How To Run a Game of Kazopolis #

The way to run Kazopolis is very simple. Pass out a bag of tokens with any number of outsiders (I’d personally stick to the base amount plus or minus 1). During the first night, wake each player (before doing any other night interactions) and let them point to any character on script. They are that character now, swap it out in the grimoire.

After everyone has picked, look at the grimoire. If you are happy with the state of the game, you can run it as is. Otherwise, you are free to drunk any player who selected the same token as another in play character. This is static drunkenness and will persist even as players swap characters and alignments.

There is one major exception to this rule though, the demon cannot be made drunk by Kazopolis. Ever. If the demon moves and the new demon is marked as “drunk” by Kazopolis, they remain sober as long as they are the demon. The token is not removed from them, and if they ever stop being the demon they will become drunk again.

The Nitty Gritty #

Kazopolis is a lot of fun, but it’s only for groups that are ready for games to potentially be a bit one sided just due to which roles ended up where. Sometimes the player sitting next to the demon happens to choose Shugenja and the evil team has no way to counter that information.

Some roles get really out of hand with duplicates in play (what I like to call “the 5 Virgin problem”). Giving the storyteller the ability to drunk duplicates is a dial to ensure that roles that stack in a very unfun way don’t end up entirely shattering the game.

We originally battle tested this on Fish Bucket, and it is a pretty fun way to play, but the rule was designed for standard scripts of 25 characters. The script “Hat Shop” was written specifically for playing with these rules (and was my personal submission to the “Garden of Djinn” script competition).

To Drunk or Not to Drunk #

Learning when to drunk duplicates and when to leave them sober is one of the hardest parts about running Kazopolis.

In general, I usually avoid drunking the evil team if I can avoid it. There are some roles where it is necessary (Poisoner) but drunking a minion is ultimately far more damaging than drunking a townsfolk. As a ST, you may wish to consider using an optional rule to let the evil team pick new roles instead of making them drunk.

Outsiders are very fun on Kazopolis, as many of them get much worse when duplicates are introduced. Having 4 Zealots will give the evil team a lot of voting power. Having 4 Recluses will shred the good team’s information. I generally recommend using an “All or Nothing” approach with drunking outsiders, either leaving all of them sober or drunking all the copies.

When deciding whether or not to drunk a townsfolk, the main question to consider is “will evil be able to play around them being sober?”. Some roles are way to strong when they are all sober, such as the Virgin or Courtier, and drunking all of them (or all but 1) is frequently the way to go. Some roles are perfectly fine to leave everyone sober, I don’t usually drunk duplicate Stewards or Washerwomen unless I think it’s going to close evils play space too much.