In post 1866, petroleumjelly wrote:First, PGO is a questionable "Killing" role in that it has no choice in when it kills, who it kills, or how many players it kills. The role in fact has no choices at all except for how it plays during the Day.
I don't see this as a valid argument seeing as how the same can be said of any negative utility passive role, e.g. Town Ascetic; Town Miller. They have no choice in their role, except how to play it during the day. In the night, it is out of their hands. Changing the consequences of the role doesn't change the basic mechanic. It negatively impacts those visiting, just in a different way than that of ascetic or miller. And both ascetic and miller are explicitly Normal mechanics.
For that matter it'd also apply to a role like a bomb, or a supersaint (although not as much for the latter since that does involve a certain type of dayplay, but it's still loosely the same issue). They can't control their role, yet their role has a definitive consequence towards others. (That said, neither of those roles are whitelisted right now, but under the graylist rules they'd have passed review in the appropriately-designed setups for them.)
On another note--because mafia killing roles are explicitly blacklisted, a confirmed PGO is conftown. No amount of it being a graylist role would allow for it to count as a mafia role in a Normal game; you'd be damn right that a mafia PGO would never pass review under the old guidelines, but I maintain that a town PGO, especially given that it is a commonly-used, universally-understood, widely-established role, is within the spirits of the guidelines as they were back then.
In post 1866, petroleumjelly wrote:->
b.)
The Role Disabler is flat out bad, and there is
no chance
I would allow it to pass in any Normal Game.
The role was specifically created to counteract the PGO, a role which at best is questionable to use in the game in the first place, which is a clear red flag (for
both
roles).
The role itself is nonsense; "roleblocking" passive abilities is
not a thing
.
The role, as was designed, can be thought of as "disables roles that have an effect which could be active but is instead a passive". Not the best wording, but I can explain by example:
It's a shitty role interaction, but an example; Ascetic is basically a reflexive-Roleblocker (except to kills), who can be thought of in a sense of "actively roleblocking the person visiting the ascetic". (That's not quite how the role works in practice, but I'm trying to show the logic here.) A passive roleblocker would disable the reflexive-roleblock.
Miller is basically a reflexive-self-framer to a Cop, who can be thought of in a sense as "actively interferes with the cop visiting, to change their result to a guilty". (That's not quite how the role works in practice, but I'm trying to show the logic here.) A passive roleblocker would disable the reflexive-self-frame.
Bulletproof is a role that can be Active instead of Passive. (And can be thought of in terms of a "self-protect".) A passive roleblocker would disable it as if it were an activated ability being roleblocked.
Thus, a Paranoid Gun Owner, which can be thought of in terms of being a "Reflexive Vigilante", is treated as if it were an activated vigilante, in being roleblocked.
The passive roleblocker would then, not disable masonries, neighborhoods, encryptors, any of the modifiers listed except BP, and definitely not the universal backup.
It may by this logic have blocked the commute as worded in this game, which I confess would be a case of reviewer oversight on wording as I was under the impression the commute was optional rather than automatic (just something that the sk would presumably always use anyway but in theory could choose not to).
But the role was, at least as intended in design, within the spirits of a modification on an existing role. Temporarily preventing a role from functioning is a mechanic we have, in the form of numerous roleblocker-type actions; shifting it from preventing actives to preventing specific types of passives (those being, passives that can be thought of as an active) is a variation that I feel is acceptable, just not well executed with exact wording/understanding.
In post 1866, petroleumjelly wrote:Then there's the whole issue with what happens when a "passive" ability might also be an "activated" ability. As an in-game example: a Strongman. The Strongman ability by itself is a passive ability, but it turns into an "activated" ability once you limit the number of times it can be used in the game... and boy is
that
is a mental mess to deal with! It's still technically a passive ability that's been "turned on," so... can it still be blocked?
An ungated strongman is a passive ability, but not one I'd classify as being an active and thus, it'd not be disabled by the role as was my understanding of its designed function. YMMV on that regard though.
An X-shot, and thus activated, strongman is not a passive ability at all, and thus, unambiguously, could never be blocked by the passive-disabler.
In post 1866, petroleumjelly wrote:A "Graylist" does not mean anything under the sun can "technically" be slotted into a Normal Game just so long as it it isn't "explicitly" banned. The basic tenets of Normal Games should always be the guiding force. Is this a role that players could reasonably expect in a "standard" game? Because if not, you shouldn't use it.
I maintain my stance on the matter: you feel it is not within the boundaries of a role that could be expected, but to me it is within the boundaries of creating a variation on an existing role.
Roleblockers disable active abilities for a single night.
This roleblocker disabled specific types of passive abilities--specifically, the one which can be thought of as an "can be an activated ability, just not in this game"--for a single night.
As per the old guidelines, graylisted roles were allowed, and most graylisted roles were either existing roles that weren't whitelisted (which, PGO definitively is), OR, a variation on an existing role new to the game. A passive roleblocker for me was the latter. The mechanics of a roleblocker are known; shifting the mechanics from an active to a passive feels like an intuitive leap in logic to me.