Umlaut's Mini Normal Review, June 2020

[northsidegal]

hello again!

i don't have too much experience reviewing sub-13 player setups so i'm interested in ircher's thoughts on this one. i do know, however, from doing the mini normal archives that sub-13 player setups tended to be won by mafia more than 13 player setups, although for whether or not that means that they were consistently scumsided or just consistently better balanced than more townsided 13 player setups i couldn't say.

anyways, that's enough preamble. i want to say that this is ~probably~ close enough to balanced to just be an instant pass? given what i know about the tendency of previous sub-13 player normal games i would say it probably leans more scumsided than townsided, but i don't think it's really that significant. it's fairly swingy around the gunsmith and probably skewed only slightly in town's favor (compared to most normal games, which i consider to be skewed more heavily in town's favor)

i dunno, maybe a 1-shot town commuter would be better? not really sure, might just be my bias for commuters (i'm quite a fan of that role). gonna let ircher chime in.

[northsidegal]

really my main reason for even adding the commuter would be to try to reduce the swing centered around the gunsmith, although thinking more i'm not sure if it even does that.

your gunsmith role PM is incorrect which is absolutely not your fault because the wiki was not updated. i have updated the wiki to correctly include vengefuls, detectives, and neapolitans, all of which return positive to gunsmiths. also, this is a minor point, but i would probably remove the word "town" from "The following town roles have guns". i would probably just say "Additionally, the following roles have guns:"

[northsidegal]

apart from that i didn't notice anything wrong, although i'll probably give it another check over tomorrow.

[northsidegal]

Otherwise, this setup is very close to a 9p setup with 1x Cop (there are some differences, but the gunsmith only gets a false positive on the vig, so it's a close enough comparison), and that has traditionally been viewed as relatively balanced.

That setup is balanced as an open, but that consideration changes as a closed. One of the reasons I liked the commuter in the first place was because people (at least in my experience) tend to be fairly suspicious of the role. I don't think it's clearing at all. Even if the commuter tries some gambit where they fakeclaim a role just to get scum to shoot them, the vig shot would still introduce a ton of doubt over everything, especially if claimed after the gunsmith. (I'm trying to be more conscious of the effect random gambits can have)

Anyways, that's neither here nor there. Whether or not it would make the setup better, we both agree that the setup's passable as is, so /pass

[northsidegal]

Hunh, the plot thickens: implosion says it actually is a normal role and "That word [active] probably just shouldn't be there."

this is probably what i would have said

i consider myself fairly up to date on random arcane normal rules and that one seemed really wrong