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Chef

You start knowing how many pairs of evil players there are.

This evening's reservations seem odd. Never before has Mrs. Mayweather kept company with that scamp from Hudson Lane. Yet, tonight, they have a table for two. Strange.

Storyteller cues

First nightGive a finger signal.

How to run it (Storyteller)

On the first night, count every adjacent pair of evil players around the circle — each pair that sits next to each other counts as one; overlapping pairs each count separately (e.g., three evil players in a row = 2 pairs). Hand the Chef a number, 0 or higher. The nastiest edge case is three or more consecutive evil players: A-B-C gives 2, not 1, and storytellers sometimes miscalculate this. Watch for Recluse seating — you may choose to count the Recluse as evil when sitting next to an evil player, which can inflate the Chef's number and send town hunting a false cluster.

How to play

  • Share your number publicly and early: the Chef number is most valuable when town can cross-reference it with other information roles, and holding it back only helps evil hide their clustering.
  • A 0 tells the group that evil players are probably scattered — push for executions spread across social groups rather than assuming a tight cabal, since a cluster hunt will miss isolated demons.
  • A high number (2+) is a strong signal that evil players are sitting near each other in the circle; use seating position to narrow the suspect pool and flag adjacencies for town investigators.
  • Track seating changes and late-game deaths against your original number — if players who die were adjacent, you can infer whether the remaining evil pair is still intact or broken up.
  • The most common mistake is treating your number as infallible; a Recluse in the game can legitimately inflate it by 1, so factor that possibility in before betting everything on a cluster read.

How to bluff as the Chef

  • Claim Chef early alongside other first-night information roles — your number is unverifiable by any other character, making it one of the safer bluffs to open with.
  • Claim 0 when your evil team is actually clustered: this suppresses town's willingness to look at adjacency and protects seated allies, and a 0 is statistically common enough to be believed.
  • If you need to throw suspicion onto a good player, claim a number of 1 or 2 and casually note that the suspect sits next to a known or suspected evil player — you manufacture a reason to nominate them without revealing yourself.
  • The tell that exposes a fake Chef is cross-referencing with a confirmed Empath or other information roles: if the Empath's readings contradict the clustering your number implies, town may smell a bluff, so keep your claimed number consistent with whatever other confirmed information is on the table.

Key interactions

Recluse

The Recluse can register as evil at the storyteller's discretion, so if a Recluse sits adjacent to an actual evil player, the storyteller may count that as a pair and hand the Chef an inflated number. A Chef who received a 1 or 2 should always ask whether a Recluse is in the script before committing fully to a cluster theory.

Poisoner

A poisoned Chef receives a number that can be anything the storyteller chooses, making the information entirely unreliable for that game. If you suspect you were poisoned on night one — for instance because your number seems inconsistent with emerging evidence — treat your own information as dead and tell town you may be poisoned rather than leading them astray.