Blood on the Clocktower

Blood on the Clocktower is a social deduction game with the same concept and structure as Werewolf. It is an improved, more complex and more strategic version of Werewolf. In Werewolf you don't really have much basis for discussion or deduction. You rely on observing the facial expressions and reactions of your friends. In Blood on the Clocktower every town resident has a unique ability, and as a team the townsfolk have a lot of information to work with. You have more concrete data as a basis for discussion. 

There are two teams. The bad guys are the demon and his minion, and they try to keep their identities secret. Their goal is to kill most of the townsfolk. If the demon can survive until there are only two players remaining, the demon team wins, even if the minion is killed. The good guys are the townsfolk. Their goal is to kill the demon. In order to do that they need to work out who the demon is. Game rounds alternate between day rounds and night rounds. Night rounds are when the demon gets to secretly kill a town resident. Day rounds are when the townsfolk can vote to lynch a person suspected to be the demon. This game requires a facilitator who does not participate in the game itself. Being facilitator in this game is much more complex than being one in Werewolf. You have much more work to do and more information to manage. In night rounds everyone closes their eyes and the facilitator gives instructions about who should open their eyes and convey or receive information without the rest knowing. 

In a day round, the townsfolk get to discuss who they think the demon is. They can vote to kill the person. This is how you kill the demon. One difference from Werewolf is you don't necessarily have to pick someone to kill if you are not sure. If none of the accused get enough votes, or if they are tied in votes, nobody dies. Another difference from Werewolf is dead people continue to play. After you are killed, you are still allowed to speak, just that you don't have your powers anymore. You are even allowed to vote, but from the moment you are killed until the end of the game, you can only vote once. People who get killed are usually the good guys. Since they get to continue to speak, the demon cannot silence them by killing them. The demon needs to be careful not to expose himself, because all these dead people still have one vote each, and if they band together, they can get him killed. I think this aspect makes the game better than Werewolf. There is no player elimination. Everyone is engaged till the end. 

The best part of the game is the character powers. Every character has a unique power. Only the facilitator and you know which character you are. There is no card indicating who you are. You don't have anything to prove you are who you say you are. Players may declare who they are, but whether the others believe so is a different matter. Certainly the bad guys want to pretend to be good guys. 

Here are some of the townsfolk characters. The fortune teller gets to pick two players every night, and she will know whether the demon is among them. There is a weakness to her power though. One specific town resident will be mistaken as the demon. All of this is handled by the facilitator. The monk protects one player every night. If the demon attempts to kill that player, the protected player is saved. The washerwoman starts the game knowing that between two town residents, one is a particular character. 

These above are the townsfolk. There is another type among the good guys, and they are called the outsiders. They are on the same team as the townsfolk, but their powers are liabilities. Their existence helps the demon. One outsider is the drunkard. He doesn't know he's drunk and he believes he is someone else. He thinks his information is correct, but it may not be. As you can see, the existence of this character can really mess with the townsfolk. All of this needs to be managed by the facilitator. 

The demon's minion can be one of four characters. The poisoner gets to disable and confuse the power of a town resident for 24 hours. The scarlet woman can take the place of the demon if the demon is killed early, allowing the game to continue. 

Although the townsfolk collectively have much information which help them figure out who the demon is, the demon and his minion do get tools and information to help them too. For example the facilitator will let the demon know about three specific characters which are not in play. This is helpful because the demon can pretend to be one of these characters, and there won't be any town resident who can verify that he is lying. 

Part of the facilitator's toolset

I did a 7-player game. I drew the demon, and that made me rather nervous. My minion was Sam. I didn't know which character he was. Right off the bat we got into a rather sticky situation. Xiang Yang was the empath, and he was seated exactly between Sam and I. The power of the empath was he could sense how many evil persons were next to him. He sensed two, which meant it must be both the demon and his minion! Game over?! This sucked big time. Another problem was Han was the washerwoman, and at the start of the game, he knew that between Xiang Yang and I, one was the empath. This meant his information matched what Xiang Yang claimed. I knew for our game the soldier was not in play. I was prepared to say that I was the soldier. The soldier could not be killed by the demon. So I planned to say that I couldn't reveal my character early, because I needed to lure the demon to kill me. He would fail, and I would have given us one more precious round. I didn't dare to deny what Xiang Yang had said, because Han's input matched his. If I went against two of them, I would arouse suspicion. So I said I believed Xiang Yang was the empath, but I said that his information was wrong, and that he must have been poisoned by the poisoner. Thankfully there was such a character in the game, and I could make use of this to wriggle out of this tight spot. At the time I had no idea whether Sam was the poisoner. It turned out that he was. 

In the first night round I promptly killed Xiang Yang. It felt too dangerous to have him seated right between Sam and I. In hindsight, that might not have been wise. The townsfolk might have interpreted that this meant what Xiang Yang had said was true - he was sitting between the demon and the minion. I could have let him live, and then let the poisoner do poisoning every round. Then what Xiang Yang said would become inconsistent, and it would just be considered gibberish. In fact he might end up being suspected. 

Game in progress (photo courtesy of boardgamecafe.net)

Joon Lam was the slayer. Once per game the slayer can attempt to kill the demon. He just has to point, and if that player is the demon, the demon is killed. During our discussion, Joon Lam was convinced that Sam was the demon. Sam did try to defend himself somewhat, at least to try to put on some show. I did not try very hard to dissuade Joon Lam. Sam wouldn't have been hurt anyway. I did not egg Joon Lam on either, so as not to appear too keen. The end result was the slayer wasting his holy water and Sam needing a towel for his wet face (figuratively speaking). 

Eu Vin was the fortune teller. Every night he could point at two persons, and Jeff the facilitator would tell him whether the demon was among them. This was done in the evening when everyone had their eyes closed, so no one knew who he pointed at and what answer he received. In fact, we couldn't even be sure he was indeed the fortune teller and all this happened at all. We had our eyes closed. In one night round Eu Vin pointed at Sam and Joon Lam, and Jeff signalled at him that the demon was among them. Eu Vin was given this answer not by mistake. The fortune teller's power had a weak point. One of the townsfolk would be mistaken as the demon. In our game, that error was Joon Lam. Eu Vin was convinced that Joon Lam was the demon, and asked everyone to vote to get him killed. I, of course, quietly supported the motion. So another innocent person was killed. Well, technically the townsfolk didn't know that yet. They could only be sure that the demon wasn't dead yet since the game continued. It might have been the minion getting killed. The identities of the dead were not yet revealed. 

Crunch time was the day round when we had four players remaining. If the townsfolk didn't manage to kill me, by night there would be only three left, I could kill one more to get to two players left, and I would win. This time Eu Vin was convinced that I was the demon. He proposed that I be sent to the gallows. Joon Lam was already dead. In this game most of the dead are townsfolk, and most of the time they are honest. They can still speak, and since they usually have no more reason to lie, you have to be careful about arguing with them. I stayed away from any such argument. Joon Lam said he was the slayer, and since his attempt to kill Sam had failed, it meant Sam wasn't the demon. I said in a matter-of-fact manner that with only four of us left still alive, the possibilities would be Eu Vin, Zackler and me. I said I thought Eu Vin was the demon, and that I too wanted to nominate him to be hanged. Up to this point, none of the three dead people had voted yet. Their votes could be make or break. Since Eu Vin had nominated me first, the voting to kill me went ahead first. With four players alive, only two votes were needed to get me executed. There were exactly two votes. In this game to vote means to support hanging the person. There is no vote for disagreeing. If you disagree, just don't vote. I had also nominated Eu Vin, so we had to vote for him too. Naturally Sam and I voted. We had two more votes from the townsfolk, making a total of four votes. I escaped the hanging, and Eu Vin was executed. That meant game over for the townsfolk. The demon and his minion won! 

This game gave me a lot of anxiety. I was nervous but I had to act calm and innocent. Looks like I'm a pretty good liar. I managed to convince the townsfolk of my innocence. Blood on the Clocktower is an improved version of Werewolf. It addresses several shortcomings of Werewolf. Werewolf is simple, and if that's what you are looking for, it will still work for you. In Blood on the Clocktower you have much more information to work with. The game is more strategic. You have more basis for discussion and deduction. You are not deciding on who to lynch based on gut feel. There is some logic and reasoning. The townsfolk have more information, which makes things harder for the demon. However the demon also has more tools to balance things out. There is more information, but there is also possible misinformation. The designer has done a lot of work balancing the game. This game must have been a huge undertaking to playtest thoroughly. I am truly impressed. If you like social deduction games, you must give this a go. 

Still lots of discussion and debate after the game

Jeff (in green) was a great facilitator 

Demon (me) and poisoner Sam