Online games are imperfect recreations of the original Clocktower game. While Clocktower has a lot of game content that allows people to construe and manipulate information, the game is also designed as a social game, where social reads and other kinds of social interactions are key to the fun of the game.

Quite simply, there are numerous soft elements of Clocktower that are lost in translation when attempted to be played on mediums that are either voice only or text only. This is because those platforms reduce the range of interpersonal communication to textual discussion. Additionally, platforms like discord mean that you cannot have cross-chatter as the platform causes one voice to take centre stage to the exclusion of all others.

This is not to say that online games can’t be fun, but because there are an increasing number of people whose only experience of Clocktower is an online game, it is important to point out that it’s not the full picture. This is especially troubling when people write reviews of Clocktower after having only played online games.

While online games are mechanically similar to in-person games, a big factor of the joy of Clocktower and many of it’s character elements are ones that depend on the physical medium. A few examples of things you cannot do on most online games:

• A Minion cannot take a stab in the dark and point to a player at night as a signal for the Demon, whether subtly or obviously.
• Neighbours cannot have discrete conversations with each other, and outright ignore the Storyteller or people speaking on main.
• The Storyteller has limited ability to discreetly observer or overhear conversations.
• A Minion cannot make eye contact with their Demon and wink at them in the circle to let them know they’re not actually the Lunatic.
• An evil player cannot distract a good player with a casual conversation during a vote.
• You cannot sit in the corner and observe players interacting in their private conversation and read their lips or look at what part of the sheet they point at when they share character information.
• You cannot observe a private conversation and see who they are looking at as a group and make inferences.
• An outed evil player cannot cause chaos and run interference, distracting from key votes during nominations because of the control around the voting system.
• An outed evil player cannot have discrete conversations or gestures on the sly to other evil players, because they only have words available to them.
• You cannot subtly eavesdrop on conversations by strategically standing close by and seeming occupied.

This is just a list I pulled off the top of my head, but it gives you a good idea of how the communication bottleneck limits the potential of Clocktower. A game that is so dependent on communication for its sense of fun, anything that curtails or limits communication is generally antithetical to it.

What a lot of people don’t realise is that these numerous and small changes add up to a big pivot in how online games are experienced. In person games have a lot of information, but the games much more frequently centre on the players. Online games tend to anonymise players and reduce intrapersonal interaction centring the game on the information instead. It’s a subtle but all-consuming change.

Online Etiquette

Currently, discord is the most popular platform for running online Clocktower, and while these conventions are not official rules for Clocktower, they have become well established conventions for online play. There are two conversational bottlenecks that slow down the pace of the game dramatically.

Private chats are simulated through the use of breakout rooms: this means that these conversations are private but you are visibly observed to be having them. While this is functional, it does lose some of the organic nature of private chats in real games. There is no ability to have a quick one or two words as an aside, there is no ability to briefly interrupt a conversation for a whisper in the ear and then stepping away to let the original conversation happen.

Queues are formed to have private chats, creating down time during the middle of the day and forcing players to be extremely economical with their conversations during the day. This undermines a lot of the conspiratorial feel of the game and more into a managerial exercise.

During the nomination phase, most Storytellers often allow a pause for the town to have a discussion, and then when a nomination is put forth, there is an accusation and a defence from the nominator and nominated. Sometimes other pertinent information is allowed into the conversation. This is because platforms allow one person to speak at the exclusion of others.

There are limited ways for evil players to run interference with the voting process by distracting good players and the whole process emphasises a sense of deliberation then and there. It moves away from the experience of a high stakes town lynching to more of a court room session. While this can be dramatic, it does drag out the nomination phase intensely.

More importantly, the constraints around conversation during the main day puts a lot more pressure on the nomination phase to be a time and place to show case evidence and pertinent information. As opposed to lining those ducks in a row before the nomination phase. This is a direct result of the need to have a conversational economy during the main phase of the day. It pushes a lot of the deliberative elements of the game onto the nomination phase because there is no other time to have it.

Nomination phases in real world games rarely take more than a few minutes. In online games, they often take more than 10 minutes. This is the single largest factor that inflates play times for online games.

Online games typically take about twice as long as in-person games. This creates a drag effect that can sap the fun out of what is often a much faster, punchier, experience. There are chaotic elements that are meant to inject moments of fun and pressure into a game, but which have to be muted in online play because they actually shift the tension of that chaos into something overwhelming.

House Rules

Overall my argument is that online games are constrained by communication bottlenecks. Some of those are meant to be simulation of in person games, but imperfectly translated. Others are unique limitations of online communication, especially which are voice only mediums.

These are a few house rules that I’m looking into for use in online play to create more opportunities for communication. They won’t perfectly resolve the barriers mentioned above, but they should hopefully ease the various bottlenecks.

While many of these suggestions could theoretically be observed or overheard during in person games, many represents a counterbalance to the overemphasis on information. By creating spaces of ambiguity, it should shift the game away from the pure tracking of private conversations, and a greater emphasis on social reads.

Neighbourly Whispers

Players may privately message their Town Square neighbours freely during the game. This simulates the ability to whisper discretely to your neighbour.

Nomination Gestures

During the nomination phase phase, a player can privately send one other player a non-verbal message. This can be emojis or the description of a gesture. If that player replies, this counts as their once per night non-verbal communication.

Night Gestures

During the night phase, a player may ask the Storyteller to communicate a physical gesture to the Town Square. The Storyteller will then communicate this gesture to any player who happens to be awake at that time, or next awake.