Overview

Kill Doctor Lucky is a darkly humorous board game where players move through Doctor Lucky’s mansion, trying to be the one to successfully murder the old man. You must be alone in a room with Doctor Lucky and out of sight of all other players to make an attempt. Other players try to foil your attempts using failure cards. The first player to make an unfoiled murder attempt wins.

Components

• 1 game board (Doctor Lucky’s mansion with 24 named rooms and 8 unnamed rooms: 6 hallways and 2 stairways)
• 1 deck of 96 cards (move cards, room cards, weapon cards, failure cards)
• 30 spite tokens
• Pawns and stands for 7 players, Doctor Lucky, and his dog (Shamrock)
• Rulebook

Setup

1. Deal cards face up one at a time until someone receives a room card. That player goes first; Doctor Lucky starts in that room.
2. All players start in the Drawing Room.
3. Reshuffle the deck and deal 6 cards face down to each player.
4. Place spite tokens in a central pool.

Turn Structure

Each turn has three steps, followed by Doctor Lucky’s movement:

Step 1: Moving

• Take one free step to any adjacent room (hallways and stairways count as rooms).
• Play any number of move cards and/or room cards before or after your free step.
  • Move cards: Move yourself or Doctor Lucky up to the card’s value in steps.
  • Room cards: Move yourself or Doctor Lucky to the specific named room.

Step 2: Murder Attempt (optional)

• You must be alone in the room with Doctor Lucky.
• You must be out of sight of every other player.
• Play one weapon card (uses its murder value) or attempt bare-handed (murder value 1).
• Add your spite tokens to the murder total.
• Only one weapon card and one murder attempt per turn.

Step 3: Drawing (optional)

• Draw one card from the deck — only if:
  • You are in a named room (not a hallway/stairway).
  • You did not play any cards or make a murder attempt this turn.

Doctor Lucky Moves

After each player’s turn, Doctor Lucky moves:

• From a numbered room: moves to the next highest-numbered room (Room 19 wraps to Room 0). Ignores hallways and stairways.
• From an unnumbered room: moves to the highest-numbered adjoining room.

Actions

Sight Lines

• A player can see you if they can look in a straight line (horizontally or vertically) through any number of doorways into your room.
• Diagonal sight through doors is not possible.
• The Gallery overlooks the Dining Hall: you can see through the railing from above or below.

Foiling Murder Attempts

Starting with the player to the attacker’s left, each player gets one chance to play any number of failure cards (values 1, 2, or 3). Failure values are summed. If the failure total meets or exceeds the murder total, the attempt is foiled.

• The last player (to attacker’s right) must play failure cards to stop the attempt if able.
• Used failure cards are removed from the game permanently.
• The attacker receives a spite token for a foiled attempt.

Turn Order Changes

• After the first round, if Doctor Lucky’s move takes him into an occupied room, the player in that room goes next (even if they just had a turn).
• If multiple players are present, the one who would have gone next normally gets the turn.
• After that player’s turn, play continues to the left from them.

Scoring / Victory Conditions

The first player to make a murder attempt that the other players cannot foil wins immediately.

There is no score tracking. The game is purely about successfully completing a murder attempt.

Special Rules & Edge Cases

• Spite tokens automatically add to your murder total. They are not spent — you keep them.
• If spite token pool is empty, foiled murder attempts do not earn tokens until tokens are returned.
• Discarding: Used move, room, and weapon cards go to a discard pile. If the deck runs out, reshuffle discards (but NOT failure cards, which are permanently removed).
• Weapon bonuses: Some weapons have higher murder values in specific rooms.
• Maximum one murder attempt per turn, using at most one weapon card.
• You cannot play cards AND draw on the same turn.
• You cannot draw in unnamed rooms (hallways/stairways).

Dog Variants

Old Dog: The dog (Shamrock) starts with Doctor Lucky and follows him one step at a time by the shortest route. If the dog can see you in the room with the Doctor, you cannot attempt murder. You can attempt to kill the dog (no spite token earned). The dog cannot prevent murder of itself. Killing the dog counts as your murder attempt for the turn.

New Tricks: The dog cannot prevent murder but gets a spite token each time someone tries to kill Doctor Lucky. If the dog moves into your room (without the Doctor present), you may discard one card per spite token to collect the dog’s spite tokens. If the dog reaches the Doctor, all dog tokens return to the pool.

Old Dog, New Tricks: Both variant rules apply simultaneously.

Player Reference

Card Type	Effect	After Use
Move card	Move self or Doctor Lucky up to N rooms	Discard pile
Room card	Move self or Doctor Lucky to named room	Discard pile
Weapon card	Murder attempt with stated value (may have room bonus)	Discard pile
Failure card	Foil a murder attempt (values 1, 2, or 3)	Removed from game

Murder Total = Weapon value (or 1 if bare-handed) + number of spite tokens held

Key Rules Quick Check:

• Alone with Doctor Lucky? YES
• Out of sight of all players? YES
• Already attempted/played cards this turn? Murder attempt allowed, but no draw
• In a named room with no cards played/attempts? Can draw