Dungeonville
Dungeonville Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Object of the Game
Your goal is to collect seven blood tokens by killing the adventurers controlled by other players. These blood tokens will be amassed in your kill zone (on the table in front of you) and in your dungeon. If you put your own blood tokens on your own dungeon, they will subtract from your total. Since other players don't know which dungeon is yours, your score will only become known when you announce that you have won.
Contents
- 5 player pawns (2-5 can play)
- 64 Adventurer cards, each representing an adventurer you may hire. An adventurer has these features:
- a class (such as "Barbarian")
- a color (such as "blue")
- a rank, indicating both combat strength (lower is better) and carrying capacity (higher is better)
- five dungeon skill symbols, indicating which dungeons s/he is most likely to die in
- 5 Dungeon decks, each with 32 Room cards. Most Room cards have two features:
- a dungeon value, indicating which adventurers die in that room
- a gold value, showing how much gold that room contains (some rooms contain items instead)
- 5 large Dungeon Entrance cards, one for each dungeon
- 5 Dungeon Deed cards, one for each dungeon
- 5 Town cards, one for each location in Dungeonville
- 1 Deed House card
- 1 Seeing Stone card to indicate who goes first each turn
- 75 Blood tokens, 15 each in 5 colors
Setup
Separate the cards into their different types: adventurers, dungeons, dungeon entrances, dungeon deeds, town cards, and the Seeing Stone.
Shuffle the adventurer deck. Arrange the five town cards face-up next to the adventurer deck.
Place the dungeon entrances face-up in the middle of the table. Shuffle the dungeon room decks and place them face-down on entrance cards. Each dungeon will also have a discard pile.
Shuffle the deeds and give one face-down to each player. Players should not know who owns which dungeon, aside from their own. Place any remaining deeds face-down on the Deed House, near town.
Choose a pawn and the blood tokens of that color; place your blood tokens in a "blood pool" in front of you.
The Seeing Stone shows which player goes first each turn; assign the Seeing Stone to the bloodthirstiest player. If there is a tie for bloodthirstiest player, assign the Seeing Stone randomly.
Gameplay
Dungeonville is played in rounds. Each round has five phases: recruitment, reconnaissance, combat, exploration, and collection. The player with the seeing stone goes first in each of these phases. At the end of a round, the seeing stone passes to the next player on the left.
Phase 1 - Recruitment
During this phase, you will recruit new adventurers from Dungeonville. The town has five locations where adventurers congregate: the Street, the Inn, the Temple, the Guild, and the Tavern. (A sixth location, the Deed House, is just outside of town, and is described in the Collection phase.)
To start this phase, deal out five adventurers. Sort them by rank, putting the lowest numbered adventurers in the highest-priced buildings. Each time a new adventurer is added to town, all five adventurers in town will be re-sorted according to rank. When you run out of adventurers in the deck, reshuffle the discards.
FOR THE FIRST TURN ONLY, each player takes four blood tokens in hand, to represent 40 gold. You may spend these in this first turn only by putting them back into your blood pool. Gold you don't spend in the first turn is returned to your blood pool anyway. On subsequent turns, all gold is represented by cards.
Starting with the player who has the Seeing Stone, each player recruits one adventurer at a time. If you don't yet have three adventurers, you must recruit. If you have three or more adventurers, you may recruit, but you must make room for the new adventurer by discarding another. To recruit an adventurer, pay the amount of gold listed on the town card, by putting those cards into the appropriate discard piles. You might not have exact change among the cards you've collected; any extra money you spend is lost. You can exchange items for 5 gold apiece.
When an adventurer is recruited, draw a new one from the deck and resort the adventurers according to rank.
Recruitment ends immediately when all players have at least three adventurers.
Phase 2 - Reconnaissance
In this phase, players send their parties to dungeons by placing a pawn on a dungeon entrance. Starting with the player with the seeing stone, each player chooses which dungeon to explore. Each adventurer card shows skills ranked "A" through "E" ("A" being best) that the adventurer has in each dungeon, which may help you decide.
Phase 3 - Combat
If two or more parties visit the same dungeon, they must fight for the right to go inside. Combat works like this:
First, each player turns three of his or her adventurers face-down and arranges them in the order he or she wishes to reveal them. (If you have more than three adventurers, the others do not participate.)
Next, each player turns over his or her first adventurer. The one adventurer with the lowest rank (the "stronger" adventurer) wins this fight, and kills and/or recruits his foes.
If a defeated adventurer is the same color as the winner, the loser joins the winner's party. The recruited adventurer cannot fight in this combat, but then becomes a member of the party.
If the colors don't match, or if either combatant is colorless, then the loser is killed (discarded). The winner's player earns a blood token from the loser's player. (If more than one is killed, the winner only earns a blood token from the weakest.) Blood tokens you earn in combat go into your "kill zone", an area in front of you. In a fight with three or more combatants, one adventurer may both kill and recruit others, but will earn at most one blood token.
After the first round of combat, compare the second and third sets of adventurers in the same manner. The team with the most survivors (including recruits) enters the dungeon, and the other parties go home. If there is a tie for most survivors, the player with the single strongest adventurer wins the tie, and the other parties go home.
Phase 4 - Exploration
Starting with the leader, each player who still has a party at a dungeon must enter that dungeon. To explore a dungeon, turn over the top card in the dungeon and go through the following steps:
FIRST, you must lose one adventurer of a skill letter that matches the letter on the card, if you have one. For example, if you have two adventurers ranked "B" in this dungeon, and you reveal a B, one of them must die. When this happens, place one of your blood tokens on the dungeon entrance.
SECOND, you may take the card as treasure; it may later be spent for its gold value, if you can carry it out of the dungeon. A party can carry no more gold than the total current rank of the party. Immediately discard any cards you can't carry in a pile beside the dungeon. If an adventurer dies, the capacity of the party immediately goes down. Cards with no dungeon values are items, and can always be carried. See below for details.
THIRD, if no one died on this card, and if the card wasn't an item, the party may escape. If they can't escape or if they choose not to escape, draw the next card, repeating these steps until the party escapes or is wiped out.
Each player finishes his or her entire dungeon adventure before the next player starts. If you run out of dungeon cards in a deck, reshuffle the discards. When you're done exploring a dungeon, retrieve your pawn to show that you have left. If the party is wiped out, discard all treasure from this round and retrieve your pawn.
Other players' blood tokens left in your dungeon count toward your score. Your own blood tokens, should you be foolish enough to die in your own dungeon, subtract from your score.
ITEMS: Some dungeon cards are items. Items are usable only by adventurers of a particular class. If you have an adventurer of that class in your party, the item's power works for you. There is one item for each major class, to be found in the dungeon of that adventurer's highest dungeon skill. You can't escape a dungeon immediately upon drawing an item card. They do not count against your carrying capacity, and they can be spent as 5 gold.
Phase 5 - Collection
In this phase, put the gold your adventurers have collected into your treasury, so you can spend it later.
In a game with four or fewer players, you can also buy a new dungeon now. The Deed House contains all the deeds which are not owned by players. You may pay 50 gold during the Collection phase to draw a random dungeon from the Deed House, and replace it with your current deed. Both your new deed and the old one remain secret.
When Collection is done, pass the seeing stone to the next player on the left and start a new turn.
Colorless Adventurers
The Assassin, Oracle, Jester, and Mule have no color, so they have no friends. They can never recruit or be recruited. If your party ever contains nothing but colorless adventurers (except during Recruitment), you must discard the party.
The Oracle's "X" matches one of your other adventurers' skills. When you enter a dungeon, the Oracle takes the skill of the adventurer you choose. This value remains the same for the duration of this exploration only.
The Jester's "?" matches a random adventurer from the deck. When you enter a dungeon, turn over the top card of the adventurer deck. The Jester gains that adventurer's skill in this dungeon for this expedition. Discard the adventurer after determining the Jester's skill. The Oracle may choose to match the Jester, if you have both.
The Mule never gives a blood token when it is killed.
Winning
You win by collecting a total of seven blood tokens between your kill zone and your dungeon. (Your own tokens in your dungeon subtract from your score.) Since players do not know whose dungeon is whose, you must declare when you have won. If you declare victory in error, the game continues, with everyone knowing which dungeon you own!