Script Design: The Rose Bride
I've recently designed a script for Blood on the Clocktower (if you don't know what that is, this post may be lost on you, but I impore you to check it out here) called "The Rose Bride" that has been a surprise hit with the groups that I've run it for. I thought I'd make a post going through my decision making when designing the script because some people might find it interesting, but mostly because I have brainworms. The current version of the script can be found here.
The Concept
The vast majority of my Clocktower scripts come from one of two places: build around a cool script name, or build around a cool script concept. In this case it was the latter—I was looking for novel things I could do with the newly released character, the Hermit, and spotted a cool interaction with Hermit-Drunk-Damsel. The Damsel would not know they are the Damsel, but their ability would be malfunctioning. Frankly, I did not know if this would actually be fun until I built the script and ran it, but I think trying something unique out and finding that it doesn't work is still worthwhile, so I went ahead and built the script.
The Initial Draft
The initial version of The Rose Bride actually had an extra twist: the fourth outsider on script was the Goon:
This was a very funny idea where once a player turned Evil, they would immeditately know they were the Hermit, but were still at risk of losing if a Minion guessed them, regardless of which team they were currently on! Unfortunately when attempting to build it out I found that this didn't work: most Evil abilities that could turn the Hermit would leave an easily spotted trail behind for the Evil team: the Demon's kill wouldn't go through, or the madness from a Harpy or Cerenovus would not be sent out, or a Witch-cursed player wouldn't die when nominating. It would then become clear to the Evil team that they've picked the Hermit and they can then leave them alone for the rest of the game—the Hermit is either Evil and playing for your team, or has been turned back Good, and you know exactly where they are, and there is no reason not to guess them if your Demon is about to die. This can lead to some frustrating games for the Good team where they lose through no fault of their own. The idea was funny, but not fun, and was scrapped pretty quickly, but I thought I'd mention it here because it's pretty interesting!
Building a Base
The most important aspect that I wanted to maintain was the puzzle of trying to find out who is getting misinformation, and therefore is the Hermit. This only works if the amount of drunkenness and poisoning on the script is limited. I avoided characters like Poisoner and No Dashii because this diluted the concept: if the Good team can't tell who is poisoned by a Poisoner and who is drunk due being the Hermit, the script quickly falls apart. Instead, I restricted poisoning to Demons that leave clues as to where the poisoning is: Vigormortis and Pukka. Instead I wanted to give the Evil team other ways of providing misinformation, which lead me to make this a multikill script.
Let's talk about "character packages". There are certain sets of characters that just work together and you can just pop these on a script when you need them for their function. One example is the "TB misinformation and outsider mod" package of Poisoner-Baron-Drunk. This gives a solid basis for misinformation that is proven to work—and using this lets you instead focus on the rest of your script, knowing you have a solid misinformation foundation. I used this on my recent World Cup script The River Styx. For this script, we'll be using the "multikill package". This contains characters like Grandmother, Gambler, Gossip, Tinker, Godfather and Assassin. You don't need all of them, but it's a good idea to include at least a few, otherwise your information becomes too easily confirmed (in the case of the Gossip) or is just sort of uninteresting (in the case of an Assassin). In this case I omit Tinker because we don't want our Hermit-Damsel to be exploding. Acrobat is not part of the standard package and only works on certian scripts but it works very well here—they can potentially confirm who isn't the Hermit at the cost of their life, so I add that in too. Godfather is very important for this script because it helps us have an uncertain number of outsiders. Gossip is interesting here because whilst the Evil team can figure out the Gossip is drunk if there's only one person gossiping, if the whole town gossips it becomes a fun puzzle. I reason it may take a couple of games for town to get used to this but it could be an interesting twist on playing with the Gossip.
That gives us a base that looks something like this:
Filling out the Outsiders
The choice for the last outsider slot is interesting. If the Hermit is dead, then they are free to come out with their info—and the town may identify the true information far more easily. (I do not think it would be fun to include a Barber or Hatter that might swap them back in, as in this case the Good team can't ever share their info which is very rough). For that reason, a death trigger that helps the Evil team out is probably a good idea. I go with Sweetheart to help them out and give more misinformation out once their Hermit-Damsel win condition is gone.
Picking the Townsfolk
For the Townsfolk, we must be careful with what we include. We do not want the drunk player to to be too easily identifiable to the Evil team, but rather include roles that all players need to work at figuring out. For example, Chef is an uninteresting choice, because the Evil team would immediately know if the information is wrong. This would result in the Chef simply never sharing their information until they are dead. It's a pretty dull play pattern for both sides. Instead, I go with Librarian and Pixie for You Start Knowing roles. Librarian can see a Hermit, Drunk, or Damsel and that's very useful information—but they could also be the Drunk or Hermit themselves, and both teams will need to work this out. And a Pixie can see a role that is both out of play and not a bluff, and if they realize this they can continue to bluff their role for the whole game to stop the Evil team realizing they're the Hermit! Both of these scenarios are interesting and fun takes on my concept.
I pick out a few other roles that can get information that can have a fun puzzle to figure out if it is drunk: Fisherman and Savant are some of my favourite roles to include as they are versatile and allow the Storyteller to tailor the information to the gamestate, and they work well here too. High Priestess can get some fun information that can point them to the information and players who are on the right track with identifying the Hermit and the Evils. Village Idiot is great here too—I ran a game recently with three VIs: one drunk, one sober, and one being the Hermit, and used Savant statements to help the Good team identify which is which. Unfortunately for the Savant, this information got to the Evil team and they figured it out for themselves and won with the guess, but that's the concept of the script!
Huntsman serves an interesting role here and is Bootleggered: Rules as Written the Huntsman that picks the Hermit doesn't do anything but that's no fun so I add in the rule that the Hermit will become the role they saw at setup. This means the Huntsman in a Hermit game can pick a player and be sure they're not the Hermit, which is valuable in of itself! And of course they can also find a Damsel as usual. I don't usually use the Huntsman to add in a Damsel or Hermit as this is harsh for a Townsfolk in most situations.
Town need some protection with a multikill script, so Innkeeper fills that slot, and as a bonus it adds some Good-sided drunkenness. Clever Good players can use this to give a reason a suspected Hermit is drunk and dissuade a guess from a Minion. Adding one Demonbane seems like a good idea and I go with Banshee becuase in my experience players have a lot of fun with it and it also gives players a reason to bluff. The final Townsfolk I added in v1 was Mayor, but this was a mistake. Mayor in a multikill script often doesn't get to do much as there is no guarantee of a final 3. This was simply a brain fart and was removed rather quickly, as I'll get to in the section below detailing my changes.
Finishing up the Minions
That leaves two minion slots: I notice a Boffin works really well with a lot of the Townsfolk: Fisherman, Savant, Innkeeper, High Priestess and Gossip are all fun choices. There aren't any "hard confirmation" roles like Nightwatchman or Virgin that I personally don't like a Boffin with, too. For the final slot, a Harpy is useful for Evil to bluff extra kills as it can kill in the night, and adding some madness here seems reasonable as it is more non-poison misinformation. That completes v1!
Playtesting and tweaking
It's important to playtest and get feedback for your script: it is basically impossible to create the best possible version of your concept immediately. We're not psychic and often can't foresee what will happen with our players once they've got their hands on it! After some initial playtesting a few issues were fed back to me or noticed myself:
- The Mayor Issue as specified above. It just doesn't work on multikill scripts.
- The Po was very strong, with only an Innkeeper to block kills and the Good team having plenty of roles themselves to increase the number of deaths in the night.
- The Evil team often struggled if the Hermit went down early and the Good team were confident of this.
I replace the Mayor with the Philosopher, reasoning that it's an additional way for the Good team to hide the Hermit which is interesting. To solve the issues with the Evil team, I cut the Po entirely to remove the Demon power imbalance, and add a Mezepheles—this is another source of non-poison misinformation. Now the Good team will have to consider if a player is Mez-turned but this is more traceable via Socials and pieces of information. It also can present a funny situation where the Evil team end up Mez-turning the Hermit, but unlike with the Goon situation earlier there's no risk of this ending the game for them.
After round 2 of playtesting a couple more issues were identified:
- Players were absolutely not interested in using the Philo to hide drunkenness, instead using it almost exclusively to go Grandmother on Night 2 because of its raw confirmation power. This was crowding out all other Philo options and play and something has to give.
- When selecting a Good team setup, the number of actual information roles was a bit lacking. If none of VI, Gossip, or Savant were in play it was very difficult for the Good team to actually solve who was evil, so I was obligated to usually put at least two of these roles in play. We could use one more information role to help out.
- Luckily I spotted this before anyone did it, but Mezepheles and Banshee is a bad interaction. Two extra votes for Evil is very very strong and not very fun to lose against if the Good team spend a couple of dead votes early on.
Removing the Grandmother and adding the Gambler should help with issues 1) and 2). Initially I thought a Gambler would be too easy find the drunkenness on, but I now think it's quite interesting that a Gambler can choose to spend their turn checking if they die by mis-gambling themselves, and if they live the mis-gamble suddenly they are in the interesting position of being aware they're potentially the Hermit but not being able to tell anyone! It's also a nice recurring information role for town that the Evil team already have the tools to counter with their extra killing power. To fix the Banshee issue I simply replace it with Soldier, which is a less interesting role, but the other Demonbanes have issues here that makes me want to avoid them, and I do like that the Soldier can still be killed by a Godfather or Assassin which is information in of itself.
Finally I add Spirit of Ivory to cover the niche interaction where the Storyteller can't Shab-rez a dead Mezepheles because this would result in Evil getting a second extra player. In my opinion this is what the Spirit of Ivory is for—not for building scripts with seven alignment changers!
This gives us the current version which I'm looking forward to running more:
Naming the Script
If you want your script to be popular and get lots of players, you should consider naming your script something marketable such as The Ballad of Seat 7. Personally I choose to completely disregard this and name my scripts after things I like, in this case after Episode 1 of groundbreaking 1997 anime Revolutionary Girl Utena, because it rules. If you like surrealist shows about cycles of abuse, the tyranny of societal systems, and lesbians, check it out.
In conclusion
If anyone actually read all this then thanks! I hope it gave you a good idea of my scriptbuilding thought process and maybe gives you motiviation to try it yourself. Your first script won't be great in all likelihood (mine sure wasn't) but the process itself can be pretty fun!