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Gardener

The Storyteller assigns all players' characters.

When sophistry becomes stupidity and hypocrisy cruelty, retreat to the garden. The final love of old men is flowers and stones.

How to run it (Storyteller)

Add the Gardener when you want full creative control over the character distribution — useful for crafting a specific experience, balancing power levels, or tailoring the script to the player group. Because you assign every character, you bear responsibility for fairness: avoid over-concentrating powerful roles on one alignment or placing characters in ways that trivially solve or break the game. Run it cleanly by making your assignments before anyone sees their token, just as you would a normal setup.

Playing with the Gardener — as good

  • Recognize that the Storyteller has deliberately shaped the game — the character spread is intentional, so pay close attention to which roles are claimed and how they interact, since nothing is accidental.
  • You cannot rely on randomness to protect you from unfortunate character clustering; strong players may have been given strong roles, so listen carefully to who sounds like they know exactly what they have.
  • If you are a powerful information role, consider that the Storyteller may have placed your ability in a context designed to test it — do not assume your information is straightforward and look for ways it could be complicated by the specific characters in play.
  • Trust the character distribution less as a source of inference and more as a known quantity — the Storyteller chose it, so wild 'there is no way two of those are in the same game' reasoning is weaker here.

Playing with the Gardener — as evil

  • The Storyteller controlled every assignment, so you cannot use 'the bag was random' as cover for implausible claims — your character choice will be scrutinized against what a deliberate Storyteller would have placed.
  • Bluffing a character that the Storyteller is unlikely to have included given the rest of the visible claim landscape is riskier than in a random-draw game — pick bluffs that fit the apparent design of the script and player count.
  • If good players start reasoning about Storyteller intent, redirect discussion toward evidence and night actions rather than meta-level setup analysis, which is a line of inquiry that disadvantages you.
  • Because the Storyteller may have crafted a balanced experience, do not assume you were given a particularly weak or strong team — play your actual information rather than guessing at hidden advantages.

Key interactions

Drunk

The Storyteller chooses who is the Drunk and which character they believe they are, making the Drunk's misfire entirely deliberate rather than random. This means a Drunk placed by the Storyteller in a Gardener game is a precise tool — good players should be alert to the possibility that their information has been purposefully undermined and should seek corroboration before acting on it.

Poisoner

The Storyteller assigning characters also means the Poisoner's targets and the downstream effects of poisoning are all within a designed context. Good players cannot dismiss poison as an unlucky random outcome and should reason carefully about which information sources were most exposed on nights when the Poisoner was active.