Hi,

My girlfriend and I thought we'd have a rest from pc/console games, so we bought Citadels, but it's already causing a disagreement concerning the dealing of the character deck for a two-player game.

From pages 8&9 of the included rules:

1. The player who has the Crown marker (Player A) shuffles the Character Deck and places a random character card facedown in the center of the table. He then secretly selects a character card from the remaining cards and passes the remaining six cards to the other player (Player B).
    
2. Player B selects one card from the Character Deck for himself and then chooses and places another character card facedown in the center of the table. He then passes the remaining four character cards to Player A.
    
3. Player A selects one of the remaining four character cards for himself, and then he chooses and places another character card facedown in the center of the table. He then passes the remaining two cards to Player B.
    
4. Player B takes one of the remaining character cards and places the last character card facedown in the center of the table.
    

Point 1 is pretty much straight forward - Player A, the crown holder, initially chooses a random (unknown) character to be excluded from game-play. He then views the remaining 7 cards and chooses a character for himself (by deduction, he will know the excluded character).

It's points 2,3 and 4 that we can't agree on. My girlfriend has the opinion that the rest of the deck should be dealt randomly - that is, the character selected to play  and the character chosen to exclude should not be viewed but chosen randomly. In my mind this makes it a pointless object in passing the deck between players A&B, as the crown holder might as well have dealt the whole deck their self.

I believe that, after point 1, the rest of the deck is dealt by each player viewing the remaining characters and choosing one to keep and one to exclude - the result being that each player knows two of the four characters that have been excluded from game-play.

Are either of us correct, or are we both missing something?

Thanks for any clarity offered.

You are correct.  Other than the first card excluded, all cards (taken or excluded) are selected by a player (who looks through the deck and knows which character they are choosing).  Choosing your character card is the main strategy element in this game.

This creates a benefit to having the crown.  It allows you to pick characters which will benefit you most.  It also allows the Assassin and Theif cards to make an educated guess of what cards their opponent will have chosen.