WORDS WITH FRIENDS

Synopsis: An ultra social script about talking, but also about friendship. Every single good character needs to collaborate with or socially read another player if they want to get the most out of their ability, and a lot of the evil characters do too.

Notes

This is an idea that I had been kicking around for a while, and I've finally got it to a place I'm happy with. Every good character on the script is in some way an "ice-breaker" - i.e. it prompts the player who drew it to have a chat with someone else!

Sometimes this is social: the Noble wants to get a read on the players it knows. The Preacher wants to keep an eye out for possible evils, and see if their behaviour changes. The Butler wants to find a good master who will vote with their interests.

Other players want to chat for mechanical reasons, or solve puzzles: what is the Amnesiac ability doing? Are you happy to be juggled? Which of us is the drunk Village Idiot? The idea is that this is a puzzle that must be solved with help from the other players: nobody is going to get simple information that they can simply sit on and wait to reveal.

We also have a lot of characters that activate their ability by having a public (or private) chat: the Fisherman and Savant who like to consult the storyteller, the Yaggababble who kills by talking and the Slayer who also kills by talking (but only one specific player).

Fun interactions

Preacher

I love the Preacher with the Marionette, it's my favourite interaction in all of Clocktower. A Townsfolk waking in the night to learn "THIS CHARACTER SELECTED YOU" → "PREACHER" tickles me in a way I can't entirely explain but am positively delighted by.

Also, it means a Preacher who never chooses a Minion is still doing a lot of good work for town just by eliminating Marionette candidates. If the Preacher comes up to you on day 1 and tells you they preached you last night, and you didn't wake up, you know what team you're on. That's huge! Of course, if you did wake up, you also know what team you're on... but you've entirely lost the ability to sincerely believe your false information. Rats!

Soldier

Really strong here! The Soldier cannot be killed or poisoned by any of the Demons, so it's strictly a Minion detector: if it's trusted, the Assassin and the Godfather will both desperately want it dead. However, it's also really hard to prove as there are a lot of reasons for no deaths at night: maybe the Pukka-poisoned player was executed, maybe the Yaggababble is keeping schtumm, or maybe either one of them passed to the Scarlet Woman.

Magician

The Magician doesn't need to keep the Demon from its Minions all game to be useful, and the evil team have a bunch of ways to work around it. The Imp can star-pass, the Vigormortis can kill it and maybe it poisons someone but maybe it doesn't. It's another character that I love with the Marionette: you can, and should, consider telling a Demon who neighbours the Magician that the Magician is the Marionette.

Character list