Blood on the Forums IV: Glimpse of the Future
Co-Storytold by @Marshal and @N.1
This game is called Blood on the Forums IV despite being run third because it is ready to be run before the canonical third one so it is running before that even though it is canonically the fourth one.
My best explanation of how this game works to a Forum Mafia player who has never heard of it before:
Blood on the Clocktower, or Blood on the Forums as it’s called here, is a form of Flipless Mafia with a Flagbearer (the Flagbearer is referred to as the Demon in this game), with the added caveats that 1) every player can talk for the entire game, even after they die, 2) after a player dies, they get one ghost vote and can vote for someone’s execution once and only once after they die (but can no longer nominate), 3) there is whispering, you can request a whisper with someone and if they accept, you can speak with them in a private DM until one of you two speaks in the main thread again, and 4) you can whisper each of your two neighbors based on seating arrangement for free (without any of the restrictions in (3) ) for the entire game.
There are five types of types of characters in this game:
The Townsfolk, members of the Town who are given mechanical abilities that help the town.
The Outsiders, members of the Town who are forced to have mechanical abilities that hurt the town rather than help them.
The Minions, members of the Mafia who have supplemental abilities for their team that can hurt and mess with the Town in various ways.
The Demon, the Flagbearer of the Mafia team who must stay alive at all costs, or his team loses. The Demon is also the only player who can kill at night for the Mafia team. There are a few exceptions to that in this game which are described in certain classes, such as the Scarlet Woman, who can give the Demon a second life if there were five or more players alive at the point right before the Demon died.
There are also Traveler characters. Traveler characters can enter the game at any time (at the start, in the middle; whenever, so long as it isn’t right before the end). Traveler characters have mechanical abilities that are more powerful than normal at the cost of being very easy to get rid of. Regular players must be executed to eliminate them. Only one execution can take place per day and a living player must nominate a player for them to be able to be voted on / executed. Everyone knows each traveler player’s role, but not their alignment. When a traveler enters the game, they will be told whether they are a member of the town or the mafia. If they are a member of the town, they learn nothing extra, but if they are a member of the mafia, they learn the identity of the Demon when they enter the game.
There are NO Neutral characters in this game; only members of the Good (what the Town is referred to in this game) team and members of the Evil (what the Mafia is referred to in this game) team.
There is NO scum chat. Players may communicate only in the public thread or via whisper. If you whisper someone that is not your neighbor, there will be a record of that having occurred in the public thread for the entire game, so be careful if you’re evil to stop easy associations based on whisper patterns from being made.
Nominating and executing a corpse is also a permissable move in this game. In this game, if that happens, it will be mechanically equivalent to if no execution occurred.
To play the game, it needs at least 7 Resident (non-traveler) players and can go up to 15 residents, and it can have anywhere between 0 and 5 travelers. The first traveler to enter this game must be the Icibalus, but any other travelers can choose their character.
If the Demon is killed AND no new demons are created in that exact moment (in this version, that would mean the Scarlet Woman), the Town wins.
If a Demon is still alive when the game gets to only two players left alive, the Mafia wins.
To put it more simply, the Town’s goal is to kill all Demons. The mafia’s goal is to have the game progress until there are only two players left alive. If both of those goals are satisfied simultaneously, the Town wins.
The above is the standard way the game ends. This setup also includes two characters that can cause the game to end early in a different way, and those are the Eevee and the Orangeandblack5. Everyone wins and loses with their entire team, so if an alternate endgame ability is satisfied, the game is also over.
This game is the opposite of Forum of Lies in the sense that since it is flipless, no one is ever eliminated, and mechanical information can often be unreliable, it is often much more important to have good social reads than good mechanical reads in this game. Mechanical reads are important, but if the town attempts to solve this game only mechanically, they will always lose.
Disclaimer of this game containing mostly unreleased and unofficial characters:
MOST CHARACTERS IN THIS SETUP ARE UNRELEASED, UNOFFICIAL, AND ENTIRELY UNINDICATIVE OF WHAT THEIR FINAL VERSIONS WILL BE. ALL UNRELEASED/UNOFFICIAL CHARACTERS HAVE BEEN RENAMED SO PEOPLE DO NOT GET FALSE IMPRESSIONS OF HOW THEY WILL ULTIMATELY WORK… PLEASE REMEMBER THIS.
Marshal and I have been given explicit approval by a member of the Blood on the Clocktower Unofficial Discord Mod Team to run this setup here now that all unreleased and unoffical characters have been renamed so that we do not give false impressions of how they will ultimately work.
Phase Length
Each day phase will last for no longer than 48 hours.
12 hours: Discussion phase. Nominations may not be cast at this time.
12 hours: Nomination phase. Players who wish to nominate may do so at this time, and votes may begun to be cast during this time as well.
24 hours: Vote finalization. During this time, votes may be cast freely on any existing nomination, but no new nominations may be made. Once this time ends or all votes have been locked in, the day will resolve.
The night phase will last for 24 hours, or until all abilities have been performed and resolved.
Storyteller
The Storyteller is the key moderator for the game; All ability uses at night must be sent to the Storyteller via private message, and Storyteller will have the final say on any open-ended ability behaviors. Storyteller’s goal is to keep the game both fun and balanced, and they’ll often be trying to make it last as long as possible; however, the Storyteller may not alter any existing rules to accomplish this.
Every time the word “may” or “might” is used in a character ability, that means the Storyteller chooses what happens. I will say that with the choices given to @Marshal and I, we will be using the choices that we have to keep the game as close as we can for as long as we can. We will not contribute to blowouts.
Scum Info
On the first night of the game, when relatively few characters act, the evil characters will all be woken to learn who one another are. Evil players will not be allowed to communicate at night. The Demon will be told who all of their Minions are, and the Minions will know who the Demon is and who all of the other Minions are. However, the Minions and the Demon will not learn which specific characters any of their fellow evils are. The Demon will additionally be told three characters that are not in play, to serve as safe claims. They may claim any of these, none of these, or simply hand the claims off to Minions; however they think they will be best served.
Malfunctions a.k.a. Drunkedness / Poisonedness; all three of these things refer to the same thing:
The primary source of interference with abilities in this game is the malfunction. A class that is malfunctioning is not told that they are malfunctioning; if the class is one that gathers information, then the information they receive that night is arbitrary (open-ended, Storyteller may resolve at their discretion), otherwise, the malfunctioning class’ ability simply does not have any effect.
Madness -- This section can be ignored because the KyoDaz was removed; however it's still here if you'd like to try to learn how Madness works even though it will not be in this game:
There is one character in this setup that employs the “Madness” condition; KyoDaz.
The best way for me to describe madness is as follows:
Madness in this game is a state of mind in which you must openclaim to be a particular character that you are not at least once per day, publicly. You must stick with this fake claim for as long as it takes. Madness as a condition is the opposite of Sanity in this game. Below is a list of four guidelines that if you are the KyoDaz, you want to follow at all costs, as disobeying any of them in any way will break madness, make you considered sane, and lose you your class ability for good:
- You must claim to be this class that you are not at least once per day in the public thread, as well as providing whatever actions / results / information from your night abilities could be relevant. As I say in guideline three below, you need not actually win the thunderdome, but you must be genuinely believable to at least a few people.
- Do not ever reveal that you are mad in the public thread. Do not ever allude to the fact that your claim could be false. If you are thunderdomed by another person in the public thread who claims this same class, you must either accuse that player of being lying scum or them themselves being mad / being the KyoDaz. If you want a good example of this, please look at my Day 2 thunderdome with Simon in which I was the mad one in BotF II.
- You do not have to outright win the thunderdome / convince everyone that you are the actual possessor of this character that you are not; however, you can never back off or retreat at all from this fake claim if people are suspicious of you, and you cannot claim any other character, even another character that isn’t your own.
- You may reveal your true role to trusted people via whisper if you would like without fear of breaking madness; HOWEVER, this is a risk, because if either 1) this information reaches everyone via whisper or 2) this information leaks out of whispers into the public thread by anyone that had received it via whisper, not necessarily yourself, you will become sane.
If you are the KyoDaz, I will never tell you whether or not you have ever broken madness, but if you follow the above four guidelines to the letter, you should be set to retaining your ability. If you follow the above four guidelines as carefully as possible, chances are that if you outlive the person you will end up in a forced thunderdome with, you will get their ability.
Note that as the KyoDaz, if you successfully receive the ability of the class you were mad as being, you may then choose to become sane (i.e. reveal that your class was originally the KyoDaz but is now something else) without any consequence, if you would like.
Nominations and Voting
Voting in this game works a little differently. After the formal discussion phase has ended, the Storyteller will declare that nominations are opened. A player must be nominated before they can be voted on. Each player may only be nominated once per day, and each player may only nominate once per day. When a nomination is opened, the storyteller will begin to count votes. Votes may be precast, and may be altered so long as they are considered not to be locked in. A vote is locked in when everyone between the accused and the voter (going down the list from the accused) has locked in their vote, or once the day ends, assuming that not all votes on the nomination have been cast. Any votes that are not counted at EoD will be considered votes to pardon. If the count of votes to execute is more than half of the number of living players, and is the highest count of votes against any player that day, the accused will be considered “about to die”. At the end of the day or when all votes on all nominations have been cast, the player who is “about to die” will be executed. There isn’t such a thing as a quickhammer around here; we’re a little more careful with what we do.
A special feature in this game is that if the two players with the most amount of votes have the same number of votes when the day is over, neither of them can be executed. This game is parity-based but will no lynch if there is a tie (unless a third person had enough votes to be executed) instead of randing, going with the first person who got that many votes, or any other of the standard rules typically used to resolve a tie vote in Forum Mafia.
Whispers
Players may whisper each other in-game through private messages. Whispers must, however, be publicly announced, typically by requesting permission to whisper (a standard format is /whisper [Player]). Whispers to your neighbors (those seated next to you) do not have to be announced. Once a whisper has been declared and accepted, the two players may whisper via private message until one of them speaks publicly in the game chat, at which point the whisper is considered over and the players must declare whispers again if they wish to whisper.
Death
When a player dies, nothing is revealed about their character and they are allowed to stay in the game and speak. They may not nominate and they will have only one vote token (this will allow them to cast a vote to execute) for the entire game. Evil players who die may thus continue to help their allies by keeping up their claim and spreading misinformation, and good players may similarly help their allies by retaining relevant info that others may have forgotten in the heat of things. Once a player dies, their ability stops working, which means that a player killed before they would perform their ability will not perform their ability, and any ability with a persistent effect will end upon the player’s death.
Resident Characters, Traveler Characters, and Fabled Mechanics in-play (All of the rest are characters; Fabled are things that change how the mechanics of the game work in minor ways):
Townsfolk
Htm: You secretly have the ability of an out-of-play townsfolk, but you do not know what your ability is. Each day, privately guess what it is: you learn how accurate you are with a one-word response that is one of the following five words: Frigid / Cold / Cool / Warm / Bingo (if you guess correctly) based on the level of similarity of the ability you have to the one you guessed, determined by the Storyteller. You can attempt to use any ability before you guess yours correctly, but if you attempt an ability you don’t have, you’ll be poisoned.
Italy: You start knowing 2 players that are not the Demon.
NuclearBurrito: Starts knowing three players, one and only one of which is evil.
Luxy: All players who register as evil do not receive any of their starting information until you die.
Hippolytus: You appear as an extra minion to the Demon and a second Demon to the minions.
Eevee: You are a minion, know who the Demon and the other minions are, register as evil, register as an out-of-play minion of the Storyteller’s choice, and are told the identity of that out-of-play minion character to bluff as to the Demon and/or other minions within whispers when needed. If the Demon publicly guesses you to be the Eevee (they can attempt this once per game), you lose, even if you are already dead.
DirectorHail: Each night, learn 1 new in-play character (dead or alive).
Kape: Each day, privately ask the Storyteller to tell you 1 piece of false information. Up to once per game, you might unknowingly get true information with this ability instead.
Marshal: Each day, privately in your classcard, choose a 1 word topic on which the Storyteller tells you 1 fact. You cannot choose a topic that you have already chosen or a topic that is blatantly a synonym of a topic you have already chosen. If you attempt either of those, you will be told to re-select your topic. If an alive neighbor is evil, you get false info.
Simon: Each night (but not the first night), you gain the ability of the most recent executee. If they are evil, the Storyteller chooses an ability for you of their choice and you are poisoned until a good player dies this way.
Vulgard: If either alive neighbor died by execution today, all players are safe from the Demon tonight.
Priestess: When you start, choose a day number: if all dead players are good that dawn, they are all resurrected as good travellers of the Storyteller’s choice at that Dawn (However, the Icibalus must appear as a part of this ability if the game had no starting travelers), and the characters of all of these travelers will be publicly known.
Universal: If both your starting neighbors die before you do, something good happens, up to the discretion of the Storyteller but something that undeniably helps the state of the game for your team in some way.
Outsiders
N.1: The Minions also learn three roles to bluff as. The bluff list given to the Minions will be the same for each minion and may or may not overlap with the bluff list given to the Demon.
Geyde: There are no other outsiders and no outsider modification effects work. You have the abilities of every other spawnable outsider. If more than one outsider was supposed to spawn, replace all remaining outsiders with townsfolk.
Margaret: When you nominate for the first time, if the nominee is not the demon, they are executed no matter the vote total. You can not ever nominate again.
Katze: The night after the first execution, you become the alignment of the first player to be executed this game.
Minions
Scarlet Woman: If there are 5 or more players alive & the Demon then dies, you become the Demon (Travelers don’t count).
Orangeandblack5: If you publicly claim to be the Orangeandblack5 after you are nominated but before players vote, and are then executed that same day, you win.
DatBird: Once per game, choose to make a wish of your choice privately in your classcard. The Storyteller will decide whether or not to grant it, and if granted, your wish will have a price, and ST will publicly tell the court a clue to the nature of this price. Everyone will be alterted if the wish is granted, but it won’t be revealed publicly if it isn’t granted.
Arete: You start knowing a secret word that is chosen by the Storyteller. The first player who says it publicly, turns evil.
Demons
Headhunter: Each night (but not the first night), select 3 players. They all must choose whether they live or die. But if they all choose life, they all die. Already dead players who choose to live are revived, unless all three players choose life that night.
Revenant: Each night (but not the first night), choose a player. They die. At the beginning of the game, choose a player and they are poisoned for the entire game. You die if and only if that player dies.
Arbiter: Each day, choose any players of any number: tonight, they will all be added to a group DM for the night. They cannot speak with each other in this group DM, but they may only submit any chosen targets or feigned, fake chosen targets within this group DM, NOT within their own classcards. This group DM may only be used for that one night and only for submitting and/or changing night targets WITHOUT stating what ability you are attempting to use. You may but do not have to feign targets if you do not have an ability to use. If you make multiple submissions, only the last one will be counted. Tomorrow during the day, if 1 these players dies, they all die. One good player of the Storyteller’s choice will die each day that no one dies that day.
Templar: Each night, either mark two players or kill all marked players. Marked players learn that they are marked.
Travelers
Icibalus: Kill one of the two living players next to you each day, but only if the other neighboring living player agrees first (either publicly or within whispers). If one of your neighbors consents, you may kill the other. A neighbor’s consent does not affect your ability to kill that person, only the opposing neighbor (this must be the first traveler that appears in the game by whatever means necessary. Players can choose the one they want for all the rest but ST chooses the additional ones if the Priestess ability activates).
Scapegoat: If a player of your alignment is executed, you might be executed instead.
Gunslinger: Unfortunately, the Gunslinger is banned, because two killing travelers cannot be balanced in this setup.
Beggar: You must use ghost votes to vote. A dead player may give you their ghost vote (this renders them unable to vote); if they do so, you learn their alignment.
Bureaucrat: Each night, choose a player (not yourself); that player’s vote(s) to execute count as three votes tomorrow.
Thief: Each night, choose a player (not yourself); that player’s vote(s) to execute will count negatively tomorrow.
Apprentice: On the first night you are in play, you will gain a Townsfolk ability if you are good, or a Minion ability if you are evil. The ability that you receive may or may not be a duplicate of one already in play.
Matron: Once per day, you may publicly choose two players; these players swap positions. Players may only whisper their neighbors.
Voudon: Only you and the dead may vote on executions. The dead do not spend a vote token to vote, and do not require one. A 50% majority is not required for an execution.
Judge: Once per game, you may force an outstanding nomination to succeed or fail (but not if you made that nomination).
Bishop: The Storyteller makes all nominations. At least one player opposed to your alignment must be nominated each day.
Butcher: Each day, after the first execution, you nominate again.
Bone Collecter: Once per game, at night, privately choose a dead player; that player regains the use of their ability for that night and the next day.
Barista: Each night, until the next dusk, a player will either be allowed to act twice, or have their ability be guaranteed to work correctly (if applicable). The person affected by your ability will know how they were affected.
Harlot: Each day, privately choose a living player. At the start of the night, this player will know that the Harlot selected them, and will be given the choice to “agree”. If they agree, the Harlot learns their character, but both players may die.
Deviant: If either or both of the Storytellers laughed as a result of any of your posts in the public thread today (we will be honest), all attempts to exile you for the remainder of the day will fail.
Fabled
Channel-Master: One Townsfolk chosen at the start of the game permanently malfunctions.
Wind Chimer: A certain character cannot be targeted by the Demon, and evil knows whether or not that character is in play.
Djinn: The Djinn is here to fix a jinx! The Djinn’s special rule is in play for the following possible case: If the Headhunter and the Scarlet Woman are both in play, and the Scarlet Woman becomes the Headhunter, if the Scarlet Woman turned Headhunter manages to revive the original Headhunter, the original Headhunter will remain the Headhunter and the second one will turn back into the Scarlet Woman.
Possible Player Count Breakdown:
Total Residents: Townsfolk/Outsiders/Minions/Demons, + anywhere from 0 to 5 Travelers
7: 5/0/1/1, + anywhere from 0 to 5 Travelers
8: 5/1/1/1, + anywhere from 0 to 5 Travelers
9: 5/2/1/1, + anywhere from 0 to 5 Travelers
10: 7/0/2/1, + anywhere from 0 to 5 Travelers
11: 7/1/2/1, + anywhere from 0 to 5 Travelers
12: 7/2/2/1, + anywhere from 0 to 5 Travelers
13: 9/0/3/1, + anywhere from 0 to 5 Travelers
14: 9/1/3/1, + anywhere from 0 to 5 Travelers
15: 9/2/3/1, + anywhere from 0 to 5 Travelers
Every character in-game is unique in that more than one of the same character will never appear at the start of the game.
Possible Lost Wolf(es) explanation
There are two characters in this game that can cause someone’s alignment to change from Good to Evil: The Katze (which would also be a part of The Geyde if the Geyde is in the game) and The Arete.
If your alignment changes from Good to Evil, you will be informed as such in your classcard. If this happens, you can never go back, and the Storyteller will not inform you of your new teammates, so you will be converted from a member of the Town into a Lost Wolf. You might end up whispering other non-lost-wolf wolves later on which may help you, however.
If your alignment changes from good to evil, your class type and class / ability does not change; just your alignment. I.e. you would now be an evil townsfolk or evil outsider instead of a standard good one.
How Travelers Work
Travelers are special and powerful characters with different rules than normal citizens.
- Traveler characters are publicly known. If a player joins the game as a Judge, for example, everyone knows that they are the Judge.
- Traveler alignments are unknown. Because Traveler characters are known, the question regarding them becomes which side they’re playing for. Travelers are more likely to be good than evil; general practice is that one in three Travelers is evil, but it is possible for there to be only one Traveler in a game and that Traveler to be evil. Evil Travelers will be told who the Demon is when they enter play; Good Travelers will be told nothing. The Demon and Minions will not be told if a Traveler is good or evil.
- Traveler players may join or leave the game at any time. This game is designed for live play, and the Travelers are designed to accommodate players who arrive late or must leave early. If you would like to play, but cannot join at game start or do not think that you can stay around for the end of the game, then you may consider playing as a Traveler character instead of a normal citizen. However, I will not allow Traveler players to sub out (since the nature of their character is designed for them to simply leave if they cannot play), and if a Traveler player has left the game, they may not rejoin later. I will additionally ask that players who would consider joining as Travelers after the game has started notify me of this before the start of the game; I will compile a list of these potential Travelers and people not on this list by the start of the game will not be allowed to join as a Traveler. If a player wishes to join an in-progress game as a Traveler, I may bar them from choosing certain characters.
- Travelers with a night ability act before any citizens. Their abilities will be resolved absolutely first.
-
Travelers are not executed; they are exiled. An exile is different from an execution in a few key ways.
-An exile is not considered an execution, meaning that a game can see the exile of a Traveler and an execution in the same day.
-An exile is not affected by any abilities affecting nomination, voting or execution.
-An exile may be called for at any time, by anyone, even if that player is presently unable to nominate (i.e. dead players), and a player who calls for the exile of a Traveler may still nominate if they have not already.
-Dead players may vote on the exile of a Traveler, and they do not spend their ghost vote to do so.
-And finally, a simple majority vote is all that is required to exile a Traveler. Multiple traveler could be exiled in a single day, if the court wanted.
There is one difference between this game and how travelers worked in Blood on the Forums II: Travelers here will never be forcibly banished from the game against their will by the Storyteller due to continuous inactivity. Although traveler slots cannot be replaced, if a traveler player needs to leave the game for an extended period sometime during the game but may be back before the end, they will always have the right to continue playing when they return.
Victory
Good wins by eliminating all Demons (you don’t need to kill Minions to win). Evil wins by reducing the game to two living players (even if both players are good). The Storyteller may also declare a victory for Evil if Good may no longer possibly win (for example, if only evil players are left alive and thus no one would nominate the Demon). Certain class abilities may present alternate routes to victory; these classes, if able to appear, will be made known on the class list. In the event of a tie (both teams would win at the same time), Good wins.
The game will also be called if all living players are evil before the game gets to the final two, as in that case the game would be unwinnable for the good team (since the Demon would never be nominated), and I’m not a fan of keeping the game going when it’s entirely unwinnable for one side.
Player list can be found below; just ping @Marshal or I with /in and the seat you want (yes, we let you choose) and whether you would like to play as a resident or a traveler, as well as the traveler you would like to play if you choose to play as a traveler, if you are not the first traveler to sign up (The first traveler must be Icibalus, but travelers can trade who the Icibalus is later on if more than one traveler signs up to play). You can change your seat to another open one at any time during the signup phase by pinging one of us. The gaps will be eliminated and the list will be shrunk (while still retaining the general orientation of the order) if the game starts with fewer players.
The game will begin after one of the following is satisfied: 1) at least 7 residents have signed up and it has been at least 96 hours since the last person signed up, or 2) 20 players have signed up, 15 residents and 5 travelers.
Seats 1 and 20 are considered adjacent.
- Luxy (Resident)
- Geyde (Resident)
- MukuroIkusaba / Alice (Resident)
- Wazza (Traveler – Voudon)
- Amelia (Traveler – Matron)
- KyoDaz (Resident)
- Icibalus (Traveler – Icibalus)
- clonedcheese (Resident)
- Apprentice (Resident)
- Hippolytus (Resident)
- Mist1422 / Chemist1422 (Resident)
- Redrover (Resident)
- katze (Traveler – Deviant)
- Priestess (Resident)
- Napoleon (Resident)
- DatBird (Resident)
- Italy (Traveler – Bishop)
Please feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions and/or confusion as to how this game works.
Informed Spectators (All spots taken; DO NOT SHARE ANY INFORMATION WITH PEOPLE WHO AREN’T INFORMED SPECTATORS DURING THE GAME, OR THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES):
- Tangeld
- Jgoesgaming
- Arete
