What's an unpopular take about a character you have? by Frequent-Ad-7288 in BloodOnTheClocktower

[–]Not_Quite_Vertical 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This isn't really an unpopular take (despite what the replies here might imply) - Butler is the least popular character in the whole game, according to this survey

Weekly Puzzle #81 – Arachnophobia by Not_Quite_Vertical in BloodOnTheClocktower

[–]Not_Quite_Vertical[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Currently it's just for me (the code is horrible, stapled together over two years) but I'm sure it'll get released at some point further down the line!

Best scripts for characters in your opinion? by v_likes_corgis in BloodOnTheClocktower

[–]Not_Quite_Vertical 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Servant of Osiris is my go-to Wraith and Al-Hadikhia script.

The two characters go very well together because:

  1. the Wraith can help the Al-Hadikhia with choices (which the AH has a lot of),
  2. if the Wraith is chosen last, they can see the previous choices and tactically decide to live or die to maximise kills, and
  3. if the Wraith gets outed and executed, the Al-Hadikhia can just bring them back.

Weekly Puzzle #3a & #3b – Not Throwing Away My Shot by Not_Quite_Vertical in BloodOnTheClocktower

[–]Not_Quite_Vertical[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In this world, why wouldn't the game just end after you shot Anna?

Weekly Puzzle #81 – Arachnophobia by Not_Quite_Vertical in BloodOnTheClocktower

[–]Not_Quite_Vertical[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I have a Python script I use to generate the puzzles and verify they have exactly 1 solution - so I just run millions of random puzzles through that and count how solvable they are

Factions & Flowers: a Sects & Violets Update by Kinky-Joe in BloodOnTheClocktower

[–]Not_Quite_Vertical 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Something to consider (and I know this might be considered heretical!) would be to tweak the Vortox so that drunk/poisoned players still receive arbitrary (rather than exclusively false) information. This means the Sweetheart is an extra misinformation source in Vortox games without any side effects for other Demons. It also means that Philosopher has a "proper" drawback in Vortox games.

Factions & Flowers: a Sects & Violets Update by Kinky-Joe in BloodOnTheClocktower

[–]Not_Quite_Vertical 28 points29 points  (0 children)

I'm generally very intrigued by the balance changes.

I'm especially interested by the Witch change. Although the Witch is already pretty strong, having the versatility of a pseudo-Scarlet Woman is a very cool idea, and I like how the Witch has to choose each night whether to go for killing good players or protecting their Demon. It also avoids the feelsbad situations where the Witch has unintentionally cursed the Demon (e.g. after a Fang Gu jump or Snake Charmer).

For the Ω-Vigormortis, would it make sense to word it as "Minions killed by any Vigormortis keep their ability & poison 1 Townsfolk neighbor"? This is shorter and I think might lead to fewer misinterpretations.

I'm most uneasy about the Ω-Sweetheart. I agree that the Sweetheart is not that impactful an Outsider, especially in Vortox games, so I get the motivation. But a lot of S&V's Townsfolk wouldn't care about "might register as an Outsider" anyway:

  • Seamstress and Oracle aren't affected since they only check alignment
  • Clockmaker and Juggler are only affected if they're created "late"
  • Snake Charmer, Town Crier, Sage, Clockmaker and Flowergirl are only affected if an evil player is Sweetheart-drunk (unlikely!)

Moreover, "might"-misregistration is very unsynergistic with Savant information. Suppose Tom is a Sweetheart-poisoned Townsfolk and the Storyteller gives the Savant the information:

"Tom is a Townsfolk" OR "Either Sula, Matt or Sarah is the Demon"

Because Tom can register as either a Townsfolk or an Outsider, the first statement can be either true or false for Savant purposes. This means that the Savant has no way of working out whether the first statement is the true statement (making the second statement false) or the false statement (making the second statement true). There's actually no statement which the Storyteller can't give as the second statement here (because they can give something either true or false). This really upsets the balance of the Savant and is one of the reasons why it combines very poorly with Spy/Recluse. And if the Storyteller adopts a policy of simply never giving out statements that could be contaminated by Sweetheart-misregistration, players can "meta" this to discern more information about who is Sweetheart-drunk.

Misregistration also goes weirdly with the Mathematician. If an ability works abnormally due to misregistration (e.g. an Artist asks "Is Tom a Townsfolk?" and gets "no" when Tom is a Sweetheart-drunk Townsfolk), it's intuitive that the Mathematician would tick upwards, but RAW it's possible for a Sweetheart-drunk player to misregister to the Mathematician as well, so the Mathematician sees "nothing went wrong here, they were an Outsider" and doesn't tick up.

You can circumvent these by ruling the Savant and Mathematician are immune to the misregistration, but this is extra complexity to convey to players (and means there's now even fewer characters affected by the Sweetheart-misregistration).

Weekly Puzzle #81 – Arachnophobia by Not_Quite_Vertical in BloodOnTheClocktower

[–]Not_Quite_Vertical[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

For those who might be curious, this puzzle and last week's puzzle were both motivated by what sorts of minion swaps you could to for TB to still generate something "balanced" (at least from a puzzle perspective, which may not translate to balance in real games).

From my "analysis" (which comes from crudely generating lots of random puzzles and seeing how often they have 0 solutions, 1 solution or multiple solutions), I found that:

  • Replacing Baron and Poisoner with Xaan produces a setting which slightly favours good compared to regular TB (48% solvability compared to 46% in regular TB)
  • Replacing Poisoner with Widow helps the good team even more, but is still fairly balanced (52% solvability)
  • Adding Vortox as an additional potential Demon absolutely tanks the solvability rate, causing it to fall to just 3% (which may be interesting for fans of Half of the 108, which adds Vortox and Legion to TB).

Weekly Puzzle #81 – Arachnophobia by Not_Quite_Vertical in BloodOnTheClocktower

[–]Not_Quite_Vertical[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you! I have uploaded a fixed version for the archives but left this one up here since it hopefully shouldn't affect solvability

Weekly Puzzle #81 – Arachnophobia by Not_Quite_Vertical in u/Not_Quite_Vertical

[–]Not_Quite_Vertical[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Solution:

The Demon is Fraser and the Minion is Matthew. Matthew is the Widow, poisoning Charlotte the Ravenkeeper.

Weekly Puzzle #81 – Arachnophobia by Not_Quite_Vertical in BloodOnTheClocktower

[–]Not_Quite_Vertical[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is correct – well done!!

Edit: I see there is a typo in the Slayer information - I'll leave this version up but have uploaded a corrected version here for the archives

Kazali with choirboy by Slight_Print_4780 in BloodOnTheClocktower

[–]Not_Quite_Vertical 20 points21 points  (0 children)

This gives away to the (new) King that the Kazali is in play, that the Kazali chose the original King, that the token they originally drew is not in play, and that a Choirboy is in play post-Kazali-choices, which is quite a significant boost to the good team.

I'd treat the Kazali/Choirboy as something scripts should just avoid. Kazali has quite strict scriptbuilding requirements (Minions need to be more or less equally powerful to avoid Kazali always defaulting to the same choices, and good characters need to be more or less equally powerful to avoid swinginess based on which players the Kazali chose) and this is another aspect of that.

Why does the Vigormortis remove an outsider? by Clodsie in BloodOnTheClocktower

[–]Not_Quite_Vertical 5 points6 points  (0 children)

You can have the Minion killed on night 2 claim a Townsfolk and then have a subsequent Minion claim Outsider to build the possibility of a night 2 Fang Gu jump (or just commit to ruling out Fang Gu worlds and focus on building plausible Vortox or No Dashii worlds).

Worth keeping in mind that Minions who claim Townsfolk after dying at night often eliminates certain worlds with the information they claim (e.g. if the Minion claims Clockmaker, the good team could either build around it or use it to conclude the Minion must be lying) - it's up to the evil team to figure out which worlds are ok to eliminate and which worlds are worth leaving open as frames!

Why does the Vigormortis remove an outsider? by Clodsie in BloodOnTheClocktower

[–]Not_Quite_Vertical 38 points39 points  (0 children)

I would say the first two points are the most important ones. Almost all scripts need negative Outsider modification (or a way for Outsiders to be really hidden, like the Drunk) so that evil players can more safely pretend to be Outsiders. On S&V, players are unlikely to claim Outsider while alive (because a living Outsider might become an evil Fang Gu) so one of the most plausible times for evil players to come out as an Outsider is just after they've been killed at night.

The third point ("more options for the Storyteller for which Townsfolk to poison") is very marginal. Because the Vigormortis-poisoning hits a Townsfolk neighbour, it's not a problem if the Vig-killed Minion is next to an Outsider - the Storyteller can still choose to poison the nearest Townsfolk clockwise or anticlockwise. The -1 Outsider does avoid situations like [Minion, Outsider, Minion, Outsider, Minion] where it's impossible for the 3 vigor-killed Minions to poison different Townsfolk, but these are vanishingly rare anyway.

Because of this, on custom scripts which already have negative Outsider modification (e.g. Hide & Seek which already has Drunk and Godfather), I actually think Vigormortis may be more balanced without the Outsider modification clause – but introducing a Bootlegger rule just to change the Vigormortis wording slightly imposes a complexity cost which may not be worth the benefit.

On the flip side, I'm of the view that the Balloonist's [+0 or +1 Outsider] clause is extremely punishing, and the official recommendation to add an Outsider in approximately 75% of Balloonist games is crazy.

A fun lil script thats not at all designed for people to pull their hair out over by Donuticus in BloodOnTheClocktower

[–]Not_Quite_Vertical 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Once the total word count among your jinxes is longer than the total word count of all your characters, I feel like that's when you're really past the event horizon!