Among Cultists: A Social Deduction Thriller

At the start of the game, you will be assigned random roles and teams: As an Investigator of the Secret Society, you will try to thwart the Cultists’ dark ritual by identifying and eliminating them before they can finish it. You’d better avoid other Characters, because every encounter could be your last! The goal of the traitors is to get rid of the Investigators.

Only if you manage to expose all the Cultists or restore enough rooms before time runs out, you can save the venerable University. But be careful: They are already among you... and the killing has long since begun!

As Investigators, you win within 10 rounds as soon as:

• you have reached a certain number of Victory Points (see table on p. 6), OR …
• you have identified all the Cultists and eliminated them by majority vote/assassin attack.

• you succeed to kill a certain number of Investigators (see table on p. 6), OR …
• you successfully sabotaged the Investigators and prevented them from scoring the required Victory Points (see p. 6) before the end of round 10, or …
• you identify the Seer at the end of the game, if there is any in the game–regardless of how the game turned out for the Investigators.

Teams, Roles and Characters: You are playing Among Cultists with two Teams: Investigators and Cultists. Only one of the two Teams can win the game. Your Role marker, which you receive at the beginning and keep secret all the time, determines your Team affiliation and Role. The person depicted on your Character card, which is visible to everyone, has no impact on the gameplay and is only used for identification purposes.

States: Your Character has one of two States: alive or dead. Yes, Characters can die in this game, but they are not eliminated and may continue playing until the end of the game. Your Character is considered alive until their death is confirmed, for example after a certain action. Once dead, a Character becomes a Ghost with different privileges than its living counterpart. Since the cards representing your Character’s State are played face down, your Character can be dead without knowing it – even at the beginning of the game.

Encounters: Every Encounter between Characters carries the risk that someone involved will be murdered. Sharing the same Location with another living Character usually triggers an Encounter. In that case, you exchange cards face down that can affect the other Character’s State.

Hiding and Revealing Information: A lot of the information in the game is secret and is only unveiled during gameplay. However, you are always allowed to talk about almost anything, to lie, speculate or just keep silent. Just like in a good old thriller, the Investigators must cooperate skillfully to expose the Cultists. In doing so, it is important to remember things. However, you don’t have to remember every detail of the past rounds – it’s best for everyone to share their own level of knowledge during discussions. Blurry memories, entangled with truths and lies, add a certain flavor to the game and your discussions.