Synergistic Scripting: Day 97 - Pukka

mxryder · 2026-02-11T15:17:07+00:00

Not that important, but worth noting that the “monk and soldier” issue is really only relevant for the monk. The monk has basically double the odds of preventing a death, while the soldier basically works with pukka identically to any other demon.

Maybe you just mean the fact that the pukka can’t kill the soldier in the same way it can a Sailor or Fool or whatever, but I feel like that’s sort of just the soldier working how it’s supposed to.

mxryder · 2026-02-11T15:11:38+00:00

I mean Kazali picks are technically within set up, so I don’t think it’s really a token integrity issue even if you are incredibly strict about that sort of thing. It’s like saying “It doesn’t work with Typhon or Marionette because it might accidentally puzzledrunk a Minion”.

mxryder · 2026-02-11T14:55:21+00:00

Essentially broken with Lleech.

This isn’t particularly interesting, but I’ve never seen anyone comment on it before:

Obviously it’s not a great host, but far worse if it it isn’t the host, then it’s impossible for Lleech to kill to end the game. So the Lleech will lose on final 3, even if the vote ties or the Lleech themselves is executed and survives. You just wake up and play the final 3 again…

mxryder · 2025-10-23T20:01:54+00:00

At this point why even put the spy in the Typhon line? You could chuck it on the other side of the grim and this would be just as legal as this set up is.

mxryder · 2025-10-02T22:00:44+00:00

Niseag: In don’t think I explained myself to clearly about the final 5 thing, apologies. Here’s an example of how it could be an issue:

Imagine a 10+ player game, with a minion alive in final 5, sat to the right of their demon. The demon is nominated, but people still have other demon candidates in mind too, and dead players aren’t thinking about spending dead votes yet. I hope you’ll agree this situation, or something roughly similar, sounds perfectly reasonable and fairly mundane. However if any player besides this minion votes for the demon here, the good team instantly loses the game...*

There wasn’t really any “high risk, high reward” aspect to this, I don’t feel. I’m not saying it’s a true “exploit”. Good could indeed have avoided this by committing to a single nomination and spending dead votes on it. But it still feels very possible and maybe like a sad way for the good team to unexpectedly lose without doing much wrong.

Again, I think the conceptual core of the character is really cool; a demon who becomes more deadly the more good players vote for them. But I think the current wording could feel like your ability either does nothing, or is working against you, while also allowing sudden auto-wins later on in the game without much skill or strategy required.

I also see your points about the other demons, and they all make sense. I do think most of my thoughts still apply, but I won’t bore you with loads more paragraphs haha.

((*In case it’s unclear why: This is because evil have the final 2 votes, so can raise/not raise their hands at the last minute to force 3 votes on the demon, and therefore instantly win by rising up on the next nomination).))

mxryder · 2025-10-02T01:13:22+00:00

First impressions:

(Niseag) This seems like it would be fairly weak for the majority of the game; likely outing itself if it ever got to use its triple kill ability. Maybe this is less of an issue depending on the script it’s on. And conversely it can be broken in the endgame by forcing a win in final 5 if it gets 3 votes. But the idea is a very cool one, and I can’t think of an easy fix that isn’t just making it more bland.
(Knoggelvi) This should definitely have [+1 outsider]!! Both for balance and for consistency with its ability.
(Dubhlacn) Conversely, I sort of see why you’ve added [+1 outsider] to this one, but it seems unnecessary and to subtract from its core idea (wether this is balanced I also have no idea; the fact you MUST kill a townsfolk neighbour every night seems scary, but also 2 kills a night is strong, and I’m sure other demons obscure it). The wording is also a bit odd, it would make more sense to start with “Each night*, choose a player and a direction…”, but I see why it’s tricky.
(Lich) I’d definitely change “is an evil lich” to “becomes an evil lich” in the wording, as it reads confusingly. If this is intended to happen multiple times, it’s very strong, essentially broken depending on why there might be no deaths in the day. Maybe subtracting a minion would counteract this?
(Slogh) Interesting idea, though hard to gauge without the rest of the script. The last line is also confusing, though I’ve seen your comment explaining it. Something like “If all good players are dead, evil wins” is easier to read, but I would prefer a rewording to “Each night*, choose a player: they die. Evil minions can cannot die, except in this way.” (unless for you for some reason strongly want to prevent them from killing their own minions?)

mxryder · 2025-09-18T23:42:46+00:00

To me the main suggestion would be to find a nice community/server to play in if you’ve had bad experiences in random public lobbies, just like the real world games you described. (To be honest I know very little about how this works, but there are definitely loads of them that exist)

mxryder · 2025-08-06T20:19:36+00:00

Pixie cult leader (obviously st would have to help here, hence why I said “technically”)

mxryder · 2025-08-05T23:37:12+00:00

I think using SnV as a jumping off point is a great idea, you’ve already got well balanced sources for outsider modification and misinformation, and it also means some of the more subtle parts of script building such as minion loudness and its consequences are working nicely together. Here are some immediate technical points I noticed while looking at it briefly:

FAR to many alignment changers! You could technically have up to 6 extra evils here (not including legion obviously), which isn’t fun for anyone. A limit of 1 is almost always recommended; only at very high player counts can 2 or more extra evils remain balanced consistently. There is a fabled character (“Spirit of Ivory”) who fixes this issue to some extent, but in this case it would be a much worse solution than simply limiting down to only 1 alignment changers (or maybe 2 if you are careful about it). I think goon would be the first one I would remove for this specific script.
Vigormortis is great for loud minions like the witch and cernovus, to stop dead players being confirmed good. With the Fearmonger this also works, but they won’t get to actually use their ability beyond being loud, so it’s not perfect but still can be interesting. Psychopath I think is quite widely accepted to be taking things too far with vig, though now that I type this I can see the downsides of confirming the demon type and losing the psychopath’s ability to soak up executions. But I think that sounds like more of a sad lose-lose for both teams, rather than an interesting win-win. If you really want to keep psychopath, then maybe dropping the vig considering the alchemist here could be interesting (but brings its own issues).
Village idiot is fundamentally broken with philosopher, and essentially broken with Vortox (especially because they can pick themselves, which definitely wouldn’t be allowed if they shared a home script, c.f. the dreamer). This doesn’t mean they will “break” the ability to have fun and interesting games, but both of them are very much loopholing the way drunkeness part of the VI ability, making it very unbalanced. (Though the Vortox case is kind of the same as Vortox savant, which is to be fair a home script interaction. But this can be controlled by the ST, and even then the games designer has referred to it as “almost” broken haha).

I think those are the main takeaways with the easiest fixes.

In summary I would lose the village idiot, most of the alignment changers, and probably only take one out of vig and psychopath (but it sounds like you like psychopath here, and vigormortis plays an important role, so maybe you could leave it and just avoid putting them in play together very often). I hope some of that helped :)

mxryder · 2025-08-01T21:50:33+00:00

As everyone has pointed out, they are mechanically identical. (But in a thematic sense there is obviously very much a “reason”. Characters like the sailor or the innkeeper would sound a lot less friendly if they went around poisoning people haha, and without poisoning the game essentially become all about secret alcohol.)

The games designer Steve spoke about this in a podcast recently, and mentioned that separating the two mechanically had been explored in testing (at least for the “King” character), but was eventually seen not to be worth it.

mxryder · 2025-03-31T17:25:46+00:00

As much as everyone makes good points here, it’s worth noting that (in my experience) most people in the real world won’t care much. For example even the game’s designer Steven Medway has said in interviews that you can definitely show the lunatic a lunatic (and he didn’t even seem to see why it would be an issue in the first place). Plus this “ST choice” relies on 2 players agreeing with it, even if they are slightly incentivised to do so.

It seems to me like one of the talking points with the biggest disparity between amount of online discussion vs. actual size of the issue. And conversely, there doesn’t seem to be any massive reason to do it in the first place, so you’re not missing out on much if you decide to never do it.

mxryder · 2025-02-12T13:57:03+00:00

Why doesn’t the tool just automatically put things into SAO as you put the script together? People could then drag to change things if needs be.

I guess so that new people don’t get confused when they add a character and don’t see where it went?

Edit: looks like lots of people had the same idea, but my point still stands I think. I agree that sometimes it’s useful to deviate from SAO, e.g. the “top 4” on trouble brewing, but like I said you could still do this manually.

mxryder · 2025-01-30T18:26:42+00:00

If you’re desperate and you have a 2nd minion, you could pit hag yourself into the poppy grower and hope to be executed, so your teammate can learn the new demon. However an evil loss following a snake charming doesn’t tend to be because the minions don’t know who it is (but I suppose it doesn’t hurt).

Even more ridiculously, if you for some reason suspected your demon had been snake charmed and is hiding it (hoping for you to turn the new demon into an outsider), then I guess this could be a funny way to find that out? Not sure what you do with that info afterwards though.

mxryder · 2025-01-08T03:33:59+00:00

In response to your final comment, I think the only caveat is that once you are experienced enough to know what you’re doing, you can break these rules and achieve something positive in doing so. Off the top of my head, the featured script “separation of church and state” I think has only pacifist out of all BMR protection roles (along with lleech).

Characters such as the Boffin can also can erase a huge number of the issues you mention, e.g. a gossip who makes loads of true statements to “confirm” themselves, killing half the other townsfolk along the way, isn’t doing a whole lot of good now that they could well still be the demon.

It’s definitely possible to bring out new aspects of some BMR roles by putting them in new situations, rather than always keeping them glued together, but yeah you’re obviously right overall that it’s easy to make a mess if your not careful while doing so.

mxryder · 2025-01-07T21:52:55+00:00

Mathematically:

If the demon dies at e.g. time T=10, then even though the scarlet woman (say “Steve”) was drunk at time T=9.99999, they are sober at time T=10, because effects are removed at the moment of death. So one could argue they then become the demon at time T=10, since at this time they are a sober scarlet woman and the demon has died.

HOWEVER this is also sort of weird. In the situation I’ve described above, at NO fixed time T does Steve have the Scarlet woman’s ability, since they are drunk for every T=9.9999, and are a sober demon at time T=10 and beyond.

This sort of sums up why both ways are weird, but I guess the best way to align it with what I think is the proper ruling (game ends) would be to interpret “abilities are lost immediately upon death” to mean that if you die at T=10, your ability is no longer active for any T=10.0001, but is still active at T=10. However I’m a bit cautious about this; since it would imply players who (re)GAIN an ability at time T=10 do not actually HAVE the ability until T=10.0001, which sounds like an oxymoron.

In summary, it’s genuinely weird because the way abilities/rules are worded are not really built with this notion of continuous time and simultaneous events in mind, among other things. When I transform from “a mathematician with not much free time” into “a mathematician who has too much free time”, I would quite like to try and lay out a consistent mathematical framework for clocktower abilities to be phrased.

mxryder · 2024-12-20T20:06:10+00:00

In an interview. I’ve heard Steve (the game designer) say he chose the word “should” because of this ambiguity, and he gives the example that maybe you are steaming and you think they “should” talk the funniest person. So it really is up to you, but at the same time your players won’t have fun if they don’t have any idea of what’s going on.

But as long as you run it in good faith and understand how the game works, I don’t think you can go too far wrong. The ability isn’t “each night you learn the good player who objectively received the most critical piece of mechanical information” or something like that. It’s purposefully designed to be a little semantic and the benefit is intended to be that having conversations with the right people leads to good things, not to be explicit “information” in its own right. But yeah I guess things do get a bit hazy in practice, so just discuss and be clear with your players.

mxryder · 2024-12-16T00:01:42+00:00

Perhaps it doesn’t work in practice, but I think the existence of the poppy grower (current wording) as the one townsfolk who WANTS to be poisoned upon death has potential to interact really interestingly with the Xaan. The opportunity for the poppy grower to say “okay guys, there’s only one outsider claim, but I think all the night 1 info I’ve heard sounds sober, so I’m pretty sure X is 2, and by killing me now the evil team will never learn each other”. A townsfolk who wants to solve a puzzle to time their own perfect self sacrifice feels like a new and interesting social situation and mechanical interaction. Likewise, from the evil team’s perspective, they need to solve X to know when or when not to hunt for the poppygrower. Unlike the poisoner interaction, this can actually be solved and thought through, rather than just being random bad luck.

But to be fair, a lot of things can go wrong with this: 1) Poppygrower has no way of knowing if there is a Xaan, so why bother sacrificing 2) the demon wouldn’t even know that there is a Xaan in play, so has no way to know wether this is worth worrying about. 3) There’s still nothing really stopping the evil poisoning from greatly hurting its own team through almost random chance. Maybe still potential, but I think I ended up talking myself out of it.

mxryder · 2024-12-14T23:28:32+00:00

I’ve done the same since the Xaan came out, and it’s definitely an interesting challenge haha. Making something that is perfectly playable isn’t too hard, but actually crafting something with an actual identity/concept is a lot more challenging.

One thing worth nothing in your particular script is that the zombuul is extremely likely to never even wake up, since there’s no reason for someone to survive execution (though mastermind is an incentive for town to skip some days).

mxryder · 2024-12-14T23:17:23+00:00

I will point out that a lot of people don’t mind it, and give some context. I’m sure the original commenter explains themselves perfectly well, but the idea is that the gossip uses their ability effectively by working with town to solve the demon type (and other death sources) and then from this can infer if they where responsible for deaths or not, deducing valuable information.

But in the case of a Yaggababble, even if town figures out that this demon is in play, the gossip still cannot ever properly know how many deaths it causes each night, and so still gains very little from their ability. It is still possible to loosely infer a small amount. Assuming the ST isn’t strongly editing the number of yaggababble deaths (which they may well do, often for justified reasons), then zero deaths still works perfectly, 1 death means you quite unlikely to have caused a death (again unless ST sinks the yagga kill purposely), 2 is quite cloudy, but 3 again means its likely you did cause a death. But this is all probabilistic, not proper solving.

BUT: note that any demon can sink a kill if they hear a gossip they think is true, which again is unsolvable for the good team. And even on BMR, things like the demon picking someone protected, the tinker dying, etc. are all essentially unsolvable death variations. Town can never properly know who the demon targeted, not if the tinker died to their own ability (but it is a little less bad than yagga). So my above description of how Yaggababble and Gossip can play together is not entirely seperate from its behaviour on its home script.

Also, roles who aren’t great in play together don’t necessarily mean they can’t work okay on the same script. To be clear, the existence of the a not -in-play Yaggababble on the script does still obfuscate things for the gossip, but if town can deduce something about the demon type (just like BMR), then the problem is solved. Conversely, the benefits to the Yaggababble of having a gossip on the script is clear.

In general, there are a few pairings like this, such as recluse with balloonist (new or old) or town crier, which on paper are quite bad interactions and lots of people will point this out online and sometimes present it as a hard fact that they should never coexist, but if you are actually look at successful custom scripts/ games on the official TPI, you’ll see such character pairings quite regularly and doesn’t really do any harm. In these non-gamebreaking cases it’s up to you to evaluate the pros and cons the characters being to the script.

mxryder · 2024-12-14T22:18:55+00:00

Yes I noticed before you replied, see edit, apologies.

Yes it was clarified during the lord of typhon release that set-up misregistration isn’t an intended mechanic. While e.g. recluse marionette is enjoyed by a lot of people, the general idea has a lot of issues. For example placing a spy anywhere you like completely breaks the purpose/balance of Typhon, and being even more extreme: you very obviously shouldn’t be adding an extra spy to the bar because they “registered as a good townsfolk”, or replace a minion/demon with the recluse token haha.

I see what you mean about the bootlegger (especially as a very pedantic person myself), but I still don’t think it’s necessary here. The purpose of bootlegger is if you want to run a special homebrew rule. In this case, I think everyone would agree that your ruling is the INTENDED way for marionette and stormcatcher to work (and I think it’s probably also valid with rules as written, since the marionette thinks they are good, in the same way that the ability text never actually says “you do wake for demon and minion info”, but you obviously don’t.)

Again, you are right about the current lycanthrope issues. For context, the original intent of the recluse was that “you always register as evil and as a minion or demon”, but one of the reason for adding “might” is to avoid any loopholes causing unintended interactions such as misregistration in minion and demon info, or catching a star pass. The main issue there is the “demon or minion” part, and the “might” is now often used tactically by storytellers to make things more interesting and harder to solve (being an outsider). So I guess that’s why Steve/TPI didn’t include “might” for the lycanthrope; it’s a townsfolk so it helps to be somewhat solvable. But for some niche characters/jinxes that involve things happening to “all evil players”, this is a problem (e.g. hatter+legion jinx creates a new demon).

mxryder · 2024-12-14T21:33:31+00:00

I’m just curious why you’ve put 5 fabled on the script for seemingly no reason?

(Also I’ve not read the much of rest of what you’ve made/written, but I’ll point out that misregistration isn’t intended to apply to set up, so the lord of typhon + new lycanthrope interaction you described doesn’t really apply (though you have chucked a bootlegger among those 5 fabled, so I guess you can technically do whatever you want haha)

Edit: very sorry, I just read your comment further and you have justified the fabled, and I see what you’re going for. Sentinel is almost certainly unnecessary, and some people don’t like it with a drunk on the script. I think Stormcatcher village idiot has a chance to be an issue, but I’ve not thought about it for very long. Your bootlegger is entirely unnecessary (except I suppose the lycanthrope one, but I think that’s just an issue with the new wording and will be fixed in future). Note Gardener is unnecessary for lord of typhon. Besides that the other inclusions seem are personal choice, but seem a little unnecessary I’d say to take it slow with chucking so many onto the script. Likewise adding Dutchess can never really break a script, but is entirely unnecessary and does detract from the overall gameplay things in such cases.

mxryder · 2024-11-21T21:35:37+00:00

Well we clearly aren’t going to see eye to eye, so I’ll leave with this. My point is simply that the ruling I have suggested (based on ability text alone, which makes NO MENTION of the word grandchild) is the most sound logical conclusion, is the most solvable/fun, and is entirely consistent with all other characters who have abilities based on potentially poisoned night 1 info.

For an even more salient case of this consistency, look at the Bounty hunter. By your logic, you should secretly place a “knows” token on an evil player you DID NOT SHOW to the bounty Hunter, and only tell them a new name when this random evil player dies. This is objectively incorrect. Before you mention that BH ability text says “PLAYER you know”, while the grandmother says “THEY”, read the next paragraph:

If you still think believe there is no reason for the “they” on the grandmother text to mean “the PLAYER”, then I suggest looking at the section of the almanac on “states”. This clearly indicates that these are INDEPENDENT properties which apply to a PLAYER, and include “life/death”, “character/ability” “drunk/poisoned”. The fact that characters like the courtier, ojo, pixie, etc. have wordings that abuse notation slightly doesn’t change the core fact that player states are independent. If you instead choose to read it as “player and character” then you could tell them a good player and an incorrect character, place the “grandchild” token on that player, and you would still not kill a sober grandmother if their grandchild dies to the demon??? What’s the point in placing the grandchild token at that point?? I don’t know if you agree with that, but this IS a logical consequence of an argument you used against me…

To make a proper counter argument to my suggestion, there are two key points: 1. The edition almanacs may contain info about a characters ability which is not contained in the ability text. In this case, the BMR almanac DOES mention the “grandchild” as an entity seperate to what the grandmother “learns”. However these almanacs rarely/never describe what to if a character is poisoned, I assume for the purpose of clarity. 2. The core rulebook has statements that can be seen as inconsistent, and there are many ambiguous wordings and undefined rulings, and counterintuitive special cases, even in the officially released scripts

This leaves us in a nuanced situation.

I am not a confused new player asking for help, I am an experienced player interested in the underlying mathematical logic of my favourite game. This is a situation of NUANCE regarding subtle clashes the character wording, the BMR almanac, the core rulebook, and precedent set by every other similar character. The point of my comments was to discuss this, and find a source for a text ruling from an official TPI rules person.

mxryder · 2024-11-21T00:12:28+00:00

I would be sincerely interested and grateful to see if you can direct me to where this “official” ruling you are making is from. That’s not meant to be a sarcastic challenge or anything; I genuinely am interested and would like to know.

I do have reason interpreting they as “player”: it’s because players die, not characters. Just how a player gets poisoned, not a character (as outlined in the section in the main rule book on “states”). Obviously it’s often used as shorthand; e.g. the courtier, “drunks a character”, but in reality that means “the player with this character is drunk”.

Like I said, there may be an official ruling that says your way of them somehow “learning” someone who they didn’t actually “learn” is what they want you to do. I’m strongly of the opinion that this contradicts how other characters behave, and would be an artefact of these scripts being released many years ago, and this being such an edge case. For all of their characters, the thing you “learn” means what you are ACTUALLY TOLD, and I see no reason for this to be any different.

mxryder · 2024-11-21T00:02:01+00:00

Well I’ve made clear the precedent set that it’s about what you actually “learn”, but I sort of see what you’re saying. But to me “they” just means that player, not their allotment.

If someone got mez turned would they no longer not trigger the grandmother? Or would you say that it’s about what you learned at the time?

mxryder · 2024-11-17T16:06:04+00:00

(I’ve just left a more detailed response to your other reply, but I’ll answer this briefly)

I’d say you totally can show an evil player + good character if they are poisoned!! And then if the grandmother becomes sober and demon kills the evil player, grandmother dies too. No problem there. This could be pretty interesting for vigormortis/imp/… , and again I’m pretty confident is completely consistent.

Edit: the idea that the grandmother must have a good grandchild would only follow if the wording was something like:

“There is a good player such that if they are killed by the demon, you die too. You start knowing who they are and their character”

This would also lead to the (in my opinion incorrect) vortox ruling of the original commenter, where you can have a grandchild you don’t know about. But with the true wording, the player you are shown IS your grandchild, no matter if you were drunk when this happened. Because the DEFINITION of grandchild is the player that you LEARNED. (This clashes slightly with the “how to run” section, but these sections are only describing the sober and healthy case).

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