https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHYgef9TH3w&t=250s - This is Ben Burns's discussion with the No Rolls Barred team when they did a script competition. To summarize his points:

1. Drukeness and Poisoning are mandatory. There must be reasons for information to be incorrect.

2. There must be some level of Outsider Manipulation.

3. Hard confirmations are bad. If there is only one way for an effect to occur, that's almost always bad. IE: Professor on the script without the Shabaloth.

4. Demons must have the ability to hide. If you're running multiple demons, then it should be difficult to determine which demon is in play.

5. At least 13 townsfolk need to be on your script, with very few exceptions.

6. Utilize Standard Amy Order. You Start Knowing, Each Night, Once Per Game, Everything Else.

The following are additional rules that I've settled into having seen enough scripts.

1. Spirit of Ivory is not a Script Fixer. There should be at a maximum, only one additional evil player on a script. This does not include characters like the Snake Charmer. But it does include things like Politician, Bounty Hunter, Mezepheles, and Fang Gu. Simply having 1 Evil player and -1 Good is potent. Having 2 evil can break the game. The Spirit of Ivory exists for a reason. If multiple evil conversions are in play, then SOI is essentially mandatory and can make playing as an evil converting character super unfun. Imagine being the Politician in a game where a Fang Gu jump occurred, for example. You may have been the reason the good team lost, but because of the SOI, there's no conversion. Sorry.

2. Minimize Jinxes. The fewer Jinxes on your script, the easier it is to play. Interactions should generally be intuitive. Players can generally roll with a few jinxes, but I would say more than 3 becomes dicey. A Hate Jinx (Two characters cannot be in play simultaneously) should never be on your script.

3. As a corollary to #5, you need at least 4 outsiders and 4 minions on your script. You can have more, but you need at least 4. This means that adding Townsfolk/Outsiders/Minions will come at the expense of fewer demons.

4. Minions (And to a lesser extent, Outsiders) should never be guaranteed to be in play. As a rule of thumb, if you have Lil' Monsta or Alchemist, you should have an extra minion in your script. In a 13 game, there are 3 base minions. Lil' Monsta adds a 4th Minion into the game and thus all four are in play. Alchemist must get an out of play minion ability. So they know that the other 3 minions must be in play. An additional Minion creates uncertainty about who is in play.

5. Avoid redundant design. The Banshee and the Sage both have a pretty tricky requirement, needing to be killed by the demon in order for their ability to trigger. As such, having both of them in the same script is a bad idea. If the logic becomes "You won't include both of them together in the same game so it's ok", then your script becomes predictable and that is also very bad. If you have a Banshee, either you don't have a Sage or your storyteller is an idiot. The solution to this problem is to only have one of the two on your script.

6. Include character pairs. At the moment, this only applies to Huntsman/Damsel and King/Choirboy. I am not saying that every GAME needs to include the Huntsman if there is a Damsel, or Choirboy if there is a King. I am however saying that the possibility needs to exist. Damsel knowing that there's no possibility of a Huntsman on the script is way less interesting than the Damsel never being entirely certain.