Pharaoh's Curse

[analog notch]

“The temples are being constructed. I envision hundreds, thousands even, of golden pyramids, all vertically stretching towards our Gods above. This is how we will reach them. Kill me now and bury me deep inside our sacred tombs. So once I reach them they shall see the divinity of the Pharaoh.”

Pharaoh's Curse is a homebrew full of death, resurrection, and, most importantly, worship. The script contains a critical fabled character:

Worship (Fabled): During the day, all players must publicly worship a Demon type.

Many of the characters on the script, including all the Demons, interact with who worshipped what Demon, and the various effects that occur as a result. As a result of these complex variables, this is a quite advanced script only recommended for experienced groups.

This is version 1.3 of the script, but I would love to hear any and all feedback and suggestions as I'd love to refine this further. And please feel free to ask any questions to which I will respond to as soon as possible. Cheers!

JSON: https://www.bloodstar.xyz/p/FangGuVeryMuch/Pharaohs_Curse/script.json?95a436ac
Almanac: https://www.bloodstar.xyz/p/FangGuVeryMuch/Pharaohs_Curse/almanac.html

[inner raven]

Does Fatalist protect during the day? Because I don’t understand why it’s an Outsider otherwise

Also, I’m not sure I see Herald as a TF. Like knowing the Demon type isn’t that valuable in comparison to your life

[analog notch]

• Fatalist only protects during the night. Fatalist was initially designed as a Townsfolk, however their ability to prevent critical deaths that would otherwise inform the good team actually became more of a downside than an advantage to have. But I definitely see what you mean about it being less of an Outsider, and as I test more I will keep their position on the script in mind.

• On this script, knowing the Demon type is the most crucial piece of information the good team can obtain through deduction and using their abilities, and the Herald can either hard confirm that, or eliminate 25% of the options for the rest of the game, so quite strong. Now, within the context of the Fatalist, a Herald's ability would be either negated or forcibly delayed; providing more reason for the Fatalist as a disadvantageous good player.

[inner raven]

One more thought: Anubis and Osiris literaly can’t kill players who don’t worship them. That seems like a bad idea because it means you could have final half’s of the game that those Demons literaly can’t win because those Demons can’t kill 1 or 2 players who choose to never worship those Demons (possibly requiring an Utraes to advance the game for evil)

If 1-2 good players decide to worship Ra or Horus together it may suck to have to deal with the threat of misreg/ressurect, but they also can’t be killed by Anubis/Osiris

Actually I guess you could count on executions but that still seems like a Leper type effect where evil literaly can’t do anything

[analog notch]

• the lack of potential Demon deaths initially seemed like a problem, however, it became clear that there is actually plenty of ways that this is mitigated:

1. The threat of the Uraeus not only forcing players to worship but also risking the game for good if not every Demon is worshipped,

2. Numerous TF abilities requiring them to test out worshipping different Demons (Scarab, Enchantress, Necromancer, Herald), and on top of that the Priest, who incentivizes others to worship a certain Demon (this is a great evil bluff too)

3. The Pagan, an Outsider who redirects player's worshipping towards a chosen Demon.

• Even with these 3 main reasons, players gain nothing from not worshipping a Demon, and whilst the evil team may not be able to kill in the night as a result, they can still easily manipulate this lack of info to their advantage and skew executions in their favour. Regardless, I appreciate you bringing it up because it is definitely a point of concern that I need to make sure is not exposed as a major loophole.

[junior epoch]

I share Lady Mist’s concern, and I’m glad you’ve clearly put a lot of thought into it but guess I’d need to see playtests:

1. while a concern, once a hard Uraeus check has been passed, no longer holds any motivation to worship. And if anything, since it is a loud madness, players could adopt of meta of D1 having whoever is Uraeus mad breaking or else assuming there is no Uraeus in play. Typically game-ending hard checks (Vortox or NWC’s Templar) are characters fairly hard to solve for rather than giving any loud signals like madness.

2. while numerous TF do have incentives to worship different demons, they also have room to decide to protect 1-2 good players in many scenarios by not having them worship demons who need to be worshipped to kill. 1 trusted good alive in F3 is an auto 50/50 for good, and 2 alive is an auto-win. Especially with good sources of resurrection in the game, it’s really important to watch and limit how much hard or even soft confirmation there is, and ensure evil doesn’t feel boxed out of killing who they think is confirmed.

3. Pagan’s an interesting Outsider and I like it, but I worry that it doesn’t accommodate the degree to which the player playing it will try to make their ability as pro-Good as possible (even more than TF who I find tunnel and overextend wanting their own info, Outsiders can be the most weaseley not playing how you intend). What stops the Pagan from publicly claiming Pagan and announcing each dawn what demon they picked, such that players who fear dying avoid worshipping that demon and players who gain info from worshipping the in-play demon know what their false positive is? Even Uraeus madness wouldn’t stop this as the Pagan can proclaim their actual info and still worship the demon they’ve been told to

I think the critique is not that Good won’t worship at all (which yes reduces significantly their info enough to be harmful in a balanced, neutered-town sense) but to purposefully worship particular demons not just to gain info but to lock evil out of options in certain worlds. It makes for interesting mechanics of a script, but I’m worried it might skew good-favored and/or frustrating for evil.

[analog notch]

first off, thank you for the feedback!

1. I agree with this sentiment in that the threat of one Minion is not always going to be enough to force players to worship every Demon. And I agree that a player only dying might not be a harsh enough effect as (similar to Mutants) they can just break madness. However, the main reason why I don't think it's as flawed in function is because it's up to Storyteller discretion whether or not the Madness is confirmed. Whether or not someone breaks madness does not confirm if a Uraeus is in-play, as the ability does not specify "executed", and thus if players decide to not worship each Demon, they can immediately lose the game.

2. I absolutely agree with this too, and I think there's a lot of hard confirmation roles that will make their threat more apparent in play testing, so definitely something I want to look out for.

3. This is a great perspective on the Pagan, one that I hadn't focused on mainly. Their ability kind of just rides on the general confusion surrounding mixing up who worships who, but I appreciate you highlighting how it's an easily mitigated power through smart worshipping. I'd be interested if you had any suggestions for how this aspect could be improved?

4. And yes, I think this is still the script's biggest problem, one that I want to look into first but am unsure of where to start with. I think there's options to include Minion-kills that allow the evil team to regain control of kills (an Assassin/Godfather-esque character would be perfect). I'd love to hear if you had any ideas as to how certain characters could be tweaked.