r/BloodOnTheClocktower

Me and my friends played 3 games today, me Storytelling all of them. It was my first time Storytelling and our first time taking part in a BOTC game for all of us. I've been a fan of BOTC for a few months now, I don't think anyone else had heard of the game before. Everyone had a really great time and we're hoping to play again soon. Good absolutely stomped Evil in all 3 games though and I'm looking for suggestions to make my next games more balanced for the Evil team. I want to know if there's more I could've done, or if Evil simply lost due to being bad at lying (by their own admission, lol).

Btw we played TB for all 3 games, no Travellers or Fabled. I used the Pocket Grimoire and DIY tokens and character sheets.

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First game

It was an 8 player game, with the players in order being: Investigator, SW, Drunk (Slayer), Imp, Empath, Virgin, Monk, Undertaker.

I don't remember all 3 bluffs, but one of them was the Soldier, and that was the role the Imp decided to bluff as.

The Investigator got a ping on the SW and Drunk, because I was hoping to make the Drunk look Evil if they tried to use their ability and it didn't work.

The Imp and SW couldn't communicate because the town didn't want to have private conversations, though I reminded them a few times that it was an option. Almost everyone claimed their real roles immediately.

No one was executed that day, though there were some suspicions on the Virgin due to the Empath ping, but no one wanted to nominate them because they were scared of its ability. The Imp bluffing Soldier was also under suspicion for the same reason, and both Soldier and Virgin were seen as great roles to bluff as for Evil.

The Imp killed the Undertaker night 2.

Either on day 1 or 2, the SW claimed Monk, which was called out by the real Monk, who claimed they were keeping their role secret to see if an Evil player would double claim them. On day 2, the SW was executed because of this and the Investigator ping.

The Imp then killed the Monk, I think? Either way the Good team executed the Imp due to the Empath ping and being too scared to nominate the Virgin, and Good won on 5.

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Second game

Another 8 player game, this time the roles being, in order: Mayor, FT, Poisoner, RK, Recluse, WW, Empath, Imp.

The bluffs were Undertaker, Investigator, Slayer.

The WW was poisoned night 1, so I decided to show them the Imp and Mayor as one of the Imp's bluffs (I was hoping to throw suspicion on the Mayor). I chose Undertaker as the bluff to show the WW, hoping that the Imp would pick it or at least pivot to it later once they heard of the WW's info.

The FT chose the Red Herring (WW, to put some suspicion on their info in case the bluff didn't work out) and Recluse night 1, which I found quite funny.

This time around I convinced the town that private conversations were a fun part of this game, so they talked privately, but only for that one day. The Imp and Poisoner exchanged info, I came up to them and asked them what they were bluffing as - Imp said Investigator (oops), Poisoner said Undertaker.

The Recluse privately asked me whether it was good to claim their role. I gave an argument for and an argument against.

The RK privately claimed their role to the Mayor and the FT separately, and said they wanted to keep it a secret from the Demon. Unfortunately for them, when they went to use the bathroom, the Mayor outed them as the RK to the whole town, lol. Most players again claimed their roles publicly.

The Imp claimed an Investigator ping on the WW and Empath as the Poisoner. The WW realized they were probably poisoned or drunk since neither of their pings were claiming Undertaker. No executions that day, iirc.

The Poisoner chose the Recluse. The Imp forgot about the outed RK and killed them. The RK chose the WW. The FT chose the Imp and the Empath.

Next day, the town asked if there were any Undertaker claims. The Poisoner panicked, didn't claim Undertaker when the question was being asked, and instead double claimed Recluse a minute later (the Recluse had come out to a few people in private, but not publicly up to that point).

The Empath was executed due to the FT ping, but the Imp was also under suspicion and the Poisoner was basically outed Evil at that point.

Unbeknownst to me, there seems to have been some confusion about the RK's ability being able to choose players every night, so the Poisoner chose the dead RK. The Imp chose to kill the Mayor, and since Evil was badly losing at that point, I bounced the kill onto the FT.

Unfortunately for Evil, the Imp was executed the next day, on 5.

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Third game

One of our players had to leave, so this one was a 7 player game, with players being, in order: Imp, Chef, Virgin, Slayer, Soldier, RK, Spy. At that point I had realized that Evil was mainly losing due to double claiming Good players, so I decided to put in the Spy so that the Minion would also be able to safely bluff. I also didn't put in many info roles so that there would be less info pointing to the Evils.

The bluffs were Empath, FT, and WW.

I'm actually really annoyed at myself here, because I forgot the Spy could register as Good when giving the Chef their info, and so I gave them a true Chef 1, which ultimately lost the game for the Evil team! I only realized this a lot later into the game, though.

No private conversations this game either.

The Spy claimed Virgin, forgetting the Virgin was in play. This resulted in a stand off between the Virgin and Spy. After some time, the Virgin nominated the Spy and didn't die, obviously. I was really hoping the Spy would nominate the Virgin back so that I could "confirm" them as Good, but they probably didn't realize this was an option. The Chef was the one who ended up nominating the Virgin, was executed and died, confirming both as Good. This also cemented the Spy as Evil in the eyes of the town.

The Imp chose the Soldier, so no deaths that night. This confirmed the Soldier in the town's eyes.

The Chef 1 suggested either the Imp (claiming Empath with a 0 on night 1 and a 1 on night 2) or the RK was Evil, or that the Chef had been poisoned night 1. There was a lot of discussion about this. The Slayer used their Slayer shot on the RK, and the Spy even claimed they were the Poisoner who chose the Chef night 1, in order to protect the Imp, but the day ended with the Imp being executed on 6.

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So, despite everyone having a lot of fun of course, me included, I can't help but feel a bit sad that the Evil teams did so poorly. I feel like the way I was reasoning didn't match the way the rest of the town was reasoning. I'm definitely going to send them a few example games on YT, so that they can get more of a sense of how this game works, but I would also appreciate any suggestions for how I could help these specific Evil players better. Or did I do well enough and Evil simply messed up? Thank you in advance for any replies, ik this post was very long.

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Edit: Fixed the horrible formatting. Hopefully it's a bit more readable now

Confirming the rules for the following characters when killed by a sober/healthy Pukka as a summary. If interpreting this correctly, "when you die" abilities do not activate after a Pukka poison-> kill because on-death abilities occur before the player becomes healthy.

Farmer - dies and does not pass farmer to another player because they die and then become healthy afterwards

Ravenkeeper/Sage - dies and receives possibly poisoned information because they die and then become healthy afterwards

Banshee - dies; the ST does not announce a banshee has died, and their ability does not activate because they were poisoned on death

Sweetheart - when they die, they are poisoned, so their ability does not activate, and nobody becomes drunk because of sweetheart

Moonchild - the one exception to the above - since it activates when you learn you died (day phase) you have already become healthy as the Pukka ability has resolved, so if they choose a good player that day, the following night, someone will die.

It was a solo Lleech demon script with Vizier in play. 15 players game. ST runs the Alejo snake charmer custom rules (SC wakes up before demon on N1). Original demon was swapped by snake charmer on N1. The original demon (now as swapped snake charmer) started their day 1 demon hunting by looking for cues in social read. She identified a possible player as demon due to how another player casually go to him (across the town square) for discussion. Of course everyone is having private chat and not paying any attention.

I was just casually doing my 3 for 3 with everyone. Then we came to the end of day 1 private chat just before public nomination, where ST opens up the for Alssahir guessing. I guessed Vizier, the players suspected by the swapped snake charmer, and a random player as the Demon and Minions accordingly.

The ST takes a look at the grim goes like

"Everyone, the game has ended, good team has won!"

I immediately went, wth!!!. Because I wasn't even the Alssahir. Turns out ST took a glance at the Alssahir token position and mistaken me as the player next to me, who is the actual Alssahir, as me and announced my guess is correct and accidentally gave away the evil team. I'm just the king. We end up re-racking. It was epic and funny moment to win as Alssahir even though I was not even one.

Tldr: Won the game through Alssahir guessing even though I am not the Alssahir because the ST confused me with the player next to me as the Alssahir.

I saw this in a game last night and was wondering how it worked.

A gnome travels in. Evil isn’t doing too well; all the minions are dead, so the amigo will be the demon. The gnome learns who that is. Immediately afterward, the demon is snake charmed. Does the amigo remain the demon turned snake charmer, even though they’re on opposite teams, or should it move to the new demon?

Imagine this:

Your demon gives you false bluffs, doesn’t tell you what demon they are, and refuses to clarify anything.

So the evil team gathers to take control of the situation.

First: The dreamer is turned into a good Vortox to poison the well.

Second: The snake charmer(who is in an evil twin pair) switches with the demon. The evil twin is turned into a Cerenovus that same night and Cere locks the old(now dead) demon into another role. (The twin pair was never announced)

The new demon(we already knew this but we now have confirmation) is a Vigormortis. New demon gets changed into a Fang Gu.

Next night the dreamer turned good Vortox gets turned into a Barber.

Fang Gu jumps to the new Barber.

Meanwhile two days have ended in madness breaks because the old demon now refuses to speak.

Pit hag changes themself into an evil Mutant for a Failsafe but by then the game was drawing to a close because a witch curse triggered.

Evil team won, but obviously some things should have been handled differently(I was the Pit Hag turned Mutant).

First demon should have had something done about them for the obvious game throwing.

Possibly something should have been done about the Snake Charmer and Dreamer game throwing but this was in response to the demon acting the way they were(I’m actually not sure how the dreamer got looped into this but it worked out).

Cerenovus should have been asked to pick someone else when the old demon now snake charmer refused to speak, therefore ending multiple days in madness breaks.

There was a mistake where a philo drunk and Vortoxed Artist got true information which by that point just didn’t matter but worlds did get built off of that information.

Pit Hag(me) probably shouldn’t have been allowed to make so many demon changes.

Ultimately the good team wasn’t happy and the evil team won but even we weren’t super happy about how the game went down(mostly because of the original demon acting up).

We knew things weren’t right from the get go because the demon gave us bluffs we knew were in play(one of them was the snake charmer that was in a twin pair). Then we couldn’t find any outsiders or hint of outsiders whatsoever. So his original claim of Fang Gu was invalid(he told me No Dashi but we didn’t believe anything he said at that point because he told one of the others that he was a Vortox but I’d changed the Dreamer by this point so we knew a Vortox wasn’t in play at the beginning).

This was a game with a lot of ST blunders and an evil team that was allowed to recover quickly but alas even I on the winning evil team couldn’t feel good about it.

The ST(a friend) won’t allow that sort of thing to happen again and has said he will now just boot game throwing players so the game can be played as normal.

I’ve always loved the flavor text in Clocktower. They give a lot of context as to why some characters work the way they do. The demons have always fascinated me, though. Since they aren’t physical jobs or roles in the way a Librarian or an Assassin might be, their interpretations can seem a lot more vague, especially when their icons don’t give us much to work with. In Lore, what do you interpret the demons as? What do they look like, and why do they do what they do?

So I’m playing in person tomorrow and I was wondering something.

I don’t have a very good win rate so I was thinking that I should just strip it back to basics and ask what your basic strategy is when playing Blood on the Clocktower?
We’re gonna be playing TB if that helps.

Edit: I won as the spy!

This post is not an invitation to discuss recent happenings regarding cuts of people. The moderators locked the thread for a reason and this is not me opening another. 

The game we all know and love is best played between a large group of friends who know each other and the ways in which they lie and solve and read. It is paramount to the way it is played that everybody is on the same page regarding boundaries and playstyles. There is also a large content community (in context to the size of the game) which produces content for people to enjoy, and which acts as a huge jumping on platform for people interested in the game. These groups each have dozens of people volunteering their time to showcase this game. Many of the larger channels are monetised for the content they produce. I will note that I am a member of some of these and volunteer my time to play this game for them. 

What this means, to me, is that these streaming groups who play the game more regularly the most often become a large friend group who happen to volunteer their time to play the game on a big stage. What this also means is that there is a business incentive for the relevant content creators to maintain their view on what constitutes good content. This has major risks of causing a clash in what is expected. If the content creator deems that a person within their sphere is not making good content for them and that all discussions have been had and there is nothing that can be done to rectify the situation, then there are only two choices:

1. Removing the player in question and ostensibly casting them out of a group of friends. 

2. Keeping the player in the group and risking the content degenerating.

 

I don't think there is a good answer. Either option is hurtful and damaging to at least one person. On the one hand, it is almost certain to seriously hurt the people who end up being cut. On the other hand, it is the content creators' (and by extension, their volunteers) job to have fun playing this game. There are groups of players who are paid to play this game within the larger channels. There are fundraising events aiming to make more lavish content for the sake of expansion. Larger channels are now engaging with smaller channels which can help the viability of this being an actual job prospect.

Where is the line between a streaming group being a group of friends and a bunch of volunteers/colleagues? Is that a line that is always going to be blurred for the benefit of the content produced? One thought I had was that the content creators could set a hard boundary and outright state that this is something that is a business model for them. The risk there, however, is losing the natural touch. The content could suffer if people are told it's not a friend group. As I said earlier, this is a game best played with friends. If you are making content on the matter, it's best to make it with friends or to be very sure you're good at creating that facsimile. 

Any streamer, video maker or content creator in this sort of space is selling their friendships with their player base to an audience. The group is to seem amenable and natural. This coalesces with the relationship the creator and their troupes have with the wider community that engages with them. The friendliness and relationships that are shared internally is being broadcast externally. Any issues are therefore at a much higher risk of becoming public knowledge and thus “internet drama” as people have bought into those relationships in some respect. 

As a result, I think that that parasocial aspect of making people believe you're all friends bleeds into the way that the stream groups act internally. Content groups have to be friends to sell the content and to sell the game, but this breaks down when the content demands a change in roster for the sake of growth or stability. There comes a point where business will inevitably conflict with friendship which is a problem when friendship is a core practice of the business model. This, in turn, makes a business decision (which should be impersonal) into what can easily be construed as a personal affront. Maybe that's a necessary evil to successfully sell the idea of people-who-are-friends-and-love-this-game, but there maybe should be recognition internally and externally that moderation of the groups is important to the cohesion of the product. And yet, if I or anyone I know in this sphere were cut, I would be deeply hurt and worried that I'm not fit to be those people's friends. 

I'm interested in other people's thoughts. Is there a solution? Or is this just a risk that has to be taken when you're within this part of the community?

I have been judging storytellers. Now enough! It's my turn to be judged. And honestly I am very nervous!!

I'll be storytelling TB or Onion pies for the first time ever! And honestly I have no clue how to make the character bag. I have never done storytelling and want some tips. Would you be kind and give me some?

Suppose I put the Lleech into a game that has the Evil Twin, and the Lleech chooses the Evil Twin's pair as their host. Does good even have a way to win at that point? Should I re-rack at that point, ignore it. make evil lose anyway if the host dies?

I was surprised the Djinn didn't have a rule for this already on the wiki page.

I’ve been watching A LOT of BOTC content for the past few months and it seems so fun. I have no one in my real life to play with. I know there’s online play-are the public lobbies a friendly place to start? This might seem lame but I’m scared to disappoint people during my very first game 😅

Lessons learned during my first foray into storytelling (Trouble Brewing, yesterday night):

1. Don't get distracted by the town's chatter while you're trying to set up the grim and lose track of which way you were placing the pile of tokens you just collected...
2. Probably don't make the Virgin the other half of the Investigator ping (even if the Investigator is the Virgin's partner and you know it'll be hilarious), as it's the most confirmable role on the script.
3. If the Slayer is the Imp's girlfriend and they're sat next to each other, for god's sake make sure she's also Drunk so she can't just end the game during the first day phase.
4. Don't wake the Saint up and give them the Empath info on Night 1 (even if the Empath is actually the Drunk)
5. FIVE GOLD RINGS! Love that bit.
6. Don't give the Fortune Teller incorrect Night 1 information when there's no mechanical reason to do so; simply being a cheeky sod who frequently insults his Storytellers is not a good enough excuse (though there's not a court in the land that would convict).
7. Don't give the Fortune Teller their Night 2 information if they've just been murdered by the Imp.
8. If you do realise during the Day 2 conversations that you gave the FT wrong info on Night 1, there are probably better ways of handling it than simply going "Sorry, guys, game's cooked" and ending it there.
9. If the Imp star passes to the Poisoner after the Poisoner has poisoned the Fortune Teller, the poisoning is no longer effective and the Fortune Teller should get correct information, even though this makes ZERO THEMATIC SENSE. If you poison someone and then throw yourself under a bus, that person doesn't magically get better, do they?
10. Fortune Tellers are clearly more hassle than they're worth; don't bother putting it in the bag next time. Oh, and I probably should've told the Poisoner that he was now the Imp. But somehow he figured it out anyway. Y'know, when I revealed that the Imp had died during the night in a one Demon-one Minion game.

Apart from that, I think it went rather well...  😁

https://preview.redd.it/g0yana3ei3bh1.png?width=2155&format=png&auto=webp&s=f33a6ab159e3dd5ee5d0247f5cd9f5bc4eddedc0

https://preview.redd.it/ldmsgnhfi3bh1.png?width=2155&format=png&auto=webp&s=dac940ac6eed1fe3dafea4c016775abfaa47c25d

https://preview.redd.it/kwoz8rfpi3bh1.png?width=2155&format=png&auto=webp&s=7b7e5dd10d2319f9b67034fb9b0f2da701337ee8

https://preview.redd.it/hmjxwljqi3bh1.png?width=2155&format=png&auto=webp&s=9e9abae3fd88a5000ab36333aa5a9e74ab292854

I've spent a lot of time putting together these two very similar scripts, each with a few key twists.

The core concept revolves around figuring out which night's information you can actually trust, especially with the Xaan + Summoner + Vortox + Drunk combination. Most of the Townsfolk are designed around solving which world is the real one.

Pukka adds another layer of misinformation, while also giving the Summoner the option of summoning as early as Night 2. Moonchild and Saint are two of the few Outsiders that work well with Pukka.

Lil' Monsta adds another viable strategy for the Summoner, making a Pukka game less obvious by obscuring its first kill, while also creating some fun interactions with the Goon.

Cerenovus pairs well with Vortox, while Witch helps speed the game up.

Monk is especially strong against Vortox and Pukka.

Farmer is the only official Demonbane character that really feels viable here.

Goon empowers Xaan, Cerenovus, and Witch, as well as Widow in Vortox/Lil' Monsta games.

Tinker helps accelerate the pace of the game and also provides cover for Summoner and Witch plays.

The first script is centered around the Goon, an extra Evil.
The second is designed to play with an empty Seat 7, similar to The Ballad of Seat 7.

Which script do you think is better? Or do you think they're different enough that both are worth keeping?