magistrate: The arc of the Earth in dark space. (Default)
I did finally convince myself to join an online game for Blood on the Clocktower, largely because the Unofficial Discord started doing beginner-focused games.

It was utterly overwhelming, and a ton of fun! I enjoyed it so much more than I thought I would, given how confusing and fast-paced it felt. My team won, and I was actually instrumental in my team's victory, but that was more to do with some stunning good luck than actual skill or strategy. XD I wandered bass-ackwards into victory, but it still felt very good.

I was the Poisoner! I got the role assignment and promptly had a minor freakout, because seeing a red token on my very first game felt like jumping in at the deep end. In retrospect, I think playing minion in your first game is probably one of the kindest things that can happen in a beginner game (on a script like Trouble Brewing), because unlike anyone on the good team, you know who else is on your team, and unlike the Demon, the responsibility isn't on you to orchestrate the game, and you don't lose instantly if you die. (You win or lose with your team, regardless of whether or not you personally live to the end of the game.)

It was an 8-player game, so 5 townsfolk, one outsider, one minion (me!), and one demon.

For convenience and privacy, I'll refer to players by their seating positions, rendered as one-eighth positions around the clockface: 12:00, 1:30, 3:00, 4:30, 6:00, 7:30, 9:00, and 10:30. As so:



I was seated at the 10:30 position on the clockface, with my demon immediately to my right at 9:00. On the very first night, the Poisoner has to poison someone, before any information at all is given; I took a blind stab and poisoned the player at 1:30, and then promptly went "CRAP, I should have poisoned the 12:00 player, because if they're an Empath, they'll get information about me, their evil neighbor". Oh, well. Too late. The night ended, the day began, and I had some chats I wanted to have.

I talked to my demon first, who gave our bluffs as Fortune Teller, Mayor, and Saint. They took Fortune Teller, which gave them a lot of power to frame people if they could be believed, and I took Mayor, as it's a relatively straightforward, non-flashy bluff (Saints fall under such heavy scrutiny). Good good. I went off to learn what I could about the townsfolk, and to decide who to poison.

I wanted to learn more about my neighbor, but they were in a private chat, so I talked to my poison target of the last night: the player at 1:30.

As it turns out, my blind shot was the best possible pick: I hit the Chef, the only character in our game who happened to get first-night-only information. This meant that our Chef learned that there were zero pairs of evil players sitting next to each other, despite the fact that the demon and I were next to each other. Score!

I'd had technical issues with my mic in the first conversation, so it had run long; I didn't get a chance to talk to more than two players. There was a kerfluffle during the nomination phase; the player at 6:00 nominated the player at 7:30, while the player at 7:30 was claiming to be the Virgin; because the first Townsfolk to nominate the Virgin is executed immediately by the Storyteller, this is a good way to confirm two good players if you can pull it off.

But the 6:00 player didn't immediately die. Therefore, all the players could see that something in this set of things had happened: {The "Virgin" was drunk and/or poisoned and/or lying (AND/OR) the "Towsnfolk" was drunk and/or poisoned and/or lying}.

(I was in a better position because I knew that neither one of them was poisoned, because I was the only thing that could poison someone on this script. And I hadn't. I also knew that neither one of them was evil, which took away one of the biggest motivations for either one to lie about being the Virgin or a Townsfolk, so at this point I should have known beyond any reasonable doubt that one of them was the Drunk. I don't recall putting all of this together at the time, though. It's a lot easier to follow the chains of logic when you're spectating, and not in the thick of it; and easier still to follow the chains of logic when you're spectating from the Storyteller perspective, who already knows who everyone is, and that sort of spectating comprises most of my exposure to this game.)

Anyway, the 6:00 player who failed to proc the Virgin got executed by the town, because now the town was sus of both of them. The night phase began, and I tried to rectify my (surprisingly beneficial) error in judgement from the previous night. I poisoned 12:00, my neighbor.

As soon as I'd done that, I went "Wait, crap, if my neighbor is the Empath, getting conflicting information is going to make things definitely look hinky, and it's going to confirm that there's a Poisoner in the game! Crap crap crap!" But there was nothing I could do about it, so I awaited the dawning of the day.

The day dawned, and I learned that my 12:00 neighbor died in the night. That was the Demon's work, not my poison; poison just makes people's abilities malfunction. Well, there are worse things; often, poisoning a character who then gets Imp-killed is a waste of a poisoning, because the Demon acts early in the night, before most characters use their abilities. So I would have been disrupting an ability which was then overkilled (over-disrupted?) by the ultimate disruption, death. But, you know, there was always the chance that I'd hit the Soldier or something, who could only have been killed in the night if I'd poisoned them.

I wanted to talk to 12:00, my poisoned dead neighbor, but they got snagged into conversation with someone else. I grabbed a chat with 3:00, who claimed to be an information-gathering role, and nudged me in the direction of thinking that they were the Ravenkeeper. (I am entirely too credulous for this game. I left the conversation thinking that they probably were the Ravenkeeper.) After that, I went to talk to 12:00, who said that they were definitely the Ravenkeeper, which was another stroke of blind incredible luck, because that was the only other character on the script where it's actively beneficial to poison them on the night they're attacked by the demon. Score!

(Okay, there's the Mayor too, where the kill can't bounce off them if they're poisoned. But bouncing a kill off the Mayor is a Storyteller choice, not a guarantee, and I knew that there was no Mayor in the game because a Demon is always given bluffs which aren't in the game. And poisoning-killing a Ravenskeeper is arguably the best poisoning-killing of the three, because it actively adds misinformation to the town.) In this case, the Ravenkeeper told me that they learned something which suggested that one of the 6:00/7:30 pair (the Virgin-nominator who suspiciously didn't die, and the person claiming Virgin) was evil, but they didn't know which. They also said that I was not the person they picked.

(I couldn't unpick that for a bit, because surely if they'd picked either one of that pair, they would know which person in the pair to be suspicious of. Working it through with another player, that other player managed to unpick that the Ravenkeeper had probably picked someone outside of that pair and learned that that player was the Drunk. The Drunk is the only player on the script who doesn't know what category they fall into; they're an Outsider, but they're shown a Townsfolk token, so the player believes that they're a Townsfolk. Barring poisoning, that's the only good-faith reason that two players can try to confirm a Townsfolk/Virgin pair and fail.) (This game is very confusing when you're in the thick of it. I could probably have unpicked that logic if I was watching from the Storyteller sidelines, but I was lost when it was presented to me in the game.)

Anyway. At this point, I had a hard claim of Ravenkeeper from 12:00, and a sly insinuated claim of Ravenkeeper from 3:00, which made me suspicious of 3:00; I thought they were likely to be a powerful character trying to hide their ability. I actually can't remember who ended up getting executed by the town that day, because my head was already swimming and from my minion perspective, it didn't matter all that much. I cared less which player the town executed, so long as it wasn't me or my demon. I just needed to figure out who to poison.

That night, I poisoned 3:00, which was the only decision I had felt confident of all game.

The next day, we were down to four players left alive: myself, my demon, 3:00, and 4:30. 7:30 and 1:30 had both died, one to execution and one to the demon. That left zero living players between myself at 10:30 and the unknown powerful player at 3:00, which would become important later. I managed to speak to a couple people, including my demon; I told them that I'd poisoned 3:00, and they said POISON THEM AGAIN. I spoke to a couple more people, and then we went into day's nomination phase, with our little town of four.

Four players is a precarious position for the Good team, because the win condition for the Evil team is to have two players left alive, one of them being the demon. And the demon on this script has the opportunity to kill every night. Which means that there are three possible paths for the Good team from a four-player day:

1. They nominate and execute the demon, and win. Yay! ...but it's a one-in-four chance, and if they're not confident, they're in trouble. Because if...

2. They nominate and execute anyone who isn't the demon. This leaves them going into the final night with three players left alive. The demon will almost certainly kill during the night, which means the good team wakes up with two players left alive: the demon, and one other player. Otherwise known as the evil win condition. This is bad. It is game-over bad. So, they may choose the alternative...

3. They do not execute anyone. This leaves them going into the final night with four players left alive. The demon will almost certainly kill during the night, which means the good team wakes up with three players left alive, one of which is the demon. This puts the last death of the game in the hands of the town – execution – rather than the hands of the demon. It also means that they have a one-in-three chance of getting the demon, rather than a one-in-four.

Our town chose Option 3. There was a moment when someone nominated my demon, but no one was confident enough in their info to risk the game on it.

In the night, I poisoned 3:00. In the morning, we woke to find 3:00 dead.

In the discussion phase of the game, we learned that 3:00 was the Empath.

By this stage in the game I had been relentlessly (although haphazardly) smashing every legitimate information-gathering role the Good team had, with one exception, whose information didn't implicate me or my demon anyway. (We'd later learn that 4:30, the only living player left aside from myself and my demon, was the Undertaker, who learns the character of the person executed that day. No evil players had been executed, and I think one of our executions *might* have been the Chef whose information I poisoned. Which would have confirmed the Chef and their (wrong) information in the Undertaker's eyes, lending the Good Stamp Of Approval to misinformation. Score!)

Because I'd been such an accidentally effective little minion, the Storyteller – whose job it is to keep the game as tense and balanced as possible – tried to signal to the Empath that they were Obviously Poisoned on the first night I'd poisoned them by giving them a 2: two of their living neighbors were evil. That was me and 4:30, in the event, whom the Empath would have been reading a 0 off of until I started poisoning them.

(When your information suddenly changes, you have to ask yourself three questions: has the state of the game legitimately changed? Was I poisoned before, and am not poisoned now? Or was I not poisoned before, but am poisoned now?)

The Empath didn't get a second night of poisoned information; my Demon killed them before they could.

Anyway. At this phase of the game, all sorts of information started flying around the town. Everyone was sure there was a Drunk and/or Poisoner, but no one could tell who it was. The Ravenskeeper said that they saw the Undertaker as the Drunk. 6:00, the failed Virgin-nominator, said that they were the Investigator who saw that there was a Spy in the game (which, in a game with one minion, meant that there couldn't be a Poisoner), but the failed Virgin-proccing made them think that they or the Virgin was the Drunk. The Undertaker had learned that the Investigator was the Drunk, after we executed the Investigator. (This turned out to be the truth.) My demon came out with their bluff: that they were the Fortune Teller, and had read a "Yes, 10:30 is the demon!" off me, making me either the demon or their red herring, but I was the only one of their positive pings left alive. I made a fairly weak defense that I was the Mayor, no really!, which is a common Final 3 Players evil bluff: the Mayor wins for the Good team if no one executes on the final day, but if there is no Mayor (or the Mayor is poisoned), then Evil wins if you don't execute. (See above re: going into the final night with three players left alive.)

Everyone in the town was suspicious of me. I got nominated for execution. Five out of eight players voted; I put my hand up at the last second, just to really cinch it.

(The nominee is always the last person to vote on their own execution. There are some good reasons to vote for yourself: for example, if you want to tie the vote so that no one is executed that day, or if you want to make absolutely sure that no one can tie or exceed the number of votes. There are situations in which case you can win the game or put your team in a better position by taking the fall and being executed: for example, a minion taking the fall for their demon is almost universally a good play. In this case, though, five votes was already unbeatable; too many dead votes had been cast, and the dead only have a single vote to spend after their death. There weren't enough votes left on the board to compete with my execution once five votes were cast, so casting the sixth was absolutely just a taunt.)

I was executed. My demon was left alone in the town with a single hapless Townsfolk: the Undertaker, the only legitimate information-gathering role I hadn't poisoned over the course of the game. And Team Evil won.

The real layout of the town was this:



And that was my first game of Blood on the Clocktower! I currently have a 100% win record, which I expect will quickly and dramatically go off the rails forthwith.

I found it hectic and confusing and stressful, but in a eustress kind of way. I was surprised at how little anxiety I felt around the social aspects; talking to strangers is typically an intensely awkward experience for me, but I think the fact that we were all there to have a fun time and untangle a big puzzle took the focus off "These people are going to JUDGE MY WORTH AS A HUMAN BEING and I will FOREVER LABOR UNDER THE WEIGHT OF THEIR REGARD". I did freeze up a couple times; a couple times completely blanked on how words and communication functioned. But, unusually for me, I managed not to dwell on having done so.

All in all, I had a great time.

Date: 2022-08-24 06:44 am (UTC)From: [personal profile] rionaleonhart
rionaleonhart: twewy: joshua kiryu is being fabulously obnoxious and he knows it. (is that so?)
I enjoyed reading this! Congratulations on your victory for evil.

Date: 2022-08-24 11:33 am (UTC)From: [personal profile] echoscometorest
echoscometorest: a sky with backlit clouds in shades of purples, peaches, and grays (Default)
I actually found this totally followable! And a lot of fun to read. :D I'm glad you got to play and enjoyed it!

(I was actually eyeing the unofficial discord two days ago, funnily enough. Are they still doing beginner-oriented games? If so, I may bite the bullet and join, because I've been really wanting to try myself.)

Date: 2022-08-25 07:29 am (UTC)From: [personal profile] echoscometorest
echoscometorest: a sky with backlit clouds in shades of purples, peaches, and grays (Default)
Thanks for the info! I hopped in; I think I'm gonna try to spectate before the ones on the 5th and psych myself into joining by the next round of beginner games. Hopefully I'll see you about at some point, it would be cool to play together. :D

Date: 2022-08-28 05:46 pm (UTC)From: [personal profile] echoscometorest
echoscometorest: a sky with backlit clouds in shades of purples, peaches, and grays (Default)
I will keep an eye out -- I'm balsamandash#8640. I'm not actually sure when I'll have time for it after all cause of real life stuff, but I'm hoping I can carve out a few hours soon.

Profile

magistrate: The arc of the Earth in dark space. (Default)
magistrate

March 2024

S M T W T F S
     12
3456789
10111213141516
171819 20212223
24252627282930
31      

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Feb. 2nd, 2026 06:12 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios