Video Game High School Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Object of the Game
• Components
  • Character Card
  • Power-Up Card
  • Challenge Card
  • Video Game Card
  • Tokens
  • Game Board
• Game Setup
• Round Order
  • Prepare Phase
  • Player Turns Phase
    • Placing on Video Game Cards
    • Placing on Grand Theft Auditorium
    • Placing on Kojima Quad
    • Placing on a Class
    • Playing Power-Up Cards
    • Gaining Skill Tokens
    • Spending Skills
    • Gaining Rank
  • Challenge Phase
• Winning the Game
• Card Text

Object of the Game

Each player will take on the role of a student or teacher at Video Game High School. Players go to classes and locations to sharpen their skills. They will use those skills to set high scores in various games and challenges, climbing the ranks until only one becomes the top ranked player at the school.

Components

• 1 - Rulebook
• 1 - Game Board
• 20 - Skill Dice
• 6 - Character Cards
• 6 - Character Rank Tokens
• 18 - Character Standees
• 12 - Standee Stands
• 15 - Power-Up Cards
• 10 - Challenge Cards
• 5 - Video Game Cards
• 5 - Score Track Cards
• 50 - Skill Tokens
• 20 - Bonus Point Tokens
• 5 - High Score Tokens
• 1 - First Player Token

Character Card

1. Name
2. Ability: This is a special game effect the player can make use of when playing with this character.

Power-Up Card

1. Name
2. Character: This shows which character the card belongs to.
3. Effect: This is the effect that triggers when the card is played.

Challenge Card

1. Name
2. Needed Skills: This shows which skills must be spent to defeat this challenge.
3. Victory: When a player defeats a challenge, he resolves this effect.
4. Game Over: When a player fails to go to Grand Theft Auditorium during a round he resolves this effect.

Video Game Card

1. Name
2. Skill Type: This shows which skill type must be spent to set a score on this video game.

Tokens

1. Skill Token: These are dual-sided. 1 side represents a permanent skill token that can be used round after round. The other side represents a temporary skill token that is a one-time use.
2. Character Rank Token: These are used to track a character's current rank on the rank track.
3. Bonus Point Token: These are used to track how many bonus points will be awarded for beating a high score on a video game.
4. High Score Token: These are used to track when a high score is set on a video game.

Game Board

1. Location: A space that players can place their character standees on to gain the listed effect. The effect is represented in both text and symbols.
2. Location Capacity: This shows how many characters can visit the location during a single round.
3. Activations: This shows how many times the location's effect can be performed when placing a standee there.
4. Rank Track: This is used to keep track of each character's rank.

Game Setup

To setup a game, do the following in order.

1. Place the game board in the center of the play area and set the 5 video game cards above the game board with a score track card under each of them.
2. Separate the skill tokens into piles by type.
3. Each player chooses a character, gathering 5 skill dice and that character's 3 standees, 3 power-up cards and 1 character card. Each player places his character cards face-up in front of him and places his 3 standees on top of his character card. Each player's power-up cards go into his hand.
4. Each player places the character rank token that matches his character on the 50 space of the rank track.
5. Make a pile of bonus point tokens.
6. Shuffle the challenge cards into a deck and place the deck on the Grand Theft Auditorium location.
7. Each player rolls 5 skill dice. Give the first player token to the player that rolls the most wild results (wild results count as wild).

Round Order

Video Game High School is played over a series of rounds. Each round is divided into 3 phases that must be resolved in order.

1. Prepare Phase
2. Player Turns Phase
3. Challenge Phase

Prepare Phase

1. Reveal Challenge The first player reveals the top card of the challenge deck (the deck located on Grand Theft Auditorium) and place it face-up on top of that deck. After the first player reveals the challenge, all players simultaneously resolve the remaining 3 effects in order. After resolving those 3 effects it becomes the player turns phase.
2. Roll Dice Each player rolls all 5 of her skill dice. Each player may reroll any or all of her skill dice, twice. Dice kept on the first reroll can be kept again or rerolled on the second reroll. Each player then places all of her dice, without changing their results, to the left of her character card. The left side of the character card will be referred to as the active pool.
3. Refresh Skill Tokens Each player moves all of the permanent skill tokens that are on the right side of her character card and places them in her active pool. The right side of the character card will be referred to as the inactive pool. Each player moves all of the temporary skill tokens in her inactive pool back to their supply.
4. Retrieve Standees Each player retrieves all of her standees that and places them on her character card.

Player Turns Phase

During the player turns phase each player will alternate taking turns starting with the player that has the first player token. On a player's turn he must place 1 of the standees that is on his character card onto a location on the board or onto a video game card. The player then resolves the effect listed on that location or sets a score on that video game. Once a player places a standee and resolves its effect, play passes to the player on his left. Play continues to pass clockwise around the table until all players have placed all 3 of their standees. Once all players have placed their standees it becomes the challenge phase.

There is a limit to the number of standees per location/video game. The location capacity for each video game is always 1. The location capacity for all other locations is listed next to the location capacity symbol on that location. Once a location is at its capacity, no other standees can be placed there.

Some locations allow a player to activate their effect more than once each time a standee is placed there. When placing a standee at a location a player may resolve its effect a number of times equal to that location's activations value which is listed next to the activations symbol on that location.

Example: Player 1 places 1 of his standees on the cafeteria. The effect of the cafeteria is: 'Change the face of a die.' Player 1 may change the facing on up to 3 of his dice because the cafeteria's activation value is 3, so he may resolve its effect up to 3 times.

Placing on Video Game Cards

When a player places 1 of his standees on a video game card, he must immediately set a score for that game by spending skills that match the skill type of that game. For each matching skill spent, that player scores 1 million points. The player gains 1 rank for every 1 million points scored. If the player's score is the highest that's been set for that video game (during this play through of Video Game High School) use the score track card behind that game to mark the new high score. When a new high score is set, that player removes any bonus point tokens that may be on that video game (returning them to the supply), and in addition to gaining 1 rank for every million points scored, he simultaneously gains 1 rank for each token removed. After setting a high score, place a high score token on that video game card to mark that a high score was set there this round.

Example: Video Game Cards

1. Player 1 places his standee on the Field of Fire video game card (which has 2 bonus point tokens on it).
2. He spends 4 skill tokens and 2 dice with the FPS symbol on them, setting a score of 6 million points.
3. This is enough to beat the previous high score set for this video game, so the new high score of 6 million points is marked using the score track card.
4. The 2 bonus point tokens are removed from Field of Fire, a high score token is placed there and Player 1 gains 8 rank.

Placing on Grand Theft Auditorium

When a player places 1 of his standees on Grand Theft Auditorium he may spend skills that match the needed skills on the current challenge card. If he does so he gains the victory effect listed on that challenge card.

Placing on Kojima Quad

When a player places 1 of his standees on Kojima Quad he may spend 1 die of any result to remove a power-up card of his choice from his inactive pool and place it back in his hand.

Placing on a Class

The 5 class locations allow players to gain either temporary skill tokens or permanent skill tokens. The tokens gained must match the type shown on that class location. Even though each class location can be activated 3 times when placing a standee there, all of the activations taken for that placement must either all be used to gain temporary skill tokens or must all be used to gain permanent skill tokens. A player cannot gain both permanent and temporary skill tokens when placing a standee on a class location. IMPORTANT: Only dice (not other skill tokens) can be spent to buy skill tokens at a class location.

Playing Power-Up Cards

Each player starts the game with 3 power-up cards in his hand. A player may choose to play 1 of these cards on his turn, triggering its effect. The played card is then placed face-up in his inactive pool. When a card with 1 or more skill symbols on it is played, that player is treated as if he just spent skills of that type.

Gaining Skill Tokens

Some locations and card effect allow players to gain skill tokens. When a player gains a skill token he adds it to his active pool. If the effect doesn't specify a type of skill token, then any type may be claimed.

Spending Skills

To spend a skill of a specific type, a player must move a die or a skill token showing that skill type from his active pool to his inactive pool. There are 6 different skill types. The wild skill type can be used in place of any of the other skill types.

Skill Types: FPS, Fighting, Racing, Rhythm, RTS, Wild.

Gaining Rank

When a player gains rank by setting a score on a video game or by another game effect, that player's character rank token is moved up on the rank track a number of spaces equal to the amount of rank gained. When moving a rank token to a new space, if there is already a rank token on that space, bump the rank token that is there down 1 space on the rank track. (This can cause a chain effect wherein the bumped rank token lands on another players rank token and bumps it down the track as well.) A rank token can never be moved lower than space 50. If multiple players gain or lose rank at the same time (usually from the effects of a challenge card's game over effect) the rank is gained or lost simultaneously. (This is important for determining if a rank token bumps another rank token down on the track.)

Challenge Phase

During the challenge phase resolve the following 2 effects in order. After resolving these 2 effects a new round begins starting with the prepare phase.

1. Resolve Challenge Each player that doesn't have a standee on Grand Theft Auditorium suffers the game over effect on the current challenge card. Then the current challenge card is removed from the game.
2. Add Bonus Points Add 1 bonus point token to each video game card that doesn't have a high score token on it, then remove all high score tokens from all video game cards.

Winning the Game

If a player reaches 1st rank the game is immediately over and that player wins. If a challenge card would need to be revealed and there are none left in the deck to reveal, the game immediately ends and the player with the highest rank (closest to space 1) wins.

Card Text

When a card effect contradicts the rulebook, the card effect takes precedence.