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This Cheapass Game is free. That’s right, free. You can print it, copy it, and share it with your friends. Obviously, if you like it, we’d appreciate a dollar or two in return. We think this is the best way to get great games into your hands, so please help us make it work.

Yes! I gave Cheapass Games $_________ for this game!

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Rules Document and Information Sheet

Whereas, parties (“The Players”) desire to engage in the game entitled Witch Trial , (hereinafter, “The Game”) with the intent of effecting certain circumstances including but not limited to . the reenactment of fictional witch trials in pseudo-Colonial America involving the prosecution and defense of witches, suspected witches, and other ne’er-do-wells &.. malcontents; the play of cards based on hunches, mathematics, and storytelling and other pursuits such as idle banter not necessarily associated with the story-line or mechanisms of The Game but arising as a matter of course from the playing thereof (collectively, “The Fun”);

Whereas, Cheapass Games , a game company formed under the laws of the State of . Washington and having a website located at www.cheapass.com, where you can always go and download all the best games in the world for free rain or shine all the live~long day , (“Publisher”) has certain valuable knowledge of The Game and has created The Game with the intent of spreading love and joy throughout the Universe ; and

Whereas, Publisher desires to convey to The Players the methods, modes, articles, pleasantries, accouterments, rules, devices, understandings, and wherewithal associated with correct and proper execution of the play of The Game with the intent of assigning as much as practicable to The Players of The Fun;

Now Therefore, the parties agree as follows:

Witch Trial is © and ™ 2001, 2011 James Ernest and Cheapass Games: www.cheapass.com

Components:

To play Witch Trial, you will need to print the Board and Card files (these are separate PDFs) and assemble them. Detailed instructions for finishing these components are found at the end of these rules. You might also want a box.

Players: 3 to 7. Playing Time: 45 Minutes

Dice: Two six-sided dice. Money: Paper money or poker chips in denominations of $5 to $100, roughly $3000 total. Note: The “Money” in Witch Trial actually represents prestige. It is well known that law-yers have never been in business exclusively for the money, but also for the betterment and enrichment of society. And besides, more prestige means more money.

Board: This is a one-page board, 9.5 x 8.25, representing the Courtroom. It is formatted to fit on a mouse pad, because we love one-page boards printed on mouse pads. We are strange that way. The board has space for one Suspect and one Charge card, a stack of money (“Court Fees”), and the Jury.

Jury Marker: A pawn, a penny, or some other marker to place in the Jury Box, to indicate the current Jury Value.

Cards: There are 90 cards in five types, including Suspects, Charges, Evidence, Motions, and Objections.

Suspects represent the suspected witches who will go on trial. These cards may also serve as witnesses.

Charges combine with the Suspects to form Cases.

Evidence can be played on either side of the trial to help sway the Jury.

Motions represent unusual tactics such as appeals, bribes, courtroom drama, etc.

Objections counteract the Motions.

To Begin: Each player starts with $50. Put the rest of the money in the bank, and choose a banker to handle the bank. Shuffle the deck and deal a hand of six cards to each player. Deal a lineup of five face-up cards, leading away from the deck. This lineup runs across the bottom of the Courtroom as shown in the figure at right. Determine randomly who will go first. Play will pro-ceed to the left.

On Your Turn:

On each turn, you may do exactly one of the following: Buy a card, Create a case, Defend a case, or Prosecute your own case (by appointing a public defender).

1: Buy a Card. You may buy one card from the lineup. The first card is free, the next card costs $5, the next $10, $15, and the last is $20. The card you buy goes into your hand. When you buy a card (or take the free card), you also get to draw one card from the deck. The money you pay goes into the Court Fees area in the Courtroom. After you buy a card, the cards above it slide down, and a new $20 card is added from the deck. (This happens after you draw. This really only matters when the deck is empty.) After you buy a card, your turn ends. Note: There is no limit to the size of your hand. If you use a lot of cards in one trial, it will take several turns to replace them, so make sure you’re getting full value out of every card that you play!

2: Create a Case. The world is filled with suspicious char-acters and heinous crimes to pin on them. However, you can’t just go around accusing people willy-nilly. A case is comprised of one Suspect card and one Charge card. To create a case, you must either combine a Suspect card from your hand with a Charge in the lineup, or a Charge in your hand with a Suspect in the lineup. Once the case is made, the Suspect and Charge will sit together in front of you as your pending case. You can have only one pending case at a time, so you are not allowed to create a new case if you already have one. Creating a case doesn’t cost anything, and doesn’t get you a free card. The cards in the lineup move down, and a new $20 card is added immediately. Creating a case ends your turn.


The Lineup: When you buy a card, you also draw one.

Courtroom

Free $5 $10 $15 $20 Deck

On Your Turn, Continued:

3: Defend a Pending Case. If there is a pending case in front of another player, you may choose to defend it. This case goes to court as described under “Going to Trial,” below. After the trial, your turn ends.

4: Prosecute Your Case. If you already have a pending case in front of you, you may choose to select a public defender randomly, as follows: Every player (except you) rolls two dice. The player who makes the lowest roll must defend your case. The case goes immediately to trial, as described below. After the trial, your turn ends.

Ending your Turn: You will probably have performed one of the four actions described above, though it is also legal to pass. Passing usually only happens at the end of the game when there are no more clear actions for a particular player to take. After your turn is over, the turn passes to the left.

Going to Trial:

Trials happen frequently, and they are the only way to make money. (Er, “Prestige.”) When a trial begins, place the Suspect and Charge cards in the Courtroom. Only the Prosecutor and Defender will be involved in this case; the other players are spectators.

Step 1, Pay the Defender: The Suspect has a “Defense” budget, which goes immediately from the bank to the Defender who takes the case. This is the same whether the Defender chose to defend the case, or had it thrust upon him by the public defender’s office.

Step 2, Stock the Court: The Charge has an amount of “Court” money written on it. Add that money to the Court Fees area in the Courtroom. This money, along with any money that was already sitting there, will be awarded to the winner of this trial.

Step 3, Set the Jury Value: The deliberation of the Jury will eventually be represented by a roll of two dice, modified by a number called the Jury Value. The Jury Value represents how many jurors believe that the defendant is guilty at any given time. It is tracked using a marker (a pawn or penny) and the twelve spaces in the Jury Box. The higher the Jury Value, the more likely the Suspect will be found guilty of the Charge. The Jury Value can never go higher than 12 or lower than 1, so if anything pushes the Jury Value outside this range, the extra value is simply ignored. To set the Jury Value at the beginning of the trial, add the Guilt of the Suspect with the Severity of the Charge. This will always be a number between 2 and 12.

Note: Charges have certain Suspects who are more or less likely to have committed them. For example, Smuggling is usually worth 5, but it is worth +2 if it is paired with Lewis the Bum or Mad Gertie Hayes. If you are trying Lewis the Bum for Smuggling, the Charge has a Severity of 7, and Lewis has a Guilt of 4, so the Jury starts with a value of 11.

What the Jury Value Means: When the trial is over, the Prosecutor will roll two dice and add the roll to the Jury Value. If the total is 13 or higher, the Suspect is found guilty, and the Prosecutor wins the case. If not, the Suspect is found innocent, and victory goes to the Defense. Knowing the Jury Value is a good way to guess how the Jury will vote, but it’s rarely a guarantee.

Step 4, The Prosecutor Makes His Case: The Prosecution acts first in every trial, and may play any number of the fol-lowing cards in any order. After the Prosecution rests, the Defense will become active and can play the same kinds of cards.

The steps of the Trial will continue after the next section, which describes the functions of the cards.

Functions of the Cards:

In no particular order, here are the definitions of all card types as they apply to prosecuting or defending a trial. When prosecuting or defending a case, the active player may do any, all, or none of these, in any order.

Evidence: Evidence cards have two numbers: a positive value if played by the Prosecution, and a negative value if played by the Defense. In both cases, this value represents the effect that the card has on the Jury. When you play an Evidence card, change the Jury Value by the appropriate amount. For example, when a Prosecutor plays Friends (above), he raises the Jury Value by 2 points (to a maximum value of 12). If a Defender played Friends, he would reduce the Jury Value by 3. It’s appropriate to explain how evidence supports your case. Depending on how you explain it, the existence of a Faithful Pet could suggest that the accused is guilty (no pet would be that faithful unless bewitched) or that she is not (obviously no criminal would have a faithful pet).


Functions of the Cards, Continued:

Witnesses (Suspects): Suspect cards can be played as Witnesses in a trial. These cards work a little like Evidence. However, they are more unpredictable. When you play a Witness, you must roll one die and compare the roll to the Guilt value of the Witness. If you roll equal to or higher than this value, the Witness changes the Jury by its Guilt value (positive when played by the Prosecution, negative when played by the Defense). Otherwise, the Witness does nothing.

For example, if the Defense calls Alsace Lorraine (Guilt 2, above) as a Witness, the Defender rolls one die. On a 1, she has no effect. On a 2-6, she subtracts 2 points from the Jury Value. (If the Prosecution played the same card, she would add 2 points instead of subtracting.)

Charge: You can play a new Charge to replace the current one. No matter who plays it, the new Charge will alter the Jury Value by the difference between its own Severity and the Severity of the previous Charge. For example, if a Charge worth 2 is played to replace a Charge worth 5 (shown below), the Jury Value will go down by 3. ( 2 - 5 = - 3 ) This play clearly benefits the Defense, so only the Defense would normally make it. The reverse, replacing a 2 with a 5, would benefit the Prosecution.

When a Charge has a modified Severity when paired with a particular Suspect, remember to use that value when comparing the two Charges. For example, if Lewis the Bum was first accused of Golfing (Severity 3), but the Charge is trumped up to Smuggling (5 + 2 for Lewis), then the Jury Value will go up by 4 points. (7 - 3 = 4) Note: New Charges do not affect the amount of money in the Court. They only change the Jury Value.

Motions: Motion Cards are all different, and they all describe what they do. However, two notes may be useful in interpreting them: The “you” on a Motion card refers to the player who plays it. “Your opponent” refers only to the other lawyer in this trial. To “throw a case out” means to stop trying the case immediately and discard all the cards, including the Suspect and Charge.

Objections: An Objection cancels the effects of a Motion, and causes the Motion card to be discarded. Whenever a player plays a Motion, his opponent may play an Objection in response. Objection is the only card that can be played out of turn, and it can only be played by the opposing lawyer. Unlike other cards, Objections stick around. Instead of discarding an Objection, you must hand the Objection to the player whose Motion you cancelled. An Objection cancels all the effects of a Motion. For example if Drama is played and Objected to, the player doesn’t get to re-roll the Jury Value, but also is not forced to rest. You cannot object to a motion once it has been carried out, i.e., after the Drama dice roll. Because of the existence of Objections, it is always polite to pause briefly before carrying out the effects of any Motion card, to give your opponent a chance to Object to it. Note: You cannot Object to an Objection, because an Objection is not a Motion.

Discard Note: All cards played in a trial must remain on the table until the trial is over, so they are not technically in the discard pile until the trial ends. This includes cancelled Motions. Therefore, Short Memory can only recover cards that were played previous to this case.

Plea Bargaining: When finished playing cards, the active lawyer must declare that he is resting. At this point, and not before, this player may negotiate a plea bargain with his opponent. This a deal by which the money held by the Court would be divided in any way to which the two parties agree. If the bargain is accepted, the trial ends and the money is divided accordingly. Otherwise, the trial continues. You can only offer a plea bargain after you have rested. If you start bargaining, or make any offer that suggests a deal, you must rest whether you meant to or not.


Going to Trial, continued:

Step 5, The Defender Makes His Case: After the Prosecution rests, the Defense becomes the active player and may perform all of the same actions described above. After playing his cards and resting, the Defense may offer a plea bargain to the Prosecutor under the same terms described above.

Step 6, The Final Argument: After the Defense rests, the Prosecution is allowed to play one more card, which is called his Final Argument. This card can be Evidence, a Witness, a new Charge, or a Motion. The Prosecution may then offer one final plea bargain before letting the jury deliberate. Note: If your Final Argument is a Motion that meets with an Objection, it does not count as your last card. You may still play one more card.

Step 7, Roll the Jury: After both parties have rested, if no plea bargain has been made, the Prosecution rolls two dice and adds them to the Jury Value. If the result is 13 or higher, the Prosecution wins. If it is 12 or lower, the Defense wins. The winner of the case takes all the money in the Court. The Suspect and Charge cards are discarded, along with all other cards played on this case, and the turn passes to the left. Note that the Prosecutor always wins the roll if the Jury value is 11 or 12. On the other hand, there is no Jury Value so low that the Defense has a guaranteed win. The Prosecutor is the favorite while the Jury Value is 6 or higher.

Ending the Game: The game ends when the deck and the lineup are out of cards and there are no more pending cases on the table, or when it is clear that no more cases can be created or tried. It is possible that players will take a few “pass” turns during the endgame if the lineup is empty; however, it’s usually wise to defend a case rather than do nothing. At the end, the lawyer with the most money wins. Which is to say, the lawyer with the most prestige.

Extended Game Rules (The Double Deck):

In games with 6 or 7 players, you may wish to recycle the discards once. If you don’t, a game this large will have very few turns per player. If you like this option, make sure to agree beforehand that you are playing the two-deck game. Also, when you reshuffle, do it at the right time: you must shuffle the discards and replace the deck at the moment when the Lineup or a player needs another card, and not before. This procedure makes sure that the discard pile is there as long as possible when someone needs it for Short Memory.

Strategy:

Witch Trial requires shrewd lawyering and negotiating skills. After a few games you will learn which cards, and thus which hands, are better for prosecuting and defending. If you have a lot of small Charges, or Evidence that’s good for the Defense, seek out and defend the richest cases you can find. If your hand is better suited to prosecution, do what you can to create a valuable case. If your case relies on a random factor such as a high-valued Witness, or a Motion that may be Objected to, play that card first. Depending on how it comes out, you can decide whether it’s worth spending the rest of your hand. Effective plea bargaining is the key to success. Understand your odds of winning a given case, assuming all the variables, and don’t be greedy when making offers. Unless you need the full amount to win the game, taking half a case is always better than taking none of it. Objections can be a strong deterrent, but don’t let the players who hold them win without ever playing them! Remember that there is a silver lining to having one of your Motions canceled: you get the Objection!

About the Artist:

Charles Dana Gibson, 1867-1944. American illustrator and father of the idealized American woman known as the “Gibson Girl.” Gibson’s works now reside in the public domain and we thank him deeply for his posthumous and royalty-free contribution to our game.


Witch Trial ©2001, 2011 Cheapass Games. Game designed by James Ernest Illustrations by Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944) Special thanks to the many domesticated and free-range Guinea Pigs who will do any-thing for a lighter sentence, including Elizabeth Marshall, Dave Howell, Jeff Vogel, Mariann Kriszan, Neil and Natalie Ford, Rick Fish, Mark Simmons, Jeff Tidball, Tom and Cathy Saxton, Rich and JoAnne Gain, Toivo Rovainen, and Carol Monahan. Published by Cheapass

Games, Seattle WA: www.cheapass.com.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial - NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. There is a brief

license rights summary on the following page.

Our Creative Commons Agreement

Summary: This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial - NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

This agreement means...

You are free:

To Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work (in this case, the electronic files that comprise the work).

Under the following conditions:

Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). In this case, “Witch Trial is © and ™ 2001, 2011 James Ernest and Cheapass Games: www.cheapass.com.”

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Notice — For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. That means including all pages of this document, unaltered.


Free? Seriously?Tell me a little more about that.

Okay, here’s the deal. If I made a great game and sold it to you for ten bucks, I’d probably keep about a dollar. If I sold it to a big game company, they’d probably make a nicer version for thirty bucks, and I’d still get about a dollar.

The rest of your money would go to printers, distribu-tors, retail stores, and freight companies. And most of those guys don’t know anything about what makes a great game.

Mass-producing entertainment is a gamble. It’s a con-voluted way for creators to protect their intellectual property, by selling it in a way that is prohibitively expensive to counterfeit. And it’s getting a little old.

Why do you pay $30 for a board game? The story goes like this: the retail price of a game covers the cost of manufacturing it, and there is no way you could make your own copy for that price, to say nothing of the hassle of finding little wooden men in six colors. So, it’s worth $30 because it costs $30, QED.

But the value in a board game isn’t the manufacturing cost. It’s the play value. Unfortunately, this means that some games are priced way out of whack with what they are worth. And because the big gamble doesn’t always work out, some of your money helps pay for the stuff that goes straight to the dump.

I’ve decided to try a different gamble. I’m giving my games away for free. This way, you can read the rules, make a copy, and even play the thing, before you decide what it’s worth.

If you do like my games, I hope you will send me some money. But I’m also hoping you will share this experi-ment with your friends. You are my sales force, my marketing department, my demo team.

You’re also my testers, so if you can think of ways to improve my games, please share them with me. I’m easy to find at big gaming conventions, and even easi-er online. Look for Cheapass Games on Facebook, or drop me a line at [email protected].

If we do this right, we will get famous and do shaving ads. But more importantly, we will prove that there is a better way for a creator to profit from his work.

And nothing has to go to the dump.


How to Make your Witch Trial Cards:

Witch Trial has 90 cards. They fit on 10 sheets of paper. But what then? Here are a few methods for making your own cards. If you’re an expert, you can ignore these hints and do it however you like.

Method 1: Labels on Playing Cards

Print the cards on full-sheet labels, then cut the labels and affix them to a deck of playing cards. Full-sheet mailing labels are great. Get white ones, not clear, suitable for your type of printer. You can get them at any office supply store for about 25¢ each (in packs) and they will be very handy for making cards and game boards. Print the card sheets on full-sheet labels. Print the file at 95% so that the stickers will fit easily on the cards. You will be applying these labels to playing cards. The better the cards, the happier you will be. Good playing cards have rounded corners, laminated card stock, and a textured finish that keeps them from sticking together. You can buy a new poker deck for around $3, or you can find canceled casino decks for around $1. Some casinos and card rooms give away their canceled decks for free, so keep your eyes open. Make sure that the cards are poker sized (2.5 x 3.5) not bridge sized (2.25 wide). Trading card games are usually printed on poker-sized cards, and sometimes your game store will have a blowout price on these cards. Sometimes they are even free. Com-pare the price of 54 junk common cards to the $3 you’d pay for a new poker deck, and decide accordingly. Apply the cut labels to the card fronts. Your cards should now be fairly easy to shuffle and deal. You will probably want to skip the card backs, since add-ing another label to the back of the card will make the deck thicker and harder to shuffle. It will also defeat the textured surface on the back of good playing cards.

Method 2: Card Sleeves

Print the cards on plain paper and insert the paper, along with a stiffening card, into trading card sleeves. Sleeves that are made specifically for trading card games can be found online and at most hobby stores. To build this deck, print the cards at 100% on plain white paper. Thicker paper helps keep the images bright. Cut them down to 2.5 x 3.5, keeping the white borders. As with Method 1, you probably won’t have much use for the card backs, since sleeves are usually opaque on the back. Back each card with a stiffener: this is a poker card or trading card inserted behind the paper. This deck may be slightly more durable than the label deck described above, depending on the quality of your card sleeves. But it wouldn’t hurt to have some extra sleeves on hand just in case.

Method 3: 110-lb Index

Print the artwork directly on heavy cardstock, and then trim the sheets down to card size. I have experimented with a few different card stocks for printing playable cards. Most of the Cheapass Games were printed on 110-lb Index, which is a grade that you can find at your local office supply store. If your printer has a straight paper path, you’re more likely to have good result with this paper. Also, inkjet ink tends to show through this stock, just barely, so this is a time where you are better off printing the card backs just to keep the cards from being marked. Aligning the backs with the fronts can be a challenge, depending on your printer. Hold the pages up to the light to make sure that your registration isn’t too far off. The challenge with this method will be cutting the cards. You need a decent paper cutter, or access to one (at your job or the local copy shop). Use the card backs, not the fronts, as a cutting guide, since you want the backs to be indistinguishable. If there is some misalignment between the fronts and backs, it is bet-ter that it show up on the fronts. Although it is tempting, do not begin by trimming off the outside of each page. Instead, make a single vertical and a single horizontal cut through the interior of the pages, cre-ating four sub-sheets with multiple cards and raw edges. Then, set the cutter depth (using the backstop that your cutter hopefully has) to 2.5,” and trim each card or strip of cards to exactly this width. Next, set the back stop at 3.5” and finish the cards the other way. If you have a corner rounder, you can take the extra step of finishing the corners. This is a simple scrapbooking tool, which clips a round corner on a piece of paper. Rounded cor-ners make cards much easier to shuffle.

The Board:

The board is a single page. You can print it on cardstock, or on a full- sheet label that you stick to a heavier board. If you want to make it more durable, you can cover your printed board with a layer of clear contact paper. This is shelf liner paper that you can probably find at any kitchen or hardware store. We have formatted this board to fit on a 9.25 x 7.68 mouse pad, because we have this weird thing for one-page boards that fit on mouse pads. You can get the original art-work (with full bleed) from the Witch Trial page at www.cheapass.com.

The Money:

We suggest stealing money from your least favorite board game, or using poker chips. You will need denomina-tions ranging from $5 to $100, roughly $3000 all together.

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