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Fisherman

Once per game, during the day, visit the Storyteller for some advice to help your team win.

This was my favourite part of the river... see how the sunlight makes a rainbow from the monastery to the market? This was the best place for big fish. And the older I get, the bigger they were.

How to run it (Storyteller)

When a Fisherman visits you during the day, give them one genuine, specific piece of advice tailored to the current game state — name a player worth investigating, a likely evil pairing, or a kill priority; something actionable that actually helps good win if followed. The advice is yours to craft and there is no wrong answer as long as it is sincere and targeted. The hardest edge case is a Vortox game: your advice must not help good win, but you are not obligated to make it actively harmful — useless or misleading advice satisfies the constraint. Watch for a Fisherman who visits very early before much information exists; in that case your advice will necessarily be thinner, so consider nudging them to wait if they ask.

How to play

  • Timing is everything: visit the Storyteller after at least two or three days of information have accumulated so the advice is specific and actionable rather than generic platitudes about suspected players.
  • Public commitment: announce immediately after visiting what advice you received, verbatim if possible — this creates a shared public record that lets town evaluate and act on it collectively, and it exposes any attempt by evil to dismiss or misrepresent the advice.
  • Target value: the advice is most powerful when you are already uncertain between two candidates for a final execution; use the visit to break that deadlock rather than as a fishing expedition on day one.
  • Most common mistake: spending the ability too early, before meaningful nominations or deaths have happened, which forces the Storyteller to give vague advice and wastes the single-use ability on thin information.
  • If you suspect a Vortox is in play based on other players' information coming back wrong, treat any advice you receive as potentially inverted or useless and flag that possibility to town when sharing it.

How to bluff as the Fisherman

  • Claim you have already used the ability and received advice pointing toward a player you want town to execute — this is difficult to verify and puts pressure on that player without requiring you to visit the Storyteller.
  • If you have not yet faked the visit, use a quiet moment between nominations to whisper to the Storyteller as if visiting; town rarely tracks exactly who physically approaches the ST, and returning to your seat with a vague but confident 'I got something useful' is often enough.
  • Fake advice should sound Storyteller-like: specific but not certain, framed as a direction rather than a reveal — say something like 'the Storyteller suggested we look more carefully at the outsider cluster' rather than claiming a hard accusation, which would be unusual advice to give.
  • The tell that exposes a fake Fisherman is visiting on day one before any information exists; a real Fisherman would almost never burn their once-per-game ability that early, so avoid doing this unless you have a strong tactical reason to force an early accusation.

Key interactions

Vortox

When a Vortox is in play the Storyteller is obligated to give advice that does not help good win, so the Fisherman's ability effectively becomes a wasted action or worse — a misdirect. If several other information roles are returning suspicious results, the Fisherman should flag their received advice as potentially tainted before town acts on it.

Poisoner

A poisoned Fisherman who visits the Storyteller still receives advice, but the Storyteller is not obligated to make that advice genuine or helpful. If you visited while you suspect you were poisoned, disclose that uncertainty to town so they weight the advice accordingly rather than treating it as reliable.