Do not disturb me. The tick must continue, for the circle is a symbol of life and contains all things - all answers - in its divine machinery. I must work.
Storyteller cues
First nightGive a finger signal.
Jinxes
The Summoner registers as the Demon to the Clockmaker.
How to run it (Storyteller)
How to play
- Map your seating number immediately: count the total players, then use your number to figure out which pairs of seats are separated by 1 step, 2 steps, etc. — this lets you turn an abstract number into actual candidate pairs.
- Low numbers (1-2) are the most powerful: a distance of 1 means the Demon and a Minion are neighbours, and you can publicly name adjacent pairs worth investigating; push hard to confirm or eliminate them.
- High numbers (half the table or more) tell you evil players are spread out, which rules out clustering strategies and hints at Demon placement away from the minion-dense zone — use this to narrow Demon candidates even when you cannot pinpoint them.
- Timing your reveal: share your number early in day one to calibrate team deductions, but hold back your specific candidate pairs until you have some corroborating information, since evil will otherwise use your claim to shape their cover stories.
- The most common mistake is forgetting the path is circular — always measure the shorter arc around the seating circle, not a straight count in one direction only.
How to bluff as the Clockmaker
- Claim a distance of 2-3 in a mid-sized game: it is specific enough to sound real but vague enough that many seat pairs qualify, giving you room to steer suspicion without over-committing.
- As a Minion, pick your distance number so it is consistent with your own seat relative to the Demon — if you and the Demon are four apart, claiming 4 is internally consistent and collapses if town checks the math, so prefer a number that puts another pair under scrutiny instead.
- If the Demon or another Minion is already under heat, claim a distance that excludes their seat pair entirely, helping redirect the investigation while appearing to contribute genuine information.
- The tell that exposes a fake: a real Clockmaker can usually name specific candidate seat pairs with confidence; if pressed and you cannot produce a coherent list of pairs matching your claimed number, experienced players will notice the hesitation.
Key interactions
The Summoner counts as the Demon for the Clockmaker's measurement, so the step count is taken from the Summoner's seat rather than any Minion's. This means the Clockmaker's number stays meaningful in a Summoner game but players must remember the 'Demon' being triangulated is the Summoner, not whatever player the Demon token eventually goes to.
A Recluse seated unusually close to the Demon can cause the Storyteller to feed the Clockmaker a distance reflecting the Recluse's position rather than any genuine Minion's, or to measure from the Recluse to the nearest Minion. This can make the Clockmaker's information point away from real evil players and toward an innocent Recluse, so town should keep open the possibility that their number is Recluse-distorted.
In a Lil' Monsta game the Clockmaker's distance is measured from whichever player is holding the baby token, not from the true Demon minion. Because the baby-holder changes each night, the step count the Clockmaker receives on night one reflects only that opening night's holder and may not apply once Lil' Monsta is passed around.
A poisoned Clockmaker receives a potentially false step count on night one with no indication anything is wrong, making a bad number extremely difficult to detect. If the Poisoner targets the Clockmaker on the very first night, the entire geometric deduction the town builds around that number is founded on misinformation.