DkKoba's Mini Normal Review, March 2022

[mastina]

Setup is definitely townsided as-is, but I think an instant immediate fix to a lot of the issues:

Swap the nights for the cop and the jailkeeper.

The cop becomes much, MUCH less powerful as even-night. This not only delays the time to their first result (which is huge as it gives the scum more time to find/eliminate the cop or even the town to eliminate the cop for having no result until D3), but also makes the cop get fewer results. (There's more odd nights in a mini game than there are even nights.)

It does give the jailkeeper more uptime, but statistically speaking, a jailkeeper having more uptime is far less problematic than a cop having more uptime.

Granted: probably still a bit townsided. 3-man neighborhoods are usually assumed to have a scum in them--which in this game, is correct. This increases the odds of the cop investigating within the neighborhood which increases the odds the scum within is eliminated D3. (That said: this is dependent on who the players in the neighborhood are; it's fully possible for the cop to claim to neighbors N1 for instance, or for the cop to fully trust both neighbors as town.)

Tracker + Jailkeeper (even with JK gated) is insanely strong, on top of the cop being present.

But I think that if you swap the nights for the JK/Cop, it's a good start.

From there, it might be good if you gate the Tracker to 3x, maaaaaaaaaaybe 2x.

[mastina]

1x Even Night Jailkeeper
1x Motion Detector
1x 2-Shot Gunsmith Neighbor
2x Neighbor
5x VT

1x Mafia Mailman
1x Mafia Neighbor
1x Mafia Goon

yolo i adjusted it a bit bc i wanna refocus on dayplay lol

I'd actually say this swings the other way into being scumsided. The town's investigative here is actually

too

weak. Gunsmiths don't get hard guilties, so the only way to get a guilty on scum is for the scum to claim they don't own a gun. And it's two-shot. The motion detector can't really get guilties the same way a tracker can, and the jailkeeper in this instance is too weak.

[mastina]

Why does town need hard guilties?

Towns don't need hard guilties, but they need power roles that actually give them enough of an edge to make the default 10:3 not be scumsided.

And the power roles in 9 don't give the town enough to accomplish that.

The general balance realm for a 10:3 is that the town needs 3-4 moderately-strong power roles (emphasis on 'moderate' when 4, and on 'strong' when 3) vs. an all goon or 1 weak scum PR scumteam.

An even night jailkeeper is not moderately strong; it is moderate, just moderate. (Not weak, but not strong.)
A motion detector is one of the weakest "investigative" power roles in the game.
Neighbors are glorified VTs and thus do not count as a power role for all intents and purposes.
The only moderately-strong power role is the gunsmith, and it would be precisely that: moderately strong, not strong.

That's not enough power in the town, especially given the scum's roles are actually incredibly useful for manipulating the town and appearing town.

The gunsmith can catch 2 scum, thats huge.

That's the extreme level of the role--with it being used at its absolute best, yes, it can catch two scum and with the scum not playing it well the town could eliminate those two scum. But that's using the role at its absolute best.

Reviewers don't review off of the extreme best-case scenario.

Reviewers review off of the average scenario, the scenarios most likely to happen.

A 2x gunsmith in a neighborhood has a high chance of being eliminated (you said so yourself: clearing a player off of their claim is a mistake, so the town can in fact ELIMINATE their STRONGEST POWER ROLE), shot by the scum, or investigating town, or even thinking a mafia doctor would be present, or investigating scum that claims they have a gun.

And to counter your point of "town will know that claim to be bullshit"--you of all people should know otherwise considering you literally won a scum game with your fakeclaim that come lylo, the town did not in fact call bullshit.

1x Even Night Jailkeeper
1x Universal Backup
1x Novice Detective
1x 2-Shot Gunsmith Neighbor
2x Neighbor
5x VT

1x Mafia Neighbor
2x Mafia Goon

By my count that's 14 players but assuming you meant 4x VT, this again imo would swing too far into townsided. Novice Detective can't investigate N1, sure, but is an incredibly powerful role otherwise. It does give the gunsmith a potential false guilty, but my concern here is that with the universal backup combined with the jailkeeper, the town actually has too much safety built in, because if any role is eliminated by any method the UB allows that role to still get its full usage.

The setup in 9 had only 2 good power roles; this setup has 4 moderately-strong power roles, but the emphasis is far closer to 'strong'.

However, I think an easy fix would be to give the scum knowledge of one of the town power roles: the Universal Backup (can be done with an Informed or, heck, even a UB-Finder), Gunsmith (can be done with an informed, gunsmith-finder, maybe more), or Detective (you get the idea).

Not 2 or all 3 of them--but the scum knowing about 1 would take the setup from townsided to balanced imo as it gives the scum some idea of what to look out for. And I do mean the scum would be fine with any of those 3 being known to them. Knowing about the UB means that they know that they have to kill a TPR twice; knowing about the gunsmith gives them more counterplay; knowing about the detective gives them ways to try and avoid being caught by it.

I'd rate the knowledge most to least useful as gunsmith > UB

>

Detective, for what it's worth.

[mastina]

implosion:

can you ping Ircher? He hasn't posted here yet.

I think the setup in 18 is good, but would like the secondary reviewer to give input just in case I'm missing something.

In the mean time, can you type up roles and result PMs?

[mastina]

And to be clear: if a regular neighbor dies, that inherits the role too, I am assuming.

I'm fairly certain Neighbor does not count as a role for UB.

[mastina]

Going by the wiki, the normal guidelines section for universal backup says it inherits any non-vanilla role of the same alignment. A neighbor would return a non-vanilla result to a vanilla cop, so it should be able to be inherited.

Does a neighbor return a non-vanilla result to a vanilla cop?

I have always treated neighbor (with nothing more) as, effectively, a modifier to the Vanilla Townie role. As, technically, being a Vanilla (Townie/Goon) Neighbor.

It's not a true power role; the NRG basically universally treats neighbors as power-neutral in games because neighbors do not add anything on their own to the game, barring niche game mechanics/roles being in play to make the neighborhoods have tangible value.

[mastina]

I'm also good balance-wise but still need the role PMs/results/rules/etc.

[mastina]

wdym by results/rules btw?

Results you gave already, rules are the rules used in modding.

Role/result-wise, I echo Ircher's thoughts in 50.

[mastina]

Should be good!