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Who’s playing Blood on the Clocktower?
Wondering if we have tilde fellows playing it. I’ve become addicted since last year and it’s fully taken over my regular board game nights… I’ve been storytelling and doing custom scripts and characters.
I've played it three times, once as a player (was the imp) and twice as a GM. I also have a lot of experience playing Mafia (as a forum game), with almost 15 mafia games. Our Mafia group is so advanced that we have custom powers every game and custom template for all powers. We make our powers based on the theme of the game.
For me, I just hate it.
There was a point in my life where acting, lying and deceiving was cool and fun, for the sake of the game, but now, I just see it as not being myself and I cannot live with that. It makes me stressed every time I end up with a role on the "baddies" team and I end up having no fun at all for the whole game because I'm constantly stressed that people will realize I'm lying. I just completely dislike lying and being dishonest so even in a game setting, I can't wrap my head around it. As for being on the "good" players team, I also dislike it. I see people making analysis mistakes and I kinda dislike that too. I've also stopped playing mafia for those reasons.
That's my opinion.
My friend group absolutely love it, they have had 4 games in a year without me, the latest one being with 15 players this Saturday. They all loved it. Good for them! At some point, one guy in my group wanted to GM and I didn't want to be a player, so I haven't gone back since, it's just not for me.
So yeah, if you're a social person and easygoing in groups, it's an amazing game. If not, this game is not for you.
As someone who is not a very social person, and is not especially easygoing in groups, I still love the game, even if it can be extremely exhausting for me to play it.
I've liked social deduction games for a long time, but it's as part of a wider interest in... I don't really know what to call it. Information fidelity? There's something in the game of analysing a puzzle of partially contradicting information, which sources of information are reliable, and managing trust and vulnerability, that I just find intriguing. And while I dislike lying in general, I find that doing it and observing it under accepted circumstances is fascinating.
I'm happy you like it! I went for a more general review of it, I guess a more apt review would be "if you dislike dishonesty and lying in games, then it's not for you", but that part is kinda obvious, isn't it.
Social deduction games always make me feel so unmoored. I get why people love them and I wish I did too, but man.... I feel like I can never get my bearings and it's just so deeply uncomfortable. It's like all the worst parts of socializing with strangers and TTRPGs rolled into one and I just fucking cannot.
I haven't played, though I'm interested and have watched a handful of actual plays of it (mostly with Dimension 20 or adjacent folks). I've not played a social deduction game with a true "GM' before rather than essentially a moderator ala werewolf/mafia.
It's a bit intimidating to actually play for that reason I think
I've been on a BOTC binge! I've been watching No Rolls Barred in person plays and I just really really want to play it too.
I've only ever played it once a long while back with my friends and we've never done it again. Adult life making people busy and all that.
I didn't understand the game much then, but with what I know now, I really want to give it a go again.
Luckily, I found a local group that meets up every week to play and I aim to join them once I'm free!
Another person who's become addicted over the past year. Clocktower has become my default background YouTube to put on while making dinner and other such mundane activities. Unfortunately timezones mean that I don't get to catch most of the streams, but I'm also not a huge stream watching person so that doesn't matter.
I have a local group that meets occasionally, but unfortunately the venue they've been using is shutting down (last game this Friday). Quite often there'll be new players, but when there's not we've had some rather silly games. One of my favourites was a game of "Nobody Fucking Move" (one of the best teensies out there) that I storytold where the players drew their tokens, but didn't look at them. Everyone had to figure out which character they were. The Duchess did double duty of being the only real information the town had, as well as a mechanism for the evil team to figure out their own alignments and find each other.
I've recently found someone else at work who owns a grimoire, so the two of us are now running fortnightly games after work in the office. It's most players' first or second times playing, so it's been TB and they're starting to get the game. Still very execution shy (and I don't really want to introduce the Vortox just yet), but there's been some decent world building. The players all seem to get the premise and are happily talking to each other afterwards, which I count as a success.
I've played I think around 10 games so far. I specifically made the point of telling myself that I wasn't playing it to be a mastermind, but instead to have fun with friends. That has been incredibly important given the amount of times I've been a drunk investigator or poisoned.
I am still incredibly bitter that the only time I was the imp, I had everyone looped around my finger for the win when the slayer shot me. I must have had some tell I was giving off while socially stirring people against eachother, cause they really seemed to be confident when they shot me. But once again, it helped putting aside my escape room and werewolf brain and just going into it with the understanding that it's goofy game time with friends, because it means I get to celebrate stuff like the slayer catching me instead of being a mope-fest!
If Tildes got a game of online BotC going, I'd be down to try it at least once. I've never played online, and I know most online-versions of games become pretty meta-heavy, which can be less goofy fun and more analytical (looking at you Hanabi). But it'd be nice to try in a new medium and also get to know some of the Tildesians here by lying to eachother's faces! :P
I'd also be interested in playing with some Tildepeople, scheduling permitting (yay for the earth being a sphere!).
Playing online is definitely a bit different to in-person. I do find solving tends to be a little more mechanical than social. The official app/website has text and video chat, a grimoire-like setup that you can fill in, and you can make little notes next to people so there's lots of opportunity to track as much or as little information as you like. I think the game design itself still holds up pretty well, and there's still lots of room for social plays.
Haven't played as its been a long time since I've been capable of a mafia-like social game for many reasons, but I'll mention that Demon Bluff (https://store.steampowered.com/app/3522600/Demon_Bluff/) seems like this game if it were in the framework of singleplayer, solving who's evil at a given table. The playtest is generous, and went a long way towards getting me interested in the planned Q1 release.
I used to enjoy watching internet video mafia, but those days are past and when I was recently exposed to BotC for the first time - a charity event ran by players from the recent UK Genius Game season - it seemed overly complex to learn through observation.
I've played north of 300 games online, and have played somewhere around 15 games in person. Started early this year, had a high-intensity period for some months, then started slowing down. Used to play most days in public games. Now it's maybe once a week, and almost exclusively in private games.
My LGS runs it once a month, and we usually get ~10 players for it. We've just started running scripts with the experimental roles thanks to the carousel releasing. It's been a good time so far apart from when a couple of the players have completely thrown the game for no discernable reason.
We play in person 1 or 2 times a week. Usually there are 30-40 people playing on Fridays and our full group is maybe 80 people in size. The BotC group (we pronounce it bot-see) has ballooned into a full social club - with people going on rafting trips, hosting parties, field days, etc.
I really love social deception/deduction games. I started in college with The Resistance, then started playing Avalon a couple of years ago, and now exclusively play BotC. There's something about it that's just perfect. We're all pretty invested so it's a real challenge to play. Outside of the game I like to read people I think are lying, as well as occasionally deceive people when there are real stakes (like with negotiations), so having a fast-paced simulation is a great way to learn and hone those skills.
Games can get really unique with the custom scripts we use. Certain scenarios become famous and people will discuss games for months afterwards.