Character interaction thingy

[subtle wolf]

Empath gets more 1s when Ogre is on script. Empath number changes more often between N1 and N2 if sitting next to an Ogre who becomes evil.

[still sedge]

could work better with fang gu I guess

[subtle wolf]

Confirming or suspecting an evil ogre is a nice counterbalance to random swings of an Ogre choice. Empath neighbor discourages an Ogre from openly following or identifying with their friend, which could expose a minion or demon to the Empath

[subtle wolf]

Possibly, but Empath / Fang Gu is questionable and would need full script support to work at all

[still sedge]

Ogre Spy Recluse would be the support

anddddddd probably a vortox

[wild bridge]

Could encourage Ogre to pick a neighbor and claim Empath 0, or pick a non-neighbor and claim Empath non-0.

[steady kernel]

Empath can be ungodly powerful so tempering it is vital for script building. Ogre alone isn’t enough but it certainly helps, especially when combined with stuff like Spy/Recluse and Poisoner which are the traditional counter weights for Empath

[real heron]

A reason to give a drunk empath next to two good players a 0 n1 and then a 1 n2 onward (assuming no neighbour changes)

And I love doing that

[unborn trellis]

Me when I realize empath is before ogre on night order

[subtle wolf]

If nobody wants next I got one

[frigid flower]

I want to do one!

[wooden knoll]

I also want

[wooden knoll]

Who goes

I'll go then

05/19: Boffin x Gossip

[boreal nest]

Yum yum extra kills

[wooden knoll]

On the price of giving away information

[boreal nest]

Thats true

But thats a good bluff

Good for making demons with no multikill look like multikill obes as well if you are not bluffing gossip

[subtle wolf]

This pair discourages endless fake gossip claims because the demon can say true things, not even claim gossip, and fly under the radar for extra kills

[still sedge]

which is fire

[fringe mirage]

Good Boffin ability and BMR characters do work well with Biffin, so double good

[forest spindle]

As long as there is enough death mod that the gossip cant just say 'i am the gossip' to prove themselves

[wooden knoll]

ah yes

[subtle wolf]

Add Cerenovus and have evils claim ceremadness, including for Gossip

[tawny haven]

make sure your group stamps out the " I am the Gossip and [statement]" and it's a fine interaction

it's one of the two best ways to have Gossip on your script along with Shabaloth imo

just that you shouldn't be lame with it

[tulip sage]

what do you mean by stamping it out?

[small quest]

Players trying to circumvent possibility of boffin gossip by having all gossips start with “I am the gossip”

[still sedge]

It negates boffins from gossiping like vortox proofing does

[small quest]

Since boffin gossip is not the gossip

But that’s like, real fucking lame so don’t do that lmao

[still sedge]

We are bootleggering that

[tawny haven]

discourage it in your group, because it's not fun

it's in a similar area as "alright, everyone should guess themselves as the Damsel D1" or "alright, everyone should claim Psychopath and try to kill themselves" or even stuff like "exactly these people should vote for the Flowergirl"

it's social pressure that makes the game less fun to try and optimize it

and in a good group they'll understand it's less fun for everyone, and won't do it

[tulip sage]

a Demon with the Gossip ability can still say "I am the Gossip and X" and it'd be fine, wouldn't it? am i missing something?

[tawny haven]

No, because the Demon isn't the Gossip

only the Gossip could kill with a statement like "I am the Gossip and X"

[tulip sage]

Ohhhhhhhh

okay that makes sense sorry

[tawny haven]

Including "boffin-proofing" in gossip statements is super lame and imo if people tried that in a group I'm in I'd just let the Demon kill with those

you're all good!

[small quest]

Tbh I’d just consider as “being the gossip” tbh

Yeah

If that’s the intent they can kick sand and also die in the night

[tulip sage]

i somehow thought you were talking about people saying "I am the Gossip and" instead of "I claim Gossip and"

like how people say "I am the Goblin" instead of "I claim Goblin"

lmao

[small quest]

Yeah it took me a sec as well

[subtle wolf]

Ohhhh tbh I see this as a valid strat that I wouldn’t ban, and it ruins the combo

[subtle wolf]

I think these situations are not comparable. A forced Damsel guess on yourself is not a Damsel guess, period—we don’t need a rules patch for it. Same as forced Psychopath claim: that’s not a psychopath claim. I could be wrong tho

[still sedge]

This makes boffin gossip useless

[subtle wolf]

Cool, make a better script

[still sedge]

That’s… literally the point of boffin

to bluff stuff

[subtle wolf]

Looks like we can add Gossip to the long list of townsfolk that are useless for demon to have

How is this a tragedy

[still sedge]

Because gossip is notoriously unbluffable on anything that isn’t bmr

This is literally boffin’s point

to bluff things that are hard to bluff mechanically

allowing cheese is really stupid for that

[subtle wolf]

Sounds like Boffin and/or Gossip has a design flaw, or are inherently incompatible. Make better characters or look for script combos elsewhere

[still sedge]

Or you could just

fix the interaction really easily

[subtle wolf]

Practically that works. I’m against it in principle, but I would be happy playing a Boffin/Gossip script where the patch is used

[still sedge]

I mean this is a “RAI” thing

TPI generally doesn’t think stuff like this is a thing that people do

so it’s not jinxed

[kind berry]

How many boffin abilities would be made worse by saying "the demon register as a good (the character they got the ability of) for that character's ability"?

[still sedge]

It quite literally doesn’t matter for anything else

[subtle wolf]

TPI should step up their game. Keep playtesting, keep engaging with strategic outcomes of characters, revise, release more, etc.

[kind berry]

Ig it could then be a jinx for the ones that matter

[subtle wolf]

Never collapse quality of created products into intent or design process

[kind berry]

Pacifist technically

[still sedge]

Oof. Yeah

[still sedge]

TPI themselves actively is the “do not try to win too hard” people

I sincerely doubt they’ll do this

It’s just not how they do things

[subtle wolf]

Says who

TPI rigorously tests characters and strategic concerns

There is a ton of thought put into minute changes in characters and almanacs

[still sedge]

I mean… there are a few ben burns quotes

[subtle wolf]

Share them

Best I know, Ben is not on the design side of the company anyway, but I’d love to see the quotes

[still sedge]

Not exactly indicative of “caring about rules standarization”

[subtle wolf]

Not exactly proof of anything about TPI, nor even proof of Ben’s level of care for character interactions.

The context is Ben not knowing minions wake together

[still sedge]

TPI still hasn’t standardized the nested character type thing

Which uh

Really should be standardized

(And then there’s hermit self remove)

[subtle wolf]

TPI employees have announced several times that they are figuring out nested characters right now. That is a prime example of TPI caring about the details and mechanics of character interactions

[still sedge]

Legion magician

[wary solstice]

-# They care about the details and mechanics of interactions, that doesn't mean they necessarily have the best ideas

[lime kraken]

If the only explanations for a lack of jinx is that a) TPI don't care for the cheese or value that hyperoptimised playstyle enough to make it a jinx or b) TPI actively want this to be a non-interaction for no reason then I feel it's quite reasonable to assume it's option a, and that it's fine to houserule it if it ever becomes an issue in your group

TPI is working to improve the game constantly and just because this thing clearly never bubbled to the top of their priority list there's no need for us to have a worse or less flexible scripting experience until it does

[still sedge]

Oh yeah

TPI has already been against artist vortox proofing

This is just that but with deathmod

Realistically

[subtle wolf]

I’m not sure this is true. Steven says he finds vortox-proof Artist questions annoying and doesn’t personally allow them; I vaguely remember him saying “You as Storyteller are free to ask the Artist to choose a different question, claiming that’s too complicated.” That is not an authoritative stance, just permission to houserule.

Either way, Vortox-proof questions rarely help the good team anyway. It’s usually better to let Artist be affected by Vortox because it complements other townie info in vortox worlds, just as non-Vortox artist info should be designed (by the artist) to complement non-Vortox artist worlds

[still sedge]

I mean there’s also the “I don’t know” cheese

[lime kraken]

I think the specifics of how helpful vs not vortox-proofing varies depending on situation, but the salient point is that TPI are okay with disapproving of hyperoptimised interactions even if there's no specific clause or jinx banning (or even condemning) them, because a) they don't have infinite time and b) most groups will either never think of them or for some reason not mind them

i.e. i feel it's in some sense the default option to houserule-disallow any hyperoptimised interaction that comes at the expense of the game and people's fun

[subtle wolf]

That practice is only acceptable because BOTC is a game with virtually infinite possible interactions between characters. As a matter of game design, it’s generally pathetic for a designer to patch their game after a simplistic optimal strategy is discovered that is unfun, dictates play, or is valid in all contexts. The best games foster creative play and also withstand attempts to find simple solutions

[lime kraken]

I agree, there is some sense in which it's a shame that there's an emergent quite unfun optimal play here instead of the fun optimal play which can only exist when that strategy hasn't been thought of or has been houseruled away

But I think the most productive discussion to have is "how can we make this thing as fun as possible given the constraints and options we have" rather than "TPI should just work harder or make a better game" or words to that effect

[subtle wolf]

Well one answer to the first “” question is to design a better script. The game buffers against unexpected negative character interactions by not including them together on home scripts and giving you the option to exclude them from your custom scripts.

Houseruling is another answer, somewhat compromised, but possibly the best solution if the result is a great combo. Maybe Gossip/Boffin qualifies.

[real heron]

Ew the fact that meta could even develop...
I'd just take it that they were saying superfluous stuff regardless as a way of stomping it so like yeah

[sudden drift]

Even without the cheese, I find that the most common Gossip is "I Gossip that the demon is A, B, or C." A Boffin-Gossip can't get a kill without straying from that, which might look suspicious.

[real heron]

I think that's a meta thing but a fair criticism regardless

[late ingot]

recluse time

The recluse isn't actually a panacea here, but good Gossip scripts have some ambiguity on whether the statement is true in the form of other death mod

[grand token]

is it disputed that they do this? the base threes are one of the most intricately designed works of strategy/social deduction ive ever seen, and i dont doubt it took a massive amount of iteration, playtesting, and balance to get to that point... i dont think they are willing to compromise on this quality with the next upcoming three scripts, either

(though, the explicit hints on the experimental roles that will be included in the future base scripts does make me worry a bit for the overall balance of the upcoming scripts)

[forest spindle]

TPI is "do not try to win too hard" but they are so by designing the game in the way so it can't be meta gamed. Its the whole point of droison and learning 2 players instead of 1 to avoid shouting matches where players know for sure another player is evil. Its a social thing where you can say "I learned one of these two is evil, but my info might be false" instead of "just kill this player my info says they must be evil".
It is also why the old Sailor got changed, since the old version only really had one optimal playstyle which is against the design philosophy of being able to play all characters in multiple ways

Also the reason why Vortox has its win-condition so you cant just vortox check by not executing

[subtle wolf]

“Step up their game” was said in jest. TPI has made an excellent game. I want them to continue that practice and push to be even better

[small quest]

I think it less so comes down to TPI's iterative process and more so due to their (reasonable, imo) lack of focus on making cross character interactions completely ridid when outside of their home environment

Gossip & Boffin is just, not something that's worth their time atm 😅

Boffin as a character is "Idk man, you figure it out" for a good chunk of roles

There is a design flaw, but also I think it's a design flaw that is reasonable to exist from a dev pov, and thus as an ST I take my judgement and apply it to make the flaw go away

[still sedge]

Y’all don’t gossip clock numbers?

[merry rapids]

I do not work for TPI. So any quotes you have from me are not quotes from TPI, just to be clear.

[subtle wolf]

Which roles have ambiguous rules interactions with Boffin?

[fervent basalt]

fwiw i think the problem would be trying to force other players to do this

rather than doing it yourself

[still sedge]

noted

[still sedge]

I'll get the doc

[small quest]

Tbh looking over things it's less than I thought in my head. I believe most of the conflict comes from many roles referencing "You" or "The Demon", which when applied to the demon / boffin abilities causes weird cases.
For example, should a Sailor boffin drunk themselves and therefore the demon ability as well?
Does a boffin gossip killed banshee proc
What happens when a chambermaid picks a demon who doesn't normally wake, but didn't due to boffin ability?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sWzEjDFI-smMlAie-Oy-p1nrveVkvpzdlPHTmDF5pBQ/edit?tab=t.0

Here's the doc Nerdguy was referring to

To be completely honest, I think people overblow boffin and LM's complexness and I personally don't mind it being fully inconsistent

But I don't really care for full robustness of rules, instead opting to rule things on an per game basis, which I understand is unsatisfactory to many

[real heron]

The Boffin/sailor thing, I believe, is clarified by Jams in the HTR posted in here

[small quest]

As are many of these

But it doesn't change the fact they are often unintuitive, hard to search for rulings and such

[real heron]

Yeah that’s fair

[small quest]

Because by base logic... the sailor should drunk the demon ability as well 🙈. It's a manufactured ruling (For good reason!)

I don't mind this but I understand why people would

[jaunty tapir]

I don't want to drag out the RAI/RAW sorta discussion, but I remember from some stream/vod that Ben didn't allow artist questions to avoid recluse misreg -- something like "did one of N players wake for demon info." It's not the same circumstance but I think it's pretty similar and, while it's fully allowed by the rules, I think TPI in general has the stance that STs have agency in how the game goes/they should patch their own leaks where TPI hasn't. Sure, I think TPI should, but if they haven't filled a gap like this then it's on the ST to do it

[real heron]

#1399777176902963360 message
Ben has said to not consider his perspective as TPI’s
But yeah, I think that’s a relatively well-established opinion that is endorsed by TPI regardless (for reference, hermit doing hermit things is specifically ‘up to STs and scripters’)

[rose oriole]

I do think that if you’re going to ban an artist question or gossip statement or something, you need to make it clear that you’re not allowing that action and let them reconsider.

[late ingot]

Yeah, I don't know of STs who will just silently "eat" the ability

[real heron]

I do

[rose oriole]

Or giving the wrong answer to a Vortox/recluse-proofed artist question. Either reject the question outright or answer it as asked.

[real heron]

But I wouldn’t play in games they’re STing anymore so lols

[rose oriole]

Also like the exact last time I was in a game with a Vortox proofed artist question the Artist was No Dashii poisoned

[late ingot]

Realistically, I want enough clarifications such that I can join a public lobby and not sit through more than 2-3 "here's how I run XYZ."

One one end of the spectrum sits Summoner/Goon: I'd much prefer a bootleg jinx to running the interaction RAW, though I'd much prefer an official jinx to either. On the other end is Hermit/anything: I'd much prefer a version of the jinx list that doesn't enumerate every 3-way interaction when I'm simply trying to reference one of the Alchemist jinxes, and I hope TPI is doing better things with their time than creating a Hermit document for every possible memescript.

[rose oriole]

I think scripts having an official Bootlegger section is nice although I don’t rememb if they show up on the official app

[late ingot]

yeah, I'm very glad the new script tool lets one write Bootlegger rules out

[real heron]

You have to make the script bootlegged in the json for it to show in the app, but it does. The unfortunate thing is that rules clarification bootleggers aren’t distinguished from homebrew when it comes to stat tracking in the app

[sudden drift]

I hold the line by only using Bootlegger for actual homebrew, and omitting it for things like a custom Summoner/Goon jinx or Ballad Of Seat 7.

[fervent basalt]

i used to do the same but i've started adding it for some rulings to make it clear that that's how the script should be ran

[unborn trellis]

Idrc if artist or gossip can omit some misinfos

It’s not like there aren’t characters that can bypass vortox/recluse and get info or pseudoinfo

Not allowing Freeform info to copy even an existing precedent is just bleh

[real heron]

Same

[real heron]

I mean, artist has direct translation in a vortox game, they don’t lose any info at all. So vortox-proofing artist questions feels arbitrary and cheesy from my perspective, just so the info is more actionable, at the cost of game fun

[subtle wolf]

5/20 Spy x Barber

These two characters interact in several ways. I’m most curious what other good characters on script would be a useful register for Spy during a swap.

[grand token]

most intriguing interaction, though requires ST cooperation. i think this benefits most from just roles that the spy already likes to bluff?

it also adds the useful counterbalance to barber swaps now not being trustable by putting a strong info role in play

if you just do weaker tf off of a barber swap misreg it lets evil also erase the strongest ability in play, which is... not great

lending legitimacy to evil outsider claims via barber spy swap is also interesting, and implies we want demon o-mod sources or the drunk scripted

[still sedge]

do not swap the spy(onto a good player)

besides that, about the same balance as an Imp starpassing to the spy so

prob fine

[subtle wolf]

The No Dashii and Spy can swap, becoming an evil Gossip and a No Dashii. Or the former ND can become an evil snake charmer and retake demonhood, or become a Barber and set up another swap. Or become a recluse and continue registering as the demon to draw attention.

[still sedge]

oh huh, yeah

[forest spindle]

The more I think about it the more I like it. Now swapping two good characters cant be trusted anymore

[humble lantern]

Plague Doctor in the bag omg

[winter bobcat]

You could also go evil alchemist to change minion abilities

[weak ingot]

sorry

i didn't make good bagging decisions when trying to show how the ET placement isn't all that bad

[real heron]

Unless someone else wants to go, I have an interaction I’d like to ask about

[fringe mirage]

I think you can go

[real heron]

5/21: Princess x Gossip

[tulip crane]

just dont gossip ig

or gossip something you are sure is probably a slight chance of being in the game

[rose oriole]

"I would like to gossip that no-one is the Princess and..."

[weak ingot]

Bad interactions with Gossip vs. the humble AND operator

[still sedge]

Consider the following:

[weak ingot]

_ _

[still sedge]

“I would like to gossip that The princess is in play nor (statement)”

[weak ingot]

Bad interactions with Gossip vs. the humble NOR operator

you can make the AND out of NOR anyway

[still sedge]

That’s the joke yeah

Boolean logic is indeed fun

Ya gotta believe me

[weak ingot]

i love Boolean logic

i gossip that (the princess is in play NOR the princess is in play) NOR ([statement] NOR [statement])

[still sedge]

“I would like to gossip: “The princess is not in play and I saw the gossip character token and the clockmaker, if sober and healthy, could not learn a 4 and there are more than 10 Es in all in-play TF character names and X is not the demon and All minions neighbor outsiders and a sober and healthy Mathemetician would have learned a number greater than 5 this game.”

Coherent right

[still sedge]

This is the yag phrase

[rose oriole]

I like these kinds of things until they make the game not fun

[quartz girder]

certifiable xkcd 246 moment

[still sedge]

I do think evil not understanding the gossip is really helpful

“How does this help town? Ah, it’s fine”

And then it comes in clutch. Because it implicates more than one would think

[boreal nest]

I am so killing the gossip as the st

If it actually goes through

[still sedge]

Wouldn’t recommend that

[boreal nest]

I know

[still sedge]

That confirms a good amount

[boreal nest]

Yeahyeah

But they are making me work!

[still sedge]

(It’s actually probably around 1 bit of entropy. Most of it is in “10 Es”)

[boreal nest]

Grrr

[still sedge]

Just fyi I can and will keep pulling out the “E gossip”

as the gossip

It’s weirdly effective.

(If you have claims, that is)

[boreal nest]

E gossip?

[humble lantern]

Now we should re-build the bag to figure out if things. Change 🔥

[wary solstice]

One of the few good resources to making Gossip + Yagga viable

[wooden knoll]

I came to BOTC to refresh, not to provide a full mathematical proof

[still sedge]

The TF with Es thing

[boreal nest]

what

[still sedge]

“There are 10 or more Es between all in-play TF character names”

[unborn trellis]

i mean this is fine as is

It’s not like the no death is a confirmation

It’s just -1 evil kill not rlly proving anything

[real heron]

I feel like most of this discussion has been about cheesy gossips rather than the interaction itself, and I was kinda hoping to learn a decent amount about people’s opinions about the interaction itself

[subtle wolf]

Assuming Gossip is scripted with multikill demons, Princess makes it harder for evils to bluff Gossip. I don't have much experience with these characters but that seems bad. Gossip is already a difficult bluff, even on BMR, much less on customs with less death variability.

I don't think any interaction with Princess can be understood plainly until we understand Princess by itself. Princess seems to belong almost nowhere. Looking at the script repository, Princess has only been used a few hundred times; looking at the most popular of those (Passage of Time, Ride the Cyclone, Kingdom Come), I don't see how Princess synergizes with much of anything, beyond fitting a stated script theme. Not to mention that there is exactly one way to play Princess, and town might deny you the possibility, which is feelsbad and boring. So my biggest issue with Princess/Gossip is that it includes a Princess.

[frigid flower]

Princess it literally there is a free execution if they work

So its basically there is an extra game if you prog your ability something that even as a bluff its good for the good team

Because its extra time to solve

[wary solstice]

I do have the combination on Golden Border of Prester John. If the Princess successfully executes someone, the Yaggababble can't kill that night but the Gossip can, so the Princess has the ability to confirm the Gossip claim and the truthfulness of what they gossip'd (unless they're specifically poisoned).

[frigid flower]

Gossip on the other hand can do a bold bold bold gossip like it being "X or Y players are the demon"

And the evil team must eat it up

[still sedge]

it's fine

[frigid flower]

Yeah completely

Yeah you gotta script them both in a very interesting way.

[real heron]

That’s fair. I guess it’s hard to comment on a nuanced interaction that can’t really exist in a vacuum since the two are so environment-dependent

[frigid flower]

Yes

Another interesting one its Acrobat and Princess its one interaction i have seen and in a really weird enviroment

Like in this spanish script that its fairly popular in Spain.

Yes it has 14 townfolk.

[subtle wolf]

I understand why Princess is advantageous. My criticism is that it doesn't seem to synergize with anything and it has boring play

[unborn trellis]

Most characters doesn’t have a clear synergy anyway

[subtle wolf]

Which townsfolk have no synergies besides Princess?

[boreal nest]

soldier

[still sedge]

Soldier can be actively confed

Princess synergizes with fool and pacifist

and alch DA

[wary solstice]

Lycanthrope & Gossip can kill the Soldier but the Demon can not.
Soldier negates the ND poison if they are the neighbor, protecting another from being poisoned.
Soldier confirmed by other Good players (Steward, Empath, Village idiot, Dreamer, etc and more in some good combination) can survive to Final 3 without fear and make finding the Demon a 50/50 at least.

Grandmother + Soldier is kinda funny, with grandchild Soldier just negating the downside of Grandmother.

[boreal nest]

What about princess gambler?

[boreal nest]

Weakest grandchild

[boreal nest]

Princess if confirmed can confirm other death mods being in play

If death does happen

Its script dependent imo

[still sedge]

Princess isn’t immortal

Well

Hmm that’s true

[chilly cedar]

I don't quite agree princess has no synergies

I will elaborate but can't rn

[chilly cedar]

Princess is an interesting bluff in Al-had games, and synergises with stuff that gets info over time or needs an extra day to feel safe, like Juggler or Undertaker

Princess Gossip does work but is probably the least interesting death mod that exists

[frigid flower]

Soldier Mathmatician 😂😭😭😭😭

Mathmatician with anything mechanical that can be faked

[subtle wolf]

Why is Princess an interesting bluff in Alan games?

[fervent basalt]

imo princess is really fun with al-had because as a non-princess good player you can pretend to be one to try and bait the al-had into not choosing on n2

but obviously if you're the real princess and the al-had chooses, it sorta confirms you

[subtle wolf]

Doesn't the jinx mean Alan still chooses but nobody dies if Princess procced?

[fervent basalt]

yea but the al-had can choose not to kill

so they have to decide whether they think the princess claim who executed someone day 1 was real or not

(also makes princess quite an interesting boffin ability for an al-had)

[subtle wolf]

5/22: Vortox x Investigator

[winter bobcat]

I personally really don’t like vortox with T4/3 of TB

Maybe if there’s a consistent ruling where it can actually provide somewhat actionable information when you reverse it once vortox is solved

But generally it’s just too arbitrary

Chef less than the other three

[quartz girder]

i guess it could be okay with goblin? other than that this just sucks for investigator

[winter bobcat]

Maybe with twins where you can use it to solve vortox

I guess vizier so you can use the jinx without putting it in the bag

[grand token]

ew

[weak ingot]

it's homescript, actually. (Half of the 108)

[still sedge]

Do not

[weak ingot]

hehehe

[still sedge]

Do not bring back memories of the war

You’re evil for that

[weak ingot]

it's myscript, actually (So Let's Get Round to Why, with a bootlegger that says Investigator always must learn an in-play Minion at minimum)

but yeah. having a demon that basically makes the investigator ability nothing low-key kinda not good. that bootlegger would be how i run it in general

i mean, whatever. 108 has this so it's not like people are unfamiliar with how bad it is.

but RAW? yeah it's pretty bad

here's my fun trick

just always put the invest pings on the invest themselves and someone else

boom. works with vortox

(not really)

but it tries?

[rose oriole]

This is a great example of how a character that learns stricter info is not a stronger character. Because Investigator info is so specific, having it be Vortoxed basically ruins it almost completely in most cases.

[grand token]

just script steward atp

[subtle wolf]

Since there seems to be universal condemnation for this interaction, maybe someone can post another for 5/22 instead of waiting 24 hours

[edgy socket]

Homescript (Roundabout)

More seriously: this is bad on paper but emerges as interesting in the Roundabout environment (which is, to be fair, a torment nexus of a script) so I suspect there are environments where it works

(for reference)

There's sort of an integer overflow relationship with Vortox/Investigator/Marionette where the triad of them becomes interesting despite Investigator being janky with one alone

(Roundabout itself is probably not the best script for that triad because of its weird-ass demon line but its weird-ass demon line is hilarious for other reasons; it probably shines brighter on, like, the Lleech Roundabout that now haunts Axo's nightmares)

[subtle wolf]

Wdym by integer overflow

[edgy socket]

"interaction becomes good again from previous position of being bad"

[winter bobcat]

To be totally honest I think I might be getting psychic damage looking at that script

[edgy socket]

Yeah that's the intent

It's awesome

[winter bobcat]

This of course is contrasted with the so bad it’s good school of scripting (QJ)

[weak ingot]

Cruel and Unusual Engineer/Legion

[weak ingot]

This is awesome

[frigid flower]

Investigator its a Vortox/legion questioner!!! I love it for that and also it encorages executing their pings anyway because it might be legion!!!

Amazing how we can at the end of the day find something positive in the bad interactions!

[edgy socket]

It's an absurd script and I love it, one of the most fun scripts to run and drives everyone insane every game except that one time legion outed d1

"3/4ths demons are evil nightkills, two of those are fully ST-dictated kills, the odd one out is Vortox" produces some of the nightkill patterns of all time

[forest spindle]

I think its fine that we discuss why we dislike an interaction as much as if we like it. There is a lot to learn either way

[subtle wolf]

True, I just felt bad for taking another day, and so early, when there isn't much disagreement

[weak ingot]

there’s only so many high st. dev interactions

[subtle wolf]

My one contribution is this: I think people are assuming Vortox is easier to solve than it necessarily is. On a script where Vortox is hard to solve, Inv doesn't feel useless, even in Vortox game.

[subtle wolf]

What's that

[weak ingot]

standard deviation is a measure of how spread out the values in a dataset are from the average

so greater variability

i guess i’m saying controversial in a way that reports i do specific opinion voting games

[obsidian trout]

Coda you can't abbreviate standard to st in this server lmao

[subtle wolf]

Oh I know SD I didn't know that abbreviation lol

[weak ingot]

controversial i mean controversial

[subtle wolf]

I'm a stats guy, literally doing stats rn

[weak ingot]

😭

okay fair

[subtle wolf]

This is the best one I've mentioned before

[weak ingot]

yeah i recently built around LoT Twins

the discussion spawned a lot of ideas

[subtle wolf]

Or this controversial one lmao

[weak ingot]

artist here is kinda 🤔 but other than that the script’s solid

butler-zealot is just funny

[subtle wolf]

Butler chooses Zealot

[weak ingot]

exactly

or anyone trying to bluff it

[still sedge]

zealot is such a bad outsider

[subtle wolf]

So is Butler but the interaction is cool

[still sedge]

who wants a rant folks

[subtle wolf]

Go for it

[still sedge]

actually

no I have a wall of text on why zealot sucks

... it's also the same one saying princess is good

[weak ingot]

i mean yeah zealot sucks but lowkey doppelgängers has no other good outsiders to put on

[subtle wolf]

I will lit never turn down someone degrading a BOTC character

[weak ingot]

time to glaze steward

also i think you make it as a #custom-script-discussion lurker when you write a wall of text shitting on a character

[still sedge]

hey it also shits on killing travellers in the same essay

(and... killing alch abilities)

[weak ingot]

https://codagold.substack.com/p/bmrheaders-the-apprentice-sucks

[still sedge]

i read that one

[weak ingot]

it’s a bit short tbh

[still sedge]

I really should be working on my legion doc

now that I think about it

[weak ingot]

the points were basically:

• apprentice doesn’t work
• apprentice doesn’t work
• apprentice doesn’t work
• apprentice doesn’t work
• apprentice doesn’t work
• apprentice doesn’t work
• apprentice doesn’t work
• apprentice doesn’t work
• apprentice doesn’t work
• apprentice doesn’t work

tbh easiest bmr character to shit on

[still sedge]

not fool?

[weak ingot]

hey fool is uh

uhm

[still sedge]

yeah

I mean professor duh but

exe survival lowkey helps

[weak ingot]

bmr would be minorly cooked without professor tbh

[subtle wolf]

BMR is a C-tier script. Come at me.

Jk

[still sedge]

I'm not saying professor is uh

[weak ingot]

:(

[still sedge]

not a good thing buuut

[weak ingot]

prof isn’t great

[still sedge]

I still think the rez delay idea

would just

fix the shab problem

and make it slightly less of a "better virgin"

[weak ingot]

me and my 68% winrate

[still sedge]

what is "C tier"

is it like 50 games or like 20

(of replayability)

[weak ingot]

i think bmr is the best base script hands down

[still sedge]

for me? yes

[weak ingot]

it should’ve spent a bit more time in the kitchen

it could’ve been better

[still sedge]

TB is the most balanced, BMR is the most fun, SNV is a really fun dishevelled mess

[still sedge]

it's literally just professor

lunatic actually works irl

[weak ingot]

lunatic works

i’m talking about fool and moonchild

[still sedge]

moonchild is fine

fool should've had 3 lives

[chilly cedar]

I think Vortox investigator is worse on paper than it is in practice

I wouldn't put it on my scripts because its info isn't reversible but it's been shown that it can work

[forest spindle]

I think it depends on how many characters you have that works janky with vortox. If the rest works it doesnt really matter, you can still make bags where you have enough reversible info for town

[forest spindle]

Loud minions might also work better, since you can either quickly conclude its a vortox game or that the two players you learned are not that minion

[coral jungle]

This is an interaction of all time.

[weak ingot]

it's 23rd on my side

1 am

[coral jungle]

It's certainly not easy to build around. You can do it, but this is one of those interactions that just harms a script 9 times out of 10.

[coral jungle]

It's been about 18 hours since the last interaction, we could probably shift to the next one.

[weak ingot]

yippee

05/23: King – Lycanthrope

Imagine this with Choirboy

then imagine this without Choirboy

[real heron]

I saw this on a script last night and wanted to throw up

I don't think that choirboy being on script or not makes this good, it's just different flavours of bad. I just don't see the vision regardless, and I think it'd be a tough thing to force to work

[fervent basalt]

i tend to prefer choirboy with the demon choosing their kills, which i don't love with lycan

(also lycan killing the king sucks, the king can usually just claim but yea)

[shy ferry]

i played a solo-yag with King and Choirboy once

tbf it was the guy's first-ever time building something and we all wanted to dick around with yaggababble

[fringe mirage]

I feel like a good Lucan script often wants evil to have other killing Minions like GF and Assassin

Those don’t work great with King

[shy ferry]

I think you need to build the entire script around and evils having ways to bypass or snipe the Lycan?

King/CB being killed by an evil character could be bootlegged to mean "you know who killed the King"

[frigid flower]

What about exe (fool sailor) survival stuff?

[subtle wolf]

05/24: Cerenovus x Mayor

[weak ingot]

i personally love ways to make cere powerful

[short crystal]

this is cool

it's an alternative method to TB's world of "yeah I believe you're the Mayor but I also believe the Poisoner is alive who poisoned you"

except this is better bc you're not putting on Poisoner

[coral jungle]

This is an interaction with layers. Force the mayor to not claim mayor. Cere-lock someone as the mayor and ride their claim to victory. The cerenovus adds a really cool dynamic to the mayor dilemma, and I love it.

[subtle wolf]

Yes to all of that. Additionally, Mayor is a role that may not be openly claimed until the late game, which Cerenovus can imitate on an unsuspecting good player.

I also love the circumstance of demon/Cere/goodie F3 where everyone knows the goodie is not actually the Mayor, even though they are advocating a Mayor win to comply with madness and trying to tie the vote. Two of the living players (evils) would love to abstain from executing, and the third has to act like he wants to abstain, but desperately needs to nominate the demon and have dead players vote. Taking this even further, evils can fake Mayor madness to garner sympathy in F3. These situations are highly advantageous for evil, which is a fair result of the Cerenovus surviving the entire game

[kind berry]

Interesting interaction, but i'm not sure if it's really gonna be fun in practice

It instantly makes the script harder

[subtle wolf]

Wdym?

[kind berry]

Wdym by wdym?

[still sedge]

I mean harder for who right

[kind berry]

I'm not exactly sure what i'm supposed to answer because i'm not fully sure what you want me to clarify

[short crystal]

i mean what nerdguy said

and also how does this make things harder?

[kind berry]

Because now you will have the difficulty or finding whether you think the mayor claim is mad or not

[short crystal]

that's like normal cerenovus tbh

that's what cerenovus does

it's also not that bad as you might think for mayor bc the question of "do we go for this mayor win or are they ceremad" means you're specifically building alive cerenovus in final 3

[subtle wolf]

Isn't half the point of scripting characters together to have them interact? This is a great dynamic for players to game through

[wary solstice]

The Mayor in TB's context has few avenues for their ability to be distrusted; not merely the player being distrusted in their alignment, but in their ability actually being functional. If the Mayor is trusted and genuinely Good, their ability can be relied upon with only two real exceptions: the Mayor being the Drunk (ew) or the Poisoner also managing to survive to final 3 and being the one to poison the Mayor on the prior night.

With how specific those two situations are, the Mayor only really has to rely on being genuinely trusted rather than worry about their own sobriety generally.

So this is much the same here, Cerenovus is an even more fair challenger than Poisoner because it doesn't turn off the Mayor ability at all even if it manages to survive all the way to final 3. A ceremad Mayor in final 3 could intentionally try to tie the vote anyway as a 'mistake' to earn their win, and the louder nature of Cerenovus means the Mayor also would know that the Demon + Cerenovus are still alive (at least as of last night, Cere could have died last night) which could be crucial info in deducing the Demon.

The flip side is that Cerenovus could also cerelock someone as the Mayor, keep them alive to final 3, and then push for a 'Mayor win'. This requires playing a long game, but certainly an interesting fear and one that could be more gripping than fear of a Poisoner.

[short crystal]

yeah i really like how this fulfills the same niche poisoner-mayor does on TB (as i said at the start)

but cere is overall healthier for scripts than poisoner so this is probably more viable in context

[kind berry]

I'd argue that some madness options have a bigger impact on the game than others

[short crystal]

somewhat yeah

but as i said before the biggest implications of a mad mayor only matters in final 3

which means you're building an alive cerenovus in final 3, which limits worlds greatly

[kind berry]

Cerenovus and heretic could be an example i'd point to if heretic wasn't already the most difficult character in the game

[still sedge]

cere heretic is peak

[short crystal]

quilava mentioned the strategy of cerelocking a player as mayor for the whole game but that only pays off if the cerenovus lives to the end, which means the evil team has to keep 2 players alive

higher risk, higher reward

[still sedge]

vigor moment

[wary solstice]

3 players, basically. Demon, Cerenovus, and 'Mayor'

[short crystal]

true

[kind berry]

Cerenovus saint

[wary solstice]

Vigormortis + Mayor is sad, as it's more reliable means of poisoning the Mayor in the end which does make trusted Mayor less reliable.

[kind berry]

There are interactions that makes a script more interesting, there are interactions that makes a script more difficult. This one definitely makes it more difficult

[short crystal]

those aren't mutually exclusive at all

interesting interactions can be and often are complex

[subtle wolf]

Those categories are unrelated

[kind berry]

I never said the opposite

[short crystal]

you very much phrased it like they were two separate categories

[wary solstice]

I don't think it's that much more difficult than Poisoner is? A Ceremad Mayor in Final 3 also knows there was an alive Cerenovus too (at least as of last night), so they get a major clue if they're being messed with.

[short crystal]

you wouldn't have mentioned the 'interesting' part if you weren't implying that this interaction isn't interesting

[wary solstice]

It's more about if someone is Ceremad as Mayor, which still does require Cerenovus alive up until final 4.

[kind berry]

They are correlated, but it doesn't make it one single category

[short crystal]

im not saying it's 1 category either

[subtle wolf]

One part of this interaction we haven't mentioned is simply: Cerenovus making Mayor mad as a throwaway townie in the early and midgame, and making them justify avoiding execution

[kind berry]

But yeah i definitely struggle to explain what i mean in this conversation

[short crystal]

im just still not really sure what you mean by this being difficult

[kind berry]

You'd need to tell us how the cere knows who the mayor is

[still sedge]

It's harder for the good team

[wary solstice]

Evil Team also can become aware of the Mayor's existence if the bounce happens, and then target the Mayor for madness

[subtle wolf]

(1) The Cere can luck upon a Mayor
(2) The demon targeted Mayor and had it bounce

[short crystal]

things like Spy exist too

[kind berry]

Tbf this is a discussion i'd love to have somewhere if there was a place for it, but like difficulty opposed to beginner friendly is a decent way to define difficulty that works here

[subtle wolf]

Do you mean ambitious?

[short crystal]

that's a fair definition

and i can see it

i think the consequence of that though is you just be careful which groups to run this with if you feel it's not beginner friendly

[kind berry]

Idk, maybe but i very rarely say ambitious to mean difficult

[kind berry]

Ehhh only for specific roles imo

[subtle wolf]

I would love to know your favorite scripts

This is a complex bluffing game with layers and elaborate deduction

[kind berry]

Why?

[subtle wolf]

Because I'm surprised that someone active in discussing BOTC character interactions finds complexity a generally undesirable quality in the game

I'm wondering if there is a side of BOTC with preferences I haven't seen before

[kind berry]

*I just understood what you understood when i said that 😭 *

Yeah that's definitely not what i meant

"Recluse + invest doesn't make a script more difficult"

Most info roles have interesting interactions, most of them aren't making the script more difficult

Harder to solve (sometimes), but not more difficult

But i have a lot of difficulty in saying what i want to say in this discussion, and this (the fact that you read it as "i don't want difficulty") is one proof if it

Mayor is both on TB and also able to slot on some very hard scripts that have many roles that makes mayor more complicated (cere being one example of it)

What i meant is "only some roles have the property that their interesting interactions also happens to make the script harder"

[kind berry]

And to answer this, i'd say HHR even if in general i like diversity more than one individual script i like

MHD spec scripts also are really fun

[rose oriole]

also like

someone mad as the mayor can say "I think it's easier to just exe the demon"

because actually orchestrating a mayor win against evil resistance is tough

[sudden drift]

Cute interaction on paper, but isn't it hellish to maintain this madness?

I believe that a Mayor in f3 who wants to try for a Mayor win should never nominate first. If this is true, then a player Cere-mad as Mayor in f3 can't nominate first without breaking madness.

[short crystal]

i dont think it's out of the question for a mayor in f3 to nominate

you can acknowledge 'if we don't go for a mayor win, i think this person should be executed', or you can acknowledge that the group isn't going to go for your mayor win

[kind berry]

For the group to not go for a mayor win, you need someone other than the mayor to nom or a way for the mayor to be poisoned

[short crystal]

i mean those could also happen yeah

[rose oriole]

I mean what script doesn’t have some kind of droison

[kind berry]

That's not what i meant 😭

[rose oriole]

If f3 is Cerenovus, good mad as Mayor, and Demon then good needs a path to win

[kind berry]

"Plausible way for the mayor to be poisoned in final 3"

[rose oriole]

Yeah and I feel like almost any script will have some way for the mayor to be droisoned

“There’s a Puzzlemaster claim, and I feel like this is the kind of estee who would puzzledrunk the Mayor, so I nominate <demon>”

[frigid flower]

Pearly Gates is my favorite script to Storytell, and for playing i think anything made by Delta its cool

[subtle wolf]

I'm not trying to be obtuse or argumentative, I genuinely don't understand what you mean. Character interactions that make solving harder inherently make the game more difficult (for good). The example you gave–recluse + investigator–makes the game harder to win for the good team. I would love some more examples of interactions that contribute to the solving space (harder to solve) but not more difficult.

Cerenovus/Mayor is a little different, because it's a practical and social workaround, not a matter of solving, but I still don't know what you mean by difficulty being undesirable

[kind berry]

Well replace "not" by "only slightly", ofc tinker is worse on a script with other deathmod than on TB

Meanwhile tinker + mastermind is really scary

[subtle wolf]

Are you saying there's a point where it becomes too difficult and unfair?

[kind berry]

No, idk why we're talking that long for something that bland (well because i really struggle to say my thoughts properly) when i just mean "There are character interactions make a script harder by the interaction existing, while some interactions don't have much of an impact on the script's difficulty"

[shy ferry]

05/25, gonna throw a curveball. Mutant , + Godfather , - Cerenovus

why? maybe you need a face-down outsider, but you can't accomodate a CN for some reason.

[neon storm]

"TakeRep" command returned an error: strconv.ParseInt: parsing "05/25,": invalid syntax

[quartz girder]

bmrlikes with mutant actually cook so hard. i like this less on catfishingesque scripts where the hard confirm is often worth the kill and execution to allow the "virgin info hub" strats

[forest spindle]

I really like this interaction, adds to the punishment of mutant without ruining the entire game

[uneven kraken]

very fun - i love it when mutant is more punished then normal but not as punished as damsal

when i run snv i always run it that i kill the mutant if the execution today was something bad for the evil teamso there is barely comfrim

[real heron]

It's an interesting interaction that can yield a bunch of info for town depending on deathmod on script

If there's very little deathmod or other o-mod, it can just confirm the outsider count etc

[coral jungle]

Godfather is a great way to get the mutant to shut up! The cerenovus could try to induce a godfather kill with this, which isn't too interesting, but cere is practically a requirement to prevent a madness hard confirm. I'm immediately thinking lil monsta as a demon for this script.

[obsidian trout]

(Cere is explicitly not on the script)

[coral jungle]

Oh that's a minus

Well, gf+mutant is a great way of silencing the mutant, but I think that without cere it's a little more dicey. Mutant is now a hard confirm. Whether the player thinks risking a gf kill to hard confirm themselves is a question. It also allows the mutant to scout for a minion. If the storyteller executes them, then it's probably because there's a godfather in play. Of course, something like yaggababble can be used to fake this, but it's still a tricky scenario.

[shy ferry]

do you have an example

[shy ferry]

similar: boozling has golem with no confounds of killing a player

however, there is sw so you can bus your demon but that's it

[fringe mirage]

I have an interaction I wanna do for tomorrow's

[subtle wolf]

Go for it

[fringe mirage]

5/26: Butler x Legion

(it was gonna be that or FT Legion)

[rose oriole]

Butler is a townsfolk here

[fringe mirage]

wdym?

[rose oriole]

In Legion games the Butler is unlikely to be voting and hence unlikely to be voting on good players

[fringe mirage]

Or they vote with Legion...

[rose oriole]

So you get either more votefails or more Legion panic

[rose oriole]

Butler is never forced to vote

Also Legions tend to be shy about voting in general so it’s harder for the Butler to vote

[fringe mirage]

eh, they still might early on (tho I guess you could say that about any good player)

[real heron]

I think a butler pays more specific attention to voting than many other good players, so I think it’s interesting. Maybe a butler just results in a lot of cases of no exe days d1 but I don’t think that’s uncommon in a lot of environments

[weak ingot]

carbon neutral interaction

[vast inlet]

butler is a good legion bluff bc legion socials are the exact type of socials butler is supposed to explain away when bluffed

[frigid flower]

I had a good interaction in mind 😭😭😭

But i forgot

[grand token]

milquetoast but its what butler was intended to do and it works

[still sedge]

this is like saying zealot is a TF normally

[boreal nest]

Actually mattered a lot in games i ran

Cause butler picked legions

And couldnt vote on noms that were good for town

[subtle wolf]

05/27 Al-Hadikhia x Gossip

Can non-demon deaths placed inside the public Al-Hadikhia choices obscure who chose to live and die? Can evil benefit from that obscurity?

What about deaths outside the Al-Hadikhia choices (be it Gossip, Godfather, Tinker)?

I've been working on a script for months trying to build out this odd pair

[kind berry]

I might be wrong, but i feel like any BMR scripts that would want to add al-had will have to include the djinn rule from show me wonders ("Each night*, all players secretly choose in advance to live or die if they were to be chosen by the Al-Hadikhia. Al-Hadikhia choices are not announced."), i don't think you really can have a BMR-like with a loud demon that the targets are known

[subtle wolf]

Can Gossip only exist in a BMR-style environment? Gossip strikes me as rather flexible, capable of balancing through the ST kill choice, including killing Gossip.

[short crystal]

I dont get how gossip can obscure AlHad picks

people are going to be honest on whether they chose to live or die, so it’s pretty easy to deduce a gossip kill happened

the only exception to this is if you’re gossip killing evil players which doesn’t make much sense either

[short crystal]

I think gossip necessitates a “mini bmr” environment, which just means you need appropriate amounts of deathmod

if you need a script environment where deathmod is a subtheme gossip is a great pick, bc it’s one of the only forms of good-sided deathmod that can take place anywhere (as opposed to the gamblers and tinkers who can only kill themselves, or the Lycan who chooses who dies)

[subtle wolf]

So even with evils that are okay dying to Alan, no set of townies can integrate Gossip with Alan?

What about the pair generally, where Gossip doesn't blend in?

[short crystal]

the gossip can only obscure AlHad deaths by killing a player who chooses “live”, otherwise the gossip kills a player who already died that night

so if an evil is fine dying to AlHad they will just choose “die”, they don’t need to gamble that a successful gossip happened

[subtle wolf]

Evils in the Alan picks and Gossip killing into Alan picks are separate events. I'm not suggesting evils would be involuntarily killed by Gossip

[short crystal]

it can maybe be fine but it gets a lot harder to disguise the gossip when the demon type is known

[short crystal]

then what sort of disguising do you think the gossip can do?

[subtle wolf]

I'm not sure, this is half baked. If Gossip kills good players who chose "live", they will obviously report that they shouldn't have died. Evils can choose "die" and report the same thing. Other townies might play weird with Alan too, and throwing in Godfather and Assassin, maybe it works

[short crystal]

I think that idea has some potential but the worlds of “this person died to a gossip kill or they are lying and evil” is just more good sided than normal gossip vagueness

esp since a lying evil player probably wants to be resurrected later, and once that happens they’ll be much more suspicious

this probably does benefit from lepakon’s suggestion of keeping alhad picks private and making everyone choose live or die

[subtle wolf]

Slight improvement on this: have Alan make the choices, then ask all players to thumbs up or down for living or dying, so ST can quickly assess without having to remember every player's choice

[short crystal]

ooh nice

[short crystal]

the point here being btw is that you can gossip kill anyone who chose to die and they won’t know if they died to alhad, separate from the 2 possibilities mentioned earlier

[kind berry]

Counterpoint: if the worst gossip kill is the gossip itself, "each day, you may publicly make a statement. The first time it's true, you die tonight" is already a very strong role (+ easy to be confirmed if the evil team has no way for multiple deaths)

Imo TB + minstrel is more balanced than TB + gossip

Even if you also add assassin

[real heron]

I don’t like Al-Had with deathmod

So that convo ends there for me I think

[subtle wolf]

Why not?

[real heron]

The deathmod confirms itself to be in play innately, rather than with other stuff where it can trade off with each other (eg, innkeeper protting an al-had target that picks die and a gossip kill is clearly distinguished rather than being unclear to separate like in other games)

So a gossip usually self-confirms from a single kill, and the same with innkeeper

So I don’t like either of them

[short crystal]

there might be a tightrope of balance that allows deathmod to coexist with AlHad but removing the opacity around the demon type and demon kills makes it at minimum very very hard

[kind berry]

After trying to "make a script" with most BMR characters and only al-had, i really struggle to make something that inherently could work without the djinn rule (and even then, you'd probably still need 3 other BMR demons)

This is the closest thing i have to a proof of concept, and it still has multiple flaws

[real heron]

This is why Reptiles is kind of meh/bad imo. But I get why people can like it

[coral jungle]

This is an extremely difficult interaction to build around, and might just be outright impossible for all I know. You need to satisfy the following conditions:

1. The gossip does not get itself confirmed too easily by sniping someone outside of the al-had picks.

2. The gossip does not have a meaningless ability where it's nigh-impossible to tell if their ability went off.

3. The gossip does not accelerate the game to the point that any information is worthless.

This is extremely difficult to pull off, and I personally can't think of any way to build this.

[subtle wolf]

That’s consistent with my efforts—I’ve been trying to make it work for a long time and haven’t found a solution. Darn!

[rose oriole]

05/28: Pit-Hag x Damsel

If the Pit-Hag creates a Damsel, the Storyteller chooses which player it is.

There are several layers to this interaction

[fringe mirage]

Decent interaction: it’s on Harold Holt

You can bet on making an alive Damsel. ST can balance it on the dead

Also little point in Damsel guessing people who have announced being changed. If they were Damsel before, they aren’t anymore

You can sorta narrow the field Snake Charmer style

If you’re really feeling risky and have another Minion, you could Pit Hag yourself into a claim you think is a Damsel

If you change, get the other Minion to guess

[subtle wolf]

“You can bet on making an alive Damsel. ST can balance it on the dead”

Don’t minions immediately learn a Damsel is in play? And therefore Pit-Hag would know if the new Damsel is dead?

I’m worried that STs making a dead player Damsel for balance is frustrating for evil (that interaction is actively good-sided), but always creating a living Damsel might be too helpful to the evil team. I’m also worried this is an optimal N2 strategy for the Pit-Hag

[green fiber]

i’ve only actually seen this interaction once. Fine early game, kinda weird late game tho. either you make it a dead player which just kind of says “fuck you” to the PH and takes away player agency, or you make a living damsel from a much smaller collection of people, giving evil a huge advantage.

[still sedge]

The pithag is the damsel

Solved

[fringe mirage]

Yes, but that’s still better than giving an instant win if there’s like, 2 good players, the hag, and the Demon

[weak ingot]

meh.

i feel like there are better interactions to be had

the jinx is very obviously ST-centric and i don’t like that

[wary solstice]

Clearly you give the instant loss and make the Demon into a Damsel. /j

[tawny haven]

I've scripted this before, and in my experience, this is usually scripted with a bunch of other things the Pit-Hag would rather do than create a Damsel? Like, sure, the extra wincondition is cool, but there's usually something more pressing like "turning the Savant into the good Marionette so I know their info will be garbage" or "making the mez-turned player the Psychopath" or "holy shit my Demon just outed Lunatic I need the Demonhood now"

It's still plenty strong and quite useful for evil, but I think in practice it ends up being a strong choice rather than an overcentralizing one

also if the ST thinks evil is winning they're well within their right to turn a dead player into the Damsel

[coral jungle]

Honestly, worse than making it a dead player.

Other than that, I totally agree with axo on this interaction. The pit hag generally has more pressing matters. The ST should make the damsel as alive or dead respecting of game balance.

[tawny haven]

Notably, a hagged Damsel (usually) has a bluff built-in with the token they received, so they're harder to find than a setup Damsel

[shy ferry]

this also means you have to create a damsel from a player getting info maybe?

also can someone explain to me how pithag is so strong in HHR is it being able to create good marios/lunatics and even a poli

you can't move the demon

[fervent basalt]

you can make an evil dreamer to find a damsel potentially

[frigid flower]

Can i make one for tomorrow?

[wary solstice]

You can make an Evil Snake Charmer, or even cooperate with a Good player to make them the Snake Charmer who can steal the Demon for themself on the 5th night.

[shy ferry]

I forgot SC is on HHR

[coral jungle]

Am I okay to do a new one?

[fringe mirage]

Both you and Arepasxo have asked to do an interaction, so take it up with them too

But I don’t mind

[small quest]

if there's a ton of interest I think having more than just a daily one is okay

the goal is to talk about the character interactions and such

[shy ferry]

seems to me should just not talk over each other

[coral jungle]

I'll let arepa go first.

[frigid flower]

05/29: Vortox X Librarian

I was surprised when i find out this interaction was not in here at all.

I consider this interaction a posible Extra Layer to Vortox solves all because of hidden outsiders like:

But this interaction in a nutshell really depends on the miss info landscape that the script has as how much town can peace together their info for parallel Vortox worlds!

[subtle wolf]

How many hidden outsiders does the script need to make this work? If Librarian always sees a hidden outsider in Vortox games, you quickly dismiss Vortox worlds when the Librarian sees a face-up Outsider

But if you have three or four hidden outsiders, how is that script balanced overall?

[frigid flower]

Just 1 in my experience

Remenber with demons that are high poison like pukka vigor and nodashi can frame the librarian in a vortox game!

Even when its a face up outsider it really nails home the information landscape

[subtle wolf]

Pukka and Vigor almost never poison the Librarian, so that would specifically be No Dashii

[frigid flower]

Yeah

Poisoner and Widow too

But who would in their right mind poison the poor librarian as the widow?

[subtle wolf]

Widow on a Vortox script?

[frigid flower]

Yes

[real heron]

I think the spreadsheet is very outdated, but yeah searching using the discord tool is a thing (and I assume you did the latter)

[real heron]

I think this interaction is something I should consider for a script I’m currently writing/refining

It’s situation dependent and face-down outsiders are neat for enabling it. I think there needs to be alternative explanations for the librarian to receive false info for it to get face-ups, but it’s not that hard to combine other misinfo with a vortox

(I am specifically excluding No Dashii from this since a no dashii likes relatively ‘hidden’ misinfo and a Librarian very consistently can know their info is false)

[real heron]

Xaan is peak with vortox

(peak enough that I think hidden outsiders like Drunk are fine with xaan just to make drunk/vortox and xaan/vortox work on the same script)

But it’s a delicate balance

[coral jungle]

That is the exact same interaction I was gonna say lol

[fringe mirage]

moment with Arepa

[small quest]

As the author of a script with this combo , it's 10/10!

To be honest I think it's not too great, you either need very hidden outsiders, or you need droison/misreg

I think the most interesting cases with it is with spy, since extra droison usually can't carry it fully unless the script sucks. But it's very powerful for the good team and they need to have an explanation for true info in vortox, and false info in non vortox for it to be fun 👍

[frigid flower]

That doesnt stop the No Dashi with a Scarlet Woman to enjoy the Chaos

[real heron]

True

[frigid flower]

Another deep question its how much do you need droison/misreg for the Librarian to belive its vortox

And if its it even worth with drunk being the hidden outsider the librarian sees

[small quest]

I think if you have

Ooos, I think if you have enough hidden outsiders you can get away with more, but even stuff like damsel isn’t great in practice because damsels do have incentive to out. Drunk is solid.

I just think that it’s tough to make a script work with fully hidden outsiders, so you come back to the core problem regarding excuses for true/false info

[frigid flower]

Yeah you gotta deal with the librarian sees an out of play face up outsider

[grand token]

is pairing this with an evil grim peeker to allow evils to bluff face up lib pings interesting or too much

it comes up in tb very occassionally through spy's innate ability but vortox would allow it to happen far more often and using widow instead might serve as interesting social noise

i generally think vortox scripts can benefit from grim peekers a whole lot with how unbluffable a lot of reversible info can be sometimes (cough cough dreamer)

[subtle wolf]

This isn't too much, it's exactly what BOTC needs more of

[grand token]

i agree its a good way to add alt worlds without throwing the whole droison sink into a vortox script

i am, to be frank, a bit disappointed with how snv did that over giving evil more nuanced bluff options akin to tb

[subtle wolf]

IMO Vortox works best on scripts where town takes a long time to solve that Vortox is in play. One way of doing that is to have a few non-info roles, and those also happen to support Widow/Vortox, since Widow's poison can actually affect some Townsfolk in a Vortox game

[grand token]

youre making me unironically think of scripting boffin virgin widow vortox

[fringe mirage]

5/30: Atheist x General

[edgy socket]

@somber rose

wait there's no vortox on minionslop

stick have you considered a minionslop fourth demon

(I guess you'd have to drop hatter nvm)

[wary solstice]

There's an interesting case here if, during an Atheist game, the ST decides to let the General know the accurate truth. Sometimes it's good for puzzle atheist games to make some roles 'immune' in their information to Atheist shenanigans, and instead they receive only the accurate truth.

General could therefore learn how much players are leaning towards Atheist being real. Starting with 'Evil is Winning' since only the Atheist knows they even exist, and each night updating depending on the perspectives of the players.

---

On the other side, it'd be amusing fun to mess with a General and make them believe that the sky is falling, or to feed into their incorrect ideas of who the Evil Team as certain players are executed.

[fringe mirage]

That is the main reason I asked

To examoie the implciations of a General being given true info about whether town is believing an Atheist claim or not

its a bit fuzzier than with a wincon like Goblin, since Atheist also means the General info can be made up like you said. But General info is also interesting to examine if an Atheist claim affects the puzzle and also hhow town responds to clues the ST left in a puzzle Atheist game

If town starts finding the clues, General might go up. But of fcourse, town needs to generally get majority consent for ST executing most of the game, so general has a long time to examine if they live

[grand token]

im a fan of the bootlegged atheist that makes all subjective, st-decided information immune to atheist itself

i forget what script its present on

i feel like puzzle atheist really needs having some actual reins on its power

[boreal nest]

Give general true info

And its cool

[chilly cedar]

Does the general need to get true info?

In an atheist game?

Like I get you can do whatever you want, but general also getting nonsensical or info that points towards a single evil team would work?

[grand token]

nothing needs to or has to happen at all in an atheist game

the only reason the storyteller doesnt start turning every player into the butler, or throwing rocks at their heads or something is that it would make it obvious an atheist is in play, and make the game unbalanced

[kind berry]

Imo general shouldn't get true info in an atheist game, as it will virtually turn general into a 2nd player knowing it's atheist (and it should almost be the opposite: when town suspects it's atheist, it's absolutely the moment to give general that evil is winning)
And think about atheist being an evil bluff, do you really want to make it so that general can know that atheist isn't in play when evil is about to win?
Unless i'm forgetting another role, the only role that should always stay sober in atheist is heretic (imo)

[grand token]

general is already weak enough. being able to subjectively possibly detect an atheist being in play, especially when there should obviosuly be many other reasons for a general to be receiving "good is winning" gives general an actual use where its generally offensively mild.

evil can bluff atheist, and in the late game if nobody takes it and evil is also about to win general receives the same info regardless of either world, so this literally does not matter
late game atheist who nobody trusts: good is losing
late game evil team about to win that is bluffing atheist that nobody takes: good is losing

this is not to mention the obvious fact that any good script should have reasons to doubt the information you receive and the same holds true for general info

your goal when running atheist as a storyteller fundamentally isnt to flawlessly build a world where there is An Evil Team and a good team and completely delude the entire game into believing this. thats incredibly easy to do, unfun, and not the "point" of scripting atheist. abilities like general benefit from receiving true info often even in atheist games to add social friction into atheist games and actually push certain worlds, especially in actually well designed scripts where there is any reason to doubt your info and doubt claimed roles

[kind berry]

I still think having general knowing that their info is true in atheist is unbalanced

Not saying that everyone should have info that would work in a normal world

[grand token]

maybe if theres literally no other reason that a general would ever consider building around for the cause of their info, but thats almost never gonna be the case in a competently designed script and well-balanced game

[kind berry]

Imo a general shouldn't expect to get a good when good is about to exe the ST in an atheist game

[chilly cedar]

For puzzle atheist games, where the Storyteller tries to simulate a game with an evil team, the general getting info based off this "evil team" makes sense imo

If good execute into it and the game doesn't end, then the general supporting good with their reads and it not working is a very nice indication it's an atheist game

[kind berry]

Just to be sure, puzzle atheist = atheist in a leviathan-type game or atheist that isn't adding pope to the setup?

[chilly cedar]

Puzzle Atheist is when the Storyteller runs a game that isn't obviously an atheist game

[kind berry]

So Atheist

[chilly cedar]

Not always run as such though

Like there is a good number of times where atheist games turn into nonsense haha funny games

Like on The Midnight Oasis

Which is sometimes called shenanigans atheist

[kind berry]

I know exactly how i will sound saying that, but why do you need a specific term to say "atheist game that won't have 6 seamstresses that will all get a no"?

I get it that it's because it's not the norm, but saying that itself makes it look like it isn't (and maybe shouldn't be) the norm

[chilly cedar]

Sorry this sentence is difficult to parse

[chilly cedar]

I mean we don't, but atheist games can be split into two groups. Some people's perception of atheist is this

Also some amount of doubling can still be puzzle atheist-y, like having a game with 4 Village Idiots

[grand token]

you can also just have any legion atheist wizard amne script

[chilly cedar]

I think it's a useful term because the haha funny shenanigans style atheist is pretty well known from streams and scripts like the Midnight Oasis

[wary solstice]

You can run Midnight Oasis as a puzzle atheist too, but it's otherwise easily used for shenanigans

[kind berry]

Imo it contributes to people running it in a bad way

[chilly cedar]

Some recent scripts like Star's Edge were made to showcase what Delta thought is another way to run Atheist which was a bit underrepresented.

[chilly cedar]

Mm?

Can I just say how I interpret that lepa, and you correct me if I didn't get it

[kind berry]

Yeah go ahead, i'm tired so i'm probably bad at explaining myself

[chilly cedar]

Naming Puzzle Atheist as a "version of atheist" encourages people who would run the chaos haha shenanigans atheist to just say "hey look, we're just running a version of atheist"

Even though the games shenanigans atheist products can be seen as worse

[kind berry]

Yeah that's not what i meant
"Puzzle atheist" is a very bad name for "the way atheist should be ran"

And i'm slightly uncomfortable with the fact that there is a name for this to begin with

[chilly cedar]

Right

[kind berry]

Especially when this name is used when someone wants to say "in a good atheist game, general should get info according to what you'd expect a general to learn if there was an evil team"

But if we bring it up: Puzzle Atheist is incompatible with general getting true info in an atheist game

[chilly cedar]

Of course

But here we have a lot of people saying the general could or should. Like it's clear that people have different ways of thinking how atheist should work

[kind berry]

Fair

I'm also not fully sure if puzzle atheist is supposed to mean nontrivial or difficult, and i'm not sure that everyone using this term agrees on that question

[chilly cedar]

Puzzle atheist or "good" atheist makes it pretty intuitive that of course, the general should get info that simulates a real game

[chilly cedar]

It is supposed to be non-trivial to solve

That I think is a better way to put it than I have

By final 3, there should usually be a demon candidate (or 2) and the Storyteller to choose from

[kind berry]

(Should i go back to this and the few messages after it to give a better answer than just my "i disagree" or did this discussion about puzzle atheist does the job?)

[kind berry]

Yeah i'd qualify that as difficult more than nontrivial. Nontrivial is basically no duplicates in the bag and give plausible-looking info to everyone without worrying about it too much

Which is already more difficult than many atheist games you can see on streams

[chilly cedar]

I think this is easier said than done though

In a game with an evil team, they need to make a world where everyone is good, including themselves

It's harder to justify them not being executed

"oh if its an atheist game, and you're being framed a lot, so you should be okay with dying here"

[kind berry]

Which isn't possible when a general says that evil is winning when town is about to kill the ST and you have an ST that gives sober info to the general in an atheist game

[chilly cedar]

These socials are possible to mimic, but doing it too well can lead you to being executed on f7

[kind berry]

This message isn't worrying about when town is close to executing the ST, because in that situation there's only one way for the general to get good (+ poisoned by the evil team) and only one for the general to get evil

[kind berry]

You have no reason to doubt a general who got evil when town executed their last major demon candidate

This is why general cannot be a good character to give the "they get true info in an atheist game" boon, even if it could sound like a good idea

[kind berry]

Yeah nvm this is false, you have reasons to doubt a general who says they got good, but you can't have reasons to doubt a general who says they got evil

[subtle wolf]

I'm still not sold on the merits of Atheist. I don't play many Atheist games but I haven't experienced a script where Atheist is an actual bluffable role for evil and the ST can comfortably simulate a game that gives town a real puzzle

Most evil teams are not capable of bluffing crazy situations that indicate Atheist, and if just two or three players are suggesting it's an Atheist game, you just execute them and keep playing

[chilly cedar]

Star's Edge and Angel Heaven are two scripts by delta which have atheist on them

Star's Edge is pretty good

I've heard great things about angel's heaven

[subtle wolf]

And if it were theoretically possible to engineer an amazing puzzle for your players, where there's just enough indication towards Atheist that they can win, you have to mastermind the entire game and its worldbuilding and character interactions. That puts an even higher burden on the ST than BOTC already does, not to mention trust, which I frankly don't have for anonymous storytellers online, nor for anyone in my in-person group

[chilly cedar]

But your experience makes sense, it's definitely difficult to script

[subtle wolf]

What about those overcomes the problems I see inherent in Atheist?

[chilly cedar]

Well star's Edge has the pretty brutal drunk hermit combo which can keep worlds open for evil to bluff atheist in.

Angel's Heaven is a Leviathan/Atheist script with Knaves which mean the good team are already working through a puzzle together of which Storyteller is telling the truth or lying

And means the Storyteller has plenty of tools to make an engaging puzzle

[fringe mirage]

Also to expand on the Hermit combo, sometimes executing an Atheist claim is a Boomdandy explosion

Whether it’s a real Boomdandy or a Hermit

[chilly cedar]

Yes

[subtle wolf]

Let's focus on Star's Edge, as that seems to be the more reputed and established script.

How does Drunk + Hermit on script make Atheist bluffable for evil?

[fringe mirage]

And Drunk also means an Atheist claim can be genuinely good but false or an evil bluffing

[fringe mirage]

Drunk allows a good player to think they are Atheist

Hermit adds the Plague Doctor ability

Execute the Atheist claim on policy and you might get a Plague Doctor Boomdandy, which is very bad for a D1 execution

[chilly cedar]

Well for one, executing atheist claims can result in a boomdsndy explosion from the plague doctor hermit who thinks they are atheist

This incentivises good to keep atheist claims alive a bit longer

Meaning they have more time to use their abilties

Also drunk+hermit can mean good are building worlds with 2 drunks around. This is difficult to track, quiet misinformation that can give the illusion of no information making sense so it's obviously an atheist game

Even if it isnt

[subtle wolf]

Those are very clever interactions

When the game comes to a F5 or F3, is the Storyteller supposed to give a mechanical solve towards Atheist, or allow everyone to lose by continuing to demon chase?

The same question applies to a Boomdandy explosion

[fringe mirage]

Generally, creating a fun Athiest includes making 1 or 2 pieces not fit with the world ST is building

Part is def social but they should be able to realize it doesn’t make sense

[chilly cedar]

In a text game that happened a few months ago, there was a specific evil team which was mechanically solvable

People went for the atheist win anyway because it involved some weird socials, like a minion claiming virgin who didn't trigger

Usually on that script your atheist worlds should be coherent because it allows evil to bluff atheist better

[subtle wolf]

Notable, though, the script is not overloaded with misinformation. It can't be, or non-Atheist games would be ruined. So it doesn't really "give the illusion of no information making sense". Furthermore, even if you did put way too much misinformation on a script, that would only create an "illusion" while your players are unfamiliar with the script, which is to say... a maximum of one game. People quickly come to realize "Well nothing makes sense, so this is either an Atheist game or an unsolvable real game. Shucks."

[chilly cedar]

They might work mechanically, but it's up to the players for it not to work socially

[chilly cedar]

Yeah that is true. Drunk is one of those characters that isn't the simplest to solve for, so it can still take up good time

But yeah I may have overstated it because it's definitely not completely arbitrary

I like it a lot

[subtle wolf]

Do those 1 or 2 unusual pieces mimick false info in a real game or do they not? If they do, there is no mechanical difference between Atheist and real game. If not, evil cannot bluff Atheist successfully

This is the inherent problem I see^

[subtle wolf]

I think this is the strongest counter to my ideas, and the best case for Atheist. You may have a good case here.

[small quest]

I do agree with Lepa's point that it's a shame we call it "Puzzle atheist" because like, it should just be the default way it's run.

I also think that atheist is a character that we don't have a full envionment for but we think we do. I think boomdandy is a good bandaid but I don't think it solves enough personally.

spec & spoilers stuff: ||I think atheist thrives in Leviathan / GoS type stuff and that's just where I firmly believe its home is.||

I think in terms of the interaction specifically, there's no real reason to, on matters of balance or such, give the general true info in atheist? I just think you shouldn't be running that script if you don't have enough of a grasp of general and such. I don't think general is weak and you can frame worlds with it like any other informational character.

[still sedge]

Generally IMO the info should say "the demon is dead/The demon player is obvious enough to where the the atheist being outed evil makes the "demon" get exed before f3

[chilly cedar]

The upsides of framing a specific evil team is that good is rewarded or punished for their executions

If good plays poorly and makes bad executions, then yeah they'll get a final 3 with several evil/demon candidates and a potential Storyteller execution

If they play well, and execute into that world you're framing, they are rewarded with the atheist game being more obvious

[subtle wolf]

You’re convincing me. I’d be open to try a reputed atheist script with a great storyteller

[still sedge]

I love good atheist games so much

[wary solstice]

I do, at least, have one environment where the Atheist is bluffable by Evils without fear.

With Dullahan under the Willows, the main interaction is 'anyone can be the Vizier' with roles like Alchemist, Recluse, Boffin, Vizier, Lleech on script and the only two demons are Lil'Monsta and Lleech. The Vizier and Lleech are free to claim Atheist and not be afraid of dying to execution, and if they get to final 3, everyone is still a candidate (Vizier could be holding Lil'Monsta, Lleech makes the others into candidates, and the ST is a candidate).

[still sedge]

I am forcing STs to be better at atheist

[deft moth]

I assume the choosing process in this thread is whoever has an idea and gets there first?

[frigid flower]

5/31: Boomdandy X Town Crier

A combo ive seen used a lot in boomdandy scripts. I may ask? What makes it so popular on popular scripts that feature Boomdandy?

[winter bobcat]

I think bc tc can make people more comfortable executing with boom on script

[frigid flower]

That doesnt feel like the true answer

[fringe mirage]

I assume it would be more that Town Crier is fairly flexible info when we only have limited stuff, and works with Boomdandy?

I suppose you might also add Boomdandy works with quiet Minions, I guess

But it still feels a little like asking "What makes Pixie Boomdandy so popular on scripts the feature Boomdandy?"

[frigid flower]

I think its a more low key investigator

[fringe mirage]

That is admitdly true

Town Crier doesnt force you to as directly kill a Boomdandy, nor does it out them as Invest does

[frigid flower]

So i guess this interaction is based on convenience and the fact that maybe having a confirmed minion on the block its bad

So yeah a confirmed minion its not the demon?

Yeah but you can say otherwise to Lil Monsta and other demons who jump like Imp

[grand token]

i think this is a simple enough interaction to parse in that a boomdandy script will probably want ways to distinguish who might be the minions

[forest spindle]

Im guessing town crier, investigator and preacher act as minesweepers on those scripts

[chilly cedar]

It's fine, even good

I personally love town crier when paired with witch

And witch boomdandy are different volumes

But you can totally have TC without it!

[subtle wolf]

Great interaction, no qualifications

[humble lantern]

Because we have no “fair” minion finder role

Invest often feels too harsh on Boom

And Dreamer is too slow

[edgy socket]

I'd argue Dreamer is faster than Town Crier much of the time

[humble lantern]

If you hit but yah

[humble lantern]

Oh and Minstrel is….

https://tenor.com/view/لييوو-gif-16809754927858649993

[subtle wolf]

Ya because town doesn’t collectively work for TC info, they let people nominate willy nilly and don’t sus them out

[subtle wolf]

Preacher?

[native prairie]

Town Crier is usually a powerful Townsfolk, and it's especially powerful when a minion like Boomdandy demands a lot of town's attention in terms of who it is in addition to whether it's in play.
This is a very powerful combo for Town Crier and should be compensated for by strong misinformation. The classic way to handle Town Criers is a Vortox on script.

[humble lantern]

Not a Minion finder tbh just like helps town fight them

[subtle wolf]

Maybe so, but in terms of Arepxso’s question, Preacher is a counter to Boomdandy just as minion-finders are

[humble lantern]

Oh yeah in the wider question it’s a fantastic partnership

-# cough read my preacher write up cough

[native prairie]

preacher is significantly worse for Boomdandy than Town Crier is

aside from Preacher just being a broken character in general, it shuts down Boomdandy rather than catching it

[humble lantern]

Cough read my preacher write up cough

[pale gazelle]

What happens if a Banshee dies to the deamon, but it brought back by the Proffessor, Shabaloth or Al-Hadikia?

[humble lantern]

They cannot nominate twice or vote twice as the main point and if they die by the demon again regain their ability .

Gotten quite lost from #quick-rules-questions lol

[pale gazelle]

1: Wow thats surprising, the wording just sayd 'if the demon kills you', if they die a second time and regain their ability can they nom and vote three times?

2: Do you mean I should be asking in quick rules questions? i thought this would be the relevant place for character interactions

[chilly cedar]

Hi. Yeah you're more likely to get a relevant answer in #quick-rules-questions . This place is more about discussing a specific interaction each day

[pale gazelle]

Ahh, sorry!

[frigid flower]

Where its it

?

[native prairie]

"the Preacher is misunderstood"
looks inside
"the preacher should be on the same script as the Goblin"

[humble lantern]

Someone didn’t read

[humble lantern]

Oh I was interpreting it as you think preacher shouldn’t be with goblin

[native prairie]

I very much think preacher should not be on the same script as goblin

preacher just gets even more overpowered when you have minions that are easier to locate

[quartz girder]

idt preacher is in any way overpowered except vs psychopath and i think preacher+goblin is a playable interaction

[humble lantern]

Let Preacher be strong, they only get that impact if you actually act on

[chilly cedar]

Preacher doesn't feel that powerful when you can't feel your impact

Stuff like Goblin/boomdandy makes preacher feel more impactful because they can confidently say "hey we can execute this guy!"

As for Town Crier boomdandy, it's good. Maybe not fantastic, but good

Town crier with minions that don't out themselves (Goblin, Psycho, Vizier) will be interesting

[deft moth]

6/1: Summoner x Lleech

Both of these guys influence noms/suspicion/confirmation in a weird way, but I don't think I've ever seen them scripted together

[fringe mirage]

Seems kinda redundant

Lleech already gets to choose a good player to make the flagbearer

[frigid flower]

Awful HORRIBLEEEEE

Super horrible combo

Unfindable Lleech Host

[grand token]

god no please

unfindable host, summoner wants deathmod which pairs with science which is horrific with lleech, and summoner is in general a lame pacing killer that kinda works with like deranged kill pace scripts that lleech does not function in

i think if you want vibes such as this you should just run summoner typhon/kazali

[weak ingot]

this is just mid

well i mean like

it‘s bad

not even interestingly bad

yeah of course finding the lleech host sucks you’re trying to the poison on night 3

i think also

some people think this interaction is much worse than it is

it’s not that much worse than regular lleech

“unfindable host”

actually CL issue if it gets stuck evil when hosted. just make sure CL is good night 3

[grand token]

is this a fun script in 1 minion games?

[weak ingot]

No

All Lleech games suck in 1m

[subtle wolf]

Isn’t Lleech host usually unfindable anyway

Isn’t Lleech host supposed to be given info that disguises being the host?

Lleech host is killed by random chance executions (sometimes locating the Lleech) plus a small amount of worldbuilding

How does Summoner make that “worse”, and doesn’t the criticism here imply Lleech is an inherently flawed character?

[edgy socket]

It is, but people vary on how much they want it to be totally that -- usually people think the host should be theoretically findable

(in practice this sometimes overcorrects)

In practice scripts have outsiders on them so hosts will never be 100% mechanically identifiable off their own info no matter how goodsided you're running lleech poison

[weak ingot]

nick b: yes, yes, and yes

[coral jungle]

Yeah, lleech has proven a deceptively difficult character to build

[weak ingot]

This interaction is also kinda weird on minuit

[coral jungle]

This is on minuit?

[weak ingot]

so like it's not really even lleechable

it is??

[coral jungle]

It's not.

[weak ingot]

oh wait no it isn't

no I'm saying that this interaction doesn't work with minuitlikes

[coral jungle]

I think I misunderstood what you meant by "weird on Minuit"

[weak ingot]

not that it's on minuit

Miss Communication

[coral jungle]

Yeah, I was thinking no way Quil put summoner on Minuit.

Like it's so odd with the demon suite in general.

Anyway, Minuit also happens to be one of very few good poisoner customs, so we should note that too.

[weak ingot]

i think my very own SLGRTW is wonderful for Poisoner

just ignore the solo Vortox

[coral jungle]

Isn't it basically TB with a vortox instead of an imp?

[weak ingot]

there's a decent amount of SNV Tf

but yes

it's just TB with a different flavour profile

well it doesn't really play like TB

but it's probably just too TB-like to be called SNV

[small quest]

I don't play a ton of summoner scripts and I don't play a ton of leech scripts so: honestly don't know if i've ever seen them interact

I think it'd need to be a very tightly wound script though

[native prairie]

this is actually a pretty powerful combo - it encourages players with characters like Nightwatchman to try to use their abilities after Lleech is potentially summoned, but then the Nightwatchman can be killed off in the night or Summoned or whatever

it needs a good deal of counterbalancing, characters such as Gambler and Acrobat that are good at catching when they are poisoned or when a Lleech has been summoned

[tawny haven]

It makes an already-social Lleech host hunt even more social, since you can pretty trivially host a good player who can't mechanically be detected as the host via Summoner

outside of that... it has the normal Summoner and Lleech problems. shrug

[grand token]

i think it would suck substantially less without summoner tbh

[wary solstice]

I'm sure the combo can be made okay, but it does have quite the few pitfalls.

Host can be even harder to pin down as YSKs or spent one time roles (like Seamstress or Artist) can end up being hosted with no clue as a consequence. But having a script with none of those and still be good sounds... unlikely, from my initial impression.

[grand token]

has summoner-riot been done here?

[grand token]

i disagree, reward potential of catching the summoner to just literally end the game is very enticing and these roles are also better off using their abilities before they are summoned for an info advantage than completely dropping their opg

[frigid flower]

6/2: Pope x Savant

How do games feel with 2 savants, how does info talking about duplicate characters or bluff feel come in and about

Its an interaction on my Midsy-ish script i been working on.

[unborn trellis]

Well it’s pope x an info character

I don’t see…an interaction

[frigid flower]

Information about the pope duplication

Also the idea of having 2 savants isnt crazy?

[unborn trellis]

No?

If it is just make the info not crazy

[subtle wolf]

Having two Savants is more than twice as bad as having one Savant. No thanks

[neon storm]

Gave +1 Thanks to @frigid flower (current: #1627 - 11)

[late ingot]

#1461793146215075861 message

may I recommend

[weak ingot]

raw pope sucks

incoming coda commentary

Pope by itself isn’t very interesting, there’s a few pitfalls it has. first, most characters don’t play well with duplicates due to strength or ST overhead, or just don’t interact at all. second, it just... kills bluffing as a mechanic because evil can claim whatever and be fine.

so like, savant? eh. it doesn’t really interact with that

you can redeem pope though, using the Storm Catcher method

i like the term “Pope blesses the X” for saying pope only duplicates one character specifically

this makes it fully scriptable because you can hone in onto characters that actually work with pope for real, and actually helps bluffing

savant isn’t one of them though

[subtle wolf]

What a delight!😊

[weak ingot]

pope is like storm catcher on a script with random stormcaught

but like. worse

[chilly cedar]

Pope savant is probably not great for a lot of STs

It's great thinking of all the hijinks you can do with Savant info

Actually running several savants is difficult

[tawny haven]

I love the Savant as a character, but I struggle running more than two

There is about where I tap out

[kind berry]

"There are exactly 4 unique townsfolk in the bag/you are the only savant"

[stable parrot]

add vortox and ill think about it

[frigid flower]

Its the favorite part of most of my calculative players!

[native prairie]

Pope and Savant turns a puzzle character that should be on Garden of Sin instead of SnV into even more of a puzzle character that should be on Garden of Sin instead of SnV

https://klipy.com/gifs/thinking-mkm

players trying to solve multiple sets of savant info over several days be like

[frigid flower]

Can you just get one set of savant info that together means 1 thing

Like: There cant be a Xaan 3.

[wary solstice]

You could do something pretty amusing and do "Oops all Savants" and have everyone's Savant information reference what other Savants learn in a giant insane puzzle.

Funny for a single game, just for sake of the bit.
Not great for a serious replay value.

[chilly cedar]

Idk

I think it can be a game

But like for people that enjoy that type of thing

[shy ferry]

not sure if inappropriate or interrupting b/c this isn't a really significant interaction unlike most of the stuff I see here but:

Witch + Cannibal

One is witch, the other is an rather "inoffensive" character that from what I can tell, doesn't have a lot of annoying interactions (outside of maybe Golem in non-yaggababble games)

[fringe mirage]

would you mind addint the date soo

something like "-# 6/2: witch x Cannibal"

[shy ferry]

it's 6/2 right here sure. are we allowed to do two interactions a day

[fringe mirage]

idk

[shy ferry]

I trust I won't be banned if it isn't allowed

6/2 uhh midday ig?: Witch + Cannibal

One is witch. The other is a rather "inoffensive" character that from what I can tell, doesn't have many annoying interactions. Both thrive off of nominations.

[forest spindle]

this thread is the wild west dw 😎 🤠

[subtle wolf]

In my experience, self-noms are slightly more common with Cannibal on script, because on D1 or D2, players nom themselves and say "Feed me to the Cannibal", and purposely keep their role a secret so the Cannibal can be soft-confirmed. A Witch cursed player who does this will not feed the Cannibal.

This is tenuous, because the player can just request that someone else nom them

[shy ferry]

most canni scripts I see have a grim peeker

• A Witch cursed player who does this will not feed the Cannibal.
• This is tenuous, because the player can just request that someone else nom them

This is good right? or was the coffee not strong enough?

however on a side note I've heard cannibal is generaly easy to plug into scripts (maybe not leviathan)

[forest spindle]

I think cannibal can be pretty good on leviathan scripts if you give it strong enough food

Outside of leviathan you would need to be more careful with YSK and once per game characters, too many strong ones might make cannibal too strong

It also has a janky interaction with village idiot where you can get a certain non-VI drunk VI

[shy ferry]

cannibal shugenja I've heard can be rough, cannibal + grandmother seems interesting because if you're too obvious you get sniped, cannibal + knight can also be pretty annoying unless you're showing minions that town would want to execute (but then knight probably sounds like a suboptimal fit), cannibal + VI I assume needs a bootleg

cannibal + slayer seems fine since usually slayer isn't "supposed" to hit the Demon but confirm someone as not the Demon from what I've heard

[subtle wolf]

Cannibal + Wraith + Grandmother🔥

[shy ferry]

cannibal NWM/golem seem really busted/controversial though

[stable parrot]

can i pick two characters for 6/3 😃

6/3 Vizier + Cannibal

wait oops i meant vizier

[obsidian trout]

Vizier is terrible cannibal food

Unless you get barista sobered

:stonks:

[subtle wolf]

Non-interaction

[stable parrot]

i meant in terms of like. cannibal getting the abilities of players the viziers smashes

[late ingot]

It's funny to force-feed the cannibal awful food

the only thing better than a dead sweetheart is a dead sweetheart and a dead canni-sweetheart

[subtle wolf]

Doesn't a strategic town just coordinate around the Vizier and avoid voting willy-nilly

[late ingot]

but I'm a little skeptical on Vizier in general

[native prairie]

can be quite fun to work together as; the entire town cannot stop a Vizier and a Cannibal who want to work together from giving the Cannibal the ability of whichever player they want

however in general this doesn't happen

I actually played this from the cannibal perspective once, during whalebuffet

there was literally one execution the entire game, of a sailor (pushed through by the vizier) who did not die

[unborn trellis]

Do they eh interact

[subtle wolf]

Nothing interacts with Vizier because it doesn't exist because it's an invalid character that I purposely never play or see

This thread is suddenly like a fever dream. Is that a homebrew creation or something?

[weak ingot]

you should visit #hell

the vizier did nothing mechanical all game

[subtle wolf]

I don't have access. Probably a live game channel? I've been banned for years.

[weak ingot]

longtext

it's archived

[subtle wolf]

Bro banned me from accessing the archives because

Nvm

[real heron]

That requires the vizier to be killed by execution anyway lol

[tawny haven]

You'd be surprised how many people vote on things for fun with a Vizier

[boreal nest]

No fun allowed

[grand token]

the vizier pushing or not pushing an exe is technically information too

[viscid hatch]

(sorry for late response to this discussion about "why is this term a thing? why not just call it Atheist?)

the reason this name was coined to begin with was because it was a deliberately distinctive term in an effort to distinguish itself from Atheist as it was run and Atheist as it is intended. Shenanigans Atheist as a name was coined to call out specifically what the Atheist characters dominant style of being run had become. It is important when discussing the Atheist, its history, and its design intentions that these different methodologies have differing names.

Puzzle Atheist is the default way to run the character as intended by the designers of the game, but overtime, the default way to run it quickly morphed into something unrecognisable by stream games showing the silliest takes on the character and speeding up the Atheist's reputation disintegration.

Puzzle Atheist was defined as "Atheist where it is immediately obvious to at most 1 player that there is no Demon in play. The game could be a real game of clocktower with an evil team, but something subtle breaks this. This break can be social or mechanical (and, in most games, is ideally a bit of both)."

And Shenanigans Atheist was "Atheist where it is immediately obvious to at least 2 players that there is no Demon in play. The game has had mechanical impossibilities, overt hints, or just outright announced rule breaks."

Puzzle Atheist thusly covers many different ways of arranging a puzzle, because the actual definition just requires that players are solving a puzzle. What this means, how it is executed, and the exact way you provide a broken puzzle to the players is something that can vary from Storyteller to Storyteller.

Puzzle Atheist in the original essay was not defined as my recommended way of running the character in standard "Killing Demon" environments, like on Star's Edge. It's just that Atheist should be run in a way where it is a solvable obstacle for the good team, either by smart execution strategy or by piecing together the puzzle but finding out it can never truly fit together.

Ultimately the Atheist essay was all about arguing that Puzzle Atheist should be the dominant form of running the character, and is the version that will see players enjoy the character the most longterm. My own players love bringing up Atheist and there's a few who get too zealous about it with new players about, so they're singing praises about a character that is off script and too complicated for a new player to parse.