by Jonathan Leistiko
Learn what ingredients you need to make things. Turn money into ingredients. Turn ingredients into things. Use your things to give you an advantage over your opponents. Learn what things you need to build doodads. Build doodads out of things. Use your doodads to give you an even greater advantage over your opponents. End the game with the most diverse collection of doodads, things, and ingredients.
A Doodads ingredients deck.
Doodads thing cards.
Doodads thing and doodad FX cards.
A Doodads thing and doodad tracker board.
Money, or tokens to act as money.
Two six-sided dice.
Paper and pencil for each player to take notes (optional, but very helpful).
Separate the ingredient cards from the thing cards from the things FX cards from the doodad FX cards. Take one of each ingredient from the ingredients deck. Shuffle each pile separately and set them aside face-down.
Shuffle the eight unique ingredients you separated from the rest of the deck face-down. Deal two of these ingredients face-down to each Thing spot. Take the Thing FX cards and deal one face-down to each Thing spot; remove the remaining ones from play. Deal two thing cards face-down to each Doodad spot. Take the doodad FX cards and deal one to each doodad spot; remove the remaining ones from play.
You (and each other player) get to peek at the ingredient cards on one thing or Doodad of your choice before the game starts.
Note: FX from a thing or doodad do not “stack” with identical instances of that thing or doodad. Similar FX from different types of things and doodads do stack.
Play in Doodads is simultaneous. Each turn of Doodads has six phases: Income, Harvest, Market, Trade, Research, and Build. If you ever feel that turn order will be important during a phase, you can start a bid (dollars only) at the start of that phase. The winner of the bid gets to decide who’ll go first during that phase, with play passing to the left.
1) Income: Each player gets 10 dollars.
2) Harvest: You may spend dollars to draw cards from the ingredients deck.
Dollars | Cards you draw |
1 | 1 |
3 | 2 |
6 | 3 |
10 | 4 |
15 | 5 |
3) Market: Roll two dice. Draw that many cards. Put them face-up in the center of the table in homogeneous clusters. Cluster any solitary cards into their own cluster.
Starting with the cluster with the fewest cards and proceeding upward, each player makes a secret bid. Once all players have bid, compare the bids. If you have the highest bid for a cluster, you lose the dollars you bid and gain the cards in that cluster. If you didn’t have the highest bid, you get your dollars back. If you tie for top bid, no-one gets the cluster; shuffle it back into the deck and take your dollars back. Once bidding on all clusters is complete, this phase ends.
4) Trade: Anything goes. You can trade anything you want to with any other players. You can sell ingredient cards to the game for 1 dollar each. This phase ends when no trades have been completed for 30 seconds or when all players agree the phase has ended.
5) Research: You may buy dice at a dollar per die, then roll them. You get to look at one face-down FX card, ingredient, or thing for every 5 or 6.
6) Build: You may declare that you’re building one or more things and/or doodads. Show the ingredients or things that you’re using and declare what specific things and/or doodads you’re making. If you have the right parts, note that you have that thing or doodad. If parts are wrong, the parts you used are discarded.
If there are no cards in the ingredients deck at the end of a turn, the game ends. Score one point for every 5 dollars you have, one point for every ingredient, 5 points for every type of thing you completed, and 25 points for every type of doodad you completed.
Example: You have 53 dollars, 7 ingredients, 4 things (but only 2 different types of things), and 1 doodad. You score 10 + 7 + (2×5) + (1×25) or 52 points.
If you have the most points at the end of the game, you win. Ties go to the player with the most of the highest-scoring item.
Big thanks to the Monday Night Gaming Group for play testing Doodads for me and to Brandon W. for the seed idea for Doodads.
My original design thoughts and notes from when I first started working on the game are in a pdf that’s bundled with the cards and board download. The short form of it is: In March ’06, Brandon wanted a game where you use basic ingredients and follow recipes to make things, and you can use those things to make bigger things. In April ’06, I made this game based on that idea seed.
I hope y’all enjoy saying things like, “I’ll trade you a cabbage and some duct tape for your toddler,” as much as we did.