Cthulhu: Death May Die rules refresher

Read the refresher

You and the other investigators win together by killing the Elder One, which means defeating the Final Stage of its Stage cards. First you disrupt the cultists' ritual using the tasks on the episode card, which makes the Elder One mortal. Then you fight it down, stage by stage, before its Progression token reaches the end of the Summoning track.

For setup, choose one Episode box and one Elder One box, and never mix in pieces from any other box. Put the Elder One figure on the starting space at the left end of the Summoning track on the Story board. Place its Minions reference card there, and stack its four Stage cards faceup in order, with Stage one on top. From the episode, take the Mythos cards, the fifteen Discovery cards, the episode card, the tokens, and the Monsters reference cards. Pull out only the enemy figures shown on the reference cards. Build the map from the diagram on the back of the episode card, placing enemies and tokens where shown, then flip the episode card faceup onto the Story board. Shuffle the eight episode Mythos cards and the eight Elder One Mythos cards together into one deck, and shuffle the Discovery deck separately. Everyone puts their investigator on the episode's starting space, with a colored base on the figure. Place your six tentacle markers: one on the first level of each of your three skills, and one on the leftmost space of your wound, stress, and sanity tracks. Deal each player one insanity card faceup and put the rest away. A random starting player takes the Mythos deck.

There are no rounds. Play simply passes to the left, one full turn at a time. On your turn you take three actions, then draw and resolve a Mythos card. Next you either investigate or fight, depending on whether enemies share your space, and finally you resolve the end of turn steps. The actions available in every episode are Run, Attack, Rest, and Trade, plus the two episode actions printed on the episode card. You may take the same action more than once.

Dice come first, because they touch everything. Whenever you make a roll, you roll three black standard dice plus any green bonus dice you are entitled to. A success is a hit, or it counts toward a target number. An elder sign does nothing unless a skill or card uses it. A blank usually does nothing. A tentacle costs you one sanity on every roll, whether you are attacking, being attacked, or just making a roll. Green dice have no tentacles, and some faces show two results. After rolling, you may take one stress to reroll one die, as often as you like until your stress track is full. Then resolve in order: successes first, then any effects tied to the roll's result, then tentacles.

Your tracks work like this. Stress pays for rerolls and many Discovery card costs, and at maximum you simply cannot take more, though some effects deal wounds instead. If your wound marker reaches the skull, you are dead. Losing sanity moves your sanity marker right, and resting never heals it. The sanity track has Insanity Threshold spaces. When your marker reaches one, it stops there and any extra sanity loss is ignored. Your insanity card activates, and then you level up one skill by moving its marker one space right. Four of the thresholds show a green die, and once you reach one of them you add one bonus die to all your rolls for the rest of the game. If several investigators hit a threshold at once, resolve them clockwise from the current player. If your sanity marker reaches the skull, you are consumed by madness and eliminated. Your top skill is your signature skill. When a skill levels up, some levels replace the lower level and others add to it, as the skill says.

Run lets you move up to three spaces. You can only pass through a passage that has arrows on both sides, and spaces with matching staircase or tunnel tokens count as adjacent. Every time you leave a space with enemies, all of them follow you, even if other investigators stay behind. Every time you leave a space with Fire tokens, take one Fire token from the reserve onto your investigator board for each token there, leaving the space's tokens in place. Enemies never catch fire this way.

Attack targets a single enemy in your space, chosen before you roll. Each success puts one wound token by its figure, and when its wounds equal or exceed its health, it dies and is removed. Unless a skill lets you spread hits, extra wounds are wasted. The Elder One cannot be attacked or damaged until the ritual is disrupted, even if it is already on the board.

Rest works only in a Safe space, meaning a space with no enemies. It heals three spaces in total between stress and wounds, in any combination, never sanity, and you may Rest more than once per turn. Trade lets you and every investigator in your space give or receive any number of Items and Companions. A traded card stays on the same side of the board it was on, and Conditions can never be traded.

After your actions, draw the top Mythos card and resolve it from top to bottom, skipping any step you cannot do. The Elder One Summoning symbol does nothing when drawn. Discard the card faceup so the symbols stay visible. Special effects affect only the active player unless the card says otherwise, and the active player makes every choice. When an enemy moves toward a space, it takes the shortest path, and the active player breaks ties. It moves as far as allowed but stops once it reaches the target. At the bottom, a card may summon an enemy at a colored Gate. Place it only if that figure is available in the reserve. Resolve multiple summonings in order, skipping the rest once you run out of figures.

Next, if you are in a Safe space, you investigate. Draw a Discovery card, read the center text aloud, and follow it. Claiming means tucking the card's left or right side under that side of your board, with no limit on how many you hold. Unless a card says when, you may use its effect any time during your turn, but not while resolving another card or effect, or during a roll. Wounds you take may go on a Companion instead, and that still counts as you taking wounds. Companions are never healed and are discarded once their wounds equal their number. A Companion that grants a skill level gives you level one if you lack that skill, or moves your marker up one level, and you lose that level if you lose the Companion.

If enemies are in your space, you fight instead of investigating and draw no Discovery card. Each enemy in your space attacks you, in the order you choose, ignoring other investigators. An enemy that enters your space during this step also attacks, and one that leaves does not. You roll the dice shown on its reference card. Each success is a wound and each tentacle costs a sanity, and elder signs matter only if the enemy uses them. You may reroll with stress and use your skills to soften the attack.

End of turn has five steps. First, resolve end of turn effects other than the Elder One's, in any order the active player picks. Second comes Fire: roll one standard die per Fire token on your board, rerolling with stress if you like. Take a wound per success and lose a sanity per tentacle, then discard those tokens. If a Fire token should go on the map and none are left, ignore it. If one should go on your board, use a wound token instead. Third, check the Mythos discard pile. If three cards there show the Summoning symbol, the Elder One advances along the Summoning track. Resolve the advance effects on its revealed Stage cards first, then the episode card's, then shuffle every discarded Mythos card back into the deck. Once the Elder One is on the board, the Progression token advances instead, with the same effects. Fourth, check the summoning. If the Elder One entered the first red space, or the ritual was disrupted this turn, set Stage one aside and reveal Stage two. Stage one's effects stay in play all game. Resolve Stage two's reveal effect, which says where the figure appears, and put the Progression token on the track where the figure stood. Fifth, resolve the Elder One end of turn effects on all revealed Stage cards in stage order. Any mention of you means the active investigator.

Once summoned, the Elder One acts like any enemy and attacks investigators who end their turn in its space. It rolls the total of the dice shown on all its revealed Stage cards. After the ritual is disrupted, you can attack it. Each stage has its own health, and when its wounds reach that health, set the card aside, reveal the next, and resolve its reveal effect. Extra wounds do not carry over, and earlier stages' effects and dice stay in play.

If an investigator dies or goes mad after the Elder One is summoned, the others play on. Discard that investigator's Discovery cards and tokens. If it happened on their own turn, skip the rest of that turn except the Mythos discard pile check, using the space where they fell if a position is needed. After that, their turns are skipped.

You all win the moment you defeat the Elder One's Final Stage. You all lose if any investigator is killed or consumed by madness before the Elder One is summoned to the board. You also lose if every investigator is eliminated after it is summoned, or if the Progression token reaches the last space of the Summoning track. If a win and a loss trigger at the same time, the win takes precedence, so if the Elder One and the last investigator die together, you win.

A turn, played out

You are in a dark hallway with 1 enemy and 2 Fire tokens. Your wound track shows 1 wound, your stress track shows 1 stress, and your sanity marker already passed a threshold with a green die, so every roll you make carries 1 bonus green die. The enemy's reference card gives it 2 health. Your first action is Attack, and you name that enemy before rolling. You roll 3 black dice and 1 green. You get 1 success, 1 tentacle, 1 blank and 1 elder sign. One success will not kill it, so you take 1 stress, now 2, and reroll the blank. It comes up a success. Successes resolve first, so 2 wound tokens go beside the figure. That equals its health, and it is removed. Then the tentacle hits, and your sanity marker moves 1 space right. Second action, Run. The enemy is gone, so nothing follows you. But you are leaving a space with 2 Fire tokens, so 2 Fire tokens come from the reserve onto your board, and the hallway keeps its own 2. You move 2 spaces into an empty room, a Safe space. Third action, Rest. It heals 3, never sanity, so your 2 stress and your 1 wound all clear. Now the Mythos card. It shows the Summoning symbol, which does nothing on its own. Its last line summons an enemy at the red Gate, but that figure has none left in the reserve, so nothing appears. The card goes faceup on the discard pile. You are still in a Safe space, so you investigate. You draw a Discovery card, read the center aloud, and claim an Item, tucking it under that side of your board. End of turn. You roll 1 standard die for each Fire token on your board, so 2 dice, and get a success and a tentacle. That is 1 wound and 1 sanity, and both Fire tokens are discarded. The discard pile now shows 3 Summoning symbols, so the Elder One advances along the Summoning track. You resolve the advance effects on its revealed Stage card, then the episode card's, and shuffle every discarded Mythos card back into the deck. It stops 1 space short of the first red space, and play passes to your left.