Datisi's Mini Normal Review, July 2021

[mastina]

okay so i hate to do this but first things first: mafia babysitter is one of those roles that we haven't technically gotten around to saying isn't normal yet (and to be honest some people on the NRG might disagree with me on this one), but i basically consider it non-normal. given the potential as a mafia killing role—which i suppose you were going for—i take a pretty hardline stance that extra mafia kill power is basically not meant for normal games. it's also a

serious

amount of power for scum – even gated to them being shot, it's sort of a big deal, so normality concerns aside i would say the setup is probably far too scumsided.

Echoing this; I would consider a mafia babysitter to be a role that shouldn't exist because mafia should not have access to killing roles in Normals, and their access to them serves to punish the town vig for using their action in the first place.

[mastina]

my interpretation of macho is that it individually prevents you from being protected from a kill, not that it makes anything attached to a protective action fail. so i would say that the alien action would go through, that player would just still die if shot

I was under the impression that rolestoppers do not function like a doctor protective and function more like a commute/asceticizer-that-works-on-nightkills-too in that it makes all actions targeting the player fail--nightkill included.

[mastina]

(Also, not feeling up to reading revised setup tonight, will do so tomorrow.)

[mastina]

(For the record, I do not agree with the "rolestop is a protective and therefore shouldn't be able to protect a Macho" viewpoint; I agree with the "rolestop is not a protective and therefore should protect a Macho" viewpoint which the famous quote encapsulates. Machos cannot be protected by babysitters, bodyguards, doctors, or jailkeepers because all of those are classified as protective actions. But a rolestopper is not classified as a protective action; it is classified as a roleblocking action. Because it in many ways acts as gifting what amounts to a combined ascetic+bulletproof, or multitasking-commute. It stops actions from succeeding on the target, rather than protecting the target from the actions.

Separately, but loosely related; I also believe that, technically speaking, Macho Bulletproof is in fact technically possible, too. Macho means you cannot be protected by protection actions, but bulletproof isn't a protection action, it's a passive kill immunity. But I'm not as sure about this combo and its legality, I may be wrong about the technicalities involved. But IF I were right about it technically being possible, of macho-bp being possible, then a role which effectively serves as making their target ascetic+bulletproof would in fact still work on a Macho, further supporting the rolestop-works-on-macho.)

[mastina]

(i'm assuming that if a bodyguard guards a bulletproof player who gets shot, the bodyguard dies anyway)

This, explicitly, depends on the wording used in the bodyguard's role. (Situationally, it could also matter what the bulletproof's wording was if the bp was x-shot, but ungated, doesn't factor in here pretty sure.)

If you word your bodyguard as "if your target were to die during the night, you will prevent their death but you will die" (or something to that effect), then the bodyguard would NOT die when protecting a bulletproof player or for that matter, a player being protected by other means (e.g. doctor, jailkeeper, babysitter). The BP / other protective roles' protection would take priority in protecting the bodyguard.

If you word your bodyguard as "if your target were to be shot at during the night, you will protect them from the shot but you will die" (or something to that effect), then the bodyguard

should

die when protecting a bulletproof player. (Although not relevant for the setup proposed, this interaction is a lot more muddy in a game with other protectives e.g. doctor, jailkeeper, babysitter, with both protecting the same target. Is why I personally don't like this wording.)

Semantics in this case are actually hugely important as they make a big difference. (Incidentally, semantics in wording is actually how you can break a bodyguard-doctor loop. For years it was thought that if a bodyguard protected a doctor and the doctor protected the bodyguard, it was an unbreakable loop without one of the two being roleblocked or a strongman. But actually, with the right wording in the doctor and bodyguard PMs, the loop can be broken with the bodyguard guaranteed to die if the bodyguard protects a doctor who the mafia shoot at. The key there is for a doctor's wording to involve protecting against being shot at and the bodyguard's wording to involve death if they successfully protect, which does not involve them being shot at.)

[mastina]

In theory, yes--all wording should be made to account for how the role is supposed to work and be standardized.

However, given the literally hundreds of roles + modifiers and their literally thousands if not millions of interactions with each other, we don't have literally every single possible interaction standardized and documented. In the case of roles which haven't had an interaction standardized and documented, it's usually a game-by-game case-by-case, wording-by-wording situation, where after the game ends if the reviewers remember "this actually isn't standardized, but should be", they bring it up and hopefully after a while we fix the lack of standardization and establish one.

Basically, we can't account for every role's interaction so some slip through until a setup brings up the interaction in question. This would be a case of that;

to my knowledge

, we don't have a standardized bg-protecting-bp interaction for Normals, not yet. After this game finishes (regardless of if the interaction exists in the final game, probably safest to wait just in case), if we remember, we can bring it up in the NRG and seek to standardize it.

But currently lacking the standardization, it's a bit of mod-call, implosion-call, and imo wording used to describe it.

[mastina]

so, at what point should i start getting worried about northsidegal?

About a week ago was when I was worried.

For the setup in 32 I think it's within the balance margins albeit with a lot of extreme swing involved but I was hoping nsg would've chimed in by now as it was nearly two weeks ago that you proposed that setup.

Granted, I would state again that my preferred interaction with the bp-bg is the bg not being killed, but I realize that with it not standardized yet and with the balance relying on the bg being killed, you have the right to having it work the way needed to balance it, but feel I should at least state my opinion there.

[mastina]

I do apologize the review is taking this long. Sorry. <3

[mastina]

again, this is just my interpretation (cough cough

@implo

), but i'm decently sure that this is how it works?

Pretty sure you got it right.

Backups of a role, by default, become the base version of the role once any version of that role dies, even if that version of the role had modifiers the backup did not have. The backup does not inherit the modifiers of the role it is backing up. (A backup cop becomes a full cop if a 1x cop dies.)
Backups can have role modifiers the original role did not have. (A 1x backup cop becomes a 1x cop if a full cop dies.)
Backups can be for a modified version of a role. (A backup 1x cop does not become a 1x cop if a cop dies, but does become a 1x cop if a 1x cop dies.)
Backups do not become the role they are a backup of if another backup dies. (A backup cop does not become a cop if a backup cop dies.)
Backups are cross-alignment. (A town backup doctor becomes a doctor if a scum doctor dies; a scum backup roleblocker becomes a roleblocker if a town roleblocker dies.)

The exception to all of these rules is the Universal Backup, which functions on an entirely different ruleset. (Universal Backups can only inherit roles of the same alignment, and a Universal Backup inherits the

full

role they back up, including all modifiers and including all shots used, meaning that a UB inheriting a 2x cop that had used one shot has only one shot left of their 2x cop and does not receive the original 2x cop's first result.)

This probably isn't the best wording to convey the concept and probably doesn't cover every interaction but is a general rundown I believe of most of the important stuff.

[mastina]

the latter seems like an almost arbitrary exception of the former, since "backup" in itself is a modifier, no?

I wouldn't call backup a modifier, actually--I'd call it a role.

[mastina]

is "backup ascetic" then a legal role combination? that is, a person who becomes an ascetic after one ascetic has died?

Backup Ascetic would in fact me a legal combination as it is a role that becomes an ascetic after an ascetic has died.

[mastina]

Disloyal detective feels a bit unfun given it cannot get any results at all making it basically a named townie. It's not a real investigative in spite of the town not having any true investigative (friendly neighbor is a self-conftown but not a real investigative), so I'd say the town is a bit light in power with an unfun borderline-unfair mechanic in place, but I think the setup is definitely workable and close to good.

[mastina]

I was honestly hoping that nsg would chime in.

It's probably within my authority to take over as a reviewer (i.e. going from the secondary reviewer I am meant to be, to the primary reviewer out of nsg the primary not being here), but I'd still prefer to have a second reviewer backing me up here. I'd assume implosion is reading here but if needed we can ping him more directly and ask about nsg.

[mastina]

i do have ideas for the setup change

Per 69, I think we're good for me to hear them.

[mastina]

oh, and slightly off-topic question: there is nothing in the normal rules that says that the town roles have to be coloured green and scum roles have to be coloured red, right? like, is there anything stopping me from making role pm's with town role names in red and scum role names in green, and flipping them accordingly in game? not saying i would do this, because i'm not (yet) that much of an asshole mod, but i am wondering.

There's nothing in the official Normal rules against that but I as a reviewer would veto it as a violation of the expectation of a "Normal" game--color associations are fairly normal, with hues of red and similar being for mafia and hues of green/blue (interchangeable, so long as it's universal i.e. not using two different hues/colors for two different roles), so something that is the inverse of that I'd consider a theme mechanic even though there's no rule against it and it's a small aesthetic thing.

But that's my answer as a reviewer; you might get a different answer from a different reviewer.

As for the setup proposed: generally speaking, the more you force limits on who scum can/cannot kill, the less freedom in nightplay they have, making the game be less fun for them and reducing their agency. Scum in the proposed setup have basically full agency during the day, but during the night the roles in question limit their freedom.

Games aren't required to be fun, but if that's something you want higher emphasis on, I would suggest a change in the game mechanic. You might want to shift the mafia roles into an active role for instance, but then shift the setup so that they have reasons for activating/not activating their role. (You can keep ascetics for instance by having them be Activated Ascetic, as Activated is a Normal role modifier.) I'm not quite sure what the shift in the town power would need to be to accommodate for the shift in mafia mechanic, but I'd think for the fun factor, increasing mafia agency by giving them more power other than their nightkill would be what you'd want here.

[mastina]

A babysitter can kill a macho but cannot save them, pretty sure.

Fun-wise, the only concern is mafia overly tunneling in on finding the IC at the expense of all other nightplay, but I don't think that's actually a big issue.

Normalacy-wise, is Normal.

Balance-wise, I think it's within the balanced margin.

The scum's power is not entirely reliant on finding the IC due to having the 1x rolestopper to use in a pinch.
The Neapolitan can get a couple innocents + the IC, but can't get guilties and can be shot freely.
The Babysitter can save/protect most town and can kill scum pre-ascetic but not post-ascetic.
The roleblocker adds a little bit of extra to the town.

Overall, there's a fair amount of swing to be had depending on ascetic-scumteam-early vs. non-ascetic-scumteam early as those two situations produce vastly different gamestates, but I think the swing is at a reasonable amount (not extreme), is fairly intuitive to figure out, and the game works. Not too focused on puzzling the pieces out, has some scum agency but not a perfect counter to every town role, is in the right zone.

So, gets a /pass setup-wise from me.

[mastina]

alright. i'll make the role pm's in a little bit, though i just had an idea: would it swing too much in scum's favour of the mafia backup ascetic also became a 1-shot checker? i feel like that would lower the swing and give scum a bit more nightplay freedom (not having to use each nightkill on an ic guess), but it obviously scumsides the game a bit.

I'd say it'd be too much of a swing in scum's favor, yes.

For the current roles you have a /pass from me.

[mastina]

None that I can think of, sorry.