in black and white a retrospective by james ernest...this document contains excerpts from an early...

in black and white

a retrospectiveby James Ernest

This document contains excerpts from an early draft of Cheapass Games in Black and White, a retrospective

of more than 100 original games released by Cheapass Games between 1996 and 2012.

This document is meant only as an example of the format and direction of the book. None of the content is final.

The historic game material is presented in its original form, except where old addresses and phone numbers

have been redacted or replaced.

For NoraSomeday, all this will be yours.

Game Title: Kill Doctor LuckyStock Number: CAG 001Release Date: Fall 1996Category: Board GamePlayers: 2 to 8MSRP: $6.00Designer: James ErnestArtist: N/A

Among the first block of games I designed for Cheapass Games, I thought Kill Doctor Lucky was the best. That’s why it earned the first slot, #CAG 001.

It’s a simple premise. A group of colorful characters has gathered in the home of Doctor J. Robert Lucky, and although they don’t know it, everyone in the party wants to kill him.

Players sneak around the house looking for good weapons and places to hide. Catch the old man alone and you can try to kill him, but they don’t call him “Doctor Lucky” for nothing.

When you try to kill Doctor Lucky, all the other players get to play his luck, in the form of Failure cards. He usually escapes, but your goal is to draw the luck out of everyone else’s hands, without surrendering too much of your own. When the time comes, you can hope to strike the final blow, and finally kill Doctor Lucky!

Kill Doctor Lucky has been through many editions in its twenty year history, including a major overhaul in its 19.5th year. Here is part of the story of how it came to be.

Kill Doctor Lucky • 1

Welcome to the J. Robert Lucky mansion, arambling family estate seven miles north ofnowhere. It’s a stormy midsummer’s evening, tenseconds after midnight. And someone’s just shutoff the lights.

You have hated Doctor Lucky for as long asyou can remember, and you’ve been secretly awaiting this perfect chance to put the old mandown. Maybe he destroyed your family business;maybe you think he’s the leader of the vampires.Perhaps he’s the only person standing between youand the family fortune. Or maybe his cat just keepspeeing in your shrubs. Whatever your reason, it’sgood enough to push you over the edge. Now youabsolutely can’t wait to take the lying old bastardout.

And, though you don’t know it, everyone elsein the house wants to kill him too.

Take a deep breath. Remember why you’rehere. And then start sneaking around in the dark.If you run across a weapon, grab it. If you bumpinto Doctor Lucky, give him hell.

Trying to kill Doctor Lucky is pretty easy, aslong as no one’s looking. But they don’t call him“Doctor Lucky” for nothing. He’s got an uncannytalent for slipping out of harm’s way. But don’tdespair; after enough tries you’re guaranteed towear the old codger down. You just need a cleverplan, a good bluff, and a little more luck thaneveryone else.

So gather in the Drawing Room, shut off thelights, and get cracking. Somebody’s got to killDoctor Lucky tonight, and it might as well be you.

Included with this Game:

The Kill Dr. Lucky Gameboard, 96 Cards, andthis Rulebook.

If you need help assembling the board, look atthe snapshot on the back of this booklet.

You probably want to tape the board to a stiffpiece of cardboard. The finished size is 17” x 22”.

You Also Need:

Pawns for every player, plus a Master Pawn(another Pawn) for Dr. Lucky.

Use whatever you like for Pawns, as long aseveryone can identify themselves, and the Pawns arenot much bigger than 1” square. Dr. Lucky’s Pawnshould be easily distinguished from the rest.

The Board:

Dr. Lucky’s Estate has 32 “rooms”, including the8 hallway/stairways. When you try to kill Dr. Lucky,you must be alone in a room with him. You also can’tmake the attempt if anyone else can see you fromanother room.

Sight lines work like this: if someone can standanywhere in one room and look straight through door-ways into the room you’re in, they can see you. So, forexample, someone standing in the Kitchen can see(and be seen by) people in the Master Suite, the weststairs, the two adjoining hallways, the Trophy Room,the Wine Cellar, and the Winter Garden.

You can’t see diagonally through doors, so forexample, someone in the Foyer can’t see someone inthe Carriage House.

Important note: the Gallery overlooks the DiningHall. It’s a musician’s gallery, like a balcony. You cansee through that wall, but you can’t walk though it.This means that the Gallery can see (and be seen by)every room straight down to the Piazza, plus theNursery and the Armory.

KILL DOCTOR LUCKYA Cheapass GameM

CHEAPASS

GAMES

Strategy Hints:

Bluff. No matter how many Failure cards you’reholding, try to convince everyone else that you’re out.The more Failure cards you can force out of everyoneelse’s hands, the better.

Make as many murder attempts as you can. Eventhough your first ones will probably fail, you’ll beguaranteed to pull those Failures out of other peoples’hands.

Do your best to keep track of how many Failureshave been played. If you feel like the hands are thin,hurry up and make your attempt before everyone getsthe chance to draw again.

If your games seem to betaking too long, or you’re alwaysexhausting the deck, it probablymeans that you’re making fewermurder attempts than we do.That’s okay. To speed things up,try stripping out all the F-3’s.

KILL DOCTOR LUCKY ©1996 Cheapass GamesGraphics, Layout, and Game Design: James Ernest.Assistant Design: Rick Fish, Dave Howell, E.Jordan Bojar, Toivo Rovainen, various well-fed guinea pigs.

V

About Cheapass Games:

We here at Cheapass Games are aware of twobasic facts about board games: they cost too much,and they are, at some level, all the same.

If you ignore the clever shapes they come in,the cheap little plastic pawns are an interchangeablepart of most of the board games in your house. Soare the dice, the money, the counters, and just aboutevery clever spare part. These parts can account foras much as 75% of a game’s production cost, andthat cost gets handed to you.

If you had your choice, you’d probably investa little money in one good set of gaming parapher-nalia instead of twenty crappy ones, and then justbuy the new part of every “new” game. Yet mostcompanies insist on selling you the whole packageevery time; it’s a little like bundling a VCR with everyvideotape.

Our games come packaged with the bareessentials: boards, cards, and rulebooks. If youneed anything else, we’ll tell you. And it’s probablysomething that you can scrounge from a game youalready have, or buy at a hobby store for less thanwe’d have to charge you for it.

And, once you’ve got a collection of pawns,dice, counters, and money, you can use the sameones for every Cheapass game. We’ve standardizedour designs so your gaming toolbox will last.

For a postpaid copy of our latest catalog,send 50¢ to: Cheapass Games, [This was once ourstreet address].

OC

Base Value: 2 Worth 5 points in the

Sitting Room.

WWBAD

CREAM

2 • Cheapass Games in Black and White

Inventing Doctor LuckyI spent my college years at the University of Missouri at Rolla.

This “University” was basically an engineering school, teaching almost entirely science and math. Every liberal arts department was crammed into a single building. Actually, half of one building.

I spent my free time in the computer lab, writing dumb stories on dumb terminals and sending them to a giant printer somewhere in the basement. I had to write in this weird pre-HTML markup language to make the pages print correctly. Because 1987.

One of those dumb stories was “The Butler Wore Black,” the first chapter of an absurdist murder mystery. A cadre of colorful characters with ridiculous names were gathered in the drawing room of a Victo-rian mansion, where the hostess lectured them about their various motives to kill the victim, who at that moment was still alive.

Each of the murderers was based on a character in pop culture (for example, Lois Lane and Darth Vader). Here’s an excerpt:

Duchess Effing reached the bookcase directly opposite the fire and turned again, walking slowly around the room and gazing at her ten dumbfounded guests.

“Some of you know one another, others of you have never met. But you have all been gathered today because of an ac-quaintance you share with this man, Jose Gonzales.”

The ten guests murmured in disbelief. Tennie Lynn Phosgene shook her head. “I’ve never seen him before,” she de-clared, her schoolgirl shyness wilting the nearby flowers.

“Nor have I,” boomed the muffled voice of Father Grace Harley from behind his black faceplate.

“So you say,” the Duchess went on. “But each of you has been in one way or another involved with Mister Gonzales, and…” she paused behind Father Harley, lightly resting her fragile arm on his polished black helmet, “each of you has good reason to want him dead.”


Chapter Two was pretty short. The butler kills the power, the lights go out, and in an amazing feat of cooperation in pitch darkness, the murderers build a gallows in the middle of the room and hang the poor victim in thirty seconds.

I wrote dozens of stories like this. I doubt many of them are likely to turn into board games, but you never know.

One day in February 1996, I was driving across Seattle to visit Phil and Kaja (by this time Carol and I had our own place), and this story floated into my head, along with the title “Kill Doctor Lucky.”

I laughed out loud, picturing this feeble old man pottering around his house, blithely escaping while every guest tries to kill him. Because he’s just so darn lucky.

By the time I arrived at the Foglios’, I had a game idea pretty well in my head. A few days later, a friend went to the GAMA trade show and pitched this idea to a well-respected publisher, who said he would buy it based on the description alone.

With encouragement like this, I decided that I’d better design this game! I immediately had a couple of opportunities to sell it to other publishers, but by the summer I knew I wanted the game for myself, to be the flagship title for my own game studio.

Designing the Cheapass LookI spent quite some time on the graphic design of Kill Doctor

Lucky, because I knew it would set the tone for the Cheapass line. The first cover design is pictured on page 5.

During this period I was obviously using a lot of clip art. It was perfect for black and white reproduction, and it was free. (The Devil Bunny comics were some of the best examples.)

Originally, the familiar silhouette that became Doctor Lucky was not supposed to be the Doctor at all. I chose it for a bumbling detective character who didn’t make it into the final game.

Envelopes with gray cover images, like this one, are super-rare. I wanted to make this silhouette solid black, but my laser printer couldn’t handle it. There are only a few dozen of these in the world.


KILL DOCTOR LUCKYProduction DiaryMarch 15 1996

Friday March 15 1996: What started as a good idea about 3 weeks ago has become this week’s game. Caroland/or Jordan pitched this idea to Darwin Bromley at GAMA this weekend, and he said. “Hell, I’d publishthat.” Hence, game of week.

Wednesday I stayed up with Dave Howell til 3AM talking about game mechanics. Dave wants this tobe far more complex than I do, but I managed to convince him that it’s always easier to make something morecomplex later. Dave usually disagrees with everyone else in my playtest group, but that’s sometimes a goodthing. I also talked with Rick Fish all day yesterday about mechanics, and here’s what I’ve got right now:

On a Mansion board with 20 numbred rooms and a few more unnumbered rooms, Dr. Lucky movesone numbered room forward between every turn. Players can move one room for free each turn, and can playmovement cards on themselves and Dr. Lucky to stretch their moves out. There are 20 room cards, one foreach numbered room. These cards can jump either you or Dr. Lucky to that room. Murdering him is free aslong as you are the only one in the room, and you can play Weapon cards to increase the efficacy of yourattempt. Other players can play failure cards on your attempt; weapon cards simply cancel out extra failures.There are some weapon cards which are quite powerful in particular rooms, and others which are equally use-ful everywhere.

Failure cards are played in sequence like bidding. They go into a separate discard pile, never to beseen again. So, although they start plentiful, their number dwindles through the course of the game. The realobject of the game is to tease the failure cards out of everyone else’s hands. Oh, you can fail a failure if youwant.

New Board: 24 Numbered rooms, 30 unnumbered rooms=54 rooms total, including12 hallways. Afew awesome sightlines.

Valuation of a room’s “cost”: Distance from World Room: 1-5 (close is better)Number of rooms which can see into it: 2-10 (less is better)Distance from Lucky’s Path: 0-2 (less is better)Room card for that room: 0/4

Valuations of a weapon’s cost:Distance from World RoomEfficacyEnhanced power(weapons don’t have to be as balanced as rooms, though it would make the game seem more fair.)

New Rules as of the 18th:You can’t fail a failure. If you get shot down, you’re down.You find weapons in particular rooms, then lay them down to show you have them. You have to dis-

card them to use them.You can use move-cards on inactive players.

Room Valuations:Do on a Greatworks Spreadsheet.

This is a rare find: an original page of notes from March 15, 1996. My house is filled with stacks of unsorted notebooks, but to discover this file on an old Doctor Lucky disk was pretty cool. Note how the rules changes are being captured as they happen. (And this game is nowhere near done.)

DOCTOR LUCKY

MWhy do all mystery games start just

after all the fun is over?

Welcome to the J. Robert Luckymansion, a sprawling country estate fullof unusual weapons, good hiding places,and craven killers. Killers like you.

The object? Kill Doctor Lucky. Finda weapon, track the old man down, andlay him out. The obstacles? For onething, all of your friends would rather doit first. For another, Doctor Lucky isaptly named.

You would think that after beingstabbed, hung, poisoned, and poked in theeye, the old Doctor would just lie downand accept his fate. But he’s got moreluck than Rasputin, and an uncanny knackfor dodging your best traps.

Stick to it. Persevere. The Doctor’sluck won’t last forever. Before the night isover, someone is going to kill DoctorLucky.

Wouldn’t you rather it was you?

CHEAPASS

GAMES

A PRE-MYSTERY GAMEFOR 2-8 PLAYERS

KILL

You Need: A Pawn for every player, plus one Master Pawn.

Kill Doctor Lucky Original 1996 Cover

Why do all mystery games start just after all the fun is over?

Welcome to the J. Robert Lucky Mansion,a sprawling country estate full of

unusual weapons, good hiding places,and craven killers. Killers like you.

The object? Kill Doctor Lucky.Find a weapon, track the old man down, and

take him out. The obstacles? For one thing, allof your friends would rather do it first. For

another, Doctor Lucky is aptly named.

You would think that after being stabbed, hung, poisoned, and poked in the

eye, the old Doctor would just lie down andaccept his fate. But he’s got more lives

than Rasputin, and an uncanny knack fordodging your best traps.

Stick to it. Persevere. The Doctor’s luck won’tlast forever. Before the night is over, someone

is going to kill Doctor Lucky.

Wouldn’t you rather it was you?

DOCTOR LUCKY

CHEAPASS

GAMES

A PRE-MYSTERY BOARD GAMEFOR 2-8 PLAYERS

KILL


#CAG 001

MWhy do all mystery games start

just after all the fun is over

Welcome to J. Robert Lucky Mansiona sprawling country estate full of

unusual weapons, good hiding placesand craven killers. Killers like you

The object? Kill Doctor LuckyFind a weapon, track the old man down, and

take him out. The obstacles? For one thingall of your friends would rather do it firstFor another, Doctor Lucky is aptly named



than Rasputin, and an uncanny knack fordodging your best traps


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Origins™ Award winner:Best Abstract Board Game of 1997

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DIRECTOR’S CUT

First Broad Release Cover 1997

First Boxed Edition 2000

Revised Edition 1999

Director’s Cut 2002


Welcome to the J. Robert Lucky mansion, arambling country estate seven miles north ofnowhere. It’s a stormy midsummer’s evening, tenseconds after midnight. And someone’s just shut offthe lights.

You have hated Doctor Lucky for as long as youcan remember, and you’ve been secretly awaitingthis perfect chance to do the old man in. Maybe hedestroyed your dry cleaning business; maybe youthink he’s the leader of the vampires. Perhaps he’sthe only person standing between you and the familyfortune. Or maybe his cat just keeps peeing in yourshrubs. Whatever your reason, it’s good enough topush you over the edge. And now you absolutelycan’t wait to take the lying old bastard down.


Take a deep breath. Remember why you’rehere. And then start sneaking around in the dark. Ifyou run across a weapon, grab it. If you bump intoDoctor Lucky, give him hell.

Trying to kill Doctor Lucky is pretty easy, aslong as no one’s looking. But they don’t call him“Doctor Lucky” for nothing. He’s got an uncannyknack for slipping out of harm’s way. Don’t despair;after enough tries, you’re guaranteed to wear the oldcodger down. You just need a clever plan, a goodbluff, and a little more luck than everyone else.

So gather in the Drawing Room and get crack-ing. Somebody’s going to kill Doctor Lucky tonight,and it might as well be you.


The Kill Dr. Lucky Game Board (8 sections), adeck of 96 Cards, and this Rule Book.

If you need help assembling the board, look at thesnapshot on the back of this booklet. You’ll probablywant to tape the board to a stiff piece of cardboard; thefinished size is 17" x 22". You can also assemble theboard temporarily by using sticky-notes on the back.

You Also Need:

You’ll need a Pawn for every player, plus onemore Master Pawn for Dr. Lucky.

Use whatever you like for your Pawns, as long aseveryone can identify themselves, and the bases are notmuch bigger than 1” square. Dr. Lucky’s Pawn shouldbe easily distinguished from the rest.

The Board:

Dr. Lucky’s Estate has 32 “rooms,” including 24named rooms, 6 hallways and 2 stairways. When you tryto kill Dr. Lucky, you must be alone in a room with him.You must also be out of sight of the other players.

The sight lines work like this: if someone canstand anywhere in one room and look straight throughdoorways into the room you’re in, they can see you. So,for example, someone standing in the Kitchen can see(and be seen by) people in the Master Suite, the weststairs, the two adjoining hallways, the Trophy Room, theWine Cellar, and the Winter Garden.

You can’t see diagonally through doors, so forexample, someone in the Foyer can’t see someone in theCarriage House.

The Gallery overlooks the Dining Hall. It’s a musi-cian’s gallery, like a balcony. You can see through thatdotted wall, but you can’t walk though it. This meansthat the Gallery can see (and be seen by) every roomstraight down to the Piazza, plus the Nursery, the MasterSuite, and the Library.

KILL DOCTOR LUCKYA Cheapass board game for 2-8 playersM

Strategy Hints:


Make as many murder attempts as you can. Eventhough your first ones will probably fail, you’ll bepulling those Failures out of other people’s hands.

Do your best to keep track of how many Failureshave been played. If you feel like the hands are thin,hurry up and make an attempt before everyone gets thechance to draw again.

If your games seem to be taking too long, oryou’re always exhausting the deck,it probably means that you’remaking fewer murder attemptsthan we do. That’s okay. To speedthings up, try upping the weaponvalues by +1. Or try removing theF-3’s from the deck. Good Luck!

KILL DOCTOR LUCKY ©1996 Cheapass Games.Graphics, Layout, and Game Design: James Ernest.Assistant Design: Rick Fish, Dave Howell, E.Jordan Bojar, Toivo Rovainen, and variouswell-fed guinea pigs. Sixth Printing Sept. 2000.

V


We here at Cheapass Games are aware of twobasic facts about games: they cost too much, andthey are, at some level, all the same.

If you ignore the clever shapes they come in, thecheap little plastic pawns are an interchangeable partof most of the board games in your house. So are thedice, the money, the counters, and just about everyclever spare part. These parts can account for asmuch as 75% of a game’s production cost, and thatcost gets handed to you.

If you had your choice, you’d probably invest alittle money in one good set of gaming parapherna-lia instead of twenty crappy ones, and then just buythe new part of every “new” game. Yet most gamecompanies insist on selling you the whole packageevery time; it’s a little like bundling a can opener withevery can of beans.

Cheapass Games come packaged with the bareessentials: boards, cards, and rulebooks. If you needanything else, we’ll tell you. And it’s probably some-thing that you can scrounge from a game you alreadyhave, or buy at a hobby store for less than we’d haveto charge you for it. Heck, if you need to, you can evenbuy the parts from us.

And once you’ve got a collection of pawns, dice,counters, and money, you can use the same ones forevery Cheapass Game. We’ve standardized ourdesigns so your gaming toolbox will last.

You can learn more about Cheapass Games byasking your local game retailer. Or by visiting oursecret website at www.cheapass.com.

Cheapass GamesInfo Unit™:Now you can repentof your evil ways andSave Doctor Luckyaboard a titanic sinking ship. It’sCheapass Game #027



There are 20 Weapon cards, including manywhich, like the Billiard Cue below, are more effective inparticular rooms.

There are 42 Failure cards, including 26 1-pointFailures, 12 2-point Failures and 4 3-point Failures.

Two Discard Piles:

Failure cards go into a different discard pile than theother cards. If the deck empties, you will reshuffle onlythe non-Failure cards to replace the deck. The Failurecards are gone for good.

Moving The Doctor:

Dr. Lucky moves after every turn. So, when you aredone with your turn, you move Dr. Lucky.

Dr. Lucky tends to follow a predictable routethrough his mansion. Unless he’s lured off course bysomeone’s play, Dr. Lucky moves by the numbers.

If Dr. Lucky is standing in a numbered room, justmove him into the next numbered room (19 leads to 0).If he’s not in a numbered room, move him to the high-est numbered adjoining room. For example, if Dr.Lucky is in the Wine Cellar, move him into the Kitchen.If he is in the Foyer, he moves into the Piazza.

To Begin:

Put everyone in the Drawing Room. To randomlydetermine who starts, the winner of the last game dealscards faceup, starting on his own left. He continues untilsomeone gets a room card. That player will go first, andDr. Lucky will start in that room. Now reshuffle the deck,and deal a hand of six cards to every player.

To Win:

Kill Doctor Lucky. Pretty simple.

On Every Turn:

When it’s your turn, you have two choices: Youcan either snoop around looking for stuff, or you canactually do something. So, there are two different typesof turn.

Turn Type 1: “Snooping”

If you’re snooping, you get to move one room inany direction (hallways and stairs count as rooms) oryou can stay put.

If you end your turn in a named room, you get todraw one card. The card you draw loosely representssomething you found while you were snooping. “Namedrooms” just means all the rooms with names; you can’tdraw a card if you stop in a hallway, or on the stairs.

Type 2: “Doing Something”

In this kind of turn, you take two steps: Move-ment, and Murder. Both steps are optional. When youtake this kind of turn, you’re not snooping, so you can’tdraw a card.

In the Movement step, you can move yourself oneroom, and you can also play Move and Room cards. Youcan take your regular move before, after, or betweenplaying these cards, and you can play as many of thesecards as you wish.

Move Cards: These cards can move you, or theycan move Dr. Lucky. There are 14 move cards, includ-ing 8 Move-1’s, 4 Move-2’s and 2 Move-3’s. When youplay one of these cards on Dr. Lucky, you can send himin any direction; he doesn’t have to followhis numbers.

Room Cards: Use these cards tojump either yourself or Dr. Lucky to a par-ticular room. There are 20 different Roomcards.

In the Murder step of the type-2 turn, you can tryto kill Dr. Lucky.

To attempt a murder, you must be alone in theroom with Dr. Lucky, and you must be out of sight ofevery other player.

You can only make one murder attempt per turn.You may play one Weapon card to improve your

murder attempt; otherwise, it has a basic value of 1.Without the Weapon card, you’re trying to kill the oldman with whatever is on hand, or just poking him in theeye with your finger.

If you use a Weapon, your murder attempt has thevalue of that Weapon. For example, a murder attemptwith a 4-point Weapon has a value of 4 (not 5!). Thebetter your attempt, the harder it will be for your oppo-nents to stop you.

Once you’ve made your murder attempt, everyoneelse gets one chance to foil it, by playing Failure cards.Starting with the player to your left, every player mayeither play one or more Failure cards, or pass.

To foil a murder requires one Failure point foreach point in the murder value. Failure cards are worth1, 2, or 3 points each.

Note: Even though your early murder attemptsprobably won’t succeed, it’s important to keep trying, sothat you force the Failure cards out of other players’hands. The fewer Failures everyone else holds, the bet-ter your chances of winning.

Who Goes Next:

Normally, the turn order passes to the left aroundthe table. But Dr. Lucky can re-activate a player by land-ing on him.

If Dr. Lucky moves into an occupied room(between turns), the player standing in that room goesnext. This is true even if that player just had a turn!

This means that, if you’re clever, you can take sev-eral turns in a row, leading the old fool around the man-sion. You can use these turns to draw extra cards, andto get someplace fast. But even though you can takemultiple turns in a row, you won’t be able to make aseries of murder attempts. Since you can’t move (orplay move cards) after a murder attempt, Dr. Lucky willautomatically get away from you if you fail.

Multiple next players: If Dr. Lucky lands in a roomoccupied by two or more players, then the “my turn”status passes from the last active player, to the leftaround the table, until it hits one of the players in thatroom. This means that you can’t drag Dr. Lucky throughan occupied room, since the turn will pass to the otherplayer when Dr. Lucky moves in.

A Sample Turn:

There are 5 players, and it’s player 1’s turn.Player 5 has just ended his turn, and Dr. Lucky has

moved from the Master Suite into the Nursery (room 10to room 11).

Player 1 moves from the Library into the Gallery.He’s taking a “Doing Something” type of turn, notsnooping for cards. After taking his free move, he playsa Move-1 card, moving himself into the Nursery.

Now Player 1 tries to kill Dr. Lucky. There are noother players in the Nursery, and no one can see them,so the attempt is legal. He plays the Billiard Cue Weaponcard, so it will take 2 Failure points to stop him.

Player 2 has the first chance to stop the murder,but it’s early in the game and he feels confident that oth-ers will be able to. He passes the chance to play aFailure, although he has several. So does Player 3.

Player 4 has watched Players 5’s hand dwindle to2 cards, and feels a little reluctant to leave even oneFailure up to him. However, he has only one Failurepoint, and he plays it.

Player 5 also has only one Failure card left, andit’s worth 3 points. Although it’s overkill, Player 5 mustplay this F-3 card to stop the murder attempt from suc-ceeding. He does, and Player 1 is foiled.

After his turn ends, Player 1 moves Dr. Lucky intothe Armory (Room 11 to Room 12).k

MOVE-222

Play this card to move

yourself or Dr. Lucky up to

2 rooms in any direction.

Play this card to moveyourself or Dr. Lucky to the Winter Garden.

WINTERGARDEN

RR

FAILURE!F-1F-1

MPlay this card to foil a murder attempt.

Base Value: 2

Worth 5 points in the

Billiard Room.

WWBILLIARD

CUE


There are 20 Weapon cards, including manywhich, like the Billiard Cue below, are more effective inparticular rooms.

There are 42 Failure cards, including 26 1-pointFailures, 12 2-point Failures and 4 3-point Failures.

Two Discard Piles:

Failure cards go into a different discard pile than theother cards. If the deck empties, you will reshuffle onlythe non-Failure cards to replace the deck. The Failurecards are gone for good.

Moving The Doctor:

Dr. Lucky moves after every turn. So, when you aredone with your turn, you move Dr. Lucky.

Dr. Lucky tends to follow a predictable routethrough his mansion. Unless he’s lured off course bysomeone’s play, Dr. Lucky moves by the numbers.

If Dr. Lucky is standing in a numbered room, justmove him into the next numbered room (19 leads to 0).If he’s not in a numbered room, move him to the high-est numbered adjoining room. For example, if Dr.Lucky is in the Wine Cellar, move him into the Kitchen.If he is in the Foyer, he moves into the Piazza.

To Begin:

Put everyone in the Drawing Room. To randomlydetermine who starts, the winner of the last game dealscards faceup, starting on his own left. He continues untilsomeone gets a room card. That player will go first, andDr. Lucky will start in that room. Now reshuffle the deck,and deal a hand of six cards to every player.

To Win:

Kill Doctor Lucky. Pretty simple.

On Every Turn:

When it’s your turn, you have two choices: Youcan either snoop around looking for stuff, or you canactually do something. So, there are two different typesof turn.

Turn Type 1: “Snooping”

If you’re snooping, you get to move one room inany direction (hallways and stairs count as rooms) oryou can stay put.

If you end your turn in a named room, you get todraw one card. The card you draw loosely representssomething you found while you were snooping. “Namedrooms” just means all the rooms with names; you can’tdraw a card if you stop in a hallway, or on the stairs.

Type 2: “Doing Something”

In this kind of turn, you take two steps: Move-ment, and Murder. Both steps are optional. When youtake this kind of turn, you’re not snooping, so you can’tdraw a card.

In the Movement step, you can move yourself oneroom, and you can also play Move and Room cards. Youcan take your regular move before, after, or betweenplaying these cards, and you can play as many of thesecards as you wish.

Move Cards: These cards can move you, or theycan move Dr. Lucky. There are 14 move cards, includ-ing 8 Move-1’s, 4 Move-2’s and 2 Move-3’s. When youplay one of these cards on Dr. Lucky, you can send himin any direction; he doesn’t have to followhis numbers.

Room Cards: Use these cards tojump either yourself or Dr. Lucky to a par-ticular room. There are 20 different Roomcards.

In the Murder step of the type-2 turn, you can tryto kill Dr. Lucky.

To attempt a murder, you must be alone in theroom with Dr. Lucky, and you must be out of sight ofevery other player.

You can only make one murder attempt per turn.You may play one Weapon card to improve your

murder attempt; otherwise, it has a basic value of 1.Without the Weapon card, you’re trying to kill the oldman with whatever is on hand, or just poking him in theeye with your finger.

If you use a Weapon, your murder attempt has thevalue of that Weapon. For example, a murder attemptwith a 4-point Weapon has a value of 4 (not 5!). Thebetter your attempt, the harder it will be for your oppo-nents to stop you.

Once you’ve made your murder attempt, everyoneelse gets one chance to foil it, by playing Failure cards.Starting with the player to your left, every player mayeither play one or more Failure cards, or pass.

To foil a murder requires one Failure point foreach point in the murder value. Failure cards are worth1, 2, or 3 points each.

Note: Even though your early murder attemptsprobably won’t succeed, it’s important to keep trying, sothat you force the Failure cards out of other players’hands. The fewer Failures everyone else holds, the bet-ter your chances of winning.

Who Goes Next:

Normally, the turn order passes to the left aroundthe table. But Dr. Lucky can re-activate a player by land-ing on him.

If Dr. Lucky moves into an occupied room(between turns), the player standing in that room goesnext. This is true even if that player just had a turn!

This means that, if you’re clever, you can take sev-eral turns in a row, leading the old fool around the man-sion. You can use these turns to draw extra cards, andto get someplace fast. But even though you can takemultiple turns in a row, you won’t be able to make aseries of murder attempts. Since you can’t move (orplay move cards) after a murder attempt, Dr. Lucky willautomatically get away from you if you fail.

Multiple next players: If Dr. Lucky lands in a roomoccupied by two or more players, then the “my turn”status passes from the last active player, to the leftaround the table, until it hits one of the players in thatroom. This means that you can’t drag Dr. Lucky throughan occupied room, since the turn will pass to the otherplayer when Dr. Lucky moves in.

A Sample Turn:

There are 5 players, and it’s player 1’s turn.Player 5 has just ended his turn, and Dr. Lucky has

moved from the Master Suite into the Nursery (room 10to room 11).

Player 1 moves from the Library into the Gallery.He’s taking a “Doing Something” type of turn, notsnooping for cards. After taking his free move, he playsa Move-1 card, moving himself into the Nursery.

Now Player 1 tries to kill Dr. Lucky. There are noother players in the Nursery, and no one can see them,so the attempt is legal. He plays the Billiard Cue Weaponcard, so it will take 2 Failure points to stop him.

Player 2 has the first chance to stop the murder,but it’s early in the game and he feels confident that oth-ers will be able to. He passes the chance to play aFailure, although he has several. So does Player 3.

Player 4 has watched Players 5’s hand dwindle to2 cards, and feels a little reluctant to leave even oneFailure up to him. However, he has only one Failurepoint, and he plays it.

Player 5 also has only one Failure card left, andit’s worth 3 points. Although it’s overkill, Player 5 mustplay this F-3 card to stop the murder attempt from suc-ceeding. He does, and Player 1 is foiled.

After his turn ends, Player 1 moves Dr. Lucky intothe Armory (Room 11 to Room 12).k

MOVE-222


yourself or Dr. Lucky up to

2 rooms in any direction.

Play this card to moveyourself or Dr. Lucky to the Winter Garden.

WINTERGARDEN

RR

FAILURE!F-1F-1

MPlay this card to foil a murder attempt.

Base Value: 2

Worth 5 points in the

Billiard Room.

WWBILLIARD

CUE


Welcome to the J. Robert Lucky mansion, arambling country estate seven miles north ofnowhere. It’s a stormy midsummer’s evening, tenseconds after midnight. And someone’s just shut offthe lights.

You have hated Doctor Lucky for as long as youcan remember, and you’ve been secretly awaitingthis perfect chance to do the old man in. Maybe hedestroyed your dry cleaning business; maybe youthink he’s the leader of the vampires. Perhaps he’sthe only person standing between you and the familyfortune. Or maybe his cat just keeps peeing in yourshrubs. Whatever your reason, it’s good enough topush you over the edge. And now you absolutelycan’t wait to take the lying old bastard down.


Take a deep breath. Remember why you’rehere. And then start sneaking around in the dark. Ifyou run across a weapon, grab it. If you bump intoDoctor Lucky, give him hell.

Trying to kill Doctor Lucky is pretty easy, aslong as no one’s looking. But they don’t call him“Doctor Lucky” for nothing. He’s got an uncannyknack for slipping out of harm’s way. Don’t despair;after enough tries, you’re guaranteed to wear the oldcodger down. You just need a clever plan, a goodbluff, and a little more luck than everyone else.

So gather in the Drawing Room and get crack-ing. Somebody’s going to kill Doctor Lucky tonight,and it might as well be you.


The Kill Dr. Lucky Game Board (8 sections), adeck of 96 Cards, and this Rule Book.

If you need help assembling the board, look at thesnapshot on the back of this booklet. You’ll probablywant to tape the board to a stiff piece of cardboard; thefinished size is 17" x 22". You can also assemble theboard temporarily by using sticky-notes on the back.

You Also Need:

You’ll need a Pawn for every player, plus onemore Master Pawn for Dr. Lucky.

Use whatever you like for your Pawns, as long aseveryone can identify themselves, and the bases are notmuch bigger than 1” square. Dr. Lucky’s Pawn shouldbe easily distinguished from the rest.

The Board:

Dr. Lucky’s Estate has 32 “rooms,” including 24named rooms, 6 hallways and 2 stairways. When you tryto kill Dr. Lucky, you must be alone in a room with him.You must also be out of sight of the other players.

The sight lines work like this: if someone canstand anywhere in one room and look straight throughdoorways into the room you’re in, they can see you. So,for example, someone standing in the Kitchen can see(and be seen by) people in the Master Suite, the weststairs, the two adjoining hallways, the Trophy Room, theWine Cellar, and the Winter Garden.

You can’t see diagonally through doors, so forexample, someone in the Foyer can’t see someone in theCarriage House.

The Gallery overlooks the Dining Hall. It’s a musi-cian’s gallery, like a balcony. You can see through thatdotted wall, but you can’t walk though it. This meansthat the Gallery can see (and be seen by) every roomstraight down to the Piazza, plus the Nursery, the MasterSuite, and the Library.

KILL DOCTOR LUCKYA Cheapass board game for 2-8 playersM

Strategy Hints:


Make as many murder attempts as you can. Eventhough your first ones will probably fail, you’ll bepulling those Failures out of other people’s hands.

Do your best to keep track of how many Failureshave been played. If you feel like the hands are thin,hurry up and make an attempt before everyone gets thechance to draw again.

If your games seem to be taking too long, oryou’re always exhausting the deck,it probably means that you’remaking fewer murder attemptsthan we do. That’s okay. To speedthings up, try upping the weaponvalues by +1. Or try removing theF-3’s from the deck. Good Luck!

KILL DOCTOR LUCKY ©1996 Cheapass Games.Graphics, Layout, and Game Design: James Ernest.Assistant Design: Rick Fish, Dave Howell, E.Jordan Bojar, Toivo Rovainen, and variouswell-fed guinea pigs. Sixth Printing Sept. 2000.

V


We here at Cheapass Games are aware of twobasic facts about games: they cost too much, andthey are, at some level, all the same.

If you ignore the clever shapes they come in, thecheap little plastic pawns are an interchangeable partof most of the board games in your house. So are thedice, the money, the counters, and just about everyclever spare part. These parts can account for asmuch as 75% of a game’s production cost, and thatcost gets handed to you.

If you had your choice, you’d probably invest alittle money in one good set of gaming parapherna-lia instead of twenty crappy ones, and then just buythe new part of every “new” game. Yet most gamecompanies insist on selling you the whole packageevery time; it’s a little like bundling a can opener withevery can of beans.

Cheapass Games come packaged with the bareessentials: boards, cards, and rulebooks. If you needanything else, we’ll tell you. And it’s probably some-thing that you can scrounge from a game you alreadyhave, or buy at a hobby store for less than we’d haveto charge you for it. Heck, if you need to, you can evenbuy the parts from us.

And once you’ve got a collection of pawns, dice,counters, and money, you can use the same ones forevery Cheapass Game. We’ve standardized ourdesigns so your gaming toolbox will last.

You can learn more about Cheapass Games byasking your local game retailer. Or by visiting oursecret website at www.cheapass.com.

Cheapass GamesInfo Unit™:Now you can repentof your evil ways andSave Doctor Luckyaboard a titanic sinking ship. It’sCheapass Game #027

MOVE-111


yourself or Dr. Lucky

1 room in any direction.

Play this card to moveyourself or Dr. Lucky

to the Carriage House.

CARRIAGEHOUSE

RR

Base Value: 3 Worth 4 points in the

Trophy Room.

WWDUCK

DECOY

Base Value: 4

WWBIG RED

HAMMERFAILURE!

F-3F-3

VAs you approach theDoctor, you tumble

through a trap door.

FAILURE!F-1F-1

a“This tastes like

Rat Poison! I love

Rat Poison!”

FAILURE!F-2F-2

nYou have somehow mistaken a child’s toy for Doctor Lucky.



Editions and VariantsKill Doctor Lucky has gone through several editions in its long and

complicated life. Some were just slight updates and fixes; others were pretty major.

The original version won the Origins Award for “Best Abstract Board Game of 1997” and was featured in the 1997 GAMES 100.

In 2000, the game joined our list of boxed games, with no major changes to the content.

In 2002, we released the “Director’s Cut,” which included some variant rules as well as a “commentary track” that gave a little of the same back story found in these pages.

In 2006, we licensed the game to Titanic/Paizo Publishing, for the first full-color edition. This was during a period of hibernation for Cheapass Games, while we stopped printing things for a while and let other publishers take care of our most valuable games.

In 2016, we brought the game back in-house, with the “19.5th Anniversary Edition” including a huge rules overhaul. I think the new version is strictly better than the old, but you can judge for yourself.

Other games and products in the Doctor Lucky series:

Save Doctor Lucky, a game where players try to hand their life vests to the Doctor aboard a sinking ship.

Get Lucky, the card game version.The Island of Doctor Lucky, an alternate version set on

the Doctor’s mysterious island, which is also trying to kill the players!

Moon Base Copernicus: An expansion for the original Save Doctor Lucky.

The Doctor Lucky Ambivalence Pack: One new board for each of the original Kill and Save Doctor Lucky games.

[Redacted], an expansion board set in a location for which we didn’t have permission. We got a nasty letter, and this board was revised and became part of the Director’s Cut.

in black and white

In the summer of 1996, game inventor James Ernest began making board games at his home, and selling

them at local game conventions.

From these humble beginnings, he built an empire.

The idea was simple: Players already had their own dice, pawns, tokens, and play money. All they really needed

was the “new” part of every new game.

Cheapass Games were bare-bones, stripped of all unnecessary production cost, and sold at a fraction of their true value. Or so Ernest would have you believe.

This book contains the rules and history of more than 100 of these games, so now you can judge for yourself.

Do not squander this unique opportunity.

in black and white a retrospective by james ernest...this document contains excerpts from an early...

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