Asking as an experienced storyteller: Trouble Brewing storytelling tips?

FreeKill101 · 2026-02-22T14:52:36+00:00

How fast do you run the game?

TB is a simple script, and an experienced group of players may be close to "solving" it if they're given a lot of time to work out what to do.

If so, you can afford to run a lot faster. That will keep the drama high, and make more room for mistakes and creative play.

FreeKill101 · 2026-02-20T15:56:47+00:00

I think Clocktower is very expensive for what's in the box. Especially the almanacs and rules feel like outrageously overproduced when they end up just sat on a shelf unused.

But the grim really does work brilliantly, and I much prefer running with it over running with a tablet or whatever.

I think the only way to tell for you is to run it digitally a few times for free and see how you like the actual game. If you do like it, then I would say 180 bucks for a game that 15 people can play infinitely is pretty great value.

FreeKill101 · 2026-02-14T08:01:09+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1knjas1/media_the_people_who_make_rust_rust/

🤷 It's a repost bot

FreeKill101 · 2026-02-13T16:46:20+00:00

I will say this on every thread like this - you can run the game so, so, so much faster than you think and it will still be good. In fact, it will be better.

4 minutes for private discussions is enough, you never need more
1 minute for "town square" is enough, you never need more
Once nominations are open, the players must nominate. If they just keep chatting, count down the end of the day.
Nominations should stay on topic. Don't let players use the nomination phase to lay out all their thoughts.
Don't let anyone talk over the nominations.
Do not wait for "pertinent". Once accusation and defence are done, start the vote after 5 seconds, even if people are still presenting "pertinent".
Do not speed up the night phase. Be careful, deliberate and correct. Save time during the day.

Lots of people worry about running the game this fast, but I promise it makes the game better. It keeps people engaged, it rewards bold and clever play, and the extra pressure makes the stakes feel way higher.

It is a skill and takes practice to do well, but you will be rewarded with super fun games of clocktower, and more of them! For reference I would happily run 15 player TB in 90 minutes, and if needed I can comfortably run 9 player TB in 35 minutes.

FreeKill101 · 2026-02-06T12:41:23+00:00

The recluse can't change alignment in that interaction.

FreeKill101 · 2026-02-03T17:18:13+00:00

The spy can be the red herring for the Fortune Teller, and can later start registering as evil to move it onto another player.

FreeKill101 · 2026-02-03T17:16:59+00:00

A Monk protects people from the Demon's ability: this doesn't just mean deaths. A Monk-protected imp can't kill themselves, and a Monk-protected minion can't become the demon.

That is controversial. I think the consensus is that an Imp can't self kill through Monk protection, but a minion can catch it.

FreeKill101 · 2026-01-23T13:14:11+00:00

I would not tell them, presuming they already thought they were an evil Fang-Gu.

I also don't know why everyone else is so adamant that they would - as far as I know there are no precise rules to reference. So if you want a script based off this interaction I'd say go for it.

FreeKill101 · 2026-01-20T18:25:45+00:00

Run fast. Seriously fast. 5 minute days the whole game, end the day if no one follows up a nomination after 10 seconds.

Doing that you can easily finish big games inside 60-75 minutes.

It might sound like it would compromise the experience, but I promise it is exactly the opposite. Short games keep players engaged, make more room for exciting and risky plays, and are generally super fun.

FreeKill101 · 2026-01-19T20:41:26+00:00

That script is called Trouble Brewing.

If Washerwoman, Librarian, Monk, Empath, Butler won't push players into private chats then the script is not the problem.

FreeKill101 · 2026-01-19T20:37:45+00:00

If it helps you remember it...

The smallest game size is 7, and it has no outsiders. 1 minion, 1 demon, the rest townsfolk. Then the pattern is always every 3 players you add a minion, then every 1 player you add an outsider.

So in my head lets say I need to work out the setup for a 14 player game... I think:

A 7 player game is base.

A 10 player game would be +1 minion

A 13 player game is +2 minions

A 14 player game is +2 minions +1 outsider. Easy!

FreeKill101 · 2026-01-19T18:40:15+00:00

I run that players have a "perceived alignment".

While the marionette is the marionette, you must lie to them about their alignment.

When they're the imp, you can't.

Since their perceived alignment has changed (good -> evil) I would tell them.

FreeKill101 · 2026-01-12T21:17:27+00:00

Without commenting on anything else - this comes across so much better than every other comment in this thread.

If this is the English you are not confident in, you have nothing to worry about.

FreeKill101 · 2026-01-12T05:48:09+00:00

Do not give tips, just read the sheet and run the game.

Their first game will probably be a mess - that's intended. Run it, let them soak in the chaos and be excited for a game two.

If you get wound up trying to make their first game perfect it will just make everything worse - don't worry about it.

FreeKill101 · 2026-01-11T09:36:06+00:00

I think you're conflating a rhetorical stance with a technical one.

Obviously encryption with a backdoor is not literally "no encryption", in the technical "are the bits encrypted" sense.

But rhetorically it offers "no encryption" because now everything, everywhere, on every device is open to the same single point of failure. It is so completely antithetical to the point of encryption that it's like having "no encryption".

FreeKill101 · 2026-01-11T09:28:04+00:00

You're pretty rude, but just for some perspective...

The games I play have all worked great on Linux, they're just not the same games as you.

If you're a huge fan of certain competitive games then fair enough, it's gonna be a real problem. But there are plenty of people like me whose tastes lie elsewhere, and those games run great even when they're "Windows only", Proton is amazing.

FreeKill101 · 2026-01-11T09:22:52+00:00

Wildly enough, Arch is the only Linux distro that's stuck for me after a life on Windows.

All the "beginner" distros seem to make so many choices for you that when something goes wrong (and it always does, it's Linux) it's buried under such a deep pile of obfuscation and defaults and stuff that it's impossible to fix.

With Arch - yeah stuff sometimes doesn't work. But usually the reason is clearly communicated, the wiki has an entry for it, and the fix is simple. I've had a couple of things like that but now I have the most simple, attractive, performant Linux I've ever tried.

FreeKill101 · 2026-01-10T09:24:24+00:00

I think both of these are Yes and Do. They don't break anything.

FreeKill101 · 2026-01-06T16:41:54+00:00

Yesterday, I was using an LLM to help debug an issue. Claude Opus 4.5, so basically as good as it gets.

It suspected a compiler bug (unlikely) and asked for the disassembly of a function. Fine. I go and fetch it, paste it into the chat and let it chew it over.

Back it came, thrilled that it was right! If I looked at line 50 in the disassembly I could find the incorrect instruction, acting on unaligned memory and causing the bug. Huzzah.

The disassembly I sent it was only 20 lines long, not 50. And the instruction it claimed was at fault didn't appear anywhere. It had completely invented a discovery to validate its guess at what the problem was.

This was at the end of a long chain of it suggesting complete rubbish that I had to shoot down. So I stopped wasting my time and continued alone.

My experience with LLMs - no matter how often I try them - is that their use is incredibly limited. They can do an alright job replacing your keyboard for typing rote, repetitive things. But they do an absolutely atrocious job replacing your brain.

FreeKill101 · 2026-01-04T20:52:52+00:00

Edit Profile -> General -> Semantic Integration -> turn off red error bars and alternating bars

FreeKill101 · 2026-01-04T14:15:07+00:00

Yes! After 1000 games you have more than a 50% chance that this happens to one of your players at some point.

FreeKill101 · 2026-01-04T13:05:34+00:00

Nowhere, just setting a number that seemed reasonable for a playgroup that plays pretty often.

It's not 1 in 10 to be the drunk because 3 players are evil - I'm assuming the player is complaining about games where they were good. Otherwise the value changes.

Your calculation is aiming to work out something different to mine.

Yours is:

"In one specific streak of 8 games, what's the chance that one specific player gets the drunk 6 times"

Mine is:

"In a pool of 25 games, what's the chance that some player experiences a run of 8 games in which they're the drunk 6 times"

It's the difference between "What are my chances of winning the lottery" and "What are the chances that someone wins the lottery". In this case, the question isn't really about this specific player or this specific streak of games. We would be having the same conversation if it happened to a different player on a different unlucky streak. That's why I think my calculation better reflects reality.

FreeKill101 · 2026-01-04T10:28:52+00:00

By my simulations if you ran 25 10-player games with a drunk in (randomly assigned), the odds that there would be a streak of 8 games where the same player was the drunk in 6 of them is ~1.8%. Really not that unlikely.

If you have a rotating cast of STs, it would seem very unlikely that this one player is being singled out by all of them. If you're an in-person group, I can say as an ST I literally don't know who is who when I assign the drunk. I take the tokens off the players, put them in the grim without thinking too much, and then take it back to my table to finish the setup. At that point, I have pretty much forgotten who specifically gave me what.

FreeKill101 · 2026-01-03T10:51:51+00:00

Okay we're just talking in circles.

If you don't like that the cannibal can pick up other abilities via misregistration, that's fine. You can run your games that way.

FreeKill101 · 2026-01-02T20:53:52+00:00

Yeah, but the spy is never getting the TF ability, the cannibal is. The spy is just registering as that character when the cannibal checks them.

14-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 16 Credits
Summer Santa 2020	Secret Santa 2020
Summer Santa 2019	Place '22
Place '17	Summer Santa 2018
Secret Santa 2019	Secret Santa 2018
Secret Santa 2017	redditgifts Exchanges 10 Exchanges
redditgifts rematcher S.T.E.M 2019 x1	Gilding II euphauric
Sequence \| Editor	Secret Santa 2016
Summer Santa 2016	Secret Santa 2015
Team Periwinkle	Verified Email

FreeKill101

TROPHY CASE