Waterdeep / Rules

GAMES :: LORDS OF WATERDEEP :: RULES

Introduction

  1. You are a Lord of Waterdeep, one of the secret rulers of this great city. Through your Agents, you recruit Adventurers to complete Quests and advance your agendas. The Lords of Waterdeep all have the safety of their city at heart, but each one is also laying his or her own plans! Through backdoor dealings, mercenaries, and plain old bribery, can you guide the city to become the greatest Lord of Waterdeep?

Goal

Resources

  1. Faction: Each player will be the leader of a Faction within Waterdeep. Which Faction you control has no effect on gameplay at this time.
  2. Lord: Each player will receive or choose a Lord at the beginning of the game. Each Lord has their own goals, and at the end of the game will be awarded bonus Victory Points depending on how well you were able to promote those goals throughout the game.
  3. Agents: Each player will have a Pool of Agents. As a Lord of Waterdeep, you assign your Agents to further your interests in the city. The number of Agents available to each player depends on the number of players in the game.
  4. Adventurers: Your Agents hire various Adventurers, whether noble heroes or mere mercenaries, to accomplish various tasks. There are four kinds of Adventurers:
    1. Clerics - Priests of a specific god, or perhaps to an entire pantheon, they are healers, speakers, and excel at motivating others to do their religion's bidding.
    2. Fighters - Warriors, experts with the fist, blade, or bow. Many Quests require some sort of force to complete, and these are the men and women who provide that force.
    3. Rogues - Masters of stealth and trickery, these are the people you turn to when you need to accomplish your goals with a little more subtlety.
    4. Wizards - Students of the arcane arts. Able to bend small parts of the cosmos to their will, they can accomplish much through their magic, but their service will not come cheap.
  5. Buildings - These are the locations in Waterdeep where you gather resources from to complete your goals. There are two general kinds of buildings:
    1. Basic Buildings - These are the standard Buildings in the City of Waterdeep. They exist in every game, and no one owns them.
    2. Advanced Buildings - These are built by the Factions as the game progresses. The Faction that subsidizes the construction of a Building is the Owner of that Building, and receives compensation whenever someone else uses it. The Owner may use the Building themselves, but they do not receive the Owner benefit for doing so.
    3. Construction - There are three Buildings available to be built at any one time.
      1. Funding construction of a Building is worth Victory Points. The first turn a Building is available to be built it is worth 1 Victory Point. At the start of each turn thereafter, the Building is worth one additional Victory Point to construct.
      2. At the start of a turn, if any of the three Building slots is empty, a new Building is drawn and made available and 1 Victory Point is given to it.
  6. Intrigue - These cards let you secretly manipulate others to advance your ends. But be careful-your fellow Lords of Waterdeep are also skilled in Intrigue!
    1. Intrigue cards may only be played (unless told otherwise) when you place an Agent in Waterdeep Harbor.
  7. Quests - As a Lord of Waterdeep, you advance your interests by completing Quests, represented by Quest cards.
    1. Each Quest has a set of requirements needed to complete it, usually some combination of Adventurer's and Gold.
    2. Each Quest has a set of rewards you acquire for completing it, usually some Victory Points and perhaps some Adventurers or Gold as well.
    3. There are five types of standard Quest:
      1. Arcana Quests - Dealing with magic in some way, these Quests almost always require Wizard support to complete.
      2. Commerce Quests - Money, trade, the lifeblood of Waterdeep. That's what these Quests are all about.
      3. Piety Quests - Appeasing the right gods, driving out the wrong ones, these are vital Quests to the wellbeing of Waterdeep and its people. Clerics are your resource of choice for these.
      4. Skullduggery Quests - Only a fool thinks the darker side of life doesn't affect things, and Waterdeep isn't a city to neglect its dark side. Many important things happen in Skullport or away from official eyes at the wharves. Rogues excel at this sort of work.
      5. Warfare Quests - Not all threats are mystical or magical. Some of them are merely mundane matters requiring brute strength or a show of it. Fighters are the specialists for this.
    4. There are two special types of Quest:
      1. Plot Quests - Completing a Plot Quest gives you a recurring bonus that you get to use throughout the rest of the game.
      2. Mandatory Quests - These Quests are assigned to a player by an Intrigue card played by an opposing Lord. You may not complete any non-Mandatory Quests of any sort until all of your Mandatory Quests have been completed.

Gameplay

  1. The first player places one of his Agents on a Building and performs the action or draws the Resources that Building provides.
  2. The next player in line does the same. Agents may not be placed on Buildings or spaces with an Agent already on them.
  3. Continue around until all players have placed an Agent.
  4. Begin again with the first player and repeat around the table.
  5. If at any point a player doesn't have any Agents to place, or all available spots have been occupied, their turn is skipped and play moves to the next player in line.
  6. Once all players have played all of their Agents
    1. If there are any Agents in Waterdeep Harbor, they remove their Agent from there and may play them elsewhere in Waterdeep. This is done in order of the Agents' placing, so the first played goes first, and so on.
  7. Once all Agents have been placed, or there are no more moves that can be made, the turn is over.
    1. If there are any empty spots available in Builder's Hall, draw more Building cards to fill them. These Buildings are all set to be worth 1 Victory Point.
    2. Some Buildings are refilled at the start of each turn as well.
    3. All Agents are returned to their Pool.
    4. Every fourth turn after the first (5th, etc), each Faction receives an additional Agent in their Pool.
    5. At the end of the 8th turn, the game is over and all extra Victory Points (from Lords' descriptions, etc) are tallied.