Looking for some variety in your RoboRally games? Try one of our weekly variants.
The manager of Robotics Factory 1124-98-7bw, in charge of manufacturing all "Knobs, Knurled, 4 cm" for the entire upper-mid-central-eastern seaboard, is dead! What's worse, his killer may have been a robot! It is vital that the malfunctioning machine is brought to justice. Unfortunately, there are no robodetectives available to handle this case, so the robots of Factory 1124-98-7bw need to handle this situation themselves. One of their number is a killer … can it be stopped before it mangles again?
Setup
You'll need to do some preparation for this game -- specifically, making up some cards. Use 3x5 note cards, or spare business cards (that all match), or slips of paper inserted into plastic card sleeves with opaque backs. Make one of each of the following cards:
Chess
Chop Shop
Cross
Exchange
Island
Maelstrom
Spin Zone
Vault
Grinder
Masher
Melter
Stretcher
Whirler
Wringer
Twitch
Zoombot
Twonky
Hammer Bot
Trundle Bot
Hulk X90
Spin Bot
Squash Bot
Set up any course layout you want to use.
Separate the cards into three piles by type -- boards, murder weapons, and robot suspects. Shuffle each pile, then draw one card randomly from each. Don't look at the cards! Place the three drawn cards in a safe place, such as beneath one of the game boards. These three cards determine who killed the factory manager, where, and with what machine. Then shuffle all the remaining cards together and deal them out, one at a time, to the players until all the cards are dealt.
Now you're ready to play.
Playing RoboClue
The point of the game is to figure out who killed the factory manager, where, and with what machine. The answers to those questions are in the three cards beneath the board.
The game plays as usual, with the following differences --
- During the Cleanup step of every turn, if your robot is on a feature space (flag, wrench, conveyor, spinner, or pusher, but not pits or lasers), you can make a suggestion. To make a suggestion, name a board, a robot suspect, and a murder weapon. If the player to your left has any of those cards in his hand, he must show you one of them. He gets to choose which one he shows you. If he has none of them, then the next player to your left must show one if possible, and so on until either someone has shown you a card or no one can.
- The first player to make a suggestion each turn is the player who started in Docking Bay 1. Then other players make suggestions in clockwise order. After turn 1, each time a robot touches a flag, that player becomes the first player to make a suggestion each turn -- until the next time a robot touches a flag.
- After making your suggestion and seeing the answer, you may make an accusation. To make an accusation, name a board, a robot suspect, and a murder weapon that you think were involved in the murder. Then get the three cards out from under the board (or wherever you placed them) and look at them. If your accusation was correct, you win! If it was wrong, you're still in the game, but the only way you can win now is to be the first to touch all the flags.
- If a robot ever destroys another robot with its laser or by pushing it into a pit, then that robot automatically becomes a legitimate murder suspect. Clearly it's a killer, and the rest of the factory will happily rally behind whatever kangaroo court wants to frame it. When it comes time to make an accusation, even if you have no idea who the real killer is, you can accuse a robot that killed another robot during the game and automatically have that part of your accusation be treated as correct, regardless of which robot card is under the board.
Winning
You win by being either the first robot to touch all the flags, or the first to make a correct accusation.
Players' Notes
A game with many players needs several boards. Usually that just makes for a longer game, but in this case, more players means that each player starts with fewer clue cards in his or her hand -- which means each player must gather more information before being able to make a decent accusation. (Of course, if several robots turn killer in that target-rich environment, that shortens the game by eliminating the need to correctly identify the real murderer.)
To shorten the game, have everyone pass one or two of their cards to the left before the game begins. To really shorten the game, pull one or two cards out of each deck (before dealing) and leave them face up on the table. Everyone starts the game knowing those aren't the correct answers.
RoboRally Variant 1: Two-Minute Turns
RoboRally Variant 2: Secret Options
RoboRally Variant 3: Pac-Man
RoboRally Variant 4: Dream Team
RoboRally Variant 5: Rotating Boards
RoboRally Variant 6: Course Layout 101
RoboRally Variant 7: Course Layout 201
RoboRally Variant 8: British Beagle
RoboRally Variant 9: The Cube
RoboRally Variant 10: Texas Hold 'Em
RoboRally Variant 11: RoboClue
RoboRally Variant 12: Round Robon
RoboRally Variant 13: RoboRummy
