[Resources] Cluedo

Even before playing RPGs, I played the boardgame Cluedo (known as Clue in the US) with my siblings.

The game was a popular one in my house and with my friends. After secretly (and randomly) choosing a weapon, suspect and murder room, and placing them in an envelope, the remaining cards are distributed to the players.

Then each player takes on the persona of one of the suspects: Miss Scarlet, Mrs. White, Mr. Green, Mrs. Peacock, Professor Plum and Colonel Mustard.

Pieces move around the 9 room mansion and on each player's turn, they make a suggestion of who is the murderer, which of the 6 weapons was used and the room the murder occurred in (and the player's piece must be in that room to make the guess).

The other players then have an opportunity to prove it wrong by secretly showing the guessing player one of their cards, thereby showing one of the facts of the crime is not true. The players spend the following rounds of the game seeking to learn what weapons, suspects and rooms to discard and solve the crime with the remaining items.

Clue was a great game to play for an imaginative kid, prior to learning about RPGs. We each developed characterizations of the suspects, making Colonel Mustard a stuffy British soldier, Mrs. Peacock as a flighty housewife and Professor Plum as an absent-minded academic, and, dare I say, roleplaying each character.

There have been many different editions and spinoffs of Cluedo, including board games, interactive media games and computer games. Hollywood even made Clue into a movie in 1985, starring Tim Curry, Leslie Ann Warren, Michael McKean, Christopher Lloyd and Madeline Kahn.