Umlaut's Mini Normal Review, September 2020

[callforjudgement]

I'm the secondary reviewer for this one, I think. (At least, if I'm not, then why do I have access to the PT?)

[callforjudgement]

My main concern with the basic idea behind this setup is that Ascetic isn't a role particularly tied to the Mafia (although Mafia Ascetic is more common, Ascetic Townie is also perfectly reasonable), so even though the Checker is likely to figure out what their purpose is (checking for Ascetics), they're unlikely to figure out what their results mean. Based on that, I think that town doesn't have nearly enough power to balance the setup (even despite the weakened scumteam). It doesn't help that the Jailkeeper, in effect, makes the Checker Paranoid upon targeting them.

That said, I do like the Loyal Jailkeeper as more of a standalone role (as the only protective, effectively confirming players as town if it successfully protects them).

I'm not sure if it's possible to fix the setup while still keeping the basic idea behind it, given that it's pretty much inherently modWIFOM. You could make the Mafia team into a more normal scumteam and make the Checker Loyal; that would be equivalent to the ascetic scumteam, but give the town a much clearer indication of when they could expect success versus failure on the Checker action, but I'm concerned that it might be moving too far away from your vision of the setup. (Even after making that change, town would probably need more power to balance.)

[callforjudgement]

Investigative roles don't need to get guilties on scum; getting innos on town is enough.

It should be possible to balance (even overbalance) with non-investigatives, though (although one issue is that you'll probably need to add killing power, which may make the game end too quickly for the other power roles to accomplish much). (I'm not very clear on the balance impact of a Traitor, so don't have a clear idea of exactly how much is needed.)

It's probably more interesting if you balance it with investigatives, though, because it gives a secondary use for the Checker: letting the more powerful investigatives know who their night actions will work on. I think that would work much more neatly at 13p, so that the setup balance isn't horribly dependent on the Jailkeeper stopping a kill.

[callforjudgement]

Wouldn't a Neapolitan produce the same results as an Informed Vanilla Cop, more elegantly?

Assuming that we add a Neapolitan or Informed Vanilla Cop without removing any players (so that the setup becomes 13p and there are still four townies to investigate), the setup would be scumsided against three regular Mafia. I'm not sure what sort of balance impact the Traitor has, but suspect it isn't as large as is generally considered – the main risk is that the scum nightkill them, which seems somewhat unfun for both the scum and the Traitor. I think the setup might be better if you make the Traitor Bulletproof and the town just a little stronger to compensate (e.g. move the Innocent Child to D3).

[callforjudgement]

Well, Town can't get a hard investigation result on anyone here, except for Neapolitan on VT; every single other piece of information has multiple possible ways to explain it. That means that I doubt the setup is overpowered for town if they do win D2, then it'll almost certainly be as a consequence of excellent scumhunting rather than of any help from the setup.

Scum do have a bit of a problem when it comes to claiming. That said, VT would be safe as a claim in this setup, and it's probably the most likely claim for them to try, so I don't think we need to give them any help.

Any decisions about what to do next would need to come from mastina (who needs to either approve this setup or suggest a correction to it); she hasn't been online recently. If she doesn't turn up in a day or two, I'll take over (and would probably accept this setup as-is).

[callforjudgement]

(Well, a VT claim makes scum vulnerable to the various Cop-alikes, but scum claims don't normally need to last more than a night or two anyway.)

[callforjudgement]

It's probably simplest to write the Neapolitan PM (and Neapolitan results) as "vanilla

Townie

"; that way, the player knows that the vanilla-ness is important, but the role name is "Townie". There might be potential confusion in the way you're doing it at the moment, but using "vanilla" as an adjective rather than a name should fix both any confusion about the results, and any issue with your role naming.

The easiest fix to the win condition problem is to modify the Traitor role PM: "If there are no other remaining Mafia members, you will die" or something like that.

Apart from that, I'm OK with the role PMs.

[callforjudgement]

If I were the primary reviewer, I would be willing to approve this. But I'm not (unless mastina gets replaced), so I can't.

[callforjudgement]

/approve

I'm not so sure I'm qualified to balance this sort of setup, but I can't get it any closer by myself.