Fireflies Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
  • Some Notes on Certain Elements...
• Setting Up a Chapter
  • Chapter Starting Pages
• Core Concepts
  • Exploration and Fireflies
  • Communication Between Players
  • The Shared Reserve
  • The Darkness
  • Removing a Game Item
• Gameplay
  • 1. Place a Firefly
  • 2. Replay a Scene
  • 3. Give Priority
• End of a Chapter
  • Additional Rules
• Index

Components

• 2 Boards
• 2 Character booklets
• 1 Bag
• 1 Adventure booklet
• 1 Plastic base
• 1 Deck of 99 Adventure cards
• 5 Darkness cards
• 16 Map cards
• 14 Flag/Hint tokens
• 55 Firefly tokens (15 white, 12 blue, 8 yellow, 8 red, and 12 green)
• 90 Obstacle tokens (14 white, 46 brown, 8 purple, and 22 green)
• 8 Spider markers
• 2 Familiar markers
• 2 Character tokens
• 6 Region tokens

Some Notes on Certain Elements...

The Maps These show what's on your partner's board in each Chapter. This is how you'll know where to guide your partner.

The Firefly Tokens These represent your movements on your board. Every time you place a firefly on a new space, your partner tells you what's there, after referring to the map. You start the adventure with fireflies in two colors: white and green. At first, there's no difference between them.

The Character Booklets These booklets contain the scenes the characters will live through. Each number shown on a map corresponds to a scene in the booklet of the same color. You and your partner each have your own booklet, corresponding to your character.

The Adventure Deck The cards in this deck are the objects and events you will encounter during your adventure. Never look at these cards unless you are asked to. The different backs indicate to which type a card belongs.

Setting Up a Chapter

The following setup is the same for every game. When new mechanisms are introduced, they will be explained in the introduction to each Chapter.

Sit facing your partner. Decide who will play as Nori and who will play as Tan.

Nori places the green board in front of her with the arrow pointing toward her partner, she takes the green Character booklet and places it next to her board without opening it. Tan does the same with the orange board and the orange Character booklet. You may keep the same character throughout the adventure or, alternatively, decide at the start of each game who will play which character.

Place the Obstacles used in this Chapter, the Adventure deck and the remaining Darkness cards next to the play area, along with the Clues, all within reach.

Take the Map in your partner's color for the Chapter you are about to play.

Important: You must take the Map of your partner's colour, and not yours!

Insert the Maps, back to back, into the plastic base, making sure that no one can see the Map corresponding to their own board.

Place your partner's Character on their board, at the location indicated on the Map of their color.

Take the starting fireflies indicated on the page of the Chapter you are about to play from the bag. Place these fireflies in the center of the table, in the shared reserve.

Open the Adventure booklet (the one you're currently reading) to the page of the Chapter you want to play and leave it open on that page throughout the game. The introductory pages for each Chapter are indicated on the right-hand page.

Decide with your partner who will start the game, and embark on the adventure. If this is your first game, read the rules on the following pages first. Otherwise, go directly to the page of the scenario you are going to play.

Chapter Starting Pages

(As printed in the physical booklet's page index — Chapter 1: page 24, Chapter 2: page 26, Chapter 3: page 28, Chapter 4: page 34, Chapter 5: page 36, Chapter 6: page 38, Chapter 7: page 42, Chapter 8: page 44. The Chapter pages themselves are intentionally withheld from this public booklet to avoid spoilers — see the source note above.)

Core Concepts

Exploration and Fireflies

In each Chapter, you and your partner will each explore the area shown on your board. At the start of the game, you won't know what it contains. Placing fireflies on your board allows you to explore it.

Your partner then tells you what is on the space you just played, referring to the map they have in front of them.

To make it easier to read your partner's map, coordinates are marked on the boards:

• 6 colors (columns)
• 6 symbols (rows)

These coordinates will allow you to quickly compare your partner's Map with their board, and they are also sometimes used in the Character booklets during the adventure.

Communication Between Players

In Fireflies, communication between the two players is restricted. You are not allowed to discuss positions—either vague or specific—or directions to follow. You may only use the means provided by the game to guide your partner. However, you may discuss the icons you see on each map (but not their locations) in order to develop your strategies. You're also allowed to discuss which fireflies you'd want to use and which you'd like to leave available for your partner. You can describe the scenes in your booklet as you see them, and even show them to your partner. Finally, you're allowed to take notes and share them with your partner if you like.

The Shared Reserve

Whenever you or your partner obtain an item during a Chapter, place it in the shared reserve. This can include Firefly tokens, cards, or any other component. Any items in this area may be freely used by you or your partner during the game.

At the end of a chapter, place all items still in the shared reserve (except for the Fireflies) into the corresponding compartment. At the start of the next Chapter, take them all out and return them to the shared reserve.

The Darkness

The Darkness that engulfs the Vastwood is represented by a deck of 5 Darkness cards. Your actions and certain events will require you to move cards from this deck to the shared reserve. If, at any point during the game, all 5 cards are in the shared reserve, the Darkness overwhelms your characters (the Darkness Advances...). You will then have to face the consequences.

Fortunately, as you progress through the Chapters, you will sometimes have the opportunity to cure this insidious evil by returning Darkness cards from the shared reserve back to their deck. This is all the more important because at the end of Acts 1 and 2, you will be rewarded if there are no Darkness cards in the shared reserve.

Removing a Game Item

Throughout your adventure, you'll often need to remove items from the game—either to use their effects or because you've lost them for one reason or another. When the game asks you to remove an item, place it in the corresponding compartment in the box. You won't be able to use it again until the end of your adventure.

An icon in the booklet indicates that you must remove an item from the game, usually in order to use its effect.

Gameplay

You and your partner will take turns until you complete the Chapter's objective or fail in your adventure, overwhelmed by the Darkness. At the end of a Chapter, you can move directly to the next one or take a break before returning later to continue the adventure.

On your turn, choose one of these three options:

1. Place a Firefly
2. Replay a scene
3. Give priority

1. Place a Firefly

Take a Firefly token of your choice from the shared reserve and place it on an empty space on your board. The space must be orthogonally adjacent to your character or to a Firefly already in play. Additionally, you may not place a Firefly on the opposite side of an obstacle.

Your partner then places any obstacles that are located around the space you just explored.

Example: On his turn, Joachim decides to play a green Firefly. He can place it on one of the 8 spaces marked as available, in order to continue his exploration.

The space where you place your Firefly may have one of two types of events: Firefly Nests and Scenes, which your partner will then tell you about.

Firefly Nests Firefly Nests give you new Fireflies. Draw as many Fireflies from the bag as indicated and place them in the shared reserve.

Scenes Scenes are easily recognizable because they consist of a number and an icon. Your partner tells you the number, and then you read the corresponding scene in your Character booklet. Pay close attention to the information revealed in the Scenes; it's often crucial to the story. You're free to show your partner the Scene you're reading in order to share the information in it.

At the end of a Scene, you'll need to make decisions or deal with the consequences of your actions. In addition to specific instructions, here are some icons you might find:

• A flag icon tells you to place a Flag token on the Firefly that brought you to this scene. It allows you to come back later in the game (see Replay a Scene, below).
• A darkness icon indicates that you have been touched by the Darkness. For each icon shown, place 1 Darkness card from the deck into the shared reserve.
• A healing icon allows you to heal some of your Darkness. For each icon, remove a Darkness card from the shared reserve and place it back in its deck.
• A numbered card icon tells you to take the corresponding card from the deck (24, for example). Place it face up in the shared reserve: it is immediately available to you and your partner. These cards are also items that you find, as well as key characters or events in the adventure.

Firefly Effects After resolving any event on the space you landed on, you can use the ability of the Firefly you played, if it has one. This is never mandatory.

At the start of the adventure, you don't yet know your Fireflies' abilities. You're apprentice tamers, though, so you'll figure them out quickly.

Short of Fireflies? If, at any time during the game, you need to use a Firefly token and there are none available, add a Darkness card to the shared reserve. In return, take 4 Fireflies of your choice from the bag and place them in the shared reserve. They are available immediately.

Note: You cannot choose to take a Darkness card to draw Firefly tokens if there are Fireflies left in the shared reserve.

2. Replay a Scene

Go back to a scene you've already seen, identified by a Flag token on your board. Ask your partner to tell you the number on their Map, and read the corresponding scene again. You can play it again as if you were seeing it for the first time. This allows you to make a decision you had put off until now, because you didn't want to (or couldn't) make it when you first played the scene.

You cannot replay a scene if the corresponding space doesn't have a Flag token. However, you can always re-read a Scene you've already played through to look again at information you might have missed. Re-reading a Scene does not count as a turn.

3. Give Priority

Pass your turn to let your partner immediately take their turn instead of you. When they finish that turn, the game resumes as normal, and it's your turn to play.

There's no limit to the number of times you can give your partner priority during a game. It is always your decision to give priority; your partner can never choose to play twice in a row without your consent.

When you give your partner priority, they may, in response, give it back to you: you can then no longer give it to them again during that turn.

End of a Chapter

The game ends when you or your partner achieves the objective set at the beginning of the Chapter. After following the instructions in the "End of Game" section at the bottom of the page for the Chapter you just played, put the game components back in the box as shown below.

• Put all the Fireflies back in the bag; the ones you had at the start of the Chapter, as well as the ones you collected during the game.
• If you had to remove items from the game as you played, place them in their compartment.
• Put all the cards from the shared reserve into the corresponding compartment.
• Put the Adventure card deck into its compartment, face down.
• Finally, store the rest of the game components in the large compartment: the bag of Fireflies, the obstacles, the Darkness deck, all tokens and markers, as well as the Chapter Maps.

Additional Rules

You now know the basic rules of Fireflies. More will be added as you progress through your adventure. The index on the right-hand page lists them all, in case you need to refer to them again. If, at any point in the game, you see an icon that hasn't been explained yet, it means you don't need it just yet. You'll learn its purpose in due time.

And now, it's time to start your adventure! Go to page 24 and help Nori and Tan save the Heart Tree.

Index

The following list contains all the additional rules you might discover during your adventure, listed in alphabetical order. You'll find these rules in this booklet, except for those regarding the blue, yellow, and red Fireflies, which can be found in the Tan and Kuro Character booklets (as indicated below).

To avoid spoiling the fun of discovery, don't look up these rules right away. Wait until the game presents them to you.

• Spiders — page 23
• Keys and Padlocks — page 19
• Essences — page 22
• Familiars — page 21
• Magnifying Glasses — page 19
• Blue Fireflies — scene 40
• Yellow Fireflies — scene 75
• Red Fireflies — scene 7
• Green (Dance) Fireflies — page 18
• Birds — page 18
• Improved Nests — page 20
• Spider Webs — page 20

This version of the Adventure booklet is intended solely for familiarizing yourself with the basic rules, so the following pages (with additional rules and chapter details) have been left out.