Molly House

Molly House rules: what are you trying to achieve?

Most players begin loyal to the community. A flourishing molly-house network helps everyone escape the worst outcome, but the highest personal joy matters if the community survives. Other players may become informers, placing a secret informer token on a house and hoping that house is eventually raided. That decision opens a different possible victory path.

There are up to five weeks of play. During each week, players roll movement dice, visit sites around the board and take actions. The vice deck gradually empties, prompting the Society’s investigation and an end-of-week check. The game may finish earlier if a survival or infiltration condition is met.

The crucial distinction from a generic hidden-traitor game: the group does not simply win by collecting enough points, and an informer does not automatically win whenever a single house closes. There are three different endings with different consequences. Use the flowchart below in words: investigate evidence, check infiltration first, check whether community joy meets its threshold, and otherwise continue until the fifth week.

For an authoritative resolution, see the official first-printing English rulebook. This guide explains the mechanisms independently and flags the solo rules separately.

Player-count setup: cards, four houses and starting reputation

Place the main board and playmat together. Set out the community joy marker at zero, the week marker at one, the candelabra, item and indictment decks, evidence cubes and matching house markers. Deal four cards face up into the market and one card face down into the gossip pile. The candelabra identifies the opening player.

Prepare the shared vice deck with its molly and threat cards plus numbered desire cards. The highest desire value included changes with player count:

Each player receives a board, pawn, joy marker and four encounter tokens: three loyal and one informer. Keep these tokens face down; only their owner may inspect them freely. Each player selects one card from their starting hand, reveals it into their reputation area and places their pawn at the house matching its suit. Desire cards give their printed joy; threats go to the safe pile; molly cards give no immediate joy but may enable later bonuses.

Because the four suits are tied to different houses and sites, the first revealed card affects both movement and subsequent reputation opportunities. The precise layout of shops and houses should follow the publisher’s diagram, not a guessed London street map.

The three vice-card types: Desires, Mollies and Threats

Desire cards have a number, one of four suits (Pentacles, Fans, Hearts or Cups) and a star-based joy value. Number and suit are used to build card combinations during festivities; joy is scored only when the relevant rules say the card scores.

Molly cards depict people associated with the historical communities. They come as jacks and queens. A molly in your reputation improves future matching desire scores: a matching jack provides 2 bonus joy, a queen 3, and holding both matching mollies can yield 5. This can make a less-impressive desire valuable because of the reputation engine you have built.

Threat cards represent constables and rogues. They do not provide normal desire joy. If threats enter the gossip pile and are exposed, they can create evidence and cause reputations to be exposed. During festivities, successfully scoring a threat can instead put it into the safe pile, clearing danger from the system.

Do not confuse your personal reputation with the common community joy total. Reputation helps match sites and calculate certain risks; personal joy matters to the surviving community’s final ranking, while community joy can trigger one of the endings.

Each turn: movement dice, one action and market refill

Roll both custom movement dice. Some results show market discards, which move the farthest market card from the vice deck into the safe pile if it is a desire, or into gossip if it is a molly or threat. A public threat entering gossip in this way can expose the most infamous player associated with that threat’s suit.

Then move your pawn along the site’s ring using the number of boot icons rolled on one or both dice, without backtracking. A die that shows a discard instead of boots may permit staying put; rolling two such icons allows the special carriage movement to any site.

Take one action. Choose either an available basic action, which works at any site if its requirement is satisfied, or your current site’s action. Finally, slide and refill the market from the vice deck if possible, then observe the six-card hand limit. Excess cards go face down to gossip at the end of the turn.

If the vice deck is empty at the start of a player’s turn, do not play a normal turn immediately. That player first takes the candelabra and resolves the end-of-week procedure. If the game continues, they then take their turn.

Basic actions: Lie Low, Indulge and Accuse

Lie Low: draw one card from the top of the vice deck and add it to hand. This is a straightforward way to rebuild your options when the market does not offer the suit or cards you need.

Indulge: take a face-up market card whose suit matches your current site. Shop sites do not have a matching suit, so this action cannot be used at a shop. It can be useful when a particular desire number or molly could complete a future festive combination.

Accuse: if another player’s pawn shares your site, turn over one of that player’s previously placed encounter tokens. A loyal token costs the accuser three joy. Exposing an informer earns the accuser three joy and advances community joy by the same amount; the accused player is now a revealed informer and suffers the rules’ additional restrictions.

The cost of a mistaken accusation is intentional. The system encourages reading both the evidence on the board and the incentives of other players, rather than automatically accusing whoever appears to cooperate least.

Site actions: Cruise, Shop and Throw a Festivity

Cruise is available at a cruising site. Place a matching-suit desire from your hand into your personal reputation. Then draw vice cards equal to your reputation in that suit, capped at four. If the house has been raided, cruising at either adjacent site becomes dangerous and sends the newly played card to gossip in exchange for a permanent reputation cube.

Shop is available at one of the four shop spaces. Take the displayed item and keep up to two item cards on your player board. Resolve a market discard as directed. Items offer special timing-based effects—some help during festivities, others change what happens around investigations.

Throw a Festivity is possible at an open molly house and is the primary way to generate joy. It asks the players to contribute cards into a shared contest for the best festive set. The runner needs at least two cards in hand, or three with only two players, before selecting the action.

Because the Society’s investigation happens at week end, these actions are not simply ‘earn reputation’, ‘buy item’ and ‘score party’. They alter both your scoring opportunities and the danger in the gossip pile.

Throw a Festivity: card rounds and communication

The player who starts a festivity takes the candelabra and becomes its runner. The festivity consists of two rounds of card play for three to five players, or three rounds for two players. At the beginning of each round, reveal a card from the vice deck as the community’s contribution.

Each player in turn either plays one card face up or passes. Passing removes that player from the rest of the festivity. The runner must play a card in every round. Players may talk about cards they might have, but may not directly reveal cards from their hands unless another rule permits it. Statements can be misleading: trust is a game decision.

If a rogue is played by a player, its numerical value can be set from zero through nine with a ten-sided die. Community-played rogues instead get a random value from a die roll. This flexibility can rescue a planned set, but it can also make the contents of gossip more dangerous.

Once all the rounds are complete, choose the best eligible four-card set according to the published ranking. Only selected cards score; the rest become gossip, with their associated draw and exposure consequences. Players do not each choose their own scoring hand.

Festivity ranking: Surprise Ball, Christening, Dance and Quiet Gathering

The highest eligible shared set wins. The first three are special four-card patterns:

1. Surprise Ball: four desire cards in the same suit with consecutive numbers.
2. Christening: one queen and three desire cards of an identical value.
3. Dance: one jack plus three sequential desires, with their suits unrestricted.

If none of those sets can be created, the event is a Quiet Gathering. Select the four lowest desires among the played cards; ignore rogues for this selection, and treat constables as zero-value desires. If fewer than four eligible cards were played, select only those available.

Illustration: four sequential desires numbered 3, 4, 5 and 6 of the same suit form a Surprise Ball. A queen with three desire cards all numbered 5 forms a Christening. A jack with desire values 2, 3 and 4 forms a Dance regardless of their suits. The actual scoring value still depends on which specific cards were played and selected.

A successful special festivity gives the runner bonus joy equal to their matching reputation, and advances community joy by 3 for a Surprise Ball, 2 for a Christening or 1 for a Dance. A Quiet Gathering instead reduces the runner’s joy by the matching reputation amount and decreases community joy by one (without going below zero).

Cards selected for scoring enter their owners’ reputations or, for community cards and appropriately handled threats, the safe pile. Unselected cards enter the gossip pile. Do not skip this second part: failed combinations can harm everyone at the end of the week.

Gossip, the safe pile and exposure explained

The gossip pile is face down. It collects discarded and unselected vice cards and is used when the Society investigates. The safe pile contains cards that are no longer a source of evidence during the current investigation. Moving a threat into safety can be more important than the immediate personal joy lost by not scoring a desirable card.

Players can become exposed when matching threats reach gossip from certain actions or events. Affected players remove matching reputation cards to gossip and replace them with permanent reputation cubes. A cube protects the size of your reputation bonus from disappearing, but the removed card may further increase society risk when the gossip pile is investigated.

At festivals, if a threat enters the selected set, its danger can be foiled: the threat is placed in the safe pile, and certain matching reputation cards may also be moved to safety. Players who move those cards can take corresponding reputation cubes under the Pride rule. This is not an automatic benefit for every threat played—its card must actually be selected and resolved.

For newcomers, distinguishing these two piles is essential. A threat visible in your reputation or hand is not automatically evidence on the board; it becomes dangerous during the specific exposure and Society-investigation steps detailed in the rules.

End of week: Society investigations, evidence and raids

When the deck is exhausted and the next turn begins, players first reveal threat cards still in hand and add them to gossip, taking the applicable draw token. Then shuffle the gossip pile. Move one third of its cards (round down) into the safe pile without revealing them, and reveal the remaining cards for the Society to inspect.

During investigation, each threat generates evidence by matching desire or molly cards. Place matching evidence cubes on the corresponding molly houses. An open house with seven or more evidence is raided: mark it closed, mark its neighboring cruising sites dangerous, and return seven evidence from the house to supply.

A raid can produce major and minor indictments for the players with the highest and second-highest reputations in that house’s suit, including tied players according to the rules. A high reputation therefore has a double edge: it makes actions stronger, but can leave you vulnerable when the corresponding house becomes a target.

Next, check whether the game ends. If it continues, players who received indictments select encounter tokens as directed, then refresh the deck, market and items for another week. This also provides opportunities for secretly placing informer tokens.

The three endings: survival, infiltration or atrophy

1. Community Infiltration. This ending occurs if all four houses are raided, or if a house that was already raided accumulates another seven evidence. Successful informers—those whose secret informer tokens match raided houses—can survive and compete for victory through a distinct points calculation. This is a different outcome from a single first raid.

2. Community Survival. If the community joy marker has reached the player-count threshold on the board (for example, 30 joy with four players) before an infiltration ending, the community survives. Resolve the endgame rules and indictments; the player with the highest remaining personal joy who has not been eliminated by trial wins. Under the rules, eligible ties share victory.

3. Community Atrophy. If the fifth week ends without either of the other triggers, all players lose. The Society need not win through raids for the wider community to fail in the game’s narrative.

Order matters: during each end-of-week check, resolve Infiltration first, then Survival, then fifth-week Atrophy. A current community joy total that would normally reach the survival threshold does not override a simultaneously triggered infiltration ending.

Informer tokens, accusations and the consequences of betrayal

Every player starts with three loyal encounter tokens and one informer token. Players may place tokens after certain end-of-week indictments or through specific effects. Information remains hidden until a token is revealed or the game ends. An informer token matching a house that has been raided makes that player a successful informer.

If Community Infiltration ends the game, only successful informers can win. Their score equals two points per evidence at their informed-on house plus two per matching reputation point held by other players, minus one point for each point of their own reputation across all suits. Highest positive score wins; tied highest scores or no positive scorer mean everyone loses.

If the community survives, successful informers are pardoned and discard their indictments, but failed informers face an additional major indictment. Other loyalties also matter: players gain two joy for each loyal token placed on an open house, then resolve applicable trial penalties.

Revealed informers have special restrictions—for example, they cannot take certain actions at the house they informed against. The game’s design avoids making betrayal a consequence-free alternative strategy: pursuing it can improve your chances under one ending while harming your position under another.

Molly House strategy: useful first-game decisions

1. Build reputation across relevant houses. Concentrating only on one suit may improve immediate draws but can make an indictment especially painful if its house is raided.
2. Use molly bonuses intentionally. A matching jack or queen can make future desires much more valuable, but collecting the cards still exposes you to risk.
3. At festivities, work toward a genuine pattern. The group scores one shared best combination, not several independent hands. Count which cards are still needed and what unselected cards will send to gossip.
4. Track the Society’s threat environment. A successful festivity is less useful if its leftover cards create the evidence needed to close a house next week.
5. Do not accuse on weak evidence. Revealing a loyal token costs three personal joy; a successful accusation can help the entire community.
6. Study all three end conditions. Your best move depends on whether survival is close, infiltration is possible, or time is about to expire.

These points are original strategic interpretations of the printed rules, not universally optimal moves or claims of personal playtesting. Other players may deliberately misrepresent their cards or plans, so choose actions based on the current public board state as well as negotiation.

Solo play, historical context and who the game suits

Wehrlegig lists 1–5 players, with the multiplayer rules covering two to five and a separate solo rulebook and solo components. The solo experience is not simply a two-player setup with one player missing; follow the dedicated rules for its automated opponent and victory conditions.

The historical setting is central to the game rather than incidental decoration. Molly houses were gathering places for people whose gender expression or relationships made them vulnerable to prosecution in early-eighteenth-century London. The game draws from contemporary records and includes the community’s joys alongside the threats of surveillance, betrayal and legal punishment. Players should know before playing that the rulebook addresses persecution, criminal prosecution and capital punishment as part of its subject matter.

The publisher describes the game as a work exploring both community and betrayal, not as a general history textbook. Its historical notes explain the limits of modern labels for historical identities. This guide uses the designers’ terms and avoids projecting particular modern identities onto individual historical figures without direct evidence.

For players interested in historically grounded negotiation and competing incentives, compare John Company: Second Edition and Pax Pamir: Second Edition. Oath is another complex game with shifting alliances, but its setting is fictional. These titles have distinct historical and mechanical approaches and should not be treated as interchangeable.

Molly House FAQ

How many people can play Molly House?

Wehrlegig lists one to five. Two to five use the main multiplayer rules; solo play has its own rules and components.

How long does a game last?

The publisher lists about 60–120 minutes. First games can run longer as players learn festivity ranking and the Society’s investigation procedure.

How many weeks are there?

Up to five. The game can end early if Community Survival or Community Infiltration is triggered at an end-of-week check.

Can players show their cards to each other?

Players may freely discuss their hands but cannot directly reveal cards unless a specific rule permits. They may bluff about what they hold.

How do you score a festivity?

Identify the best eligible shared set in rank order: Surprise Ball, Christening, Dance or Quiet Gathering. Only selected cards score, while other cards usually enter gossip.

What is the strongest festivity?

Surprise Ball: four consecutive numbered desire cards of the same suit.

How much evidence raids a molly house?

A house with seven or more evidence is raided during the Society’s investigation. A further seven on an already-raided house can trigger Community Infiltration.

Does the game end immediately after any raid?

No. A first raid on a house is not automatically Community Infiltration. Check all four houses or the seven-evidence-on-an-already-raided-house requirement.

How can the community survive?

Advance the community joy marker to the player-count threshold and satisfy the end-of-week survival check without triggering infiltration first.

Can every player lose?

Yes. Community Atrophy makes everyone lose, and the infiltration ending can also leave no winner if no eligible informer achieves a positive unique highest score.

Can an informer win?

Yes, but the relevant informer token must match a raided house and the scoring conditions must be met in the Community Infiltration ending.

Is Molly House a fully cooperative game?

No. Players share interests in keeping the community alive but compete for personal joy, and one or more may become informers.

Official rules, sources and editorial notes

• Wehrlegig Games — official Molly House product, designers, player count and historical theme
• Wehrlegig Games — official resources, rulebook, how-to-play and solo materials
• Molly House — official English first-printing rulebook (publisher link)
• RulesPal — searchable rulebook text for quick term lookup
• Wehrlegig — May 2025 publication announcement

Research checked October 16, 2026. The main guide follows the English first-printing multiplayer rules and distinguishes those from solo play. Tactical recommendations and examples are original explanations. We do not claim first-hand playtesting, reproduce original card artwork, or treat fictional game outcomes as real historical facts. Publication status and availability may vary by printing and region.