Cthulhu Game Rules: A Guide You Can’t Ignore

Hey there! Ready to dive into the mysterious world of Cthulhu? I’ve got some game rules for you that you absolutely need to know. Don’t worry, I’ll break it down nice and easy.

Game Setup

So, here’s the deal: you’re gonna need a deck of cards. Each card represents a role – either a cultist or an investigator. Shuffle those cards up real good and deal them out, facedown, to all players. Make sure to keep your role a secret!

Now, we’ve got two other kinds of cards in this game – the Elder Sign cards and the Cthulhu card. Remove those from the deck and set them aside. We’ll come back to those bad boys later.

Objective

Your goal in this game is to either find the Cthulhu card if you’re an investigator, or to hide it if you’re a cultist. Pretty straightforward, right?

Gameplay

Alright, time to get this party started. The game is played in rounds, and each round has three phases: drawing cards, taking actions, and resolving effects. Let me break it down for you:

Phase 1: Drawing Cards

During this phase, each player draws a card from the deck. If you draw an Elder Sign card, keep it secret. If you draw the Cthulhu card, you’re in trouble – keep it hidden, but don’t panic just yet. We’ll get to that in a bit.

Phase 2: Taking Actions

Now it’s time to put your thinking cap on. You can take one of two actions during your turn: peek at one of your cards or swap a card with another player. The goal is to gather information and figure out who’s on your side – or who’s trying to trick you.

Phase 3: Resolving Effects

Finally, it’s time to lay it all out on the table. This is where things get interesting. Each player, starting with the first player and going clockwise, announces whether they want to declare the end of the game or take one final turn.

If someone declares the end of the game, all players reveal their roles. If all investigators have found the Cthulhu card, they win! But if even one cultist has it, they win instead. It’s a race against time, my friend.

If nobody declares the end of the game, play continues to the next round. Keep drawing cards, taking actions, and resolving effects until someone makes a move.

Conclusion

Well, there you have it – the game rules for Don’t Mess with Cthulhu. Remember to keep your role a secret, gather information, and trust your gut. Will you find the Cthulhu card, or will it find you?

Welcome to the world of Don’t Mess with Cthulhu! It’s an exciting social deduction game where everyone has a secret identity. You’ll either be an Investigator, fighting to prevent Cthulhu from waking up and taking over the world, or a Cultist, working to bring about a horrifying end to everything.

The game is played in four rounds. As an Investigator, your goal is to uncover all the Elder Signs and win the game. The Cultists, on the other hand, can win by either revealing Cthulhu or ending the game before all the Elder Signs are discovered.

Now, here’s an important rule to remember: during the game, you can say absolutely anything you want (except discussing the art on your Character token), regardless of whether it’s true or not. Don’t Mess with Cthulhu is all about social interaction and using your wits, so pure logic alone won’t guarantee victory.

Getting Set Up

Before starting the game, use the chart below to determine the number of Investigator and Cultist tokens you’ll need:

Players
Investigators
Cultists
OMEGA AGENTS

Total	3	4	4
Per Player	1	2	2

Hiya! So, in this really cool game, we’re gonna get started by shuffling these handy-dandy Character tokens and giving one to each of us. But keep it super secret, okay? We don’t wanna spoil the surprise! Now, any extra tokens we have, we can just put them aside because we won’t be using them this time.

Before we jump in, we need to choose someone special to be the first player. So let’s do it randomly and give them the Active Player marker. Exciting, right? Now, we just need to know how many cards we’ll be using for our Investigation deck. We’ll use this handy chart:

Players456

Futile Investigation	15	19	23
Elder Sign	4	5	6
Cthulhu	1	1	1

Hey there! Let’s get to know how to play this exciting game. So, first things first, we need to set up our investigation cards. Each player will get five of them, and they have to keep them a secret. Shuffle the cards and deal them face down, alright?

Next, the starting player will take a look at their cards and tell everyone how many Elder Sign and Cthulhu cards they got. But, wait! They don’t have to tell the truth if they don’t want to. So, it’s up to each player to decide if they want to be honest or not. Tricky, huh?

Once everyone has seen their cards, shuffle them again and place them in front of you. It’s time to dive into the investigation!

Quick note: Each player will end up with five Investigation cards. You’ll know how many Futile Investigation, Elder Sign, and Cthulhu cards you have, but you won’t know which card is which. Mystery awaits!

When we play this game, it’s hard to know if other players are telling the truth or not. We can only trust what we see in front of us.

Here’s a tip for playing the game:

Don’t worry about telling the truth in this game. It’s actually better to lie sometimes. Both the Investigators and Cultists can lie – it’s part of the game and adds to the fun.

When it comes to keeping your identity hidden, it’s crucial to be mindful of the information you share, and even to, well, tell a fib or two.

You see, there are these cultists who are on a mission to uncover the whereabouts of Cthulhu, and if they manage to reveal just one card, well, they win! So, if you’re one of the investigators, you gotta be careful about giving away the fact that you’ve got Cthulhu.

On the flip side, the cultists need to proceed with caution when it comes to sharing too many details about the locations of the Elder Signs.

As I’ve played this game more and more, I’ve come to realize that there’s a whole bunch of other reasons why being a straight shooter isn’t always the best move for your team.

But hey, let’s not forget that sometimes being honest is actually the smartest strategy. It’s all about knowing when to tell a little white lie and when to spill the beans – that’s the secret to a successful investigation, my friend!

Let the Game Begin!

When you play the game, there are four rounds. Each round has as many actions as there are players in the game. For example, if there are five players, there will be five actions in each round.

What is an Action?

During an action, the player who has the Active Player marker chooses any Investigation card from another player. They put the Active Player marker on that card.

Everyone, including you, can give advice and try to influence the Active player’s decision. But in the end, it’s up to the Active Player to make the final choice.

The chosen card is then revealed and placed in the middle of the play area where everyone can see it. Before continuing, we check if the game is over (more on that later). Then, the player whose card was just revealed takes the Active Player marker and performs the next action.

Note: Once you reveal a card, it stays revealed and cannot be used again during the game.

Strategy Tip:

Remember, not everyone will get a turn in each round, and that’s okay. It’s not necessary for everyone to have the same number of turns. Just keep in mind that if Cultists take too many actions, Cthulhu will be revealed and the game will end right away.

The Round Comes to an End

The round is done when the number of actions matches the number of players in the game.

Note: At the end of each round, the revealed Investigation cards should equal the round number multiplied by the number of players.

For example, in a five-player game, the second round ends after revealing 10 Investigation cards.

Once the final action of the round is completed, the remaining Investigation cards are shuffled and evenly distributed among the players. They take a peek at their cards, give them a good shuffle, and place them in front of themselves secretly.

Each round, players have the option to declare (truthfully or not) which cards they possess.

Note: At the start of each round, we all have the same number of Investigation cards. It’s one less than what we had in the previous round.

You know how many Futile Investigation, Success, and Fail cards you have in front of you. But you don’t know which card is which.

In the next round, play continues with the Active player going first. We keep going like this until the game ends or we finish four rounds.

End of the Game

The game immediately ends if we reveal the Cthulhu card, if all the Elder Sign cards are revealed, or if we finish four rounds.

We, the Investigators, win if we reveal all of the Elder Sign cards.

Note: The number of Elder Sign cards in play always matches the number of players.

I want to talk about a really cool game called Cthulhu. It’s a game where you get to play as either a Cultist or an Investigator. The goal of the Cultists is to reveal Cthulhu, while the Investigators are trying to find all the Elder Signs before time runs out.

Now, here’s something important to keep in mind: The Cultists win if Cthulhu is revealed. They can also win if the Investigators can’t find all the Elder Signs in time, which happens after four rounds.

But wait, there’s a twist! The game always ends before all the Investigation cards are revealed. So you have to be quick and smart to win!

Example Round: I’m currently in the third round of a four-player game. So far, each player has placed three cards in front of them. We’ve already uncovered eight cards in total – three Elder Signs and five Futile Investigations.

Hi there! Let me tell you a story about a game called Cultist. We have three players: Mary, Peyton, and Thomas. Mary is the active player, and she has two face-down cards in front of her. One of them is the Cthulhu card, and the other is a Futile Investigation card. However, Mary doesn’t know which card is which.

Intriguingly, Mary confidently declares, “I have the Elder Sign!” Peyton, on the other hand, actually has the Elder Sign and exposes Mary’s falsehood, saying, “Mary, you are clearly a Cultist because I truly have the Elder Sign.” Interestingly, Thomas believes Mary’s claim and is convinced of her honesty.

1. Action 1 – Mary decides to investigate one of Thomas’ cards and uncovers a Futile Investigation card. As a result, Thomas becomes the active player and will take the next action.
2. Action 2 – Thomas, fully trusting Mary’s claim about the Elder Sign, chooses to investigate one of Mary’s cards. He reveals a Futile Investigation card. Interestingly, if he had revealed the Cthulhu card, Mary would have won. Now, Mary becomes the active player again.

3. I’m going to take Action 1, which means I’ll be the first to investigate someone. I choose to investigate Mary, so I flip over a Futile Investigation card. Now it’s Mary’s turn to take action.

4. Mary decides to investigate Emily for her action, so she flips over another Futile Investigation card. Emily is now the active player.

5. Now it’s my turn again for Action 3. I want Thomas to be the next to act, so I investigate him and flip over another Futile Investigation card. Now Thomas is the active player.

6. For Action 4, Thomas becomes suspicious of Mary’s claims and investigates Peyton. He flips over another Futile Investigation card. If the fourth Elder Sign was flipped, they would have won the game. Now Peyton is the active player.

After four actions, which is equal to the number of players, the round is over. In total, twelve cards have been revealed. Peyton takes all the remaining face-down cards from each player, shuffles them, and gives two cards to each player.

So here’s how it goes: we start by looking at the cards we got. If we want to, we can make some declarations about them. Then, we shuffle our cards and put them face-down in front of us. The trick is, we can’t peek and see which card is which. It’s a mystery until we flip them over.

Now we’re at the fourth and final round. This is where Peyton gets to make the first move. Exciting, right?

I’ve Got Some Rules For You, If You’re Into It

If you really want to get into it, I suggest playing Don’t Mess with Cthulhu multiple times in one go. After each game, everyone on the losing team gets an Insanity token. It’s a little reminder that things can get crazy in this game.

Now, here’s the kicker. When a player collects three Insanity tokens, that’s when the session is officially over. And get this: the player or players with the fewest Insanity tokens actually wins. It’s wild, I know.

Got Some Options for Three Players, Too

Hey there! Did you know that you can enjoy a game with just three players? It’s true! Let me break it down for you. The rules stay the same, but there are a few changes in the Set Up. Instead of the usual number of Investigators and Cultist tokens, you’ll now have 3 Investigators and 2 Cultist tokens. And the Investigation deck will consist of 11 Futile Investigation cards, 3 Elder Sign cards, and 1 Cthulhu card.

Quick note: It’s possible that all the players end up being Investigators. In that case, if the Cultist win conditions are met, everybody loses. So, keep that in mind!