One Week Since Gen Con

This is Evin here! It’s been one week since Gen Con ended. This is easily the biggest convention that we’ve ever done. The response was, quite frankly, amazing. We were fortunate enough to be featured on a couple of most-anticipated lists for Gen Con (thank you so much to Geek & Sundry and The Fandomentals for your great work highlighting Blood on the Clocktower). Word of mouth got out about us after the first day and we ran full games basically all weekend. I’ll give a report at the end of this post – it’ll have some details from a Con that went really well and where we had an absolute tonne of fun and where we met great people. Happily, this kind of experience is becoming a welcome kind of standard, so I want to focus this post on a different thing that happened at Gen Con.

Blood on the Clocktower for Blind Players

Three weeks before Gen Con we received an email from a woman, Sierra, who said that she and her friends would be attending and were interested in playing the game, but that one of them, Devon, is completely blind. Not having played BOTC before and not knowing much about how it’s played, she wanted to know if it would be accessible for people who do not have sight.

This sparked off a discussion among the team at The Pandemonium Institute about the best way to achieve this. We’d never run a game for a blind player before, but there were plenty of reasons to believe that it was possible:

Most of the games pieces are used exclusively by the Storyteller – all other players handle their own character token briefly at the start of the game and then only their character reference sheet after that (which also serves as a useful talking screen for private conversations). If we could get the character sheets printed in Braille (or create an audio recording of the character sheet for blind players to study beforehand in the event that they cannot read Braille) then it would simply be a matter of telling the blind player what role they were in the game.

Most of the ‘day phase’ of the game is conducted between players by talking, but the voting process takes place partially visually, as players raise their hands in their air to signify that they wish to vote for an execution and the Storyteller counts the vote tally out loud as it rises. This means that we needed to figure out some way to communicate who was voting and when. Also, with so many players sharing information and interacting verbally, it couldn’t hurt to come up with some way to make all of that easier to track for a player who cannot see who’s talking and who won’t immediately know where everyone is sitting in relation to each other.

The ‘night phase’ of the game is conducted in silence, the Storyteller communicating all information visually. This was the biggest challenge to overcome – figuring out a way to communicate all game information to a blind player non-visually (and allowing them to select specific players when necessary) whilst still making sure it was completely secret.

Read on under the cut!

Our primary goal was to not make any changes to the rules of Blood on the Clocktower itself, just modifications in some of the ways it is played out. We wanted to make sure that any blind players would be stepping in to the same game as anyone else. The initial modifications we came up with were as follows:

Each player in the game would receive a position number, in addition to their name tag. The player to the left of the blind player would be '1’, the player to that player’s left would be '2’, and so on clockwise around the circle. Players would be encouraged to state their position number often, especially when claiming a role, sharing new information, or making a clear accusation of another player. This also allows a blind person to select a player during the night phase if they need to, by holding up the number of fingers corresponding to the player’s position number. I wrote numbers on ten of the small 'night’ tokens in the grimoire to place next to each player token so that I could also keep track (see the next photo down for an example of this).



Before each execution vote, the Storyteller would ask all players who planned on voting to raise their hands before the vote, and then announce which positions had their hands raised. (This doesn’t mean that they couldn’t change their minds later as the Storyteller’s arm spins around the circle, but it gives the blind player an indication of the mood of the group that players with sight can pick up visually by seeing who already had their hand up.) As the Storyteller passes each position, they would announce how each position voted and give a final vote tally at the end.



The blind player would sit at the edge of the gap in the circle, the space where the Storyteller normally makes their way in and out of the space to run votes. This would allow the Storyteller to whisper into their ear at night if information needed to be communicated to them, or lead them away from the group each night to give them their information if they believed it would be too audible. Other players would also be asked to cover their ears at night in addition to closing their eyes.



The grimoire from Devon’s first game at Gen Con. Player numbers have been applied to each role, in addition to all of the other information the Storyteller sees.

I wanted to test these modifications before trying it out at Gen Con, and the people at Beers and Board Games of Columbus were absolute champions and only too happy to oblige. We’ve been playing a lot of Blood on the Clocktower there the past few months, so most people in these games were familiar with it already. There were two games of Blood on the Clocktower, each game with one player whose eyes were closed the whole time (with the exception that they were allowed to open their eyes to look at the character sheet if they needed). In the first game it was David, who some of you may have met running games at Gen Con. He said that the system mostly worked for position numbers and voting, but that it may have been an issue with whispering information if he’d received a more complex role than the Chef (a role that receives information on the first night only).

At this point, our friend Jen brilliantly suggested using text-to-speech to communicate information. The blind player would wear earphones and the Storyteller would text them their information directly. Other players wouldn’t need to cover their ears and the information would be communicated clearly with no possibility for it to be overheard. It would also allow for the unambiguous communication of larger chunks of information – especially necessary if the blind player is ever the Spy (a role that sees the entire grimoire and consequently learns every other player’s role). Jen played the next game with her eyes closed. All of her information was texted to her and she selected players to die by holding up fingers corresponding to their position. She was the Imp, she won, and she reported that the game went smoothly. By using text-to-speech to convey information, the blind player was also now free to sit wherever in the circle they wished.

I made voice recordings of each of the character sheets from the first three editions and emailed them to Sierra. I also confirmed with her that Devon could read Braille and so set about getting the character sheets printed in it. It took some time figuring out a place in Columbus that could do this, but eventually the American Council of the Blind of Ohio were happy to assist. They were absolute legends, actually. Super helpful, super friendly, and they even got in touch with us after Gen Con to ask how the games went. If you feel like chucking a quick donation in their direction you can do so here (it’s tax deductible too, if you’re in the U.S.): https://www.acbohio.org/give/

Sierra, Devon, and their friends were booked in to the 11am Thursday game at Gen Con – our second game of the whole convention. We gave the standard rules explanation that all new players receive, and then made an extra note of the minor modifications we’d be introducing to accommodate a blind player (mainly the need for position numbers in addition to name tags). After an initial moment where it appeared there may not be enough phone signal in the convention hall, the text-to-speech system worked and the game went smoothly. Devon was the Virgin in his first game, and the main feedback was that it all worked well and that we could even ask players to emphasize the position numbers more than they were already. Devon played two more games that day – one as the Undertaker and another as the Monk.

The Blood on the Clocktower Gods usually decide what alignment you are (I once had a four-month stretch where I didn’t draw a single evil role, and when I finally pulled that red token out of the bag at the end of it I nearly had a heart attack), and they had decided in this case that Devon’s first three games would be with the Good Team (he won two of them). So when he came back to play as a Traveler on Friday (a Traveler is a class of role that can enter a game after it starts), in a game that Kayla was running, she took it upon herself to make him the Evil Gunslinger. He immediately shot and killed the Scarlet Woman (a minion on his own team), not knowing they were evil, but his team went on to win regardless. Nice shooting.

Overall, this was a really interesting challenge and one that we’re glad we were given the opportunity to take on. I’d like to thank Sierra, Devon, and their friends for reaching out to us and for coming to play at Gen Con. This sparked us to looking into how we can incorporate blind players into the game long term. It’s early days yet, and the game isn’t even released, but there are eventual plans to make Braille copies and voice recordings of the character sheets widely available, and we’ll have a section on the BOTC wiki (which is in the works – coming soon) with the specific guidelines for the Storyteller of how to adjust a game to incorporate blind players.

If you’re vision-impared, or know anyone who is, and you’re interested in playing, we should be able to include you in any game at one of our regular locations or one of our upcoming conventions. Please reach out and let us know in advance if you’ll be wanting Braille copies of the character sheets by emailing storyteller@bloodontheclocktower.com (currently the only Braille versions are in Ohio, so if you’re playing anywhere else we’ll need a bit of notice ahead of time to get some made).

Gen Con

The rest of Gen Con went just as swimmingly! It absolutely would not have been possible without the help of David and Kayla. They were seemingly everywhere at all times – answering questions at the table, running games, taking email addresses, and making sure that I sat down or took a break everyone once in a while. Jen (aforementioned as the second player to test the game with her eyes closed) was also an angel who brought us food when we didn’t have a chance to get away. That was excellent. It was an absolutely joyous four days of gaming and they were completely perfect for all of it.

David, fielding questions about Blood on the Clocktower at Pandemonium HQ.

The way Gen Con works is that you set yourself up for ticketed events that people can either book for in advance or use generic tickets to enter if there is still space. Wanting to run as much Blood on the Clocktower as possible, we scheduled 39 events across all of Gen Con with a booking maximum of ten players in each one. Each spot was for the minimum possible $2 ticket price. Games would be every hour on the hour from 10am to 10pm each day, except for 5pm-6pm; and except for Sunday which ended earlier.

The only session in which we didn’t have enough players for a scheduled game was 3pm on Thursday. Word of mouth got out about us after Thursday and, with the help of The Fandomentals and Geek & Sundry rating us as their most-anticipated, we experienced such high demand for games that we ended up running two games at once in some slots and bumping our player counts above ten-players in others (so long as everyone agreed they were fine for the game to go a little longer). Even so, there were still some time slots when there simply wasn’t enough space for everyone who wanted to play, which is a problem but one that definitely rates as 'a good problem to have’. Most of these players were able to sign up for other sessions and managed to get a few games in.

Setting up for a massive 20-player game on the final day.

By the end of Gen Con we’d collected 437 tickets for, uh, a total of 390 available slots and received 180 new email address sign-ups from players interested in the Kickstarter. We have a lot of faith in Blood on the Clocktower as a game and we’re usually able to run it constantly at any convention, often with a good core of people who find it and play it relentlessly, but to actually have interest that took us above 100% of our bookable capacity was completely wild. We even had to re-stock the death candy. When you die in Blood on the Clocktower at a convention we give you a piece of Death Candy. We’d turned up with an enormous bag of it thinking we’d be fine, but we had to get more mid-convention as the players (and the deaths) piled up. (By the way, I’ve been making the death candy about 50% Reeces and the rest an assortment of other chocolate, but if you’re coming to a con and you’ve got a specific death candy request then let us know at storyteller@bloodontheclocktower.com or post on our Facebook page and we’ll see what we can do. Three Musketeers were great as death candy, because the wrappers have these really encouraging messages on them - to players who’ve just been killed.)

The final Thursday night game ended in victory for the Good Team

We had a group of shrewd social deduction experts play a few games across the weekend, and it turns out they’re running a social deduction convention in Atlanta this February called Decepta Con. I love love love that name. It’s looking like a strong chance that Blood on the Clocktower will be there, so watch our Where to Play page in the next few months.

Since Gen Con ended, six new players from the con have given it great ratings on BoardGameGeek and said some really lovely things about it too. Thanks y'all! Thank you too, Gen Con, and to everyone who came to Blood on the Clocktower for making it an awesome four days. 10/10 would go again.

Here are some more photos!

This model table nearby meant we got to take some sneaky photos of a game through an actual village setting. That was fun.

This was the final game of the con. So many people wanted to stay late and play that we had to move out into the corridor. It was awesome.

Yeah! Gen Con!

We had special badges made up for every special victory condition in Trouble Brewing, the first edition of Blood on the Clocktower. These two on the Evil Team just pulled off a win by convincing everyone to execute the Saint.

Kayla found her Evil Twin.

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Until Next Time,

Evin Donohoe

Social Minion for The Pandemonium Institute