Blood on the Clocktower: my favourite game I've never played

Forgot to mention another key fix, because I'm so used to it now: when a player dies, their role is not revealed, so they can still talk and be part of the game - all they lose is their ability and some voting rights.
Here's a favourite No Rolls Barred BOTC game: • Panic Has A New Face |...
On the official channel, I think the Village Idiot showcase is as good a starting point as any: • Experimental Character...
And here's Noobs on the Gooftower: • Troubles Are Brewing (...

[@matthewdukes511]

To give you some context for how big the game is, there are approximately 70-ish places in the UK running regular games. At my local games we had enough players this weekend to run 2 simultaneous games of 15 players each. They also have a bunch of accessibility functions in that game. The "fabled" characters allow the storyteller to do things such as protect new players (Angel), stop experienced players from overtaking a game with mainly new players (Buddhist) and even has a character to pair up players that feel uncomfortable lying to each other or that need extra accommodations to be able to play the game at all, such as blindness, deafness or language differences (Revolutionary). With regards to game design, clocktower is a fascinating object as there is a huge repository of scripts that are all player created and tested (and most of them work well, but this can obviously vary wildly). There are also a whole group of community designed games with custom rules such as "blind" games (where nobody knows their role or alignment and just gets told to do an action) or the "oops all amnesiacs" game which still follows the regular rules of alignment and character type, but nobody knows what their ability is, and has the amnesiac's guessing ability. On top of that, you have people constantly designing and testing "homebrew" characters, which are completely unofficial but still follow the basic clocktower rules. The best designed one of these Imo is "fall of Rome" but there are homebrews themed around things such as Barbie, Alice in wonderland and Dune among others. So, even if you don't want to play (even though I would recommend giving it a try at least once just to see how different it feels to play compared to watching) I hope that you keep an eye on it as there is so much cool stuff happening around that game from a design perspective.

[@AlastairGames]

thanks for letting me know about it, it's entertainting to watch even though I don't like actually playing them myself

[@charlesr456]

It’s not uncommon to find people who love storytelling but hate playing due to the reasons you mentioned.

[@3thanguy7]

i absolutely fell down the clocktower rabbit hole maybe a year and a half ago and man. it's just so good

[@3thanguy7]

i will say having now actually finished watching the video lol - you may always have to lie (since if you're evil, you can't realistically out that, so if that's not your style, no worries), but it's rarely the case that you have to convince someone you're good from social plays alone. being able to garner trust by collecting and interpreting information from other players is a *very* important clocktower skill, and it's rarely the case that proving whether or not you are good is purely because "you acted more good than someone else" no shame on just watchin the good stuff though, it's how i got into it. part of what makes the game so appealing is that every game has its own unique narrative

[@Asher535]

Having just got out of a few very very good games of clock tower I'm adding this vid to my watch list, mostly because my brain is still absolutely fried.

[@latte4159]

That No Rolls Barred game was SUCH a treat to watch, I'm so glad you made a video about this!

[@vfigplays]

thank you for this! i can totally see how this design is up your alley. the way the many abilities interact, with spiky edge cases reminds me so much of some of the wild chaos that ensued in heat signature (perhaps my favourite being a kidnap target’s ship being blown apart by cannon fire before i docked with it, just happening to suck the target alive out into space, and me just barely managing to yoink them before they asphyxiated) i had never heard of BotC before (social deduction games being generally off my radar after a couple very unfun werewolf games). with the right group of people, this would be a lot of fun. regardless, i just binged the whole NRB clocktower videos on youtube, and theres some great entertainment there.

[@vfigplays]

followup now that i am rewatching your video now knowing more about the game: the amnesiac is my *least* favourite character-at least, in the way ben burns seems to do it. he creates abilities that have many logical components, e.g. (a) each night choose a player, you get told a number (b) that is how many of that player’s neighbours (c) is currently affected by (d) a madness-related ability. the complexity of this (though some have been three components rather than four) makes it hard to use effectively when you already know the entire rule, comparable to many of the normal character abilities. but when you dont know the rule, you get little to no feedback on its operation; you have to incrementally guess towards it in a very wide search space (because there are so many facets to the game mechanics); with typically three to four guesses at maximum; and at the end of that-*if* you managed to understand it-you have an average- or slightly higher than average-powered ability just as the game reaches the tipping point where most abilities dont matter anymore, or at least not nearly so much as your communication skills and your web of trust. but of course, you spent a good deal of those four days trying to figure out what your ability is instead of establishing that web of trust! so you end up having done little either way for your team, focused more on a puzzle than the key questions of who is which character and who is trustworthy, and will not get an enticing ability as a reward even if you manage to figure it out in time. to me, thats a recipe for boredom and frustration. of course, the NRB sessions arent the only way the amnesiac can be played, but it is striking to me that in all of them its effect was to remove a player from the game. an amnesiac could (and probably should) enlist several players to help in figuring out their ability, to hopefully figure it out faster. and a savvy amnesiac would ask questions that are better at narrowing scope than the NRB examples did. and maybe ben’s design sense is attuned more to experienced riddle-solvers than otherwise. i dont know. but as exemplified in these games it doesnt fit right to me. i would like to see ken playing amnesiac, as it seems a more apt fit for both his relative levels of social and deductive skills.

[@ikesau]

just got back from a walk to get breakfast, sat down and wondered "i wonder if tom's put out a video recently?" lovely serendipity! i really enjoy your analysis and enthusiasm : )

[@kamehamegamer]

Thanks for the introduction to this Tom! Really fascinating mechanics

[@DasGanon]

Yes but consider: Egg. (Rejoice!) But yeah I absolutely love watching the official TPI streams as well as NRB and Patters. It's soooo gooooood

[@DasGanon]

Actually just got onto your mention of those two (as well as goofs). On the Adam thing he's gone (probably for good) and TPI are back to work on the live season 2 this month. The only question is if Carley (who says Adam was being... Creepy) is also coming back or if she's gone too. (I hope not, she's great!)

[@DasGanon]

21:47 ohhhhh yeah that's the Jon Leviathan game with Blair as the politician isn't it. That game is *wild*

[@JoshIsMerry]

Gonna watch this later tonight as I'm literally running a game of clocktower online right now, if you (or anyone) happen to fancy jumping in I'm running beginner friendly sessions tonight and every few days, if it's of interest I can drop a link

[@ShaunCheah]

KZbin is not the friendliest with links (comments with them may not appear at all to others), but could you perhaps share what we might search to find this thing of yours?

[@JoshIsMerry]

@@ShaunCheahits mostly been discord servers till now, but the official app has just added a lobby system so you can look for open beginner games! Mine are usually called #chill. If you google blood on the clocktower online you should find it. There's 2 apps, the official app requires you to make a free account, the unofficial app doesn;t but also does not have lobbies or voip integrated

[@lordzeolite]

This is a cross over i would have never expected. Clocktower depends a lot on the group. Some groups are very cahotic and just playing to make chaos happen. Some try to solve the puzzle the best they can. Others go by social reads to figure out the game. There is no correct way to play. And most of the time people wont pressure you into doing things you dont want to even if it means they lose the game. Finding the right group is the key.

[@bigmclargehuge8219]

Well just based on the title, I think I'm gonna like this video, as I'm in the same boat. Don't know for sure I'd want to play a lot but I love watching and would love to try at least once!

[@lordkandar]

The unofficial Discord can definitely be a blast. You might want to consider trying a game on it. IRL is better but online games can give you a taste of the game. As the good team, you definitely have to go for a trust fall at least for a while and share what info you have. If people are rallying against you can say it's a bad execution or ask people to check you and kill you later. I just played a game where I was a good twin and had a lot of people calling for my death day 1 and that's how I managed to survive till good won.

[@ShinoSarna]

"Normal innocent people have nothing to do" is a common problem in social deduction games. I mean, that's the reason why Among Us has crewmates do bunch of random minigames to pass the time.

[@JamesDenholm]

Well, Among Us uses those more as the overall structure of the "night phrase" of the game. The minigames are The Reason to get out there and split up, after all.

[@ShinoSarna]

​@@JamesDenholmYeah but they barely factor into actually finding out who is the impostor. Minigames themselves are mostly to kill time.

[@adt4864]

​@@ShinoSarnayou still couldn't take them out of the game though because they put pressure on the imposter to kill and pressure on the players to split

[@rich_in_paradise]

I also can't stand playing social deduction games and I hadn't really thought about why before, but I think it's probably the same as you. I cannot tell a lie.

[@rich_in_paradise]

My brother on the other hand...

[@zeedar412]

Edit: don't get me wrong, this game sounds amazing, but... You really put your finger on why I don't like social deduction games. Really, the part about having to defend yourself when you are telling the truth is painful. Also getting arbitrarily eliminated just sucks. 3-hour long games with elimination mechanics, that can remove you from the game like 10 minutes in... no thank you.

[@nitrorev]

For Werewolf, I hear your complaint, but the whole point of the game is that death is explicitly not elimination. Clocktower isn't about surviving, it's about finding the demon before it's too late. In clocktower when a good player is nominated, they often just state their case and conclude with "I've used my ability so you can kill me if you want" because it doesn't matter that much if certain characters die. You still get to play and puzzle out the game and potentially win. That's why it's such an improvement on the Werewolf formula.

[@lordzeolite]

Some characters want to die as well. So you can control the negative affect. I also believe a good player Willing to die makes their info more believable. Generally it's okay to die in clocktower as more people are willing to tell you the truth and use you as a way to spread information. It really depends on the group you Play with

[@ralphtedesco7289]

If you die in clocktower. You still play the game and talk, and other players can confirm your on the money. And good. So. No harm no foul :)

[@REXanadu]

Why is the audio so low?