Colossal Cave: The Board Game
Colossal Cave: The Board Game Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Components
- 1 game board
- 72 Cards (28 red Action, 13 green Item, 16 purple Reaction, 15 yellow Treasure)
- 1 light disc
- 4 wooden player tokens
Setup
Shuffle the cards and deal three cards to each player as a starting hand. Put the rest of the cards face down in a draw pile. Leave some space nearby for the discards.
Whenever you need to draw a card and the draw pile is empty, reshuffle the discards to create a new draw pile.
Also leave some space in front of each player. As you collect items and treasures inside the cave, you'll be playing them face-up in front of you. This is your inventory, or carried items.
Place the board in the middle of the table, where everyone can see the names of the rooms and the connections between them. Each player chooses a player token and places it in the Well House to start.
The Well House is an important location because you'll need to return there to drop off your treasures as you collect them. A treasure in the Well House is safe from the predations of your fellow adventurers. (That's because the Well House, in addition to housing a small spring of water, also houses four giant steel safes - enough for each of you to store your treasures safely.) See Depositing Treasures for more information.
The player who has most recently played a text adventure goes first.
Quick play variant: Separate out the treasure cards and add a random treasure to each player's starting hand before shuffling the rest of the treasures back into the draw pile.
On Your Turn
Each player's turn consists of the following actions, in this order:
- Draw one
- Move one
- Play one - choose one: play an action or item; draw another card; move another space; or deposit a treasure
- Discard down to seven
Draw one - Draw a card from the draw pile and add it to your hand.
Move one - You may move your player token from your current room to an adjacent room, following the connections on the map; or you can just stay where you are.
Play one - You may play a card from your hand. However, if you'd rather not play a card, you may instead draw an extra card, or move an extra space on the map, or (in the Well House) deposit a treasure, or do nothing at all. In fact, whenever you have to "play a(nother) card," you may do any one of these things.
Discard down to seven - If you still have more than seven cards in your hand at the end of your turn, you must discard until you have only seven. Even if your turn ends prematurely, for example due to being Lost in the Maze, you must still discard down to seven cards before the next player takes his turn.
The Cards
Cards in Colossal Cave come in four types: Item, Treasure, Action, and Reaction.
Item cards represent items you've collected while exploring the cave. To play an item card, you must be in the location associated with that item. For example, the Black Rod item card can't be played anywhere except in the Cobble Crawl. To play the card, place it face up in front of you. You are now carrying that item.
During play, you may notice that the Friendly Bear is "Playable: Nowhere." This item can't be played in the normal way, but can be played or acquired by other means. Read on.
Some items have side effects, which are explained by the text on the item card itself. For instance, the Black Rod scares the Little Bird. These effects apply only when the item is being carried, not when it's in your hand. Make sure to read all the effects of each of your items!
Treasure cards are just like item cards - in fact, all treasures are by definition also items.
Action cards represent something special you can do on your turn. To play one of these cards, show it and do what it says, then put it in the discard pile.
Reaction cards are cards that may be played when it's not your turn. Every reaction card's text starts with the same phrase: "Play out of turn when..." You can use a reaction card to interrupt another player's turn; for example, when Alice tries to move from the Well House to the Cobble Crawl, Bob might inform her that The Grate Is Locked!
In some instances, you may also play a reaction card even when it is your turn. For example, as you move from Bedquilt to the Volcano View, you might play Stop! Pay Troll! on yourself, just to get the Friendly Bear out of your hand. This is perfectly fine. Playing a reaction card never uses up your "play one" action for the turn.
"Defends Against"
Some item cards end with the text "Defends against..." For example, the Friendly Bear defends against Stop! Pay Troll! This means two things. First of all, if you have the Friendly Bear in your inventory, then you are immune to the effects of Stop! Pay Troll! (The bear scares away the troll, you see.) But secondly, and more importantly, if somebody directs Stop! Pay Troll! at you while the Friendly Bear is in your hand, then you can immediately reveal the Friendly Bear, put it in front of you, and invoke its protective ability. (The troll is if anything even more scared of the bear when it takes him by surprise.)
Revealing an item card this way does not count as "playing" the card, so you can ignore the item's "Playable in:" text, and the revealed card cannot be canceled by I Don't Know How to Do That or Dwarvish Magazines.
Acquiring
Some cards tell you to "acquire" an item. This means to find it, no matter where it is in the game, and put it in front of you. Check for the card in this order:
- Your own hand.
- Player inventories.
- The discard pile.
- Other players' hands (in whatever order you choose). Don't actually look at their hands; just ask who's got the card.
- The draw pile. After you look through the draw pile, shuffle it again so you don't know what's coming up.
You do not check the treasures that have already been deposited in the Well House (except in the very specific case of Fee, Fie, Foe, Foo!).
Acquiring an item does not count as "playing" that item.
Darkness
There is light to see by in the Well House, and also in the Cobble Crawl (where a dim light filters in through the grate above). However, the rest of the cave is in darkness by default. If you are carrying the Brass Lantern, then your room of the cave is lit, i.e., not in darkness. This applies to every player in the room with you.
You can set the light disk under your player token to indicate that you're carrying the lantern.
Death and Resurrection
Some cards say that a player "Dies." Don't worry, death in Colossal Cave isn't very permanent. When you Die, do the following things:
- Remove your player token from the board.
- Discard your whole hand.
- Discard your carried treasures.
Do not discard your carried non-treasure items, and also do not discard the face-down treasures you've already deposited in the Well House.
Until your next turn, you are Dead. Although you are not in any room and your hand is empty, you are still in the game. In particular, you can still be affected by Steal a Keeper.
At the start of your next turn, you emerge coughing and gasping from a cloud of orange smoke to find yourself... back in the Well House! Place your player token in the Well House and draw a new hand of three cards. (You'll "draw one" at the start of your turn, too, so that'll be four cards total.)
Depositing Treasures
If you are in the Well House, and you are carrying a treasure - that is, if you have a treasure face-up in front of you - then when it is time for you to "play a card" you may instead deposit that treasure. To deposit the treasure, simply turn it face-down.
This does not count as "playing" the treasure card - it has already been played - so you can't use I Don't Know How to Do That to keep someone from depositing a treasure.
Remember that depositing a treasure takes up your "play one" action for the turn. If you have two treasures in your inventory, it will usually take you two turns to deposit them both.
Quick play variant: After you deposit a treasure, draw and reveal cards from the draw pile until you reveal a new treasure card. Put that card into your hand, and discard the rest.
Winning the Game
The first player to deposit three treasures in the Well House wins the game!
FAQ
Can I carry two treasures at once? Can two players occupy the same room at once? Are treasures items? Does moving from B to A count as moving "between" A and B? Can I Steal a Keeper from a player who is currently Dead? Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes, respectively.
If Alice tries to steal my Dwarvish Magazines, can I discard the Magazines to cancel her Steal a Keeper card? No. But you can still tell her I Don't Know How to Do That.
Alice is discarding the Friendly Bear to acquire the Golden Chain. Can I use I Don't Know How to Do That to stop her? No. I Don't Know How to Do That can only cancel the playing of a card, and merely using the effects of a card you've already played is not the same thing as playing the card to begin with.
I want to play this treasure in my hand, but I'm already in the right room! Can I "play one" and then "move one" after I've played it? No. Moving is optional, but it still has to be done before your "play one."
Does using a Magic Word to "warp" from place to place count as "moving," for the purposes of reaction cards? No. The verb "move" refers only to moving along the passages marked on the board.
Can I use Let's Do That Again to take an item from the discard pile? Yes, but you can't "play it immediately" unless it is, in fact, playable in your current location.
Alice and I are both in the Plover Room, and I have a Brass Lantern in my hand. If Bob plays Bottomless Pit on Alice, may I reveal my Brass Lantern to defend her? No. You may defend against a card only if you are its intended target.
Who is Don Woods? Don Woods is one of the co-creators of the original Colossal Cave Adventure. While working at the Stanford AI Lab in 1976, Don Woods came across Will Crowther's game Adventure and (with Crowther's permission) proceeded to enlarge the cave by a factor of three and stock it with fantasy creatures and magic incantations. The bellowing beanstalk, the troll bridge, the fierce dragon sprawled out on a Persian rug - all these were among Woods' contributions. So it's only natural to consider that, if Don Woods Never Existed, neither would any of the treasures that he added to the game.
This game feels a lot like (Fluxx/Chrononauts/Back to the Future). Yes, it does. That was actually one of the design goals, and it's also the only reason that Dwarvish Magazines works the way it does in the answer to the first question in the FAQ: Because that's how the "memo" items in Back to the Future work, and it would have been confusing to do it differently in Colossal Cave.
Can we play with 5 or 6 players? Yes, but I wouldn't recommend it. There are only 15 treasures in the game; the more players you have, the quicker the "easy" treasures will get soaked up and the harder it will be for anybody to collect three of them.