Cluedon’t is a reverse game of Cluedo where murderers want to be caught
I killed Dr Black in the kitchen with the candlestick.
Find all the evidence you need to get yourself arrested for murder in Cluedon’t, a reverse version of the classic family board game.
Created as part of a bet between its co-creators - Grant Howitt and Chloe Mashiter - Cluedon’t is a spin of the beloved board game that flips its premise onto its head. Rather than trying to gather the clues needed to find the killer of Dr Black, or Mr Boddy for people in the US, players in Cluedon’t want to see themselves get put behind bars for the crime and not any of the other house-guests.
Instead of finding evidence to incriminate the other characters in the game, players are looking for the evidence they need to prove that everyone else is entirely innocent except for them. To experience the parody title, players will need a copy of the original Cluedo - or more commonly known as Clue in the US - and the Cluedon’t PDF.
The game begins in a similar manner to Cluedo, with players all taking the role of house guests at an “eccentric millionaire relative’s estate,” only to be told that the family member has been brutally murdered. However, things take a bizarre turn when it’s revealed that the deceased individual has stated in their will that all their inheritance will go to the murderer responsible for their death. As such, the players must be able to prove that they did the crime in order to nab the money - as well as a decent amount of jail-time.
Whoever chooses the games master role will deal two cards to each player, put all the weapons into one of the rooms and secretly write the amount of inheritance at stake before putting it into the game’s envelope. Players then decide to either move any two miniatures anywhere on the board or perform one of several potential actions - to plant evidence, toy with a weapon, say nice things or trigger a flashback.
Planting evidence sees the players incriminating themselves by drawing a card and having the GM interrogate them about their actions in the room they’re currently in. Whereas to toy with a weapon has players using one of the weapons to frame themselves and drawing a card. Saying nice things about the other players allows the current player to take cards from their opponents, whilst a flashback sees players roleplaying a situation to see who has the upper hand. Drawing cards that match the current room, weapons or the player character’s skills enables them to take more cards.
Whichever player has the most or least possible cards become the most obvious suspects, with the GM rolling a die to decide which of the two players was the actual murderer - that player then delivers a monologue and is able to pick up the inheritance before being carted off the prison.
Besides co-creating Cluedon’t, Howitt is best known for designing roleplaying games such as Honey Heist - a system that has players becoming bears who are attempting to pull off a big score - and Reverse Beastmaster, whilst Mashiter has previously created the TRPG Sadness & Grace, a GM-less RPG about a four kingdoms engaging in a war, and a solo RPG called Bear.
Cluedon’t is available to download for free now from Howitt’s Patreon page.