Mini Normal 2252 | W;ildlife amd strange critters | Over!!

[mastina]

Hi I reviewed this game.
(Sorry for taking so long.)

[mastina]

the amount of modifications and caveats on this game definitely made me feel like I couldn't make assumptions about the setup, which I've always found to be a benefit for a normal game.

For the record, my personal belief on Normals is that the less they look like a Semi-Open, the better they are.

By which, I mean: the more roles, and the more modifiers, that exist, the less predictable and less breakable-by-the-town the game becomes because with more combinations of roles/modifiers, there's more variety to be had in setup design. The wider the pool of roles and the wider the pool of modifiers, the wider amount of possibilities exist and with more possibilities comes less ability to nail down precisely the setup just from having seen one role flip.

Back in the day, if a Cop flipped, that single role flip was probably enough to give the town an idea of the entirety of the setup, because of the small pool of roles/modifiers, so one role flipping meant that you had the information to know what role combos would be probable off of just that one flip--one flip alone might not make the setup

certain

, but it was unhealthily informative given how the whitelist was small enough to be borderline a Semi-Open in of itself. You had a pretty good idea what the setup was likely to be from so much as a single flip, just because of what roles would work with that one role that flipped.

By continuously expanding the roster of Normal roles/modifiers as we come up with implementable mechanics that can be added healthily and which fulfill Normal mechanics (no redirectors for instance), we make the games be less predictable, less certain. One flip no longer makes the setup basically wide open; one flip isn't enough to give you a pretty good idea of what the setup is likely to be. It

can

be, but far more likely than not, you'll need 2-3 roles to have flipped before you can hone in on what the setup is more likely to be.

Imo, that's a healthy direction.

But I do understand the culture shock of coming from the time when the whitelist was quite small compared to today since it's a lot of new info to learn and the documentation of the changes isn't as good as it should be and interactions aren't as defined as they should be (a natural consequence of there being more roles/modifiers--each new role/modifier adds interactions with every previous role/modifier so a lot of interactions slip through the standardization cracks and require later looks to figure out if/how to standardize them).

definitely concur that i'm not really a fan of what the normal guidelines have become, there's too much emphasis on puzzle box setups that are meant to thwart the assumptions of players and mechanics which are fairly alienating to those unfamiliar with the meta

Imo, good setup design fulfills all of the following:
-The setup is not easily guessed;
-The setup is not broken by a massclaim early;
-The scum have agency in both the day and the night, but not total control over either;
*The scum do not have a counter to every town PR (or at least, not a counter to most town PRs);
-The town's power roles give the town a boost, but the town is not reliant on their power roles to win the game;
-Town PRs give benefit to the town, but the town can still plausibly win with bad luck;
-The game has relatively low swing;
-The game has low odds of severe swing in one direction (in other words, even if the game is swingy, it has equal odds of swinging both ways rather than a 75% chance of swinging towards one faction over the other e.g. a high chance of swinging towards scum but a chance to swing hard towards town);
-The swing on sides is loosely equivalent (in other words, even if the game is swingy, the benefits from gaining an advantage are loosely equal for both sides);
-The game is fun for the players and does not contain unfun mechanics;
-The game is not too heavily themed;
-If the game does have a theme to it which is acceptable, the theme isn't very guessable to players and only becomes obvious in postgame, (and/)OR, if the theme IS guessable, it doesn't provide a sizeable advantage from having been guessed;
-The game is loosely balanced, ideally close to 50% (we can pass anything which goes up to 60-40 either direction but the closer to 50%, the better);

Probably a couple more but these hit on the major ones. (An optional one is for each game to be unique, to make each experience be different from the prior game.)

The thing about that though is that most of these are, strictly speaking, entirely optional.
We're required to review to make sure the game fits Normal mechanics (which means it can't be too heavily themed) and we're required to make sure the game is within the 60-40 (nothing 65-35 or so) margin of balanced (this covers guessability + massclaim breakability + scum counters among others imo), but we're not required to do literally anything else. Agency, "game is a puzzle", reliance on town PRs, swinginess, ease of swing to one faction, and funness are all technically speaking not required in reviews.

It's my opinion that the NRG should aim for those things, but they're strictly speaking not

required

to exist in Normal games.
After all, a NRG mandate is to try and preserve the vision of the setup designer. We're meant to try and preserve the core of their vision when we give our feedback. We need to make the game fit Normal mechanics and we need to make sure the game is within the acceptable balance margin, but beyond that, anything we do is going above and beyond our call to duty because technically speaking, most of the review process is meant to be making the least amount of changes possible to the moderator's intended setup. Make the fewest needed changes to have the game be runnable.

And even when we DO include the technically-optional stuff...it's hard to hit the mark on everything.

YOU try designing a setup that hits literally every mark I mentioned.
Setups that are balanced, not easily guessed, not broken by massclaim, give scum agency, don't give the scum a counter to all the TPRs, have the TPRs give a boost to the town but don't outright solve the game for the town, low in swing, have the existing swing be loosely equal between factions, have the benefit of the swing be loosely equal between factions, don't have a guessable "theme", are still unique, and are fun to both factions?

Far and few between because designing a setup which hits some of these marks often sacrifices hitting the mark on others.

It's much much much harder than you might think.

Granted, when I'm not as sick as I am and as swamped with RL shit as I am, I'm planning on posting to MD some better insights into my NRG philosophy, which will go into this a lot more extensively, but this should give you at least some insight into things.

tl;dr: we're only required to do a couple of things, and more than that is going extra (reviewers are meant to maintain as much of the core vision of the designer as possible); when going through those extras, it's incredibly hard to hit every mark (especially since many are seemingly mutually exclusive with each other), so we do the best we can, but designing a truly perfect setup is effectively impossible. (And even if it were possible, you run that one game and then you need to design another. One perfect setup is seemingly impossible. Now try to design two, three, four, five...)