Temple Gold

Full rules

1. Overview
2. The cards
3. Setup
4. Playing a round
5. Winning the game
6. Tips for beginners
7. Variants

Overview

Temple Gold is a short party game of hidden roles, bluffing and a little luck. Most players are adventurers who want to find all the gold in an old temple. A few are secretly guardians who want to keep it hidden. Every player gets a few face-down chamber cards – gold, empty chambers or fire traps – and knows what they hold, but not which card is which. One after another, players open a chamber in front of somebody else. Everyone may talk, advise, claim and lie about what they hold.

The adventurers win as soon as the last gold is found. The guardians win if all fire traps are opened, or if the gold isn't found within four rounds.

A shorter cousin of Werewolf: no moderator, nobody is out, and a game takes about a quarter of an hour.

• Players: 3–10; best with 5–8.
• You need: one standard 52-card deck for the chambers (with 10 players also one joker), and 11 cards from a second deck as role cards – ideally one with a different back, so the two never get mixed up. A coin or any small object serves as the key.

Temple Gold is our own adaptation for an ordinary deck, inspired by Timebomb (Yūsuke Satō, 2014), known in Germany as Tempel des Schreckens. The names and texts are our own; the rules follow the German edition, except that playing cards replace the role and chamber cards and, with 10 players, a joker makes up the one missing empty chamber. It has not been playtested yet.

The cards

Role cards (from the second deck): a red card means you are an adventurer, a black card means you are a guardian. Take 7 red and 4 black cards; their ranks don't matter.

Chamber cards (from the first deck):

Within each kind the ranks and suits don't matter: a 3♣ is just as empty as a 10♥.

Setup

1. Pick the cards for your number of players from this table:

With 10 players there are only 36 number cards, so the joker is the 37th empty chamber. Everything else goes back in the box.

2. Deal the roles. Shuffle the role cards and deal one face down to each player. Look at yours secretly and put it face down in front of you. With 3, 4, 7, 8 or 10 players there is one role card too many: put it back in the box unseen. So nobody knows exactly how many guardians are at the table.
3. Deal the chambers. Shuffle the chamber cards and deal 5 face down to each player. Look at your five cards secretly, then shuffle them face down and lay them out in a row in front of you. Now you know what you have, but not where it lies.
4. The youngest player takes the key and starts.

Your role card stays secret until the game is over – you may never show it. Everything else you may say, true or false.

Playing a round

Talk first. Once everybody has laid out their chambers, players usually say what they are and what they hold: "I'm an adventurer, I've got two gold and no trap." Adventurers want the gold to be found, so they tell the truth – mostly. Guardians pretend to be adventurers and try to lure the others to their empty chambers and fire traps.

Open a chamber. The player with the key chooses one face-down chamber card of another player (never one of their own), puts the key next to it and turns it face up. Everybody may give advice, but the key holder alone decides.

• Gold or empty: put the card face up in the middle, sorted into a gold pile and an empty pile, so everyone can see how many have been found.
• Fire trap: put it face up in the middle too. If it was the last fire trap, the guardians win at once.

Pass the key. The player whose chamber was just opened takes the key and opens the next chamber – again one of somebody else's.

End of a round. A round ends when as many chambers have been opened as there are players (5 cards with 5 players). It doesn't matter whose chambers they were. Then:

1. Gather up all face-down chamber cards and shuffle them. The opened cards stay in the middle.
2. Deal them out evenly: everybody now gets one card fewer than last round – 4 in round 2, 3 in round 3, 2 in round 4.
3. Look at your cards, shuffle them face down and lay them out again.
4. The player who holds the key starts the new round.

Example: 4 players, 20 chamber cards: 6 gold, 12 empty, 2 traps. Anna, Ben, Carla and Dan each get five. Anna has the key and says: "Adventurer, one gold, no trap." Ben: "Two gold here." Carla: "Two gold, but also a trap – careful." Dan is a guardian with four empty chambers and a trap, but says: "Adventurer! Three gold." That makes eight gold claimed – but there are only six in the game, so somebody is lying. Anna opens one of Dan's cards: empty. Now Dan has the key. He opens one of Carla's cards, hoping for her trap – but it's gold. "Great, one gold already!" he says, hiding his annoyance. Carla takes the key …

Winning the game

The game ends at once when:

• the last gold is opened – the adventurers win;
• the last fire trap is opened – the guardians win;
• round 4 ends and gold is still hidden – the guardians win.

Then everybody turns their role card face up. All players of the winning side win together.

Nobody is ever out: every player stays in the game until the end. If there are fewer openings left than gold cards still hidden, the adventurers can no longer win – you may stop and give the guardians the win.

Tips for beginners

• Count the claims. Everybody knows how many gold cards and traps are in the game. If the claims add up to more gold than there is, someone is lying.
• As an adventurer: the truth is your best tool. Say exactly what you have and watch who contradicts it.
• As a guardian: claim gold when you hold empty chambers – every empty chamber opened wastes one of the adventurers' chances. Don't overdo it: claiming too much gold gets you caught.
• Who opens whom? A guardian with the key often picks a player who claims a trap, "just to be safe". Watch who does that.

Variants

All optional – agree before you start.

• One trap (as in the first edition): for 3–8 players. Use only one fire trap (an Ace), as many gold cards as there are players, and four times the number of players minus one empty chambers (e.g. 5 players: 5 gold, 19 empty, 1 trap). Roles: 3–5 players 3 red + 2 black, 6 players 4 red + 2 black, 7–8 players 5 red + 3 black; the leftover role cards go back in the box unseen. The guardians win if the trap is opened or the gold isn't found in four rounds.
• No second deck: write "A" (adventurer) and "G" (guardian) on slips of paper and fold them – they work just as well as role cards.