Quiztopia
Quiztopia Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Game Material
- 12 building cards (categories) — each has a symbol for its category (here: sports & games), a colorful side, and a dark side.
- 1 card holder — this is how you draw the question cards out of the card holder during play (press down here; pull out the bottom card here).
- 2 double-sided overview cards.
- 6 help-in-need cards.
- 177 question cards, each showing a question side (with the category symbol, here: sports & games) and an answers side.
- 4 tip cards (for the expert game).
- 1 cover card.
- 1 rulebook with campaign card.
- 11 challenge cards.
Standard Game Setup
There are four difficulty levels: Normal, Hard, Madness, and Hell, Hell, Hell.
Agree on one and take the matching overview card. Lay it on the table so that you have room to the left, right, and below to place cards.
The overview card summarizes the setup and the rules in brief, so that in future you will rarely need to pick up the rulebook. It shows how many buildings you must win, and how many you may lose at most, in order to win.
Shuffle the 12 building cards (categories). Look at the table and, according to the number of players, count out that many building cards, which you lay side by side in the middle of the table with their dark side facing up. (The number of dark buildings equals the number of players + 2.)
| Players | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dark buildings at the start | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
Lay the buildings side by side, not stacked — just spread them out on the table.
Now lay the remaining building cards with their colorful side facing up, side by side in the middle of the table. The dark buildings tend toward the dark side. Through just one wrong answer, they are lost. The colorful buildings tend toward the colorful side, i.e. toward you. Through just one right answer, you can win them.
Count out 24 question cards and lay them with their question side facing up in the card holder. Put the remaining questions back in the box. Lay the cover card on top of the questions.
The symbols on the question cards correspond with the symbols on the building cards. (This is so nobody can cheat by peeking, of course.)
Shuffle the help-in-need cards and form a face-down deck from them. Draw one help-in-need card and lay it face up to the right of the overview card. This one is available to you right from the start of the game. Lay the rest of the deck on its marked spot on the overview card.
Put the challenges and tip cards back in the box. If you have already won the standard game a few times, you may draw or choose one or more challenges and lay them to the left of the overview card. (More on this at the end of the rulebook. Challenges are not a good idea for your first game anyway.)
Decide for yourselves who among you begins the game. (If you fail at this decision, the game is probably not for you anyway.)
(Only for the expert game): When you later play with challenges, you place them here. Here, won building cards are set aside during play; here, lost ones.
Game Goal
Win enough buildings through correct answers to wrest your city from the darkness. For this you only have 24 questions' "time"!
| Difficulty | Normal | Hard | Madness | Hell, Hell, Hell |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buildings needed | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
Game Round
Choosing a Building and Answering a Question
When it is your turn, choose any building that is still lying in the middle. The person to your right draws a question card and reads you the question of the category belonging to that building. Colors and symbols help you find the right question.
The card must, of course, be held so that nobody can read the answer on the back, you clever clogs. It is best to leave it lying on the table.
You may discuss the answer as a group. In the end, you decide which answer you want to give.
Help in Need
You may use one or more of the openly displayed help-in-need cards at any time. Each may only be used once and then goes out of the game. What each one does is stated on the help-in-need card itself.
Scoring the Answer
After you have settled (with or without help) on an answer, it is scored.
If the chosen building was DARK:
- Answer correct: The building becomes colorful. It now tends toward you. Through a further correct answer in this category, you can win it.
- Answer wrong: Building lost! Take the chosen building from the middle and place it by the overview card under "Lose max. X buildings." As a consolation, you may reveal a further help-in-need card!
If the chosen building was COLORFUL:
- Answer correct: Building won! Take the chosen building from the middle and place it by the overview card under "Win X buildings." You have come one step closer to your goal!
- Answer wrong: The building becomes dark. It now tends toward the dark side. Through a further wrong answer in this category, you will lose it.
The question card is now used up. Set it aside on a discard pile.
Game End
You have lost if...
- ...you use up the last question card and have not yet won the number of buildings required by the difficulty level.
- ...you have lost more buildings than the difficulty level allows. The overview card helps you keep track of this.
(Should you have the help-in-need card "Cast" or draw it through the loss of the building, you still have another chance and may keep playing. You must then use the Cast as quickly as possible.)
You have won if...
- ...you have fulfilled all the requirements of the difficulty level (and, where applicable, of the challenges). The overview card helps you keep track of this.
Should you not yet have lost a building at that point, you may of course keep playing to face the ultimate challenge: The whole bakery! Try to win all 12 buildings.
(You know how it goes... "We don't want a piece of the cake... we want the whole bakery!")
If you don't manage that, your game still counts as won.
Stop!
If you have read this far, you are ready for your first game. You only need to read the rest of the rulebook once you want to tackle the expert game, new challenges, or the campaign.
Challenges
Have you already mastered the game several times? Then face new problems. Draw (or choose) one (or more) challenges during setup and abide by the new rules and objectives. If you want to play with several challenges at once, watch for the symbol in the lower right corner of some challenges — per symbol you may only choose one such card.
Three challenges (Downtown, Scene District, Outskirts) bring new loss conditions into the game. If you lose a building that your challenge demands you win, and you no longer have any chance of getting it back, you have lost. (Exception: the help-in-need card "Cast" and the challenge card itself give you the option of placing lost buildings back in the middle.)
Solo Game
You can also play Quiztopia alone. Remove the help actions Insider Tip, Benefit Show, and Data Leak from the deck of help actions and put them back in the box. If you play with challenges, remove Film Studios and Hanseatic City from the deck and put them back in the box.
You naturally don't need tip cards for the solo game either. (Unless you want to give yourself tips. Best done in mime...)
Expert Game
In this variant you still play together, but you are not always allowed to discuss. It makes the game noticeably harder and slows down alpha players who would otherwise solve everything single-handedly.
Depending on the difficulty level, lay out two to four tip cards side by side. The active side (without an arrow) faces up.
| Difficulty | Normal | Hard | Madness | Hell, Hell, Hell |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tip cards | 4 | 3 | 2 | 2 |
As in the standard game you choose a category and have the matching question read to you, but you must answer alone!
Need help? If you have an active tip card, the others may flip it over to help you. This naturally only makes sense if they believe they know the answer themselves.
Tip Cards
When you flip an active tip card, everyone who is not currently taking their turn may either each give one word as a tip, or give hints through mime, humming, and sounds. You must decide as a group whether you want to give ONE-WORD TIPS together, or MIME TIPS (without words) together.
ONE-WORD TIPS:
Each person in the group may give exactly one word as a tip.
The word may not be part of the answer, a translation, a homophone, or a rhyme on the answer.
MIME TIPS (WITHOUT WORDS):
You may give tips through MIME, HUMMING, and SOUNDS. You may NOT depict letters or numbers through mime.
It is permitted to break the answer down into partial words and depict these one after another. You may indicate with your fingers how many partial words you have broken the answer into. And you may indicate with your fingers which partial word you are currently depicting. Several of you may also take part in the mime to any extent. You may point at objects or people in the room. Nodding and shaking your head is of course permitted. Those giving tips may coordinate by whispering.
If the ONE-WORD or MIME TIPS have not led to the right flash of insight, the others may use up and flip a further active tip card, in order to hold a PLENARY.
PLENARY:
When you hold a PLENARY — for this you have flipped two tip cards — everyone may discuss openly and agree together on an answer. Whoever is currently taking their turn decides if you cannot agree.
Should you have no active tip card, you may discard a question card from the card holder unused, in order to reactivate a used tip card and turn it face up again. You may do this multiple times as well.
But be careful: if you run out of question cards before you reach your goal, you have lost.
Reactivation of Tip Cards
Should you have answered correctly ALONE, you may, as a reward, flip a used tip card to reactivate it. If all tip cards are already active, this does not apply. (Yes, "alone" means without tips from the others.)
Now it is the turn of the person to your left, who chooses a building card, and you read the matching question aloud.
Important Rules That Are Often Forgotten
- If you answered correctly alone, you may reactivate a tip card.
- If you lose a building, you may draw a new help-in-need card.
- Every help-in-need card can only be used once and must then be put back in the box.
- You may discard question cards to reactivate tip cards.
- Used question cards are placed on a discard pile. Never put them back in the card holder.
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
- Immediately flip an active tip card if someone who is not taking their turn accidentally gives a tip. The others in the group may then, of course, also give a matching ONE-WORD TIP. If there is no active tip card left, one of the remaining question cards must immediately be discarded to reactivate a tip card, which must then be used immediately.
- If someone even blurts out the answer, you must flip two active tip cards. If you don't have enough active tip cards, you must discard a question card for each one missing.
- For a question asking for a name, giving the surname is enough. (Unless, of course, the first name was explicitly asked for.)
- Yes, you may count the remaining question cards to determine whether you can still win at all.
- No, whoever was allowed to look at the answer through a help-in-need card may not take part in a subsequent plenary discussion! But if someone else on your team arrived at the answer thanks to the tip, they may of course take part in the discussion.
- For answers with slashes, such as "Berlin/London/Paris," you do not have to name all of these answers, only the quantity asked for, e.g. two of three.
Campaign Rule
The campaign is a consecutive series of games in which you try to win the support of eleven different cities, in order to finally make all 12 buildings of the capital, QuizCity, colorful again. You will surely need several evenings for the campaign. You don't have to always play in the same group, but it's probably more fun that way.
The campaign is the ultimate Quiztopia challenge. Only take on the campaign once you are well acquainted with the normal game. The campaign card is printed on the last page of this rulebook. You can also find it to print out online.
Choose a team name and write it down. Decide on a difficulty level and write it down, and take the matching overview card. You can play through the campaign at all four difficulty levels. The victory conditions are sometimes made harder by challenges, and the setup is changed.
Win one city after another! Before each game you may choose which city you want to win over to your side. The cities are of varying difficulty through their associated challenges: pink = crunchy, orange = ooh, red = intense, dark red = crazy. You naturally cannot choose a second time a city you have already won.
Take the challenge cards belonging to the city (for example, with Fragfurt, that is the challenge card "High-Rises") and follow their instructions. If two challenge cards are listed for the city, you must follow both at the same time! (It is of course advisable not to start directly with the intense cities. But it isn't forbidden...)
At the start of the campaign you only have two tip cards and no help-in-need cards. You can earn these over the course of the campaign.
Support
When you win, mark the city on the map with a cross as won. This city also supports you for the rest of the campaign. Choose a support and mark it with a cross as well.
Tip cards that you receive as support are available to you at the start of every further city. From all the help-in-need cards you have won as support, you may choose one in subsequent games and place the rest as a face-down deck on the help-in-need card space on the overview card.
Donation
If you lose, you may not cross off the city, but you may at least cross off one of the coins. For every crossed-off coin, you get one more question card in subsequent games. You may repeat cities in which you lost as often as you like. (Even at a later point.)
The goal of the campaign is, in the end, to win all 12 buildings in the capital, QuizCity. For this you may use all the supports you have earned. All the help-in-need cards you have earned are also, exceptionally, already available to you at the start of the QuizCity round! Caution: You may only choose QuizCity once you have won all the other cities.