A few weeks ago, at our usual table in the corner of the Cow & Moon, Steve looked me dead in the eye and said, “I want to update all the jinxes.”

We’d been deep in the weeds of new character development for weeks at this point, and Steve was absolutely bursting at the seams with ideas. Which is amazing, but there’s one big caveat: Every new character needs to work with every existing character, or otherwise needs a special rule - a jinx - to help players figure out what to do if it doesn’t. 

As a result, every time we create a new character, the game gets more complicated. But Clocktower was designed to be accessible - while the Storyteller needs to read & understand the rulebook in order to run a game, new players only need a 3-minute rules explanation, all found on one sheet of paper, and they’re ready to rock and roll. 

So back to the jinxes - in the process of brainstorming and developing new characters, Steve realized there could be a simpler, more player-friendly way to approach jinxes. Rather than have one-off solutions that only worked for unique character combinations, we wanted to try and use the same jinxes (or wording patterns) to cover multiple combinations of characters that interact in similar ways. In theory, by solving similar problems with similar solutions, Storytellers don’t have to remember as many unique rules, and players can more easily intuit how something works. 

That said, there are two main drawbacks to this new system. First, favoring general rules that can apply to multiple similar interactions limits how specific a jinx can be to a particular character combination. In addition, players who are already intimately familiar with the game will need to re-acquaint themselves with updated jinxes, and might be frustrated that jinxes they preferred were adjusted to be more in line with the new goals and intentions of the jinx design & overall game design. In particular, folks who’ve created custom scripts based around specific jinxed interactions might find themselves with a script that no longer “works” due to a changed jinx. And we get that this is frustrating, especially when these jinx changes aren’t necessarily coming from a place of individual jinxes being broken and needing a fix. But the thing that’s “broken” in this case, and therefore the thing we’re attempting to “fix”, isn’t the individual jinxes - it’s the overall accessibility of the game and its design.

Early on in my time working with Steve, I learned that you often have to make choices that can’t and won’t please everyone, that you have to be intentional about your priorities in game design. That it’s worth designing something that prioritizes accessibility, even if the end result isn’t as cool and specific as a more niche solution would be. And with those principles in mind, we intentionally committed to reworking the jinxes.

–

To start, Steve and I knew we wanted to categorize the types of interactions that typically require a jinx. So first things first, we needed to figure out the categories! After much brainstorming, we came up with the following list:

• Character Changers

• Clarifications

• Evil Auto Win

• Evil Turns Good

• Feelsbad

• Good Auto Win

• Grim Peekers

• Just For Fun

• No Ability

• No Death At Night

• Setup

• ST Choice

• Unique

(Note: while some of these category names are pretty straightforward, others we shortened for brevity & ease of spreadsheet-building. For example, “No Death At Night” represents characters who don’t cause night death interacting with characters whose abilities trigger on being killed in the night; “Grim Peekers” represents characters whose abilities hinge on evil not knowing what’s in play interacting with characters who see the grim; “ST Choice” represents interactions that are broken if and only if the Storyteller makes a choice that they otherwise could have not made, etc.)

Once we’d established our categories, we began sorting each previously-jinxed character pair into them. Most were pretty straightforward, but there were several that Steve & I disagreed on, as well as some that fit into multiple categories. If you’re curious about how we ended up sorting things, you can view our final list here, along with the complete record of all jinxes & jinx updates. As a fun bonus, after we were finished sorting, we were both surprised and impressed that our categories had sufficiently covered every jinxed interaction in the game. We only had two categories that we didn’t end up using: any situation that could have been ascribed to “Character Changers” consistently fell under “No Ability” and/or “Feelsbad”, and we didn’t find anything that was “Unique” in the way it interacted relative to everything else. 

Next came the crux of this work: reviewing each of the current jinxes (plus several jinxes we wanted to add) to determine where and how we could make things more straightforward. For the most part, we went character by character - for example, we’d look at every character the Vizier was jinxed with, and compare each jinx to any others in the same category. Then, when looking at other characters in the same respective categories, we could look back at jinxes we’d already proposed to see if the jinx could be applied to the other characters, too. The overall process took many, many days of hours-long meetings (the guys at the Indian place on Enmore Road know our order now), and while we’re overall happy with where we’ve landed, we also know there’s still room for improvement. In particular, I wanted to address a few of the more interesting & potentially controversial changes:

Legion & Magician: The Magician wakes with Legion and might register as evil. Legion knows if a Magician is in play, but not which player it is.

When Steve first proposed this, I balked. “If I’m the Magician,” I argued, “I just grab all the good players and tell them I know the entire Legion team. I beg them to kill me and keep each other alive. What’s stopping us?” 

As a counterpoint, we discussed that Legion players could do the exact same thing, potentially grabbing 1-2 Legion along with 1-2 good players, and double-claiming the Magician. While this is definitely spicy, it also has the potential to open up new avenues for bluffing and gameplay - imagine bluffing Magician in a Legion game as, say, the Baron in a non-Legion game! And if it’s really terrible, we can always try something new. 

 

Mathematician & Drunk: The Mathematician might learn if the Drunk's ability yielded false info or failed to work properly.

We spent the better part of two days arguing just about this jinx. There’s some much-needed context here: when Steve first created the Mathematician, he wanted it to be a character that tracked when things went wrong. In that sense, a Drunk whose Townsfolk ability “malfunctions” (in the sense that it works differently to how a sober version of that Townsfolk would have worked) would uptick the Mathematician’s number. For example, if a Drunk Empath learned a 1 when they had 2 good neighbors, this version of the Mathematician would learn a 1. However, due to limited space for the ability text, as well as resulting complications for other characters, the Mathematician was released with wording that excluded the Drunk (and the Marionette) as characters that could “malfunction” in the way the Mathematician tracks.

The original Mathematician-Lunatic jinx attempted to address this: If the Lunatic targeted a player who didn’t die (because the Demon targeted someone different), the Mathematician would learn a 1. That 1 represented the Lunatic “malfunctioning” per the original intention of the character - it was a player who believed they had the ability of a Demon, but the ability they expected to have wasn’t working. In theory, jinxing the Mathematician with the Drunk and the Marionette would include those characters’ “malfunctions” in the Mathematician’s number, just like the Lunatic! But in practice, this has more complicated repercussions than we’d like. If the Mathematician must learn every time the Drunk or Marionette receives incorrect information or thinks their ability should have worked, the good team gains significantly more information about who can or can’t be a Drunk or a Marionette. After much debate, we decided it was worth trying out a jinx where the Mathematician could detect the Drunk (or Marionette) “malfunctioning”, at the Storyteller’s discretion. If it doesn’t work, we can always remove it - and if we do, it’s likely that Mathematician-Lunatic would also be removed.

–

Deleted Jinxes

In the case of both the Marionette & the Kazali, we were able to update the characters’ respective almanac entries in order to address several problems that were previously solved by a jinx. The almanac entries for the Marionette & Kazali now include the additional text:

Marionette: The Marionette is not woken due to character abilities that would confirm that they are a Minion eg. Snitch, Preacher, Lil’ Monsta, Poppy Grower, Hatter, Damsel.

Kazali: The Kazali can make whatever player they want into a Minon, regardless of that player’s character ability eg. Soldier, Goon, Damsel, King.

–

Some final thoughts, for now, in no particular order: 

If a jinx gives instructions that describe how an in-play character uses their ability, it is reasonable to assume that the character must be alive, sober, and healthy for the jinx to have a meaningful effect on the game.

When in doubt, make the decision that makes sense, based on whose team a character ability should be helping (Good if Townsfolk, Evil if Outsider/Minion/Demon). 

If something is ambiguous, the Storyteller’s word is law. Storytellers - support your evil players with their bluffs, and do your best to make the game fun and fair, within the rules as you understand them.

And as always: Kill with grace, and die with dignity.