Mizzytastic's Mini Normal Review, September 2019

[schadd_]

this is strong for town, and adding to that, town can get a lot done fast without mafia being able to do much about it - even if it were closer to balanced, that's not something people like to play against. there is a guaranteed 2 good results as soon as night 1, and most likely there are four: friendly neighbor confirmed town, vig confirmed town (via extra kill), tracker result, gunsmith result (it is only 2 if the doctor protects + the mafia kill someone else relevant)

the tracker is really strong here, as mafia are doing a lot of actions - the doctor and roleblock actions are both things that are really scary to get tracked (e.g. if the roleblocker gets tracked to someone, then executed, then the tracker has an extra innocent result) and the mafia has less ability to coordinate who perpetrates the nightkill

obviously a gunsmith misfire is pretty rough and also likely but if the informed townie gets their secret out asap (which they should, and can be expected to imo) i think a gunsmith might be hesitant to claim an early has-a-gun result, which would be the worst case. moreover, at the end of the day the information + the confirmed mafia doctor indicates to town that there are three town roles with guns, which is quite useful for clarifying things

the biggest problem, to me, is that power is very diffuse. even in spite of the night-specificity that helps the mafia out, they still have 5 people that they need to find and kill, which is hard. i would suggest

removing the friendly neighbor (and keeping the inform, which i like)

and

making the tracker 1-shot or making the cop night 2 only

[schadd_]

having the tracker is surely not a necessity, though i am more confident in the balance with it, also it is just a fun role to exist in this setup

you can stack a miller onto the informed townie. lol. i think that the inform slightly seems like it would come from town, so the miller sort of cancels that out

so we would have:
gunsmith
informed miller
odd-night vig
even-night cop
1-shot tracker
5vt

odd-night doc
even-night roleblocker
informed goon

[schadd_]

Also if you want to explain why the 1 shot tracker is better for assessing balance I'm curious just from my interest in game design. I think I get why its fun (goes from too much town info at each night to something that could clutch it for town or just add to the investigative noise depending, and gives a bit more space for setup spec for the free protective fake claim scum might attempt)

just intuition. i think if there's scum counterplay (and there is, though a somewhat small amount) you usually want 3 strong power roles plus a little bit; the inform and the tracker cover that. i wouldn't want a full tracker because it would bother me for mafia to have 4 things to have to consistently worry about, and the lack of a tracker feels like town doesn't have enough stuff

[schadd_]

passing this !