Kyoto Protocol
Kyoto Protocol Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Components
117 cards:
- 30 Coal
- 25 Oil
- 20 Gas
- 15 Uranium
- 20 Wood
- 7 player aids
60 Penalty counters (double-sided: a pollution side and a production-deficit side).
Set up
Every player takes a player aid card, which describes production requirements and penalties for each round. Shuffle all resource cards together, then divide them into three decks of approximately same size: 1 deck for each round of the game. The number of cards in each deck need not be exact.
Place the deck for Round 1 in the middle of the table and draw 3 cards into a row face up next to the deck. This is the Offer. Each player should have some space for their cards in front of them as a playing area.
Goal of the game
There are five different resource types: Coal, Oil, Gas, Wood and Uranium.
Players draw these resources into their hand, and at times play sets of cards onto their playing area. Cards which are face up in a player's playing area depict his energy production; every card counts as one unit of production.
Every round the players have a production goal. If a player cannot meet that goal, he is given fines: penalty counters, which are negative Victory Points at the end of the game. On rounds 2 and 3, the players who use a resource type the most, are also given pollution fines - more penalty counters.
Every card you place in your playing area is a Victory Point. At the end of the game, the winner is the player who has best succeeded in producing energy and avoiding fines.
Game play
The game is played in three rounds and each round consists of the following steps:
- Player actions
- Distributing fines
- End of rounds
Player actions
The player, who has most recently used an electrical device, begins the game. Players take turns clockwise around the table. On his turn, a player must do one of three possible actions:
a) Acquire resources b) Add production c) Cleanse company image
a) Acquire resources
Draw ONE card into your hand. You can choose a card from the Offer, or draw the top card from the draw deck. If you took a card from the Offer, refill it back to three cards at the end of your turn. There is no limit to the number of cards you can have in your hand.
NOTICE: If all the cards in the offer are of the same resource type, you cannot choose to draw from the draw deck.
NOTICE: You are always allowed to count the number of cards in the draw deck (without looking at the faces of those cards).
b) Add production
Play from your hand as many cards as you like of a resource type onto your playing area. Place cards of the same type in a column so that their type and number is easily seen.
ADVICE: Often it's better to acquire many cards of a resource type, so that you can play several at once. Playing cards onto your playing area one or two per turn is cumbersome and takes away turns that you could be using to acquire more resources!
Example: Jenny's hand: 3 Coal, 2 Oil. Jenny has plenty of resource cards in her hand, and only 3 Oil cards in her playing area. The offer has only Gas cards, and acquiring them is not part of Jenny's plans. She opts to play cards instead of drawing them. She can now choose any resource type from her hand: Coal or Oil, and play any number of that type into her playing area. She wants to keep collecting more Coal before playing them, so now she just plays 2 Oil cards, adding them into the column of Oil already in her playing area.
c) Cleanse company image
Flip 1-2 cards in your playing area face down. The flipped cards can be of the same or different resource types. Resources that are face down are not included in a player's production, but they do not count towards pollution either. (see Distributing fines) Even face down cards give you points at the game end, however!
You are not allowed to flip face down cards back face up.
Example: Jenny's playing area: 5 Oil, 2 Uranium. Jenny is worried about penalty points, because from all the players she's using the most Oil (between all the players, she has the most face up Oil cards in her playing area). She proceeds to flip 2 of her Oil cards face down. The turn then passes to the player to her left.
Players keep taking turns until the draw deck of the current round is depleted: the last card in the draw deck is placed in the Offer, or drawn into a player's hand. After this, each player has one more turn, including the player on whose turn the last card was drawn.
In your last turn you can still draw cards from the offer, but because there is no draw deck, you cannot draw from there. For the same reason the offer is not refilled between turns.
Because it's important to know approximately how many turns you have left in a round, you can always count the number of cards in the draw deck. After everybody has had one last turn in the round, it is time to distribute fines.
Distributing fines
(Player aid card: shows the Production goals and Pollution fines tables below.)
Production fines: Round 1, 2 & 3
| Player | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Round 1 | 8 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 |
| Round 2 | 16 | 12 | 10 | 8 | 7 |
| Round 3 | 24 | 18 | 15 | 12 | 10 |
Every player counts the number of cards they have face up in their playing area. This is their energy production. Every player checks if they reached the production goal of this round, which depends on the number of players.
NOTICE: Face down cards are not included in a player's production! Cleansing the company image requires money and personnel, which lowers productivity.
If your energy production is equal to or greater than the goal, you are not fined. If your energy production is less than the goal, you receive a penalty counter for each missing unit of energy.
Example. If the goal is 12 units, and a player has only 10 cards face up in his playing area, they are missing 2 units of energy. They proceed to take 2 penalty counters.
Pollution fines: Rounds 2 & 3
| Coal | Oil | Gas | Wood | Uranium | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Round 1 | - | - | - | - | - |
| Round 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| Round 3 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 |
In addition to production fines, players are given pollution fines on Rounds 2 & 3. Pollution fines vary from resource to resource and from Round to Round, but they are the same with any number of players. These fines are given to players who use a resource type the most.
Go through pollution fines in order: Coal, Oil, Gas, Wood and finally Uranium. First see who has the most face up Coal cards in his playing area. This player takes the pollution fines for Coal on the current round: you can check the number of penalty counters given from the table above or from the player aid cards.
Example: If it is the end of Round 2, the player(s) with most face up Coal cards in his playing area must take 2 penalty counters. If it is the end of Round 3, the player(s) with most face up Coal cards must take 4 penalty counters.
Do the same for all the resource types: check who has the most Oil cards, distribute fines etc.
If two or more players tie for the number of face up cards of a type, all of those players must take the full penalty for that resource.
If none of the players have any face up cards of a certain type, no one gets fined for that resource.
NOTICE: Face down cards are not counted, when you check who has the most of a resource type! Cleaning your image takes time and lessens your production, but your company can dodge pretty heavy fines.
NOTICE: Whether your penalty counters come from pollution or production deficit makes no difference in the basic game: they all give the same -1 Victory Point. The double-sidedness functions as additional information to the player: By observing where your penalties come from, you can try different tactics!
Example: It's a 3-player game, end of Round 2. Jenny and John meet the production goal for the round (16), but Tim is lacking 2 energy. Tim takes 2 penalty counters.
Jenny has the most Oil so she takes 2 penalty counters. She also has the most Coal, so she gets additional 2 counters.
John dodged the Oil penalty by turning one of his Oils face down during the round. He still has the most Uranium (1 counter).
Tim has the most Wood and Gas. So he takes 2 + 1 counters.
End of round
After distributing fines, remove the cards in the Offer from the game. Place the draw deck for the next Round in the middle of the table and draw 3 cards into the Offer, like in the set up.
Cards in players' hands and playing areas stay where they are: they can keep building their sets in the next Round.
On the new Round, turns continue normally: the beginner is the player sitting clockwise to the last player who took a turn. Now the players have a new production goal for the Round and new resources to acquire!
Game end
The game ends after Round 3, after all production & pollution fines are distributed. Cards in players' hands are discarded and every player counts his Victory Points:
- Every player receives 1 VP for each resource card in their playing area (both face down and face up cards give a VP)
- Every player loses 1 VP for each penalty counter they have
The player with the most Victory Points is the winner. If several players tie for points, the winner is the tied player who was the last to get their first turn.
Example: John has 19 Victory Points (24 cards in his playing area - 5 penalty counters).
Game variants
Two-player game
The game plays out very much the same as with several people, but the number of available cards is halved. In the game set up, remove half of the resource cards randomly from the game (55 cards). Then, divide the rest of the cards into the three Round decks of the same approximate size as per usual. Use the same Production Goals as a four-player game:
- Round 1: 6
- Round 2: 12
- Round 3: 18
Pollution Fines remain the same.
The Kyoto Protocol
The name of the game comes from an international treaty which aims to lessen the impact of industrialism on our atmosphere.
The basis for the protocol stems from the mind-set that human activities are responsible for the observable increase in global temperatures.
First signed in 1997, the treaty continues to diminish green-house gases around the world.