Untitled

Before I say my piece, a note from Delta, this script's author!

The Passage of Time set out to do something insanely ambitious: make an engineer script. The resulting script is essentially a complex mess (endearingly) where evil is often not even bothering to blend in, and good has a pretty quick grasp of who is evil and who is good, but the brutal power of evil is often enough to completely steamroll through that. For good to win, they need to strategize and coordinate, but under the veil of shadows as to not expose Damsels and prevent evil from intercepting. The Princess unites the good team on an action day 1, the Engineer can create optimal conditions, all whilst the Psychopath hides away, waiting for the perfect moment to ruin everything. My favourite TPOT story is when the Snake Charmer sniped the Shabaloth N2, and then they killed the original Demon a few nights later. The original Demon (now Snake Charmer) was regurgitated, and stole back their Demonhood before closing out the game themselves on the same night, winning with their original team in a photofinish.

The Passage of Time is an incredibly iconic script pushing power against power. It's shown up on the TPI stream before, and for good reason — there's nothing quite like it. Featuring an incredibly chaotic suite of evil characters, everything feels overpowered, but the good team has some incredibly powerful tools to fight back. The Savant, Fisherman, and General can get amazing information about the gamestate, the Banshee and Engineer can switch things up and swing the advantage over to the good team, and the Monk, Princess, and Cannibal can stall out the game and protect the most important players from the Demon.

Each Demon has a unique skillset that if misidentified, can spell doom — the Shabaloth is the only source of extra death at night, but can hide for a time by sinking kills, being able to jump out when it's too late for good to do anything about it. The Imp and Fang Gu, meanwhile, are both mobile, but in different ways: the Imp seems weak, but starpassing to a Minion can often go undetected, while the Fang Gu can create a whole extra evil. If town's executing Outsiders while the Boomdandy-turned-Imp chills, the game is all but over.

The Minions are in the pseudo-loud space where an Engineer is rarely hard-confirmed by making their choice. If the Psychopath kills, then stops — did they really get engineered into the Boomdandy, or have they stopped killing to help a fellow evil bluff Engineer?

What brings everything together are the devastating Outsiders on the script. The Mutant and Damsel prevent town from sharing their info too outwardly, lest they expose one, and the Puzzlemaster and Barber can provide unmatched mobility and misinformation that can completely confound a good team's solving efforts. Oh, and the Plague Doctor is an entirely separate can of worms — you don't want the ST gaining *any* of these abilities if you can help it!

When bagbuilding TPOT, start with deciding the evil team you want in play, and which Outsiders (if any) are in the bag. If the Minions and Demons are incredibly powerful (Shabaloth + Psychopath is a notable combination as two potent tempo-increasing characters, but Fang Gu can also be this way), consider removing an Outsider with the Sentinel, and vice versa: if the evil team is incredibly weak (Imp tends to be this way, especially when paired with the Psychopath), consider adding an Outsider. At base-0 Outsider counts (7, 10, and 13 players), if an Engineer is in play, almost always consider adding an Outsider with the Sentinel or Fang Gu, so Fang Gu isn't an optimal choice for the Engineer.

The good team should be a match for the evil team. This can be hard to get a handle on, especially with the high-power and swingy Townsfolk and Outsiders on the script, but make sure that they can counter the unique capabilities of the evil team. High killpower evil team? A Monk and/or a Princess might be in order. Mobile Demon? Ongoing inforoles like the Snake Charmer, Savant, and Cannibal will fit well. An Engineer can be the perfect fit to disrupt all of evil's plans... but can also create something the good team might be unprepared to fight — so especially at low player counts, be a little careful with the Engineer. Keep in mind that the Engineer can change the Demon type, and prepare for that to happen when bagbuilding.

Some notes:

Both 3-star General and 5-star General have their benefits — if you think you can capture the specific quirks of the gamestate that differentiate a "good is winning" from a "good is slightly winning" with all the moving parts of this script, run 5-star if you can. A 3-star General is also perfectly accceptable, and, in my experience, is a bit easier to run here.

If the Plague Doctor dies, don’t be too harsh on the good team. Ending the game after town executes on 5 by using a duplicated Psychopath ability isn’t particularly fun for either team. I’d almost always gain a not-in-play ability, and use it in a way that keeps the game fun and interesting while giving the PD something to chew on as they solve for which Minion ability they gave you.

Couple quick comments — if you gain the Psychopath ability, you hard-confirm the Plague Doctor by killing. However, it massively speeds up the game — overall, prioritize fun and fairness.

If you gain the Wizard ability, but don't know what to wish for, just give the wish to an evil player and let them have it.

Be a little careful when deciding the puzzledrunk — with some characters, like the Engineer or Banshee, it can be blindingly obvious that they're puzzledrunk, which can result in an unfortunate loss for the evil team. Most everything else is fine, though. (Oh, and don't puzzzledrunk an Outsider — even outside of "outsiders should hurt the good team" reasons, you don't want the Fang Gu jumping a puzzledrunk player and then being unable to kill.)

I've covered Wizard scripts on this blog before, so this might be old news to you, but my number one tip for running the Wizard well is to remember that you can veto a wish!!! If something seems too hard to cost or too challenging to run or too unfun, you can always say no and ask the Wizard to make a different wish.

As previously mentioned, the Shabaloth is the only source of extra deaths at night, meaning it can be fairly outed as a Demon type. With that said, be careful with when you resurrect a player — I'd go for one rez, maximum, and only if the Shabaloth is getting several doublekills in a row, to balance the pace of the game.

Just another quick note — the Barber procs immediately upon being killed, so if the Shabaloth kills the Barber with their first kill, you prompt them for the Barber swap before prompting their second kill.

If the Shabaloth Barber-swaps themselves, the new Shabaloth can't resurrect the picks of the old Demon. This is fairly houserule-able, if you so choose.

I think that's about everything. This script is pretty difficult to run, but it's absolutely worth it. Give it a run... if you dare!!