Ancient Terrible Things: The Lost Charter Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• The New Cards
  • Character Obsessions
  • Revelation Encounter
  • Warning Encounter
  • Event Encounter
• New Terminology
  • Trade Offer
  • Foreshadowed Encounters
  • Old Stock pile
  • Pile
• Ancient Terrible Things: Travel Edition
• 5th Player
  • Re-roll track card (1st edition owners only)
  • 5th Player Set-up
• Forgotten Secrets
  • Rules for solo play
    • Set-up
    • Object of the Game
    • The Map
    • Location Action variants
• Revised Rules (1st edition to 2nd edition)
  • Timing Rules
  • Trading Post
  • The Map
  • Card timing rules

Components

• 5 x Character Obsession cards
• 16 x Encounter cards
• 13 x Feat cards
• 8 x Swag cards
• 4 x Achievement cards
• 6 x Fateful Location travel cards
• 1 x Riverboat card
• 1 x Trading Post card
• 1 x Expedition track card
• 1 x Re-roll track card
• 1 x Character board
• 1 x sticker sheet
• 1 x wooden pawn
• 3 x purple Revelation dice
• 1 x River dice board

The New Cards

Character Obsessions

As a game variant, each character begins the game with their respective Obsession. Each obsession card describes the game condition that activates the obsession effect, and the condition to discard the Obsession. Obsessions have a Terrible Thing value if they remain in a player's possession at game end.

Revelation Encounter

When a character attempts a Revelation Encounter, that player add a purple Revelation die to their dice pool. Revelation dice results may only be used for completing Encounter dice combos and may not be used to gain Resource tokens. Revelation die may be re-rolled using Focus tokens.

Warning Encounter

These are exactly like ordinary Encounters except they don't cost you a Terrible Thing token penalty if you fail them. (Consequently, they are worth fewer points for the same combo.) However, should you fail a Warning Encounter, a Terrible Thing token is still discarded from the Expedition track.

Event Encounter

When drawn, Encounter Event cards are placed over the current Location, and replace the Location Action at that Location. Some Location Events have an ongoing effect, that affects the entire game state. When a player moves their pawn to a Location with an Event Encounter, the effect is resolved during the Explore Phase, and the Event Encounter is removed from the board.

New Terminology

Trade Offer

• Where a card allows a player to make a trade offer, that player may make a single offer to exchange Secrets (i.e. completed Encounters), tokens or Swag items in any combination or amount, with an opponent.
• Achievement cards and Feat cards cannot be traded.
• Swag which are exhausted when activated, become exhausted when traded.
• A trade offer is not a negotiation, and cannot be revised or retracted once it has been made.

Foreshadowed Encounters

Certain effects allow an Encounter to be Foreshadowed for a particular player, before their turn. This commits the player to attempting the Encounter, unless an opponent does so before them.

To Foreshadow an Encounter, place your pawn on it. If an opponent moves to an Encounter you have Foreshadowed, return your pawn to the Riverboat and give that opponent a random Terrible Thing token from your stash. The Encounter then ceases to be Foreshadowed.

Players on Foreshadowed Encounters take the Location Action and collect resources as per normal when beginning their turn.

One way for an Encounter to become Foreshadowed is as a result of a player stepping in to Rescue another player. This is a special effect which prevents the Rescued player from taking a Terrible Thing token, and Foreshadows the Encounter for the Rescuer. Any resources taken from the Encounter card by the Rescued player are returned to it if possible.

Old Stock pile

The name for the Swag discard pile.

Pile

Tokens are collected on your player mat in five piles: one for TT tokens and one for each resource type. You may use <5x modifier tokens> to represent 5 resource tokens. The size of a pile is measured by the number of resources or TT tokens it represents, not the number of tokens in it.

Ancient Terrible Things: Travel Edition

Ancient Terrible Things was conceived in the jungles of South East Asia, and many may wish to play the game in strange and exotic locales. This expansion includes 9 travel edition cards, and a dice-rolling jungle mat, in order to create a compact travel friendly edition of the game, for those who wish to pack the essential components into a dusty backpack (or convention bag), and head out on their own expedition!

Set-up: The diagram above shows the game set-up for an Ancient Terrible Things Travel Edition.

5th Player

This expansion includes a fifth playable character, The Prophetess. She begins the game with 2 Ancient Secrets.

Re-roll track card (1st edition owners only)

Towards the end of the game, you might plan an elaborate sequence of cards, additional rolls and re-rolls in to achieve a particulary hard dice combination. To keep track of how many re-rolls you have used in this situation, this expansion includes a convenient re-roll track card with a corresponding re-roll tracker token stickers. (Apply the stickers supplied to either side of one Courage token in the original game, to modify its use to a re-roll token.)

Each player has a maximum of 2 re-rolls. Move the tracker token on the Re-Roll track down one space, before each re-roll. Cards that allow you roll additional dice do not count towards your Re-rolls. Reset your Re-roll marker to 2 on the Re-roll track on your character mat, during the Refresh phase. Some cards may allow you to have an additional re-roll during your turn.

The re-roll track card is intended as a floating card, to be used between players on their respective turn, should they wish to use it.

5th Player Set-up

The table below outlines the starting set-up for the Ominous Encounter deck and Expedition Track for a 5 player game, for either short or long game.

The printed table is a graphic. Its columns are headed by an hourglass icon (one hourglass for the short game, two hourglasses for the long game), and it gives the following counts:

• Short game (one hourglass): 16 Encounter cards and 11 Terrible Thing tokens.
• Long game (two hourglasses): 15 Encounter cards and 16 Terrible Thing tokens.

Forgotten Secrets

Rules for solo play

Set-up

• Remove all Purple-header cards from the Feat deck.(Player vs Player Feats.)
• Remove the Skeleton Key from Swag deck.
• Do not use the Character Obsession cards.
• Build an Ominous Encounter deck with 18 Encounter cards ( 4 green, 6 orange, 6 red)
• Shuffle and draw 5 Terrible Thing tokens for Expedition track.
• Choose a character, and equip them with one resource token of each type, plus their starting resource.

Object of the Game

The object of the solo game is to end each round (including the final round) with an empty Rumours pile and a positive Ancient Secrets score, with at least one Terrible Thing token remaining on the Expedition track.

In the multiplayer game, there is no way to remove cards from the Rumours pile. The solo game introduces a special rule which allows the player to Forget Ancient Secrets from their Score Pile (removing them from the game), and to Forget Encounters in the Rumours pile (removing them also from the game).

At the end of each round, the player must Forget cards with at least double the total Ancient Secret value of the cards in the Rumours pile. The entire Rumours pile is then removed from the game.

Any cards worth Ancient Secrets can be spent in this way, including Swag cards and Achievements. Note that Achievements cannot be regained after they have been spent, and spent cards do not count towards Achievements. Cards which would normally be worth Ancient Secrets at the end of the game are worth that many Ancient Secrets when they are Forgotten.

The Map

In the solo game, the Map is not used to determine turn order. Instead, when the player has the Map, they may discard it when they fail to overcome an Encounter. That Encounter stays on the board, is replenished with resource tokens, and the player does not take a Terrible Thing counter. (you basically get a Mulligan, or a do-over)

The player may regain the Map through any effects which would normally cause them to gain the Map (including the location action of the Crumbling Ruin).

Location Action variants

The Location action variants for solo play are shown on the reverse side of the respective Travel edition cards, and these locations cards cover the original Locations when using the game board during solo play. These effects are:

• Sinister Chateau: Take a token from the bank, return a token to the bank.
• Yawning Chasm: Spend Courage tokens equal to the Ancient Secrets value of the top card on the Rumours discard pile, to discard that card from play.

Revised Rules (1st edition to 2nd edition)

The following revised rules and terminologies are included in the rulebook of the 2nd edition of the base game, but included here for the benefit of owners of the first edition of the game.

Timing Rules

An action must be completed in its entirety before another action may be played. For example, when you play the Feat card Pure Charm ("Take any two tokens from one opponent. Then, give that opponent any two tokens from your stash."), you are not allowed to play another Feat card in between taking the tokens and giving your opponent two tokens back.

Trading Post

The Trading Post begins the game with 3 slots for Swag cards. At the beginning of a Trading Post phase, the active player may choose to move any one of the 3 cards to Old Stock (the Swag discard pile), and replace it with a new card from the Swag draw pile. They may purchase any face-up card in the Trading Post, including the topmost card of the Old Stock pile. Additionally, they may at any time during the phase, spend 2 Treasure tokens to refresh up to 3 cards in the Trading Post, placing the discarded cards on to the Old Stock pile, and drawing new cards to replace them.

The Map

At the start of the round, the player with the Map may choose to give the Map to any player. The player with the Map then takes their turn, with the round continuing clockwise from the player in possession of the Map.

Card timing rules

You may play a Feat card or exhaust a Swag card for its effect any time during your turn, excluding during the Refresh Phase.