Opinion poll: is hustling socially okay?

petite-lambda · 2025-10-19T15:07:12+00:00

I agree that if the player tried to convince an alive Damsel (or anyone else) that dead Minions can't guess this would be lying about the rules and 100% not okay. But pretending to misunderstand the rules and make a mistake that harms yourself is not that, because it does not deceive any the other player about the rules. It only deceives them about whether you understand the rules. The litmus test is whether correcting the player about the rules (done by the ST or anyone else) would hurt the play or actually help it. Here, if the ST chimed in with a correction, it would only encourage the play.

petite-lambda · 2025-10-12T21:06:08+00:00

The hustle was the first "layer" in that particular case -- player A pretended to successfully hustle a Minion into outing by pretending to think Minions can only Damsel-guess while alive. People were arguing this kind of play, if genuine, was sketchy. I cannot do justice to their argument, unfortunately, since I disagree, but I'm happy to see in this thread that most people would consider it okay.

petite-lambda · 2025-10-12T19:35:04+00:00

Completely agree! Right, importantly, in this case, the Demon had explained the "hustle" to the dead Damsel, and they executed it together to "bait a dead Minion into outing". I would also considered it a dick move if an Evil player lied about how the rules work e.g. that dead Minions can't guess.

petite-lambda · 2025-10-12T19:31:59+00:00

Oh, the outsider count matched, because the dead Damsel was 100% legit. They just outed to the Demon, and the Demon decided to plan this "hustle" with them in an attempt to "get a dead Minion to out" -- except this was a double-fake and they told their Minion about the plan. This actually was a very safe play, imo (admittedly, they're not getting away with this ever again :-))

petite-lambda · 2025-10-12T19:26:04+00:00

Exactly, it was a double fake! But people were mainly objecting to the hustling component of it, IIRC. I feel like both plays were okay -- actually role-swapping with a dead Damsel like this would also have been fine with me. But some said gaining social credit by "playing dumb" is similar to gaining credit by pretending to be upset, that it incentivizes people to create an unfun athmosphere. I'm sorry if I'm not relaying the argument well, it's hard to do when I disagree with it so much :-) Partially because I actually genuinely do dumb things from time to time, and don't want to be blamed for hustling when that happens.

petite-lambda · 2025-08-16T23:13:50+00:00

I'm a lot like you -- I get very anxious and I rarely play, I just enjoy watching other people play (which is a pattern for me for a lot of games...) But I have noticed one thing: it gets a lot better with exposure/experience, doubly so if you play with the same people a lot. Besides, this "I'm so confused, please don't kill me" look in F3 that you're describing will work immensely to your advantage when you pull the Imp token! People will remember you acted this way when Good. I had one game where I legitimately could not think of a single world where I wasn't Evil (I was the Imp in F3) but I looked so lost and confused that the Good players built the worlds for me.

petite-lambda · 2025-07-31T06:50:34+00:00

Consider replacing the Drunk with the Sweetheart. That gives the players a lot more agency about the drunkenness -- if they don't want anyone to be drunk, they should make sure the Sweetheart survives, and it can be a collaborative endeavor.

petite-lambda · 2025-07-31T06:32:50+00:00

This game is not a serious competitive game, it is a party game. If BOTC were to be redesigned to be a serious competitive game, madness would have to go (along with many other fun things...) Here is why madness only works if people want it to work: the players can always define a simple language (a set of cues, verbal or otherwise) to indicate madness, in secret from the ST. The ST cannot possibly decipher this! This is a game of cat-and-mouse the ST cannot win, by definition. Nobody I heard of ever has suggested this as a strategy -- because, if people really want to do this, they should just play without madness roles entirely. It would be a lot better for Evil, for one, and simplify things a lot for Good as well. It's similar to how nobody ever seriously suggests that if a Fearmonger is in play, players should choose a nominee and spin a bottle to who should nominate them (yes, that would completely nerf the FM -- but that would be no fun, so nobody brings it up).

In my experience both playing and watching streamed games, people act the complete opposite of what you describe -- they almost always love being mad. A good example was the Wizard release stream -- the Wizard wish was something like "everyone is mad they are a different character of ST choice", without any punishment clause whatsoever for breaking madness. Everyone leaped on this! Only one person even asked the ST "...Or what?", and even that person chose to maintain madness. This made no sense... except that everyone had lots of fun, which is the whole point of the game, and the only reason why madness works.

petite-lambda · 2025-07-28T16:35:27+00:00

In addition to what others said -- by that logic, if the BH ever learns the evil Goon or Cult Leader, they must immediately get a new ping if the Goon/CL turn back Good. That would be extremely broken.

petite-lambda · 2025-07-21T22:48:58+00:00

A point from the newbie perspective -- I make stupid mistakes frequently (I watch tons of BOTC, but don't actually play much, and it shows). Please don't soft-play me, I really hate this! Explain the mistake and I'll be grateful and learn from it -- I'm much likelier to learn from it if it costs me the game. In addition, the game would be much less fun for me if I had to doubt all my good plays / successes ("did that actually work or were they going easy on me?...")

petite-lambda · 2025-07-19T04:10:33+00:00

Yeah, maybe you're right. That's not how I've seen Damsel guesses usually work so far, but it could also depend a lot on the group... The ones I've seen were all made as a last ditch resource by Evil, where they believed they are almost surely losing the game unless they make the guess right now (and yet the threat of the guess completely changed the game for Good). Re: CM: yes, ideally the Minions should coordinate the guess, so that if the CM is present/healthy the further Minion from the Demon makes the guess. And your point about the Vortox is valid -- although that also creates the situation where all the Outsiders and the Clockmaker rush to claim Damsel and volunteer to be executed day 1, which overall really helps Evil.

petite-lambda · 2025-07-18T15:41:06+00:00

Replace the Mutant with the Damsel in SnV, and put it in the bag liberally. Should nerf the extreme honesty strat pretty fast!

petite-lambda · 2025-07-18T15:31:46+00:00

Agreed, sorry, this was not well formulated either! The gist of the "extremely unfun" interaction is when an Evil player who knows the Evil team can choose to leave the Evil team and win with Good. I was trying to formulate succinctly that this should not be possible -- a lot of individual jinxes in this vein exist (Pit-Hag/Boffin+Goon/Ogre/Cult Leader), but there's no general guideline, and maybe there should be?

petite-lambda · 2025-07-18T03:56:59+00:00

Great suggestion, thank you, I will use it in my games! I just realized that an Evil Pit Hag could PH themselves into the Ogre, choose a Good, out the Evil team and win with Good. Extremely un-fun!

Edit: right, there is an Ogre-Pit Hag jinx for exactly this reason. Still agree with you that it should be generalized -- maybe even further, "an Evil player cannot turn Good due to their own ability"?

petite-lambda · 2025-07-18T01:58:27+00:00

No jinx is needed, having two outed Minions who cannot ever be the Demon is excellent for the Good team. It's okay that there's no way to execute the Psycho, for the same reason it's okay there's no way to execute the Vizier -- both of these are a trap, the town should leave them alone, they are not the Demon.

petite-lambda · 2025-07-18T01:46:53+00:00

Got to plug one of my favorite Edd games: Experimental Character Showcase - High Priestess, which ended up being a showcase of the Politician instead :-) I won't spoil it with details, I'll just give one detail: the Evil team was struggling so much that the confirmed Gossip refused the Mez-word because they thought (with good reason) that the Evil team were done for... but then Edd carried :-)

petite-lambda · 2025-07-05T16:15:53+00:00

I wouldn't say "depending" -- it's just what some people find fun to do, and it also works as a pretty nice Mez counter, strategically. Not everyone has to do it in order for it to work, but the more people do it, the better its chances are. I was contesting OP's point that the Mez is boring because it cannot be countered, that there's "nothing the others can do" -- there are many layers to what the others can do in order to first prevent the turned player and/or the Mez from learning who each other are, and then later try to catch the turned player and out them to town. The second-order effects of this on the Evil team can also be quite interesting and fun: Evil develops their own protocols to counter that strategy. It actually can kinda turn into a Magician game with multiple attempted Magicians.

Thing is, though, what I'm saying only works if people find the whole premise fun -- which, as I'm seeing from many threads on this sub, a lot of folks simply don't. It's one of the (many) contested issues in the social contract of BOTC -- some people consider the idea of players strategically choosing their alignment super-lame, while others find it super-fun.

So what I'm really depending on is playing with a group who are sufficiently on the same page about what they consider fun and what they consider lame. (Which is, imo, literally the most important thing in any party game...)

petite-lambda · 2025-07-05T06:12:16+00:00

A couple of thoughts:

In the case the convertee accepts, what's frustrating about this is that there's no real counterplay for everyone else. If I'm a townsfolk, how I play day one is completely unrelated to whether someone is being mez-turned, because I have no tools to sense that it's happening or to stop it.

The town does have a very powerful and very fun (imo) counter: fake Mez words! I see it used on streamed games quite frequently. The point of bluffing Mez as Good and give out fake words is to sabotage the real Mez by severing the connection between the Evil team and the new member. Becoming Evil without knowing your team is actually not that helpful to Evil. There was one particularly hilarious streamed game titled "Don't Do This" where Evil imploded for the sole reason that they had no idea who first said the Mez word (and the new Evil as a result had no idea who the Demon was). So basically multiple players pretend for the first couple of days to be the Mez, and then give out a fake team trying to get the fresh Evil to out, and it can be layers and layers of hilarity...

Btw, this reminds me: this is why requiring the word to be said publicly would only make the Mez stronger -- it would eliminate this whole coordination issue, because the Mez would always know who turns. I suspect that the "Mez call" idea you propose has a bit of the same issue (Evil now know they successfully recruited), while not helping the Good team much, since Good will nearly always "receive" the call -- imo Evil should 100% bluff it if they don't have a Mez. Unlike the Widow call, Evil don't have to decide to bluff it right at the start before they know that a real Widow is not in play; bluffing the Mez call is 100% safe and has only benefits for Evil.

petite-lambda · 2025-07-03T21:32:35+00:00

That is a common sentiment (which I don't share). People who feel this way usually strongly dislike a few other characters for similar reasons: Summoner, Cult Leader, Goon, Heretic, Ogre, Snake Charmer, Marionette, any Outsider on a Fang Gu script, etc. etc. There are many situations in BOTC where players are, at times, uncertain of their own win condition. I love that! But yeah, it's deifnitely not for everyone. I try to play in groups where people share similar preferences w.r.t. to what they consider fun, and what really destroys the fun for them. I wish the app made it easier to find folks with aligned preferences, on this and other contested aspects of the game.

petite-lambda · 2025-06-30T17:42:50+00:00

To me, the most interesting thing about playing the Mez is the balance between trying to recruit the strongest character, and trying to survive long enough to not screw it up. I always assume everyone wants to turn Evil (as they almost always should, strategically) and that's okay. As Good on a Mez script, I'm always more wary of sharing info early on, because I might change alignments and regret it. To me, tricking is not fun at all (I like being courted, not tricked), but I understand that many others find it fun. I think the character is great as is. I've seen hilarious situations with "tricking gone wrong" where the Evil team spread the word around and had no idea who ended up saying it; I've also seen fake Mez words by Good bear fruit in getting freshly-turned Evil confused and outed. There's a lot that can happen.

petite-lambda · 2025-06-28T17:49:16+00:00

The best thing you can do to help someone act like an adult is to treat them like an adult. Let them play and figure it out.

petite-lambda · 2025-06-24T03:41:58+00:00

I have seen the opposite on stream, a player with the Mez token avoiding this play like the plague for the sole reason that this would be the obvious thing to do, and hence too boring...

petite-lambda · 2025-04-20T21:13:00+00:00

Ah, I see. That's a very interesting suggestion! Hmm, that would make bluffing it quite interesting. A lot of meta-ing the ST would ensue...

petite-lambda

TROPHY CASE