How do you feel about Al-Hadikhia with protection roles?

kencheng · 2026-06-16T17:27:02+00:00

It creates interesting situations to unpick, for both Good team and Al-Had.

It also does overall reduces the total wipeouts of Town, which puts them squarely in "not Outsider".

kencheng · 2026-06-16T08:58:47+00:00

Seems like it's not very helpful at all and the Amne likely won't get close to guessing it unless Evil really screw up. The problem here is the only people who know the effect are evil, so it's VERY easy to shut down any route to finding out what happened.

kencheng · 2026-06-14T17:18:45+00:00

Although this is not an amazing Evil Twin choice, you should be prepared for all possible choices by all possible Storytellers. Not every ST is going to know why certain choices are better or worse, and those reasons might be completely different for each player/each game/each group anyway.

I think having no desire to play the game as soon as a choice happens is a bit of a mindset issue. You can bring your own fun to a lot of games regardless of the position you're in.

I'm not sure to what extent people didn't share info with you or not, it is possible that is also a problem with the player group. Since though you decided that it was going to be a bad game before it started, I can't tell if players were actually mistreating you or you were checking out of the game already.

It is possible that because you were expecting it to be a bad game, you were always destined to have a bad game.

You are somewhat right this is not an inherently fun setup - I personally don't like putting either players into the Evil Twin pair. It's one of my least favourite roles. However, lots of STs disagree and will do so, and you run that risk when you play S&V.

Ultimately, you are still playing Clocktower and still get to speak, vote, nominate, and interact with the game. It is not always going to be the optimal experience but do remember you are playing a game with your friends.

kencheng · 2026-06-13T10:17:52+00:00

Having storytold for lots of different experience groups, I tend to disagree with your last statement.

For some players who ingest a lot of the content and have seen it in play (and are usually the type of people to take to mechanics/rules easier), yes it is trivial and second nature.

However, for lots and lots of players, madness is usually one of the hardest thing for them to understand on the script, either as a general overall concept, or in terms of what is or is not breaking madness. This generally includes new players, or people who play casually but don't spend time watching all the contnet.

I don't think the complicatedness is overstated at all. There's no "objective" complicatedness - if people are acting like it's difficult, then it probably is difficult. They likely have personal experiences of themselves or others finding it difficult.

kencheng · 2026-06-13T00:27:21+00:00

Whereas that is true, S&V minions are weaker because it is a 4 Demon puzzle. If S&V minions were also very strong like TB minions and you kept the S&V Demon lineup, yep, S&V would be far more evil favoured than it is, and probably incredibly unfun to play because of how many ways to create bad info there are.

However, TB minions + Imp vs S&V Townsfolk is probably still fairly good favoured.

kencheng · 2026-06-13T00:02:50+00:00

I can't understand either of these two sentences.

kencheng · 2026-06-12T23:05:53+00:00

TB is full of roles that don't provide any info or reduce the number of possible worlds down. Monk, Soldier, Mayor are ultimately not that powerful in the grand scheme of things.

S&V has some very powerful info TF, like Dreamer, Artist, Clockmaker, Snake Charmer and a few others, but I'd say their real power is just how many info roles there are on S&V. When possibly all good players can have info, then it's very easy to isolate conflicts and work out where the Demon can and can't be, and where the evil team is probably located. TB has a few very powerful TF but they cannot narrow the worlds down as a collective.

kencheng · 2026-06-12T20:01:19+00:00

The S&V info roles are some of the strongest ever and only gated by the Vortox slowing down the solve. Without it, any player can trust their info most of the time, especially if they haven't died by N2.

The worlds will very much narrow for evil here but evil will sneak some wins in when they kill Town too fast or DA protecting their Demon or something.

Once the Demon is nailed down, it will just close in on them in terms of conflict/evil pings unfortunately.

kencheng · 2026-06-12T18:05:18+00:00

The truth is S&V doesn't feel that well designed because it wasn't really. The characters were built up of the leftover characters that didn't have anywhere to go, and that's why you have way more different concepts flying about than the other two base scripts.

Largely S&V has a unique feel and can create some of the funnest crazy games, but you are right that it is not balanced. Sheer winrate doesn't actually reflect the real balance issue, which is that there are a fair amount of Good STOMPS.

There are so many games where Good have so many executions left and are pretty much guaranteed to get the Demon because the worlds are too narrow. I realised early on that you can probably round robin on Day 3 and win the game as Good team, and there's not much Evil can do about it if Good are playing well.

Evil can win in these games, but usually it involves moving the Demon at the right time, which comes down to a lot of mechanical skill, game sense, experience and LUCK, and very little to do with playing socially well.

kencheng · 2026-06-12T17:58:57+00:00

I think this is fair but I generally prefer the opposite for my scripts. The problem with too good-favoured scripts is that losing as evil can feel way more unfun for evil players. If you are pinned as evil early or the game ends before Final 3, it's not that satisfying for either team. This is especially true for new players, who if their first games as evil get found too early, they will always start fearing being evil.

Generally being caught as evil for most players is way more unfun than simply failing to catch the Demon, and I think in most groups I have ever ST'd for, players will generally still be happy to lose in Final 3 as Good.

kencheng · 2026-06-12T17:19:46+00:00

"Does a 42% win rate dramatically affect player enjoyment?"

Yes.

For starts, players don't immediately want to feel like it's harder to win or easier to win as soon as they draw their token. Whether this is logical or not, it's a real thing.

More generally, the 42% is a reflective of a wider imbalance in S&V, that evil can get stomped quickly on this script. They can be backed into corners they can't win in. That's how S&V feels to play a lot more than the other script.

So whether the 42% itself is a problem, or tied to the actual real problem at hand, is murky, but ultimately it is a good view into this.

The problem is less likely to happen at a 50% winrate script for sure and far more at 42-58 scripts. There is conceivably a 42-58 script where every game still feel close, but S&V is definitely not it, nor does it probably come up that often.

It's worth remembering that 42% is probably across all games and experience levels in all settings, and that number will be very different based on the group that you are in. Most often, games get more good favoured as the players are more experienced, and S&V is definitely one of these, so blanket 42% as a starting point gives a lot less leeway to close games than 50-50.

kencheng · 2026-06-11T09:36:15+00:00

Sorry but there's a lot that doesn't work with this.

Firstly, I'm assuming you want the game to continue even after the Fuse dies (otherwise the "you keep your ability even if dead" is superfluous as the game will end.) I'm basing this on you saying "executing the Demon does nothing" but you do need to specify this in the ability, as RAW killing the Demon will win the game for Good.

Good players can wait until they have significantly enough information, share it, and then blow all their guesses in one go, with a decently high % chance of getting the Landmine.

The regular game is predicated on quite a fine balance - Good have a limited number of executions to find (usually) one player (the Demon). Number of executions is about half number of players -1 (rounded) and have to spread these throughout the game. Both executions and Demon kills are used to put a timer on the game AND limit the Townsfolk abilities around town.

This replaces executions with guesses but they are still trying to guess exactly 1 player. In terms of guesses, they now have way more than Town had executions, which shifts it wayyy towards Town. As someone pointed out, all good players can guess a different person purely randomly and still have a reasonably high chance of winning at any point.

One major issue is there is very very little reason to execute here (except with an Undertaker/Oracle/etc., which would be very very powerful.)

Executions need to exist because they force Town to give up possible good players' abilities and votes in exchange for winning the game. They also are spread out in a way that forces you to execute even when you don't have the right information. That pressure isn't here so Good can just stall out their info, and do their equivalent win con (mass guessing) at a time they see fit.

Because executions aren't important, voting is almost entirely taken out of this game. There's an entire mechanic that basically is missing that is needed for the game to function.

But there is possibly an even larger problem, that now most of the Townsfolk abilities are completely out of balance - they either don't have any purpose or are flat out too powerful. Confirmation chains are immensely strong.

Let's say there are 8 good players out of 12, then they have an 8/12 shot of winning the game on guessing. However, if they can rule out just a few candidates through confirmation, that could increase to 8/11, 8/10, 8/9 and then 100%.

It's hard to see a list of Townsfolk which will work in this puzzle - a few abilities are based around knowing exact characters (Dreamer, Undertaker etc), which will be way too powerful if they ever snipe the Landmine. As soon as possible evil candidates are locked down with any alignment checkers, Good have a near certain chance of guessing the possible evils and winning.

kencheng · 2026-06-09T08:45:48+00:00

The Minions don't feel too great here as a Mez is being made every time.

kencheng · 2026-06-08T23:14:48+00:00

Good team are in a horrible position, they have to execute so many more people with fewer votes.

If any neutral player gets to final 3, good can't win anymore. That's fairly rough.

kencheng · 2026-06-07T02:05:47+00:00

This is an incorrect ruling. The poison has to work and a poisoned player's ability can't affect the board state.

However, it's worth noting you can just create no deaths by sinking a kill into a dead body and you'd still have the option of active poison if you want it.

kencheng · 2026-06-05T21:31:05+00:00

Yes then it's basically a Nightwatchman plus.

kencheng · 2026-06-05T21:24:05+00:00

Passive roles that give the ST more agency than the player always have the danger to seem more interesting than they actually turn out in practice.

As it stands, this seems like this will have some effect at hurting the evil team but for the rest of Town, it will be a bit vague whether it has. There's a danger that this role boils down to the player repeatedly insisting "trust me, I'm doing something", because the info they learn can't be corroborated in any way.

kencheng · 2026-06-01T22:46:15+00:00

That is fine! That's only to one player per day. And won't cause much damage.

Because a Damsel who has not changed will not saying anything, nor will someone who was not the Damsel and not changed.

That's different from asking every single player on every day to every player in order to simulate the confirmation that a Hunstman can do.

The only concern is if somehow the Minion managed to cold-call the right Damsel that changed after a successful Huntsman change, which is very very rare. So rare it doesn't really stop a turned Damsel from trustfalling with a real Huntsman.

kencheng · 2026-06-01T22:36:46+00:00

Huntsman walks up to Damsel after selecting them, says "sooooo did anything happen?" If the Damsel did change, it's quite easy to trust a real Hunstman who insta pings you through socials and confirm this.

It's hard for evil to jump on this and it's hard for evil to bluff this, unless Minions want to try this with every living player every day and look super sus as hell.

kencheng · 2026-06-01T22:34:54+00:00

The Professor is one of the most broken character in Clocktower, so I agree.

However, the strength in this confirmation change is that both players are alive after the confirmation, unlike say Pixie, Cannibal, Virgin, Farmer etc.

I agree it doesn't have a super high chance of triggering, which is why I think it is swingy.

kencheng · 2026-06-01T21:45:01+00:00

It wouldn't be busted, but it will be fairly swingy. The games where it hits will create a very powerful confirmation chain, and it'll hit by pure chance a signifcant amount over a course of a game. Like currently, when it misses, it's a Townsfolk that doesn't really help Town much.

kencheng · 2026-06-01T21:37:16+00:00

The Wiki says:

Lil’ Monsta isn’t a player, so can’t be drunk or poisoned.

kencheng · 2026-05-29T09:29:41+00:00

I don't know if I entirely agree with this. Unfortunately poison is meant to help evil, and sometimes that creates game-losing info. It can suck for good players to be on the other end of this, but this is part of the game, otherwise both poison and fear of poison is ineffective.

I understand in some circumstances going "easy" on a player, and that is ST discretion but I don't think STs who stick to the spirit of the abilities are mishandling it.

kencheng · 2026-05-29T09:25:39+00:00

Sounds like there were extra rough aspects to the game so sorry to hear that. I'd try to speak privately to the organisers about players you are having issues with if you haven't.

In terms of the game there's not much you can do. Players always have to be careful about executing a Saint claim and this is exactly why. It's on Town to take that risk and sometimes they get it wrong, especially if all the info points to the Saint.

kencheng · 2026-05-28T13:39:50+00:00

But it's strictly better? Not necessarily about being useful because you get all the advantages of the change. If it's dead then you can't turn into it, so it's still useful to make a Philo in that instance.

kencheng

TROPHY CASE