How to Play the RECLUSE (Trouble Brewing) | Blood on the Clocktower

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[00:00:06]Welcome to Clock Tower Academy and my name is Dylan D'Angelos. On this week's pod, we are continuing our trouble brewing strategy guides with an episode on the first outsider that we've covered in this series so far, and that is the recluse. I guess for this week's pod is Evan Donahghue from the Pandemonium Institute. Evan is the company director and CFO at TPI. He's like one of the OGs for the entire game. It's pretty cool having him on this podcast. If you watch those really old Clock Tower playthroughs on the official BOTC YouTube channel back in 2019, Evan's the storyteller for those videos. We also have a cameo appearance. Philip, who is the Undertaker in that trouble brewing video I was just talking about, he he makes a little cameo appearance in the early part of this episode. I guess he was just hanging out at Evan's house at the time. So yeah, real stacked cast here for the Recklus episode here today.

[00:00:47]Anyway, you guys can check out Clock Tower Academy on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Pods, anywhere you get your podcast. You can also check us out on Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok. Consider joining our Clock Tower Academy Discord server where I'm organizing games that I play on my live streams every Wednesday. If you're a newer player, if you're trepidacious about getting in the Clock Tower, feel free to hang out in our streams. We are pretty frequently at this point getting people that have never played the game before or had never played online before and they're hopping in and they're doing just fine. It's great to see. I'll link to all my stuff in the description of this podcast. Anyway, I think that's going to do it here for this intro here, guys. Have fun with this recluse episode. It's a good one. Class is in session.

[00:01:23]Evan, welcome to Clock Tower Academy.

[00:01:25]>> Thanks for having us. Uh, I just want to also introduce a special guest here.

[00:01:28]This is Phillip, original Blood on the Clock Tower City Community Player and was in what is now regarded as the first ever game of Clock Tower, which at the time was just Steven's Werewolf, was the first ever Undertaker.

[00:01:38]>> Hello. I'm here for no reason. And viewers at home can't see this, but I'm the pretty one.

[00:01:44]>> No.

[00:01:45]>> Yeah. Philip Lovely in the house. I was also in uh some videos at 2019. We did some demo videos for the three base sets. Trouble Brewing, Bad Moon Rising, and Sex and Violets. We had one game of each. I can't remember exactly what happened, but I I I believe I I I had a problem of uh figuring everything out.

[00:02:01]I'm a really good detective when I play the game. And then I had a tough time convincing anyone of what I had discovered. Yeah. So, that's that's that's the way I lose games is I get too excited. It's like, "Oh, I know. I know what's happening." And then people think I'm clearly overexited and I must therefore be evil.

[00:02:17]>> Yeah. Deduction versus social, >> which is often true. I think I think I'm evil more than the stats should allow.

[00:02:22]>> Yeah. Some people some people just have those sticky fingers, you know.

[00:02:26]>> So, I'm joined by two clock tower celebrities here.

[00:02:29]>> Yeah.

[00:02:29]>> Yeah. For the price.

[00:02:31]>> Yeah.

[00:02:31]>> Are we old hands or are we old hats?

[00:02:33]>> We could be both. I'm an old chestnut sometimes.

[00:02:35]>> Today we're talking about the recluse.

[00:02:36]It's an outsider from the trouble brewing script. It ability reads, "You might register as evil and as a minion or demon even if dead." So, I'll start this episode like I start started all episodes. Let's just talk about how this ability works. Its core mechanic is misregistration, but I could see new players pulling this token and going, "What does this mean exactly? Does this mean I'm on the evil team? What does it mean?"

[00:02:58]>> Yeah, that's a that's a common question.

[00:03:00]I don't know if I run over or under a thousand games of trouble brewing at this point in my life. I stopped counting at some point, but one of the common questions from new players is, "Am I evil? If I'm registering as evil, am I on the evil team? What does that mean?" Having to say to them, no, no, you just you just mess with other people's ability. you're there to be a problem for other people is the kind of main thing.

[00:03:18]>> Yeah. And there's always when writing the uh uh description, there's always this battle between making it concise and making it comprehensive. So this this went through dozens of iterations.

[00:03:29]The word register was appear at some point. You might appear as evil. Other players were in there. So it said something like you might register as evil to other players to make it clear that when other players look at you. But then that was also kind of strange meaning what what did do they just know?

[00:03:44]do they get told by the storyteller?

[00:03:46]It's so it's just sort of odd. So, um it was tough. It require It's one of those roles that just generally requires an extra layer of you know pulling someone out in the mid game saying, "Hey, you're not evil." But there's also a pregame thing if you've got a whole bunch of new players. I would I would always really stress blue good, red evil. Every time I run the the script, sorry, the game, any any script, blue good, red evil. But yeah, I think there's no there's no way around that.

[00:04:11]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think the easy way to describe the recluse to a new player, at least the way that I do it, is that you're a good player that can look like an evil player to >> good player abilities.

[00:04:22]>> Yeah, good good players that see evil stuff might see you as evil. Often if I'm trying to explain the character, I might give a few examples. Empath is usually a simple simplest one because that's one of the most intuitive characters to just kind of grock without needing too much explanation. You might say, if you're sitting next to an empath, the empath might get a one because you might register as evil to them. You look evil to other players. Or if the fortune teller points at you, I might nod my head and say yes, they're the demon. A couple of examples usually don't open with the chef example because people are already that's also probably one of the characters that gets a lot of questions at the start like what do you mean a pair? What does a pair mean?

[00:04:55]>> Yeah, it's it's horrendous. I don't think that's I'd never had someone understand.

[00:04:59]>> There is no good way to articulate the chef's ability.

[00:05:01]>> And and I think the chef has sunk more evil players bluffing than any other character in the game. They come out and they say, "Oh, the story teller told me there were three pairs." I'm like, "That's that's actually impossible." um in this current circle I haven't pulled them aside and then they come out they come out from a little chat with a storyteller and then their story has changed. It doesn't look good.

[00:05:21]>> Yeah. What's interesting about this ability is that you know trouble brewing introduces two different like core mechanics that are used for misinformation purposes. And you've got you've got drunken poison which are you know essentially a debuff to a character's ability. It's a way to, you know, potentially give a character false information or turn their ability off entirely. Recluse and the spy, which is like the mirror of the recluse. These are characters that are giving misinformation via their abilities are working as intended and they're still getting quote unquote wrong information or at least it feels like wrong information. And as the recluse, part of your job just being in the game is figuring out like what you're doing to other characters abilities and how that's affecting the rest of town and what picture that paints on, you know, the rest of the town at large, you know, based on, you know, how you're pinging to other towns folk.

[00:06:12]>> Yeah, I think that I'll frame frame it in these terms. When I'm running a game for new players, I will say if there if there are any new players involved, if they're all new players, I just usually let them play. But if it's one or two new players with a group of experienced players, I'll say, "Hey, look, if you're a new player, I will come and find you on day one and I'll just talk you through what your character does."

[00:06:30]Making stressing not telling people how to play. Um, you as a storyteller, you should never tell people what to do, but I like giving them kind of an overview of what their character does, what your mission is, and a few options for how you might want to play. Every character is designed so that there's never one dominant way to play the character. So, for the recluse, I would sort of echo what you've been saying there. say, "Look, you you look like you're on the evil team to other players with with good abilities." So, your mission is to figure out basically figure out who the demon is. That's everyone's mission on the good team. But your kind of mission is to figure out whether there are other outsiders in play. You know, you're an outsider. You know, the outsider account. So, kind of you can figure out from there how likely someone else is to be an outsider when they claim to be so.

[00:07:14]but also to figure out whose information you might be messing with because if there is someone out there who is looking at you and saying I think you're evil as the recluse that actually kind of tells you I think this person might be on the good team it would be unlikely for a random evil player of course always exceptions like the spy to kind of turn around and say this person's evil but if someone is sitting there going I'm the fortune teller and I saw Evan the recluse is as evil you can sit there and go well they might be on the good team I can probably trust this person so you you as the recluse your ability hurts the good team But you personally, your mission is to figure out who your ability might be affecting so you can figure out who to trust and not trust.

[00:07:51]>> Yeah. And what's interesting about this ability is that it says you might register. So yes, >> the word might is basically just saying this is a storyteller decision. The storyteller is going to be making several decisions, you know, potentially throughout the course of the game whether to register you as an evil player, as a minion, as a demon, depending on what makes the most sense for that game state.

[00:08:13]Yes.

[00:08:14]>> Yeah. And I can tell you it makes it makes the stories tell a sweat sometimes. There are certainly uh uh decisions you can I would say the mites for both the spy and the recluse uh tend to lean more than 50% in registering.

[00:08:27]I'd say it's it's kind of integral to their character. For example, if let's just say you took might as a coin flip >> uh and three people looked at the the recluse during the game. It's pretty, you know, it's it could happen that you uh go the recluse looks good good good three times in a row and then the recluse is not a character, right? So, um I think the the might still means the storyteller should lean towards making them appear evil.

[00:08:50]>> Generally, for anytime that there's a storyteller decision, in most cases, I think there's a there's a a misconception that that means help the losing team, and that's not really the case. You should be using character abilities to kind of honor what the character's purpose is, but mostly to be helping the evil team. Being on the evil team is really hard. They're outnumbered. The good team only needs to get lucky once. The evil team needs to get lucky every day. Your job as a storyteller. I know we're zooming out a bit from the recluse, but we'll zoom back in soon. I promise. Your job as a storyteller is to get the game to that final day where there's three players left and that's where the most tension is for both teams. So, when it says you might register, I tend to explain to players or for the things like the recluse, for the spy, um the mayor, I'm going to use this ability to help the character first. So, in the case of the mayor, where another player might die instead, I usually use that to protect the mayor. But for the recluse, I'm almost always going to make the decision that hurts the reclus's team more in my opinion. And that usually means making them misregister.

[00:09:44]>> Yeah, exactly. As Evan said, the might is just wiggle room.

[00:09:47]>> Yeah.

[00:09:47]>> Because the storyteller needs wiggle room in general.

[00:09:50]>> Yeah. And like you said, Recklus is an outsider and the the crux of outsiders in general is that they are good players that have abilities that are detrimental to the good team. So using that ability to help the evil team, you know, a decent chunk of the time is, you know, typically how, you know, you're going to want to run it as a storyteller.

[00:10:07]>> Yeah. You got to wreck wreck the good team with this with this character as much as possible. Yeah. As if you are a new player watching this, that means typically if you're uh if your storyteller is making some reasonable decisions, then they'll usually be using your ability to misregister. But once you start getting a few games in, maybe five, 10, 15, 20 games in, the storyteller might start some voting expectations. And when you expect them to zig, they might zag. And a few choice instances of not using an outside ability or when they when you expect them to can throw the good team off. A good storyteller is always looking for what their players will expect um and trying to do. They will always be using your ability or they should always be using your ability to hurt your team as much as possible. That's that's the main thing to keep in mind.

[00:10:52]>> Uh yeah. Uh last thing with this ability is that it's an ability that sticks to you even when you die, which is atypical of clock tower characters in general.

[00:11:02]Usually when you die, your ability goes away. You're just a dead player. Recklus isn't the case. So, say you're dead and the fortune teller picks you and another player, you could still get the misregistration off of that and get a yes on a demon ping with a dead recluse.

[00:11:15]That's something that's happened in a game with me before. So, just keep that in mind is that like your misregistration can still mess with town even once you're dead.

[00:11:21]>> Yeah. And that's something as if you are playing the recluse something and if you're open about being the recluse, it's something to maybe tell people or keep in mind, you know, don't don't check me fortune tellers when I'm dead, you know. And largely that's there as well so that the recluse can still look like an evil player to the undertaker.

[00:11:36]That's the character in trouble brewing.

[00:11:38]That when a character is when a player is executed, the undertaker knows what character they are. And so for the recluse ability to work after they die means the the undertaker might see them and probably will see them as an evil character instead of the recluse.

[00:11:50]>> Yeah. And then uh anytime you pull an outsider token or or I really just like any game in general, it's good to know the base outsider count for your game.

[00:11:58]And so you know that you're going to be one of them. So, say, you know, say it's a 10-player game, which is which is Bay Zero Outsiders. You pull the Reckluse token, you know, it's a Baron game immediately because that there's an outsider put in the bag. If it's if it's like an 11 player game and you pull the outsider token, it could be that you're just the only one. And so, that's just going to be part of your puzzle is like figuring out what's going on with the outsiders in this game, your piece of that puzzle.

[00:12:22]>> Yeah. Uh, I want to pipe up about this.

[00:12:24]I've never enjoyed the uh metag game of counting outsiders, even though I recognize its strength and its importance, but uh so that there was an advanced storyteller variant. What are the the special characters? There's a there's a fabled character called the sentinel which was designed for me. It means that this game could have plus or minus one outsider in the game. So, it deliberately is there to just ruin those numbers and ruin that metagaming because I think um it's one of the very few interactions which is really fine with an experienced group. I think that discussion is fine. We're using it to count us, you know, we haven't got anyone, you know, maybe there's a drunk blah blah, but with new players and experienced players in the same game, it ruins the game. Just my personal opinion, I don't think uh it always goes that way. So, um just messing with those numbers really helps.

[00:13:09]>> Just just to zoom out a bit as well. Uh if you are if you are a new storyteller, if you're running a gaming group, more important than the addition someone is playing, how advanced the characters are, whether it's Trouble Brewing or Bad Moon Rising or Sex and Violence, what's most important is that everyone playing, particularly when they're starting out, is at relatively similar skill levels.

[00:13:25]So, as much as possible, try and put newbies with newbies. If you have veterans playing with newer players, like people who've played lots of clock tower playing with new ones, please give them this advice. Tell them if you draw a good token, if you if you draw a blue token, if you're on the good team, step off the gas a little bit until the final day. On the final day of the game, that's when you can go a little harder and try and get the demon executed. But if if you've played 50 games and you see a a first-time player make a total mechanical misstep bluff, maybe don't jump down their throat straight away.

[00:13:55]Wait until the final day. If you are a veteran player playing with newbies and you draw an evil character, play your guts out. Weapons free. Play as hard as you can. And typically when veterans get that advice when playing with newbies, those games are still fun for the newbies.

[00:14:08]>> Yeah. Because I mean just like any board game, that first game experience is going to be so important to how players feel about playing a second game and then playing, you know, a hundred or a thousand games after that like a lot of clock tower players are.

[00:14:22]>> It really sticks in your mind.

[00:14:23]>> Yeah. And the storyteller is playing a different game. The storyteller has the joy of seeing clock tower play out, but their game is making sure that everyone enjoys themselves. I will say this just to to bring it back to the recluse and being the outsider that you are and knowing the outsider account. The recluse is one of my favorite outsiders to be. It's one of my favorite characters to be. For some reason, uh whenever whenever I'm the recluse, something I I tend to have good games. I tend to I tend to win things go well. As for the four outsiders in trouble brewing, it's the kind of the one with the most upside. The drunk doesn't know they're the drunk. The saint has an incredible downside. Their job is to stay alive and not get executed or to try and get killed by the demon. The butler has a restriction on their voting. They can't do what they want.

[00:15:03]But the recluse is great to be because you can vote freely. You know who you are, which means you can contribute information to the outside account. As you say, is is this game supposed to have zero, one or two outsiders? And what does that mean for me? What does that mean for other people who are claiming to be an outsider? You know that your ability might be affecting how other people see you. So, you actually can do some deduction based on what people say about you. And it doesn't matter too much if they execute you. Uh so you can kind of play more freely that way. You're more free to focus on deduction socializing uh without having to worry about picking the right master or not getting executed. So the recluse is uh if you're if you're a new player and you draw that recluse token and you wor like a damn I'm an outsider. The recluse is all upside. It's a really it's a really fun character to play because you can kind of just do what you want and there's still some meat on the bone uh from a deduction perspective.

[00:15:56]Yeah, the Recklus is like a it's like a passive information character. If you're able to kind of like figure out how your misregistration is working throughout the game and why it's misregistering that way to the like specific characters, you can kind of become a towns folk at that point. You can kind of >> Yeah.

[00:16:11]>> be a piece of the world building.

[00:16:13]>> Like um if the chef if there's a chef who says I got a one and you're the recluse, it's like I should probably start killing my neighbors.

[00:16:19]>> Yeah. Like what's going on here? Yep.

[00:16:21]>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in absence of any better information, if there's nothing else, it's like, well, I'm a recluse and the chefs are a wand. Um, like you can kind of as a storyteller backdoor uh information on finding evil players that way um is particularly useful.

[00:16:35]>> Yeah.

[00:16:35]>> The last thing I just want to talk about with how does it work is that if you get poisoned, you just don't have an ability. You're just a vanilla outsider.

[00:16:41]You can't misregister. You're just an outsider.

[00:16:45]>> Uh if you get poisoned, then everyone sees you for who you truly are. It's all going well that way. All right. I've had games where Yeah. the the Reckluse gets sniped by the poisoner on night one and I'm the storyteller sitting there going, "Okay, well, I got to I got to like readjust some stuff in the grim here."

[00:17:01]>> Yeah, now the reckless is poison.

[00:17:03]>> Yeah.

[00:17:04]>> All right. Well, I got to head. Thank you so much for having me. As always, this has left me bloodthirsty for another game. And I just I I hate talking about this game because it makes me want to play it. God damn it.

[00:17:14]>> Tomorrow.

[00:17:14]>> Yeah. All right. I'm getting ready.

[00:17:16]>> There's a there's a game on tomorrow.

[00:17:17]>> All right. I'm in.

[00:17:18]>> Yeah. All right. Sweet. See you. Keep playing.

[00:17:20]>> All right, cool.

[00:17:20]>> One thing I forgot to say is that uh because you pulled an outsider token, you cannot be the drunk, which is also something I've seen new players ask is that uh because you're the reckless, you cannot be the drunk. The reck the drunk is an outsider that thinks they're a towns folk. They're an outsider that pulled a town folk token. So, because you pulled an outsider token, you're cool. You're not the drunk.

[00:17:39]>> Yeah. And that that is um just to echo what what I was saying before about uh and as you say contributing to the outside account. There are only three good characters in trouble brewing who really know who they are. Um and that's the recluse. That's the three outsiders that aren't the drunk. The recluse, the butler, and the and the saint. Any any other blue token you draw, you don't know 100% who you whether you're the drunk or or that town's folk. And so just in on that alone, you start with some very valuable information if you're one of those three characters and particularly the recluse.

[00:18:12]>> So let's get into the the weeds of the recluse. I I actually like I went through the whole script and I was like, "Oh my god, it's so many abilities that potentially interact with the recluse.

[00:18:22]It's everywhere."

[00:18:23]>> Yeah. And that was just to speak to the design principles. Um, and you'll notice this particularly if you're looking at the Bad Moon Rising script, but a character shouldn't wouldn't really go into a base edition script unless it had like a quorum number of other abilities on the script that it could interact with. Um, and so a lot of the characters on Badmin Rising in particular were kind of retrofitted to sort of fit into that interacting with each other. The Goon in particular um was a very difficult character to get right and so needed a lot of different writing. I'm doing I'm doing the the veteran player sin of when you've got new players talking about other characters that they don't hear about and aren't aware of. But um yeah, the the recluse definitely plays a lot with characters on trouble.

[00:19:05]>> Uh so I'll just go one by one here. Try not to spend too much time on each of these individual uh abilities. Start with like the simplest one which is librarian. Librarian says you start knowing that one of two players is a particular outsider or there's zero play. They could just see you as the recluse, which is best case scenario honestly is the recluse is being librarian confirmed in a game. Um I've done that as a storyteller. I've had the recluse librarian confirmed. It's cool.

[00:19:30]It's cool to have somebody just like believe that you're the recluse.

[00:19:33]>> Yeah. Uh I I like to do that as a storyteller if I kind of as a storyteller I like to set up things that might happen and then whether or not the players go down those paths that's up to them. They they play their own game.

[00:19:43]They craft their own stories. But if I'm doing a librarian and recluse pairing as a storyteller, I keep it in the back of my mind that this might look like a bluff from the evil team. And so getting into bluffing, if some two of the the demon bluffs, the three good characters that they learn aren't in play, you can give a bluff. You can give a librarian and a recluse. And on day one, the demon can stand up and say, "I learned that one of these two players is the recluse." And just point at their minion and someone else. So, it's very powerful for the good team, but because it's so powerful for the good team like that, uh try and keep it in the back of your mind that you might, if you had this pairing, you might want to set up other stuff that might frame them as as demon and minion, uh and get the town to come after them.

[00:20:23]>> Yeah. Uh another cool thing that you could do with the librarian, the recluse, which I I did in a game last week, it was actually it was somebody's first game ever playing and there were the librarian. I I did this to them. It was uh a one outsider game. The only outsider was the recluse and I gave the librarian a zero because what you can do is you can have the recluse register as a minion or a demon, therefore not an outsider. And so the librarian learns that there are no outsiders in play. He didn't figure that out. Also, nobody I I I'm disappointed in the veteran players that were in this in that game that uh they didn't like come up with that. They they painted like a like a poison librarian world. That's what they ended up thinking it was. That's fully sober information. I think also like was in that game did they believe the librarian when they were when they were saying that?

[00:21:06]>> They trusted the librarian. I I think he did get executed at one point because you know they did the >> you know yeah worst case yeah you're a top four. You're either you're either a spent role or you're a minion so we'll just execute you anyway.

[00:21:18]>> Um yeah if you've got nothing better to do just kill a librarian. It's great.

[00:21:21]It's fine. Don't worry about it. Um no that's that because there's really I'm just thinking through this now and I've given precious few librarian zeros in my life. uh mainly because like in in my view the zero option is there so that you can just randomly um throw things out in the bag, right? You can you can pick randomly and if you've got a 10player game or a 13 player game or a seven player game, these these player counts where they're not supposed to have an outsider, the librarian still learns something. But because I've spent so much of my time um as a you know one of the developers as the producer of the game going out into the world and promoting it as a kind of showing it off to new players. It is more interesting for a first-time player generally to learn something. That one of two dynamic that exists throughout a lot of clock tower means you you learn something but not everything. It gives you people to talk to. Gives you something to do and but you don't just get the information handed to you. You need to go out and work for it. And and as a way of showing off the game, that is much more interesting for interesting for a first-time player. If you've played a few times and you're a librarian and you get that zero and you understand the implications of that, the nature of the game, you're like, great, I love this.

[00:22:24]Um, but for first timers, it's it's probably a little less interesting. So it means I've done very very in the in the many games I've run probably just a handful of times I've actually given a librarian zero. So it's nice to hear that um you telling these stories are going yeah I tried it with these new players. There were people there who could have figured it out. They didn't.

[00:22:43]That's >> and that new player uh they were like I watched like so many videos. I didn't even know that was a thing. Uh and they were excited that like that happened to them.

[00:22:50]>> Let's talk about the investigator. The investigator says you start knowing that one of two players is a particular minion. The investigator and the recluse are just they're just tied at the hip.

[00:22:58]>> Yep. It is just a thing that happens that you recluse is going to be involved in that investigator ping.

[00:23:03]>> Yeah. Yeah. My favorite move isn't to wreck the investigator. My favorite move is to give the minion cover. So this is what I will do is the investigator sees a genuine minion, but you point as the other player as the recluse so that the investigator gets correct information, but they might think, "Oh my god, I'm wrong. This person isn't a minion. I just saw the recluse as this thing." If you really want to have fun and mess with the evil team, if you want to split the difference as a storyteller, you can I like doing this one. You show the recluse and a minion, but you show a different minion. Yeah.

[00:23:34]>> So, the investigator is still learning an evil player, but they're getting wrong information about which evil player is in play. It is possible to just show the investigator the recluse and a different player entirely and give them misinformation. That's an an extremely powerful way to use the recluse's ability to hurt the good team.

[00:23:53]But as a storyteller, you will see some opening setups in grimoirs and decide, you know what? I think the evil team needs to help. I think I'm going to uh just just throw the recluse under the bus here. And storytellers might do that.

[00:24:04]>> Yeah. What's interesting about the investigator is that, you know, in my experience, I have more often seen the recluse put in the wrong side of the investigator ping. And so, it's put in there with a real minion that the investigator's pinging off of. And it's it's almost like the recluse it it is the threat of the misregistration off the recluse that is making it interesting. In that situation, the recluse isn't actually using its ability. It's just on the wrong side of the investigator ping. That could be anybody. But because it's the recluse, now you got something to think about.

[00:24:35]>> You're using player expectations to to subvert this stuff.

[00:24:39]>> Yeah.

[00:24:39]>> You're not using the ability, but people will come to the conclusion often that you want them to come to or it creates enough doubt. This is this is if you are I'm coming at this a lot. I know we're here to talk about the recluse. I know we're here to talk about the recluse from the point of view of someone who might be looking to to play blood on the clock tower, but because of so much of what I do is is storytelling and running the game, a lot of my insights are going to be from the storyteller perspective as well. So, I hope that is that is useful and interesting. But um when you have new players and first- time players who might not be so crash hot at bluffing, it is another way to give a first-time player some cover cuz it's not it's not fun to be kind of out like mostly confirmed as evil if you're new to the game. Veteran players don't mind.

[00:25:19]Veteran players who get confirmed as evil still find ways to have fun. It's happened to them before. They've seen everything. For a first time player, particularly in a newbie group, if someone is strongly believed to be evil or confirmed as evil, then people stop socializing with them. And the game is a social game. That's where the fun is. So if you've got that new player group or that new player minion, pairing the recluse with them and the investigator ping is a way to cast some doubt on whether or not they might be evil, which makes the game more fun for them cuz they're less likely to be confirmed as evil and people are more willing to socialize with them.

[00:25:49]>> Yeah, the recluse also existing gives minions a good cover for being in investigator pings even if like the other player is the actual recluse is that's something I've done as a minion.

[00:25:59]I've just like double claimed the reckluse and say both of us are claiming reckluse right now. What are you gonna do about it?

[00:26:05]>> And that's fine as well. Like as a as a minion, your job your job is to get killed so the so the demon doesn't, you know. Um, one of my one of my favorite strategies is the noisy minion play.

[00:26:17]There are a couple of players I know who are so good at just making the game about them and people spend the whole game trying to figure out what's this guy's deal and then they spend so long determining and then finally executing this person they forget to search for the demon and the demon just skates through the whole game. So if you are in that investigator ping bluffing double bluffing recluse great make that noise make things uncomfortable. Anytime they're talking about you and thinking about you they're spending mental effort and energy on that and not the demon.

[00:26:44]It's great.

[00:26:45]>> Uh let's talk about the chef. The chef says, "You start knowing how many pairs of evil players there are." So, Reckluse can register as an evil player. And so, a lot of the times when I'm storytelling, I get the tokens back and I see, hm, Reckluse is sitting next to the Scarlet Woman. Or maybe it's sitting between the Scarlet Woman and the Poisoner. It's going to be a storyteller determination. What's important to know about the chef pairs is that they are calculated individually, like one at a time. So the recluse can be registering as evil for one pair and then not registering as evil for another pair.

[00:27:18]And so you can you got a lot of wiggle room for the storyteller to kind of like, you know, see what number do I really want to give here for the chef.

[00:27:25]>> Yeah. The the chef the chef doesn't snapshot the whole situation at once. It snapshots each individual pair of players. And in each of those instances, you can choose whether to register as good and evil. I believe that's a question in the in the storyteller quiz that's on your website is you you have the recluse sitting in between two evil players. What number does the chef get?

[00:27:50]And then the correct answer is either a zero, a one or a two.

[00:27:54]>> Yeah, >> I like apppropo of nothing else. I do like giving ones in that situation. I mean, depending on whether there's a scarlet woman in play, whether the demon is one of them, but if you have a chef in between two evil players as a storyteller, I think it's good to give a one because it means the good team will probably probably at some point try and execute one of those two people. But it means if one of those people ends up looking evil, then the other one ends up looking good. So, you're kind of and then the town and the evil team together get to figure out which one is which. So whilst you are sort of dooming an evil player, you are kind of helping one of them out or they or they'll just decide to kill both of them. That might happen too.

[00:28:31]>> Yeah, it's it's interesting like the things that you can do with uh the recluse if you're in a situation where there's like a line of evils. I had a game like a month ago where it was three evil players in a line. It it was the demon and both the minions and then the recluse and then an evil traveler. And I gave the chef a four off of that and I just wanted to see do they buy this right now? I think yeah, the fastest way to get yourself executed in in Clock Tower is to or the fastest way as a storyteller to get someone executed is to give them wildly implausible true information. I think if you if you are in a game of Clock Tower and you want to get executed as quickly as possible, stand up on day one and say, "I'm the empath and I got a two last night." And they will just kill you. Then they're not going to kill your neighbors.

[00:29:15]They'll just come for you. So, what happened in that game with the chef?

[00:29:17]>> The chef did believe their number eventually. I I think it made it to a final three. I good won that game. But they looked like long and hard at that chef number and we're like I don't know.

[00:29:26]>> I don't like this. Yeah. Fantastic.

[00:29:29]>> Let's talk about the slayer. The slayer says once per game during the day publicly choose a player. If they are the demon they die. I can tell you a story about a stream that I had literally last night. We >> Yes.

[00:29:37]>> We did trouble brewing plus the pope uh which is a a luric that uh makes it so that there are duplicate good players uh in play. And so what I did was I did a bunch of slayers and a bunch of recckluses, >> right? Amazing.

[00:29:52]>> And so the slayer can shoot the recluse and have it go off. And so we had something we had like six slayer shots go off on day one. And I think like two or three of them got kills. And so they don't know if they're hitting demon they're hitting the demon or if they're hitting recluse off that.

[00:30:07]>> That's that's that's like a niche fun experience player game. But you confirm so many people that way. The thing reckless and the slayer interaction is interesting and the slayer has this with the scarlet woman as well but the virgin in trouble brewing it's a town folk with the ability the first time you're nominated if the nominator is a town folk you are the nominator is executed immediately so the virgin's whole thing is they're a good player who can be confirmed 100% as being on the good team and that is extremely valuable. It's such certainty in blood on the clock tower is such a valuable resource that it is metered out very very scantily.

[00:30:43]But the the slayer is the other character in trouble brewing that can 100% confirm who they are. So if a slayer shoots a recluse and the recluse dies, which is the storyteller choice, then you confirm who the slayer is. Or if the slayer shoots the demon and there's a scarlet woman in play who becomes the demon, then the slayer also confirms itself. So if you put a slayer and a recluse in the same game as a storyteller, you need to decide whether you are going to allow that interaction to play out because you can choose for it not to. If the slayer chooses the recluse, you could say, well, the recluse is an outsider and outsiders hurt the good team. So I'm not going to register them as the demon. The slayer is going to waste their ability and they're not going to learn anything. Or you can say, the slayer is a town folk and the towns folk ability should help the good team. I'm going to let them kill the recluse. So, they'll be down a good player, but you will have a confirmed good player, and then you'll know that the the recluse player is either the demon or the recluse. And as a storyteller, you'll want to make that judgment in the moment. I typically go towards letting the shot happen. So, if you're in one of my games and a slayer just use their ability on the recluse, I'll generally let it go through because that's always more fun and that's more interesting. And it's also the good team is kind of checking down, so to speak.

[00:31:52]They're they're choosing not to go for the demon, but they want to get something from the slayer's abilities still. So, it's if they're going to do that, then I go great, they're not shooting the demon, the game gets to continue. I'll give them a little something. I'll give them a confirmed player. Just to think about that interaction from the storyteller perspective as the recluse. If I'm the recluse and I hear that someone is the slayer, different game states notwithstanding, but typically I'm usually going to the slayer and being like, "Hey, I'm the recluse. Do you want to just use your use your ability on me and see if you can get the slayer confirmed?" and then you'll kind of be a trusted doer. You know someone you can trust. And just to speak a little more on that, it's also a great thing to do if you're an evil player, if you're a minion, if you're the Baron, bluffing is the recluse, finding the slayer and being like, "Yeah, use your ability on me. I'm the recluse." And then you have a plausible reason if it doesn't play out. Yeah, I love the slayer recluse interaction. It's always fun putting them in the back together and then you might get a fun decision to make as a storyteller.

[00:32:44]>> Yeah, because the slayer ability working off the recluse is like pretty good.

[00:32:49]you're getting that hard confirmed player.

[00:32:52]>> Yeah.

[00:32:52]>> You know, if you're in a game that also has a confirmed version, now you have two good players that are still alive that they're going to have to be killed at night essentially because they're hard confirmed in their abilities.

[00:33:03]>> And the evil team having to spend time killing them means they're not killing your empaths, your fortune tellers, and your undertakers. So, it's it's not only that, but there are people gathering valuable information who the evil team has to take time not killing in favor of getting rid of the the confirmed good players who really shouldn't be there at the end of the game for the evil team.

[00:33:22]Very powerful.

[00:33:23]>> Uh let's talk about the empath. It says each night you learn how many of your two alive neighbors are evil. So, this one's pretty straightforward. If you're sitting next to the empath, they be they could be getting an evil ping off you.

[00:33:34]It it really is going to depend, at least like when I'm storytelling, it depends on who the empath's other neighbor is. If their other neighbor is an evil player, I I'm going to be more likely to give a one than a two there >> to really set off like the alarm bells of the empath, though. If it is the reckless on one side and then an actual good player on the other side, I think most of the time storytellers given a one off that just to make the empath think about it.

[00:33:55]>> Yeah. Uh all all solid stuff. The empath is one of the most sort of simple and intuitive and dynamic characters in the game. having a reckless next to them. I think you're absolutely spot on. Look at who the other the empath's other neighbor is before deciding whether to make them register for their ability.

[00:34:11]Although, as I said before, this is just my experience, but uh empaths that say they got it too tend to be not trusted.

[00:34:16]People don't like that for some reason.

[00:34:18]But yeah, that's um use the use the recluse to cause doubt for the good team. Exactly as you said it. Register is evil if the other neighbor is good. Register is good if the other neighbor is evil. If you are the recluse, this is another great way to use the recluse's ability to sniff out bluffs. I say this from the many, many from the from the many bloody games I've run, the empath is a particularly popular bluffing choice for the demon.

[00:34:43]New players, veteran players, whoever, if the empath is one of the three demon bluffs, the demon would usually go for that over the other options because it's it's great. uh they're not so valuable that the demon needs to kill them immediately like an undertaker or a fortune teller. They can use their their their bluffs to get their neighbors on side and so forth. So if you're a recluse and the player next to you says, "I'm the empath and I learned zero. I learned that you're good." That should set your alarm bells off a little bit.

[00:35:08]That could tell you that this player might be the demon. They might be lying about who they are. Cuz if they were a good player, typically they would have gotten at least a one from sitting next to you. So that's something to keep an eye out as the recluse. If you're sitting next to an empath and they're saying, "I got nothing." You could be next to a drunk or a demon bluffing as the empath. Sorry to do one part.

[00:35:26]>> Yeah. It's kind of like it's like metagaming a little bit off of like the tendencies of what empaths would normally get off of you.

[00:35:32]>> Uh, sorry. Raven keeper. Yes, >> Raven Keeper. If you die at night, you're woken to choose a player, you learn their character. Raven Keeper. If uh they pick the recluse, they can see a minion or they can see the imp, which is is very unfortunate if the raven keeper does pick the recluse because uh yeah, they're going to see an evil player and the raven the the recluse is also probably going to tell them like, "Hey, why did you pick me? You knew what was going to happen here."

[00:35:54]>> Yeah, it's it's one of those things where again there's no one way to play any character. And I think later on we are going to talk about when you when you should air quotes should come out publicly is the recluse. One of the cases for coming out publicly earlier is to avoid situations like this. Whether you're bluffing as the recluse or whether you are the recluse, the moment you've claimed recluse, fortune tellers are going to get a yes on you. Raven keepers are going to see an evil character. Undertakers will see an evil character. So if you haven't claimed publicly claimed recluse yet and the raven keeper chooses you, that's tragic, but at least you kind of know you can trust the Raven Keeper was telling the truth. not all that useful once they're kind of a dead towns folk who who didn't learn all all that much useful. But that is one of the reasons why as a recluse letting people know you're the recluse at some point avoids situations where the raven keeper quote unquote wastes their ability on you.

[00:36:44]>> Yeah, you mentioned the fortune teller.

[00:36:45]The fortune teller has like a similar interaction where its ability says each knight choose two players. You learn if either is a demon there's a good player that registers as a demon to you. You don't have to worry about that last part because the recluse just can register as a demon to the fortune teller. And yeah, the thing about the fortune teller is that it's a character typically that wants to like build a case over the course of the game to try to like, you know, geollocate where the demon is exactly. And the recluse can just screw that up because they're going to be getting yeses that are that could be potentially be bogus. I've actually had a game where I was the demon and the night that the fortune teller checked me, they also checked me with the recluse and I was like, that's that's pretty lucky.

[00:37:24]>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's it's useful that way to just kind of go Yep. And this this goes into a little bit of what I said before I have my my kind of little spiel for someone's a new player playing with people who've played before and I kind of run them through what their character is. For the fortune teller, I tell them you get your best information when you get a no. You point at two people, you learn one of them isn't the demon. If the fortune teller points at two people and they get a yes, they don't know which player they're getting a yes on. They don't know if that player is the demon, the red herring for the fortune teller, the false register, or the recluse. The recluse can also just mess out there as well. Again, fortune teller's ability is another reason why the recluse at some point will probably want to get out there. Like, hey, I'm the recluse if you're a fortune teller. Uh, picking me will not give you any meaningful information now that I've said that I'm the recluse.

[00:38:13]>> Yeah, it just muddies the information that the fortune teller is getting.

[00:38:16]>> Yeah.

[00:38:16]>> Lucky break for you, though. That's cool.

[00:38:18]>> Yeah, it was cool. Yeah, we won that game.

[00:38:21]>> Hell yeah.

[00:38:22]>> Last good player that I have on here is the Undertaker. It says each night you learn which character died by execution today. So, it's a pretty common like tactic I see towns have where like you don't have a lot of information. You're still trying to like figure out the world what's going on and town says let's just execute somebody and at minimum the undertaker's getting some information potentially tonight. Yes.

[00:38:43]So, they'll see who's getting executed.

[00:38:44]The recluse makes that irrelevant though because just like the Raven keeper, the Undertaker's going to see you as a minion or the demon.

[00:38:49]>> Yeah. Once you've as soon as you've claimed to be the recluse, which is why like it's one of my favorite characters to play. It's also one of my favorite characters to bluff on the evil team. If I'm the imp, I'll usually wait to confirm whether there's a scarlet woman in play or not. But after that happens, I'm just like, "Yeah, Reckluse. Let's go." Um cuz cuz you get to cuz I play fearlessly as the recluse and if I'm bluffing recluse, I get to display playing fearlessly, right? So the it's also a reason to not execute the recluse in trouble brewing which is really useful to zoom out a little bit and and go behind the curtain. One of the the most difficult class of character to design are the outsiders. And the reason for that is every good player want there to be reasons for them to not be executed so that they can be every good player should be bluffable by the evil team, right? And if outsider abilities are detrimental then the argument is usually well why don't we just kill them? So they need to be detrimental, but not so detrimental that you're incentivized to just execute them immediately. And having the Undertaker paired on the same scripts with the recluse is a reason not to execute the recluse, which makes them more bluffable. If you are, whether you know there's an undertaker in play or not, you as a town know you'll probably or possibly get information just by executing people unless you're executing someone who's claimed to be the reckless. So in that case, it's like, well, you're going to mess with town's information, but we also know you're there. Fortune tellers and raven keepers know not to choose you. Chefs and empaths are already accounting for you and their information. If we execute you, we waste a night of waste, a night of good information the undertaker might be getting by us executing someone else.

[00:40:22]So, let's actually just keep you alive and execute elsewhere until we know that the Undertaker is dead or until we know that there's no Undertaker. So, in that sense, the Undertaker interaction is great because it's one of the things that helps keep the recluse alive, which is one of the things that helps keep it viable as a bluff if you're on the evil team.

[00:40:41]>> Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. So, yeah, I got eight roles here that inter town folk roles that interact out of the 13 that are on the script.

[00:40:48]>> It is it is embedded in the heart of Trouble Brewing. This this ability, let's get into the yes but don't section of the reck list. These are I'm actually curious like from like uh like a game design perspective how you feel on like these interactions and are these just like it just like comes with the territory of like this level of complexity and misregistration that these are things that are possible >> to every rule and exception. But yeah, let's jump in.

[00:41:11]>> Uh let's start with the spy which I think is like the simplest one and I think it's like kind of harmless but like when the spy looks in the grimoire they can see the recluse as another evil player. Obviously, they're gonna see that the Recklus didn't get woken up with the other minions or were point to as the demon.

[00:41:26]So, it's kind of superfluous, but it's a thing that can happen.

[00:41:30]>> Just for for like if you are a first- time player or if you're a new player, we're getting into the section. I received this as a as a pamphlet at uh Clocktown uh Las Vegas in 2023. It is a a missionary from the church of Yes, but don't. This is a phrase that applies generally a catchphrase that applies to storyteller decisions in Blood on the Clock Tower where there is stuff that is mechanically possible within the rules and the storyteller is perfectly allowed to do with the rules is written, but you shouldn't do that. That's where the storyteller judgment comes in. And no character embodies that more than the recluse. There's a uh I don't know if you have show notes or anything, but you might even want to link this file. Uh there's a pamphlet that gets handed out and it just lists all the stuff you can do with the recluse and interacting with other players, other characters rather, that you just shouldn't do. And that is the section we're getting into now with the evil ability. So you've mentioned that the spy see the whole grim, they see other characters, but you as a storyteller can take the reckless token out and put in an evil token. So the spy would look at them and and think they're an evil player. I have never done this.

[00:42:31]I don't think I've ever given the spy a bad grimoire unless they were like directly poisoned by someone somehow. I I tend to be be straight up with my spies, but I'm interested. Dylan, when what circumstances can you think of in Trouble Brewing where you might want to do that to a spy and show the recluse is an evil player to them?

[00:42:48]>> Uh, I don't know. Just a mess with them probably.

[00:42:51]Uh, you could you could show the spy as the recluse and the recluse is the spy in the grim.

[00:42:56]>> Yeah, >> when you're showing the spy.

[00:42:57]>> Man, that's that would that would break their brain. They'd have to take it.

[00:43:01]>> I actually I did my spy episode a few weeks ago. I'm actually curious like what are your thoughts on misregistering the spy to their own ability in the grimoire to show them the bluff that you intend to misregister them as if you have like a mushroom woman token on them or something.

[00:43:15]>> I've never done it, but I love it. But the the place that might be more useful is um if you're showing the spy in a ping to another player like a wash woman. Yeah. or and you can and of course you should only do this with experienced players who who know how to visually decode a grimoire because if you have a god forbid a first-time player or or a newbie player looking at a grimoire their mission and this is what I tell new players at who the spy your mission is when you look at the grimoire just try and find a character try and find a good character that isn't in play so that you can claim to be that character after that if you survive to the next night identify high value characters that the demon wants to kill like the monk the undertaker fortune teller slayer if they haven't used their ability yet and try and direct the demon towards those people and then maybe try and find some people to avoid like the the raven keeper, you know, the soldier.

[00:44:03]So, for that, I do love nudging the spy in that direction. But for the most part, I kind of like just letting letting the spy figure figure things out on their own and maybe putting a token on them and and having to kind of well, it's like, well, what did I get seen as the opportunity for them to make that leap is there, but they need to work for it. They can't just lock in with that information. That's that's my view.

[00:44:23]>> Very interesting. Yeah, you should uh you should listen to the my spy episode that uh >> I released who who did you have who did you have dude to spy?

[00:44:30]>> It was me and Kinky Joe from Kinky Clock Tower.

[00:44:32]>> Hey.

[00:44:32]>> All right, cool. I watch a bit of Kinky Joe. There's usually um you It's my my my office and usually if I'm not in meetings, there's people playing Clock Tower on Twitch. I'm usually watching that in the background. So plenty of plenty of Kinky Joe.

[00:44:43]>> Um now let's talk about the weird ones.

[00:44:46]Starting with the Scarlet Woman. Scarlet Woman's ability is if there are five or more players alive and the demon dies, you become the demon. Travelers don't count. And so the demon keyword being in the Scarlet Woman ability means that that that could potentially be the recluse. So yes, if the recluse gets killed by the demon, if the recluse gets executed, it could just straight up proc the Scarlet Woman's ability and you're in a situation where there's two demons.

[00:45:08]Now, >> yes, th this is a this is an absolute um uh like massive yes, but don't. If if you wake up in a game of Trouble Brewing and two people have died in the night, that's a that's a problem. you look at the storyteller and you go, "What's up, bro? What are you doing?"

[00:45:27]>> Um, I'm trying to think of of a circumstance in Jaw Brewing where you where you would do this.

[00:45:32]>> I would say it would need to be a situation where like evil is getting like throttled where it's like evil has been like the good team just knows who the evil team is straight up and you're like, we got to like really play catchup right now.

[00:45:43]>> Yeah. But even so, like you would the only the like maybe the the I can't see it working because any circumstance where you would need to create a new demon using the recluse and the scarlet woman interaction would be a circumstance where the real demon is probably going to die on the same day either from a slayer or an execution. So why wouldn't you just have that demon pass to the Scarlet Woman and take over their ability that way? That's yeah, I can't off the top of my head think of any situations where you would need to in good faith and to keep the game running and helping the evil team without creating two living demons turn the scarlet woman into the demon when the reckluse dies. But hey, it's a complicated game that that might come up yet.

[00:46:25]>> Yeah. Uh I've never seen it happen personally. I have heard of it happening largely due to storytellers just memeing. I've never heard of like a legitimate reason for it to ever happen.

[00:46:34]>> Yeah. Yeah. uh at a at a certain point once you once you played enough clock tower you just you want to press buttons to feel something you know you're like let's see but you know >> yeah yeah here >> if you if you have and look there there there are groups that have been playing together for over a decade now there are people who played thousands of games if you have the trust from your group and and you know that this will be fun for them the kind of the best catchall for how to be a good storyteller uh is to meet your players where they're at and if you know for certain that you have buyers from your group to pull fun shenanigans like this and that this isn't going to wreck someone's night or or they'll be like, "Hey, you made an unfair game, that this is actually just kind of pretty cool and fun and [ __ ] it, let's see what happens." Go for it.

[00:47:13]That's that's fine. But you you've got to be reasonably confident and very certain that this this will be a fun thing to do.

[00:47:18]>> Yeah.

[00:47:19]>> Uh the last one is also a case that I've never seen before, though. This one I I I could see it working occasionally, and that is uh the imp. Their ability says, "Each night, choose a player, they die.

[00:47:30]If you kill yourself this way, a minion becomes the imp." So, this is the star pass ability of the imp. And you could be in a situation where there are ideally there's no other minions left, but you I guess you could still do this if there are minions that are not the scarlet woman.

[00:47:44]>> Yes, >> you could have the recluse register as a minion and now the recluse is the imp.

[00:47:49]The caveat here is that it does not change alignment. So, you are a good imp.

[00:47:55]>> Yes.

[00:47:56]Um, this this one is fun. This is probably the only thing that in this is this isn't a yes but don't. This is a yes but rarely.

[00:48:05]>> Yeah, I agree.

[00:48:07]>> In trouble brewing, you you there are times when not only you can do this, but you should do this. For example, as you say, the evil team might just be getting totally washed and you're heading into the final night of the game and the demon is reasonably sure there might be a recluse out there. Or they just know they're going to be executed tomorrow and they're hoping there's a recluse out there. They target themselves. there's no other minions alive or the minions that are alive have so much heat on them. You pass it to the recckl and then what happens you have it's usually useful to do on the final day of the game. It's more useful to do then cuz you deny the recluse an opportunity to kill themselves in the night and win the game instantly if there are no other minions alive that is. And so you have someone on the final day saying I'm the good demon we need to kill me. And then the the tension is well do we believe you? Are you actually the recluse who became the demon or are you a minion trying to divert attention away from the demon? So, it's a yes but rarely because it's still like creating a good demon is generally pretty powerful for the good team cuz you have a good player who knows who the demon is and is trying to get them executed. Even if that's them, that's still very powerful. But it still creates ambiguous situations and tension. And in the right player group, it could be fun and it sometimes even be necessary. And if you want to muck around and do it earlier in the game, typically the recluse should be trying to get themselves the recluse who becomes the imp, if there are still other minions alive, they should be trying to get themselves executed because if they target themselves at night, then it might bounce to another still looting minion. That's more in the meme territory. If you're trying to kind of stunt on your on your players, which you should never do, but yeah, there there are worlds where the the recluse can become the imp and should become the imp.

[00:49:39]>> Yeah, it's uh something I've never seen in a game. I I hope to see it at one point. I've just never encountered a situation. I also would love because I love playing minions. I would love to be a minion in a final three that is desperately claiming that I am the good imp in that final three.

[00:49:55]>> It's it's a it's a fantastic bluff to pull off. And I I'll if we get into story time later, I'll talk about one of the epic recluse bluffs I I uh was adjacent for. There is one more thing you can do with the demon and the recluse that I think is it's a yes but don't, but it's a milder one. And I think it is a fun way to mess with veteran players. So at the start of the game, the minions all wake up together and they see who the demon is and the demon learns separately who the minions are. You point at the minions. What you can do, uh, one of the many things you can and shouldn't do is that in addition to the other minions, you point out the recluse as a minion. So any player who's played enough clock tower more than a couple games will clock pretty quickly.

[00:50:34]I've been shown too many minions. I'm only supposed to have two minions and you point it at three people. This means the storyteller knows. the storyteller, the demon knows, well, one of these people is a is a recluse. I don't know which of my minions I can trust.

[00:50:47]Eventually, at some point, they just need to wait for the minions to come to them, which may happen at some point.

[00:50:51]They'll learn who the real minions are, but it's a nice way to to just give a little extra stumbling starting block.

[00:50:57]If you have a very veteran demon player and you know that your group doesn't mind this kind of thing, it stops them being able to initiate conversation with their minions on day one instantly.

[00:51:06]doing the reverse of waking well cuz to for the reccklus to to do the other way you would have to wake the recluse with the other minions and show them who the demon is. That's that's no good.

[00:51:17]>> Uh you could wake the you could wake the minions and show them the reckluse and the demon. You could show them two demons.

[00:51:22]>> Yeah, that that one if you want to do that then probably leave the minion learning leave the demon learning properly who their minions are.

[00:51:29]Otherwise, you're just turning the recluse into the magician, right?

[00:51:32]>> Yeah, I was going to say that this is literally an experimental town folk. Uh the magician's ability is >> minions think you're a demon, demon thinks you're a minion.

[00:51:41]>> Yeah.

[00:51:41]>> And it just like screws with the evil team.

[00:51:43]>> But the reckless lets you do one side of that. If you have a very ex and this this is not what this podcast is about.

[00:51:50]So if if you are a first-time player or storyteller listening to this podcast, don't do this. The things I'm describing right now, I I pretty much have never done. Why? I'm just like uh the one time I was a demon and the storyteller showed me the drunk as one of the bluffs. It has only happened to me one time and I was like great. Thank you for the compliment of giving me this bluff. Good for showing me that junk is not in play.

[00:52:10]You can have these little levers to just spice things up for your very veteran players.

[00:52:14]>> Cool. Uh but yeah, that was the that was the yes but don't section or the yes but rarely section.

[00:52:19]>> Yes, but rarely. Yeah.

[00:52:21]>> So, we're an hour into this recording.

[00:52:22]Now, we can get to the strategy guide part of the strategy guide podcast. We did it everybody. Let's talk about the day one strategies. You pulled the Recklus token. Evan, what are you thinking? What's your day one looking like?

[00:52:33]>> I I have already won. That's what I'm thinking. Like it is It is absolute hubris. It's absolute bragging. I wanted to do the recckluse so I could brag a little bit, but when I draw the recckluse, my first thought is, "Oh, I'm going to win this game." I certainly have lost games with the recluse. I just can't remember the last time it happened. Uh, no. What I'm thinking is I don't like to name personally my play style. If I can avoid it, I'd like to not say who I am on day one. That gives me if I'm if I'm evil, it gives me time to craft a bluff. If I'm good, it gives me time to build ambiguity around who I am. Um, of course, exceptions to where we rule, but what information am I looking to gather from town? I'm looking to see if I'm in any evil pings. I'm looking to uh I'm looking to find out if there's a chef that learned information.

[00:53:10]I'm trying to find out if there's a slayer who could use their ability on me. I'm trying to find out if there's a virgin so I can avoid nominating the virgin. I don't want to waste a virgin's ability. So, I'm looking for characters whose abilities I interact with. And as you pointed out, Dylan, earlier, that's most of them on on this script. If I'm if as soon as I become public about being the recluse on day one, if I stand up and say I'm the recluse, um then you kind of lose the edge on letting good players find you and accuse you of stuff. Because anyone who's accusing you of stuff is either the spy who is trying to throw you under the bus or they're a good player who saw you as evil and which means you can kind of deduce that they're a good player. And if you start publicly claiming recluse, you lose that ability. You you lose that edge to the evil team. So yeah, I'm looking I'm kind of want people to come after me. I want people to be suspicious of me because that tells me I think I can trust you.

[00:54:00]And that's that's really important.

[00:54:02]Yeah, I think that the most common strategy the most common day one strategy I see newer players use as the recluse is just they immediately say I'm the recluse. They say I'm the recluse.

[00:54:11]I'm one of the outsiders. If you got an evil ping on me, that's why you got an evil ping on me.

[00:54:15]>> And that's and that's fine as well.

[00:54:17]There's there's value to that letting the good team know, hey, I'm messing with your information. My view is you don't need you just don't need to do that straight away. Blood in the Clock Towers, you can say anything you want at any time. Good characters don't need to share their information. They shouldn't share their information, but you should by the end of the game. If if it's if it's the final day, you should probably publicly share everything you know. But for the recluse, I think waiting a day like waiting a day doesn't give too much away to the good team. People can always retrofit their information from night one when they learn that you're the recluse. Plus, this is a strategy most employed by the Raven Keeper. The Raven Keeper is trying their guts out to get executed by the demon. But there are other characters like the Recklus and the Saint and the Butler, the the non-drunk outsiders. Kind of want the demon to kill them as well, cuz if the demon is killing the recluse, they're not killing an information gathering talents folk. So, waiting waiting a day or two on your information, again, there's no one way to play. Being straight off about being the recluse will help people put their information together faster, but if you wait a day, they can still do that later. and you give the evil team an opportunity to kill you, poison you, use abilities on you that are better used on you than on a more valuable information gatherer.

[00:55:26]>> Yeah, I agree. I think that just like hanging out is probably the best way >> Yeah.

[00:55:31]>> to run the recluse on day one. They're going to be people fishing for outsiders. I mean, the best case scenario is that there's a librarian that just legit saw you as the recluse.

[00:55:39]>> Yeah. Yeah. And then you can team up.

[00:55:41]You can collaborate. Yeah. That's the Yeah, you you I I missed that completely. The other thing to touch on, you want to be listening for the other outsider claims. You want to pay attention to what the outside account is, who might be claiming to be an outsider, um, and then determine whether there's a baron in play, who the drunk might be. Yeah, just just being a recluse is already huge information in that regard. So, the more you hold back on claiming to be an outsider, the more you maybe let evil players step into those bluffs and can out them that way.

[00:56:07]>> Yeah. Because what's important to understand is that we talked about all of those towns folk abilities that can ping off of you. oftentimes one of those or several of those towns folk are going to be evil bluffs and so you coming out as the recluse allows them to like retroactively give information that where they can say they pinged off you.

[00:56:27]I had a game last night where that it was a it was a poisoner that poisoned the washerw woman and I had the washerwoman essentially see the poisoner as the investigator and what the investigator did was the poisoner investigator did was is that they put a good player and the recluse in their ping and so it made them look more like a legit investigator. Right.

[00:56:47]>> Yeah.

[00:56:47]>> And however that is something that's really hard to do if the recluse just doesn't come out as the recluse. If the recluse is hiding, that evil investigator can't do that.

[00:56:56]>> It's also like it's a really common bluff for the evil team. Like if you if you're a minion on day one and you've got nothing else going on, a claiming recluse is is a pretty easy way to um explain explain the pings on you and try and maintain some trust still. So if you're a real recluse, giving evil players a false sense of security that there's not a recluse in play, let them bluff recluse for a bit. you pretty reasonably find some other evil players that way by just letting them uh uh by >> Yeah. And then another thing I think is good generally on that first day is like get a sense of who your neighbors are or like what they're claiming because could be an empath situation. Those are your potential chef pairs as well. The two players next to you.

[00:57:36]>> Chef pairs. Uh fortune tellers will often pick their neighbors on night one just to to get into fortune teller strategy. If I'm the fortune teller, I do this. I see a lot of people do this.

[00:57:43]They choose their neighbors because depending on where you're playing, you talk to your neighbors more than than other people. They're they're sitting next to you when you're all sitting in the town square. So, the more you know about them, the more you can kind of talk with them about that. So, if you are if you're a recluse and your neighbor is the fortune teller, there's just a slightly higher chance they picked you on night one as well. So, learning that is pretty cool, too.

[00:58:03]>> Yeah.

[00:58:04]>> Uh let's talk about some of the storytelling considerations. We we've kind of talked about storytelling a good bit in this pod already, but uh I I just wanted to go over like real quick, you know, if you're storytelling a game of trouble brewing, you get all the tokens back. There's a recluse in the game.

[00:58:19]What is your thought process on how you're planning to use the recluse in an interesting way in that game based on like what are the other, you know, characters that are around it? default mode is um when I when I build a bag together, my typical process is I'll I'll randomly select and then do a few substitutions based on what I think might be interesting. Uh I might have an idea of who the drunk might be if there's a drunk in play, but uh I I'll decide finally once I see the final setup. So, what I'm looking to do with the recluse is use their ability as much as I reasonably can to uh help the evil team and hurt the good team, but I'm just going to wait and see where they land. often often times, especially if you're doing a game without a drunk and without a poisoner, you know, two major sources of misinformation for the good team, you can put a recluse in there in case you need to use them. You can look at the setup and be like, damn, all these all the evil players are in a row on this side of the circle and there's no drunk, there's a chef. Um, you know what? I will use the recluse to ping to the investigator against another good player and divert attention away from this high chef number. Um, and I really need to do that. So mainly I'm waiting to see where the tokens land. But as a storyteller, I'll put the recluse in the bag to kind of give me those options.

[00:59:31]Particularly if I'm not running with a drunk or not running with a poisoner.

[00:59:35]It's kind of the last that and the spy are the last other two avenues you have of giving the good team some stumbling blocks out the gate and not immediately finding the evil team.

[00:59:44]>> Yeah. Because two of the outsiders on the script are misinformation based and and then the other two outsiders aren't.

[00:59:50]And they're also, you know, two face up outsiders. those other two. I'm curious.

[00:59:53]Do do you usually think about it in that way of like I I generally want to have a drunk or a recluse at minimum if I'm going to be adding an outsider to this bag.

[01:00:00]>> Um at this point this at this point in my life um okay well if if if you're running for all new players if you're if they've all never played before put the drunk in. There's there's an eight recommended eight player setup in the main rule book. That is that is the absolute uh uh banger for first- time players. The drunk is the funnest and most interesting character in all of Clock. the drunk is the engine that drives the game. Right? Having said that, uh, this point, particularly if I'm playing with veteran players, I don't really clock that stuff so much. I will do my I'll I'll do a random draw. I I'll just give Yeah, I I think that's a good way to put it. I'll give myself options. Um, and that option might be a request or it might be a drunk or it might be a spy or a poisoner to give the evil team the opportunity to create their own options.

[01:00:45]But I am cognizant of overloading the bag with a drunk and a requisit and a spy and a poisoner. Uh which you kind of need to do if it's a huge game already.

[01:00:52]But then 15 player games like three million games of 13 or more players kind of have their own little dynamics as a storyteller that you want to kind of contour the game in certain ways. Yeah, I I suppose I am thinking about that.

[01:01:03]But know more about the recluse than than any source of misinformation in trouble brewing.

[01:01:07]>> Yeah, because I know that the uh the saying with trouble brewing is that you can't build a bad bag with it.

[01:01:13]>> Yeah, it's bulletproof. It's bulletproof. Yeah.

[01:01:15]>> Uh, however, like if you're building a bag that doesn't have drunk recluse, spy poisoner, it's a little weird because and town's going to kind of like feel the weirdness, too. They're going to be like, "This feels kind of more like a vanilla social deduction game."

[01:01:31]>> Well, what you do there is I mean, you like there's no bad bag in Trouble Brewing. you can load up the mayor, the soldier, the, you know, >> yeah, take away the information rules, >> easily, intuitively get information so that you're just not waking anyone up all game. People still know stuff.

[01:01:44]People still interact in certain ways.

[01:01:46]If you're going to do that, if you're not going to put those misinformation roles in, what you probably should be doing instead as a storyteller is giving the evil team bluffs that let them generate false information. That's the next stage. So, there's good players getting wrong information. And then there's people making stuff up. So, you want to give the demon maybe, you know, undertaker, empath, fortune teller, raven keeper. I I do this so often. I give the raven keeper as a demon bluff and they never kill themselves. Do it more. Do it more. Yeah, that's that's the >> My first game is the demon. I tried doing that and it >> Oh, fantastic.

[01:02:14]>> It completely blew up in my face. It was worth a shot though. I agree.

[01:02:18]>> The night two star pass is is one of my favorite moves. It reemerges in the in the meta every once in a while and then no one does it for a while and then someone does it and then everyone's on lookout for it for the next couple months. It's great.

[01:02:28]>> But yeah, t typically like what I'll do is kind of what I have in my write up here. I'll see who the recluse's neighbors are. If I want to do anything with the creative with the chef number or with the empath number, you know, see what kind of worlds potentially can be built off that. I feel like a lot of the times now when I'm storytelling, I can kind of look at how I set my grim up and I can kind of like figure out what the day one is going to look like based on how I dole out the info on that first night. And then past that, it's like who the hell knows what's going to happen in the game. But you can kind of like, you know, start setting off like the beginnings of specific confirmation chains and this isn't, you know, part of that.

[01:03:03]>> You can have your little sort of, you know, social Rube Goldberg machine set up and then players always take it in a different direction. But what you want to do is is create things that might happen, fun opportunities they might find with uh room to maneuver if slash when they go down a different path. But I think it's important to know that like, you know, a north star here is that outsiders hurt the good team and help the evil team. And so if you're in a situation where the recluse is seated between, you know, say it's like your whole evil team is just a minion and the demon and the recluse is in the middle of them, it's going to come down to like your group meta a little bit. You know, do you give do you give a Sober Chef two, how likely are they are to believe that?

[01:03:43]>> If it were me, not knowing anything else, I'd just give the zero. and have the recluse register as good and that will protect the neighbors.

[01:03:50]>> Yeah, exactly. It's the safe play. I don't always feel the best doing it. I feel like a coward a little bit.

[01:03:55]>> One of the If it's the if it's the Scarlet Woman in the amp, I don't feel so bad because if it's only if it's a seven player game, they're only going to get three executions at best and they would have to use two of them on those two players with a a chef and a recluse coordinating. The evil team can play around that. And if they don't, it's a sevenplayer game. It probably took you 30 minutes. Yeah, it's it's all it's all context. Context is king. For the most part, in that spot, I would just give the the chef a zero.

[01:04:18]>> Yeah. Uh and then also, you know, is there also a spy in the game with the recluse? How are you dealing with like both of their misregistrations? You know, you could have a situation where like the spy is sitting next to the recluse and you can you could do interesting stuff with both of them.

[01:04:33]>> Um yeah, these are just all like different storyteller decisions for when you're setting up that grim on the first night. I was like putting the spy and the reccklos in together. That's a great way to like have the drunk light. It gives you enough options. Uh it it just almost invalidates chef info by having them both around with the amount of options you'll probably have. Try I I I think I when I think of this, of course, large games are always the exception, but I think I try not to do both of those together too often, but having having a spy in the game and a recluse is a great way to not have a drunk and not have a poisoner.

[01:05:03]>> Yeah. Yeah. because those are the, you know, your two like primary misinformation mechanics that you have on the script to work with. Uh >> let's talk about some advanced strats for the recluse. This is, I guess, maybe where you can get in with like any stories, like creative stuff that you've done as the recluse. Uh a recent one that I had in a game that I played last week was cute mage on my stream. She's a veteran storyteller here was from my Philly group's been on a couple of my podcasts uh talking about evil players.

[01:05:30]She was the recluse and just hard claimed Baron on the first day. He got executed and then afterwards came out like the next day said that they were the recluse and that then like explained evil pings that were on them.

[01:05:42]>> Okay.

[01:05:43]>> Because because you're because you're going to be getting evil pings off you anyway. It's a way that's a thing you can do.

[01:05:48]>> I get that. But also like part of me is like that's fun and fun first, right?

[01:05:53]Fun fun in other people, you know? Not not fun at the expense of others to just caveat the hell out of everything needlessly. on first, but I don't see what that does. I like you you've hard cla role. You're looking at that person going, "Okay, what's their angle here?

[01:06:08]Why are they doing this?" And if the next day they'd say, "Ah, I was actually the recluse." It's like, well, could have that's that will al is also something you could have said on day one that also may have got you executed. It I mean, if you're looking for participation from the storyteller, but you would need the storytellers to go along with this and they're helping you with the outsider ability, maybe not so much. You're just claiming under Baron, under Baron, under Baron. Um, and then the Undertaker, you get executed and you show the Undertaker poisoner. Then that's a way of going, "Oh, okay.

[01:06:34]Something's something's up here. Maybe this person is the recluse when they later come out and claim to be the recluse." But, um, yeah, there there are so many ways to get yourself executed in Blood on the Clock Tower. Publicly outing yourself as an evil player in Trouble Brewing for me personally just creates a lot of doubts around around why why would you do that? I don't know.

[01:06:52]Maybe maybe I should maybe I should do it more. It it did work in that game because what happened was that they were sitting next to the empath. The the player on the other side of the empath was the Scarlet Woman and the empath got a one. And yeah, what happened was is that I was monk that empath got protected that night. And so we were like, why did I get a monk save there off an empath? What number were they going to get? Cuz I was I was the next in line after that recluse got executed.

[01:07:18]So, they were going to get a second one in a row on night two, which would have exposed the minion that was the other side. Anyway, it like set off a confirmation chain where we were like, "Okay, we trust that that person actually is the recluse. We trust that that's the empath." I went to the empath, said, "I monk protected them."

[01:07:32]We got like a massive confirmation chain. We I mean, we we won the game like really fast as good that game.

[01:07:37]>> Can Can the the the empath confirmation chains can happen remarkably quickly?

[01:07:43]>> I the most I think one of the very earliest games I ran and this one sticks with me. um PAX Australia in 2017. It was an empath sitting there with a zero um who went, "Oh, great. I'm an empath with a zero." Immediately nominated the Virgin on day one and then the Undertaker saw them. Um pretty much like, you know, spy shenanigans notwithstanding. But you kind of had five players all trusting each other on the good team from the second day onwards. It's just >> it's it's the worst feeling when you're an evil player and the good team trusts each other. You're like, "Well, shit."

[01:08:17]That's five good players trusting each other. Virgin, empath, empath neighbors, undertaker who saw empath who hadn't claimed empath and only one of them is dead. That's brutal. Absolutely brutal.

[01:08:27]Yeah.

[01:08:28]>> Another strategy, and this is just like really any outsider, is that the best case scenario is you get killed by the demon at night.

[01:08:35]>> Yeah.

[01:08:35]>> Because that's a knight that the demon is not killing an actually important character.

[01:08:39]>> Yes. Um, I I typically, and this is just my play style, I like to try and try and bait the demon for a night or two, and depending on the player count, the game might go on longer. Um, but there'll always usually be a second act reveal for me where I say what my real character is or or I reveal what I always was. But if I'm an outsider, I'd always like to give the demon a chance to kill me. Um, and that might also be, you know, notable, like there's not a lot of clock tower spaces, although I have been taking a backseat in more of the kind of production administration side the past few years. But, you know, I'm the producer of the game. as uh out there promoting things early on. If you if you've been around Clock Tower long enough, you know that I'm, you know, a developer. So, in a lot of the spaces I play in, I'm personally just going to be getting uh sort of more attention from people in terms of uh execution, heat, poisoning, killings, and so forth. So, I think just for my personal dynamic and knowing myself and knowing how I perceived, it is a little more likely that I might get killed at night. And so for me personally, hanging on and trying to bluff something else um and and try and attract a demon kill is is a a slightly more viable strategy. But yeah, if you're an outsider, give it a go. See see how you can go. If your if your player group is is open to listening and and reasonable, they'll usually understand why you didn't come out on day one or so. They'll understand the value of a demon killing you at night versus an empath or an undertaker.

[01:09:52]>> Yeah. I mean, one thing that you can do is say you are sitting next to the empath and the empath says, "Hey, I got a one on you. I got a one on you and my other neighbor. Do Do we think we should just execute the other guy? And you go, "No, I'm actually the recluse. What we can do is we can like roll swap right now and I can like publicly come out as the empath with like a zero or something like that."

[01:10:11]>> Yeah.

[01:10:12]>> And just see if you get killed at night and you know maybe maybe you don't get killed at night and now that puts sus on that claimed empath next to you, right?

[01:10:20]Because you're like, "Yeah, that might not even be a real empath right now."

[01:10:23]>> Yeah. Empaths unreal. Yeah. Um roll swapping. Great. Great for a reckless.

[01:10:27]Yeah, it's it's it's it's kind of like it's also great for for rather than announcing publicly kind of revealing to one or two people who you are. The recluse is also fine for that because the worst thing that's going to happen is the evil team learns who you are and then they won't kill you at night. It doesn't have the downside of of being like, hey, I'm the monk and then the evil team has to figure out whether they want to try killing you or not. It doesn't really matter if you die. So, you can kind of tell people who you are even if it is some private sharing of information. you can you share your character more easily privately without the risk of high downsides like a town soap would have. So it's it's great on a social level for that reason as well and you can kind of mess around with who you tell when what you're bluffing, who you're swapping with. Um a very dynamic character that doesn't appear that way on the surface. Another thing that you're going to want to do is just like keep an eye on any other face up outsiders that are in the game because there is a pretty decent chance that one of them's evil. It's clearly built into trouble brewing the idea that, you know, there there's either like two outsiders or there's four outsiders or there's one outsider or there's three outsiders. So, like having a lot of outsiders like face up walking around town isn't like inherently suspicious on its own, but it's definitely a little suspicious.

[01:11:40]>> Especially like being from the storyteller side of things, oftentimes you're putting bags together with the intention of, you know, there's going to be at least one evil player walking around as an outsider bluff.

[01:11:49]>> Yeah. Um, and the the keep in mind one of the outsiders does usually doesn't know they're an outsider.

[01:11:55]>> Yeah. You have the one hidden outsider.

[01:11:57]Yep.

[01:11:57]>> Drunk is going to be in a lot of games, but that's that's also a nice way like if your if your group is getting into more and more games, just start putting in as you as you call them the face up outsiders with no drunk and then that creates it creates that doubt as you you just established a meta. If I if I'm on the reckless, one of the face up outsiders is probably evil. If your players start thinking that, well, then stop putting drunks in. starting in the face of outsiders. Players will, if they're following the recent history and the trend and what they expect of you as a storyteller, they will either suspect that one of the two claimed outsiders is a lying evil player or that there's a drunk somewhere or both when really it's just two outsiders. Yeah.

[01:12:34]>> Yeah. I've definitely done that in games where it's like base one outsider with a baron and I leave the drunk out and I just see >> are these face up outsiders going to trust each other? Yeah, it's a great way to get the Saint executed. Like in my storytelling style, I think Saints have a hard enough job. Um although my win rate as a storyteller with a good team has been relatively high lately, but I tend not not to involve the Saint in too many like red herring pings or investigator pings or anything like that. But at the same time, I tend not to confirm them with librarians and things of that nature. I kind of leave them on an island. Putting just putting the saint in with a recluse or a butler in a baron game with no drunk, it's just going to look like one of them is lying.

[01:13:11]And if the saint is still there at the end of the game, it's just a kind of a way of situationally framing them based on where your group's better is at. And you can do stuff like that. Yeah.

[01:13:18]>> Yeah. I had a a stream last night where it happened in two games where I put Saints in as a demon bluff and none of my evil team took it. They just ignored it because of like the potential stigma of like they didn't feel like walking around town as a saint that people might not trust. And the last thing to just like keep in mind is, you know, the storyteller is probably going to misregister you at least once, probably more than once. And so what does that mis misregistration potentially tell you about the world building? And this is where coming out as the recluse later in the game can be helpful because then you can kind of like backtrack of like what were the evil pings on you earlier in the game and what what is the storyteller trying to you know what direction are they trying to point because usually you can just like reverse that and say they're trying to put me down a road that is not the actual road. We want to go the other way. And that's that's also relevant not just for the storyteller, but if you've been alive long enough in Blood on the Clock Tower that, you know, this isn't an official game term or anything, but what gets thrown around as a term is the is the frame. Who is who is the player left alive that the evil team is going to try and present as the most likely demon. And if you're a recluse who's lived long enough, and it's not just the storyteller setting up these breadcrumbs of misinformation, it can be the evil team as well. Are are you going to be the final day execution that lets the demon live? Are they setting you up? who who has been pushing this narrative that you're evil, but at the same time making sure you you don't get executed, you know, that you stay alive. So, you can look at it from both of those angles because it's not just the it's not just the storyteller telling a story, it's also the evil team.

[01:14:47]>> Yeah. If you're like midway through the game or if you're at like the final five or something like that and one of the other alive players is like, "Why don't we just get rid of the recluse right now? Why is there a recluse still alive?" I would I would be looking at that player and being like, "Why you coming at me right now?"

[01:15:00]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[01:15:01]>> Because they know you're a good player.

[01:15:02]>> Yeah. If they're Well, outside outside account as well, you know, like it's uh well, I'm I'm pretty confirmed by outside account, right? If you ever looked at the blood, you know, you know, yeah, a real thing, a real thing that can be said.

[01:15:14]>> Yeah. I I had a game last night where town just like trusted a recluse and the recluse was in final three and the other two players nominated each other. It basically came down to they were like, "We know the recluse is good. We just don't know which of the other two is the demon."

[01:15:26]>> Yeah. Coin co coin flip that one. It's great. Was the recluse the recluse? Do I trust him? Who knows? Let's talk about Recluse as an evil bluff. I think it's a pretty cool evil bluff. It's definitely a dangerous evil bluff. I will say my first demon win ever was a game where I was a demon bluffing recluse. Boy, was it stressful. It was not a win where I made it to final three. It was a win where we got the Saint executed.

[01:15:48]>> Whoa.

[01:15:49]>> Okay. Oh, cuz you're cuz you're putting out a false outside account.

[01:15:52]>> Yeah.

[01:15:53]>> But that's that's the thing like this is >> this is a podcast for new players and new strategy. un unfortunately I think by dent of of the guest you have on my mind is always going to be going as well as the new player experience and and stories tell strategies kind of zooming out and and going all over the place about you know you know 12 years of clock history at this point the sort of most common meta I see established when it comes to saints and outsiders is when someone claims saints unless people are like really sure or the person is very suspicious they'll go okay we'll not execute you and if we get to final day and you're still alive and we've got nothing better to do. That's when we'll kill you. So, the saint is for the evil team. I know we here to talk about the recluses and evil block. The saint is fraught. It gets you to the end of the game, but it doesn't get you the win, right? It can get you to that end, but they might just kill you then anyway.

[01:16:41]For the recluse, what that means is if you are bluffing as the recluse and there is another base up outsider in play, a saint or a butler, they're they're usually going to execute you over a claimed saint um after after a certain point. So it is a dangerous bluff because they will just kill you.

[01:16:57]For this reason as a storyteller if if a minion wants to bluff recluse recluse great all powerful great double up the recluse explain the evil pings make a lot of noise get executed have a have a blast. Uh but if I'm giving the recluse as a bluff to the demon then I uh almost always I think as a personal rule at this point I will put the scarlet woman as one of the minions. So that uh that lets you that also lets you put a slayer in. That lets you put an undertaker in.

[01:17:21]Let you do fun things where the demon sees the recluse bluff and they don't they won't know that their minion is the Scarlet Woman, but it probably should be. And it lets them play with a bit of that peerlessness. It means you're really setting up the the Scarlet Woman as the eventual demon at the end of the game. Possibly. Probably. So there's very different implications for blocking Reckluse as a minion than as a demon.

[01:17:41]Yeah. Uh yeah, I agree that it is it is very dangerous as a demon to take the recluse bluff. What's funny is that like I mean it on paper it's a really good evil bluff in general because you can just say >> hey that's why you're that's why you're getting an evil ping on me. That's literally my ability.

[01:17:57]>> It explains everything and if and if you end up double bluffing a real recluse, they just had to kill both of you.

[01:18:01]>> Yeah. Unfortunately, the flip side is is that like you could just get executed and like town doesn't give a [ __ ] They don't care at all if they execute recluse.

[01:18:08]>> Yeah. Well, your your image here is of the Baron. It's kind of tough. I see this, not to not to criticize, but a lot of players will pull the Baron token and then they'll start bluffing as an outsider themselves.

[01:18:19]>> Yep.

[01:18:20]>> And I think the instinct is, oh, Baron, outsider, outsiders, where the Baron means that you if you bluff as an outsider as the Baron, you are much more likely to end up in a double bluff. And the problem with being double bluffing a recluse as an evil player is it means are there outsiders? You're kind of confirming that at least one of you is telling the truth, which in a way helps confirm the outside account for the good team. All right, we have an outsider here. We know we collectively know one of these people is the recluse because they're both bluffing reckless. They could both be evil, but you know, Okam's razor this one. What's most likely probably a double claim, right? That'll get you through most games, not all of them. And so you're kind of if you are minion double bluffing the recluse, depending on what the base player account is and the outside account is, you're kind of confirming that there's a recluse in play, which helps them confirm the other outsiders as well. So you create some ambiguity, but at the cost of confirming some other stuff.

[01:19:12]It's a great way to make a ton of noise as a minion. Always great to just bluff recluse and see how you go. But for a demon, you should probably rely on a bit of storyteller support there and a bit of setup support before you start throwing recluse out there. Unless you plan a star pass, a star pass when the demon targets himself and a minion becomes the end.

[01:19:30]>> Yeah, I think like generally if you're bluffing any outsider, part of your strategy is going to be to try to paint other outsiders like real outsiders as evil players. You're you're trying to convince town that you're the good one.

[01:19:42]>> Yeah. Yeah. And this this this line this line get is great. It's true whether you're good or evil. Like, just execute both of us. Like, I'd rather you execute them first because I think they're evil and they have an evil ability that could that could hurt the town. But if you if you if you got a problem, execute them and then execute me tomorrow. It's great. Do me. I'm happy to die. Just not yet. That's a great line. Use it yourself. Yeah.

[01:20:05]>> Yeah. I had a game this past Monday where I was the poisoner and the demon showed me the bluffs and I was like, I'll take Reckluse. Sounds good. And just so happens I was in the investigator ping as the poisoner.

[01:20:17]>> Yes.

[01:20:18]>> And I was like, "Let's go. This is great."

[01:20:21]>> Uh cuz I can and I turned to the guy and it's funny is that like I play Poisoner a lot and this guy that was >> the investigator, he was looking at me like there's no way Dylan's poisoner again, right? And I was like, "Listen, I'm the recluse. Of course, like they showed you poisoner off of me." And they bought me like two days.

[01:20:38]>> I like how you said I play poisoner a lot. Like it's a choice you have. Yeah.

[01:20:42]I run I run I run a poison build.

[01:20:43]>> If it was my choice, that would be the choice. I love that character.

[01:20:46]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:20:47]>> But yeah, it's great. It's a great like minion explanation of why there's like specific pings off you and like if you get executed and the Undertaker sees you as the minion that you are, >> it doesn't matter. You can just say that you were the recluse the whole time in this.

[01:21:00]>> There's a number a number of cozy it's just like a cozy little normal bluff that kind of serves you and that you can pivot away from later. You if you say, "Hey, I'm the reckless." Um, and then later on, this is getting into more advanced bluffing strategies. Um, if you realize later on in the game, like actually no one did see me in an evil ping. Hey, like I'm I'm the minion that wasn't next to an empath. No, no investigator saw me. The chef's getting zeros, you can kind of maybe pivot later to a town folk with more devastating info. You can say, "Actually, I'm not the recluse. I just didn't want to get killed at night. I I'm actually this character and I've learned X, Y, and Z."

[01:21:38]And you start coming out with false information. So, it is a it is a way to to just kind of explain your evil pings.

[01:21:44]Then, if you realize you're not getting evil pings, you can pivot into something that generates false information rather than just explains existing information on you.

[01:21:53]>> Yeah. In that game that I played on Monday, you know what we did was that me and that butler that was in that game, we got we we became tight. We we became so tight and I was so trusted essentially as the recluse. I got executed. We got we got the sane executed is what happened is that town just didn't trust the saint at that point because they were like that's the outsider that's that's not legit right now. We believe that recluse and that's what's great if town like legitimately believes you are the recluse even if it gets you killed at some point like it's going to make another outsider look evil.

[01:22:21]>> I I say when I draw the recluse I usually win but I also usually die.

[01:22:25]That's the thing. like you just you just get to play fearlessly and that that that nonchalance that genuine nonchalance of oh yeah I don't care if you execute me that carelessness can keep people alive if it if it's sincere they look at that and go oh an evil player really wouldn't sweat this much I kind of trust him we we actually don't need to execute him or if it can be bluffed people look at that fearlessness and that nonchalance and go actually yeah he seems he seems pretty legit that's why it is such a a useful bluff.

[01:22:56]It is it is one of the true fearless sort of roles. You know, if I'm an undertaker, I'm really sweating getting to day two and getting an execution on day one, so I can use my ability. If I'm the monk, I don't want anyone to know who I am. But if it's it's the reckless when people start coming for me, I'm like, "Ah, you were always going to do that at some point." That's fine. I don't mind. Let's execute me and get it over with and we can carry on with the business of fighting the demon. And just the the mindset that the recluse allows you to drive the game with, I think, is one of the most valuable things about it.

[01:23:24]>> Yeah, it's And yeah, >> it's the best outsider bluff on the script when it comes to like obuscating what the actual information is for town.

[01:23:32]>> Yes.

[01:23:33]>> Because of like if you claim saint and you get executed and the game doesn't end, they're going to know you're an evil player. If you're the butler, if you're claiming butler and you get executed and the Undertaker sees you as the poisoner, they're going to think you're the poisoner. But if you say you're the recluse, now it's like, >> okay, all this evil info that's coming off you, that's the explanation.

[01:23:51]>> Slide slides right off. You know, if you're a saint and people are saying like if you're the saint and your job is to not get executed and there's a player saying, "I saw you. I saw one of you two as the as the poisoner." You're there going, "Nah." Like, "F this sucks. Oh no." But a recluse not only doesn't matter if they die. There's an explanation for it. It's just it's it's it's ultimate ultimate chill mode vibes. They they are they are reclusive and they are they are loving it. Yeah.

[01:24:18]>> Yeah. though. Uh it's kind of you're you're playing on hard mode if you're a demon that takes that takes that bluff.

[01:24:24]>> Yeah. Oh, just uh like um help help your evil teams. Pair Reckluse buff with Scarlet Woman minion. If not, uh I don't know. Give give them a challenge. See how they go.

[01:24:35]>> Yeah.

[01:24:35]>> Talk about my rating system here. For complexity, I gave the Reckluse a 6 out of 10. Maybe that's too low, but I mean sometimes you're just not misregistering at all or you're only misregistering like a couple times in the game. And so >> I think I think that's fair for its unlabel use. Like there there's this there's um you know the the whole pamphlets and spreadsheets dedicated to ways you can abuse this ability to the detriment of your players in the game.

[01:25:01]But if you're using it for its on label uses that complexity ratings it seems seems about appropriate. Yeah.

[01:25:07]>> For strength I gave it a two out of 10 which is you know outsiders abilities are going to be kind of low though. I do think it's like maybe that's a little low because you can get creative especially like as you become more experienced in the game, you can kind of like figure out what is like going on with the way that you're bouncing off of other players abilities.

[01:25:24]>> Yeah, I think and without me jumping into the the the the stats from the app, the win rates for the Recklus, which I dig up somewhere, but it's it's probably not going to be as high as a town folk outside of win rates tend to be lower and not controlling for anything else. But um yeah, personally it it the recluse clicks with me and I've said this multiple different ways in this podcast.

[01:25:45]I think on on like on average at it's an outsider, its strength rating should be low. Personally, it clicks with me in such a way that when I draw it, I I feel like I've just drawn a town spoke uh and I and I play accordingly. Personally, it's a stronger character for me.

[01:25:58]>> And then uh for evil bluff, I I gave it a three out of 10. This is mainly because I I just don't think it really works as a demon bluff unless you're doing some some big plays that involve like a star pass or >> Yeah.

[01:26:10]>> Yeah.

[01:26:10]>> Scar pass Scarlet Woman kind of kind of needs that there as a as a playmate. But yeah, it's a bluff. It's a bluff that explains everything, but we'll probably get you killed at some point. And and if you are double bluffing a real recluse, then you're also giving the town more info.

[01:26:23]>> Yeah, and that's the rub. Yeah, it's it's tricky. like giving that as one of the three characters not in play, you're kind of handing it to the demon saying you're kind of locking in one of your evil players is going to die to early to mid game and you just got to like, you know, put that into your calculations.

[01:26:38]But anyway, that's all I have in my script here. We've been talking for a while on the recluse. It's a character that's got a lot going on. I know you're a big fan of the recluse. Evan, any final thoughts?

[01:26:47]>> I've got I've got a few I wanted just uh two stories and one interaction comment.

[01:26:52]So, talking about advanced strategies, I want to claim here. This was a game uh I didn't see this one. I was running the storyteller the next game over and this was Zet. He's known as Zetsu online Lachlan. He writes wrote a lot of the quizzes for the script tool. A very long-term and active member of the clock tower community. Wonderful dude. And he decided one game to bluff. He was the spy and he bluffed as the recluse who got woken up along with the evil team and saw who the whole evil team was. He was like, "This storyteller has gone crazy. I'm the recluse who saw all this stuff." And then for some reason, he was despised. So, he knew what he was doing.

[01:27:27]He decided to nominate the Virgin, thinking, "Well, I've just spent all this time bluffing as a recluse. No way.

[01:27:34]The storyteller is going to let this go through, and I just want to waste the Virgin's ability." And the storyteller was like, and Lachlan is executed because they're the spy.

[01:27:41]>> That's tough.

[01:27:41]>> And from there had to like, and he was out loud in the circle going, "Okay, all right. I can fix this." like and I don't know what happened between that moment and the end of the game, but he still won as an evil player who had bluffed the reccklus who saw the evil team and then got nominated executed nominating the virgin. probably my favorite reckless bluff story ever because it all just went so wrong. But he just churned and fought and somehow maybe in spite of him got a win for the evil team, but by the end of the game he's on the fetal position on the ground screaming from the the stress and the pressure after having won and put himself in that spot.

[01:28:18]So that is probably my favorite recluse bluffing story. Just just bluffing that the storyteller did a yes but don't and then being proven that that didn't happen. Amazing by the storyteller.

[01:28:28]Yeah, th those are some of my favorite games are the ones where you're certain you're going to lose the game and then somehow you win the game. That's how my game on Monday was where we all the evil team was dead except for the spy who was who was the imp at that point. Nobody bought that he was a good player. They just weren't sure if he was the spy or if he was the imp at that point.

[01:28:48]>> And we managed to convince town that that guy was the spy and that the saint was actually the imp. And they got the execution on the the saint first. But it was like I was looking at the guy that was the spy like bro we're about to lose right now like this game is over and those are the that's the best feeling like you can always bring it back in Clock Tower.

[01:29:04]>> I um I just realized that the one of the other stories I was not about the recluse was about the angel. So maybe another time. Uh finally just a note for all of you advanced player heads out there. This is something that came up with the recluse, which um I'm not going to I'm not going to like try and render a decision either way, but it became a a fan favorite interaction with the recluse, which is with a character called the marionette. Marionette is a minion, an experimental minion whose ability is you think you are a towns folk, but your ability doesn't work. You neighbor the demon. So, you're you're an evil player, but you think you're on the good team. And the part of the ability that says you neighbor the demon sort of one of the overall design intents that got, you know, miscommunicated through through this interaction with the marionette. When we're releasing experimental characters, things aren't always clear is that bracketed text on the characters takes place during setup for character abilities kind of come into play. So the whole intent of the marionette was that it would always neighbor the real demon and never the recluse. But a lot of storytellers, and we we came out and clarified this years after the fact at some point, but a lot of storytellers and players and groups still love using the recluse as the demon for the marionette setup. So the marionette isn't next to the actual demon.

[01:30:17]>> The marionette is on the other side of the group. And the demon still learns who the marionette is, but they're not seated next to the actual demon. This it it does it helps and it hinders. It subverts the true intent of the marionette, which is that it's fun to sit there and turn to your neighbors and go, "Give my body a marionette." But at the same time, a marionette, if they are discovered, if they slip up, can be used to pretty quickly discover the demon and kill them because the demon. If you know, if you learn the marionette, you learn one or two players as the demon.

[01:30:46]So allowing this house rule interaction with the recluse where the marionette can sit next to the recluse can give some cover to the demon in a world where the marionette screws up. It also means that you can kind of go up to anyone at any point, not just your neighbors and be like, "You're the marionette. You're sitting next to the recluse." Hah. But, and just to one more thought on that, it makes it easier to convince the marionette that they are the marionette because at some point the player next to them will say, "I'm the recluse." Um, uh, and especially if you tell them they're the marionette before the recluses come out publicly because if someone publicly claims recluse, then their name is a fair game for anyone to tell them you're my marionette. I know this is all a lot of run-on thoughts and if you're here as a new player and you're hearing a lot of this interaction, but this is this is probably the most uh popular and famous and controversial and interesting interaction with the recluse outside of its base edition is what do you do with it with the marionette? Uh the official ruling is that marionets should not neighbor the recluse, but it's a popular enough house rule at this point that um that if groups are running it that way that there are different ways to consider that and run that as well. So I just wanted to comment a bit on that about what the intent was and what the effects of that house rule are.

[01:31:53]>> Yeah. And TV plus marionette is a pretty common script that >> it is. It is a cool one. Adding a marionette to Jera Brewing is a nice is a very uh strong spice that gets thrown in there. Yeah.

[01:32:04]>> Um though I I don't think I've ever seen that. The games where I've seen Marionette and TB um to have it next to the recluse uh seems kind of harmless like just on paper. Uh, I understand like the, you know, when you have like the dev vision of like what this character is meant to be >> to see it like, you know, misused. Uh, >> neighbors whispering to neighbors. Yeah.

[01:32:23]>> But, um, it's it's not like, no, you'll ruin your game. It's like, okay, this wasn't the intent, but it does a bunch of different stuff that sort of balances out and most importantly, most people love it. So, that's not that's not always the great way to design a game.

[01:32:38]Often times, what people say they want is not what they'll actually enjoy. and trying to figure out what people want versus what they think they want is is always a difficult challenge in in game development, in feedback, etc. So, it's not it's not always enough to be like the players like it. Uh cuz sometimes people don't know know what's good for him. But in this case, it was an overwhelmingly popular thing to do and something that does give a lot of dynamism for custom scripts and storyteller choices.

[01:33:05]>> I I mean, yeah. I mean, that's why for these podcasts, I'm keeping it to the home scripts because >> Oh, yeah. Yeah, >> I could just imagine the recluse.

[01:33:12]>> You just take all the experimental roles and you just control F minion or demon in there and then that's that's potential Reckluse interaction.

[01:33:20]>> Yeah. Yeah. Jeez. Yes.

[01:33:22]>> That's a lot. But anyway, that's it.

[01:33:24]That's all I got for the Reckluse. Evan, well, thank you for coming on talking about this character with me today.

[01:33:28]>> Thank you for having me. Thank you for having Phillip at the the start of the show.

[01:33:30]>> Absolutely. Cameo appearance.

[01:33:32]>> Yeah. Cameo from from an OG Sydney Copt community player. Yeah.

[01:33:37]>> This is the point of the pod where I ask where where can people find you online?

[01:33:39]I don't know. Do you want to like plug TPI >> blood ontheclock tower.com? We are still running the the app in uh in a in its pre-release form, but it's currently undergoing a UXUI overhaul in in favor of a of a broader release. But uh Patreon, if you go to is it Patreon?

[01:33:54]What's our bloody Patreon address? Let me figure this out. Yeah, patreon.com/botcline.

[01:33:59]Oh, also check out our YouTube channel.

[01:34:00]There's there's years and years of games in our Twitch channel. Twitch Pandemonium Institute. Uh YouTube blood ontheclockw.com. Yeah, if you head to our main website, that's kind of your blood on the clock tower.com. That's your starting point for all fun things clock tower. Yeah. Check to our go to our channel, check out some filmed games. Have a nice time. Yeah.

[01:34:16]>> Yeah. It's great. Yeah. Yeah. Appreciate you coming on. We like we talked about scheduling this like months ago. And uh I know you've been busy.

[01:34:24]>> I've been pretty busy. Yeah. We uh my partner and I had our had our first child, so they've been growing at an enjoyable rate, but it has it did kind of take me out of action on a lot of stuff for a while.

[01:34:34]>> Yeah. That's good.

[01:34:36]>> Get here. It's wonderful to to talk about one of my favorite characters.

[01:34:39]Yeah.

[01:34:40]>> Yeah. And listen, this is not going to be the last uh TV pod that we do together. We got another one coming down the pike sometime in the future.

[01:34:46]>> Yeah. We'll have to figure out what what's what pro probably something tonally different from the recluse might be might be the go.

[01:34:51]>> It's going to be a a unique uh structure for that pod. I'll have to figure out how I want to do it.

[01:34:57]>> Okay. All right. I'm looking forward to it. Anyway, you guys can check out Clock Tower Academy on uh YouTube, Spotify, Apple Pod, anywhere you get your podcast. New episodes come out every Friday. Uh we are also on Twitter, Tik Tok, Instagram. Consider joining our Discord server. I run stream games every Wednesday, mostly doing TB. We've been getting a decent number of like like brand new and newer level players coming into our server, getting introduced to the game, getting introduced to the online app. You know, a lot of the streamers out there, not to bismerch the the other guests in my pod, they do some kooky stuff on their streams. They do, you know, the crazy customs, the homebrew. I mostly do Trouble Brewing.

[01:35:34]And so, I'm >> a good entry point for people to get into get into the game, get into the app.

[01:35:40]>> I always play Trouble Brewing. Always.

[01:35:42]Yeah.

[01:35:42]>> Uh, and it's great. It Listen, I've played something like I'm probably getting close to 100 Trouble Brewing games because I've been doing since I started playing the game. I I started playing the game about like six months ago. Yeah, I I've played almost exclusively Trouble Brewing, especially like since I've been doing these podcasts. I'm trying to get like my research games in. I did I don't know if I mentioned this, but I don't think I've ever played as the recluse actually. I don't know if I've pulled the token.

[01:36:04]>> Wow. Oh, cuz you you'll be track I tracked stats for a bit and then I stopped and then I've started again.

[01:36:10]I've got my stats fully tracked from the start of 2023 till now. Most of my games were run in person with the the group in the city I used to live in. Uh Newcastle, which is about a 2-hour drive north of Sydney where where I live now.

[01:36:23]I'm originally from around Sydney from out of Sydney to West. But yeah, I was running a group up in Newcastle and most of my games were up there and most of them were trouble brewing. But yeah, I I've got years of unttracked stats of just anecdotal evidence of being the recluse and having a nice time. Yeah, >> we were talking about that today in our uh local group that I'm part of here in Philadelphia. There's one person that she has every game that she's ever played like tracked in a spreadsheet to like pretty extreme detail of like what their character was, number of characters in play, the results of the game, what the demon was, what what like day or night the game ended on, and this is like >> that is atomizing down pretty hard. I've got I track 1400 games they have played.

[01:37:05]>> Oh, cuz there's a there's a website for this now. I just made a spreadsheet.

[01:37:07]There's clocktracker.com. the the the proliferation of fan-made tools is is extremely encouraging in a lot of this stuff. It just really shows like clever people engaged well and having fun. A a few IP infringements that we have to look at and go protect ourselves from that, but generally the goodwill we get from the community when we're we're a growing company, but we're still not, you know, big big boys yet. Um, and usually when we like finding the line between what's a cool tool that we want out there fans to do and oh, actually this kind of puts our IP in a little bit of danger. Can you please hold it back?

[01:37:36]We approach each one on a case by case basis. So there are a few things where you have to be like uh sorry but just the community the player base is usually so good that people are happy to to understand it and kind of work with us on that. Yeah. Clock tracker.com I think records all all of this stuff. I've just got a a Microsoft Excel but yeah. Okay.

[01:37:54]All right. This is this is historical knowledge. I've been the recluse twice in the past three and a half years. I've won both of those games.

[01:38:01]>> There you go.

[01:38:03]>> That is >> Yeah. I I I now wish in hindsight that I had been like tracking in more detail the specific games. Everything is just like off of like my memory and you know like anecdotally trying to like remember specific things that happened in games.

[01:38:17]>> Don't don't sweat it too much. As soon as you don't as soon as you have not tracked one game then you'll lose that total knowledge is lost forever. My big fear was that for tracking stats that I would become concerned about my win rate and that I would stop playing for fun.

[01:38:32]I'd be like I would take a loss and be like, "Oh, that's going to hurt my percentages." So, my rule for tracking stats was always the moment that I feel bad about winning or losing a game based on my stats, I would stop tracking my stats. So far, that hasn't happened yet.

[01:38:44]I'm still like some some of my most enjoyable games have been losses. And I think that's true for for a lot of people who play Clock Tower. Um, just just the act of of fighting hard and losing or when your friends really get you real good, that's there's something enjoyable in that. So, but yeah, for for some people the stat tracking can turn a little dark. So, it's take it or leave it. I wouldn't worry too much. It's it's fun and it's cool, but I I don't think you're missing too much of the experience of blockar by not by not having done it to completion.

[01:39:08]>> Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, that's going to do it for this episode of Clock Tower Academy. Class dismissed.