Unofficial DIY Resources for Blood on the Clocktower

The fantastically fun social deduction game Blood on the Clocktower spent years in development, long before its retail release in 2022.Some of us couldn't wait!

Fortunately for eager fans, the Pandemonium Institute announced they are happy for anyone to use do-it-yourself resources to make the physical game (called a “Grimoire”, the box loaded up with all components) provided we don't sell anything and don't use it for automated games.

Here is my current set of documents, developed since 2019, for printing DIY Blood on the Clocktower components. All this work is my adaptation of art and text © 2014–2022 Steven Medway and Pandemonium Institute.

This is intended to supplement official resources found via the Blood on the Clocktower site. I don't consider this to be a print-and-play suitable game; these are for only some of the game components.

Grimoire box

You'll need a large, sturdy box for the Grimoire. I've up-cycled an unwanted game that has a good deep rectangular box; this document is custom shaped to that. Print on single-sided A3 paper, and apply these panels to all exterior surfaces of the lid and tray. I then cover all that with protective adhesive-backed transparent film.

Grimoire stand

These decorative panels can be printed on sticker paper, or manually glued. Form a Grimoire stand from various panels, this art roughly matches the panel shapes I used, but yours will likely be different.

Component boxes

There are so many components in this game it is wise to keep them organised into smaller containers, both for storage and during play.

Each edition gets a long box for its tokens (character, marker). There is an extra “Storyteller box” for the general components for Town Square (life token, vote token, name label), Grimoire (death shroud, information card, reminder token) and Fabled tokens (character, marker).

Print single-sided onto A3 paper, glue panels to each side of sturdy card (make sure to line up each side exactly), then cut, fold, and glue to form the boxes. These are sized to fit inside my custom Grimoire box.

A set of modular separators divide each long box into sections. Print the dividers onto thick card, cut and fold, and glue at the marked positions in the base of each box.

Character tokens

The web images are a good start, but are optimised for display on a pixel device, not printing to paper. The resolution is low, there's a useless shadow, the text is blurry, etc.

I've made these high-resolution tokens, rendered the icons, no shadow, and a more readable font. 47mm diameter tokens. Pages are A4 size.

Grimoire tokens

All the tokens for the Grimoire (except characters): ability markers, alignment markers, info cards, death shrouds, night reminders.

A track to show the current day or night phase, by number.

Two large cards (or one card double-sided) to declare, and pose for photos, which team won the game.

The 12 information card faces can be made single-sided (12 cards) or glued back to back double-sided (6 cards).

A brochure-like promotional card with a little detail about the game, to show to curious onlookers while a game is in progress.

Town Square

I use a Town Square sized for the specific game board that I cannibalised; you may find it useful, but you also might want to re-size it.

The document is designed for a folding two-panel board. The front panels show the Town Square and a table of Character Counts for reference during the game. The rear panels show an overview of the game.

Reference

Rules explanation and setup

One-page rules explanation, in two variants.

A4, print two double-sided sheets for laminating.

When teaching the game these days, I use a rules explanation that differs in some places. See a detailed discussion of my custom rules explanation for the game.

Character reference and night sheet

Character reference and night sheet, double-sided in a single document.

One document per edition:

Travellers and Fabled

Reference sheet for all Travellers and Fabled. Two pages, or print double-sided for a single sheet to laminate for everyone's use.

Revealed, Unreleased Characters

As the game approaches release, Pandemonium Institute have occasionally revealed some characters and other material that is still in development and will not be part of the initial release.

With the blessing of Pandemonium Institute to enjoy these unreleased characters, here are the tokens needed.

Characters in Development

Some unreleased characters are revealed as “experimental” characters. The abilities, names, assigned editions, etc. are not final.

Each of these characters was revealed in some form on various dates, for the fan community to use in custom scripts.

The assignment of each character to its home edition is not yet known; the “Total Chaos” placeholder is used for these.

The rules for these revealed, unreleased characters are not published officially. Unofficially, you can learn how the Storyteller should run a script containing these characters in the Cobbler's Almanac.

Crowd-funding Stretch Goal Reveals

These characters were listed as part of “stretch goal” tiers, and eventually included in the product sent to crowd-funding backers.

Covid-19 Lockdown Bonus Reveals

As the world endured long isolation lockdowns and waited for the manufacture and shipment of the product, these characters were additional reveals made by the project for the comminty to enjoy.

Character variants

The character tokens for all these renames are in these documents. This is still a work in progress, but all the below mentioned renames are here.

Doppelgänger

The character name “Evil Twin” causes much confusion with its ability effects. Because some effects can cause players to change character or alignment, it is possible to have a Good Evil Twin with a Twin that is Evil but is not the Evil Twin. This is woefully difficult to discuss.

These variant documents use the name “Doppelgänger” for the same character. This name change was proposed to the Pandemonium Institute but did not become canon.

Gender inclusivity

Many of the character names imply harmful assumptions about gender roles and sexual morality. This is all part of the theme of the fiction: it deliberately evokes a period and social structure that had prejudice based on gender, morality entangled with sexuality, and gender roles that were quite starkly imbalanced.

Some people may prefer to use names for these characters that do not reinforce harmful stereotypes about gender and sex in society. This has no effect on the game mechanics, so I have made custom components here that change many character names for this purpose.

I have official images and text for the characters in the base game and those revealed specially; for unrevealed characters I have only names. These are the gendered role name changes: