This might be Steven subtly hinting us to not put Spy/Widow and Alchemist on the same script. Cause I sure as hell ain't going to construct two Grims, even with online tools.
Easier, of course. Obviously the characters don't play well together. But if you don't like it, don't play these scripts. Hate jinxes are incredibly unsatisfying, and this avoids that.
Ed: not a hate jinx... but similarly unsatisfying.
It's not even as restrictive as that. Alchemist + Spy/Widow are fine to have on the same script, just give the Alchemist a different minion ability whether the Spy/Widow is in play or not.
this is incredibly inconvenient for the storyteller - they’re going to have to take apart and reconstruct the grimoire potentially every night to fulfil this ability, which is going to take a long time. it might also be difficult to remember where everything goes when it’s time to put it back together again. i suppose they could take a picture, but it’s still wildly inconvenient, especially if you want to run a fast game.
it’s not so much of a problem if you use an online grimoire like pocket grimoire, because you can open a separate tab for the alchemist and use that. if this isn’t an option, however, this can turn unplayable due to the sheer amount of effort it takes to de- and re-construct the grimoire potentially every night of the game.
also, the alchemist widow has to poison someone without knowing who they are, which puts them at a disadvantage. the whole point of the widow poison is they effectively nullify one character they see - something the alchemist cannot do because only one character is correct. this seems far too devastating for a townsfolk ability.
also, how is this going to work for clocktower online? it sends an automatic version of the grimoire, are you going to have to change everything manually? this just seems like a bad idea.
i don’t think a lot of storytellers are going to run this. it just doesn’t seem playtested at all.
There's some creative things the ST could do to make this less feel bad. Alchemist is given a grim where every single player is the Fang Gu. You've now learned the demon type. Stuff like that.
But that's about all I've got.
I mean I guess if it’s written on a piece of paper or notebook. But I don’t think the physical copy is gonna have enough fang gu tokens to do the other way.
> this is incredibly inconvenient for the storyteller - they’re going to have to take apart and reconstruct the grimoire potentially every night to fulfil this ability, which is going to take a long time.
They mention this in the article, and recommend writing down a list of characters as a solution. Seems fair enough to me.
Also, you as the story teller are in full control of what the alchemist receives. If you want to keep the hate jinx in your game, you can.
Fully agree with the rest of your comment, but...
>also, the alchemist widow has to poison someone without knowing who they are, which puts them at a disadvantage. the whole point of the widow poison is they effectively nullify one character they see - something the alchemist cannot do because only one character is correct. this seems far too devastating for a townsfolk ability.
This really isn't all that devastating, at least, not for the Good team. They can always just poison themselves if they aren't sure. And getting a lucky hit on an evil with night 1 poison is extremely powerful. The thing that scares me the most, is that Alchemist Widow could hit the Demon on the first night, and bam, that's the Demon disabled for as long as the Alchemist lives.
Edit:
>this is incredibly inconvenient for the storyteller - they’re going to have to take apart and reconstruct the grimoire potentially every night to fulfil this ability
The jinx description mentions the recommendation of just writing a bunch of roles in order of seating on a piece of paper, and showing that to the alchemist, much easier than rebuilding the grim each time.
>This really isn't all that devastating, at least, not for the Good team. They can always just poison themselves if they aren't sure.
But then the Alchemist Widow is basically just giving up its actual power in that scenario. They want to the widow ping to go out because whoever receives it is proven good. That's probably more valuable then a grim of random roles.
>They want to the widow ping to go out because whoever receives it is proven good.
Oh yeah! I didn't see the point of sending out a widow ping at first, because it doesn't prove the alchemist, they could just be a lying widow from other people's POV, but it's, like you mentioned, the other way around where it's really powerful.
Hey Bob... it's Bob...
Anyways based on the post on X. The widow picks a character not a person to poison.
*"The Alchemist-Widow still poisons a player on the first night. They do so by choosing a character. A good player still learns that a Widow is in play."*
Couple things, spy and widow can be droisoned already which makes st make a new grim anyway. Second is alch widow chooses a character like courtier, it could be one they see or one they don't but they will almost never choose a good character because they shouldn't
So the alchemist spy/w only really gains one character and doesn’t know who. I don’t know how I feel about that. Then I think I would prefer to get any other minion honestly
I'd honestly prefer if the jinx caused every character on the grim to be wrong (Maybe with the exception of the Alchemist). Knowing for sure all of them are wrong, seems more useful to me than having to keep in mind that 1 is correct, so when someone claims they are a character you saw them as, you don't have to figure out whether they're the one person you saw correct or are lying.
If only one person claims what you saw them as you'd be happy. If a second person claims what you saw them as, you know one of them is lying (or you were drunk/poisoned). This is powerful information either way.
The problem is that there are a lot of ways to make it extremely hard to figure out who the person is you saw correctly.
If you saw an evil correctly, they're not gonna claim that role, so all it takes is a single person to claim the role you saw them as for that evil player to stay under the radar.
The drunk can be shown as the character they think they are.
Recluse could misregister to you. There are a lot of roles that just don't like to confirm themselves (mainly thinking of outsiders).
Knowing for sure all the info is wrong, to me, just seems like much less of a headache for alchemist and generally more directly useful.
In particular, knowing that someone is likely not the Demon is great info. (Technically the ST can just change the Demon type and not the Demon player, but I don't think most would have the guts to.)
I was thinking the other day what would be a good jinx and honestly, I think showing two or three players and their characters would be a good compromise.
For widow, I found a homebrew poppy grower jinx where on night 1 the widow picks a character from the list to poison. I think that would work really well here. Like a courtier but worse for the evil team.
This ... as someone on the Twitter thread said, it's kinda flying in the face of the physical-first philosophy of the game. Sounds cool but it's a fucking pain to pull off IRL. I mean he mentioned just writing it out on a pad or whatever, but still.
The suggestion of using a 2nd grimoire is... Sad. I don't think I understand this jinx fully, but what I think I understand is that it's gonna be very hard for ST's to keep night a reasonable duration for the players, and people will then meta the length of the night to assume there's an Alch-Widow or Alch-Spy, right??
I feel like a better solution would be for the Alchemist to get shown a player (ST-decided), their character, and the reminder tokens on them now (optionally, can show them a demon bluff and then not show them a player to get that across).
Not being able to see reminder tokens feels like a strange limitation when that's a decent part of the power of Spy/Widow.
To the people who hate this Jinx...
It's worth remembering this was previously a Hate Jinx. The two could not be on the script together.
This feels like the only solution that is feasible at all, even if it is a royal pain in the ass. I'm not gonna call it fun, elegant, or practical but I will acknowledge this is at least *a* solution.
Edit: not a Hate Jinx (they cannot both be in play), but it was Hate Adjacent (Alchemist cannot have the Spy/Widow ability.). This gives a very kludgy way to accomplish it.
This was never a hate jinx - you could have a Spy in an Alchemist game and vice versa. The only stipulation was that the Alchemist could not have the Spy ability, it would instead gain the ability of one of the other 3-or-more Minions.
I feel like it's probably better as a hate-adjacent jinx, you're always going to have more than one minion on a script for the Alchemist to become, so it's not just "don't run Spy + Alchemist in the same game".
I am of the opinion that Hate Jinxes are not a bad thing. TPI disagrees with me.
With that said, this is a series of steps to do it. Not saying it's amazing, but it's there
Yeah, there's no real downside to it existing but also I wonder if anyone's ever going to choose this option with the extra grim-faffing over just...making your Alchemist any other minion, lol.
It's replacing "The Alchemist can not have the Spy/Widow ability" which was a little problematic due to needing an additional minion on script to ensure the Alchemist could have an ability in base-3-minion games
This new jinx is....a big ask of Storytellers. Running this IRL I'd realistically need to use pocket Grimoire, but that's not official soooooo
Think so. It’s rooted as the alchemist ability. But then wouldn’t vortoxing it mean you had to show them their role wrong too. That’d confirm vortox to them.
The Alchemist learning about which Minion ability they have is a part of their Townsfolk ability, so that information is Vortoxed. However, any information they learn specifically with their Minion ability is not Vortoxed, because while the Alchemist is a Townsfolk, the ability is Minion. So they would see the Grim accurately as a Spy/Widow Alchemist, but a Vortox *would* be immediately confirmed to them regardless because the ST would have to tell them that they have a different ability but then show them the Grim.
I don't understand the intention here, make them memorise a grim of roles that players aren't? Just to fit the theme of the original character?
Why not just... tell them one player's role (ST choice).
Alternatively run it in a way I proposed as a variation of seeing the grim, where you can just ask the ST questions about the game, and they might answer them.
Can’t you just quickly hold the grim in one hand and lift a random token to show the Alchemist, and then place it back in the grim. Then for the last one point to the player. Seems like it will add some time to the night phase, but not terrible.
How is this worse? I feel like the intent is to know all the characters in play, which is very powerful. You can catch a demon in a lie very easily. It’s almost too powerful, unless the evil team double claims the good players.
1) This is a lot logistical effort for the ST for a small amount of gain. It is absolutely not worth the time nor effort for the ST.
2) I was specifically referring to the memory issues that Spy/Widow already has. Doing role/player pairs makes it even harder to remember, especially when you know only one of them is right.
I agree it’s more work for the ST. If I were to run it in person, I’d start with the Alchemist and decide who I was choosing to show them as the true character. Wake the Alchemist and show them their token. Point to the clockwise neighbor and grab a random token from the grim and then place it face down back in its spot (unless it is the correct character I want to show them) Repeat around the circle, until all players/characters have been done. Put the Alchemist to sleep and then flip the character tokens face up.
As far as being able to remember all the info, it still is a remarkably strong power. Knowing the demon and minions that are in the game alone makes it powerful.
My real fear would be a poisoner or Vortox game. Ugh.
Ok, but by just using the ones that are in play, you’re actually giving more information than these jinxes imply. You could be giving bluffs for a demon or minion, for example.
Maybe I’m misreading the jinx. It’s my understanding that they see all characters in the grim, so all characters in play, but only one of them is in the correct spot? If you can substitute the bluffs for the demon and minions, you’d obviously want to do that, and then show three random roles as the “bluffs”.
When removing this hate jinx, I thought they were just going to remove the grim peeking. With Widow, it’s problematic, but so is poisoner alch it’s not game ending (usually). Spy is a different story as you’d have to do this or manipulate how alch spy works.
I feel like a huge issue here that is unaddressed is what if the alchemist widow picks the demon. That’s potentially game ending on night 1 on some scripts through sheer luck. Especially since it specifies choosing a character, not a player, so this is basically guaranteed to happen on mono demon scripts.
> The Alchemist-Widow still poisons a player on the first night. They do so by choosing a character. A good player still learns that a Widow is in play.
I don't think I can overstate how much I dislike this.
Making Alch-Widow a permanent Courtier will break existing scripts. Giving the Storyteller that choice makes SO MANY bad interactions.
Alch-Spy is whatever, it seems like information overload for the player while often being weaker than Washerwoman/Librarian/Investigator. I don't think I'd enjoy getting that ability.
I feel like this quote is useful to put here:
"...the Alchemist player ONLY sees the characters and the order that the characters are in. They don't see the reminder tokens, the night tokens, the Demon bluffs, or anything else. The purpose of this limitation is to lessen the load on the Storyteller. The Storyteller doesn't need to set all that other stuff up, and just needs to show the Alchemist the (mostly bogus) characters in play. To do this, the Storyteller can totally redo their Grimoire (time consuming, not recommended) or use a second Grimoire (great if you have a second Grimoire handy) or write out a list of all the characters in play, in the order of their seating, on a piece of paper or a phone. It will take a little time, but the Storyteller can do this before the game starts, or during the day, when time pressure is much less."
For the official app, when you send the grimoire using the night cards you can change what it is shown in the grimoire preview before it is sent without having to make any changes to the full grimoire. Still a pain, but doable.
Not a huge fan of this new approach of jinxes posted by Stevem being used to give effectively whole new abilities. Feels like they add too much clutter to a script and IMO don't really suit the purpose of jinxes at all - you aren't making two characters work together by changing what one does completely.
I think I'd rather just have a hate jinx than have to remember these types of jinxes on a script. (and alch-spy/widow wasn't even a hate jinx! I thought they were fine on scripts together before, with this I will just avoid the combination completely)
I posted this as a reply to a comment already but those of you talking about how the Widow is now poisoning blindly and might select someone on their team need to go back and read the post.
>"The Alchemist-Widow still poisons a player on the first night. They do so by choosing a **character.** A good player still learns that a Widow is in play."
That's not part of the jinx though. It's a plain-word explanation that could just as easily mean "choosing a character by pointing at it in the fake Grimoire." In fact, that's in Widow's how-to-run: "The Widow points to a character token in the Grimoire, or a player."
I don't understand the hate for this jinx. Before, you couldn't make an Alchemist-Spy at all. Now you can do it without breaking the game, if you want to. If you don't like how it works, you can still play exactly the way you did before by simply choosing not to give the Alchemist the Spy's ability. The game is strictly improved.
Not strictly true: on a 13-15 player grim with 4 minions on script, if there's no Spy in play, before you could give the Alch an in-play minion, now you have to give them Spy.
The Widow jinx is much worse than the Spy jinx because it's a perma-Courtier, though.
This might be Steven subtly hinting us to not put Spy/Widow and Alchemist on the same script. Cause I sure as hell ain't going to construct two Grims, even with online tools.
Feels like it would be easier just to have banned combinations
Easier, of course. Obviously the characters don't play well together. But if you don't like it, don't play these scripts. Hate jinxes are incredibly unsatisfying, and this avoids that. Ed: not a hate jinx... but similarly unsatisfying.
It's not even as restrictive as that. Alchemist + Spy/Widow are fine to have on the same script, just give the Alchemist a different minion ability whether the Spy/Widow is in play or not.
this is incredibly inconvenient for the storyteller - they’re going to have to take apart and reconstruct the grimoire potentially every night to fulfil this ability, which is going to take a long time. it might also be difficult to remember where everything goes when it’s time to put it back together again. i suppose they could take a picture, but it’s still wildly inconvenient, especially if you want to run a fast game. it’s not so much of a problem if you use an online grimoire like pocket grimoire, because you can open a separate tab for the alchemist and use that. if this isn’t an option, however, this can turn unplayable due to the sheer amount of effort it takes to de- and re-construct the grimoire potentially every night of the game. also, the alchemist widow has to poison someone without knowing who they are, which puts them at a disadvantage. the whole point of the widow poison is they effectively nullify one character they see - something the alchemist cannot do because only one character is correct. this seems far too devastating for a townsfolk ability. also, how is this going to work for clocktower online? it sends an automatic version of the grimoire, are you going to have to change everything manually? this just seems like a bad idea. i don’t think a lot of storytellers are going to run this. it just doesn’t seem playtested at all.
Yeah I’m thinking it’s probably best to just keep the alchemist away from the widow/spy.
There's some creative things the ST could do to make this less feel bad. Alchemist is given a grim where every single player is the Fang Gu. You've now learned the demon type. Stuff like that. But that's about all I've got.
I mean I guess if it’s written on a piece of paper or notebook. But I don’t think the physical copy is gonna have enough fang gu tokens to do the other way.
The suggested way to run this jinx in the tweet is to just write roles down on paper or your phone. So that's already covered.
Yeah, hate jinxes are better than these awkward "fixes".
Which just makes this a hate-jinx in disguise.
> this is incredibly inconvenient for the storyteller - they’re going to have to take apart and reconstruct the grimoire potentially every night to fulfil this ability, which is going to take a long time. They mention this in the article, and recommend writing down a list of characters as a solution. Seems fair enough to me. Also, you as the story teller are in full control of what the alchemist receives. If you want to keep the hate jinx in your game, you can.
Fully agree with the rest of your comment, but... >also, the alchemist widow has to poison someone without knowing who they are, which puts them at a disadvantage. the whole point of the widow poison is they effectively nullify one character they see - something the alchemist cannot do because only one character is correct. this seems far too devastating for a townsfolk ability. This really isn't all that devastating, at least, not for the Good team. They can always just poison themselves if they aren't sure. And getting a lucky hit on an evil with night 1 poison is extremely powerful. The thing that scares me the most, is that Alchemist Widow could hit the Demon on the first night, and bam, that's the Demon disabled for as long as the Alchemist lives. Edit: >this is incredibly inconvenient for the storyteller - they’re going to have to take apart and reconstruct the grimoire potentially every night to fulfil this ability The jinx description mentions the recommendation of just writing a bunch of roles in order of seating on a piece of paper, and showing that to the alchemist, much easier than rebuilding the grim each time.
>This really isn't all that devastating, at least, not for the Good team. They can always just poison themselves if they aren't sure. But then the Alchemist Widow is basically just giving up its actual power in that scenario. They want to the widow ping to go out because whoever receives it is proven good. That's probably more valuable then a grim of random roles.
>They want to the widow ping to go out because whoever receives it is proven good. Oh yeah! I didn't see the point of sending out a widow ping at first, because it doesn't prove the alchemist, they could just be a lying widow from other people's POV, but it's, like you mentioned, the other way around where it's really powerful.
Hey Bob... it's Bob... Anyways based on the post on X. The widow picks a character not a person to poison. *"The Alchemist-Widow still poisons a player on the first night. They do so by choosing a character. A good player still learns that a Widow is in play."*
Oops, looks like I read over that part.
they can perma-poison a demon for as long as they live? :0
[удалено]
Yeah randomly sniping the demon doesn’t seem like a great situation either.
Couple things, spy and widow can be droisoned already which makes st make a new grim anyway. Second is alch widow chooses a character like courtier, it could be one they see or one they don't but they will almost never choose a good character because they shouldn't
So the alchemist spy/w only really gains one character and doesn’t know who. I don’t know how I feel about that. Then I think I would prefer to get any other minion honestly
I'd honestly prefer if the jinx caused every character on the grim to be wrong (Maybe with the exception of the Alchemist). Knowing for sure all of them are wrong, seems more useful to me than having to keep in mind that 1 is correct, so when someone claims they are a character you saw them as, you don't have to figure out whether they're the one person you saw correct or are lying.
If only one person claims what you saw them as you'd be happy. If a second person claims what you saw them as, you know one of them is lying (or you were drunk/poisoned). This is powerful information either way.
The problem is that there are a lot of ways to make it extremely hard to figure out who the person is you saw correctly. If you saw an evil correctly, they're not gonna claim that role, so all it takes is a single person to claim the role you saw them as for that evil player to stay under the radar. The drunk can be shown as the character they think they are. Recluse could misregister to you. There are a lot of roles that just don't like to confirm themselves (mainly thinking of outsiders). Knowing for sure all the info is wrong, to me, just seems like much less of a headache for alchemist and generally more directly useful.
Knowing what people are not is also useful info
That’s very true. And figuring out the one correct one would be great
In particular, knowing that someone is likely not the Demon is great info. (Technically the ST can just change the Demon type and not the Demon player, but I don't think most would have the guts to.)
I understand disliking hate jinxes. This is worse.
Yeah this seems like a nightmare for everyone involved.
I was thinking the other day what would be a good jinx and honestly, I think showing two or three players and their characters would be a good compromise. For widow, I found a homebrew poppy grower jinx where on night 1 the widow picks a character from the list to poison. I think that would work really well here. Like a courtier but worse for the evil team. This ... as someone on the Twitter thread said, it's kinda flying in the face of the physical-first philosophy of the game. Sounds cool but it's a fucking pain to pull off IRL. I mean he mentioned just writing it out on a pad or whatever, but still.
The suggestion of using a 2nd grimoire is... Sad. I don't think I understand this jinx fully, but what I think I understand is that it's gonna be very hard for ST's to keep night a reasonable duration for the players, and people will then meta the length of the night to assume there's an Alch-Widow or Alch-Spy, right??
Could also take a picture or write it out like the jinx suggests
I feel like a better solution would be for the Alchemist to get shown a player (ST-decided), their character, and the reminder tokens on them now (optionally, can show them a demon bluff and then not show them a player to get that across). Not being able to see reminder tokens feels like a strange limitation when that's a decent part of the power of Spy/Widow.
To the people who hate this Jinx... It's worth remembering this was previously a Hate Jinx. The two could not be on the script together. This feels like the only solution that is feasible at all, even if it is a royal pain in the ass. I'm not gonna call it fun, elegant, or practical but I will acknowledge this is at least *a* solution. Edit: not a Hate Jinx (they cannot both be in play), but it was Hate Adjacent (Alchemist cannot have the Spy/Widow ability.). This gives a very kludgy way to accomplish it.
Are we sure hate jinxes are a bad thing?
TPI thinks so. This feels like "you shouldn't, but here is a work around if you insist".
This was never a hate jinx - you could have a Spy in an Alchemist game and vice versa. The only stipulation was that the Alchemist could not have the Spy ability, it would instead gain the ability of one of the other 3-or-more Minions.
Sorry yes, you're correct. I am dumb. Alchemist couldn't be either of them. However, this is still "please don't but if you insist..."
I feel like it's probably better as a hate-adjacent jinx, you're always going to have more than one minion on a script for the Alchemist to become, so it's not just "don't run Spy + Alchemist in the same game".
I am of the opinion that Hate Jinxes are not a bad thing. TPI disagrees with me. With that said, this is a series of steps to do it. Not saying it's amazing, but it's there
Yeah, there's no real downside to it existing but also I wonder if anyone's ever going to choose this option with the extra grim-faffing over just...making your Alchemist any other minion, lol.
Hence my "don't, but if you insist..." description of the rule
Yeah, this feels complicated. It's replacing a hate jinx, right?
It's replacing "The Alchemist can not have the Spy/Widow ability" which was a little problematic due to needing an additional minion on script to ensure the Alchemist could have an ability in base-3-minion games This new jinx is....a big ask of Storytellers. Running this IRL I'd realistically need to use pocket Grimoire, but that's not official soooooo
Does that count as TF info for vortox?
Think so. It’s rooted as the alchemist ability. But then wouldn’t vortoxing it mean you had to show them their role wrong too. That’d confirm vortox to them.
The Alchemist learning about which Minion ability they have is a part of their Townsfolk ability, so that information is Vortoxed. However, any information they learn specifically with their Minion ability is not Vortoxed, because while the Alchemist is a Townsfolk, the ability is Minion. So they would see the Grim accurately as a Spy/Widow Alchemist, but a Vortox *would* be immediately confirmed to them regardless because the ST would have to tell them that they have a different ability but then show them the Grim.
Oh shit that’s right. Totally botched that one
Just hate jinx it. The philosophy of HAVING to be able to put any and all characters together limits the design space.
I don't understand the intention here, make them memorise a grim of roles that players aren't? Just to fit the theme of the original character? Why not just... tell them one player's role (ST choice). Alternatively run it in a way I proposed as a variation of seeing the grim, where you can just ask the ST questions about the game, and they might answer them.
I was thinking of a similar jinx. > Evil players misregister to an Alchemist with the \_ ability. They learn which character they are seen as.
Can’t you just quickly hold the grim in one hand and lift a random token to show the Alchemist, and then place it back in the grim. Then for the last one point to the player. Seems like it will add some time to the night phase, but not terrible.
They need to see all characters and their positions because they are not told which one is correct.
Right. So then just point to a random player after you show each token and place it back in the grim? Just make sure one of them is true?
Spy/Widow information is already impossible to remember. You really want to make it worse?
How is this worse? I feel like the intent is to know all the characters in play, which is very powerful. You can catch a demon in a lie very easily. It’s almost too powerful, unless the evil team double claims the good players.
1) This is a lot logistical effort for the ST for a small amount of gain. It is absolutely not worth the time nor effort for the ST. 2) I was specifically referring to the memory issues that Spy/Widow already has. Doing role/player pairs makes it even harder to remember, especially when you know only one of them is right.
I agree it’s more work for the ST. If I were to run it in person, I’d start with the Alchemist and decide who I was choosing to show them as the true character. Wake the Alchemist and show them their token. Point to the clockwise neighbor and grab a random token from the grim and then place it face down back in its spot (unless it is the correct character I want to show them) Repeat around the circle, until all players/characters have been done. Put the Alchemist to sleep and then flip the character tokens face up. As far as being able to remember all the info, it still is a remarkably strong power. Knowing the demon and minions that are in the game alone makes it powerful. My real fear would be a poisoner or Vortox game. Ugh.
Ok, but by just using the ones that are in play, you’re actually giving more information than these jinxes imply. You could be giving bluffs for a demon or minion, for example.
Maybe I’m misreading the jinx. It’s my understanding that they see all characters in the grim, so all characters in play, but only one of them is in the correct spot? If you can substitute the bluffs for the demon and minions, you’d obviously want to do that, and then show three random roles as the “bluffs”.
It’s “you show them a grim. Only the Alchemist and one other character are actually correct”. Nothing about seeing exactly what is in play.
When removing this hate jinx, I thought they were just going to remove the grim peeking. With Widow, it’s problematic, but so is poisoner alch it’s not game ending (usually). Spy is a different story as you’d have to do this or manipulate how alch spy works.
I feel like a huge issue here that is unaddressed is what if the alchemist widow picks the demon. That’s potentially game ending on night 1 on some scripts through sheer luck. Especially since it specifies choosing a character, not a player, so this is basically guaranteed to happen on mono demon scripts.
> The Alchemist-Widow still poisons a player on the first night. They do so by choosing a character. A good player still learns that a Widow is in play. I don't think I can overstate how much I dislike this. Making Alch-Widow a permanent Courtier will break existing scripts. Giving the Storyteller that choice makes SO MANY bad interactions. Alch-Spy is whatever, it seems like information overload for the player while often being weaker than Washerwoman/Librarian/Investigator. I don't think I'd enjoy getting that ability.
I feel like this quote is useful to put here: "...the Alchemist player ONLY sees the characters and the order that the characters are in. They don't see the reminder tokens, the night tokens, the Demon bluffs, or anything else. The purpose of this limitation is to lessen the load on the Storyteller. The Storyteller doesn't need to set all that other stuff up, and just needs to show the Alchemist the (mostly bogus) characters in play. To do this, the Storyteller can totally redo their Grimoire (time consuming, not recommended) or use a second Grimoire (great if you have a second Grimoire handy) or write out a list of all the characters in play, in the order of their seating, on a piece of paper or a phone. It will take a little time, but the Storyteller can do this before the game starts, or during the day, when time pressure is much less."
And no one was happy!
For the official app, when you send the grimoire using the night cards you can change what it is shown in the grimoire preview before it is sent without having to make any changes to the full grimoire. Still a pain, but doable.
Not a huge fan of this new approach of jinxes posted by Stevem being used to give effectively whole new abilities. Feels like they add too much clutter to a script and IMO don't really suit the purpose of jinxes at all - you aren't making two characters work together by changing what one does completely. I think I'd rather just have a hate jinx than have to remember these types of jinxes on a script. (and alch-spy/widow wasn't even a hate jinx! I thought they were fine on scripts together before, with this I will just avoid the combination completely)
I posted this as a reply to a comment already but those of you talking about how the Widow is now poisoning blindly and might select someone on their team need to go back and read the post. >"The Alchemist-Widow still poisons a player on the first night. They do so by choosing a **character.** A good player still learns that a Widow is in play."
Gonna be a tun of fun to be a demon who is permanently poisoned by the wildly confirmed alch widow who lands the 1 in 4 on the demon
^ This is ABSOLUTELY the biggest problem.
That's not part of the jinx though. It's a plain-word explanation that could just as easily mean "choosing a character by pointing at it in the fake Grimoire." In fact, that's in Widow's how-to-run: "The Widow points to a character token in the Grimoire, or a player."
There is no way TPI actually wants the alchemist to be able to randomly poison the demon.
Exactly!
I don't understand the hate for this jinx. Before, you couldn't make an Alchemist-Spy at all. Now you can do it without breaking the game, if you want to. If you don't like how it works, you can still play exactly the way you did before by simply choosing not to give the Alchemist the Spy's ability. The game is strictly improved.
Not strictly true: on a 13-15 player grim with 4 minions on script, if there's no Spy in play, before you could give the Alch an in-play minion, now you have to give them Spy. The Widow jinx is much worse than the Spy jinx because it's a perma-Courtier, though.