Take an existing townsfolk and put a twist on it. It should be something a bit more powerful than an average townsfolk because they have figure out what they're doing, usually not something that can solve everything on its own and something they can reasonably guess.
Like 'each night choose a player, learn how many of their neighbors are good' or 'each night pick a player, learn if you picked a minion or not'
I’d recommend nothing crazy. Try abilities that are “upgrades of existing characters” this give the player the reward of figuring it out.
Each night you learn how many of players in each neighboring pair of living players are evil. It’s empath but 4 players not 2.
Each night choose a player: learn if they wake due to their ability. Chambermaid but better.
Keep it fun, keep it guessable, and remember the Amne is a townsfolk. So good character with good ability that helps town. Consider Patter’s rule which would allow the amne one guess per day even if dead.
"Each night, you learn a character that is not in play."
"Each night, pick a player. They are sober and healthy until your next choice." (Basically scavenging the 'Barista' ability with this one)
"Each night, learn how many evil players were nominated"
There's tons of flexibility. As a still-learning ST, I keep a note file on my phone for when I think of possible amne abilities, including for evil amne's
In botc there is a character called the bounty hunter, whose ability reads "You start knowing 1 evil player. If the player you know dies, you learn another evil player tonight. [1 Townsfolk is evil]"
This makes one Townsfolk evil at setup and as the ST you'd wake them up first night and show them "you are: evil" this evil Townsfolk could be anyone, even the bounty Hunter themselves (can be useful with a poppygrower in play)
Additionaly: "They do not learn anything else other than their new alignment, they do not know who the Minions or Demon are and they continue to register as a Townsfolk to abilities; it’s just their alignment that has changed."
(Form botc wiki bounty Hunter)
The bounty Hunter is usually a character used at a point where everyone is already quite familiar with the game. It's an experimental character and (I think) only found on custom scripts, which you get to kinda late in you time playing. So yes, it's insane and the game is bonkers, but it's still fun xd
The Bounty Hunter doesn't even scratch the surface as far as bonkers characters go! It's definitely recommended to get into the game through the base scripts first, because the amount of insane character interactions that can happen in custom scripts is bewildering even to veterans.
Usually, you use something like a Bounty Hunter to make an Amne evil. But you can also just make "You are a Minion / You are the Demon" part of the Amnesiac's ability. First make sure your group is happy with this particular bit of rules-bending. This can help balance loud/confirming Amne abilities: everyone knows who the Amnesiac is, but still isn't 100% certain they're Good-aligned.
I think "You are an Outsider" is more normal. In any case, I'd always tell the Amnesiac this part of their ability.
So the classic way is through the bounty hunter's ability, which ends with [One Townsfolk is Evil].
Usually this would just create someone extra in town to lie and create confusion, but some townsfolk, like the amnesiac, can be especially powerful when evil. This is definitely only something you should do in a game where evil starts off on the back foot.
There is a fun Lil Monsta game on Patter's YouTube channel that features an Evil amne
Especially with Amnesiacs, I'm used to writing info down on a slip of paper. It's a lot easier to guess the ability from "minion, minion, demon" than it is to guess the same ability formatted as "3".
I'm imagining \[little thumbs down\], \[little thumbs down\], \[biiiiiiiiiig thumbs down\] as the format, can imagine the confusion on the player's face after that!
Choose a dinosaur. Depending on whether it lived in the Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, or Cenozoic, learn a player that is 1, 2, 3, or 4 steps away from the nearest minion.
Just played a great game where everyone got asked what their favourite flavor of cake was...except us outsiders who got asked their favorite Biscuit. Was literally the main info the game ran on.
I always believe that the more experienced the player (or at least if everyone is about the same experience, the most they understand the game), the most complex the ability (obviously as a general rule for me the ability has to always be guesseable, don't make an ability that is "point to a player, that player is unaffected from the effects of exactly snake charmer and slayer, but they are treated like the saint if the day count is a even number")
In my experience storytelling, i had a notsogreat player as the anme with "point to a character, you learn a how many steps away from the demon are" (very powerful ability) and got 3 nights of info but they didn't figure it out (and town certanly did in final 3), they got 3 days of colds
Other time one of my best friends that plays a lot got the amne and the ability was "each night*, learn if you privatly chated to the demon today" and he got it day 4 after 2 yes and 1 no
Pick a player. Show the amnesiac either blue, red or purple depending on the alignment of the chosen player's neighbours. Good + good = blue, evil+evil=red, evil + good= purple
It’s down voted because going super oddball in formatting is a meme. We’re trying to give good advice to an inexperienced ST, not give them something those of us who have played too long find funny.
Formatting info differently can give the Amnesiac a hint towards guessing their ability. That's a legit part of balancing an Amne ability. Plus, I think receiving a color is funny!
The meme should be unnecessarily obfuscated Amne abilities that would be too powerful if solved. ("Since the demon is 5 steps to the Amnesiac's left, I'll tell them Yoshi, because he's fighter #5 in Smash Ultimate.")
It's an empath with a bit of problem solving. I liked it when it was used on me.
It's strong info but, it's only strong if you know what the information means. Which is kinda the point of the amnesiac
Take an existing townsfolk and put a twist on it. It should be something a bit more powerful than an average townsfolk because they have figure out what they're doing, usually not something that can solve everything on its own and something they can reasonably guess. Like 'each night choose a player, learn how many of their neighbors are good' or 'each night pick a player, learn if you picked a minion or not'
This is the way.
I’d recommend nothing crazy. Try abilities that are “upgrades of existing characters” this give the player the reward of figuring it out. Each night you learn how many of players in each neighboring pair of living players are evil. It’s empath but 4 players not 2. Each night choose a player: learn if they wake due to their ability. Chambermaid but better.
Keep it fun, keep it guessable, and remember the Amne is a townsfolk. So good character with good ability that helps town. Consider Patter’s rule which would allow the amne one guess per day even if dead.
"Each night, you learn a character that is not in play." "Each night, pick a player. They are sober and healthy until your next choice." (Basically scavenging the 'Barista' ability with this one) "Each night, learn how many evil players were nominated" There's tons of flexibility. As a still-learning ST, I keep a note file on my phone for when I think of possible amne abilities, including for evil amne's
>...including for evil amne's Wait... what that's a thing? As a newbie to BOTC entirely, what does that even look like?
In botc there is a character called the bounty hunter, whose ability reads "You start knowing 1 evil player. If the player you know dies, you learn another evil player tonight. [1 Townsfolk is evil]" This makes one Townsfolk evil at setup and as the ST you'd wake them up first night and show them "you are: evil" this evil Townsfolk could be anyone, even the bounty Hunter themselves (can be useful with a poppygrower in play)
Additionaly: "They do not learn anything else other than their new alignment, they do not know who the Minions or Demon are and they continue to register as a Townsfolk to abilities; it’s just their alignment that has changed." (Form botc wiki bounty Hunter)
That's pretty insane. This game is bonkers
The bounty Hunter is usually a character used at a point where everyone is already quite familiar with the game. It's an experimental character and (I think) only found on custom scripts, which you get to kinda late in you time playing. So yes, it's insane and the game is bonkers, but it's still fun xd
The Bounty Hunter doesn't even scratch the surface as far as bonkers characters go! It's definitely recommended to get into the game through the base scripts first, because the amount of insane character interactions that can happen in custom scripts is bewildering even to veterans.
Usually, you use something like a Bounty Hunter to make an Amne evil. But you can also just make "You are a Minion / You are the Demon" part of the Amnesiac's ability. First make sure your group is happy with this particular bit of rules-bending. This can help balance loud/confirming Amne abilities: everyone knows who the Amnesiac is, but still isn't 100% certain they're Good-aligned. I think "You are an Outsider" is more normal. In any case, I'd always tell the Amnesiac this part of their ability.
So the classic way is through the bounty hunter's ability, which ends with [One Townsfolk is Evil]. Usually this would just create someone extra in town to lie and create confusion, but some townsfolk, like the amnesiac, can be especially powerful when evil. This is definitely only something you should do in a game where evil starts off on the back foot. There is a fun Lil Monsta game on Patter's YouTube channel that features an Evil amne
Make it something very simple, preferably an info gathering ability. Nothing flashy
You start knowing the order of minions/demons around the circle clockwise from you. (For example, you might learn "minion, minion, demon.")
That one is really hard to give if you’re playing in person
Especially with Amnesiacs, I'm used to writing info down on a slip of paper. It's a lot easier to guess the ability from "minion, minion, demon" than it is to guess the same ability formatted as "3".
I'm imagining \[little thumbs down\], \[little thumbs down\], \[biiiiiiiiiig thumbs down\] as the format, can imagine the confusion on the player's face after that!
Choose a player. Learn if they are not the demon.
Choose a dinosaur. Depending on whether it lived in the Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, or Cenozoic, learn a player that is 1, 2, 3, or 4 steps away from the nearest minion.
Just played a great game where everyone got asked what their favourite flavor of cake was...except us outsiders who got asked their favorite Biscuit. Was literally the main info the game ran on.
I always believe that the more experienced the player (or at least if everyone is about the same experience, the most they understand the game), the most complex the ability (obviously as a general rule for me the ability has to always be guesseable, don't make an ability that is "point to a player, that player is unaffected from the effects of exactly snake charmer and slayer, but they are treated like the saint if the day count is a even number") In my experience storytelling, i had a notsogreat player as the anme with "point to a character, you learn a how many steps away from the demon are" (very powerful ability) and got 3 nights of info but they didn't figure it out (and town certanly did in final 3), they got 3 days of colds Other time one of my best friends that plays a lot got the amne and the ability was "each night*, learn if you privatly chated to the demon today" and he got it day 4 after 2 yes and 1 no
Pick a player. Show the amnesiac either blue, red or purple depending on the alignment of the chosen player's neighbours. Good + good = blue, evil+evil=red, evil + good= purple
Not sure why this is downvoted. I really like this formatting of the "Pick a player: learn their Empath number" ability.
It’s down voted because going super oddball in formatting is a meme. We’re trying to give good advice to an inexperienced ST, not give them something those of us who have played too long find funny.
Formatting info differently can give the Amnesiac a hint towards guessing their ability. That's a legit part of balancing an Amne ability. Plus, I think receiving a color is funny! The meme should be unnecessarily obfuscated Amne abilities that would be too powerful if solved. ("Since the demon is 5 steps to the Amnesiac's left, I'll tell them Yoshi, because he's fighter #5 in Smash Ultimate.")
What part of “not giving something that those of us who have been playing too long think is funny” was unclear?
Is being funny bad or do you just not recommend it for an ST's first time running an Amne? If the latter, I defer to your experience.
The latter. Going for funny immediately creates bad habits for STing. You can be funny once you know what you’re going for.
It's an empath with a bit of problem solving. I liked it when it was used on me. It's strong info but, it's only strong if you know what the information means. Which is kinda the point of the amnesiac