Volume in BotC

Or: SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP

One of the more common script writing pitfalls I’ve seen has to do with what’s commonly referred to as the “volume” of the evil characters. This post is a mostly-comprehensive look at what that means. Like before, I’ll link the first mention of each character to its wiki page, as well as possibly other mentions (like in the list at the end).

What is Volume?

Minion/Demon Volume: the extent to which a Minion's/Demon’s ability reveals its own presence to the good team.

It’s worth noting that it doesn’t count the good team’s ability to reveal its presence. An Investigator knowing a Poisoner is in play doesn’t suddenly make the Poisoner loud, because that came from a good character’s ability. Some characters are also de facto loud, meaning that the good team can often tell it's in play based on a grim read rather than mechanics. I'll touch on those later but this isn't a particularly important concept for script building. Mechanical volume is super important, and will be the primary point of focus for this post.

Evil character volume, and Minion volume in particular, is important to keep in mind. I’ll illustrate with an example. Imagine you’re playing a script that looks really interesting to you, and you pulled a Minion token. Wow, what a fun character type! Let’s see which Minion it is: (old) Organ Grinder¹. That’s pretty cool I guess. You’re the only Minion in this game, and it’s a solo Demon script, so by nominations everyone will know exactly which evil characters are in play.

…is this okay? Well, it might be. Let’s look at the other Minions. On this particular script, there’s a Baron, Assassin, and Spy. Baron is the only thing that lets the evil team bluff as Outsiders above the base count, Assassin is the only non-confirmatory explanation for an extra death, and Spy is the only way to bluff certain info, like Librarian or Undertaker. These seem like important worlds for an evil team to be able to push in order to frame just about anyone. But, on day 1, all of that is immediately out the window. And then the double kill of course confirms someone, and there’s no bluffing Recluse to get out of a nasty evil ping, and the Undertaker, Juggler, and Librarian are all confirmed by their info, and town just wins. How skillful.

In case it wasn’t obvious, this was an actual game that happened (plus minor extra details to sell the example), and I was the Organ Grinder that game. It was still fun because of the people, but on a game level it felt pretty bad. There wasn’t much we could do, and my ability only served to help town. It didn’t do this by being the Organ Grinder ability, though: it helped town by obviously not being the Baron, Assassin, or Spy abilities. This is because Organ Grinder is a very loud ability, letting all players know that it’s in play. Had it been the updated version of Organ Grinder, I would have just chosen to be drunk every night until I was sure that we didn’t need the script presence of every other Minion… which isn’t exactly the most fun play pattern, anyway. Properly managing Minion volume allows the evil team to make full use of their abilities without shooting themselves in the foot by closing worlds.

By the way, no shade to Lullaby for the Dying. It’s got some really cool ideas going for it, and it just has the exact case of Organ Grinder in a 1 Minion game suffering from this. It’s still a good time if you just close your eyes and pretend Organ Grinder isn’t on the script in 1 Minion games (pun intended). It just so happens that it’s a great example of Minion volume gone wrong.

Knowing that Baron, Assassin, and Spy were out of play was so significant because these characters are all loadbearing. This is a somewhat deliberately vague term, just because of the subjective nature of characters.

Loadbearing: an evil character is loadbearing if it is the only evil-sided explanation for an action or claim.

Outsider modification is generally loadbearing (e.g. Baron), as well as death modification (e.g. Assassin), grimpeeking (e.g. Spy), and misinfo (e.g. Poisoner). Different characters also may or may not be loadbearing in different contexts (e.g. Godfather is not loadbearing on Catfishing, which has other Outsider mod, allowing the Godfather to be loud if it wants).

Loud characters prove that other characters of that type are not in play. If this means that loadbearing characters are not in play, that restricts the worlds evil can push. So, there are times when it would just be better to not have your loud ability in favor of being able to push those other worlds. This is the core of why volume is such an important consideration.

What Minion Volumes Exist?

The simplest response to this is to make it so all Minions on the script have the same volume. This is generally a good solution! In order to understand this more, let’s take a closer look at what loudness levels exist in the game:

The following Minions are fully silent, on a mechanical level: Poisoner, Spy, Scarlet Woman, Mezepheles, Marionette, Boffin, Goblin

These Minions are what I call “pseudosilent”, where they are silent except to the Outsider(s) they add into play: Baron, Xaan

These Minions are basically silent, but are made loud by proxy of Demon abilities being loud: Mastermind, Summoner

Exactly 1 good player knows these are in play: Widow, Evil Twin. Pseudosilent Minions fall into this category in base-0 Outsider games (7, 10, 13 players), and count as silent Minions at all other player counts.

Confoundable Minions: these are Minions that have loud effects, but can be script built such that there are alternative explanations for them, which makes them quieter (usually not silent, think about how BMR plays).

• Devils Advocate is confounded by Pacifist, Sailor, Fool, Tea Lady, and Lleech (I won’t count Vizier)

• Assassin and Godfather are confounded by a full night death modification suite, as seen on BMR

• Witch is confounded by exactly Yaggababble

• Every single Minion is confounded by Alchemist, Plague Doctor, Wizard, Amnesiac (don’t), and Atheist. Those are more often than not special cases

(Others exist but they're not notable enough to list)

The remaining characters have unbluffable loud effects that can be seen by more than 1 good player. This is the category is where de facto volume matters the most, so I'll order them based on how de facto loud they tend to be, starting with the quietest: Boomdandy, Pit-Hag, Cerenovus, Harpy, Psychopath, Organ Grinder, Fearmonger, Vizier. This ordering may vary by script (e.g. Harpy has a partial confound on a Yaggababble script).

And then, of course, there’s the Wizard. Wizard can do anything, and is therefore all volumes. In practice, it’s best to treat it as being at least as loud as Widow/Evil Twin, since that’s the quietest nonconfoundable volume.

Putting it to Use

Ok, great, now what do we do with this? Silent minions tend to want to be paired with other silent minions. If you can tell that a quiet or silent Minion is in play by virtue of other minions not being in play, it's called "proxy loud". Proxy loudness isn't inherently bad, but scripts are generally cleaner without it. Also, if a proxy loud character is also loadbearing, it stops doing its job very well.

Pseudosilent Minions should definitely be built with silent Minions. These will (should...) be loadbearing in terms of Outsider mod on the script, so the other minions need to be silent to compensate. Otherwise they become proxy loud and the good team knows the Outsider count for free (this is less true of Xaan than Baron, but think about 7 player games).

Mastermind and Summoner can either be built as loud (e.g. uncovered Summoner, or the “Mastermind Engine”² typically; Summoner nights and Mastermind nights are bluffable via sinking anyway), OR as a confounded minion, like BMR Minions. The second is more common.

The 1-good-knows category is louder than you might think; both Widow and Evil Twin maximize de facto volume by their design (though this isn't inherently true!! I have some homebrews where this isn't the case). Feel free to build them as loud, though there are ways you can get creative with these two.

Confoundable Minions depend heavily on the script. On BMR, the Minions (and everything) thrive off of alternative explanations for everything happening--confounds. These characters often work best in an environment where that's possible, but you can build them as loud characters and have it go fine... except for Godfather, if it's loadbearing for Outsider modification. If you've got separate Outsider modification (like on Catfishing, again) then it can be loud and that's fine, but if not then you better have a lot of death modification. Note that on BMR, Godfather bears the load of Outsider mod, but Assassin bears the load of Godfather’s killpower. That combination means that the Godfather can actually use their kills rather than being forced to sink them in order to leave worlds open.

As for the other Minions, you generally want to build them as loud minions. Boomdandy can get away with being quiet, provided that an explosion won't immediately solve the game (so no Baron/Assassin/Spy!!). If you really want to quiet these down, Alchemist and Plague Doctor can do that, but only a little. Wizard, Atheist, and Amnesiac can as well, but they all have their own quirks, and why on earth are you using an Amnesiac to simulate a Fearmonger?

De facto volume can affect how games play out, but the reason that mechanical volume is so important is because of script presence. In a quiet Minion suite, none of the Minions are proved to be in play, so the good team has to account for ALL of them. In a loud Minion suite, they’re not really gonna be able to hide their presence (usually), so revealing that they’re in play isn't so detrimental. De facto volume doesn't account for this: for every game of TB that's obviously a Spy game because the Monk dies then the Undertaker dies, there's another that's "obviously a Spy game" with the same deaths but there's no actual Spy.

The places where de facto volume tends to matter are (usually) 1-player-knows (because they explicitly encourage the good player to out it immediately... and Evil Twin even encourages the evil player!), and like... games of SnV where one Minion isn’t revealed I guess? It can affect individual games but doesn't usually affect the script. When script building, the full range of a character’s volume is what’s important (so they don’t need to hold back), not what might happen in one individual game.

Demons Exist, Too

Demons serve a really different role, because there's always exactly 1 of them in the bag (or at least, there aren't 2 distinct Demons in the bag... unless you're playing Binary Supernovae I guess). All Demons are loud, but most follow a pattern of killing 1 player per night. It's reasonable to think about Demons as quiet if they kill 1 player per night and any other effects are quiet, since the loud part of the effect is usually identical.

With that, the quiet demons are: Imp, Lil’ Monsta (though there’s more to it), No Dashii, Ojo, Vigormortis, Vortox.

The pseudosilent Demons are Fang Gu, Kazali, and Lord of Typhon. The distinction between pseudosilent and silent Demons (after counting the kill each night of course) is rarely very important, except that Fang Gu is generally loadbearing for Outsider mod.

Lleech, and Legion are relatively quiet, but can be outed at times. This is perfectly fine, just don't make any of the other Demons on script loadbearing. Or do, it’s okay for Legion to fear being outed, because it’s Legion (avoid this with Lleech unless it’s confounded by Devil’s Advocate).

And of course, BMR keeps up its habit of having characters that are normally loud but have an entire script's worth of confounds (which is a very core concept on BMR): Zombuul, Pukka, Po, Shabaloth, Yaggababble (Yaggabbabble is notably not on BMR but it fits at this volume).

Lil’ Monsta and Lord of Typhon are Minion modification! This means that you can get creative with the Minion volumes. Want to have Organ Grinder on a Baron Assassin Spy script? Throw a Lil’ Monsta on!! This way, if the Organ Grinder outs their presence, the other Minions still aren't ruled out, and it's not an actively detrimental ability in 1 Minion games. Note that having too many loud Minions (often 2 is already too much) can out the presence of LM/LoT, making them loud (not unlike Mastermind and Summoner, just in reverse). Notably LM and LoT both have a lot of script considerations that come with them, but I guess that just comes with the whole "[+1 Minion]" idea.

There are also 3 Demons that are much louder: Leviathan, Al-Hadikhia, and Riot. These struggle to hide among other Demons (in descending order), and are typically best if they’re allowed to be loud (or solo) Demons.

In terms of how to build scripts around Demon volume... you can go kinda crazy. Sometimes Demons are loadbearing (Fang Gu & Vigormortis often carry Outsider mod, sometimes Demons are the only source of misinfo, etc), but outside of that you can honestly do whatever you want. Wanna make a Leviathan/Al-Hadikhia/Imp/Shabaloth script? Sure, why not!! They'll all be loud in practice, but that's okay!! Just be careful with the rest of the script, building for all 4 of these at once is tricky.

When building with loud Demons, you're not building around the interplay between their script presence. This can lead to essentially designing 4 scripts at once, each being a solo Demon script where the only difference is the demon type. This is generally fine. I even tried it for fun! It’s pretty quick and dirty, but it features that loud Demon suite from before and a totally silent Minion suite (barring Xaan, which needs the slightest bit of volume to add an Outsider).

Case Studies

SnV has a really loud Minion suite. Witch can make players drop dead in broad daylight, the twin pair will (usually) say something, and players will know if they’ve been Pit-Hagged or made mad. They’re all roughly the same volume, meaning that they can use their abilities in full… usually. One criticism of the script is that Witch is louder than the rest, and in many cases that’s true. I think it’s justified, but there are certainly metas in which Witches will sink their curses in order to push worlds where a different Minion is in play. The Demons, on the other hand, are all quiet, at least relatively. It can be difficult to escape the reality of Vortox in bigger games, but all of these Demons can hide as each other pretty well. This is extremely important to the script, as Fang Gu serves as the only way to add an Outsider to the bag, but all the other Demons serve as the only (non-Sweetheart) misinfo.

China Shop is a script that’s gotten a good amount of traction after winning the Lord of Typhon contest, and both are for good reason!! It’s a fun time, and also a great example of mastery over volume. Everything locks into itself nicely, so it’s hard to know where to start, but Witch feels like a good starting point. Witch once again kills players in broad daylight, but unlike SnV it has a confound here: Yaggababble. A Witch kill no longer confines worlds to “there is a Witch in play”, because it could just be a Yaggababble, or even a Tinker! Similarly, a Witch being in play doesn’t confine worlds to “there are no other Minions in play” at any player count, because Lord of Typhon adds in a Minion.

Vigormortis fills in the gaps of the script well, and makes it so Minion activity late game also doesn’t limit worlds, which Lord of Typhon appreciates. Godfather is the primary source of Outsider modification, though LoT, Vigormortis, and even Balloonist contribute as well. Godfather, Assassin, and Yaggababble cover each other’s extra night deaths, which opens the path for characters like Gambler and Grandmother. Widow is uniquely loud because the Widow ping has no confound, but that’s okay because LoT leaves worlds open. And of course, the Devil’s Advocate throws a little bit of doubt onto survived executions, and can be a great protective mechanism.

Every evil character on this script is loadbearing in one way or another, and they all support each other in a super tight way. They even have a Plague Doctor to act as an extra confound later on! (Just close your eyes and pretend that duplicating the DA ability is illegal…) Good can’t narrow worlds sharply with evidence that 1 Minion is in play, but they can work together to figure out what’s where.

The Garden of Djinn World Cup has brought some really creative ideas to the spotlight, and Stowed Away is no exception. It introduces Travelers as a 5th hidden character type, rather than the public character type they normally are (which of course happen through a Fabled, which is a public character type³). This means that they have a volume that we can care about. Good character volume isn’t typically interesting (because it’s either 1 silent to everyone but that player, 2 a confirmation character, 3 a confoundable character which puts it back in category #1, or 4 exactly Golem, which is pretty cool actually), but evil character volume is interesting enough to write a full blog post on (hmmm someone should do that). Travelers are… both? neither? It doesn’t matter how you look at it, there’s something to be said about their volume because they’re evil pretty often.

They’re less than confirmatory because their abilities can come from both good and evil players. Apprentice also works as Minion mod here, much like LM/LoT (again double DAs aren’t real and can’t hurt you), which opens up Cerenovus + Devil’s Advocate worlds even if there’s only 1 Minion (well, worlds with those abilities). Deviant also provides an additional explanation for a survived execution, while Scapegoat provides another explanation for a misexecution (like what Cerenovus and Mutant can do). Bone Collector acts as a little bit of a Plague Doctor, Nightwatchman, and, well, Bone Collector all at once. It can be used to prove oneself as the Bone Collector, or create the illusion of a Minion still being around, or just give the Savant another day of info. It’s also got really cool interactions with the other Travelers!

As for the other evil characters, Imp and Vigormortis are silent with respect to each other, while Po can blend in or explode if it wants. Poisoner is totally silent, and both Assassin and Summoner have confounds.

Character Notes

That’s about all I have to say on a general level! For now, anyway. To cover more of the details, and to provide a tool for script writers, here’s a list of every evil character in alphabetical order with some notes about its volume (Minions then Demons):

• Assassin: quiet in environments with plenty of death mod, loud in other environments. loadbearing in most death mod environments

• Baron: pseudosilent, with the added wrinkle that 2 players will know it’s in play at base 0. Having Drunk on script (which you should) helps with this

• Boffin: silent, and often loadbearing in order to throw suspicion on confirmation

• Boomdandy: quiet for most of the game, and then incredibly loud when it explodes. Feel free to build as proxy loud or just quiet, provided none of the other Minions are too loadbearing

• Cerenovus: loud. There is such thing as a louder Minion, but this sure is up there. Its presence can be bluffed sometimes, but don't expect it to hide all that well within legion; if anyone breaks, it's definitely in play. Mutant confounds it… a little

• Devil's Advocate: loud, but highly confoundable. Often you want it with at least 3 of Sailor/Tea Lady/Pacifist/Fool (including Pacifist), OR Lleech (do not combine these).

• Evil Twin: while only 1 good player learns of its presence, the way it plays out is that both the good AND evil twins out the other, which makes it a difficult bluff for an evil team. Build it as loud, unless you work to obscure it

• Fearmonger: very loud. There is no bluffing this, there is no hiding it

• Goblin: despite what it might seem, Goblin is completely silent. There are just 2 effects associated with Goblin: claiming it (which is an action that any player can take), and winning the game, which is so incredibly loud that it loops back to being silent because the good team has no time whatsoever to do anything about it. It is silent, and optionally also as loadbearing (as a safety mechanism for the Demon). It can be proxy loud if it's not loadbearing

• Godfather: loud in its death pattern, but can (AND SHOULD) be confounded with a death mod suite. Loadbearing for Outsider mod, which also means it's got a lot of the same properties as pseudosilent Minions. It's hard to place outside BMR but can with on BMR-likes

• Harpy: loud, like Cerenovus, but dearth mod suites and deliberate storytelling can quiet it down. You're not hiding the madness ping, but the deaths can happen at night, allowing even a team of legion to bluff it. Yaggababble, Witch, and Tinker can also shut it up nicely

• Marionette: totally silent. Optionally loadbearing, if the script presence of good players not pushing on their neighbors & fake marionetting players is important. It can be proxy loud if that's not loadbearing

• Mastermind: silent, but since Demon abilities are loud, players can generally tell when it's a Mastermind day. BMR’s death suite provides lots of confounds for missing deaths, but without enough confounds it'll be relatively loud. Since Mastermind thrives on the good team not knowing it's a Mastermind day, it wants to be quieter than that, so confounds work great

• Mezepheles: totally silent, but not typically super loadbearing (though it can be if you’d like). Don’t let the fact that a good player learns they were turned fool you: they’re no longer good!

• Organ Grinder: loud, but can voluntarily hide its presence if it wants. This puts it in a similar spot to Witch, though it’s still distinct (and typically louder)

• Pit-Hag: one step below Harpy, players will know that they’ve been hagged but bluffing its presence is possible. On SnV and other environments without other death mod, the arbitrary deaths tend to hard out Pit-Hag. Generally just build it as loud, though it’s possible to make a script where it’s relatively quiet (e.g. with Drunk, Marionette)

• Poisoner: Totally silent. If you’re going to put Poisoner on a script, it better be pretty loadbearing for misinfo

• Psychopath: very loud, but the volume can be delayed. There’s something to be said for abilities that out the Minion player in addition to the ability. It won’t affect the worlds in terms of what the good team knows about the evil team’s composition, but it does limit what worlds can be built and what worlds can be pushed. This applies to Evil Twin and Vizier as well

• Scarlet Woman: totally silent, not typically loadbearing

• Spy: totally silent, very loadbearing in terms of both misinfo and bluffing info

• Summoner: usually silent, but doesn't have to be. Most Demons can sink a kill in order to make it look like there's a Summoner when there isn't, but if town doesn't execute on day 1, this usually isn't an option. If they do, Shabaloth and Leviathan still struggle to hide themselves. Fun side note, Summoner is COMPLETELY silent in a Riot game!

• Vizier: loud & outed, too much so for its own good. Alchemist actually does a good job of quieting this down for once, but it only goes so far. Build it as loud, though I've explored ways to quiet it down with… interesting consequences

• Widow: 1 good player will know it's in play, and will almost certainly out its presence. This is often bluffable, depending on how you build your script. Widow probably shouldn't be loadbearing in its misinfo because it's a little loud, but it can be loadbearing for grimpeeking because it can always poison itself

• Witch: can be loud, or can have confounds (e.g. Yaggababble), both are fine

• Wizard: Wizard is all volumes. It should be built at least as loud as a Widow, because that's the quietest nonconfoundable clue that can be given. It's perfectly fine for it to be louder than that as well, or for it to be storytold in a way quiet enough to be bluffed by whatever other evil teams there are. Wizard can be loadbearing for literally anything, just don't get lazy with your scripts

• Xaan: pseudosilent, and loadbearing for both Outsider mod and misinfo, though you probably want at least one other source of misinfo (Puzzlemaster anyone?)

Demons

• Al-Hadikhia: incredibly loud. It can hide itself for a night or so but if it wants to win it needs to be loud at some point

• Fang Gu: pseudosilent & loadbearing for Outsider mod and evil nightkills

• Imp: quiet & loadbearing for evil nightkills

• Kazali: pseudosilent, generally not loadbearing but it’s useful to bluff Widow pings and the like

• Legion: quiet, unless a votefail happens. Because it’s Legion, it’s okay for that to be a problem for the evil team. Legion asks for much quieter Minions than most Demons, specifically Minions that can be bluffed by a team of Legion. Proxy loud Legion doesn’t tend to work very well. Legion paranoia is typically loadbearing

• Leviathan: the loudest Demon out there, build accordingly

• Lil' Monsta: quiet, and adds a Minion! LM likes to have exactly 1 or 0 loud Minions with the rest being quiet. It doesn’t love Minions that out the Minion player, because that also effectively outs a Demon player, but it’s not the end of the world. It’s possible to get really creative with Minion mod: work through each possible evil team, and figure out if the good team can figure out too much at once without their abilities. If a loadbearing character is confirmed to be out of play just as a result of the evil team’s abilities, something has gone wrong

• Lleech: loud for a Demon, but can still blend in pretty well. Devil’s Advocate can quiet it down by partially confounding it, but it’s not necessary. It’s typically best to build it as quiet, but without any loadbearing Demons on script

• Lord of Typhon: this has a lot of the same considerations as Lil’ Monsta, with 2 key differences: this is a Demon that pisses itself and dies if the good team knows it's in play, and this is a Demon that pisses itself and dies if a single Minion is outed. Avoid Psychopath and the like

• No Dashii: silent & loadbearing for misinfo

• Ojo: silent & can confound a bit of death mod (not loadbearing for other things)

• Po: quiet, until it triple kills. Death mod can quiet it down, but only so much

• Pukka: quiet, but wants confounds for when it accidentally sinks. It's allowed to be loadbearing for misinfo, but now you've got to deal with Pukka being the primary source of misinfo

• Riot: very loud, but can hide until day 3

• Shabaloth: loud, and very difficult to confound (though it's possible with enough positive death mod & revival mechanics)

• Vigormortis: quiet, loadbearing for Outsider mod. Struggles to be loadbearing for misinfo by virtue of being Vigormortis

• Vortox: quiet in theory, often somewhat loud in practice. It'll depend on what town looks like. Loadbearing because it turns any script it's on into a Vortox script

• Yaggababble: always capable of being quiet but often hates trying to blend in with the more standard 1kpn Demons. Give it some death mod to confound it, and it'll perfectly confound all death mod back

• Zombuul: loud, & very difficult to confound, though it's possible with enough negative death mod i.e. night protection

Closing Notes

One thing that I’ve been assuming pretty implicitly over the course of this post is that scripts are being designed to work at all player counts (well, 7-15 plus any Travelers). Volume is most important as a consideration in (base) 1 Minion games, but it still applies to all player counts. It’s somewhat common to design a script to only be played at at least 10 players, which leaves room for 1 loud Minion and 3 loadbearing ones (like Lullaby for the Dying). This is generally fine, but not a design space I like to work in because I prefer to avoid making scripts that restrict themselves like that.

This ended up a lot longer than I initially intended. I sure hope I hit everything. There are always going to be smaller nuances that I couldn’t possibly cover in a setting like this, but I’ve discussed the majority of what’s going to come up in practice. Hope you enjoyed, etc etc idk how to end these. Hopefully this can help catch up beginner or even intermediate script writers to get up to speed and not build evil teams that shoot themselves in the foot.

Little guy, as always.

1. Organ Grinder’s ability text used to read (possibly not verbatim): “All players keep their eyes closed when voting and the vote tally is secret. Votes for you don’t count unless you vote.”

2. The Mastermind Engine is Mastermind, Lleech, and Vortox all on a script together, often supported by something like Boomdandy. It’s a cool dynamic that allows Mastermind to be louder than it normally is without creating an easy solution to it.

3. Wait… what if there were Fabled-like game modifiers that weren’t publicly announced?? Is this an interesting design space? I just thought of this while writing. I might try something with that sometime, like the misinfo shape exploration from last time.