Blood on the Clocktower and Social Deception
Game: Blood on the Clocktower
Creator: Steven Medway, published by The Pandemonium Institute
Platform: In-person tabletop social deduction game / online app
Target audience: Players who enjoy bluffing, deduction, hidden roles, and intense group conversation
Playing Blood on the Clocktower helped me realize that I do not just perform as an analyst in social games. After examining Blood on the Clocktower from the MDA framework, I realized that the game’s mechanics produced a social dynamic that brought out a very specific side of me. I enjoy creating narratives, managing information, asking questions, and using timing and trust to influence a group of people.
Blood on the Clocktower is not physically complicated at all, but it has very intense social interaction. The mechanics of the game, such as bluff roles, hidden roles, night kills, private conversations, public discussions, and clockwise voting, combine to create an incomplete information situation. Because every player has incomplete information about other players and has to analyze not only the facts but also tone, timing, confidence, and social proximity, there is a lot of room for interesting interactions to occur. The mechanics do not force aggressive and persuasive behavior, but they create a context where that behavior becomes effective.
Figure 1 . The role sheet shows why bluffing in Blood on the Clocktower is not just random lying. Since each role has a specific information structure, a believable false claim has to fit into the larger logic of the game.
This showed up clearly in my Demon role. The Demon receives bluff roles that are not in the game; therefore, I first claimed an empty bluff role that did not provide much value in terms of actual information. I took a risky action because otherwise a safe role that does not generate any new information can not influence the narratives of the game, and so players could not defend themselves proactively. However, I re-framed that original claim by stating that I had only claimed the lower-value bluff role in order to protect my “real” identity. After that, I changed the bluff claim to be an information-producing bluff role. Mechanically, it was a bluff; however, dynamically, it allowed me to build a timeline. I made my first cautious claim, then, as I built trust, I could use that trust to give more weight to the second lie than to the first.
The counterclaim created an even more intense situation. Another player later claimed the same information-producing bluff role that I had already claimed. However, I had shared that bluff role with a confirmed trustworthy person in a private conversation before the counterclaim happened. Because of that, my claim carried much more social weight through my existing connection to the trustworthy player. For me, this scenario reflects how, in Blood on the Clocktower, evidence alone does not determine what is real. Relationships, timing, and the order in which information appears can become just as important.
My aesthetic experience in Blood on the Clocktower combined elements of challenge, fellowship, expression, and discovery. The challenge came from constantly adjusting my persona in a way that was not too polished. The fellowship came through conversations with other players, even while I was attempting to deceive them. The expression came from taking on an identity and performing that role. The discovery came from realizing how I act under pressure, which was interesting because I was more strategic and socially calculating than I expected.
Compared with games like Among Us or Avalon, Blood on the Clocktower feels more focused on long-term narrative memory. In Among Us, deception is often connected to physical movement and visible tasks. In Avalon, the structure is more centered on mission votes. Blood on the Clocktower gives players more room to privately talk, build trust, change claims, and keep participating even after death. This makes the game feel less like one clean deduction puzzle and more like a messy social archive where every earlier conversation can matter later.
The style of my decision-making became much more aggressive than in prior games because the game rewards initiative. My preferred way of playing was to create two possible outcomes for the good players to consider, and then attempt to demonstrate that my version, the evil player’s model, was more correct. Once I had established enough social trust, I transitioned to a more passive approach and allowed the other players’ readings of the game to guide my actions. I also adjusted my night kills based on how players were viewing my player profile. For example, if people were suspicious of both another townsfolk player and me, killing either of those obvious targets would make the pattern too clear. Killing a less obvious player made my action appear more random and less planned.
The defining performance moment occurred during the last vote of the game. Because voting went clockwise, the timing of the votes mattered significantly. At one point, there was a player in the middle who had to choose between my theory and the other player’s theory. I was able to convince him to vote in the direction I wanted; however, once he made that vote, he could not retract it. Since the next player was my evil teammate and had never played the game before, I realized that if he voted correctly, we could win. Since my Demon could still kill another player during the night, we effectively achieved victory at that moment. That was fulfilling because it was not just one lie working. It was the combination of deception, the voting mechanism, and social timing all coming together.
Figure 2. The voting order mattered because one player’s vote could lock the whole situation into place. (This actually reminds me of the order in poker: from UTG to Big Blind, and from Small Blind to Button. The sequence of betting influences so much on calculation of range and equity)
One small design critique I have is that the game can be very hard for new players during late-game voting. The clockwise voting system creates interesting tension, but a new player may not fully understand how much one vote can decide the game. I think a simple reminder card for voting order, dead votes, and final-day consequences could help new players without reducing the social complexity of the game.
I believe the ethics of deception are acceptable in Blood on the Clocktower. Every player enters the game knowing that everyone else has the right to lie, and because of that, lying in the game is not the same as lying in the real world. It is part of the challenge and part of the skill involved in playing it. However, I also believe there are social consequences. When a player repeatedly succeeds at deception, it can affect their reputation among other players, especially in future games. This tension is one of the most appealing aspects of Blood on the Clocktower. The game creates an environment where deception is built into the structure, but it also shows that trust is still dependent on memory, performance, and reputation.
