Changes to Normal Games (update September 2022)

[Ythan]

I disagree that it's a lie but it's a plausible change you're suggesting anyway I guess if people are into it.

[TemporalLich]

A red herring Enabler or Backup is effectively a Named role - a red herring with a town-only role is effectively a role that tells Role Cops they are Town.

A red herring Finder is still a Checker with a name.

Red herrings are more setup WIFOMy than Named roles imo, though red herrings do serve to reduce the power of Enablers/Backups/Finders so they aren't informed that shows in flips.

I think red herrings are fine - red herrings

can

be reasonably anticipated and the alternative is granting derived roles an unintended and hidden ability.

[Jake The Wolfie]

Concept: Roles that implicitly lie to the players (eg. A Jailkeeper-finder when there is no Jailkeeper, which is functionally a Named Visitor) should not be allowed in Normal Games.

Why not?

If we named roles in normal games, then we would just allow named roles in normal games.
In addition, a moderator should not be forced to lie to their players under any circunstance.

[TemporalLich]

I'll argue that a red herring is not a moderator lie: there's nothing about a Cop Enabler that informs you that Cops exist in the setup.

Enablers/Backups/[role]-Finders without their associated role existing in the setup is a red herring - it is designed to lead to a false conclusion (that the associated role exists) but there's nothing that actually states the conclusion is true.

It gets even more unusual when you consider the Backup/same Backup interaction - I assume one of the Backups dying in that scenario activates the other, otherwise there's no point to having two Backups unless the non-Backup version of the role exists. (note: this gets really weird with two Backup Bulletproof roles - I'd have to resolve in that case simultaneously NKing both will result in both dying as neither have time to back up)

[Jake The Wolfie]

It's not as explicit of a lie of an informed being told theire is a cop when none exists, but it is still implicitly a lie.
If you wanted red herrings, then you would include redirectors and bus drivers. Technically the moderator isn't lying when they say you got a redcheck on player A when in reality you were redirected to player B and got a redcheck on them, but the moderator is still implicitly lying to you.

[TemporalLich]

It's not as explicit of a lie of an informed being told theire is a cop when none exists, but it is still implicitly a lie.
If you wanted red herrings, then you would include redirectors and bus drivers. Technically the moderator isn't lying when they say you got a redcheck on player A when in reality you were redirected to player B and got a redcheck on them, but the moderator is still implicitly lying to you.

Red herrings are still a form of deception, and I still would consider it reasonably anticipated (there's really nothing that says your derived role is not a red herring, and it's Normal anyway so it's reasonable to anticipate if it can happen in Normal Games). It's not an outright lie, but if it were it would be bastard (False Informed is not reasonable to anticipate).

I actually consider investigations that have incorrect

targets

to be bastard (a moderator lie that cannot be reasonably anticipated). In Normals your target is your target as redirection is categorically not Normal, though in Themes it will be relevant. If you got a red check on Player A but in reality you were redirectd to Player B the moderator is

explicitly

lying to you. Even if that, you'd have to justify why you think Framer, Lawyer, and Tailor should be Normal, because if you're allowing "apparent target" investigations and redirection you also need to justify why Framer, Lawyer, Tailor, and Godfather are normal. I don't think "apparent target" investigations and redirection should be Normal if the more Normal and effectively possible Framer, Lawyer, Tailor, and Godfather are not Normal.

[Something_Smart]

It's not a lie. People are aware of the possibility of a curveball with roles like this. Calling it an implicit lie is pretty fair.

However these roles do have use besides just toying with the players. In the case of the game that likely sparked this, the point was to encourage the neighborizer to target scum. That said, in retrospect, it was probably a bad idea because of what happened in the game.

What it is is a violation of expectations, if you happen to expect than an X-Finder would never exist without an X. It's always possible for people to have incorrect expectations violated, so we have to strike a balance of which expectations are reasonable and which ones are unreasonable. In retrospect, I do feel that the expectation "there is a strongman" was reasonable enough, I just didn't expect it to matter in the way that it did. But overall, people should be familiar enough with normal rules and design philosophies that expecting no red herrings is unreasonable.

[Something_Smart]

About that role, Isis said (and I quote), "It's the kind of red herring that's never harmful."

Hopefully she'll agree with me that that's clearly wrong.

[Jake The Wolfie]

That is not my stance. My stance is that the moderator should not be forced to lie or misdirect the players (which actually excludes Miller, a role which in a twist of irony forces the moderator to lie to a player about another's alignment, from being normal) because that directly influences the game, because that is direct moderator influence.

P-edit: @SS If you check player A, but were redirected to player B, a moderator isn't lying when they say that you got a Redcheck, but they are misleading you on who the Redcheck was on.
P-edit2: That is the opinion of one user. A user who knows what they are talking about, sure, but still the opinion of one user.

[TemporalLich]

About that role, Isis said (and I quote), "It's the kind of red herring that's never harmful."

Hopefully she'll agree with me that that's clearly wrong.

yeah, red herrings can lead to bad plays and false expectations. The most obvious case of harm is if a derived role softclaims that the role they are based off exists in the game.

The alternative would be giving derived roles an obscure Informed-except-it-appears-in-flips power only because of the openness of a Normal setup, effectively making derived roles function differently depending whether you are in a Normal or a Theme game.

That being said, do you think Informed-except-it-appears-in-flips could ever be Normal? The main issue is logistics, it would prevent flips from being a simple listing of the role in Normals.

P.S. the redirector investigation alteration is bastard if you are told "Player A is Not Town." except you actually targeted Player B.

[Not_Mafia]

WIFOMy things like Back-ups without their main role, millers without cops etc... have been around forever. They're a perfectly reasonable thing to expect in a standard game

[Jake The Wolfie]

P.S. the redirector investigation alteration is bastard if you are told "Player A is Not Town." except you actually targeted Player B.

That is not something that happens in most games, normal or otherwise. You aren't told who you targetted, who you ended up targetting, etc.

WIFOMy things like Back-ups without their main role, millers without cops etc... have been around forever. They're a perfectly reasonable thing to expect in a standard game

They are reasonable to expect because they have been around forever. If we wanted to normalize False roles, then we'd just need to make it blaringly obvious for the first, say, 25 games that False roles are indeed possible. That would not make them any less bastard or abnormal.

[Gamma Emerald]

I'll argue that a red herring is not a moderator lie: there's nothing about a Cop Enabler that informs you that Cops exist in the setup.

Enablers/Backups/[role]-Finders without their associated role existing in the setup is a red herring - it is designed to lead to a false conclusion (that the associated role exists) but there's nothing that actually states the conclusion is true.

It gets even more unusual when you consider the Backup/same Backup interaction - I assume one of the Backups dying in that scenario activates the other, otherwise there's no point to having two Backups unless the non-Backup version of the role exists. (note: this gets really weird with two Backup Bulletproof roles - I'd have to resolve in that case simultaneously NKing both will result in both dying as neither have time to back up)

I have seen a double backup scenario, the function was that both triggered at the same time

[TemporalLich]

WIFOMy things like Back-ups without their main role, millers without cops etc... have been around forever. They're a perfectly reasonable thing to expect in a standard game

thanks for reminding me that a Miller in a setup without a Cop is a red herring

and that's not getting into some advanced red herring level shenanigans like putting a Strongman in a setup with no protective or manipulative roles or putting a Ninja in a setup with no action investigators that end up making a "no red herring" rule hard to define

[Ythan]

Years and years ago when I sometimes modded I ran a game full of red herring roles that was actually just a confusing vanilla game.

[Gamma Emerald]

miller functions as a rolecop inno
so unless neither cop nor rolecop are in the setup, miller is not a red herring

[TemporalLich]

miller functions as a rolecop inno
so unless neither cop nor rolecop are in the setup, miller is not a red herring

yeah that just makes it even harder to ban red herrings from Normal

and regardless I think Earl (Named Townie, but specifically Town-aligned) might have a iota of potential as a Normal Town role if that is the case.

[Kerset]

If we ban red herring then each backup, finder etc will become more powerful for town as they will hold additional information. We don't want that as it makes games harder to balance.

[TemporalLich]

yeah that's my main point on why I don't want red herrings banned - it creates a stark power difference between derived roles in Normals and derived roles in Themes

[Jake The Wolfie]

I don't care how much harder it would make to review a game. If the eNeRGy needs more resources because they suddenly have an uptake in Mods making their own games instead of using prefabricated games, the solution is not to reduce what qualifies as normal, and bar any new qualifications from being enteted.

[Cheery Dog]

NRG probably needs more resources anyway.

But if you get rid of red herring roles as such, they probably need to be excluded from all games.

[Jake The Wolfie]

Define "All Games"

If "All Games" includes "Bastard Games", then I disagree with you heavily.

[Cheery Dog]

all games as in normal games. This is a thread about normal games, and therefore only normal games matter.

[Jake The Wolfie]

Yeah, I'd agree that if you got rid of X, it'd be good practice to remove X.

[implosion]

It is an "implicit lie" sure, but I'm not convinced that really means anything. Moderators are not forced to lie to players; having a setup with a deputy and no cop is not a lie, because telling a player "you're a deputy" does not include info that there's a cop. It's only implied because it's usually the case; there's no rule that it is the case, and thus no lie. It's that simple in terms of whether the mod is lying to a player.

Whether or not these "implicit lies" are a *good* idea is generally a reviewer's choice. I think there are some reviewers who would object to, say, throwing in a random neapolitan enabler that has no interactions with any other roles in the setup, for instance. But it is useful from a design perspective to be able to make linked roles like backups without confirming the existence of the main role.

Like a fair number of choices in the current iteration of normal game design, I don't feel especially strongly about this choice; in fact I think the choice matters not all that much either way. The advantage to banning things like backup-without-main-role is that normals become a little simpler, and might have a little less implicit misinformation. But in practice this is a small gain, because setups with truly red herring roles are quite rare. The advantage of allowing them is also pretty small; it allows us to design the roles in such a way that they don't have extra info by virtue of their role. I think another important advantage that's been brought up is that there's no hard line for what constitutes a red herring; plenty of roles can serve a purpose in a game even if their linked role doesn't exist. A miller can, as mentioned, be a rolecop inno. A backup vig can serve as a false positive for a gunsmith. A jailkeeper-finder with no jailkeeper isn't a lie at all - it could, for instance, deconfirm a fakeclaim from a mafia roleblocker. A vigilante finder in a large could exist as a way to deconfirm a serial killer fakeclaim. There's lots of potential design space for roles like these without their explicit linked role, so we would have to pick a line that is to some degree arbitrary (which doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad idea on its own, but etc).