I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.
Jinxes
How to run it (Storyteller)
How to play
- Reveal early: your ability is public information that town can verify mechanically, and claiming Zealot immediately explains why you vote on every nomination — hiding it only makes you look like a vote-bot trying to execute innocents.
- Player-count timing: when alive players drop to 4, you regain the right to abstain — save that flexibility for the late-game moment where withholding your vote could prevent a bad execution.
- Use your forced voting as social currency: because the town knows your votes are compelled above 5 players, a 'yes' vote from you carries less accusatory weight, so be explicit in speech about which nominations you actually endorse versus which you are simply compelled to support.
- Nomination sequencing matters: if you genuinely want to execute someone, nominate them yourself or coordinate with allies to ensure the vote lands before count drops — once you cannot abstain, your vote is already committed regardless of how discussion goes.
- The single most common mistake is letting forced votes speak for you — always verbally clarify after each nomination whether your vote reflects genuine suspicion or pure mechanical obligation, or town will misread your voting record.
How to bluff as the Zealot
- Commit to compelled voting immediately and visibly: evil players bluffing Zealot must vote on every nomination while 5+ are alive or the bluff collapses the first time they try to strategically abstain.
- Use the bluff to launder targeted executions: because your votes appear forced and non-strategic, you can enthusiastically vote for good players and deflect suspicion by saying 'I had to vote, that means nothing about my reads.'
- Coordinate with your evil team so they nominate players you actually want dead — your compelled yes vote is a free mechanical push that looks coerced rather than coordinated.
- The most dangerous tell is inconsistency: if you ever fail to vote on a nomination while 5+ are alive, or if players notice you only 'forget' to vote when it benefits evil, the bluff dies — track nominations obsessively.
- When player count hits 4, telegraph the shift loudly so town registers the rule change and does not catch you suddenly abstaining without explanation.
Key interactions
Zealot might register as evil to Legion, meaning Legion could incorrectly believe the Zealot is one of their own — this can cause Legion to miscount their team or spare the Zealot from a kill, which is a useful survival edge the Zealot should be aware of but cannot control.
Zealot might register as evil to the Vizier, which could cause the Vizier to count the Zealot when deciding whether to use their execution ability — town should weigh that a Vizier claiming to have confirmed evil on a Zealot may simply be seeing a misregistration rather than genuine alignment.
If the Cannibal executes and eats the Zealot, the Cannibal gains the compelled-voting ability and learns it — the Cannibal must then vote on every nomination above 5 players, which dramatically constrains their strategic flexibility and is worth factoring into execution priority.