Face Your Fears

[fresh basin]

question

if you think you have an ability and choose someone with it are you interacting with them

[wicked jay]

Yes because you're choosing them

Interact = choose or affect

[acoustic acorn]

blame Goon for that one

[cedar depot]

Bad TPI ruling #24948

[fresh basin]

common Luis S W

[mint agate]

Face Your Fears 2.6 is now out!

Changes since 2.5:

-Sasha James is getting a significant rework! No longer does she passively gain abilities based on interactions with her neighbors, instead Sasha may now OPG at night guess five players' characters and permanently gain any Townsfolk abilities she guesses correctly (think a Juggler , but privately at night). Sasha's new affiliation with the circus should hopefully give Sasha more room to grow while still only ever gaining in-play Townsfolk abilities, and give interesting rooms for socials to foil her.

Note on Sasha's misregistration: Sasha James's misregistration is now tied to her having used her ability rather than purely switching alignments with her target (although she can only make her targets register as Evil). This means that until Sasha uses her ability she cannot register as Good, but that once Sasha does she may register as Good at any point even if she misses all 5 guesses (she can only make a Recluse on a Townsfolk she has guessed correctly, so a completely missed guess will have the misregistration impact of Sasha being the Spy).

-Gerard Keay has been reworked for simplicity, getting rid of the demon’s page/second ability use when dead to be truly once per game as well as cutting the question (as no longer needed for balance). Now Gerard has a once per game save, but drunks himself if he nominates a living player who is either Evil or Jurgen Leitner (judged at time of nomination, if they are executed that day Gerard remains drunk that night).

-The Stranger has a small change that now reads "you are both poisoned if your teammate interacts with them" rather than poisoning you both if any other interaction from your team. This now means that a second player on The Stranger's team (including their pick self-interacting) would need to interact to trigger a double-poison rather than The Stranger interacting with their target a second time. This is largely intended to patch bugs where Archivist runs out of players to legally soberly target in late-game, while also allowing for some more gameplay for The Stranger themselves (and, for HB balancing nerds, massively nerfing particularly Sasha-Stranger as the strongest TF for old-Sasha to gain in response to the sizeable Sasha buff with new Circus-Sasha).

-The Corruption has a wording change to a) re-insert "your team loses" instead of the shorter "Evil wins" previously patched and b) specify outright that you must have learned yourself in order to lose (which means Evil cannot lose, as the Evil-Corruption has no way of learning themselves). This is to clarify for many Evil-Corruptions who have asked how they can win and been disappointed to learn that is not how the ability has worked because it's broken (we'd love to find a fun use for Evil-Corruption besides checking Tim's alignment, but for now any Evil-Corruption win is horribly unfun).

-The Hunt now specifies that it must have learned an evil player for the rampage to kill, which is a non-functional wording change to clarify a confusing point on how the ability previously worked: a Hunt who learns a name while droisoned cannot kill if they incorrectly learn a Good player, but STs are not meant to give this as a pass to show an Evil without consequence (or for Town suspecting The Hunt is drunk, such as per The Stranger or Peter Lukas, to test it by avoiding kills on a sober name or to attempt to turn the timer off to keep The Hunt or Daisy and their ping alive).

-Daisy Tonner has a similar-yet-different clarification wording tweak to emphasize that she can kill. Daisy has always and will always kill on the same pattern as The Hunt, but we've been asked enough that we sacrificed her shorter character text length a little to just say it outright.

Print-and-play!

Almanac!

Json!

[compact hedge]

Finally a minion other than Melanie is getting some love

[mint agate]

Look it's not our fault Martin and Tim are perfect 🤩

[acoustic acorn]

aside from Martin's significant buffs and Tim's significant nerfs near the start

I really like the new Sasha, feels good to have her having something to actively do, other than sit around, wait, and hope

and who doesn't love another reason to good to lie all the time

[keen drum]

I looove the new Sasha 🥳- because yeah her power was mostly based on luck and in the last game I played with that role it felt like you don't have much agency 🙈

Think the Hunt rework is really good too!

[fathom glen]

Evil corruption in shambles

[fathom minnow]

I like the gameplay loop new Sasha encourages as well

Having a reason to lie to not give Sasha a lot

[fresh basin]

So is registering a Sasha James-Corruption as Good so evil wins a yes but don’t

[shut pond]

It says "your team loses" so you wouldn't be able to do that anyway

[swift roost]

I think as per Faux Paw / Saint rulings that Good would win there? which is still yes but don't

[fresh basin]

Sasha James would be able to learn herself

[shut pond]

Still can't misregister to your win condition

So evil would lose

[fresh basin]

mmm, can you misregister a Sasha-Corruption so they lose?

[shut pond]

i mean, probably? By a reading of the ability I think so, but obv don't do that

[wicked jay]

You can make Good win the game off of Sasha-Corruption, but, do not do that

You cannot make Evil win the game off of Sasha-Corruption

[digital edge]

hiya
something has been nagging me since I finished The Magnus Archives, which full spoilers will be for below

||why is Tim Stoker the one that turns Good, when Sasha James was the one who actually turned Good||

[mint agate]

||because Tim Stoker is the one trying to quit the Evil team, while Sasha James we're keeping it ambiguous what point at the timeline we're in and which Sasha she is||

[digital edge]

ah. thanks.

[acoustic acorn]

||Also like a bunch of these Minions/Demons tried to quit the Magnus Institute||

[digital edge]

followup question that I'm pretty sure is just for balance reasons and not lore tie-in

[mint agate]

||I mean yes it's the vibe we can't (I mean I guess we could) just have Melanie organ grind herself 😂||

[digital edge]

||why is Keay an outsider when he worked for Gerturde (from my perspective, as well as he could)||

[acoustic acorn]

||Daisy was also an assistant to Jon at one point, a line has to be drawn somewhere and they're just on the other side of it||

||Peter Lucas was even briefly in charge||

[digital edge]

||i mostly assumed it was because Peter Lukas is more of a servant to the lonely, which is good, and Daisy was just timeline shenanigans||

[mint agate]

We're drawing the line at:

||Townsfolk: The Fears (obvious, bigger decision was -The Eye to make room for BotC only having 13 TF) (this was script's inspiration)||

||Outsiders: Entity-aligned humans who in some way "assist" the Minions/Demons (weirdest one was the Not-Them at one point being on, because, well... Sasha was an assistant)||

||Minions: Assistants, with preference given to characters who fans will most go "oh yeah they were an assistant!"||

||Demons: those most closely affiliated with the Archives/The Eye (fun fact, when The Eye was a TF pre-alpha, the fourth demon was The Extinction, but since then this has coalesced as the theme)||

[digital edge]

ah!
got it, then

[nimble star]

||I mean yeah, but Daisy is loyal to the Hunt 😇 ||

[mint agate]

Oh and Travelers are less clearly aligned characters who could theoretically be equated to either "team" 🙂

[digital edge]

||i can't believe we didn't get one of gerturde's dead assistants that were mentioned once as a minion... so sad...||

[mint agate]

(Which tracks for, you know, the mechanics of Travelers)

[wicked jay]

|| Every Outsider is Institute affiliated in some way, but draws their power from other fears, Daisy technically joins up but is Hunt aligned, Gerard helps out but is somewhat End and most definitely not loyal to the Eye, Peter literally takes over but is always Lonely aligned, and that's everyone who bears mentioning ||

[acoustic acorn]

||they're with us in spirit. being gruesomely killed off by Gertrude||

[digital edge]

hah

[nimble star]

||Having the Extinction as a traveller rather than anything else feels very appropriate tho, given how young they are. They are not a major player.||

[mint agate]

Completely unasked for script-history fun fact: ||extremely pre-alpha when Extinction was a demon, the sketch was around the extremely-pre-alpha version of The End that experimented with a TF who in a certain amount of time would kill (and therefore neutralize/confirm) Outsiders. The Extinction was a Leviathan-like demon who would do that to Townsfolk once it emerged 🙂 ||

[digital edge]

was the newest demon after that was reworked Gertrude Robinson?

[mint agate]

No, as I said that was The Eye

[digital edge]

...I just woke up

forgive me

[mint agate]

No worries!

Gertrude was the first character on script to emerge in an almost completely unrevised form!

[acoustic acorn]

shoutout to all the weird janky really old versions of characters you've mentioned before. like the End just being able to kill off good players whenever

[mint agate]

Demon-Minstrel really played into my vision for making the Good team feel Evil/Evil team feel Good, and just flavorfully ||worked so well for Gertrude Robinson to kill off her Assistants to foil the Fears, and not caring whether she or the Fears themselves did it||

[mint agate]

Yeah, one of Besjbo's pre-alpha drafts of The End was:

The End (Townsfolk): anyone may die at any time.

That version... did not make it past me to any near-final version of a script 😂

[acoustic acorn]

but the vibes are immaculate

[wicked jay]

It is the perfect ability, incredibly concise, and yet the only ability in all of botc that is always in play, regardless of the bag, script, or whether you are playing clocktower at all

I have never understood the hate

[digital edge]

all zombuul

[mint agate]

Oh yes tbc Besjbo meant it both under the auspices of game mechanics and irl

[digital edge]

actually now that I think about it

[digital edge]

||Jonah Magnus will be the King of a Ruined World, and shall Never Die, so I'm not sure what that's about||

[mint agate]

||Jonah Magnus can't follow through smh||

[acoustic acorn]

||how did that work out in the End, now?||

[digital edge]

||I think Jonah Magnus would refuse to comment, mainly on the grounds of being Dead||

[fresh basin]

pin? 🥺

[mint agate]

@nimble star? 🥺

[fresh basin]

thx Palsonny!

[acoustic acorn]

do you want me to remove 2.5?

[mint agate]

Yes please! (It should be alpha, 1.0, 2.0, most recent)

[fresh basin]

When does the Hunt check if the player learned is evil (for Tim and Sasha)

[wicked jay]

Since you're in an ongoing game (and so am I) I would recommend you ask the ST if you're asking for the purposes of that particular game

That said, the check happens at the time they learn the information, is how I'd run it

[fresh basin]

it isn't, thx!

[fresh basin]

On the almanac, Sasha James is listed that she "might gain abilities that interact, and interacts with the Townsfolk they make misregister" but doesn't she also interact with all the players she guesses?

[bleak laurel]

the almanac isnt strictly updated iirc; i believe those interactions mainly refer to how old sasha worked (granted i think they remain true for current sasha, just they arent expansive?)

[wicked jay]

This is a deliberate sleight of hand that I'll talk to Mabel about, you're technically right, but there isn't any ability in play that can care about sasha interacting with the players she guesses, since she goes way too early in the night for it to matter

I dont list it because if you're ever counting it as a mechanically relevant interaction you are wrong

[fresh basin]

ah I see

[mint agate]

Agreed here. Even The Stranger who cares about interactions by a teammate only cares about interactions after.

It’s niche but important because anyone going before The Stranger in the night order is doing something fragile to the game that droisoning often has an outsized effect on (Archivist’s win countdown isn’t fun to droison, same with Sasha’s juggle, Jurgen needs to gain AN ability even if it’s later droisoned, same with Martin throwing a tea into ST’s decision is affecting other Outsiders and worth noting even if it’s later negated by droison)

Therefore, Stranger only ever actually cares about both interactions being after, because things before are either only ever truly locked down after or are so fundamental to the game it throws balance off too much if it’s droisoned

[digital edge]

whilst I understand the intention of the wording and why it says as it does, for The End's almanac entry, it reads "The End has no way of preventing themselves from making a N2 kill." which is false due to The Buried's ability

am i fatally misunderstanding the wording or the almanac itself or is this an actual error?

[mint agate]

You are correct in your interpretation (and if that’s unclear we can rephrase) but the point was to clarify that The End’s own ability cannot prevent themselves from killing N2 using their nominating a dead player clause, as even if they execute their nominee that player is alive

[digital edge]

let me be clear that I know it's quite a nitpick but

[mint agate]

(I’ll note it’s also technically feasible post-Travelers release to have Mr Spider kill a player D1 before The End nominated them, but the point is to clarify that later killing the nominee does not change how they register to The End)

[digital edge]

i can't say i know much about building almanacs or entire customs themselves, but I wanted to at least make sure you all were aware of it incase it's something that would desire fixing

thanks for the information

[light gull]

it seems like a relatively easy fix to tack on "... using that part of their ability" onto the end of the examples

[mint agate]

Thanks! We probably will revise it! It’s a 40-page almanac of a script that’s definitely still undergoing revisions so there are going to be errors and things that are no longer accurate 😅

Best we can do is have them pointed out and try to clarify here then fix

[mint agate]

We’ll see… almanac pages can get quite tight on real estate 🫠

Fun fact the Jonah Magnus page does not fit without the Zombuul gag subtly adding the Demons header to the prior page 😅

[light gull]

incredible stuff lol

[mint agate]

The End looks to have room (🤞) so yep should hopefully be an easy fix

[wicked jay]

Yeah, we can make the change for clarity, but i do think everyone who reads it will understand the meaning as written

[mint agate]

Face Your Fears 2.7 is now out!

Changes since 2.6:

-Melanie King has another significant rework! She is no longer our angry gossip and is now is more of a ghost journalist (undertaker?) who each night learns about the dead and who killed them (ie "Besjbo killed The Slaughter") and is on a quest to nominate who she learns. Note, the character says setup counts, which adds a fun twist that fellow evils N1 count, so Melanie can kill N2 iff she's willing to nominate another evil D1.

-Archivist is also getting a rework. Archivist now almost always gets two marks per night* (with the first night mechanically staying the same): one mark on the next unmarked clockwise neighbor, and the other now on the last player the Archivist interacted with (or tried to, if that "interaction" was a failed kill). Archivist gets more control, but moves at a set pace, rather than the Town-driven pacing that was unfun both for Archivist and to solve for. We want to see how this plays on ritual timing and kills (as Archivist can no longer kill unmarked players at all--if you tap them multiple times a night, they just keep living).

-The Desolation has been changed to fix a "double jeopardy" weakness where being poisoned blocks their ability both when they set the fire and when it goes off. Now the kill immune to poison (like the even if dead clause, this does not cover the night the fire's set--The Desolation must be alive and sober to doom a minion). Note: we're trying something experimental in the immunity only being to poison not drunk, meaning Gertrude, Tim, and Peter foil The Desolation, but Townsfolk (including evils with TF abilities) cannot. This better fit our goals of what droison's fun and which isn't, but is, we think, the first time a Clocktower script has differentiated drunk and poison, so we're aware that's a shift.

-Next up is The End with a new wrinkle on the same ability. Instead of simply killing a neighbor when both are good, The End now also protects their other neighbor with the life they took, which should help buff The End and give a little more signal of when an End kill occurred (in ruling out some cases). Or, as Besj described it "End now proteccs, attaccs, and slowly but inevitably fades all conscious experience in existence to blacc"

-Tim Stoker has a minor tweak to no longer change alignment during the day (instead delaying the turn until night). This is to avoid extremely uncomfortable hypos where Tim doesn't know their alignment final day (ie. if anyone alive is claiming The Buried). Note that Tim is still statically evil if dead, such that if Good Tim is executed ending the game, Tim still turns evil.

-The Spiral has been reworded to add "from start of tonight on" to its twisting. While Besj and I always imagined messing with ST agency to include playing a bit with murky ST calls, some players recently asked about whether a mid-night Spiral can impact who Peter's poisoned that occur earlier in the night. This wording should codify our intent that as long as nothing's visibly locked a decision (such as having a webbing not work), those ambiguities can shift if intervening twisting changes priorities.

-The Web is reverting "if they would interact with another player" to "if they would interact with anyone" from a previous version. There was an old Jonah exploit (webbed Jonah jumping converting the MVP into a second living Jonah) that's since been patched (now The Web just blocks the jump), but no one (except Chum) realized that this also prevented The Web from redirecting self-picks in other fun situations (Dark, Flesh, Buried).

-Last but certainly not least, the art for The Dark has been switched out with the more lore-accurate art @nimble star provided! Thank you!

[eternal field]

Gave +1 Thanks to @nimble star (current: #25 - 968)

[mint agate]

Print-and-play!

Almanac

Json

[topaz thistle]

YIPPPPE

The dark looks so cursed, and will for several months as I get used to the 4th lash 😂

oh wow, I really like the melanie change

[fresh basin]

I like Melanie change, no more BS “Melanie 50/50” defenses ^w^

[topaz thistle]

End change is interesting as well, and glad desolation is getting a nudge

[stiff axle]

These changes are fun

[shut pond]

end is spicy

[fresh basin]

I kinda wish that Melanie learned the character but not the player who killed

[mint agate]

We thought about that. There were a couple reasons we went this way. One is that we didn't want to have it be niche and only niche scenarios where evil doesn't have enough information to put that together (The End killed Mabel being easy to solve unless there are no evils anywhere in that corner of the grim), with the caveat that we worried it feels stressful/unfun to know you should know your target but don't and therefore can't fully use your ability. The second (and honestly tiebreaker) is when we came up with the setup info trick: we wanted Melanie to be able to kill N2 but still have some cost and liked this new pattern. The cost being you could nominate evil but a) not yourself and b) this only works D1 not all game (except for your demon who's likely killing) put it over the edge

[fresh basin]

like “The Archivist killed The Slaughter”

[mint agate]

Mhm, that was the same rationale

[fathom minnow]

I do not understand setup counts

[mint agate]

And additionally it negated evils needing to discuss in a way that seemed less fun (why should Melanie learn demon type N2 for free and mess with whisper tracking as something that adds little when evils chatting has also been good on socials in a tough script

[mint agate]

Melanie in a 12p game learns N1 during setup that Besjbo is her demon and Mabel is her fellow minion. For the purposes of her ability, Melanie learned Besjbo and Mabel N1, and nominating either of them D1 will let her kill N2

[fathom minnow]

oh okay

[mint agate]

N2 Melanie learns that Besjbo killed The Slaughter and that Leelou killed Jurgen Leitner. D2 Melanie can nominate either Besjbo or Leelou to use her ability, but nominating Mabel would not let her kill N3

[fathom minnow]

I think saying minion info counts seems more clear but

do not know how that affects formatting

[mint agate]

1. way longer on token 2) we figured some people would get it some wouldn't and that there wouldn't be universally clear language

so the almanac clarifies

[fathom minnow]

okay makes sense

[mint agate]

minion info counts might make someone think nominating their demon D1 doesn't count, etc.

some things in Fears no one's going to be able to agree on what best wording should be 😅

(also extremely niche technicality, but yes if Melanie King is granted one of Hunt/Corruption/Vast by Mikele Salesa, then the name Melanie learns from that ability would count towards hers the next day)

[acoustic acorn]

I’m unsure if I like referring to evil info as setup

something more akin to (for any reason) would be a lot clearer, I think

but character count issues

hm

[wicked jay]

for any reason does not clue in the reader

i am very open to a clarity rewording next patch tho

[acoustic acorn]

Distortion nominating players they learned with their tf ability

[wicked jay]

honestly that's just good clean fun

[acoustic acorn]

very

it’s a fun emergent interaction

[wicked jay]

(Evil info counts), if i can get the character space to work

may be clearer

[rapid oxide]

is the lonely considered to have "killed" themself?

[mint agate]

If you mean in the context of Melanie King, then no

The Lonely appears dead but never dies, and therefore was never killed

[rapid oxide]

yeah i mean for melanie

does "who killed them" mean the ability that did it, or whoever caused them to die

in the case of web shenanigans would melanie learn the killer, or the web?

[mint agate]

Learning info is not an interaction, so The Web cannot change that

Sorry

[rapid oxide]

no i mean if the web picked a killer

[mint agate]

If The Web webs the killer, the killer’s still the killer

[acoustic acorn]

would this consequently mean that a Melanie can always tell when a player goes Lonely? (or Peter Lucas, which is still a Lonely)

[rapid oxide]

oh also good point
peter is killed but doesn't die

its an inverse lonely

[acoustic acorn]

it's a lonely but the guy sucks

[mint agate]

No Peter is Lonely, just doesn’t have The Lonely’s ability that gives nomination exception to typical BotC Zombuul rules

[mint agate]

The Web doesn’t mechanically change an ability in practice. The Web just looks at the choice a player (or ST if arbitrary) made and says “no you picked this player instead”

The Web’s only ability is loss of control for the other player (which is why The Web can never force an illegal pick or interaction)

[rapid oxide]

got it

[mint agate]

If you know the podcast, that makes a bit more intuitive sense 🙂

[rapid oxide]

only other comment i have is that melanie waking up, learning "your demon was killed by Jonah Magnus!" is really funny

er

Jonah Magnus was killed by your demon

[mint agate]

Yeah Melanie learns who the new Jonah is right away, which is strong!

Most minions have to figure out who the Fang Gu jumped to

[rapid oxide]

wouldn't they learn their old demon?

[mint agate]

Oh yep blah I’m off, you are correct

Yes Melanie gets the hilarious info that Jonah killed themselves

For evil killers really evil has that info, the stronger thing is for TF killers it helps figure it out (Desolation, Hunt, etc)

But it’s mostly a “okay here are your targets”

Melanie can proc off of nominating a dead Jonah, but only on the night after the jump, not all game

[rapid oxide]

also helps you figure out who jurgen is, if you really wanted to figure that out for some reason

[mint agate]

Yep, that’s intended

There have been games where evil hasn’t solved Jurgen until nearly endgame

[rapid oxide]

i can see a melanie using their pseudo-undertaker to retroactively bluff stranger

anyways end buff

[acoustic acorn]

should have made end kill both neighbors

[rapid oxide]

interaction that immediately comes into my head is end protecting a sasha registering as good from dying to desolation

[acoustic acorn]

would probably need to be twisted to justify doing

[rapid oxide]

or be an evil with the end ability

[acoustic acorn]

this is true

[wicked jay]

i will eventually wear mabel down to the final form of end, "anyone might die at any time"

[rapid oxide]

good morning everyone, the demon has died n1, congratulations to the good team

[acoustic acorn]

End (Townsfolk): Players might die.

[rapid oxide]

"usually" doing some heavy lifting here

[mint agate]

Twisting is not meant to be the single most pro-evil thing such that I wouldn’t use it there even if twisted

[wicked jay]

basically as ST it's not like you can NEVER do that, but you should not do it if the game is remotely normal

[rapid oxide]

if its an evil with the end ability i feel like it'd be fine?

[acoustic acorn]

there's a normal fyf game?

[wicked jay]

"oh god, evil is being hard solved on, this game is completely off the rails" would be okay

[mint agate]

https://tenor.com/view/good-place-tgp-chidi-thats-gif-18334989

[wicked jay]

yeah evil end should flat never be stopping desolation

it's not solvable

[rapid oxide]

what if its jurgen leitner-end

[wicked jay]

i mean, the real question here is desolation, how much power has it gotten

is sasha the 2nd minion to die to the desolation?

maybe its okay to use jurgen that way

is this the only thing desolation is doing all game? that's outside of jurgen's power budget

jurgen getting the end to protect a minion from a webbed kill on the other hand is a little more balanced

[mint agate]

Evil End (and same with Jurgen) at this point on the script cannot be the full extent of the player who’s using its ability. Power budget wise, are you going to use a portion of one ability to not only hose a TF who should be killing a minion, but also definitionally killing another good player and introducing misinfo

[wicked jay]

of course, unless the web has also done literally nothing all game

it's really important in fears to actively work as ST to make TF abilities help good

[rapid oxide]

got it, makes sense

i'm looking at lonely being before end in the night order and am now thinking about extremely comical scenarios

"hey how come both of my neighbors died 🤨"

[mint agate]

That happened this afternoon 🙂

It was a signal from the ST that the demon went lonely

[rapid oxide]

the end's protection still applies if their kill fails to happen (e.g gerard blocks it, or they're in the buried), right?

[mint agate]

Like, one scenario close to this that imo is more balanced isn’t saving Sasha, but is killing Sasha to save Tim. That introduces a ton of misinfo in the game, but does so at the cost of a minion who otherwise wouldn’t die (notice no good players are harmed here), yields info if solved (Sasha misregistering just means she’s spent, Tim means he’s good at the time and not drunking), and yeah is kinda on net

[mint agate]

Jonah’s jump is an example of an ability that needs the kill (on self) to go through

[swift roost]

okay hang on i'm going to have to re-nitpick my hunt/flesh/lonely problem then

i guess this is still distinguishable if we have yet another fang gu "and" where Melanie's ability specifically requires someone to have killed the dead player?

but this is now a script with several different abilities that look for a player dying that all see Lonelies as not dying... except for Hunt which does see them as dying

and from a balance standpoint each of those makes sense but from a disambiguation standpoint i hate it

other than that i do really like new Melanie though

[acoustic acorn]

I believe Gertrude also sees them as dying

I'm not sure if there's any exceptionally clean way to do the distinction

you could cut the difference between dying and being killed, but would anyone actually understand that when reading?

[bleak laurel]

does it? i thought it didnt but ive also never seen that interaction

[acoustic acorn]

my second game had a gertrude night when my minion went lonely, and I don't think that's been changed since

though the fact that neither of us is entirely sure does put across the point well

[wicked jay]

Lonely looks like it dies but is not killed

Truth be told, I kind of don't care how it's ruled because it's the same outcome, like, Melanie doesn't need to learn that the lonely is the lonely

[mint agate]

I am aware that’s not the ideal, but I am the one pushing that sorry 🙈

[wicked jay]

Because they have a great big blank in their info that is obviously the lonely

Like, I would give my blessing to explicitly tell Melanie that a player went lonely, because an experienced melanie should know that instantly

Its just new player hand holding

[bleak laurel]

(is peter ruled the same way? or does melanie learn kill credit for who "killed" peter)

[wicked jay]

Yeah I'd say so? Peter was not in fact killed

I don't hate the opposite ruling, but I feel like this is the most consistent?

[bleak laurel]

doesnt that mean that melanie no wake then is peter or lonely? (granted i think thats fine honestly)

[wicked jay]

Okay, yes, Melanie can't tell the difference. I'm good with that

They aren't real ghosts

So what is she studying

Theyre just off somewhere quietly

[mint agate]

Notably, Melanie also doesn’t get told if someone attacks into a Flesh bone

Melanie wants to see a ghost

[wicked jay]

I think i could maybe be convinced that the ruling could be that melanie learns their character but learns no killer because there wasn't one???

[mint agate]

If she sees a ghost, she investigates its story and gets really angy at its killer

[wicked jay]

Thoughts, mabel?

[mint agate]

I’d be down? Yeah. She doesn’t get a target to attack. ST wakes Melanie, points to Lonely/Peter, shakes head, puts Melanie back to sleep

[wicked jay]

Let us know if "the lonely dies, but is not killed" is ever contradicted

Because I do think that is how it works

Consistently

[acoustic acorn]

I think it would mostly just be a question of how it interacts with the Flesh

[wicked jay]

It doesn't, because the flesh doesn't prevent misregistration from happening

The flesh sees it as a failed save

[acoustic acorn]

so the flesh would learn their ability activated?

[wicked jay]

No, because the flesh only learns when they successfully save someone

I guess against all odds we haven't put an assassin on this script yet, but if you assassinated a flesh ping it'd be the same

Flesh tries to save, but does not, so learns nothing

[mint agate]

Can confirm, Besjbo’s been trying to put an assassin on this script for months

[acoustic acorn]

well I look forward to that rework of the End

(unless you somehow manage to make Oliver Banks into an outsider)

[mint agate]

Gosh I wish, that would be fun

[wicked jay]

Say it with me

Anyone 👏 might 👏 ...

[mint agate]

We’re pretty happy with Peter though. 🫰 our fourth outsider slot stays full

[mint agate]

No, anyone might not take the fourth outsider slot, that’s Peter’s 🙂

[wicked jay]

Face Your Fears 2.71 is now out! We held this patch from 2.7 because we wanted to give it the focus it deserves, and also give ourselves room to remove the change if it proves too warping in playtesting. It's time to talk about Archivist.

is the defining character of FYF in many ways: protagonist of TMA, iconic emoji, and mechanical glue that cements FYF as the script where Evil always has worlds to push. Also, for better or for worse, it's just longer than anything outside FYF, so much so that most players refuse to build Archivist until absolutely necessary. Mabel and I love the flavor slam dunk, but we've known for months that a big change is in the works. This is one of the more impactful patches FYF has ever had, impacting worldbuilding every single game, so we wanted a separate update to highlight new Archivist and give an 'opt out'. This is why we tweaked Archivist in 2.7 - it clearly needs change, but we're genuinely not sure how this will go, so we left ourselves a fallback to give STs the option to just run 2.7 until we come out with 2.8.

Let's talk solvability. We tried really hard to make sure Archivist is traceable, making it rely on town action, then on seat order, but it never made a dent in the overwhelm. We realized there's a really simple reason for this: players don't solve for Archivist, not while there's any alternative. Once an Archivist game is confirmed, players do get a grip on worldbuilding, but doing it all final day leads to a lot of good players understandably checking out, letting Evil socials swing the game. So, we're biting the bullet, and in what will possibly be the most controversial change, letting players know what to expect:

All players know you are in play.

Archivist games are now confirmed. Archivist won't exist as niche worlds anymore, but The Eye does a good enough job at this without being a complete nightmare. We're hopeful that this makes Archivist its own interesting puzzle STs can embrace or avoid.

Now, let's talk about the ritual, the flashy wincon. Annoyingly, not only does this wincon never help (it happened exactly once, on final day), but it's actively a trap -- it's better for the Archivist to kill to F2 than sink kills, because unlike a normal script, night kills are Demon candidates. We've worked a long time to buff the ritual - right now it happens ~Day 3 in small games, ~Day 5 in medium games, and Day 7 in big games. But this isn't great, because in a social script like FYF, the difference in info between 8p and 14p isn't that much - 3 days feels too slow, 7 days feels too long. We played with slowly marking out-of-play roles, but we found a simpler solution: hardcode in ritual length. This will possibly be the most controversial change, but as soon as you try it, we think you'll love how simple and freeing it is for everyone to know how long's left:

After day 5, evil wins.

And finally, marking. Archivist should be scary - they perfectly copy any role, making executions fraught because Archivist is often among the confirmed. We want to keep this dynamic, but the complexity of marking (especially mark registration) just had to go. We want FYF to be a script people can pick up and play without knowing us personally, and that just can't happen until Archivist's wording makes sense. We wanted a Templar-ish anti-exe clause, but Mabel brought up Jurgen Leitner - it's no fun if a madness break ends the game Day 1. Therefore, we gave town wiggle room, and in what will possibly be the most controversial change, we're giving Archivist a truly terrifying ability that we think will be a satisfying replacement for all that marking nonsense:

If more than 1 good player is executed, evil wins.

We know this is a lot of change, but we hope you'll appreciate how streamlined FYF feels with new Archivist. It's still a wackier character than anything TPI would release, but we think we've met the community more than halfway.

[mint agate]

Hey folks, Mabel here.

Face Your Fears 2.71 is now out! (For real this time, no )

Change since 2.7:

-The Stranger and Peter Lukas are switching in the night order, such that Peter now acts before The Stranger. This is minor but significant change meant to patch all opportunities for evils to gain the Peter Lukas ability (which we excluded by intent on Peter's release by patching The Eye to only gain TF abilities, but The Stranger had left an avenue being clearly closed now). Note that Peter can still drunk The Stranger before Stranger wakes to use the received ability. Our intent is that a droisoned Stranger at this time can be deceived about the ability received to frame their pick as evil, if the ST wishes.

A couple things on this patch, and our philosophy in general, that I'll flag in this update, mostly as it's the first intermediate patch. We held this patch from 2.7 as the issue this is fixing arose in a long-form game of FYF off-server that just ended. I'll flag this as a time to say please we do appreciate hearing when FYF's being run and getting to look into games as they're happening (both because it makes us happy and because we like helping out on games). We wanted to release 2.7 over the weekend for live playtests and for an upcoming text game here, but to be clear we never want a patch to implicate an ongoing game, which we worried would happen with this patch if players caught on to its rationale.

That said, I'll also take this time to flag that we alluded to this interaction, albeit not this change, in the most recent almanac. We'll re-revise that part of the almanac in 2.8, but friendly reminder the almanac does get updated even beyond the ability changes in patches to cover what we think are some of the most critical interplays on the script. (That said, we don't cover-to-cover the almanac in every revision, so drop us a note if you think something's outdated or might be wrong!)

[ocean ice]

no cuz I could've sworn the lonely had spirals in it

[mint agate]

Another thought I'll voice here: Besj and I try to cover a lot of potential interactions before release of new abilities. We consider a lot what stars have to align for rare interactions, what role the ST has in mediating interactions, and how that plays into player agency vs game balance vs game state. (should The Hunt only be able to kill good players if it's a punishment for good? should the ST be allowed to sink The Hunt's kill into a corpse? is it different if it's a Martin'ed Daisy ending the game early?)

Generally, we tend to allow an interaction to remain on-script if we think two things are true: the interaction itself is generally pro-fun/pro-player-agency, and if the interaction won't ruin a game in niche scenarios with ST mediation.

Peter Lukas's introduction led to us patching The Eye to only gain TF because we didn't want evil to get Peter's ability. The execution survival on a script where night deaths are still demon candidates, the ability to double the demon, I hate evil Sailor... we really didn't want it. That said, we like when players do things, and The Stranger copying Peter supported that.

Seeing Evil Peter ability play out made us look for a patch, and luckily here the downsides are minimal. That said, we are aware this script is complicated; the hardest part of STing Fears is that we hope and expect STs look at the game state and niche interactions/misinfo possibilities not as trying to help Evil, but trying to create a fun game first and foremost. From what we've seen, Fears needs a softer touch there than most BotC scripts, and more than veteran B3/custom players may expect. As of now, we're happy with the effects of that (including that those niche and sometimes game-changing interactions I mentioned leave worlds open, we don't want to patch them all). We've been really impressed with STing in Fears, just introducing for those looking to run it that just because something crazy can happen, doesn't mean you as ST should let it.

[finite cobalt]

Hmm doesn’t this just make evil peter always sober? If an evil player with the stranger ability picks a peter player now, they don’t act as Peter so the st can’t drunk them and if they are executed the next day they die as a sober Peter?? Or am I missing something?

Deals with evil Peter drunking someone but not evil Peter gaining an extra life?

[wicked jay]

Thats a very good point, our intent is that the "zombuul" clause is part of Peter's ability, and can't be gained separately to the waking ability

I agree that in light of this last change, that's not actually that clear, so thank you for pointing it out

We'll definitely put in a rewording for clarity next patch, that basically connects the two sentences of Peter's ability with a comma so that the intent is clear

"Each night, etc etc, and the 1st time you die...", so that it's very clear that if you didn't get to use your each night ability, the zombuul shield was never gained

[fresh basin]

the Spiral has different wording on the thematic script and the print and play, presumably the Print and Play is an older version of the wording

[wicked jay]

ah, crap

well, it's the same functional wording

but good catch

i'll silently fix that for next patch

i was convinced to not literally put the words "token integrity" on the ability, but i forgot that i put it in the PnP

[fresh basin]

👍

imo the ignoring token integrity (while being bad syntax) explained what The Spiral meant much more

[shut pond]

agreed that "ignoring token integrity" makes more sense from a token text perspective, but that's coming from someone who's a frequent ST

someone who hasn't engaged with the online STing community as much/at all might not read "token integrity" and know what it means

[fresh basin]

yes

I agree

I do genuinely think that a solution is having “ignoring token integrity” on the thematic script and the other ability text on the PnP is a solution I think

I do like both wordings existing

[fresh basin]

(the idea here is that someone online with more idea of token integrity would see the thematic script, while a newer player who might not know abt token integrity only seeing this script irl through the print and play would see the wording that is more standard)

[wicked jay]

i will talk with mabel about what wording is best but i definitely want the ability to have one canon wording

[fresh basin]

:(

[topaz thistle]

Tbh if anything people playing specifically FYF IRL are more likely to know what token integrity means VS random people online

Considering homebrews are very rare IRL and running FYF irl is an arduous task

[shut pond]

I disagree - STs will probably know, but there's no expectation for players to (especially IRL)

I guess STs can just explain what token integrity is? But then you're back at square one

[fathom glen]

would you like this pinned?

[mint agate]

Yes please!

[brittle yacht]

Each night, choose another alive player: from start of tonight on, their ability's Storyteller agency is twisted to help the opposite team it normally would, including retroactively.
Is this wording clear?

[acoustic acorn]

if you're calling out retroactively, then "from the start of tonight on" is mostly redundant

[brittle yacht]

mostly redundant, but there's the edge case where an ST might try to change things that happened on previous nights that haven't been observed that should just be explicitly excluded

[mint agate]

Yeah I was just thinking on that and technically there’s the “oh Jurgen got a Hunt ping last night but that was on Melanie who didn’t nominate, I could make that a Vast and avoid a rampage” that yeah from the start of tonight on is meant to say don’t do that

[rigid wadi]

@mint agate I don't suppose you have PNGs for the images by chance? A friend asked me to make tokens for for this one, and that would make it a lot easier. I see the PnP pdf, it's just going to be challenging to pull just the character images out of that and remove the white background. 😅

[wicked jay]

We totally do, the PNGs are in the post

Or are you asking for specifically the token PNGs

Those are available too, links are all within the JSON file

[elder spade]

My group and I are playing this script, and the wording for Mikaele Salesa has been interpreted incorrectly by us in so many different ways, until a member more experienced with this script explained it to us. I propose a wording that makes much more sense, makes it so much easier to understand what it actually does, fits better with clocktower syntax, and is even slightly shorter:
Each day, you may visit the storyteller and name a townsfolk: you may publicly give a player (not yourself) that ability until dawn, but the storyteller tells you a price for it

[rigid wadi]

that's what I meant! Thank you!

[eternal field]

Gave +1 Thanks to @wicked jay (current: #55 - 558)

[mint agate]

Out of curiosity, what were you running Salesa as doing?

The key things this wording might obfuscate are 1) Salesa gets the price before bartering the item, 2) the player Salesa wants to give the item to must agree to accept it (but they don’t need to know the price to accept it)

[elder spade]

(I wasn't running it, I'm just a player, not the ST - thankfully the more experienced member is storytelling)
I thought the named townsfolk picked the price (Wasn't clear that "they" referred to the storyteller), and I didn't understand that the given ability was just that townsfolk ability, rather than one made up by the ST (Amnesiac style) (Much cooler)

Also imo "item" doesn't fit with syntax at all

But yeah you make good points

[wicked jay]

I strongly recommend reading the Almanac page for things like this - the How to Run is usually quite thorough

[elder spade]

I'm sure it is, but also, is it not best to be able to get a good understanding of the character through the ability text?

[wicked jay]

And yeah, it's easy to be confused, but I'm not sure how "that ability" would refer to anything but the Townsfolk ability? I will look at a clarity rewording that resolves the ambiguous pronoun

changing "they" to "the Storyteller", if there is character room, would alleviate that

[elder spade]

Yes, if it weren't for character limits, this would be a great idea

[wicked jay]

yeah, it fits

thanks, we'll probably make that rewording in patch 2.8

i'm aware that 'item' is not used anywhere else in clocktower, but that's for the simple reason that the mechanic is not used anywhere else in clocktower

it is a fun mechanic, though

[elder spade]

No argument there, I do like the gameplay of negotiating over who gets the ability

[wicked jay]

you don't just grant the ability, you get an item you can keep as long as you want, that has an upside and downside that you understand before you give it away

clocktower doesn't do this (yet?), but i think 'item' is a fair word for it

hopefully just resolving what the pronouns mean makes the ability grok more cleanly

[elder spade]

Ohhhhhhh yeah I didn't understand the part of keeping the item, ty

[eternal field]

Gave +1 Thanks to @wicked jay (current: #53 - 559)

[stray fiber]

can you update the links in the main post 🙈

[mint agate]

Ahhh sorry can after work. The most recent one is pinned

[stray fiber]

thanks

[solid violet]

hey im readng on desolation and it seems quite strong

am i missing something?

also what the does the setup thing mean for the last minion?

[wicked jay]

Desolation does seem quite strong... but it's the single weakest Townsfolk. If you look at the patch history, it's hilarious how many buffs it's gotten - it used to be OPG for this effect, then it moved to each night and still was too weak, then we buffed it to the current version, and we're playtesting a further buff that will probably be published next patch. The problem with Desolation is that there are so many ways for abilities to mess with each other on this script that it's really, really hard in practice to solve that a kill was because of the desolation, and mystery kills don't help Good much by default. We know it reads crazy strong, this script is full of characters that read ludicrous until you play with them

Setup means that when Melanie learns her evil teammates during the Minion info step, she can nominate them on the first day to get a kill. We'll probably clarify that wording next patch.

[craggy warren]

The question of our times…

Is F*ck Jurgen Lietner a Loric? Or a Fabled?

If one had to describe the color of wishing the fury of 10000 burning suns upon Jurgen Lietner, would it be green?

[naive dragon]

since it’s designed to solve a problem with the script (life was too easy for the repugnant old man) i think fabled

[acoustic acorn]

it's the opposite of an accessibility tool. it's an active hostility tool

[stiff axle]

I think Fabled

Loric premise is essentially "you can add this to any game to make it spicier"

[craggy warren]

tru

[weak tree]

Isn't this basically what Spooky Nights uses Jurgen for

[stiff axle]

It pretty much is, yep.

FJL also has part with keeping delayed abilities around which feels more like fixing stuff.

[acoustic acorn]

well that's what it uses Jurgen (the Outsider) for

[light gull]

i do like that there's discussion of whether FJL is loric but Moonlight is unequivocally fabled

[stiff axle]

True

It's also a great one.

[cedar depot]

I think FJL is a fabled still purely bc of the 2nd clause

It means that people don’t get unresolved abilities

[wicked jay]

at the end of the day, you're not allowed to run Face Your Fears without FJL (or if you do, it's an unendorsed variant that won't reliably play well), which makes it more of a ground rule than a variant

[weak tree]

Spotted in the Kibitz Organization Project

[acoustic acorn]

and the vision remains, and it is hell

[fathom glen]

Released 1 year later

[wicked jay]

i will forever maintain that i had very few contributions to Fears but they were good ones

i saw "(they learn which ability)" and said "hey, you know what would really make this role funny..."

[amber pollen]

||I just got to episode 160 and holy shit, the demons make so much more sense now||

||I thought The Archivist was just collecting statements, but no||

[fathom glen]

You should probably spoiler these 2 messages

[amber pollen]

I don't really think I'm spoiling much, but sure

[fathom glen]

Neither do I, but it's certainly not spoiling nothing

[amber pollen]

Fair enough ig

[fading swift]

||Same when i tell you I was gagged||

[mint agate]

Besjbo before listening to the podcast: ||can we please make Archivist simpler, like can't we just have it copy only the TF abilities in play||

Me: no, it needs this I swear, for flavor

Besjbo after ||episode 160||: okay it needs it for flavor

[fading swift]

||If archivist ever changes to where it only wins at end of day after getting marks make a reminder token that just says “I OPEN THE DOOR”||

[acoustic acorn]

||what do you mean changes, it already works like that||

[topaz thistle]

For anyone going to f3con, I will be storytelling face your fears there! 4-6PM Sunday 🙏

[eternal field]

Above time (18:00 EST) in your local time · Feb 11, 2026, 11:00 PM

[random scarab]

hi, planning on running a longtext game of this and wondering what the most recent version of sasha is?

thanks!

[wicked jay]

oh, let me get you the most recent playtest version of the script

@random scarab

[random scarab]

thanks!

[random scarab]

sorry to trouble you again, but do you have a json for this, please?

actually never mind, i think i can find it on the archives

[wicked jay]

Here it is

[random scarab]

thank you

[eternal field]

Gave +1 Thanks to @wicked jay (current: #79 - 586)

[daring seal]

How are you supposed to run a lonely who gets night killed by Eye/Gertrude post going lonely by the way? They seem to have no way to know they've been killed but shouldn't be allowed to vote?

[bleak laurel]

just the same way you'd run any other dead player; if they attempt to nominate, deny them, and if they vote, it'll use their ghost vote

i think theres actually a small grey area if they manage to vote twice in a day without knowing, so completely up to how you rule that as an ST

[daring seal]

I was mainly wondering if there was an official way to deal with that player voting multiple times without nominating to check if they were dead first. Thanks for the answer though!

[graceful rock]

Well you’d inform them that they spent their ghost vote the first time they vote, no?

[bleak laurel]

little hard, ideally you would inform them privately but i can imagine in an irl game that may not be possible; technically ghost votes don't publicly disappear in FYF due to the possibility of evil Lonely

if you're playing online or in text that is pretty trivial though and would probably be my solution

[daring seal]

Ok I was mainly wondering for livetext/longtext purposes so that works for me

[graceful rock]

Surely there wouldn’t be a way evil could get the Lonely ability right

[mint agate]

Yeah, this is all correct—the now-actually-dead Lonely burns their ghost vote the first time they vote while dead, and it fails to count the second time they try to vote

You are allowed to try to burn your ghost vote in wondering if you’re still alive and hoping to confirm yourself good for socials (but being dead with no vote), that’s part of the Ambassador-like behavior of The Lonely. BUT trying to spend a dead vote you know you don’t have for socials (ie. if you’re a dead The Slaughter being accused of being Lonely Demon) is cheating on the same level of narrating your night actions to the circle for trust and timekeeping. Since you cannot enter a voting Lonely state without having actively chosen at night to do so, this is an easy rule to enforce—anyone who’s previously chosen to enter The Lonely has reason to wonder and can attempt to repeatedly dead vote, anyone who hasn’t can’t.

The Lonely has the devil’s bargain of getting to keep the ambiguity for a surprise double vote but possibly being dead, and being able to play off of that is part of their ability. If they’re publicly confirmed, that’s part of The Lonely’s TF ability to confirm themselves (and part of the trade off for the demon is if they keep you alive you’re a vote but a demon candidate, whereas if they kill you the board gets info and The Lonely is in almost all worlds confirmed)

[arctic scroll]

I'm looking to run face your fears with my local group in the next few days; is there a more updated version of the almanac available? It doesn't need to be fully complete, just ideally one that doesn't have dekkard in it haha

Re: new slaughter - if they nominate an evil player who then nominates someone else, does the slaughter ability still trigger?

Also is it intentional that Martin's 1 no longer lets an outsider act when dead?

[acoustic acorn]

@arctic scroll you can find the 2.7 almanac here, I don't think there's one for anything more up to date yet

[arctic scroll]

Oh perfect, I missed this!! Thanks so mucj

[eternal field]

Gave +1 Thanks to @acoustic acorn (current: #233 - 299)

[swift roost]

nope

[swift roost]

yes

losing the ability to trick dead Peter about whether or not hes dead is a sad loss but the bone collection was awkward with all of the other outsiders

[arctic scroll]

Yeah I had a feeling it was this, they pretty much all act after death anyway

[arctic scroll]

If new!slaughter nominates Tim while he's good, it seems like he'll be locked as good until his ability goes off, and he could be good while dead if it doesn't. Is this intentional?

[bleak laurel]

new!Slaughter is pretty careful to work purely on Evil players and not just Evil characters (which would be all Minions and Demons), so good Tim isn't able to have his ability changed by The Slaughter

[arctic scroll]

Ahhh that's the bit I missed! Thanks

[arctic scroll]

Is the intention that in 13 - 15 player games, the archivist starts with only 2 abilities, one for themself and one for their clockwise neighbor?

Or should the minions be registering as in-play townsfolk, letting them start with all their bluff abilities?

Another Q: Jürgen gets new!End ability and nominated a dead player today. Do they learn how many players they've killed with the end ability or how many players they've killed overall? (This goes for the stranger, the eye and Sasha too)

[acoustic acorn]

The Archivist starts with [14 - # players] abilities and marks 1 player on the first night

all other players should be registering as out of play townsfolk until you have a player for all of them, then you can double up

[arctic scroll]

Oh new!archivist says they start marked

[acoustic acorn]

I'm more pointing out that yes they're meant to start with fewer in higher player counts

[bleak laurel]

im not looking at the text but i think archivist doesnt misregister to themselves? so they dont actually gain an ability from the self mark

[arctic scroll]

So I was counting that one + the one they marked night 1

[acoustic acorn]

new archivist does

[bleak laurel]

ah noted

i think its 2 abilities then yeah

[arctic scroll]

And yeah it just struck me as odd for some reason

[bleak laurel]

iirc almanac recommends to register people as duplicates when player count is 15 (when players exceed onscript TF)

[bleak laurel]

fair, i also thought it was different

[wicked jay]

It does not say "to the end ability", so yes, its all kills

[arctic scroll]

Can I ask what the rationale is for trying a new version of the slaughter?

(it's noticeable because all the other changes are small tweaks that make sense to me)

[mint agate]

Slaughter’s consistently been weak to actively unhelpful for town, and the few versions we’ve tried where it’s in the ballpark of right power level have led to unfun gameplay (especially with gaming the gossips in text with that Slaughter and that Melanie), so we’re still trying to get the right ability for the character

[arctic scroll]

Got it, I'm definitely curious to see it in practice

Even by this script's standards the wording and logic feels a little long-winded at first glance, but I can see the vision of slaughter replacing evil abilities with senseless violence

[wicked jay]

Well, it conscripts them and sends them off to war

Once they shoot someone they can come home

We're not positive it's the final take on the ability, but it's the first that has felt pro town

[arctic scroll]

Does Sasha get a new use of her once per game after she comes home from the draft?

For that matter, does Martin get a new librarian ping? Under default clocktower rules I'd assume yes

[arctic scroll]

Sorry for all the questions but here's two more: can the web redirect the Vast's poison to someone they normally wouldn't be allowed to poison? Can the web affect the buried at all?

[bleak laurel]

the vast's only valid targets are MVPs, so they can be redirected into one of those; they learn who they poison though, so they'll learn the MVP they poisoned (so theres no case of them learning one player and poisoning a different one). A vast who is webbed into a non-MVP isnt influenced by that webbing

as for buried.. id rule that they can? but i dont remember what the actual ruling is on that

[arctic scroll]

For the vast that's how I interpreted it yeah - for the buried the weird thing is that the only legal target for the buried to interact with is the single player who nominated them today. Which implies webbing doesn't affect them, much as I'd prefer it to

Speaking of rulings, it seems odd to me that sasha's guesses don't count as interactions - she has to choose those people with her ability after all

[bleak laurel]

i think there may be precedent for this actually; the web's almanac entry has an interaction where the web redirects the slaughter, and i think that's pretty similar to what the buried does in terms of targets

for sasha interactions im not actually sure, but i think you could rule new!sasha counts as an interaction given she's mainly a foil to the Stranger? dunno about the old one since thats ruled as not an interaction i believe

[wicked jay]

That's a bit of sleight of hand on our side - it is an interaction, but there is absolutely no ability in the game that cares about that fact, so we have not listed it. If that ever changes, we will update the helper page

We'd rather have STs index on the sasha interactions that mechanically matter to flag as interactions

[arctic scroll]

This is confusing me slightly - wouldn't the web care? If the web chooses Sasha on the night she makes her guesses, shouldn't it redirect all of them to affect a single person?

[wicked jay]

Sasha goes before The Web

[arctic scroll]

Rightttt thank you, I forgot about night order

[acoustic acorn]

night order is a mess but a very well defined mess

[wicked jay]

as tempting as it would be to let The Web hose Sasha... which is SO tempting for reasons that you only know if you know... it is not pro-fun

[mint agate]

I think one of the biggest rebalances we’ve made to Stranger was just moving it in the night order

[arctic scroll]

Oh 100%

[wicked jay]

one of the saddest things we've had to do is chip away bit by bit at the sasha-web interaction from the pre-alpha "web completely bricks sasha until someone can get rid of the web" to the current "the web is maybe mildly annoying to sasha but not moreso than anyone else"

[arctic scroll]

I'm just coming to terms with the way that the web's restrictions on what they have as valid targets or not are not very intuitive

At least to my brain

[wicked jay]

it's fine, it bothers us too

[arctic scroll]

(can they redirect the buried's poison?)

[wicked jay]

one day we will probably tweak it, and yes it can, since the buried is capable of poisoning anyone (anyone alive)

[acoustic acorn]

theoretically it can redirect the poison to a butcher that also nominated the buried, I suppose

[wicked jay]

[acoustic acorn]

oh yeah

so basically no

[arctic scroll]

See to me that also contradicts the ruling that the web can't redirect the desolation's kill to a non-minion

[bleak laurel]

moonlight is yet again the best 😎

[wicked jay]

the desolation can't kill non-minions

we are drawing a distinction which i do want to find a more intuitive rework for, between abilities that only target a specific class of players, which can only ever target that class, and abilities that can target any players who take some specific action

there is nothing a non-minion can do to get themselves desolated ever, or a good player to get slaughtered, but there is something anyone can do to get buried

[bleak laurel]

trying to think if theres an exception but fwiw my rule of thumb with web is that it can be redirected to targets that they could have affected that day/night cycle; so something like the buried/slaughter works but things like the end/desolation do not

well, granted deso web is still a bit of a mess i think, i dont fully remember if that matches

[wicked jay]

i mean, yeah

the flavor has always held up

web just takes away free will and makes it as though different choices were made

the web can make it so that someone else crawls into the buried (naturally, when everyone else is distracted), because that's just a thing that could happen

but the web can't make it so that an Avatar burns to death

avatars can't do that

the web can make it so that a different mortal human burns to death though, that's just making the desolation curse someone else

[arctic scroll]

The theme definitely makes sense to me

Mechanically though, if the desolation's ability is meant to be read as restricting their valid targets to only minions, I don't see why the buried's ability shouldn't be read as restricting their valid targets to only players who have nominated them today

Ultimately this is mostly a wording thing though, and it sounds like you're aware of it

[wicked jay]

yup. the best answer we have is because "is a minion" is an inherent property of a player whereas "chose to nominate the buried today" is a choice that isn't determined until it happens

the web can change people's choices without anyone knowing it, and can't do anything else

there's no choice you could change [unless you count me and mabel making the script, which happened before the web acts in the night] that would make the desolation doom a townsfolk

[bleak laurel]

great to know that night order still holds

[daring seal]

Wait how does a webbed Jonah magnus work?

[bleak laurel]

jonah can only attack goods mvp, so doesnt i think

[arctic scroll]

Almanac says that Jonah still learns the MVP, but their kill is redirected to the web target

[bleak laurel]

i dont remember the details but jonah/web was a janky interaction in earlier iterations and i believe has since been fixed

[bleak laurel]

yeah this most likely

i think the scenario of jonah jumping but but being webbed and not knowing the real demon is patched

[arctic scroll]

So if Jonah would jump but is webbed, instead of killing themself they kill the web target and no jump happens

[daring seal]

This example is specifically for a jonah who correctly jumped which is why i was wondering about if a non-jumping jonah kill would get redirected

[wicked jay]

yeah, the web can redirect jonah to any good player. i will be the first to admit that this isn't consistent with how the Web/Vast interaction works, and the Web/Vast interaction works the way it does for balance, so that's a design problem to be fixed, it's on my radar

If Jonah's class is 'any good player' subject to the ST's subjective choice, the Vast should operate the same way

But we let that be a thing once, and it wasn't fun, so it doesn't work that way

[arctic scroll]

The stranger chooses the spiral, and the spiral chooses the stranger. Does this affect the stranger!spiral ability?

[acoustic acorn]

I'm pretty sure the spiral is an ability with no storyteller agency

[mint agate]

Twisted is a flat status that is either applied or not. The Spiral’s ability is to apply the twisted status. So a Spiral being twisted shouldn’t impact what the ST does to a twisted player

(Fun fact, this is also why it doesn’t matter whether The Spiral or an evil with The Spiral ability twists a player. Twisted players’ abilities help the opposite team they normally should, regardless of who did the twisting. So twisting a Jurgen should generally help Town, even if the demon did it.)

[arctic scroll]

Great! That's what I thought, but wanted to make sure

[wicked jay]

Yup, Palsonny is correct, despite it also being the case that The Spiral is an ability that does nothing except affect Storyteller agency

[acoustic acorn]

deeply confusing, as it would have wanted to be

[wicked jay]

In practice, I have chosen to make an accidentally Sasha-Spiraled Jurgen less pro-town than I would have made a Townsfolk-Spiraled Jurgen, to avoid unbalancing the game. At the end of the day the game should be fun, and there's a limit on how much bad breaks should hose the unlucky team. But still, you're mechanically obligated to try to make a Sasha-Spiraled Jurgen somewhat helpful to Good, and you're pretty much breaking the rules if you keep using it as an Outsider, even if not doing so balances towards Good.

[arctic scroll]

If the stranger chooses a player who then turns evil from a Jonah jump, do they become poisoned?

[mint agate]

No. The Cannibal-like poison doesn’t come into play because it checks when picked what ability the Stranger should get, and is intended to not out evils (like Cannibal). It sees whatever ability the player has because they are good, so it gives The Stranger that. The teammate interaction poison doesn’t come into play because Jonah is not on The Stranger’s team, so Jonah cannot poison The Stranger by interacting with anyone. Also for the same reason, in this situation The Stranger must receive the player’s ACTUAL old ability, even if they were bluffing something different that the ST would normally give to try to help them bluff.

Note this means that if Sasha with The Stranger ability chooses a player who is then jumped, Sasha becomes poisoned, because Jonah interacted with the same player. Even more interesting is that if this player happens to be The Flesh with a bone on themselves, then the Sasha-Stranger poison interaction would allow Jonah (or Gertrude attempting the same thing) to kill through the bone, because the interaction poisons The Flesh and makes the bone invisible.

[arctic scroll]

ok good to know! it definitely makes sense to help with bluffability

[arctic scroll]

First game down with my in-person group! On the whole everyone had s great time; pretty much everyone had clocktower experience but the veterans especially clicked with the script. Explaining the concept of Jonah Magnus is what excited everyone initially, and while this was an evil win at least one good player was successfully catching on to the true world by the end

Do yall want more detailed playtest feedback?

[fresh basin]

can you dm me more with advice?

[mint agate]

Feedback is always welcome!! 😍

[fresh basin]

(I ran this with the same group and they didn’t like it I think)

[arctic scroll]

Lovely!

• General: this is hardly news to you, but the biggest hurdle when introducing the script was the sheet wordiness and level of detail of a lot of the abilities. I think the good players actually did have a decent grasp of their abilities and their interplay by the end of the game, but there was a lot of early fumbling and "let's just see what happens."

• Archivist: full disclosure - I told the players when handing out the scripts that the archivist wouldn't be in play, both because it's much more difficult to understand without a solid grasp of...every single other ability on the script, and it's harder to storytell. I felt a little vindicated when a few players mentioned that it was the only role they couldn't begin to understand on a first read through.

• Jonah: Everyone had fun with Jonah! Our starting Dark, a veteran who immediately began working out how to make use of their ability, was delightfully stressed when they were jumped to midgame. We had a final "two" of Sasha, Jonah and the lonely, and while most players were focusing on Sasha, there was at least a few who (after some clarifications) were considering the possibility of the dark being jumped to. I gave them Peter, corruption and flesh as bluffs, and the latter two were easy enough to understand for them to adopt them quickly.

• Sasha: her new ability makes sense from a balance standpoint, and she was excited to correctly juggle three townsfolk on night 2. but in terms of gamefeel, the sheer number of interactions happening on any given night meant that she spent the entire game drunk except for the last night, when almost everyone was dead. Her player felt a little off kilter after waking each day to see none of her choices mattering, especially with no feedback at night. I wonder if there's something smoother to be done here?

• the buried: here's an odd scenario we ran into. On night 1, daisy got a ping on the buried. On day 1, the (then-good) Dark and Gerard Keay claimed to each other, found out about the buried and their evil ping, and concocted a plan to have Gerard nominate them to both test the ping and turn off Gerard... Only for them to realize that the coffin wouldn't last after the buried's death.

It was a moment where it felt like the entire good team was communicating clearly and collaborating with their abilities, but following the obvious implications of their information meant they couldn't actually pull off their plan. It strikes me that the buried suffers a bit in highly-communicative towns, the kind that FYF encourages, because of the lack of spare nominations. Since there aren't any other roles on the script that specifically want to be nominated, it doesn't seem to me like their ability will meaningfully proc much; an open buried isn't going to find a ton of takers for nominations except for outsiders, and a sneaky buried has to walk the fine line of being suspicious enough to be nominated but not suspicious enough to actually get voted out. How has this played out in your sessions?

Knee-jerk reaction: perhaps their ability should poison someone even if the buried gets executed from their nomination? So that the buried can count on going off at least once

• Gerard Keay: as it was my first time running the script, it felt tricky for me to work out how to use Gerard; it seems like he'll pretty much always want to save the initial End kill or a desolation pick? Most other deaths at night will hurt the good team more than preventing them will.

• all other characters worked just as well as they should have. I found that picking out the good/evil MVP each night wasn't as daunting as I'd thought, and it felt intuitive towards the end.

• oh, one other piece of concrete feedback: f**k Jürgen Leitner isn't on the simplified script pdf

[wicked jay]

Thanks for the feedback!

One thing I don't understand is this Sasha issue

Obviously sasha is drunk the night that the lonely goes lonely

But who was picking the other targets?

We have definitely tuned sasha back and forth a ton - without the risk in going for a big number, sasha is a monster

As for the buried and noms more broadly... I might push back gently against the idea that an active and communicative town means few noms

With the slaughter, the buried, the flesh, and Gerard all wanting plenty of nominations, theres little reason to hold back

Also, why exactly should the open buried not get takers? It keeps you alive AND clears you of demon candidacy

Yes, it turns off your ability if you trust the buried, but if you trust the buried, then you should be at least as interested in testing people as the buried is

Your players didn't quite hit on it, but there's even a flavorfully intended Daisy-Buried combo - Daisy herself nominates the Buried! If the buried dies, Daisy doesnt rampage. If the buried lives, Daisy is poisoned and doesnt rampage. Of course, if the buried is evil, this doesn't go well... but it wouldnt be a very good bluff if you could execute them so easily

As for Gerard, you're not wrong on the common use cases. But it's the threat of Gerard that is so damaging in practice. He makes worldbuilding much harder by existing, because any damning lack of kill now has another explanation. Yes, half the time the game goes by and there's no good Gerard save, that's totally fine

And yeah, generally the barrier to entry is real, but that's the charm of it all. Banning Archivist for the first game or two is a totally legitimate way to ease people into it - as you said, most players get what the Townsfolk abilities do pretty quick in practice, and once you know that you know most of the mechanics

[arctic scroll]

On both nights 2 and 3 she was drunk by the dark. Crunching some numbers, this isn't an isolated experience; with nine living players and the dark (or the web, or the stranger + the spiral) alive and making random choices, here are Sasha's % chances of being drunk: if she has 1 ability it's 22%, if she has 2 it's 41.6%, and if she has 3 abilities it's 58%. The probabilities are even higher if more than one of those characters are in play, which also becomes more likely at higher player counts.

That suggests there's some unhealthy dynamics at play where Sasha is disproportionately punished if the ST puts characters who consistently jnteract with Townsfolk in the bag - the irony being that these are mostly the exact characters Sasha wants to copy.

It also means that the penalty for picking up an additional ability pretty quickly outgrows the benefit of learning a single player's character, meaning a Sasha who wants a chance to use any active abilities is encouraged to limit her guesses to only one or two.

[arctic scroll]

I see what you're getting at here, but I don't think all of these abilities actually encourage multiple nominations. Gerard does want to nominate consistently, and the buried does want to be nominated semi consistently, but the flesh's ability puts a downward pressure on nominations - since for the flesh, any nomination other than their own is a threat to their ability. (Indeed, in our town, the player who was trusted as flesh was the only player to nominate the day they wanted to activate their ability.) The slaughter theoretically also wants multiple other players to nominate, but mostly as a way of punishing evil players; good players don't really have a strong reason to play along, especially since they don't want to provide cover for a Melanie.

[wicked jay]

This may be a playgroup specific thing... but why don't good players have a reason to play along? There are multiple Townsfolk who benefit from that

Sasha feeling awkward is fair - I would say that shes supposed to be drunk half the time unless shes very cautious, but that might not be clear on the tin

But most fears games I have seen and run have plenty of nominations, since players generally want to provide cover for the roles who care.

Also, to be clear, the flesh can get a bone every day, right? Theres no reason why they shouldn't be trying all the time, they just might not always be that trusted

Also, this is more subtle, but for Sasha, they do have a strategy to free themselves - try to get their targets killed. Townsfolk can't ever interact with the dead, so if her targets are dead, she is safe and sober

I would imagine that after The Dark got jumped and The Lonely hid, things got much better for her

Granted, I see that only happened late in the game this game... but Sasha often doesn't need much time to severely impact the game state

One extra kill, or a surprise extra lonely corpse, can devastate good

We'll definitely keep watching her impact

[mint agate]

I’ll chime in that it was also intended with present Sasha being balanced by her being more likely to be drunk the more powerful abilities she has. On a script where 3/4 demons cannot easily pick kills, we’ve found that redirecting kills is one of the most powerful abilities that evil can get, and a single night of Sasha Dark can wreck a solve. So with that ability we did find it to be a feature not a bug that it can often be turned off (in ways that Town can track, by knowing that Sasha only could’ve darked if particular players were targeted and then not interacted with by her targets)

[arctic scroll]

My general thought on Sasha there is less about whether this incarnation is balanced (she probably is) and more that an ability that gets to be woken constantly for abilities but is drunk most of the time for balance (I think 3/4 nights in our game) isn't very fun for players to interact with. It's kind of a feels bad thing

But anyway thanks for all your thoughts and conversation! I'll see if I can get another game in with my group in a few weeks

[topaz thistle]

I generally agree with this, I think the ability is very swingy in a way I don’t think I overall like?

[arctic scroll]

Yeah like it's almost certainly 100% true that a single active sasha-dark night can wreck the good team's chances

But if the remedy for that is to have a Sasha that wakes for four different abilities every night, but both the storyteller and the player know that they're almost certainly not going to do anything, it's kind of a waste of time and resources for everyone involved

I wonder if leaning into that dynamic might work. Like Sasha gets to have a bunch of guaranteed abilities for a single night, but town also gets some kind of tell that a Sasha night has occurred

[topaz thistle]

I think there’s an inherent design problem Sasha is facing that being able to gain up to 5 (but reasonably 1 or 2 can be enough) of these abilities somewhat untraceably is always a ridiculous power when it works

[arctic scroll]

Ok not to infringe on the designer's job but I will toss out one idea I have to keep Sasha's concept while avoiding some of the frustration, playing on the "i see you" theme:

Each night, choose up to 3 players and guess their characters. You learn & gain all Townsfolk abilities you got correct until dusk, and 1 of those townsfolk learns you are in-play.

So Sasha can reach her heights, with potentially three townsfolk abilities per night, but town gets a widow-esque ping confirming one of those abilities. This can still be bluffed by evil but takes some coordination and may not work in the long run

[wicked jay]

We experimented with a Widow ping for Sasha in one very silly playtest where I choose to believe that Hannah was evil (I do not remember if they actually were and I do not want to find out)

It was problematic enough so that Mabel and I immediately took it out - Fears minions are already quiet by design, but it's really awkward when the minion whose main job is to make good cagey outs their presence, because as soon as you know sasha knows who you are you just completely play face up because evil already has your number

So the game goes from very closed to very open in a flash

I hear you on the swinginess and fun issue, though. We may not be at the final iteration of miss table

[arctic scroll]

Ahhhhh that does make a lot of sense

[mint agate]

Yeah, also convinced Sasha’s up there for characters likely to change, but fwiw where she’s at now her drunkenness is meant to provide some traceability (largely through knowing where she can’t be) without outing her

Unfortunately with minions (esp old Melanie and Martin for a bit) we’ve found that anytime on Fears we try to have a minion with risk/reward evil gets power for sticking their neck out and giving good some info, evil just… never takes it. We kept in OG Melanie through like 25 playtests at least and not a single one ever got the scarlet woman part of her ability because universally they refused to take the risk, and people were upset that she was too weak. With Martin bone collecting there was a tiny chance that it could cause dead Outsiders to wake, and not just players but also STs would twist the game into weird situations to avoid that ever even coming close to needing to happen

So we’re in a weird spot where the power balance trade off has to be mechanical, and if it feels to risk/reward in Sasha’s hands with risking outing her team we’re worried people just… won’t risk anything ever. And if it’s in Town’s hands to find things about her it can feel bad and can encourage STs to mess around with an already flexible ability, so we really wanted the consequence to just be limiting her power already, and something a bit less predictable to her upfront so she can’t just turtle or just only take X ability because it minimizes any risk of downside

The swinginess definitely isn’t ideal, but yeah so far the best we’ve thought of is a drunkenness that isn’t preemptively traceable to either team but helps town confirm places Sasha can’t have been (because TF would’ve been drunk otherwise) and just limits Sasha’s power rather than risk exposing evil in a way players and STs have both shied away from so far in playing the script

[arctic scroll]

Fwiw, based on my experience playtesting other homebrews, I don't think this is just a fyf problem - evil players that need to act publicly or give out info about who they are are very difficult to write

(new Melanie still has shades of this - she can get kind of stuck if the town collectively agrees not to nominate more than once or twice each day)

So yeah it's a tricky dilemma to solve

[wicked jay]

I mean, thats not great for town if they do that, so thats kind of a fine equilibrium - she can still get info, and even one late game kill can turn the tide... one of the things that is just sort of table stakes with fears is that theres a lot of power being thrown around, and getting to do something strong even once can be really impactful

If you expect your ability to go off each night, it can feel bad, but if im playing fears and I roll minion I see it as a quest over the course of the game to see if I can manage to do a thing that makes the game weird enough so that good will be hard pressed to mechanically solve

We can try to make them more fun, but we don't actually have much room to make them any stronger - this is where they are supposed to be, or Good doesn't have much of a chance

[arctic scroll]

Out of curiosity, why does the Dark check the previous night instead of the current night?

And why does Tim drunk people for two nights?

[acoustic acorn]

dark checks the previous night because it cannot see the future

usually chambermaid goes last, but needing to redirect kills means it needs to go fairly early on

[wicked jay]

Tim drunks people for a long time because he turns good and so needs to have a pretty strong ability to make that worth it for evil

Tim packs a huge punch but is a social liability

[mint agate]

It’s also so it takes coordination and ability sacrifice from multiple trusted good players if the good team wants to force Tim into staying good

If it was only for one night, a trusted good picker who trusts Tim can just pick Tim every night, and sacrifice their ability to keep Tim good, which is really strong

[wicked jay]

Fun fact, we did originally design this dark as just acting on the current night and seeing the future, but we just did not like introducing the idea of a hypothetical waking that mechanically mattered even if it didnt come true [because someone who was supposed to have woken died], because then town needs to track not just who woke but who the Storyteller thinks should have woken, which is complicated however you define it