Quantum Clocktower

[violet gale]

"It seems that there is a Chronology Protection Agency which prevents the appearance of closed timelike curves and so makes the universe safe for historians." -Stephen Hawking

The Rules: #1247683557426724864 message

The Almanac: #1247683557426724864 message

Recommended Script: #1247683557426724864 message

Quantum Clocktower is a rules variant on Blood on the Clocktower compatible with several combinations of official characters, that transforms the game into a complex puzzle of strategy and ambiguity. Players get alignments but do not draw character tokens, and players simultaneously exist as every character they could possibly be given the state of the game, so Good players must work together to eliminate enough uncertainty to make their information meaningful. Evil players have an incredible amount of flexibility as they can more or less choose their characters, but bluffing takes on an entirely different meaning when you must bluff not just a particular character, but all the choices you would make as a Good player as you attempt to narrow yourself down to a single character.

I came up with Quantum back in 2022, and it's been going around the community in various forms for long enough that I figure it deserves its own repository and official reference materials.

If this is your first time learning about Quantum, welcome! The good news is that it won't be as hard as you think. The bad news is that I'm assuming you think it's really, really hard.

[gray monolith]

what iiiiis thiiiiiissss
my mind broke down just reading it
reminds me of 5d chess with multiverse time travel
seems not absolutely murdering as a player but i assume each story teller can only run this after getting a PHD in Quantum Clocktower Theory?

[violet gale]

i can confirm that storytelling this live is quite the experience

it has been storytold in text by at least 4 different people that i know of all very effectively

[modest prism]

Holy what the hell. This seems so cool but it’s so mind breaking. So does every good player choose their information? And they make choices for every thing that they could still be? And every evil player chooses a player for poisoner and demon separately or as one choice? Also, can good players kinda force a vortox game by starting with choosing crazy info

This is awesome!

Oh after reading the almanac some more, they can choose how many things they want to keep in their superposition, but then they leave more worlds open

[violet gale]

More or less! Yes, everyone gets to choose their information, which is crazy powerful, but it does balance out. Good has a number of ways to try to check if it's a Vortox game, but they can't actually force it, because if the Demon doesn't wake up on the first night, it's already definitely a Vortox game (the other two Demons wake up on the first night)

The Evil team determines who is the Demon with their starting information, which is set at the very beginning of the game, and from there each Minion can decide whether to choose a player (and therefore make themselves / ) or to not wake (and therefore make themselves / )

[random crystal]

Ahh, Quantum BotC. Funnily enough, I made another script for that exact format a few days ago, cause our group wanted an alternative from Uncertainty principle. Haven't had the time to fully playtest it yet, but it should have some legs, with some interesting choices that lock characters for other players.

[broken island]

Exorcist is very sad

[versed garden]

My group played this a couple months back

Hilariously mind boggling

[analog basin]

Unfortunately

I'm too dumb to understand this

But this seems like a very fun script

[violet gale]

Hmm, there's a few awkward choices here -- making your own Quantum script is really hard. Off the top of my head:

-The Laws don't actually clarify how Bounty Hunter would work. Alignments are rolled, so do you determine whether a BH is in play at setup? Can players choose to learn that they're the Evil TF?

-King/CB are legal but a bit awkward in that the Demon gets to handpick who the King is, and they can just kill the King without the King knowing they're the King, and if any dead player is possibly Choirboy, Good can be none the wiser.

-Exorcist is very sad, as the Demon has to consent to being exorcised which won't happen much (otherwise you just get locked as Monk)

-Ogre has no superposition, so you're just the Ogre if and only if you pick and learn nothing N1, right? Not sure how much intrigue it adds since it functions entirely classically

-Sweetheart is a really awkward Outsider because it's so easy for it to drunk the Demon (if a player ever chooses to get info after the Demon chooses them lategame when they have zero other way to survive, congrats, some recently dead player was the Sweetheart) -- you should just consider Puzzlemaster for this reason

-Plague Doctor has sizable balance issues in Quantum, since the ST having the Poisoner ability means that every player is possibly poisoned each night, and it can be a different player each night, which absolutely guts town information at very little cost. The other modes are pretty odd, as Witch never does anything (no way to prove ST chose you), and the Marionette Jinx just allows the Demon to turn their neighbor Evil on demand, which is workable but extremely harsh on balance.

-Witch is neat but a bit tragic in that you rarely actually score a kill? If you don't have a Poisoner buddy working together with you, how can you prove you're not the Poisoner? If you can't, you'll never collapse your curse targets dead.

-Goblin is a "silent alt-win" character, which has some issues in Quantum - if you're a non waking Minion and claim Goblin and get executed, you just lock yourself as the Baron, right? The game continues if possible, so in practice it's incredibly hard to get that wincon off.

-Marionette would require a tweaking of the Laws to work. Alignment is randomly rolled and the Evil team gets to choose which of them is the Demon. That means that any character that makes Evils not know each other has a hard time working, because the Evil team knows each other before anything else is decided. Would you go into the game deciding it's a Marionette game and that you're only waking up 2 Evil players at the start?

-Demon set is fine, but note that Vortox as a non-solo N2 Demon is a little sad as town can just skip D1 to lock it out of play if they want

[random crystal]

• For BH, I was assuming no BH can be in play if no Good player chooses to learn they turn evil on N1 - basically, they choose to have one on their team or not (and can attempt the self-turn ofc)

• King/CB indeed has the Demon choose the King ; and choosing to not learn anything N1, to then try to learn a single name in the following nights, to try for a Choirboy proc, should be a valid strategy good should use when possible. I think.

• True about Exorcist, might reconsider. Though at some point, if two good pick, there has to be an Exorcist in there, limiting the Demon's options.

• Ogre is indeed classic, but I thought it fit the spirit of the format. It's similar to Puzzlemaster on the original, where you can lock yourself at the start of the game to try to influence Outsider count.

• I can see how Sweetheart could become awkward there. I initially had Monk, Exorcist, Minstrel & co to cause no visible death nights, but I hadn't spotted that pattern. Probably should be replaced.

• PD is indeed a bit tricky ; this version had less droison than the original, so I had thought Poisoner was fine. Witch should work similarly as normal Witch ? Note that I assume the ST chooses their action at night the same way a player does, and collapses similarly, so it's workable. Marionette doesn't sound much more busted than the normal use case, since the jinx has an inbuilt SoI in it.

• Witch is hard to work out properly indeed, since you'll get locked most of the time into Poisoner , still, in bigger 3-Minion games, I think it works fine, because there's more chance another Minion went Poisoner. And ofc, PD can help collapse later if the ST chooses to pick.

• Yes, Goblin has a dynamic where you have to work your way toward it, lessening Outsider locks to force yourself into the role before the execution. I like that dynamic personally, it's less cheesy ; and again, two Minions that don't wake guarantee a Goblin in there.

• Marionette is mostly a PD option, and indeed doesn't work in the normal setup ; I'm fine with this, with 5 Minions on the script, but the "wake 2 players, then a third if no Mario" tweak would be fine with me too.

• If too many people learn wrong info on N1, wouldn't it lock Vortox before the skip ? I'm not sure town would see this as a worthwhile risk.

I wanted to put Recluse in there, replacing Sweetheart, to help with the VI/BH/Oracle pings ; I was afraid about Ogre then turning evil on demand while locking it ; but considering there is BH-turning + N1 pickers that have the same play pattern on N1, it might actually work fine, provided I include SoI in there.

[violet gale]

For PD... the way you'd run it is to actually make a choice with your agency as the ST, rather than having all choices be possible until proven otherwise? That's kind of odd, can you as the ST just arbitrarily choose to do that any time a nonwaker dies? And Marionette is at least reasonable given that it's purely on script for PD, it's still extremely good for evil, but maybe that's okay. the Poisoner interaction is still quite awkward

How exactly do you work towards a Goblin win? Evil has almost no agency over how many Outsiders get locked in play, so it's usually out of your hands, and in doublenonwaking games it's even sadder, as you need to get BOTH minions goblin executed before you can win, so town can always kill the first goblin claim for free D:

With steward/BH in superposition and village idiots being self-drunking, it's pretty difficult to affirmatively lock vortox in play on day one. what would that actually look like, even in theory? i'm not actually sure it's possible on this script

recluse makes sense as an addition to this, recluse is one of the quantum outsiders that usually works well

the only awkward thing is that they can try to learn who the marionette is, and rules as written you can't deny them that info

same with the king

recluse clashes with characters that let The Demon unilaterally do/know things

[random crystal]

Haven't actually run the numbers on a Vortox lock on N1, let's see. Steward wrong, BH wrong, 3 VI wrong, none picked by a Minion - Recluse, VI drunk and Drunk can justify 3 out of the 5, none adjacent to ND... that's about 2 misinfo unnacounted for without Vortox ?

[violet gale]

how are the steward and BH both wrong? isn't it possible that they are therefore both right

[random crystal]

Ah, Recluse is indeed King/Mario bait. But I mean, if a player wants to try to lock those before the demon, as cost of becoming an Outsider, I think it's actually an interesting play pattern, that can be bluffed too ; plus, Demon should learn Bluffs before King/Mario info, so they can put Recluse/the other two as out of play if they want to avoid some of it

[random crystal]

Ah, I see what you mean ; and locking out of Vortox D1 would have them be unable to switch roles on N2. Hmm...

[violet gale]

having to choose an outsider as a bluff D:

but, i do think locking the vortox is theoretically possible - no evil TF so BH locked out of play, a player sees an evil player, every village idiot chooses an evil player and learns that they are good.... this isn't very likely xD

anyway, there is a reason that Pukka//Lleech is such a mainstay of quantum scripts - you don't have to go with exactly that, but certain demons like vortox and fang gu really, really like being solo

so it can sometimes be more harm to evil than good to have too many demons with the same waking pattern

[random crystal]

Unlikely indeed. I wanted to avoid Lleech because this version really doesn't focus on execution survival. Might chose Pukka instead of Vortox. Or Yaggababble x)

[violet gale]

oh boy, yaggababble super does not work 😂

how do you ever prove anyone died

[random crystal]

Yeah, I was joking x)

Ojo would be neat too, not sure it works how I picture it (aka not at all) though ; wouldn't it create paradoxes, where players die if they chose something at night, but if they can't choose because they're dead now they don't die ?

(Also, re:Recluse, outsiders as a bluff in normal games is a thing, I don't think it would be a bad thing here ; it's valid counterplay with a small cost, and at worst you give it to a Baron/Goblin)

[broken island]

the issue is that missing can be very very awkward

[random crystal]

Even without the misses I'm not even sure it can function, so yeah, with it it's 100% non-viable

I like the Recluse-King dynamic (plus it counters the Ogre forcing themselves as evil 100% since it locks Recluse in place - though even that was mitigated by BH+1st night pickers), and since Mario has other problems and PD-Baron fills the same niche, I'm removing Marionette. Having only 4 Minions could actually be a good thing for evil there, since PD would help lock things like Goblin or Witch in place after the PD proc.

I'm also fine with having Vortox as single backup for the very unlikely situation where it's needed on N1. If players want to skip on D1 to lock it out, its fine, they lose out on an execution for it. And I'm adding in Pukka, to give another droison source/locking choice for the Demon.

Now for an interesting Exorcist replacement... Knight or Noble are actually interesting here too. More Vortox N1 lock options, too.

Noble it is, more Recluse interlocking potential, and also fine with Cannibal.

Here's how this looks now, should play a bit tighter.

[violet gale]

There can't be paradoxes in quantum -- if a player's choice would result in an impossible game state, it simply isn't possible. But yes, Ojo is kind of awkward. The script seems a bit rough around the edges, but if your group is bored of Uncertainty Principle (and Schrodinger's Clock too, that's different enough to be worth trying!), may as well playtest a bit

[broken island]

thoughts on this?

[violet gale]

You should read the Almanac, Scarlet Woman + Recluse is a very, very bad idea 😉

Also as mentioned above, PD just doesn't play great in Quantum, with DA its quite miserable because it seriously slows down games as you kinda have to double tap everyone

It looks like the TF changes from schrodingers clock are Courtier Farmer and minstrel over clockmaker Gambler and undertaker? That's all workable, with Farmer especially being pretty interesting to test. Not sure I love Courtier on sheer power level, and this game will definitely go a lot slower with Courtier and Minstrel both blocking a lot of kills whereas the roles you cut do good work filling out superpositions and giving good info... but it's legal

I think zombuul is pretty interesting, I feel like in Quantum you really want poison as evil so idk how often evil would go for it, but I do think it's interesting and could be fun

Farmer is definitely the most interesting quantum Townsfolk not on my scripts, because of the interesting gossip interactions - I still prefer Gambler as a higher agency pit-hag style role that synergizes with gossip, and you'd definitely have to cut Gambler or Mayor for Farmer, but it's pretty interesting

Minstrel is also somewhat neat and mostly not on because I didn't want games to drag, but you could cut Mayor for it reasonably and it would do work

Courtier I just don't love because it has no superpositions and can be oppressive and slow games a lot

[worthy crag]

doesn't courtier/lleech also give you quantum immortal lleeches?

[violet gale]

There's already poisoner on script with the lleech, so you have to run with the ruling that the lleech dies if the host is dead

[worthy crag]

right, ty

[broken island]

why?

oh

wait?

[violet gale]

🙂

[broken island]

why would it affect much?

cause the script doesnt have demon detection

so they wouldnt gain the recluses ability ever?

[violet gale]

Day one you execute a random good player

Night two a Minion tells you they're the Demon now

[broken island]

they would only choose to wake right?

[violet gale]

now there are two demons and you can do nothing about it

[broken island]

wait

sw doesnt just gain the recluses ability?

[violet gale]

No, the Recluse registers as the Demon and the scarlet woman becomes the demon

[broken island]

sheit

[broken island]

ive run it a few times in smaller games

its worked well

a few changes

[violet gale]

Plague Doctor is still kind of unworkable, and I'm not sure its completely broken, but there is the Gary Cooper interaction where the zombuul dies once and the SW becomes the zombuul

So you still have two Demons running around, they are just both zombuuls

Also, I know you're making changes for the sake of trying new things, but I would really consider just having CM over Librarian - the extra superposition possibility is gonna be healthier for the script than Librarian info is

[broken island]

ive enjoyed like 1 or so games w librarian but fair...

eh the focus was mostly to get the zombuul to work

it doesnt really 😅

[violet gale]

That's a matter of taste, the only things that I very strongly suggest are replacing SW with Mastermind and replacing PD with something that works

[broken island]

i like the idea of sw tbh

but pd i see

[violet gale]

You can have SW on, but then you probably should not have Zombuul on - it's strong enough that SW can change the Lleech host silently late game, but getting to make a second Demon on demand is just a dangerous idea

[broken island]

yee

had removed zombuul on my version

[violet gale]

And you also absolutely can't have Recluse on, so you'd need to run Barber or Golem (there are technically other options but none work very well)

[broken island]

already swapped for barber

[violet gale]

That seems pretty playable, it's UP minus vortox plus ND, minus MM plus SW, minus gambler/UT plus farmer/minstrel?

[broken island]

idk, havent looked much at uncertainty principle

[violet gale]

I don't thiiiiink that ND is as strong for evil as vortox is but they're both viable, SW does work without any of the characters it breaks

Annoyingly minstrel does a lot less without Recluse on the script

[broken island]

true

gaaah

this was really hard, but i enjoyed it

[violet gale]

It's at least functional but yeah sorry, Quantum scripts are a huge house of cards and there's a ton of reasons the first scripts are what they are xD

[broken island]

yee, will only have a few changes

minstrel is a lot less important with zombuul gone as well

[violet gale]

there is probably a possible version that is schrodinger's clock -fang gu +zombuul -mayor +minstrel to get recluse minstrel and zombuul on the same script in a nonbroken fashion

[broken island]

oo

[torn osprey]

i played in a quantum tb game

that was really fun but god it was so chaotic

[violet gale]

wait quantum tb doesn't work, the recluse scarlet woman thing is busted 😳

wait, also the spy just locks everyones roles O_O

[woven grotto]

I wonder what the least fun quantum roles are

Surely Magician is up there

[torn osprey]

yup those are things that can happen

[torn osprey]

it couldnt lock everyone but it narrowed it down a lot

[torn osprey]

i was recluse that game but i didnt live long enough to do any shenanigans

[violet gale]

its not you that does it, the minion just wakes n2 and makes a second imp 😛

[shrewd galleon]

after seeing this, i had to try my hand at a script, so here goes nothing!

[winged delta]

Quantum Boomdandy means that all players are alive and dead at the same time once it goes off tho right

But since the game only ends if Boomdandy is the Minion, it would lock the Minion into being Mastermind instead unless impossible

[shrewd galleon]

i did not think of that

its prob. better if the boomdandy is the baron then

[violet gale]

yeah i feel bad looking at everyone's scripts and saying "no, just play uncertainty principle", but you actually should seriously just play uncertainty principle until you are several games in

here.... yeah, boomdandy does not really work at all, and klutz also does not work because if someone dies and claims klutz and chooses an evil player, it just confirms that they aren't the klutz and the game continues, which doesn't do anything

as for the townsfolk, you have next to no "superpositions" - that is, you have very few players who receive the same prompts, which is important for a healthy quantum script. as far as the individual choices, sailor is broken because you are completely immortal (you just keep picking every night to prove yourself alive), and innkeeper is broken because you can choose yourself and someone else, and since it's possible that you'll be sober, you won't die even if attacked by the demon, so you are also immortal

exorcist does not work because the demon has to consent to be exorcised, which they are very unlikely to do

snake charmer also does not work very well because you will simply lock yourself as not the snake charmer and/or droisoned if you ever hit the demon

moonchild also does not really work for similar reasons to klutz

Start with Uncertainty Principle until you get a good feel for how the game mode ticks

[dusty smelt]

Yeah ummm, happy to help ST or script drafting but… trying to write a Quantum script took several thousand messages logged on this server alone, weeks if not months of revisions, and took over my life so much it feels like the experience took over half my house 😂

[dusty smelt]

The flavor text of first Schrodinger’s Clock game will live on and die simultaneously in our memory 🥲

[broken island]

I've run it like the evil team recieve their character type

[remote zodiac]

that's a far more sane solution
i should probably script build with that in mind instead of going mad calculating the implications of two evil potential Lleechs running amok

[ivory quest]

I have a question about the law that states: "The game continues if possible, ending if and only if its superposition has collapsed to only contain states where it ends."
Does this mean that in a scenario where there's a universe where the game ends and one where it doesn't, they both continue existing and once the other one also reaches an end, then a teams wins?
OR
Does it mean that in that scenario, the universe where the game ends ceases to exist and the game continues in the other universe?

[worthy crag]

The latter is more correct. From the almanac:

If the game possibly ends, but possibly continues (for example, if a Minion guesses a possible Damsel as the Damsel), then the game will continue, and all game states that would have ended are eliminated.

[ivory quest]

Oh okay, I think I was misinterpreting that law. So the game only ends if all possible worlds reach an end at the same time. And then if there are some where evil wins and some where good wins, that's when evil would win that tie?

[worthy crag]

Yes, that's right

If there are no states where the game can continue, it ends

[ivory quest]

This all makes sense now, thanks!

[sonic oar]

Gave +1 Thanks to @worthy crag (current: #2 - 1261)

[blissful prism]

That's when you make all minions have different prompts than all demons

[violet gale]

Yup. There's no sense in a game state "continuing to exist" once it has ended - the fact that the players are still making choices and taking actions proves that the game isn't over

[grim brook]

Question about the mastermind leech jinx, if the host is executed and no execution happens at all the next day, is it intended for the game to continue with a permanently crippled leech or does the game end there

[broken island]

as per the common ruling that ive seen officially the game would have to end as there is no mechanical way that it can continue

[grim brook]

the argument would be that "the demon" is still alive but that does not seem rules as intended so it's probably best to not run it like that

[broken island]

is this a question of whether quantum alters something or the base game jinx?

[grim brook]

both

cause if anything would alter it, it would be quantum

[broken island]

the jinx just allows the lleech to live during the mastermind day

[grim brook]

alright

thanks for the clarification

[broken island]

yw

[violet gale]

Quantum does not alter the jinx. The jinx is somewhat infamously unclear, but I would run that the Lleech drops dead after the Mastermind day, giving the Good Team the win.

[hollow laurel]

Hello! After watching that quantum game on Saturday's TPI stream, I was wondering about a few things:

• How are you supposed to run characters that make several "choices" in a row? For instance a Fortune Teller, they pick 2 players and then get a Yes or a No. Is "I pick Alice and Bob and get Yes" a single choice that they need to remake fully if it's not valid, or do they only get to change the Yes into No if the Yes was not valid?
• I'm unclear on how Gossip works. On the stream there were overall two kinds of gossips: those that refer to the state of the game within a given universe, and those that refer to the meta-state of the multiverse. It seems like the truth value of the former depends on the state you're in, while the truth value of the latter is absolute. Is that right? When/how do you evaluate the truth value of a gossip?

[broken island]

They can try to do:
I pick x and y and learn no
I pick x and y and learn yes

[hollow laurel]

Ok. It also means they can fish for a yes (or a no) by picking people until they get what they want.

[broken island]

Yes

[broken island]

They base it on the state if relevant.

The gossip almost never "kills anyone". It's people who choose to die by not waking generally. As a gossip could always be sunk into a dead player

[hollow laurel]

Yeah of course, it just seemed weird to me for a gossip to refer to the meta-state of the game. But I guess technically it could refer to anything, it doesn't have to be game-related, as long as the ST can determine its veracity.

Thanks for the insights!

Oh! I was also wondering how a Nightwatchman would work. Let's say it's on script, and on N1, a Good player selects another player.

• If it's the only player-picking Good role on the script, would the other player necessarily receive the information a NWM selected them?
• If it isn't, would it necessitate the other player to also choose to learn that a specific player is a NWM for it to work?
  How does it go?

[broken island]

It would neccicate that the other also chooses to learn you

Or it would lock you as droisoned

[violet gale]

Yup, if there is literal 0 droison left in game, the player is forced to learn a NWM ping as that happens sequentially after the pick. If there is any droison left, it doesn't happen.

This actually makes NWM extremely swingy in Quantum as it can potentially hard confirm to 2 players that there isn't any floating droison left in the game, which makes it stronger than I would choose to put on a script

[violet gale]

Yeah, to be more specific on Gossip, absolutely everything in the game full stop is only ever evaluated in its specific world. Any Gossip that is fully about meta-state will have the same T/F status in every world, but that's not a problem, just a factoid. The Gossip is only ever evaluated at the point the Gossip acts in the night order (at which point it checks the game state at the time the Gossip was made), and a check happens in every world where a player is the Gossip who Gossiped (so you routinely have hundreds of checks happen per night if everyone gossips, which delightfully ruins the computability of Quantum, but is in practice really easy to do for a human since you batch so much together in your head)

[broken island]

Doesn't it make the player unable to do the nwm pick

?*

[violet gale]

no, you do it and then you wake the other player up and Law 3 them into seeing a NWM ping

barber swaps and, well, getting killed by the demon work the same way

if you do something and there's no way to stop it, it happens

[broken island]

Barber swap was a jinx tho?

Cause it broke the normal rules I thought

[violet gale]

learning that your superposition has changed is a specific ruling

rather than learning what character you are, since you never do that in quantum

but the timing of it is just the way that it has to work

first the demon chooses, then the characters swap

for NWM, first the NWM chooses, then you put them to sleep, then wake up the other player and give them the ping

so if the first part is possible, it happens, and then the second part happens if it's forced to

[broken island]

Mmh

[hollow laurel]

Ah, thanks for clarifying, that makes sense! I was actually thinking of the comparison with Barber

[worthy crag]

I think the more apt comparison is Fang Gu - if a locked non-Recluse Outsider (e.g. Puzzlemaster) gets attacked by the Fang Gu and there's neither Monk, Lycan, nor Tea Lady able to interfere, the Outsider gets Law 3'd into getting FG jumped

similarly if the NWM picks someone and there's no floating droison, they should get Law 3'd into getting the ping

Caveat - how the hell does NWM-Vortox with no floating droison work?

I'd assume the answer is "it doesn't" since the recipient should get law 3'd into learning they got a ping but the ST has discretion over who the "source" is due to Vortox

[violet gale]

It works, it's just a very awkward interaction - you have to reject their choice to not wake and force them to see a NWM ping, but you don't have a mechanism to tell them that this is what they need to do, so you just have to reject their choices forever until they figure it out. Law 3 is intended to avoid this, but the way it is worded doesn't cover scenarios where you get forced to learn something unexpectedly, but the exact thing you learn isn't determined

If you desperately wanted to play with this you'd probably be best off with a house rule that you get told "You learn information" so that you can figure out what's going on before you get frustrated... but why exactly do you want that, this doesn't seem like a very fun interaction

[worthy crag]

it doesn't seem fun, no

[analog basin]

Listen

Just hear me out

Quantum Hyper Fishbucket

[violet gale]

this does not go well

"Hey Bob go visit the Storyteller and say they tell you 'watermelon' "

"I guess that I am the Amnesiac whose ability is that anyone can visit the Storyteller to learn 'watermelon' and when the day ends Good wins, and I get a Bingo"

and then you can't be droisoned, so good wins

Oh, make sure to put [The Heretic can't be in play] as a setup ability in your amne ability because otherwise evil always wins quantum

[analog basin]

[hollow laurel]

Alright, another tricky one (I think): Farmer. Let's say someone's state has collapsed to have the Farmer's ability (either they are the only non-waking role, or a philo-Farmer with no possible droisoning on them), and they are targeted at night by the Vortox with no way to survive.
If another player submitted in their choice the fact that they become Farmer, I assume everything is easy. If not, does it mean you need to invalidate the night of a randomly-selected Good alive player? What if they already acted before the demon?
Also, do you inform the new Farmer that they are now the Farmer, or just that their superposition changed?

(My assumption is that yes, you need to invalidate the night of a random Good alive player, and they need to somehow figure out that "And then I wake up again and I become the Farmer" needs to be part of their submission. (The clunkiness is fine, you'd just never put Farmer on a script if it can collapse that easily, I guess.))

[broken island]

You don't invalidate the action previous to the farmer for example. A monk can still become a farmer the night they acted. And yes I belive you would tell a player of their new character

[hollow laurel]

This seems contrary to Law 6 to me, since players are supposed to submit a choice for the entire night. But I guess that's a question in general for any player who would have reasons to wake up multiple times in the night.

[broken island]

You can submit 2 actions

[broken island]

I choose player X
And become the farmer

I choose player X

I become the farmer

Are all valid submits

Also since you're randomly choosing a player, there is little reason for those players not to be in the running from my understanding but other people probably have a better answer

[violet gale]

It's important to note that the timeline of players submitting choices isn't the same as the timeline of events happening in the night, so there's no problem with accepting some things in a player's submission and rejecting others. This plays better than Nightwatchman at least, since you affirmatively tell a random player "You are now the Farmer" - there isn't any other prompt you can get if you become the Farmer, so Law 3 saves you the frustration.

The really awkward thing is characters that make you get information unexpectedly but don't define what information you get. Waking unexpectedly to get a clearly defined piece of information plays fine in Quantum

But yes, on a script building level you should not make it that easy to lock the Farmer, Farmer should usually be locked by a player affirmatively choosing to become the Farmer

[worthy crag]

How does Steven Medway's proposed Lycanthrope update shake out with its presence on both UP and SC?

(for reference: "Each night*, choose an alive player. If good, they die & the Demon doesn’t kill tonight. One good player registers as evil.")

the "lycan red herring" seems like a hassle to handle

since in practice it seems like it harder to lock lycan (when it's not a bluff)

[violet gale]

The two big differences are that it still allows Gossip/Gambler to kill, which is pretty unobjectionable, and the added Lycan-Recluse. It's actually not too hard to get off a Lycan kill as long as you have a cooperating partner, but yes, it absolutely makes it a weaker role, which I don't think is too bad as Quantum is Good-favored as it stands. The other Townsfolk on UP and SC aren't actually bothered much, the big one is Empath which now has another reason to get wrong info (but if it locks Lycan in play that's pretty strong for town), Tea Lady (which is already very strong and usually locks itself in play by the possibility of two Good neighbors, so the play pattern won't change much), and hilariously Cannibal, who now has yet another way to get a Demon bluff.

tl;dr It works just fine, it gives Evil meaningfully more tools on both scripts, but Quantum is really tough for Evil so that's fine by me

The Demon now has less reason to choose Lycan as a bluff, which is great because Lycan was in the "are you sure you want to let this exist" category

I won't fault anyone who just doesn't like the proposed Lycan and wants to play with the official one, but I think it probably makes the script more balanced and it would be a fine change

[worthy crag]

Empath locking Lycan into play does seem incredibly strong yeah

but that's reasonably unlikely given how many other sources of misinfo there are?

like, Vortox on UP/Recluse on SC, plus Drunk/PM

[blissful prism]

how easily do you think someone could lock themselves into droisoned Cannibal if they actually wanted to do that?

[worthy crag]

most cannibals tend to lock themselves droisoned in some way or another, don't they

it's the whole thing with canizzlemaster

[violet gale]

Very easily

You wake up and choose a player, and then you make a puzzlemaster guess the very next day

Which seems blatantly illegal, but its legal if you are the Cannibal who ate the puzzlemaster but was poisoned at the start of the night (perhaps by the pukka and there was a lycan kill?) but is sober now

And since there's a scenario where you MUST do that, it's legal to show to a droisoned cannibal

[blissful prism]

Suppose it is a script with Drunk but not Puzzlemaster, how much harder does it get?

[worthy crag]

I think you can still do it by waking for something like Monk/Lycan and learning a number in the same night - this is something a Pukkad, then sober Cannibal (Lycan kill? monk save?) could reasonably do so can be simulated to a Drunk (Cannibal)

It's the same principle

[blissful prism]

I just thought of an idea: I want someone to make a solo Kazali Quantum script

[winged delta]

It probably does work, it’s just… kinda boring? Like, the entire evil team doesn’t get to play the whole shtick of Quantum, and they don’t even get the fun of getting to know the role they once were since they weren’t any role before

[left crypt]

also means outsider count can never resolve, which is odd

[winged delta]

Oh yeah that too

[analog basin]

Let's make a solo legion

[blissful prism]

I'm making a script which leans hard into this - not only is it solo kazali, there will be literally no way on the script for the evil team to interact with the quantum mechanics

it will probably never be run, but i just want it made

I'm having trouble picking which minions to include in this

[blissful prism]

First draft for my solo-Kazali Quantum script: Kazali Exclusion Principle!
The core premise of this script is that the Evil Team does not utilize any of the Quantum rules! To that end:

• The only starting evil player must be the Kazali, who then chooses which players are which Minions.
• There is no good role on the script that requires the cooperation of the evil team in any way.
• There is no way for evil players to be in a state of quantum death.
• This script features a Bootlegger: "Evil players cannot be drunk."
• The problem of choosing bluffs has yet to be solved, please send suggestions as a part of your feedback.
  Please send suggestions for how I can improve this script while keeping the core premise, and know that it is a first draft that I do not intend to be run anytime soon, I am simply doing this as a thought experiment for fun! Questions about the script or decisions involved while making it are also appreciated.

[timber mason]

when you say "the problem of choosing bluffs," what problem do you mean?

that evil would choose bluffs and therefore engage in quantum behavior (thus violating the intent of the script)?

[blissful prism]

exactly

[timber mason]

yeah i'm not sure there's a way around that besides bootlegging

make it a teensy?

[broken island]

@violet gale when are we getting a xaan quantum script

I feels like it would fit amazingly

[left crypt]

god being able to resolve droisoning status based on outsider count is... cursed

[night tulip]

i'm thinking about the quantum scripts that have been played recently, got a hot take of: i don't really like quantum clockmaker on scripts without a recluse

most of the time it just ends up as a droison magnet, because the validity of clockmaker info has already been set in stone before n1 even begins, meaning that the very act of learning a number massively collapses worlds

tpi please release more number learners

see: most quantum games that have been ran, bunch of people submit numbers, because one of them has to be a clockmaker that alone massively pins down droison

[timber mason]

the only issue is that it messes with player count / team balance by a lot because it will be in play pretty often and therefore base outsider count is irrelevant and evil just gets a buff in base 0 while town gets a buff in base 2

but it’s definitely worth experimenting with

[broken island]

Town might just be able to lock a night as being the poison night tho?

[timber mason]

right but the concern is about the balance of [X Outsiders]

in Xaan games town would just always rather it be a 12p game than a 10p game, because base outsider count going from 0 to 2 is what is supposed to counterbalance the advantage town gets from having more members but Xaan erases that
and vice versa for evil preferring 10p to 12p

in a normal game the ST can account for this and make balance decisions accordingly, but Quantum explicitly removes that lever

[broken island]

true

[violet gale]

Mabel and I discussed this last night and our conclusion is that it is quite fun, but only at base 2 Outsiders. Consider either of the base Quantum scripts minus Baron plus Xaan to have my blessing, if and only if you run it at base 2 Outsiders. If that's not the number of players you have I'd just play with the Baron.

It's not unplayable at 10, but it simply means that the game is more Evil favored purely because of the player count

[dusty smelt]

The issue is that Xaan will almost definitionally lock 2-4 Outsiders in play, meaning at +0-1 Outsiders it is a stronger Baron and one evil has a harder time predicting/controlling, and as Good it almost certainly locks Xaan in play with a late-night trigger or hard confirms all minions wake.

if your group is experienced enough Schrödinger’s Clock or Uncertainty Principle is extremely Good-favored, you can swap Baron for Xaan on script with our blessing, but it is a balance swing that our first thought was may actually close more worlds than open, because the game will predictably collapse in more similar ways

[violet gale]

I do enjoy that Xaan on script makes hearing the Damsel's call not a trap, since you may as well

I think I would enjoy it with an experienced crowd, at 12p

[dusty smelt]

Off-topic but gosh the phrase “Damsel’s call” makes me imagine trying to use/design a dating app 🤣

[violet gale]

I wouldn't play in a game with it at 10p, though, Evil does need some help in Quantum, but doing that by having 3 Townsfolk in a 10p game just doesn't sound like a great time

"Even here among the apps, I was alone"

[dusty smelt]

#things-peter-lukas-would-find-more-complicated-than-quantum

[violet gale]

i don't think it's as hard as you think, this is a wonderful ritual concept

you put together some really advanced algorithm that pairs people based on maximum hookup compatibility and minimum emotional compatibility, so they get hooked on your app but are incredibly lonely as they drift between meaningless flings

[dusty smelt]

Oh I meant getting the bloody technology to work (he eventually realizes it being broken and janky and sometimes never delivering messages is even better)

[violet gale]

oh yeah, if you actually start connecting with someone over how terrible the experience is, it starts crashing and leaving you on read

[dusty smelt]

||Gertrude Robinson foils it by siccing the feminists on it, who start using it to bond over feminism||

[worthy crag]

3 townsfolk where one of them is almost certainly puzzledrunk 🫣

[dusty smelt]

Yep, or even worse, none of them are for long enough the demon is 🫣

It’s why in B2 Outsiders we’d recommend and think it can be a fun switch, but not less than that

[night tulip]

couldn't enough people getting false info lock a xaan 1 into play

[violet gale]

Empath CM Math Pixie all false? Maybe, but it's very rare that all the numbers fail to work for any role, especially when the faux paw exists

2 false is trivial to explain off of drunk and puzzledrunk, so you need none of those to be a bluff (and often at least one is) and 3 or more to be completely impossible in any permutation

On SC, the recluse makes it even easier to get weird numbers, and on UP the vortox can just hose all of this

[night tulip]

isnt this inverted?
"so you need none of them to be a bluff"
wouldnt having them as a bluff make it easier for the explanation to be a xaan night?

if anything it feels more like itd split things into a "xaan 1 world" and a "there are more outsiders" world

[violet gale]

no, the only real way to force a xaan night is too much droison on n1

if there are only 2 pieces of misinfo n1, then either it's a xaan 1 with exactly 1 outsider (let's say the damsel), or there are more outsiders

and then as soon as any player submits misinfo ever, which will happen because it's quantum, it's locked as not xaan 1

on SC it's a little trickier because locking golem and recluse is nontrivial, so you'll often only get 3

in UP you can summon up a barber swap and a damsel at will, and a PM and a drunk will still be locked in play before anyone is locked sober

so xaan 4 is easy

with baron, 4 outsiders in 12p is even easier, you just exist, so it's fine

but it's horrifically broken in 10p

i do think xaan might take away some of the charm of being locked by outsider count, but it's balanced at base 2

[azure pelican]

I love this

Lemon is running this btw

link in official app recruiting

[unique void]

I know yeah

[blissful prism]

there's still 2 open spots

[unique void]

The only thing I wonder is this: how do you know what character you are using?

Does the st decide or do you give a character token you become

[blissful prism]

nvm they just removed the 2 extra seatas

[unique void]

Is it each night or choose a token on the first night?

[blissful prism]

you tell the ST what you learn or do each night and it happens. This makes all worlds where you didn't learn or do that impossible.

you don't know what token you have

for example: you learn a 1 night 1. You could be the Clockmaker that elarned a 1, the Empath that learned a 1, or the Mathematician that learned a 1.

[unique void]

So you choose a character to preform an action. If it is not your token you are drunk?

[blissful prism]

your token is not determined at the start of the game

only your alignment is

and you become drunk if you try to learn information or do something that only a drunk version of your character could learn or do

[unique void]

Ioooooh. It's basicly just oops all philosiphers but without forcedrunk

Or the character alignment restrictions

[blissful prism]

feel free to spectate

[azure pelican]

If you join before we receive charchters you will get a seat if we notice in time

[unique void]

I'm still fine?

[blissful prism]

yep

[azure pelican]

Join quickly

[unique void]

I figured yall wouldn't be to happy

[blissful prism]

alignments are about to be handed out but there's still a few seconds left

[azure pelican]

Is this an okay quantum script?

[blissful prism]

Watch out for SW-Recluse: If a nonwaking minion wakes n2 and tells you they become the Demon, they could be the Scarlet Woman and the executed player is the Recluse that registered as Demon to them!

it's one of the warnings in the quantum almanac

[azure pelican]

how about this?

[worthy crag]

not the most experienced quantum st/scriptbuilder but some thoughts:

• recluse/SW is a huge no, as called out in the almanac. a nonwaking minion can observe they've turned into a Demon after a nonwaker gets executed, locking them as the dead Recluse who registered as a Demon to the Scarlet Woman. I'd consider Mastermind over SW for that reason; it's what Uncertainty Principle and Schrodinger's Clock use
• Plague Doctor feels super harsh for good - PD-Poisoner as a possibility means that the first good to submit incorrect info that isn't otherwise covered by recluse/pd/lycan/etc gets plague poisoned after a possible PD dies, which guts town's info
• • PD/Baron seems hard to do anything with, too: someone would have to observe turning into an outsider, right? Even if, say, Minions suddenly observe a Damsel after a nonwaker dies (and a puzzledrunk damsel sobering up isn't a possibility), you'd still have to wait for a good to observe they've turned into the Damsel, which is hard to do without the way you prompt players in Quantum
• is chef/clockmaker on the same script particularly interesting? Uncertainty Principle only has CM on it for a reason
• no Cannibal, while probably not a bad decision, is def unusual: what can end up happening is that a player can quickly realize that a role is a Demon bluff by failing to lock into that superposition. it also means that without it or something like UT that you might have issues locking executees dead, and while it only affects the Fool since there's no Tea Lady it's something to note

[jovial pivot]

Does UT have the possibility of learning info even if the executed player didn't die because in some worlds they did?

Do I keep asking players for their choice even after they've been locked in as a role that doesn't wake?

[worthy crag]

• If the UT successfully observes learning something, it locks the executee dead (same with a Cannibal waking up), removing all worlds where they would have survived execution from consideration
• Yes, you keep asking dead players for observations - law 3 requires recieving a specific prompt, and "I don't wake" isn't a prompt

[jovial pivot]

copy that

Once a non-waking role or an only once waking role like Pixie, barron, the outsiders, is locked in for a player do I still keep waking them too? Also does making a puzzlemaster guess lock someone in as puzzlemaster?

[azure pelican]

just realized why the last one didnt work

[worthy crag]

• Yes, you keep asking players for observations every night. This is relevant for things like Pixie, who might observe waking to force gaining their ability (e.g. pixie-UT trying to learn a character), the Minions (who might try to observe a Damsel later on to lock the Damsel in as previously puzzledrunk and now-sober), or the Outsiders (who might try to observe getting Fang Gu jumped on scripts like Schrodinger's Clock). Even if they're something like Pixie-Mayor, you still wake them every night to ask for observations, even if they can never actually wake while maintaining their own superposition.
• Successfully making a PM guess locks someone in as having (or being simulated to have) the Puzzlemaster ability - so either Puzzlemaster or Cannibal (Puzzlemaster)

[jovial pivot]

cool cool, So I've run my current game quite amateurly. lol

[worthy crag]

most Quantum games get run in the async text format, so doing it live is no easy feat :P be proud of yourself for running it at all!

hope you didn't end up with too many ST mistakes 🙈

[jovial pivot]

other than not waking people correctly, no ST mistakes that I can see have been made

add legion 🙂

[azure pelican]

thoughts on this?

[jovial pivot]

no legion 😠

[violet gale]

Okay...

BH has been put on Quantum scripts before and it's not entirely unworkable, but you have to let Townsfolk decide to turn Evil N1, and letting players choose their own alignments this way can lead to some negative socials in my experience. Not a hard problem, but worth thinking about.

Ogre means there is potential +2 evils with BH, and potential +3 Evils with Cannibal? I would probably stick to one alignment changer per script.

Evil Twin does not work with Damsel at all, they just choose to see the Damsel night one.

Boffin works, but in practice I've found it a little sad since you have to specify which character you want N1, which means that the role doesn't actually play out Quantum in any way, you just probably nab Fool and become a derpy DA? I think the waking Minions will almost always be more appealing.

Vigor with no positive outsider modification is a little sad, because most games, some Outsiders will be locked in play by night 2, which means that the Vigormortis will simply never get to exist. Also, anything at all paired with Vortox is very sad, because town can skip D1 to lock Vortox out of play for free. Vigormortis does lessen this problem somewhat, in that there will be plenty of games where Vigormortis is locked out of play D1 and so skipping isn't safe... but that isn't great either.

[azure pelican]

Thanks for the criticism

[sonic oar]

Gave +1 Thanks to @violet gale (current: #49 - 541)

[azure pelican]

I will keep trying to make scripts until they look decent

[azure pelican]

Thoughts on this?

[violet gale]

no broken things which is good!

the biggest thing to call out is that klutz will virtually never go off in practice, because if klutz is in your superposition and you die and you pick an evil player, all that happens is that klutz stops being in your superposition. it's very very hard to lock a player as being exactly the klutz and nothing else, so it's a bit of a blank token

minstrel works but is deceptively strong because it is very likely to create a minstrel night off of the recluse (all that needs to happen is for the demon-chosen player to wake). that's not a bad thing per se but an interaction to be aware of

oh, there's an issue with ogre i missed that you could decide on a ruling to make it work, but you need an answer for - what happens if the ogre picks a player who is a possible faux paw, and the game ends before it's determined who the faux paw is? the ogre is good in some worlds and evil in some worlds, so does the ogre win, lose, or do you tell them they get a half-win? there's a lot of ways you could rule it, but you'll need a decision, and the ogre won't have an easy way of knowing whether they are the same alignment as their friend or not

witch is something i considered that does work, but it plays out kind of funny -- if you curse a player and they nominate, they don't die as long as you could possibly be the poisoner. it's really hard to prove that you're not the poisoner, so usually this will mean that if there is only one waking minion, they will end up as the poisoner, and you'll only get witch kills if you have both a poisoner and a witch in play. that's still fine, though, and it plays perfectly fine, but don't expect the witch to be actually killing most games.

xaan is definitely worth trying, although it does have the balance issue I mentioned above, where it weirdly makes the game more evil sided the fewer base outsiders there are, because base outsider count doesn't mean anything anymore. but at base 2 outsiders xaan seems like a ton of fun

[azure pelican]

I understand the klutz point and minstrel point but could you explain more for the ogre thing?

[violet gale]

So, the new Lycanthrope makes 1 player register as Evil (the 'faux paw'). They register as Evil to everyone, not just the Lycanthrope. If the Ogre picks that player, the Ogre will be Evil, but the Ogre won't know it, and the player the Ogre picked won't know it either. In classical BotC, this is funny but works fine in the rules, you just have an Evil Ogre who will never know it. In quantum BotC, though, every possibility exists at once in superposition. At the start of the game, assuming that Lycanthrope is not a bluff, every Good player will have some worlds where they are the Faux Paw and register as Evil, and so if the Ogre picks any Good player, there will be some worlds where the Ogre is Good, and some worlds where the Ogre is Evil. It's possible that later in the game, information roles will end up determining which player is registering as Evil, and therefore lock the Ogre's alignment. However, it's very possible that this never happens, and the game ends with the Ogre being Good in some worlds, and Evil in other worlds. In that event, do you announce that the Ogre wins? Do you announce that the Ogre loses? Does the Ogre accept that they won and lost at the same time, and they're not going to get any more closure than that? How should the Ogre play the game, knowing that there's a good chance that the game ends and they neither win nor lose?

[azure pelican]

I have a really fun idea for a ruling but I feel like it probably wouldnt work in practice

[azure pelican]

Thanks a lot for the explanation, I didnt even think about the new lycanthrope interaction

[sonic oar]

Gave +1 Thanks to @violet gale (current: #49 - 542)

[azure pelican]

I also didnt know that the new lycanthrope evil was being called the faux paw

[violet gale]

someone on unofficial coined it and TPI canonized it

[azure pelican]

Another thing is what if you aren't locked in as ogre

Idk if ogre works like at all

[violet gale]

Well, that does work here, because no other good role chooses a player on the first night

But yes

Ogre doesn't play all that interestingly in Quantum

The list of outsiders that work well is vanishingly small

Barber, Damsel, Drunk, Golem, Puzzlemaster, and Recluse all work, Goon works but needs a script built around it, Hatter and Plague Doctor work but are both oppressively strong for Evil, Saint sort of works with Fang Gu but isn't that satisfying, and Mutant sort of works if you have a satisfying way to rule it

Everything else just doesn't really work

Either because, like Tinker, they don't do anything, or because, like Lunatic or Heretic, the rules don't have any way to handle them

[azure pelican]

Yeah

Might just remove ogre

[woven hinge]

I just found this rules variant last night and I wanna try running it, i am a little confused on how gossip works. if a player has been gossiping statements each day that could be true and not waking up and eventaully get collapsed into only being gossip, would players retroactively be killed due to gossip statements? how is it decided who the gossip statements kill?

[woven hinge]

Or can a player only be superimposed into just the gossip if players who would have woken up choose not to thus creating a death that could have only happened due to the gossips ability

[dusty smelt]

Great question! This is the probably the hardest interaction in the recommended Quantum scripts to get to work but shows off the concept (and of course is quite strong if you get it pulled off):

The first hurdle is that you much prove that you must be the Gossip, because just not waking or making a true Gossip isn't enough to distinguish you from any other waking role. The easiest way to do this is actually to get a ton of players to make one gossip, because if every waking role for instance is locked, it could be that there must be a Gossip between three of you, but if you all make the same true Gossip that proves that one of you is the Gossip. If only one player's making true gossips each day and no one's gossiping, they're more likely to collapse themselves as not the Gossip.

Once it's guaranteed that there is a Gossip and they have made a true Gossip, Law 1 states that anyone who could die might die. This could be 6+ players at first if everyone gossip'ed Day 1. The Laws say no one dies until they must be dead in all worlds, so they're all going to appear alive.

Then some players who might've been Gossip-killed are going to prove that they were not. Any player who wakes to use their ability after the Gossip went off has proven they could not have been killed by the Gossip. Nominating and voting don't, as Quantum Laws state anyone who may be alive in any world may still do so.

If you get to a point where you know 3 players have died to the Gossip and there are only three people it could have been (also note it's quite common in Quantum for the demon to kill a player who was alive in some worlds but dead in others to guarantee them dead, meaning in some worlds including the eventual canonical collapsed world they may be tapping a corpse), those three players must now be dead and will collapse dead. Since Gossip itself does not wake, this can be pretty challenging, as it's hard to prove the order between them.

Most often, the way you get Gossip kills are for a player to volunteer themselves to try to die to the Gossip. If say an Undertaker believes they are safe from having yet died and sees a Gossip they want to test, the Undertaker can attempt to choose not to wake. If there really is nothing that could be killing the Undertaker but the Gossip, they would only die if the gossip was true and a player who gossiped it was the Gossip. This can lock a player (or one of several players) as the Gossip, who then operates fairly classically (although, for future Gossips, if they are true in some worlds and not others, they may collapse away those worlds if no one appears to die)

[violet gale]

One thing to make sure you internalize from the above as a newbie is that you don't need to prove you're the Gossip to possibly get a Gossip kill.

Every possible world exists. Internalize that: every possible world actually is the real world. That means that if you might be the Gossip, you are the Gossip (and probably many other things too), and if your gossip could possibly be true, then it's possible that you kill someone, which means that you do kill someone -- actually, it's probably possible you kill everyone, which means you do kill everyone, in at least one world. But in Quantum, you can be dead in one world and alive in others, and you only appear dead once you're dead in every possible world. Therefore, as Mabel said, the trick with Gossip to render all worlds where you didn't Gossip kill someone impossible. But if you internalize this, this explains why nothing ever happens retroactively: your day one Gossip already killed in some worlds, but it might not be until very late in the game that those worlds become the only worlds left.

[woven hinge]

Thank you both so much for writing these answers, this is very helpful. To help me clarify, let’s say there’s a scenario where on day one, only one player who could be the gossip makes a gossip, and that gossip is true. If nobody tries to not wake up, is gossip eliminated from that players superposition?

[violet gale]

Hypothetically yes, but in practice no, because there are three massive issues:

One, the odds of zero nonwaking roles being in play is pretty low. A lot of characters just don't wake at night, including most Outsiders.

Two, if a role like the Monk wakes up, they might still die to the Gossip later on that night, because Monk acts before Gossip. So, your hypothetical requires every single player to try to wake up in a way that could only happen after the Gossip kills (info roles, basically), which can technically happen but you have to construct a really wonky script to make it even possible that the Gossip is the only nonwaking role in play, which leads to the third problem.

Three, the Gossip is a nonwaking role! If the player who could be the Gossip tries to wake up and get info, then yeah, Gossip is eliminated from that player's superposition, obviously, because they woke up at night. And if they don't wake up, then it's possible that there's a Gossip self-kill, so Gossip wouldn't get eliminated from the superposition.

From your question, it does seem like you understand the way Gossip works, and yes, if there was a hypothetical Gossip role that says "If the Gossip was true, a player who isn't you dies at the start of the night", then there would be some normal games you could construct where Gossip gets eliminated from a player's superposition because everyone else woke up.

[woven hinge]

Ahh I see. So in practice since there are a lot of nonwaking roles on UP and SC, all those nonwaking roles might be dead due to the gossip, but they don’t appear as dead because they aren’t dead in every world. So it sounds like the only way for the game to collapse to worlds where there absolutely must be a gossip, a player that would normally wake would have to volunteer not to

[dusty smelt]

Pretty much. Or the Gambler can also lock a Gossip (by gambling the Gossip then gambling again the next night).

The strength of Gossip is that if someone is willing to volunteer, they can confirm whether there are any worlds where your gossip might be true, and make it so

“The Mayor bounced onto a Minion last night” is a non-sensical gossip classically but is insanely strong in Quantum if you wind up just making the demon have murdered their Baron/MM

[violet gale]

"Mom can we have The Desolation"

"We have The Desolation at home"

The Desolation at home:

[dusty smelt]

[woven hinge]

Oh wow thats powerful

Let’s say a player is locked in on the gossip, and they continue each day to make a gossip that is true in all worlds. Everybody that woukd wake up does wake up, but the gossip was true so a non waking player could be killed by the gossip, but all the non waking players could be tea lady protected or the fool. If specific players eventually get locked in as tea lady and fool do the worlds collapse to ones where the gossip killed players that were protected from death?

[violet gale]

I guess that depends first on whether the ST rules that it's legal to sink a Gossip kill into a Tea Lady protected player

I'm not actually sure what the official TPI ruling is

[woven hinge]

Ah. Let’s assume they can’t

[violet gale]

Well, if the ST rules that that is illegal, then there are never any worlds where that happens, so if there's a confirmed Gossip kill that has to be on one of three players, and then two of those players get locked in as having been Tea Lady protected on the night the Gossip went off, then the third player is the confirmed Gossip kill and presumably dies in all worlds

[worthy crag]

infuriatingly the answer is "yes they can but please don't do it"

[violet gale]

FWIW I'd probably rule that they can't for quantum purposes because it says "a player dies" and Tea Lady says "they can't die" but i'd 100% respect the other way around

and i think it has minimal balance implications

[worthy crag]

snippet from the almanac:

When choosing a player to die due to the Gossip ability, we recommend that you choose a character that will actually die, not one protected from death by an ability (like the Fool or Tea Lady).

I have always ruled that someone must actually die

[violet gale]

yeah, the question is whether you see "a player dies" as a condition that the character demands be met, or an "attack" that can be countered by a defense

[woven hinge]

What if two of those players get locked in as tea lady protected on some future night after that gossip kill would have gone off

[violet gale]

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, but I think you're generally asking what happens if there's a paradox. The answer to that is that there can't be a paradox in Quantum, because every possible world exists, and the only thing that's actually happening in Quantum is that the set of possible worlds gets smaller and smaller as worlds are proven impossible. There's never any new world introduced, it's pure subtraction as more and more possibilities are ruled out. If two players would get locked as Tea Lady protected, but there isn't any possible world where those players can actually be Tea Lady protected because the Gossip already rendered that world impossible, then whatever is trying to lock those two players as Tea Lady protected isn't possible and the Storyteller should reject whatever choice caused that to happen. If there is a possible world where those players can be Tea Lady protected, then great, all the worlds where those players aren't Tea Lady protected get thrown away and some smaller set of worlds remain.

If there's a possible Gossip kill on Night Two, and then on Night Three it's confirmed that there really was a Gossip kill on Night Two, and then on Night Four it's confirmed that the N2 Gossip kill went on either Alice, Bob, or Charlie, and then on Night Five it's confirmed that Alice and Bob were both protected on Night Two, then Charlie is announced as dead on dawn of Day Five, and the Storyteller (and nobody else) knows that Charlie died on Night Two in every possible world, it's just that until recently, there were possible worlds where Charlie was still alive

[woven hinge]

Got it thanksss

[violet gale]

On the other hand, if on Night Five it's confirmed that Alice, Bob, AND Charlie were all protected on Night Two, then, no it isn't, because last night we already eliminated every world where those three are all alive. Whatever choice some player is trying to make to confirm that those three are all protected needs to get rejected, because it's impossible.

[woven hinge]

Also to make sure I understand win-cons, suppose in final 3 a player is superimposed as either the mayor or some other role, if no execution occurs evil would win here bc evil wins ties between possible game states?

[violet gale]

Evil would win but not for that reason. Evil would win because there's a world where the game ends and a world where the game continues, and the game always continues if possible, so the game would continue, and presumably the Demon kills a player in the night and then wins

[woven hinge]

Ahhhh I seee

[violet gale]

The ties between possible game states rule kicks in when the game definitely ends, but it's not resolved which team won

[woven hinge]

Gotcha

[violet gale]

Very easy example is you kill the Recluse on a Mastermind day. The Recluse might register as Evil for a Good win, but they might not, so it's a tie, so Evil wins

[woven hinge]

In this scenario suppose the tea lady is a bluff but Alice Bob and Charlie all have fool in their superposition. None of them appear as dead until one of them is locked in as the fool?

[violet gale]

You only appear as dead once you're dead in every possible world. So, none of them appear as dead until the other two are somehow someway proven to not have died to the Gossip

Maybe one got locked as the Fool and the other got picked by the Devils Advocate or something

[woven hinge]

Ok cool

Thank you very much for answering my questions

Also which script would you recommmend starting with? I watched a video of UP and vortox seems like it makes the game more confusing than fang gu but idk

[violet gale]

I'd say they're pretty equivalent. Vortox isn't so bad once you know it's in play for the usual reasons. SC might be a little easier to follow, but some people just dislike the social dynamic of Good players hedging for Evil, which is the main reason UP exists.

[woven hinge]

Ah that makes sense

Ok cool thank you

[night tulip]

yeah the main social issue with fang gu is that anyone could be an outsider

[woven hinge]

I have found a few st perspective videos of quantum, only one of which was not an atheist game. Does anyone know of more videos out there from the st perspective with evil players?

[worthy crag]

if you're okay trawling through the text game archives #schrödingers-booze was a quantum game with an evil team

[blissful prism]

also #1307633074229481514

[worthy crag]

plus at least one more in the off-server text game archives?

[timber mason]

if you want ongoing ST commentary you can also ask whoever the current stx1 is for access to kibitz x1 (text game spectator channel) and find the section of that kibitz where I was running the game

[woven hinge]

is there a json for the laws as fabled?

[jovial pivot]

I made this one

[woven hinge]

could a drunk or puzzledrunk cannibal receive pretty much any info/do any action

[broken island]

Believe so yeah

[worthy crag]

a droisoned cannibal can recieve any prompt/series of prompts that a sober cannibal in that position could recieve

[woven hinge]

If undertaker is a bluff and a player tries to learn undertaker info, can they collapse into the drunk/puzzledrunk cannibal

[violet gale]

Yup

[woven hinge]

Also, actual night order doesn’t have to do with randomly deciding who is able to do what right? Like if one player wants to gamble and another wants undertaker info but one must be the damsel, would a coin be flipped for them or does the person gambling get to do that because gambler goes before undertaker in the night order

[violet gale]

Gambler goes first so the UT-wanter becomes the damsel

The game does actually proceed in strict night order

The future can't change the past

You can 'backfill' the night, but only so long as it wouldn't change the past

The classic example is that if you fail as Undertaker because it's a bluff, you can still gamble

But you can't lycan kill a player who already woke before you submitted undertaker info

[woven hinge]

Ahh gotcha

[blissful prism]

That part was actually one of the hardest things for me to understand, for the longest time I thought if someone wanted Gambler and someone wanted UT but failed and their backup was Gambler, they would roll for it
but that's not how it works, the first person already got Gambler before the second had a chance to try

[hard junco]

I Storytold this at 1am in Teensyville. It was a lot of "fun"! Q: Is it an intentional strategy for players to say they learned 99999, to test for droison/Vortox?

[worthy crag]

Just by the rules of droison, you can only learn info that's possible for you to learn sober - so I'd just reject impossible choices

If it's not possible for a character to learn a 999999 then they can't it droisoned

[hard junco]

Hmm
Something like 5 then, which could be (but won't be) a Math number?

[worthy crag]

Depends on the player count

But yeah, submitting weird info to droison/vortox check isn't uncommon

[violet gale]

It is common, I would make clear what your maximum math number is per number of players alive

Its a valid strategy, although you should never be able to be perfectly confident

[blissful prism]

I have now been Outsider in all 5 of my quantum games so far

[violet gale]

Quantum is really the only script where that's at least somewhat on you 😉

[blissful prism]

I know, I was aiming for it in games 3-5

[jovial pivot]

Does anyone have a relative list of all characters that work vaguely well in quantum? If, as an example, I wanted to do a quantum whale bucket of sorts.

[violet gale]

One of the big problems is that there are a lot of complicated clashes in Quantum -- characters that only work well with other specific characters, characters that only work well without other specific characters... in Quantum, the entire script is in play in a way that isn't true in the rest of Clocktower, so whalebucket is just actually having way more characters in, rather than just having more possibilities. So, the inescapable thing is that there are probably several different "whalebucket" scripts you could create, if the goal is making a more than 13/4/4/4 Quantum script. You could definitely try, I'm sure it would be feasible to get to something like 20/6/6/6 without too much of a headache, but your choices will absolutely depend on each other.

You could get a maximally large script by striking out all the characters that are independently completely unworkable in Quantum, and then seeing how many broken interactions there are and figuring out the minimal number of cuts you need to make to get rid of them all, but the result would be a lot closer to Oops-All-Philos than Quantum, with normal superposition balance going totally out the window and people essentially just picking what role they want to be. That sounds fun and you could give it a try, but superpositions are a lot of the charm of Quantum, and I think you'd end up playing oops-all-philos faster than you think.

[jovial pivot]

Al-Hadikhia
Fang Gu
Imp
Leviathan
Lleech
No Dashii
Po
Pukka
Riot
Shabaloth
Vigormortis
Vortox
Zombuul

Are these all the demons that don't inherently break quantum?

[violet gale]

Leviathan breaks if it is on script with any other non waking n1 demons, since it will force itself out of play when no announcement is sent, the rest are all functional

[jovial pivot]

Ahhhhh true. I didn’t think of that.

Here’s all the minions that work? Although a lot auto-lock themselves in really quick.

Xaan?
Witch
Scarlet Woman (or recluse)
Psychopath (although this will almost never happen?)
Pit-hag (i guess but it goes against quantum)
Poisoner
Organ Grinder (the minion sends me ‘no’ which only an organ grinder could respond like that?)
Mez?
Master Mind
Harpy?
Godfather? (Locks in outsiders?)
Goblin (eh, bad interactions but works)
Evil Twin (I guess? Idk we could cut this one.)
DA
Cerenovus?
boffin ( I think?)
Baron
Assassin?

.
And here’s the outsiders?

Barber
Butler
Damsel
Drunk
Golem (eh)
Goon
Hatter
Heretic (lmao no)
Mutant?
Ogre (cuttable but works)
Plague doctor (technically works but has some issues, cuttable)
Puzzle master
Recluse (or SW)
Snitch (only for things like godfather ow quantum possibilities?)
Tinker??? (Anyone not-waking can die any time I want lol?)
Zealot?

[blissful prism]

Heretic does not work if there is any way for which outsiders are in-play to not get collapsed or if there is any way for said Heretic to be possibly droisoned, "read Law 10, then read Heretic, then read Law 10 again" says the almanac
With tinker, you don't get to choose when they die, the players have to do something that collapses a nonwaker dead with no other explanation
Be careful with plague doctor and hatter for balance reasons
You would have to make a ruling on Zealot and Butler just like you would have to make a ruling on Golem
Also be aware about Snitch locking too many roles out of play so you know when to reject it
Goon and Mutant are kinda weird too but I guess can be fine

[violet gale]

Psychopath doesn't work in practice at all yeah
Pit Hag does not work because you can make the whole evil team into demons
Organ grinder still doesn't really work, because it's unresolvable what happens if the OG is possibly puzzle drunk? It gets weird and messy
Mez works fine, you just choose a mez word and then you're a normal mez
Harpy doesn't actually do anything because "might die" is almost meaningless
Goblin only works if there are
no other nonwaking minions you can be, claiming goblin doesn't make you the goblin, so in practice it is a blank
ET is OK but hard breaks with damsel
Cere also doesn't really work unless you tweak the rules to let the ST control madness executions, because "might be executed" doesn't do anything as written
Boffin works so long as you're okay with the Demon always gaining the single strongest thing to gain

[violet gale]

VGVideo said a lot of it, Plague Doctor has very severe balance issues, making it so that every player is possibly DA'd all the time, for instance, its a huge slog

What you said for Tinker is instructive - they don't die any time YOU want, they die any time THEY want. The Storyteller in Quantum doesn't have agency, the players determine what prompts they receive, and all possible worlds exist, including all outcomes of "might" abilities.

[blissful prism]

If that's how you rule Cere now (which has apparently changed from when you wrote the Almanac (see the entries for Law 5)), then Mutant also doesn't work

[violet gale]

No, you're right, I forgot about that, that works fine

Its harpy that works less well

Executions run classically, deaths do not

[jovial pivot]

So remove tinker, pit hag, harpy, and evil twin?
Psychopath and goblin can just like be there for show lol.
Probably get rid of butler.
Then be careful with hatter and PD?

[jovial pivot]

Alright. Huge thanks to you guys going through this with me. Last one, Townsfolk. I've read through literally this whole chat, so let me know what you guys think of these. My first thought is that there's a lot of roles that could suck up droison really quick.

Washerwoman?
Village Idiot?
Undertaker
Town Crier?
Tea Lady
Steward
Soldier
Snake Charmer?
Slayer (just never procs like a psychopath?)
Shugenja
Seamstress
Savant???
Sage and Ravenkeeper?
Professor? (Will prob just never happen ya?)
Pixie
Philosopher?
Oracle?
Noble
Nightwatchman (has issues but works?)
Monk
Mayor
Mathematician
Lycanthrope
Librarian (is it possible to jut choose 0 every time and if I don’t have a droison to place it goes through?)
Knight
Juggler????
Investigator?
Huntsman?
High Priestess (doesn’t really work?)
Grandmother (Does this work?)
Gossip
General?
Gambler
Fortune Teller?
Fool
Flowergirl?
Farmer
Empath
Dreamer?
Cult Leader (surely this doesn’t work right?)
Clockmaker
Chambermaid?
Cannibal
Bounty Hunter (I’ve seen kinda doesn’t work?)
Banshee (doesn’t work because of the public announcement right?)
Balloonist?
Atheist
Artist?
Alchemist? (This probably doesn’t work ya?)
Acrobat (just like never dies? So like just there for noise.)

[violet gale]

You can't be careful with PD, is the thing. If town ever executes a nonwaker, then every out of play Minion ability will be used on every player, in superposition

Same with Hatter, the Evil team can summon it on command

You do not get to make choices to balance the game in Quantum

And Organ Grinder still kind of doesn't work, since if the OG is possibly drunk and possibly sober, what do you do?

How would you have Psychopath RPS work? If a possible but not confirmed Psychopath is executed, do they get to decide whether or not they play RPS?

And Heretic does 100% have to go

For Ogre, beware that the Ogre can trivially lock themselves Evil N1 by locking a player as the Recluse, which might not be fun, and for Butler/Zealot, youll need to decide how that actually works in the rules, do you need to vote if you're a possible Zealot?

[jovial pivot]

I’ll respond more in a moment but heretic was just a joke

[violet gale]

WW is messy because it'll either be droisoned or way too confirming
Most of the rest are fine, Slayer is awful for the reasons you said, and Snake Charmer is awkward because the Demon has to consent to being charmed or the SC will just self-poison
Savant is completely unworkable, remember that the player gets to choose the statements and can keep rerolling rejected statements until they solo solve the game
Professor is prohibitively OP but does work fine
Philo works but kind of goes against the premise of Quantum?
Huntsman is stupidly OP, because any nonwaker can consent to a Huntsman turn with 0 risk
Grandmother works, itll always be droisoned and when it's not droisoned it solves the game
Bounty Hunter is awkward because anyone can decide to be the Evil Townsfolk (including the Cult Leader who can immediately flip good again) but it does technically work
Banshee doesnt work at all yes
Artist is stupid broken for the same reason as Savant

The rest work at least in isolation

Alchemist isn't great but isn't horrible, going Alch Godfather seems pretty good for instance, it works fine

It might be OP but it isn't hard broken

The fundamental issue here is that whatever the most unfun broken interactions between characters are, the players can force exactly that to happen and you as the ST can't do anything to stop them

So unlike normal BotC, you have to take every yes but don't deadly seriously

If some niche combo is gamewinningly strong but niche, it'll happen every game if players want it to

Huntsman turns a nonwaker into Professor, who revives the Grandmother, who keeps going around the grim getting rejections and alignment checking people until they stop getting rejected and hard confirm at least 4 players good to the table

If these characters are on script, this will happen every single game if players want, and there's almost no disrupting it

[jovial pivot]

Got ya. So there’s a lot of talk about ‘converting to pings’ (mostly talking about character changes) would you send out a ping of ‘x wants to happen’ or would it just be that they would have to coordinate taking the same action?

So WW and investigator can probably go, huntsman can probably go. Snake charmer, savant, artist, grandmother can maybe go. Banshee is gone.

Actually I’ll keep slayer for the same reason as psychopath, just funny filler

[jovial pivot]

Ya, idk how the Psych RPS would work so for now I'll chuck it out. I might just remove butler for easy but I think Zealot works just fine much like how Golem works. The 'mean; way would be all players must vote if it's in their super position. The 'nice' way is if you ever have not voted, it's not in your superposition.

[violet gale]

They'd have to coordinate

[jovial pivot]

Cool cool

Btw, I will be running this live in the BOTC app on <t:1737855000:F>

just in case you want to come watch the train wreck

[winged delta]

Savant and Artist very much need to go. Both can 1000% check if they’re droisened/Vortox’d, then if they aren’t they can just go through possible info until they solve. For example if I’m the Savant I can go:

Savant: I learn: ‘You are the Savant OR You are good’
ST: Denied
Savant: Cool, not droisened. I learn: ‘You are the Fang Gu OR You are evil’
ST: Denied
Savant: Cool, not Vortox’d. I learn: ‘Adam chose to be the Demon in setup OR You are evil’
ST: You learn that
Savant: Cool, Adam is hard confirmed Demon with no other possibility

Same logic with Artist

[jovial pivot]

ya they left

My cheat sheet for this horrible idea

[night tulip]

i still think Tinker can work, there were some very fun Cursed zombuul-gf-tinker things in the first running of quantum involving retroactively causing a tinker to have died on D1

tinker needs the right script to do things on though

empath/tea lady can be interesting with tinker for example

[jovial pivot]

BTW y'all, I'll be live running some quantum games tonight on the BOTC app around <t:1737255600:f>

[blissful prism]

Ooh
I might be able to increase my outsider streak some more

[jovial pivot]

we be playin quantum https://botc.app/join/playing.stuff

[jovial pivot]

If a player is only alive because they could be the fool (executed day 1) , then they ask to wake up on N2, would they die?

Or would I put them to sleep because their superposition is either 1) fool or 2) dead

[blissful prism]

There is no world where they could wake up, because they are either dead or the fool with no ability, so you would have to reject every choice they make and have them go to sleep

[jovial pivot]

cool cool

[jovial pivot]

So is the only way to become the gossip is to have a waking role not wake?

[blissful prism]

Or for there to be some sober info that proves you are the gossip (e.g. Undertaker) (but your way is probably easier)

[jovial pivot]

The play tests went well. Most people had fun. Whoever said that it would basically be oops all philo was kinda right. I think I might try to remove some of the unique acting roles and see what that leaves us at

[jovial pivot]

Newest version of Quantum all any plus a SAO order one, which I'll probably use in the future because for the purposes of quantum it's easier.
Things removed are Mez, Xaan, Alc, Knight, Noble, dreamer, juggler, chamblermaid, and Shugenja. These are almost all more unique acting roles, making them nearly insta locking quantum roles. Many of the remaining roles have quantum conflicts.

[jovial pivot]

Sense wizard works in quantum, what are some quantum related wishes you would make?

[night tulip]

wait how does wizard work in quantum

doesnt that mean its price and hint could be literally anything and oops! infinite worlds

and also whether or not the wish gets accepted

wizard wishes "i instantly win the game"

what happens

wait no not that one

[blissful prism]

Wizard doesn't work in Quantum, for the exact same reason that Amnesiac doesn't work!

[night tulip]

Law 9

[blissful prism]

The Wizard makes any wish - the price could include "The game can never end no matter what"

[night tulip]

welcome to day one of a leviathan game with an outed evil apprentice spy who registers as good to the leviathan wincon

[jovial pivot]

mmmm I see. I didn't think about that part, just the part where you talk to the ST, much the Puzzle master. mb lol

[worthy crag]

I'd like to drop the bomb with vati

[sick cradle]

incredibly funny place to see a random reference to what is, unfortunately, my best minion game to date

[violet gale]

Yeah wizard is up there with amnesiac for roles that utterly completely don't work, although the rules handle it even less well because as the wizard you don't get the right to know the price/clue, so every single possible price/clue exists, which means the game is just meaningless

Not over, but the rules simply no longer apply because you can't prove they do

[maiden path]

I need to watch tutorial for this one

[maiden path]

Please ping me if anybody want to run it in apps

[eternal moth]

ran a game of this

it went well

an evil was executed in the final 3 mastermind day

how does barber work in quantum

it was locked as a demon bluff, so it didn't matter

i guess the demon has to pick to swap

but what do you tell the people that get their role swapped

[violet gale]

you tell them "your superposition has changed"

and yes, the demon has to tell you that they want to barber swap

they can either do that before they kill, in which case it works if a possible barber just got exed, or after they kill, in which case it works if they just killed a possible barber

[misty fossil]

I tried to design a Teensy version based on Uncertainty Principle. Essentially just removed one waking pattern and adapted roles a little. For example I still wanted the ability for evil to remove roles from good players, thus the snitch became necessary

[violet gale]

That seems legal, I'd be curious how it plays

[misty fossil]

gonna get to playtest it next week. will let you know

[winged delta]

Isn’t the problem with a Quantum Teensy that the evil team are simultaneously both Demons and Minions until locked otherwise? This probably needs Toymaker (and to swap out Snitch)

[eternal moth]

You can use toymaker, or you can run the rule that evil players tell you what type of token they have

[misty fossil]

If an evil player decides to never wake, that immediately collapses their type. But otherwise, you're right. I didn't consider that part of the interaction

So, a) switch snitch for toymaker, or b) give minion and demon entirely different waking patterns

Ughhh... Toymaker also interacts with the delayed kills of Pukka. Makes it more difficult to run, but also... fits the vibe?

[violet gale]

ah, yeah, every teensy I've seen in Quantum runs toymaker for that reason

its not great when you exe a good player d1 and the game ends because 2 possible demons are in f4

[broken island]

lleech pukka is also quite easy to win with in a teensy

[jovial pivot]

I do quantum teensy all the time but I jsut use the normal script. Snitch seems bad sense the minion takes three and town is left basically jsut playing a normal script.

[misty fossil]

That part is no different to the full script where the demon also picks 3 bluffs. theres more than double the amount of townsfolk available than actually could be in play

Compared to UP, I mostly removed 1 waking pattern and kept the rest as is, to not change how easy it is to collapse oneself

[dim sage]

I've recently tried to make a Quantum Script if anyone has useful feedback.

[violet gale]

seems functional... i assume you would run zealot to mean that everyone who hasn't woken yet needs to vote on everything?

[dim sage]

yeah that was the intention.

[jaunty trench]

do yall have any tips for running this? like keeping track of possible roles for each person etc

sounds like it could get pretty tough to run but I haven't done it so maybe it isnt so bad. yk since the players are doing some of the work for you

[worthy crag]

Use a spreadsheet

That's the #1 thing for me personally

I've got a page for what people's superpositions are and a page for what people submit, and that helps immensely

[violet gale]

Practice

I could tell you a lot about how to train your intuition to get better at doing it all in your head, and I think I've done that somewhere here and I can post that for posterity, but nothing will replace you doing it, muddling through it horribly, and training your own brain to do it faster and better next time

Here's what I've written before:

When I have run Quantum, I had a Grimoire open on the brain tool on which I took notes, and I also had a Notepad open to take any additional notes. I suspect a spreadsheet would probably be really slow going, although if you got good at it it could be a useful tool.

Generally I have 2 big suggestions for running quantum clocktower:

1. Practice, practice, practice. You will actually get the hang of it after a little bit. Run it as small as possible with a couple friends just to put yourself through it, you will make mistakes but you'll make fewer mistakes next time, and importantly, you'll get the hang of what decisions are hard for you to make and easy for you to make and where you are most unsure how the rules work. There is no tool that is a replacement for just running this at least once. Teensies of this are weird as hell but functional and instructive (just add the Toymaker).

2. Make sure you have a good system for communicating with players at night. You have to talk to basically every player every single night, sometimes multiple times a night. I was DM-ing players like crazy live, and I tried my best to minimize re-visits for the sake of time (the game runs in strict night order, but as an ST, you aren't actually doing this, you're getting everyone's requests, and THEN slotting them into the night order and coming back to them as soon as something impossible happens, so best case scenario, you don't spend a second on somebody until you already know for sure whether you'll be able to accept or reject their actions, which is not always possible). It doesn't actually matter how you handle this specifically, but you need to be aware that keeping the night length down is HARD and you're going to need to create a system of logistically running the night that works for you (while still following all the rules of course).

[maiden path]

My group still scared on what happen when playing this script, we still gathering people who brave enough haha

[upbeat shale]

I just had a thought: how badly does the Lycanthrope update break Uncertainty Principle? the faux paw:

• registers as evil to the Empath
• causes Mathematician malfunctions
• negates Tea Lady protection
• poisons the Cannibal
• introduces ambiguity when it comes to determining the collapse between Lycanthrope and Monk (because the Lycanthrope red herring can survive their attack)

the Vortox + Empath + faux paw interaction is particularly interesting/difficult because an Empath can learn a 0 in a Vortox game if they sit next to two good players and one of them is the faux paw

[eternal moth]

From the one (1) singular solo game of quantum that I've storytold, the faux paw got narrowed down quite rapidly by a good player the lyanthrope chose waking up

Although that game we had a monk/lycanthrope pair, and all drunkeness accounted for, so that was probably quite lucky on my behalf

[violet gale]

I would rule that the Vortox cannot be fooled by misregistration, but to answer the asked question, the faux paw gives evil help it solely needs - Good does win most games of Quantum with players who know how to solve, it's just so easy to get amazing info

It definitely makes lycan a more dubious bluff, which is neat as it used to be an S tier bluff

[upbeat shale]

I was thinking the same about the evil winrate on this script after I posted yesterday, so maybe I'm worried for nothing lol

I'm not entirely sure if the faux paw registering or not registering to the Empath is better and for which team, locking the FP in a Vortox game can be a way to solve but also a daunting task

oh actual cursed interaction: Damsel being the faux paw

then evil guesses and loses

that should be extremely hard to lock in though

[rose kernel]

I think Faux Paw doesn't affect wincons.
It is ruled that Faux Paw Saint still loses with Good.

So I think that also applies to other wincon (not sure about like Klutz, cause it check alignment, then triggers losecon).

[eternal moth]

Has there ever been a documented damsel win in Quantum?

[blissful prism]

Not necessarily on this server, but yes

[blissful prism]

How it happened: Puzzlemaster guess locked in puzzlemaster, evils learning of a damsel locked in damsel, enough required droisoning locked in a Drunk, that's 3 Outsiders so it locked in a Baron and thus a barber.
Only 2 good players had thus far not taken any action locking them as some combination of damsel and barber, and all worlds (that the STs were able to find) had the Barber dead so they prompted the Demon to make a swap (this was a mistake), so the Demon swapped themselves with a Minion and when the former Minion learned they became a Demon, they chose to learn a specific Demon which as a side effect locked in which of the 2 good players were barber and damsel
The other Minion eventually figured out who that damsel had to be and guessed them when the Demon was on the block

(this was pre-Lycan change btw which is relevant)

[blazing spoke]

i thought barber swaps were restricted to non-demons ? is this changed in quantum

[blissful prism]

this has never been the case (outside of rule-breaking characters like Wizard making it so)

[rose kernel]

It's restricted that the Demon can't swap another Demon.

So that the Demon can't bring dead Demons to live (due to Fang Gu or PH).

[blazing spoke]

wait what

oh shiiiiit

[rose kernel]

*role Barber

[random sleet]

Barber (Outsider) - Sects & Violets

If you died today or tonight, the Demon may choose 2 players (not another Demon) to swap characters.

**Affects Setup: **False

[blazing spoke]

ive gone almost a year thinking a demon couldnt barber swap

[eternal moth]

That's the busted bit of barber

Like a barber death going into f3 is pain

[winged delta]

Outsider being an Outsider oh no

[eternal moth]

Oh for sure, barber isn't really an outsider without it

[blazing spoke]

reading the example in the almanac for law 6 — if a player chooses to learn a 1 and another player chooses to kill them as the lycanthrope simultaneously (lets say both choices would lock them into empath/lycan respectively) will the storyteller roll in this situation?

[midnight rune]

it goes in night order iirc

so the lycan wakes first and if that locks the empath as dead then they would have to not wake

[blazing spoke]

ah, right

gotcha

i think i just made myself confused

thanks!

[jovial pivot]

So anyways, quantum hermit

[blissful prism]

Refer to other quantum Outsiders , if you have any particular concerns with a specific combination feel free to ask, outsider manipulation makes outsider count less solvable and less easy to lock in (but the -1 will likely rarely happen)

[violet gale]

quantum hermit is reasonably good as quantum outsiders go, it's probably a decent contender to replace golem on schrodinger's clock. the main issue with it is that it tends to be powerful in an unfun way -- in that situation, it's just an extra drunk AND an extra puzzledrunk, so you're down to potentially 3 sober townsfolk at setup in a 12p game. the damsel minigame is totally scuttled, because if any waking townsfolk can be the source of the damsel ping, it's impossible to resolve it to a single player, and if barber is on the script, being able to create multiple barber swaps per game, with any townsfolk able to secretly be the hermit on top of the normal barber, doesn't feel very fun

it definitely buffs up evil, which is good in quantum, but i wouldn't personally run it after thinking about it, because it buffs up evil in a way that trivializes most of the actual mechanics of the game, and reduces the game to whether you can catch evils lying about the meta-game of submitting prompts, which for me, isn't the most fun way to play

[blissful prism]

It very much feels script-dependent, with it feeling much better on scripts without Drunk (but since Drunk is so ubiquitous in Quantum Clocktower places for Hermit are hard to come by)

[quasi pollen]

Why is Law 5 the way it is, as opposed to something like "when players nominate, their superposition collapses to only contain states where they're alive"?

[violet gale]

That would be a very, very different game, where nominating actually has a mechanical effect on the game state.

That would be pretty lame for a couple reasons... it would probably be correct for most if not all players to try to nominate every day to lock down the game state, which in practice would drag out the game a lot. It would also create an incredible amount of extra information in a game where Good does not need the help. Also, it'd mean that any kill ambiguity is pretty much impossible to make work in practice, since players have little reason to allow things to remain ambiguous.

The game works because many players are both alive and dead for a lot of the game, and figuring out and proving how alive people are is a big part of the puzzle. Making that trivially solvable for every player every day eliminates that dynamic entirely

[quasi pollen]

I totally get that for balance and fun reasons, but there's still something in me that's bothered by the tension between it and Law 8, since in whichever world ends up being "real" at the end, it might have only been possible if it turns out a dead player did nominate

I wonder if a Bishop or Voudon would work in Quantum

[violet gale]

Nominations just run classically -- they were both alive and dead at the time in the quantum game state, even if they end up being dead in the actual game

This is not too far from how reality is actually theorized to work (see the quantum eraser experiment), so I'm happy with the flavor, but for mechanics sake I think you do just have to accept that you have to run noms classically or the game isnt fun

Bishop and voudon would both work without problems. Voudon would also have to define 'dead' classically, but once that happens, it'd just be an ordinary Voudon. Same with Bishop

I haven't wanted to run Travelers in quantum precisely because they don't really do "quantum things" - all the workable travelers just work the exact same way they would in a normal game

But, thats still fine if you want a Traveler for accessibility

Bureaucrat, Thief, Scapegoat, Gunslinger, Beggar, Voudon, Judge, Bishop, Matron, Butcher, Deviant, and Gnome all work very simply

[quasi pollen]

ah, so the day phase and nominations is the equivalent of quantum interference? I actually like that

Because that's the piece that you can't get if everything were classical, and that matches the quantum stuff in real life that doesn't work if everything collapses to classical

[violet gale]

Apprentice is a bit out of spirit with knowing for sure what your ability is, but it's legal, just doesnt feel right, Barista flatly doesn't work, Harlot is broken, Bone Collector technically works but is hilarious levels of cursed since it's secretly an Assassin, and Gangster just actually doesnt work because who your alive neighbors are is not information you have access to

[eternal moth]

I feel like scapegoat doesn't work, or if it does, you're introducing storyteller decisions into the mix, which quantum generally tries to do away with

[worthy crag]

I think Scapegoat just has to work classically because of Law 5, which is totally introducing ST agency

[violet gale]

Yeah, if you very understandably dont want to have ST agency in Quantum then scapegoat and bishop are out

Deviant too

And Gnome i suppose

If someone walks in and really wants to travel, I would honestly just make them the Bureaucrat

[broken island]

would you run it as ignoring tea lady & being chosen or not?

[violet gale]

moonlight probably just makes any tea lady script better so i'd probably do that

eh, i guess you'd have to, because the rules aren't able to resolve what happens if they're possibly poisoned

[left crypt]

bureaucrat thief superposition 🔥

[maiden path]

Can you share this to me?

[worthy crag]

I can only get to that in a few hours, sorry - but it shouldn’t be very difficult to recreate yourself? I didn’t do anything fancy with Google Sheets to set it up

[maiden path]

Oh

is it that all that showing there

[glossy steppe]

I’m a bit confused as to how “I don’t wake” works. My understanding of the FAQ is that it is an action which gets locked at end of night iff player has non-waking roles in their superposition / locked after their last role would have waked iff they don’t have non-waking in their superposition.
So if there was a confirmed lycan, and a confirmed empath, and the only possible death between them is a singular gossip kill (so one must wake that night). Then if both submit “I don’t wake”, the lycan would get it locked in first and the empath would have to choose again?

[violet gale]

Asking not to wake is an affirmative request to lock in that you are not waking at each point in the night order when you possibly could wake.

So in your example, there's an issue that the Lycan and the Empath act on opposite sides of the Gossip kill - so if the Gossip kill was last night and the Empath woke last night, then the Empath can't have died to the Gossip, and if the Gossip kill is tonight, then the Lycan can't fail to wake, because the kill hasn't happened yet.

But that's only awkward because the night order is too different between Lycan and Empath. Let's take Empath and Undertaker, which both act after the Gossip. If there's a possible Gossip kill, and the Empath chooses not to wake, and there isn't any other way for them to have died, then they get locked in as Gossip kill, before the Undertaker would wake in the night order. The Undertaker also locks in that they don't wake when the Empath wakes, but that doesn't matter, since they were already locked as not waking when the Empath wakes, since they're the confirmed Undertaker. Then, the Undertaker attempts to lock in that they don't wake to use the Undertaker ability. Unfortunately for them, this is impossible, so they are forced to wake.

To tackle your first question head-on, it doesn't get locked at the end of the night, per se. The game proceeds in strict night order, and not waking gets locked at every single point at which it could possibly matter. In practice, this usually means that you as the ST can lock it at the end of the night. But in any edge case scenario, it's good to know what is actually happening procedurally -- the player is shorthanding the very annoying process of saying "I don't wake for Gambler I don't wake for Lycan I don't wake for Monk I don't wake for..." by simply saying that they don't wake period, but it has the same effect on the game as if they had specified that they wish to affirmatively not wake for every single ability that could wake that night, which are ticked off in order.

[glossy steppe]

I see, so effectively you are taking the “do not wake” action with every character’s night order slot

But if your superposition doesn’t contain that character then you were never going to wake for that slot anyway so nothing changes

[violet gale]

Question to test your understanding of the above:

On Night 2 of Schrodinger's Clock, 8 of 9 Good players choose to learn that they do not wake. The 9th Good player chooses to learn that they are now the Evil Fang Gu, and successfully gets jumped by the Fang Gu. No Good player chose to wake up Night One and a Minion was executed Day One. There are 6 Townsfolk locked in play (there's a Fang Gu and two waking Minions in a 12-player game). The Cannibal, Mayor, Tea Lady, Fool, Gossip are all possibly in play, but there is no sixth Townsfolk on the script that doesn't wake. What should you do as the Storyteller?

Answer:

|| Roll a d8 to choose one of the Good players, || || then wake that player and tell them that their choice is impossible, || || then reject their choices until they submit any Undertaker information, since that is the last role to wake in the night order that they could still be (and it could be poisoned since they might be Puzzlemaster-drunk) .||

Addendum: || If any possibly valid Gossip was made that day, then you don't wake anyone, the Gossip becomes true, and there is a floating dead Undertaker among the Good players. ||

[glossy steppe]

thanks for the help

[shy pawn]

Does anyone have any links to non-Atheist Quantum games from the Storyteller perspective? I'm thinking about running a Quantum game and the only ST perspective I've seen has been an Atheist game.

[worthy crag]

If you're okay trawling through text game archives and kibitzes there are quite a few

[violet gale]

#schrödingers-booze comes to mind

[glossy steppe]

Mock scenario to test that I'm understanding all the rules correctly (namely how the night order interacts with roles getting locked in)
Given that it is n1 of a 6 player Schrodingers Clock game with toymaker and players 1 and 2 are evil with these night actions
1 - I learn 2 is my demon, I choose 6
2 - I learn 1 is my minion, I choose 6, the bluffs are recluse, drunk, puzzlemaster
3 - I learn a 0
4 - I learn a 0
5 - I learn a 0
6 - I don't wake

Result:
1 is locked as poisoner/DA picking 6
2 is locked as pukka/lleech picking 6

I believe 4 and 5 would be locked as empath/mathematician and 3 would have to rechoose
6 is locked as golem

My reasoning for 3,4,5 is that 4 and 5 have valid empath/math information while 3 only has valid math info, empath goes before math.
So basically we get to empath in night order: 4 and 5 are valid, 3 is impossible. None of them have valid clock info. At the math turn of the night order 4 and 5 are locked as empath/math which means both empath and math are removed from everyone elses superpositions, leaving 3 with an impossible move

[winged delta]

In this example why would 3 be any different from 4 and 5? They requested the same info

I see now it’s because of neighboring and I’m too tired to see if you’re right or not

[blissful prism]

At the empath turn of the night order, Empath is locked between 4 and 5, but 3 is still a possibility for mathematician. At math's turn in the night order 3 is still in contention for mathematician, so you must do a random roll between the three of them to see who gets rejected (and if it's not 3 then 3 is locked as math since they can't be empath)

[violet gale]

Great hypothetical!

As I run the rules, VGVideo is correct: Law 2 says that players' choices "become true unless mechanically impossible".

The question is, what qualifies as mechanically impossible? When you submit a '0', are you implicitly telling the Storyteller that you receive a Clockmaker 0, then if that doesn't work an Empath 0, then if that doesn't work a Mathematician 0? No, you are not. If that were the case, then you would be locked as the Empath if you submitted valid Empath information when it came to the Empath's turn in the night order, and you would be permanently out of the running for being considered as the Mathematician. But, that is not how Quantum works. Quantum considers a 0 as simply a 0, and the mechanical possibility of receiving a 0 is judged holistically - the rules, as I run them, do not permit you to split the hair we are talking about here, and rule that 0 is mechanically possible as some roles but not as other roles. When the night order tells you that it is time to evaluate a piece of information, the information is either mechanically possible, or it isn't. For your hypothetical, a 0 is mechanically possible for 3, 4, and 5 (more possibilities exist for 4 and 5, but the game does not care), so a random roll is required.

I don't see any strong reason right now why the rules would break if you ran it the other way, and decided that for purposes of Law 2, the mechanically impossibility of information is judged for the specific purpose of the role currently acting in the night order, rather than judging the information as a whole. I do think that this is a little philosophically inconsistent with the information remaining in superposition after it becomes true -- if you only locked your information as true because it worked as Empath information, and you would have been rejected otherwise, why should you still have Mathematician in your superposition? But, at least at present, I don't think that it would be too destructive.

[glossy steppe]

I guess the problem I have is when does the 0 learned by 4 and 5 get locked? Locked in the sense that you can deny other player’s actions without a roll off

I guess it would only be after the math turn in the night order that they get locked, because then we can determine that their action is possible and thus it must have happened?

and so without 3’s involvement, 4 and 5 would be locked empath/math after the math turn. But with 3’s involvement there are mutually exclusive events which must be resolved by roll off

[violet gale]

You do lock it when the Empath goes in the night order

I was debating last night whether I'm ruling the correct way, since I'm not actually sure this precise scenario has ever come up in any game I've seen -- in practice it's incredibly niche. The way that things are usually run in practice when too many players request numbers is to figure out how many of them can get a number, and then roll to determine who gets it.

I will acknowledge that this ruling would become incredibly spooky if there were any abilities with the same prompt that didn't act at more or less the same time. For example, if there was a number role that went before the Demon, then you could have some very spooky action at a distance: you could attempt to learn a number, and become locked as learning that number before the Demon acts, even if you can't actually be the role that acts earlier in the night order, which means that if the Demon attacked you in the night, they would be told to choose again, since you're already locked as performing an action in the future. This is strictly speaking already possible (no matter how you ran it, if this situation existed, and you had the early waking number role in your superposition, it might somehow leave your superposition before the Demon acts, thus pre-emptively locking you as surviving the night). The takeaway here is that it's probably a bad idea to put a custom role into a Quantum script that mimics a waking prompt at a very different time of night, but I grant that the behavior there is weird and not really intended.

I do think that my ruling here is most consistent with straightforward running (and solving) of games: the night order tells you when it's time to consider a category of information, and then you consider it in full.

[glossy steppe]

Sorry if I still don’t get it, but what I’m getting here is that at the empath turn in the night order you would consider whether each player could mechanically learn a 0 as any role in their superposition (not just empath) and since all 3 can learn a 0 in some form but not all together there must be a random roll. Is that it?

[blissful prism]

In practice this is simpler than you make it out to be because there's nothing else between the number roles that could disrupt things, but the way I see it is at the empath turn in the night order you consider who could learn their 0 from empath, and what gets locked is just the fact that either 4 or 5 must learn a 0 from something, because it is possible for that something to be empath. 3 could still be math, so at math's point it sees that 3, 4, or 5 could receive a math 0 and that the math 0 can coexist with the empath 0, so we roll after math.

Take this section from Law 6 of the Almanac: "This can lead to situations where players’ actions are impossible because of something that is already confirmed to happen later in the night order. For example, if the Empath tells the Storyteller they learn a 1, and they have one Evil neighbor, then the choice becomes true, and every game state where that doesn’t happen is discarded. If a player then tries to learn Undertaker information, but Undertaker is a bluff so they are asked to choose again, they might choose a player as the Lycanthrope. This is legal, because by Law 6, when making a new choice players make a new choice for the entire night, but if they choose the Empath as the Lycanthrope, then unless there is some way for the Empath to survive being attacked by the Lycanthrope, the choice will be impossible and the player will be made to choose again, because that Empath is already confirmed to have gotten a 1 in every game state!" "Note that if the player had submitted a Lycanthrope choice as their first choice, rather than Undertaker info, then the Empath would be dead by their turn in the night order, and their 1 would be impossible, since they’re dead. But instead, the player submitted Undertaker info, which the game does not consider until after it considers and confirms Empath info, since Empath acts before Undertaker."
In my point of view, if the Empath still had Mathematician in their superposition, they would still be locked into learning a 1 at the Empath's point. However, if the other player's Undertaker info was rejected because another player was locked as the Undertaker instead of because Undertaker was a bluff, and that third player learned Empath as their undertaker information and there's no way for them to be drunk/poisoned, I would run it as the player learning a 1 being locked as the Mathematician at the Undertaker's turn in the night order, but still being unable to be targeted by the Lycanthrope since they're already locked into a 1.

[violet gale]

Yup, the above. I do think that the way you put it last it correct - all 3 can learn a 0, so there is a random roll.

The Almanac example VGVideo cites is a nice illustrative example of when locking information like this can mechanically matter beyond whether or not you need to roll -- but the exact situation we are discussing has never come up in practice, because the number roles all go together in the night order, so there can't be any external mechanical consequence to this ruling.

[eternal moth]

Fairly sure this is not standard practice, but the two games of quantum I have ran, I ran in a way that always gave priority to evil player's requests over good players. Not sure if that was right, but it felt like giving evil more control over the game's quantum state was a good thing

[blissful prism]

That being said, watch out for quantum scripts with number roles like these alongside Grandmother or Dreamer or Chambermaid, because they each do go between some of these number roles

[violet gale]

I'm not actually sure how that would be relevant, barch, since definitionally Evil abilities don't go at the same time in the night order as Good abilities

If you mean you're locking in their actions as true ahead of time... technically you shouldn't do that, but nothing can ever cause the Demon to not be able to act, and the Poisoner and DA both go at the start of the night, so practically speaking, they DO always get their way, at least on the recommended scripts

If you are playing quantum on a script where evil abilities can get one or more or every Townsfolk ability, well, god help you

[glossy steppe]

I think I have come up with a scenario that could be affected by how you rule it (this is completely impractical at this stage but a fun thought experiment)
6 player Schrodingers clock game with toymaker, 1 and 2 are evil
1 - I learn 2 is the demon and choose myself
2 - I learn 1 is my minion, the bluffs are drunk, puzzle master, clockmaker, I choose 1
3 - I don’t wake
4 - I learn 0
5 - I learn 1
6 - I learn Empath

1 is locked as DA/poisoner picking themself
2 is locked as pukka/lleech picking 1
6 is locked as pixie learning empath (there is no droisoning so empath is in play)
3 is a non waking role

Now here’s the fun part, by Besjbo’s ruling we consider whether 4 and 5 can learn their numbers as any role. 4 can learn their number by being the empath with a 0, or the math with a 0. 5 can learn their number as a math with a 1 (if the empath learns wrong info by pinging off the recluse). Both players numbers are mechanically possible but mutually exclusive so a roll off is required. By VGVideo’s ruling, at the empath spot in the night order 4 is locked as learning a 0 (since they’re the only empath candidate) which means by the math point in the night order 5 cannot be the math with a 1

[violet gale]

Ah, nicely done - 5 can get a Math 1 but never an Empath 1*, so if you allow 5 to roll for it and they'd win, then you'd have to give 4 a Law 3 notice that they learn a 1, since they no longer have any choice. That's spooky, but that's probably what I'd say happens. It is worth noting that this plays a lot better when the Demon doesn't take all the droison Outsiders as bluffs.

*It's still a fun thought experiment, but 5 CAN be the Empath with a 1 if 4 is the Lycanthrope who registers Evil to themselves. So, in a real game of Schrodinger's Clock, you obviously have to roll, because both 4 and 5 can be the Empath. But I'm ignoring that for the time being, since this is true if you change the script.

[glossy steppe]

Actually I think 4 in my scenario can just be the recluse for 5 to get an empath 1, though I think if the pixie gets math it shuts down that world (3 could be the math there since they haven’t locked as no wake yet)

[glossy steppe]

So I think it is possible for the ruling to matter even with number roles all being together, but in practice it is extremely unlikely (my completely contrived scenario has no droisoning but still has unplugged holes)

[violet gale]

Right, that too. Yeah, in practice this doesn't matter, because droison makes it incredibly unlikely that different players can be different number roles on the first night.

[urban night]

I'm preparing to run Quantum IRL. IIUC, this is what ST does in the night:

1. get each player's prompt

2. figure out which prompts are always possible (those are locked in); which are consistent with the locked in state, but not with each other (those are mutually exclusive); and which are always inconsistent with the locked in state (those are impossible)

3. randomly choose a prompt from the mutually exclusive bucket and make it locked in

4. go through remaining mutually exclusive prompts and figure out which are now impossible

5. if there are any mutually exclusive prompts remaining, go back to step 3

6. if there are any impossible prompts remaining, ask those players to submit a different prompt, then go back to step 2

This means that the ST goes around the circle for multiple rounds asking for prompts until every prompt is consistent with the superpositioned state. Ofc, law 3 and the parenthetical in law 6 make this slightly different, but the principle is the same.

What confuses me is that examples given in this thread make it seem that in round 2 (or 3 etc.), the remaining players are forced to lock in as roles that wake in the night after the players that were locked in during previous rounds. Eg. being forced to wake as the Undertaker, since that's the only possible role that wakes late enough in the night.

My prior understanding was that, in any subsequent round, the player may try to lock in as any character in the night order, so long as their prompt does not contradict the currently locked in state. Is this not the case?

[violet gale]

Your prior understanding is correct. In principle, a player could be forced to wake as the Undertaker without trying to, but that is exceedingly unlikely in any realistic game-state, because there are simply enough nonwaking roles on the script so that a player is never realistically locked out of nonwaking.

In a highly inadvisable 20p no traveler game of Quantum, you will have some issues of that kind

[urban night]

Wow, that's some fast response time 🙂 Just to confirm, let's say in night 2, a player(s) got locked in as Empath or UT or Math, etc. Then another player, forced to submit a different choice from their original N2 choice, for whatever reason, decides to make themself the Gambler. Let's say this choice has no direct interaction with those other players, so it's not contradicting their choices in any way. Is it allowed for that player to try to be Gambler at that point? Or do they have to be a nonwaking role?

[violet gale]

Okay, sure, Alice is the locked Empath. Then Bob tries to submit Undertaker information, but Undertaker is a bluff and the Cannibal is locked elsewhere, so Bob's choice is rejected, and Bob's next choice is to gamble themselves as the Gambler. That's entirely legal, yes.

[urban night]

Nice, thanks for confirming!

[plush rivet]

just learned about this existing and this looks absolutely wonderful

where can i find a stream/video of a quantum game?

[eternal moth]

I think TPI did one or two

Atredies did a couple as well iirc

[plush rivet]

Question: There is a Soldier and Seamstress on script. On night two, the Imp attacks a player who could be either; they survive. On the next night, the player tells the Storyteller they use their Seamstress ability. Can this be accepted?

my concern is that if it is accepted, the player immediately becomes already dead and unable to use their ability, which creates a paradox of accepting it

or do you tell them yes and then announce the seamstress as dead in the morning

[night tulip]

wouldnt you just tell them no as they cant be the alive seamstress anymore

and dont acept

[dim sage]

yes a player who can only be alive if they are the soldier can't wake to use their ability

[plush rivet]

ah yes okay ty

Does this just mean that if a Soldier is the only reason a death doesn’t happen each night the first attacked player who has the Soldier in their superposition becomes the Soldier

[dim sage]

no, and if later a different player "becomes" the Soldier that first player will retroactively have died that night.

Deaths not happening isn't an each night occurrence, they are perceived as alive until they couldn't have survived

[plush rivet]

hmmm okay gotcha

[eternal moth]

Yeah, people being percieved to be alive until they are definitely dead is one of the big headscratchers here - definitely for my players

[midnight rune]

zombuul moment

reverse zombuul

[toxic lagoon]

I am sorry if this has been asked before, but if a good player who wakes up each night says they woke up and got a 1, does that mean it lock them as living on that night (as empath/mathematician)? Or should we still consider worlds where they may have died at that point and retroactively kill them later when their state collapses ?

[winged delta]

A player who wakes cannot be dead. Any states where they were dead are now not possible

[toxic lagoon]

Got it. Thanks! So only things that retroactive deaths can affect can be nominations done by (living/dead) players . Therefore a player A is executed they don't die as they could be either a fool or say a damsel. A is allowed to nominate the next day. Later 2 days later a minion guesses a different player B as the Damsel. This locks in that player as non Damsel. Therefore it locks in A as the damsel (assuming somehow all other non waking roles are claimed). Then A will die after execution that day as all states have collapsed to them dieing . Does that sound correct to you?

[winged delta]

Almost entirely correct. However, the instant A’s state collapses into Damsel they would be announced as “collapsed into only dead superpositions”. You wouldn’t wait until dusk

[toxic lagoon]

Got it. Thanks a lot! Really appreciate it

[violet gale]

There is even a question in the Quantum Quiz that turns on exactly this weird capability for a Damsel guess to cause a daytime death

(Q5)

[azure marten]

does someone have a spreadsheet template to share?

[dim sage]

I wonder why you want those,
I typically use these 2, one for tracking player superpositions the other for tracking player choices

[azure marten]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QHJzUjYfno6TvuaxFiqbV3ln5ZF5KxH8wTZCBZX53iI/edit?usp=sharing like this?

[dim sage]

Yeah,I think axo also made a similar one here. The sheet ends up looking like just a few small differences in note taking.

[toxic rain]

Apologies for the noob question but I am looking to run this for the first time and am mildly confused by the rule that players collapse roles when they choose information that would be impossible i.e. a player choosing to wake and learn a 3 means that they are either the clockmaker or math but not empath. Or waking and choosing a 0 on the first night means they cannot be clockmaker. Even with outsiders in play/picked by an evil player on the first night. Is this understanding correct? Additionally, does this rule go out the window when the demon chooses not to wake on the first night and collapses into Vortox? Or is it still in effect?

[winged delta]

Players cannot learn info that would be impossible for a sober/healthy/true version of their character to ever learn. Even if they are drunk, poisoned, and/or affected by the Vortox, this rule holds true

[toxic rain]

And by impossible, I understand what that means for a clockmaker 0 or an empath 3, but does that also include someone waking on the first night and learning a 3, when the closest demon/minion are not 3 steps away? Would that exclude clockmaker from their superposition even with droisoning/vortox?

[winged delta]

By “impossible” it means that it must be impossible under any sober/healthy/true circumstances. As long as it’s possible for any Clockmaker in any game of BotC to learn a 3, it’s possible information (even if in this particular game it’s not true, as long as the Clockmaker is droisened/Vortox’d)

[toxic rain]

Got it, thanks

[violet gale]

There's a distinction here that I don't want you to get confused by between impossible information that is allowed by the game and a major game mechanic, and illegal information that just shouldn't be allowed, period.

The latter, illegal information, is information that could not ever, in theory, be true. A Math 8 with 8 players alive. A Clockmaker 7 in 12p. Learning "Fang Gu" on Uncertainty Principle. This information has no place in the game. If your player tries to submit, gently tell them that that isn't a valid thing to do, and ask them to try again.

The former is the meat of Quantum, and what I think you might have been asking about: is the information impossible in the current game state, even if it's legal information because it could be possible? If a player wakes and learns a 3, then they cannot be the sober Empath, so sober Empath is not in their superposition. However, they could still be the Puzzle-drunk or Vortoxed Empath, so them being the Empath character is still in their superposition. Empath leaves the player's superposition only when there is no possible way for them to be the Empath - in a way, it's really simple. If they submit a 3 and the only way that that could ever happen is that they are the sober Mathematician (because they can't be drunk or poisoned for whatever reason and they can't be the Clockmaker), then they are the Mathematician, and their superposition has collapsed.

[winged delta]

Empath 3 is also illegal information tho? It’s the same as a Clockmaker 7 or a Math 8, it’s not a possible result that an Empath could ever receive. Submitting that 7 in your 12p example, you still could be a Math 7 (a legally possible result), so it’s only illegal if they’re the Clockmaker. So you can’t refuse it (unless Math is a bluff), they just get Clockmaker removed from their superposition

[violet gale]

A 3 is not illegal information, however. The player does not submit "Empath 3", they simply submit a "3".

So yes, in theory, you could accept a 7 on the first night. In practice, though, don't do that in the recommended scripts, since it's not actually ever possible on those scripts. How are you supposed to get a Math 7 on the first night?

I would accept nothing larger than a 5 without a proof from the player of how it is ever in theory possible

If there's a night 1 math 6, I don't see it

[broken island]

Is a 3 not illegal for an Empath to learn? If you learn a 4 doesn't that mean you can't be an Empath? And thus force you to be a Math or Clockmaker?

[violet gale]

No, it simply means you can't be the sober Empath.

The Storyteller can deceive players with any information that could be sober from the player's own current point of view.

[plush rivet]

this seems exploitable, no?

can't i just say "i learn a 13" and force myself to be the Drunk?

[broken island]

Besjbo just explained why that's not allowed

[plush rivet]

ah i see, i misunderstood

[violet gale]

It's not too hard to submit information that makes you overwhelmingly likely to be the Drunk - in practice, recurring high Math numbers are incredibly unlikely

But, you can't submit information that makes you mechanically the Drunk

And, importantly, the most reliable way of making it likely that you are the Drunk is to submit unlikely information over multiple nights, by which point droison may have already been locked elsewhere on people who were trying to confirm or disconfirm individual players

[plush rivet]

i see i see, thank you!

[toxic rain]

So the actual ruling is that a 3 doesn’t fully eliminate empath, just that they are either the drunk that saw empath or puzzledrunk empath?

[violet gale]

That's right. Receiving a 3 means nothing more and nothing less than the elimination of all game states where you could not have received a 3.

[plush rivet]

how do puzzlemaster guesses work here? Considering that someone who puzzlemaster guesses could have puzzlemaster and several other characters in their superposition, and that the puzzledrunk player could also be superpositioned across multiple options, how does the Storyteller handle these kinds of guesses?

[worthy crag]

If someone with PM/Canni-PM in their superposition makes a valid PM guess (keep in mind they also have to provide the answer), it collapses their superposition to only include states where they have the Puzzlemaster ability

[plush rivet]

ah I’ve forgotten that they have to also give the answer

oh wait okay that’s interesting, thank you

[violet gale]

I had a player die midday to a PM guess once

daytime superposition changes are fun

[glossy steppe]

how do people typically run this in person? Do you get people to pass you their info on pieces of paper or something?

[winged delta]

I think the answer is: they don’t

[glossy steppe]

what about clocktower con?

[broken island]

People certainly have

I think

[coral sinew]

I am having a mental blank on names, but I know someone who ran it in person at clocktower con (Aus) in 2024. He had a set of hand signals for particular information and I think everything on that script (uncertainty principle) was able to be communicated with pointing to character sheets + hand signals.
Then used an excel spreadsheet to track supersets and information.

[dim sage]

With patience, I've run it 8 times in person now. all characters on Uncertainty Principle are very easy to submit info for, you show a number or point to a character on your script, I have some custom tokens to help me track superpositions and use a notebook to write down choices for future reference, night can be a bit long due to players not submitting multiple choices but it runs fine.

[winged delta]

What order do you wake people in person, then?

[dim sage]

I wake the evil team first then go round in a mostly random order, then go back for players who need to resubmit

[violet gale]

I'd probably recommend that people send inputs on their phones IRL

Which maybe disrupts the purity of IRL, but saves a lot of time

[plush rivet]

question: The Demon who must be the Fang Gu attacks a player who must be an Outsider, but another player who is either the Monk or Lycanthrope chooses the Fang Gu player. How is this handled?

My first thought is that the Fang Gu’s jump and death happens as soon as the Monk/Lycan’s superposition collapses, which means the Outsider learning they are the evil Fang Gu is also delayed until this happens.

[broken island]

If the Outsider doesn't choose to learn they have become the fang gu,

The monk/lycan collapses into monk & the Outsider dies...

I would imagine it goes like this

[plush rivet]

So since the Outsider didn’t say they learned becoming the Fang Gu, the superposition collapses into the world where the Outsider doesn’t become the Fang Gu?

[broken island]

If one is possible

[plush rivet]

right Rule 3 doesn’t apply

[broken island]

If there are none, and the jump has to happen, they aren't allowed to not wake & will be woken to choose until they say they learn they are the fang gu

[plush rivet]

right

okay that makes sense thank you

[small hill]

Any advice for running good atheist games? In normal Clocktower I normally just use the rule breaks to frame an evil team containing the atheist but since I don’t know who the atheist will be n1 it seems a lot harder to do that

Unless I create a fake evil team n1 and use rule breaks to force one of them into atheist?

[plush rivet]

I’m curious about this too, I’m not quite sure how the framing process would even work

[small hill]

Also, want to make sure I understand rule 9: if a loss con might be triggered early, all superpositions where that loss con is triggered are discarded, unless there are no other superpositions, right? So if a non waking player is executed and saint is on script, you wouldn’t leave saint in their superposition and end the game in evil’s favor if the superposition ever collapsed to saint, you’d just remove saint from the superposition.

[plush rivet]

as far as I know all that is correct, and it’s why the superpositioned Pukka/Lleech is so interesting

if the Pukka/Lleech is executed without DA protection, they become the Lleech because if they were the Pukka the game would be over, meanwhile if the player the Pukka/Lleech chose on night one dies, they become the Pukka because if they were the Lleech the game would be over

[plush rivet]

question this spawned: in the scenario where the Pukka/Lleech is executed and becomes the Lleech, do the players the Lleech chose each night* get announced as dead then, at dusk, or does the ST wait until dawn?

because while the superposition technically collapses at dusk, it seems like a decent giveaway that the Lleech was just executed

[violet gale]

In practice, deaths are often muddled enough so that you won't always see collapses at dusk, but yes, the collapses always happen immediately, so town can sometimes reason that they just exed the Lleech

[violet gale]

#the-gays-v-besjbo is an example of a text game that went well.

Note that you can totally decide who the Atheist is if you want. Just choose someone who has never woken and refuse them ever waking up for any reason. You control the game. I usually go with the flow for a lot of the game and let abilities work normally, but I'll frame the player who I've decided is the Atheist, and I'll frame anyone who seems socially connected to them.

Also, it's Quantum and therefore complex, so you can kind of do whatever you want. The worst thing that happens if you do weird questionable rule breaks is that town solves it's Atheist and kills you, which is hopefully still a fun puzzle for them however they solve it.

[small hill]

Is there anything I should do to prevent a game where no one was expecting an atheist to be in play? Or is the non waking good player knowing they might the atheist enough

[violet gale]

You should probably just not run an atheist game if your players are not experienced enough to account for the possibility

If it's on script, people should at least consider that it might be in play

Some number of players will probably organically suspect something is weird, but it's ultimately up to them

Quantum Atheist imo plays much closer to Intended Atheist than atheist does in practice

Steven intended Atheist to be an 85% good winrate, whereas on this server it's more like 99%

Good will lose atheist games, but they'll win plenty of them

[glossy steppe]

learn any information, the Storyteller should not affirmatively tell them that they do not wake. ```
this sentence in the almanac seems to suggest that players can never learn "you do not wake" via law 3 (even if that is the only possible move available to a player).

although I don't really understand the reasoning behind it ```“you do not wake” is not something a Storyteller would 
actually tell a player who doesn’t wake```
wouldn't a storyteller in a non-quantum game 'prompt' you with non-waking by just not waking you up? and in the context of anti-boredom, if a players only option is to not wake why shouldn't it be forced on them in the same way that you force other prompts?

[winged delta]

Because they don’t know they can’t wake. You might be able to either learn a 7 or not wake, or you might only be able to not wake, you need to experiment if you wanna find that out though. It’s different enough from proper “prompts” that it’s important to differentiate ig

[glossy steppe]

I guess "I do not wake" is much easier to fall back to if it's your only option as opposed to if your only option was "You learn a 7, there is a damsel in play, and your superposition has changed"

so it kinda makes sense that way now I think about it

[snow fog]

Out of curiosity, are there any quantum communities or otherwise communities that frequently run quantum games?

I've been wanting to play and ST it more, just to sorta see and play with the medium. I've already been running games ever other week for the past couple months which has been fun, but much as I love the group I've been playing with, it'd be cool to see some players with more experience playing the game to see what those games are like.

[winged delta]

Does anyone have the json for Schrodinger’s Clock? Just realized I can’t find it anywhere

[plush rivet]

i found it by checking on the botcscripts website (when i ran it, not in this moment)

[winged delta]

Ty

Axolator the goat (ghoatst?)

[south yacht]

(I've only played Uncertainty Principle once, I wanna try doing it again a few more times, and then come back to this eventually)

[south yacht]

Storytelling this seems very interesting but I can't have the time to invest in such a thing

[winged delta]

It's definitely fun but definitely something lol

[south yacht]

Yes

Quite

[south yacht]

Ping me when u run it again

[oak quarry]

question for experienced quantum players: what do you think about a script with a Chambermaid and a modified Innkeeper that reads:

Each night*, choose 2 players (not yourself): they can't die tonight, but 1 is drunk until dusk. Learn an arbitrary number in [0, 2].

I'm not sure how to handle the "alive" condition on the Chambermaid ability

[high dagger]

it works i guess, granted i think a quantum chambermaid-innkeeper might be more headache than it's worth + could be pretty ambiguous for players

in practice the chambermaid's living condition is similar to something like the DA/Lycanthrope who both have to choose living players, although acts slightly different due to their much later position in the night order. if a player is alive in any superposition, and is chosen by the Chambermaid, they must be alive, as they can only choose living players

[oak quarry]

is the player supposed to be told whether their choice was "classically invalid" vs Law 2 invalid?

[glossy steppe]

well if a player is in a superposition of alive or dead, I would collapse them as alive if they were chosen by the chambermaid. If a player collapses dead in the night before the chambermaid night order slot I would probably treat it as law 2 invalid. If they’re collapsed before the start of the night then the chambermaid should know not to pick them

[violet gale]

Yeah, that seems like a nonexistent distinction

Innkeeper is pretty OP though

Since it basically protects itself forever so it never dies, and it drunks the demon forever

Only once you find them, of course, but you have a lot of time to find them

[oak quarry]

@violet gale do you think it's OP with this modified ability?

[violet gale]

It's still very awkward, since possibly drunk Demons dont kill

Up to you, but I would find the lockout potential unsatisfying

[winged delta]

I also feel like the most interesting part of Quantum is seeing base-game characters used in such a wild and different context but still working so well, so heavily modifying them like this makes it a lot less elegant and thus interesting to me

[torpid bronze]

Is teensy quantum possible

[winged delta]

Not really. Because there’s no evil info steps, evil players would be superpositioned between both Minion and Demon which makes it incredibly difficult for good. Toymaker helps, but also kinda just not enough players to really lock in good players which makes solving nigh-impossible

[high dagger]

i think in practice teensy is probably janky as hell yeah, although if it were to work i do think you'd need evil info; toymaker can work theoretically, my other thought would be lil monsta (although the reality of ST decided kills makes it more of a timer demon, i think, and probably mechanically unsatisfying?) or just ensure that the minions and demons have completely distinct prompts to all good players

[winged delta]

LM doesn’t work because LM can always not kill. So it gives good infinite time

[high dagger]

oops i thought i put it in my response but yeah youd also probably have to bootlegger LM to kill every night, at which point id just probably pick another demon

i think quantum teensy would probably just try to go for distinct prompts, there are demons that work (mainly looking at kazali) but in a quantum context functioning and being interesting/engaging for players is not inherently the same

[worthy crag]

People have made teensy toymaker quantum before and it's not like super broken I don't think

[broken island]

don't use both a pukka and lleech on them

speaking from experience

it's very evil sided

I've ran teensy quantum, quite long ago now, but it works and is quite fun (we did use a toy maker)

[dreamy hollow]

Hi! When is it determined whether a player should be woken to ask for actions?

For instance, consider a Fang Gu and a player who must be the sober, healthy Mathematician. The Fang Gu, ends up picking the Mathematician, who has no way to survive.

Which of the following should happen?

• The Mathematician is prompted at the start of the night for choices (regardless of who the Fang Gu picks), because the Fang Gu might pick them and they might not wake. After the Fang Gu picks them, they are told that they have collapsed into not waking.
• The Mathematician is not prompted for choices. The Fang Gu selects them, and they die, so there is no world where they could wake. (If the Fang Gu hadn't selected them, they would have been woken and told collapsed into reading the appropriate number.)
• Something else?

Also, consider a similar situation where the Fang Gu is picking a Recluse.

Which of the following should happen?

• The Recluse is prompted at the start of the night for choices, since the Fang Gu might pick them and might jump.
• The Recluse is prompted for choices only after the Fang Gu picks them until they decide to turn Evil or not wake. (They would not have been prompted if the Fang Gu did not pick them.)
• Something else?

[winged delta]

Generally speaking it’s good to prompt everyone for actions. Even if there’s no world where they wake, they don’t necessarily know that’s true. Maybe they could’ve been the Cannibal who could’ve woken for Monk picks before dying? In that case, not waking them proves they must be the Mathematician (or other info role). Notably, a player is not told when they collapse into only non-waking, they must infer that themself. The only time you tell them they collapse is when they collapse into a waking prompt (and such as learning the correct Math number)

[violet gale]

Strictly speaking, players aren't prompted at ALL in Quantum (except because of Law 3). So, neither. The player tells YOU when they are prompted. Logistically, this means that you do need to hear from each alive player each night, or they can't tell you whether you prompt them. But mechanically, you never actually prompt that Mathematician. So, sort of the first option, but the distinction matters, because you're not actually prompting them, you're just giving them the opportunity to prompt themselves, meaning that there is never a mechanical reason to not go to them at all

The only time it is permissible to not allow a player to attempt actions in the night is if they are dead on a script where the dead cannot possibly wake [which is most of them]

[dreamy hollow]

ah, yes, by "prompt" here I meant "ask if they want to do something"

Notably, a player is not told when they collapse into only non-waking, they must infer that themself.
this seems inconsistent with the answer to question 6 of the quantum quiz, which reads:
Randomly accept one Good player’s “Tea Lady” info and randomly accept two other Good player’s 2s. If the Good player sitting between the Minion and Demon is randomly chosen to learn a 2, randomly decide one of the remaining players and accept their 1, and inform the last player their superposition has collapsed and they do not wake. Otherwise, inform both players who neither learned “Tea Lady” nor 2 that they do not wake

Logistically, this means that you do need to hear from each alive player each night, or they can't tell you whether you prompt them.
and, thanks, this seems to be the answer that I want

I had (incorrectly, evidently) parsed the Laws to suggest that players shouldn't be asked if they want to wake unless there is some world in which they wake

[winged delta]

You still have to ask them, you just have to deny all prompts that aren’t “I don’t wake”

I think that example has all of the players listing “I don’t wake” as their last prompt in their priority list?

[dreamy hollow]

it does, but "inform the last player their superposition has collapsed and they do not wake" is different from just accepting the choice of not waking

[dreamy hollow]

actually, I guess I'm having trouble squaring this with this example from Law 3:

If the Empath immediately says “zero!” when there is nothing else for them to learn but zero, the Storyteller should not approve the choice and put them back to sleep, but rather should inform the Empath that they learn a 0. If the distinction is confusing, explicitly tell them “Your superposition has collapsed to only contain states where you receive the following specific prompt” before giving them the zero

this seems to be describing a scenario where instead of asking for what they'd like to see, you tell them a specific prompt

and it doesn't seem to contemplate you having previously given them a free choice of what they'd like read

[glossy steppe]

I believe "I don't wake" is an exception to law 3 and the quiz is just wrong in this case

[violet gale]

"You don't wake" is not a prompt a player can actually learn, so it's not Law 3'd

And yeah, the quiz is actually incorrect here, yes

The thrust of the answer is right, but it shouldn't have been described in those terms

[dreamy hollow]

ah I see, thanks!

[dreamy hollow]

though I admit I'm still confused about this

if I'm supposed to wake everyone and ask them for what they'd like to read, even if they might later collapse, does that make this example in Law 3 wrong as well?

[violet gale]

No, it is saying that instead of simply accepting their zero, you should tell them that they MUST receive a zero

The mechanics are distinct from the logistical way that you choose to wake people, which is likely dependent on the medium in which you are running the game

It's plausible that in an in-person game, you might physically wake most players twice - once at the start of the night to allow them to make submissions, and again later to tell them what has happened

but that's not set by the rules, and besides, it isn't really a function of whether they Law 3 collapse or not - the easiest practical way to run quantum is to have two interaction points with each player each night, the first of which is them communicating to you, and the second of which is you communicating to them

(there may be some instances where practically, their first communication isn't as complete as they had hoped, and so they still need to respond to your communication to them, but that's a skill issue)

[dreamy hollow]

I see

thank you!

[dusty smelt]

This made me imagine Quantum Jurgen Leitner and now I wish I had never thought of that…

It’s not even that fun it’s just cursed

[noble shoal]

Apologies if this is a simple question - I'm just trying to wrap my head around this stuff.
In the almanac doc, the following is said:
"For example, if the Empath tells the Storyteller they learn a 1, and they have one Evil
neighbor, then the choice becomes true, and every game state where that doesn’t happen is discarded. If a
player then tries to learn Undertaker information, but Undertaker is a bluff so they are asked to choose
again, they might choose a player as the Lycanthrope. This is legal, because by Law 6, when making a
new choice players make a new choice for the entire night, but if they choose the Empath as the
Lycanthrope, then unless there is some way for the Empath to survive being attacked by the Lycanthrope,
the choice will be impossible and the player will be made to choose again, because that Empath is already
confirmed to have gotten a 1 in every game state! This is another valuable source of information in
Quantum. Note that if the player had submitted a Lycanthrope choice as their first choice, rather than
Undertaker info, then the Empath would be dead by their turn in the night order, and their 1 would be
impossible, since they’re dead. But instead, the player submitted Undertaker info, which the game does
not consider until after it considers and confirms Empath info, since Empath acts before Undertaker."

In the second part of the example, would the player submitting a Lycanthrope choice, and the Empath choosing to wake not be a a mutually exclusive set of events per law 2, meaning it's randomised whether the Empath has to choose not to wake, or the Lycanthrope has to choose someone else (or to do something else)?

[winged delta]

You evaluate prompts roughly in night order. So if two prompts are mutually exclusive but one comes earlier, that prompt takes priority. Otherwise, the Demon could never kill waking players without having to roll constant 50/50s, which isn’t fair to evil

You only roll if they’re both in the same (or might be the same) night position, such as multiple players trying to learn Empath info (imagine it’s n2 and Math is a bluff), only one can be accepted so it’s rolled

[violet gale]

Yeah, the game is run in strict night order. Strictly speaking, you should resolve the night one character icon at a time, and when you're done move to the next icon. In practice it's much faster to figure it all out at once, but mechanically speaking, actions are locked in step by step.

[noble shoal]

I see. Does that mean a Mathematician always has their number decided for them, because they can never be in conflict with another player and win that conflict?

I guess a math can collapse others when there’s a few possible numbers

[violet gale]

That, and they don't start the game locked as the Mathematician. They're often in superposition as the Empath and/or the Drunk for a while. But yes, sober Maths are totally a thing that can happen and it is strong when it happens.

There's a lot of ways for it to not be set in stone even late game, though. If the Demon attacks a possible Mayor, the attack could bounce or it could not, which creates some options

[noble shoal]

That makes sense yeah.

What are the limitations of droisoned players learning incorrect info here? Is it allowed for a droisoned Clockmaker to learn a 0, or a greater-than-possible number? Or an Empath to learn a 3? Or what about for a Mathematician to learn the number of players in the game? They can’t all have malfuntioned, but it’s not above the number of players, not really outside the bounds of information that that character could feasibly learn.

[violet gale]

Players can't learn anything that would provably be false from their own point of view. The drunk Empath can get a 3 because that doesn't hard confirm to them that they are drunk (they could be the sober Math), but the Math can't get a 12, because, as you said, it's impossible for everyone to have malfunctioned. This only really gets complicated with specifically the Math, and my own rule is that if a player wants to learn a Math number that I think is suspiciously high, I will require them to tell me how that number could theoretically be true, and if they can prove it, I'll accept it.

[noble shoal]

That makes sense 👍

[noble shoal]

So watching through Etreides’ recent quantum video, there was a situation where 2 players attempted to learn Undertaker info on N2. One of them tried to learn “Poisoner” and had been chosen by a Minion, so they decided that that player was a poisoned Cannibal who learnt Undertaker info. Would that be allowed, or break the idea of not “knowing” you are droisoned, because a sober and healthy Cannibal-Undertaker could only ever learn “Undertaker”.

[winged delta]

It’s not illegal, no. Generally a droisened Cannibal can do anything since their food could’ve been evil. Or they could think they’re the actual role (Undertaker), similar to the Empath 3 example

[noble shoal]

Also I’ve seen some copies of the laws that state that players who collapse to a state of death during the day are announced as having done so at dusk. Is that a rule that was updated or something, or just a rule that some STs prefer?

[noble shoal]

Ohhh I see. I misread Besjbo’s previous response but that makes sense now.

[glossy steppe]

tbh that seems like it may be a good rule to implement if you wanted to give yourself time to work out the gamestate before announcing anything

[violet gale]

For at least all of the time that this post has been up, there's been one official version of the laws. I'd go by the pinned laws image when in doubt