BotC + Dinner With Friends
Hi all! We did one of these in the past and it was a good time, hopefully it'll be even better this time!
Let's do a potluck for snacks to eat while we play. It'd be great if everyone can bring their favorite snack :)
A big difference from last time is that we'll be starting the game right away without teaching, so for those of you that don't know how to play, I'm going to be sending out a tutorial video for you to watch beforehand, so keep an eye out for that!
See you all on the 6th!
General flow of the game
Get roles → Day → Night → Day → Night → …repeat until game is over
During the day:
I’ll announce the player who died during the night
Everyone, including the dead, talks amongst each other to figure out who they should nominate for execution (aka figure out who the demon is)
Note that the only difference between dead players vs alive players is that dead players cannot use their abilities, cannot nominate, and only get to vote one more time during nominations for the remainder of the game
Then, after 10-15 min or so, we go into nominations
Anyone (except the dead) who wants to nominate someone for execution can do so and give their explanation
People who agree to execute that person will raise their hand
Note that there is no penalty for voting, and alive players can vote yes to as many nominations as they’d like. For dead players, as mentioned previously, they get 1 vote to use for the rest of the game
I go around and tally up all votes - if the number of votes is ≥ half of the number of alive players, the nomination succeeds, which means that player will be executed unless another nominated player gets more votes
We repeat 3.1-3.3 until no one wants to nominate again (but a player that has already been nominated this day cannot be nominated again)
The player who got the most votes is executed. If there is a tie for the highest number of votes, no one is executed this day
I announce if the game is over (either because the demon died or because only 2 players remain, one of whom is the demon). Otherwise, everyone goes to sleep and the night starts
During the night:
Everyone, including the dead, closes their eyes
I’ll take turns waking people up to use their abilities, including the demon, who will kill 1 person
Everyone wakes up, and the day starts
FAQs
What does drunk/poison mean?
Functionally, they are very similar. In both cases, the player’s ability may/may not work
Normally, the choice of whether the ability works/give correct info or doesn’t work/give wrong info is given to the storyteller to make the game more interesting (aka help the losing team), but in our game, I’m going to handle them mostly randomly (will give more info below for those of you that want to know)
The main difference is that the drunk is a role (and therefore, permanent), whereas being poisoned lasts one round (1 night + 1 day). Someone who is drunk will think he is a different role when he’s actually the drunk. And since he’s drunk, his abilities may/may not work.
For example, you might get the role of slayer, and for multiple rounds, you convince everyone that you’re the slayer. Then when you go to use your ability to kill someone, no one dies, because it turns out you were the drunk. (But in this case, it’s also possible you were actually the slayer, but the poisoner happened to poison you this round. It’s up to you to figure out what happened)
Are you allowed to reveal your role?
Yes! That’s part of the game. It’s just up to whether or not they believe you, bc everyone, including the evil team, will pretend to be good roles
Good roles generally do want to reveal themselves to other good roles so that they can share information to deduce who the evil team is, but be careful because you don’t want to accidentally reveal yourself to the evil team
Also, keep in mind that there are some good roles that have an incentive to lie, bc they have a bigger downside if they are killed off early by the demon (such as slayer, monk, empath, etc), so they may be more careful in revealing their roles to others, or they might lie and say a different role so that they are not targeted
How much info can we share with other people?
There are no rules on how much info you can share with others. Just be careful who you share info with..
What is an outsider?
Outsiders are on the good team, so they are genuinely trying to find out and execute the demon, but their abilities unfortunately usually hurt the good team
Can I reference the character sheet while we play?
Yes, I’d recommend that
How I’ll determine drunk/poisoned abilities
For drunk abilities, if it is an ongoing ability (i.e. empath), I’m going to roll a virtual dice to determine if drunk abilities will work/give correct info or not work/give false info in that round
For drunk abilities that are one-time use (i.e. slayer), and all poisoned abilities, they will always not work/give false info
Other things to know...
Generally, you want to talk in small groups to reduce the chance of accidentally talking (and revealing info) to an evil person
The demon will receive 3 GOOD roles that are not being used in this game to safely bluff as. The minions do not know these, so it will be up to the minions to talk to the demon during the day (without getting noticed!) to come up with a strategy/what role they will pretend to be, etc.
In this game, it’s almost always better to be proactive
If you’re on the good team, if you combine all your abilities and knowledge, your team should be able to win easily, which means the more proactive everyone is about gathering intel (as long as it’s with other good roles), the better your chances are
If you’re on the evil team, you need to be proactive in coming up with a strategy together with the 3 good roles the demon gets, and doing your best to confuse the good team; otherwise, they have way too much info/abilities to win the game
If you’ve played mafia, a big difference is that if you try to go under the radar as the demon to try to kill everyone off, you will likely lose (which wasn’t the case with mafia)
Dead players often have a big impact later on in the game, because they can completely swing a nomination. For example, when there are 3-5 players left, only 2-3 votes are needed for a successful nomination. And 3-5 players left would mean 10-12 dead players who could cast 1 vote (if they haven’t used it already)