Kill Doctor Lucky

I was going through my shelf of old RPG books recently and found my original copy of Starbase Jeff tucked away on a shelf.  This was one of the low-cost classic games created by CheapAss Games back in the 1990s.  It came in a paper sleeve and had just the instructions and space station tiles you would need to play.  The designer knew that we already had heaps of dice and tokens and pawns to use, so he only printed the unique items.  They were always twisted, quirky and fun.  Yup, James Ernest, someone I really admired as a game creator.  Blast from the past.

I had an urge to Google him and see where his creative mind ended up.  Not only is he still around, but there is still a website for CheapAss Games, and he put about 20 of their old games on their website as free print-and-play versions.

It was fun to see them again, including ones I had never seen back then, and ones I had never heard about.  And of course, Kill Doctor Lucky, which works fine on a single sheet of letter-sized paper, while the 96-card deck was a test of my patience on Anne's little paper cutter, but boy was it worth it.

Since we have tons of dice, we used little dice for our players and the big die for Doctor Lucky.  I had forgotten how entertaining this was, and how easily the rules roll once you get the hang of it.  As you learn, play goes faster and a bit more frantic, with more missteps to laugh about.

So, the game board is a map of a mansion with some of the rooms numbered (0 through 19), other rooms named but not numbered, and some other space like hallways and stairs that have no name or number.  Each turn you can either snoop around (move one space, and if you end up in a named room you draw a card) or "do something" (play cards and try to kill Doctor Lucky).  At the end of each player's turn they move the doctor to the next numbered room.  Which makes him amusingly hard to catch.

The cards either have the name of a room, or Move 1 or Move 2, all of which can move you or the doctor to a new location, your choice.  Other cards show murder weapons with point values or Failure cards from 1 to 3.  If you end up in the same room with the doctor, you can use a weapon card to try to kill him, but other players can hit you with failure cards to cancel out your effort.  Or, when the doctor moves onto YOUR space, you are immediately activated and get to take a turn whether it's your turn or not.

The last, extra quirky rule is that you can't attack doctor lucky if any other player can see your piece from where their piece is located, and the few rules of thumb for that are given in the rule sheet.

I think that's a good quick summary.  It is such a well-balanced set of conflicting needs.  It works fine with two players, but would probably be more fun with more people in the mix.  Or maybe they would just be in the way, by design.  It's pretty hilarious when you think you got into just the right position and the doctor zooms past you due to a miscalculation or another player's tampering.  And almost every time you attack, either the player can see you or throws down failure cards.  Our first game ran about 20 turns, or should we say three laps of the doctor around the mansion?

If the doctor starts in the lower right rooms, it is possible to head toward him in the first moves and (assuming the other player went out of sight), kill the doctor with your bare hands (attack value 1) before anyone managed to get any failure cards to stop you.  Otherwise, good luck.  You can't catch him by chasing him, you can only wait for him to come around, bring him to you with a card, or step into his room at just the right moment.  And probably fail.

We played about 7 games in a quick flurry of activity, because it was just so funny and weird, and we just felt we were getting the hang of it when boom, the doctor gets away again.

A classic game by any measure.

Anyway, James Ernest is currently doing his thing, over at Crab Fragment Labs, with even more little gems waiting to be tried -- like Copper Creek.  He's on Patreon and Drive Thru Cards.  I bought two of his new card games at Drive Thru Cards, as a thanks for the good times.  He also had some great videos on Youtube of how to craft better gaming components, from game boards to cards.

Jan 27 update: Wouldn't you know it?  Barely two weeks after finding that archive of the old CheapAss games in print-and-play format, the cheapass.com site now points to GreaterThanGames and all those pages of individual games and PDFs are gone.