gating I do like it quite more. [+T]

I'd much rather keep the number of backup Neighbors at 2; but if it's absolutely impossible to salvage there being two, I'd be willing to remove one, maybe replace it with a Mailma

[biancospino]

The wiki says "a neighorizer without any neighbors at the start of the game is Normal".
I would parse that to mean "don't do this" moreso than to run neighborizers with neighborhoods that work differently from how neighborizers with neighborhoods always work in themes

By this you mean you think I should avoid doing a Neighbor Neighborizer at all?
I do parse the wiki as just saying that the "Neighborizer hood" must start empty, not necessarily that the Neighborizer can't also incidentally happen to be in another unrelated hood

[biancospino]

Mhm, on seconds thoughs I am not sure if an Indecise Doctor isn't actually still too strong. If it is, maybe an indecisive Bodyguard instead?

[T-Bone]

Let's get this done quickly since this game is full in the queue, please!

[DkKoba]

Oh that's awkward that this one went into signups before some of the other minis lol oops

Bianco, to speed it up I'll try to shoot out a few suggested designs later