Kill Doctor Lucky Variants

Here's a very lengthy collection of the best variations for Kill Doctor Lucky that have trickled into Cheapass Games over the years, starting with our favorite: Kill Doctor Lucky and his Dog.

And check out these photos by Matt Crawford of his Life-Sized Kill Doctor Lucky games where he used a durable canvas for the floor plan.

Kill Doctor Lucky And His Dog!

From: Michelle Elbert, m_elbert@yahoo.com

Inspired by the warped minds of Bill Maxwell and Jams "Diego" Pinkerton.

Dr. Lucky's dog is very loyal to Dr. Lucky. (Unfortunately for him, Dr. Lucky is not quite as loyal to the dog.) He will follow Dr. Lucky around the house taking the shortest rout to his master. Whereas Dr. Lucky warps from numbered room to numbered room, his dog can only move one space at a time.

The dog counts as a witness so you can't kill Dr. Lucky if the dog is watching. You can, however kill the dog if the only one who can see you is Dr. Lucky. BUT, if you're the one with the dog's blood on you, and you later try to kill Dr. Lucky and FAIL, Dr. Lucky will try to avenge his dog and himself by trying to kill you before fleeing to the next room.

Dr. Lucky gets the top card of the deck to see if he has a weapon to attack you with. (It is his house after all.) If Dr. Lucky succeeds in his attack, you must discard your hand. (Unless you're playing that you can kill other players, in which case Dr. Lucky should be able to get in on the fun.)

Option: If the dog is in the Gallery and can see Dr. Lucky from there, he will just stand there and bark (not moving to another room at the turn) until Dr. Lucky moves out of sight.

Option: If and when the dog is killed, tip it on its side and leave it there, have moments of silence for the dog whenever anybody enters the room.

I know what I'm giving as belated X-mass gifts this year!

-Michelle

Dr. Lucky Gets Suspicious

From: Kelly D. Affannato, affannat@sas.upenn.edu

Hi;

I recently devised a cute new variant to Kill Dr. Lucky that I call "Dr. Lucky Gets Suspicious". The idea is this: after someone has tried to choke you, stab you and cream you to death several times in rapid succession, you're going to start getting the feeling you're not wanted, even if you are as oblivious as Herr Doktor.

To play, follow the standard rules for the game, moving and making murder attempts as you will. Here's the twist: with every third unsuccessful attempt, Dr. Lucky gets more and more suspicious of foul play, and begins to take measures to protect himself. Players can decide on their own levels of suspicion, but here's what I've worked out:

After attempt #3, Dr. Lucky gets the feeling he's being followed, so he moving backwards through his mansion in order to shake the follower.

After attempt #6, Dr. Lucky is really beginning to get spooked and thus begins to move forward through two rooms at a time (e.g. instead of moving from #2 to #3, he would RUn from #2 to #4).

After attempt #9, Dr. Lucky is glad to still be around, and he begins to get defensive. He is certainly not going to let anyone get close enough to kill him without a weapon, and he is going to make it hard for weaker weapons to get at him. Thus, the Doctor gets a defensive point (kind of like and automatic F-1 card) against any attempt on his life.

After attempt #12, the Doctor is getting REALLY edgy - 2 defense points.

And so on, with the Doctor gaining another defense point per three attempts on his life. While the failure cards may run out by the time the Doctor gets enough of a clue to protect himself, the weapons are continously cycled back into play, so, eventually some will Kill Dr. Lucky.

--->Kelly Affannato

affannat@sas.upenn.edu

Doctor Lucky is Pissed!

Date: 07/30 10:25 AM

Received: 07/30 12:55 PM

From: William Mauritzen, varion@fuse.net

I find it hard to play Kill Doctor Lucky without imagining the backstory...but that would take up printing space with the game... :)

On a dark and stormy night Dr. J. Robert Lucky has gathered a drawing room full of his closest "friends" and investors. "Thank you for coming, I have a revolutionary invention to show you all", he said. Everyone was guessing at that, for he wore a strange backpack. The oddest thing about the pack was the blinking lights and strange humming noises. From the pack a large white cable ended in a small white box with a big red button. He ceremonially pressed the button and disappeared from sight. A gasp arose from the crowd and momentarily his echoing voice could be heard from the gallery overlooking the dining hall, "I have invented Spatial Permutation Activated Mobility, or uh....teleportation!"

Someone mumbled to themself, "That has to be worth trillions of dollars." Eyes shifted from left to right as each person assessed the possibilities. Their gazing moved frantically from person to person as each realized the darker side of the evening. "Is this not the neatest thing! I am soo happy to share this with you all!", his cheerful giggling echoed through the hall as the group broke into a series of smiles far too serene to be sincere.

"Why don't you teleport into the uh...sitting room so we can talk about this.", someone said as they walked into the dining hall.

Of course it could not be that easy, Dr. Lucky has so little control over the device. "I think I will walk instead.", he said as the box made an odd noise. He shook it and some lights on the backpack blinked red. Someone in the drawing room disappeared as a simultaneous thought occured; "I hope that's one less to kill." Many attempts were made on his life.

Oblivious to all the commotion he seems so....damned Lucky!

Stumbling upon a corpse of a dear friend he realizes that something is quite wrong. After finding yet another, he decides to take matters into his own hands and put an end to this obscenity. His ire grows stronger with each corpse and the killer becomes more skilled.

Dr. Lucky shall not die without a fight!

---------

At the beginning of our first game we all decided to split his estate and just kill him immediately. We are all incredibly rich and happy...not to mention the fact that we got away with the murder.

Dr. Lucky is Pissed, addendum

During our third game we decided that you should be able to kill other players. (We had only three people playing and things were going far too slowly.)

Upon attack the value of the weapon is declared. The type of weapon is kept secret until the person evading stops moving. If a person stops moving in a room with Doctor Lucky or within sight, they are safe from attack. Play any move or failure cards in your hand. Failure cards mean you do not move from the room and can counter attack upon your next turn. Move cards allow you to run in any direction from the attack. If they stop moving in the weapon specific room all points are applicable to its use. The person attempting the player kill may chase up to the value of the weapon in spaces. If the weapon overtakes the person it is played minus the movement points. If the player being attacked has no teleport, movement, or failure cards then the murder is successful. (players have zero resistance if they are running from an attack.) The crafty murderer gets a bonus point for each successful murder. This point is added to subsequent attacks on players and the Lucky bastard.

Opposed to the rules with killing the good doctor you can attempt a player kill in even the most crowded room. Turn status passes as normal with anyone being able to attempt a murder during their turn.

If successful, the corpse stays where it is unless someone decides to use a movement card on it. If Dr. Lucky stumbles upon a corpse his skill rises by one point per corpse, as does his attack which is equal to his resistance. Anyone attacking doctor lucky must resist his counter attack if they fail to kill him. If they fail to resist his counter attack, his skill rises one point but he loses his counter attack until he finds another corpse. Dr. Lucky figures he has killed the murderer and everyone can calm down.

-----------

We love the game and will probably laminate it to the table.

Thanks again for the cheapass game alternatives!

-Bil

The Clone of Doctor Lucky

Turns out that you and Lucky were rival geneticists. He invited you and the other guests to his mansion to gloat over his success in cloning the first human being: himself.

That does it! You want to kill Lucky twice as much as you did before. The only problem is that you can't tell him apart from his clone, save for a small birthmark on his derrier (why the good doctor told you that is anyone's guess).

So hop to it! Kill the good Doctor before it's too late...

Game Synopsis:

There will be two Lucky pawns. They must be easiliy distinguishable from the player pawns, and distinguishable from each other (even though, in reality, they are clones). Make one pawn the 'head' pawn, and the other the 'tail' pawn.

The head pawn travels around the mansion identical to how Doctor Lucky does in the original game. If in an un-numbered room he moves to the room with the highest number room, same as before.

[I think he means the highest numbered adjoining room. -J]

The tail pawn travels around the board in reverse. If in an un-numbered room, he travels to the lowest number room. Both Lucky pawns start in the same room (the only time they will share a room together) and both move at the end of each turn. If one Lucky pawn lands in a room with the other Lucky pawn, they move again, even if someone was in the room (that person doesn't get an extra turn as he/she is too weirded out by seeing Lucky in two places at once).

When playing a move card or room card, the player must specify which Lucky they are moving. Players can still get extra moves from either Lucky. If both the 'head' and 'tail' land on many players at the same time, treat this as a Multiple Next Players. Go from who just moved around the table to the left to the next player who is in a room with Lucky or the clone.

When a murder attempt is made and is successful, use a handy randomizer: coin, dice, chance cubes... (heads and odds refer to 'head' pawn, tails and evens refer to 'tail' pawn). If the roll/flip refers to the pawn just slain, congratulations! You just killed Lucky.

Otherwise, you just killed his clone. Damn. Now go kill the Real Lucky.

Lucky will continue around the board as normal.

Further Complications: The Clone Machine

Plays the same as above, except Lucky has found a way to clone himself helluva quick. When determining the start of Lucky and his clone, keep dealing to determine which room Lucky has stashed his Clone Machine in. The Clone Machine does not effect the game unless the clone is killed.

So you've killed the clone. If Doctor Lucky makes it to this room, and is by himself, he flips the switch and a clone is produced. They both move again in the appropriate directions, but since they are clones, you are now unsure of which one Lucky is (ie if Lucky was the 'head' pawn before, it doesn't mean he is the head pawn now). It is important to note that only only clone can be supported at anytime. If the clone is alive, no additional clones can be made. If the clone is killed again, Doctor Lucky can make another clone when he passes through the Clone Room.

If someone is in this room when Doctor Lucky gets there, he doesn't create a clone since he doesn't want people to find the machine.

Play proceeds as above.

Richard Conrad Zink

Department of Biostatistics

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Snooping & Winning by Process of Elimination

Subject: Kill Doctor Lucky variants.

From: Michael T. Richter, mtr@igs.net

Hello, James:

This most recent Friday my usual gang of gaming thugs (Arthur Harris, Nikolaus Maack, Marion & Michael Voytinsky, Craig Hall) and I were doing our usual game of Kill Doctor Lucky. For whatever reason we decided to make some changes to the rules. The changes worked out nicely, so I thought you might be interested in hearing about them (and, possibly, placing them on the Cheapass web site). Let me know what you think.

Variant #1

Rule: You only get to pick up a new card if you "snoop" into a named room other than the one you currently occupy.

Justification: With the current rules as written, when you do a "snooping" turn, you are permitted to snoop in place if you wish. We found that this makes the game a bit static -- especially if the Craigdarroch supplement is in use. Players would tend to find a nook or cranny they liked and stay there collecting cards while they assembled the killer combo they were hoping for.

Game effects: Changing this rule made the game much more mobile. Move-n cards become much more valuable this way as well since you would most often have to move both Dr. Lucky and yourself to the target room since you wouldn't necessarily be able to lay in wait any longer.

Potential problems: None were observed and I can't think of any.

Variant #2

Rules: Instead of attacking Dr. Lucky you may attack the token of a fellow player. All the usual rules of killing Dr. Lucky apply to this as well. There may be no witnesses to the attack other than the target player. Dr. Lucky cannot be a witness either. The attack announcement is made as if it were Dr. Lucky being attacked. Weapons may be played and special effects for particular rooms still apply. The usual process of going around the table collecting failure cards follows. Any player may contribute failure cards at his or her discretion. If the attack fails, the target player's token flees using exactly the same rule as Dr. Lucky does. If the attack succeeds, the target player is removed from the game. In this situation the attacking player inherits all of the cards of the target player.

Justification: This started off as someone muttering "I wish we could attack each other" after a particularly annoying move by a fellow player. It was also observed that there was no mechanism in place to discourage two players who would otherwise constantly interfere with each other because they wanted to hang out in proximity to each other for a particular room.

Game effects: First, mobility is further enhanced when using this variant. People spend an awful lot of effort keeping away from each other. The original problem -- people constantly "in each other's sky" -- also vanished, although not always in favour of the aggressor. Alliances (in the form of WWI-style defense pacts) also form and break, so fans of diplomacy games will probably like the feel. If the group is bloodthirsty (ours was), failure cards come out of the deck very rapidly. This makes the game shorter -- something which ameliorates the problem of having players sitting on the sidelines doing nothing but watching.

Potential problems: It could turn into a grudge match generator.

Michael T. Richter <mtr@ottawa.com> http://www.igs.net/~mtr/

Kill Your Cohorts

A game variant from Jay Moore, c594315@showme.missouri.edu

Hello. My friends and I just played Kill Doctor Lucky with the maximum of eight people, which we had never done before. About thirty minutes into it, someone got bored, and from the boredom sprang an Idea!

It went like this:

"I'm bored."

(Silence)

"I think I'm going to start trying to kill other people."

So that's what we did, and it made the game rather hilarious. People started trying to seek out fellow players and whack them with the Monkey Hand, and what have you. To facilitate the new murder rule, we decided the two of you had to be alone in the room (Dr. Lucky counts as another person, too!). Plus, we decided you could use move cards to move fellow players. It made holding failure cards all the more important, as other people aren't bloody likely to help you foil a murder attempt on your own life.

Consequently, the game was still won when someone killed Dr. Lucky. We had spent all our failure cards defending ourselves. It was quite entertaining, and everyone playing the game suggested I send our new rules on to you. Do with them what you like!

Jay Moore

c594315@showme.missouri.edu

Cheapass Medical Student

What, were you born in a barn?

Subject: Variants

Date: 03/19 11:15 AM

Received: 03/26 7:21 PM

From: Jason Arvey, jarvey@midway.uchicago.edu

I'm not sure if this is the right place to send game variants by e-mail, but seeing as I can't find any other address, I'll send them here. My friends and I were playing two games the other night -- Kill Doctor Lucky and Devil Bunny Needs a Ham -- and we came up with variants for each that seemed to work well at the time.

For Kill Doctor Lucky, one of my friends complained at some point about lines of sight. "What dumb murderers! Why not just close the door?" So, we started closing doors, using pennies to represent closed doors.

The game starts with all doors open. At the beginning of a player's turn (either a snooping or murder turn), the player may open or close one door connecting to the room in which he begins his turn. A player is not required to change the status of a door, if he wishes not to. Players can not witness an attempted murder through a closed door, nor can they move through a closed door. Dr. Lucky's regular moves, however, are unimpeded by doors. Doors are also unaffected by the play of a room card to move either Dr. Lucky or a player. Play of a move card does affect doors: the moving character, be it a player or Dr. Lucky, is assumed to be in a rush, and as such, he will open any closed doors on his way, but will not close them after passing through them.

The effects of closed doors on play is generally a bloodier, faster game, as the chances of murder attempts are more likely. However, the doors also promote a lot of creativity in the use of cards, either to open or close lines of sight. Finally, if you're in a silly mood, whenever the Civil War Cannon or Loud Noise are used in a murder attempt, all doors leading to the room are opened by the force of the blast. The opening of doors after the attak will not render the murder attempt illegal by opening new lines of sight -- the murder attempt occurs before the lines are opened.

(See the Devil Bunny Variants page for the other variant)

Anyway, these certainly haven't undergone extensive play-testing, but they were fun for the few games we tried them in.

--Jason Arvey

Exploding Dr. Lucky

Subject: Kill Dr. Lucky Variant

From: BobaFej@aol.com

Here's a fun and exciting addition to Kill Dr. Lucky. We call it Exploding Dr. Lucky.

Each player starts with a bomb (a penny). Players can lay a bomb in any room as long as no other players are in line of sight. Players may lay a bomb instead of snooping a room. The bomb becomes armed during the snoop phase of the bomb layers next turn, so you better leave the room!

If Doctor Lucky enters that room, the bomb explodes regardless of whether or not someone can see into the room.. To prevent Dr. Lucky from dying, every player other than the bomb layer must play a failure card.

Also, players can defuse another player's bomb by entering the room ahead of Dr. Lucky and playing a failure card. The defuser gets to keep the bomb! However, if a player enters a room with any bomb and does not have a failure card, that player is blown up and starts over with no cards!

Give it a try. It's a BLAST!

Oh yeah, Dr. Lucky's dog also can trigger the bomb! Poor poochie!

- Jeff Clear and Scott Pallitto

Get a Clew*!

This is a simple variant intended to speed up play. In this version the person attempting to kill the good doctor places their weapon face down on the table and declares their intent without specifying the value of the attempt. The other players put up what they feel is appropriate, and when the failure cards are all out the value is revealed.

Players will try to draw out failure cards with lowball attacks, but if they let a high value attempt slip by the game will end quick.

Keep up the craziness!

Craig Griswold
"Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.
Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
-|-Anonymous-|-
* "Clew" is an older, but correct, spelling of clue. I thought it was appropriate to a Victorian-era game - and a play on Clue (another board game where you aren't allowed to look at the cards until it's too late).
- Craig