Building from my collection of mythos-related games and book, as well as my interest in integrating props into tabletop games, I’ve gradually developed a fondness for displaying my collection. In some areas it’s modest, in other areas less so. I have dubbed this constantly evolving display my Shelf of Madness.
And I’ve recently taken to creating some props and display pieces of my own.
I’ve posted pictures of some of these items here and there, and I’ve gotten a few requests for a more detailed description of some items, where they are from, etc. So I figured I could start posting some of that here as well. That way when I post some new acquisition or creation and someone sees something in the background, I’ll have a place where I can point them to check out what’s in the collection.
You can see all the posts describing the Shelf of Madness here.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, in the past couple of years I have played two Call of Cthulhu scenarios with my family. The first game, The Haunting, did not go as well as I wanted. The second game, the Peru Prologue to Masks of Nyarlathotep, went far better. I learned a lot from both sessions, and studying those experiences can point to what worked well and what didn’t – pointing to a preliminary list of features for my game.
I’ve also played a fair bit of both Mansions of Madness and Arkham Horror: The Card Game, not to mention numerous other board games. Again, examining what I liked and what I didn’t should help define some more features I may wish to incorporate.
Differences Between The Haunting and Peru
There are a few things I did differently when playing these two scenarios. While The Haunting didn’t go badly, my kids had a difficult time with it. We also didn’t really engage the system that much, and wading through the content of the prop handouts I used consumed a lot of time without a lot of benefit in terms of driving the investigation forward (great for immersion though).
System
When we played The Haunting, we used the Trail of Cthulhu conversion. There were very few dice rolls, and in general we didn’t engage the system except for during character creation. We didn’t quite reach Corbitt before we had to stop, which assuredly would have used the system due to combat. Not sure that would have gone well anyway, since we didn’t use the system much leading up to it.
For Peru, I used a work-in-progress version of the system I’m working now, which is a custom adaptation of Fate Core. There were a few parts of the system we didn’t engage with as much as we probably should have, but that was due more to some mistakes on my part as GM. I should have made the difficulty of rolls known to everyone, which I think would have helped drive the Fate Point economy. (I was leaning on my past experience of using unknown difficulties to help build suspense, but that wasn’t necessary.) I probably called for a couple of rolls I shouldn’t have, since I didn’t have any good ideas for complications from failure. And I should have called for a few more defense from horror rolls when the investigators encountered something strange or horrific.
Overall though, we definitely used the system a lot more in Peru, and it never felt like we had an excessive number of rolls. I had already put together a conversion doc that helped me quickly identify what skills would typically apply. However, even when the players wanted to take some action that wasn’t explicitly covered in the scenario, the Fate system made it easy to quickly identify a skill and mechanic to handle what they wanted to accomplish.
Character Creation
I think one of the differences that had the biggest impact for my group was how we got started with everyone’s characters. Our first time around we created characters from scratch using the ToC rules. This got the adults interested in their characters, but we spent a lot of time on this – and since we didn’t engage the system much, it was largely pointless. The choices of professions and such was interesting, but no one had a clue how the numbers for the skills would be relevant. We ended up spending around two hours on creating characters, whereas if we had spent less time on this we probably could have finished the scenario. More importantly, the kids were completely lost during this part. There were way too many choices for them to pick from, which turned them off from the beginning.
When we played Peru, I converted the pre-generated characters over to my Fate Core implementation and presented them to the players. So three people were choosing between about 8 characters. Since I was using a version of Fate, each investigator had a handful of aspects that provided a quick summary of the character, which made it easy for everyone to see how the investigators were different from one another and make a choice. After the investigation got started, I also had each player come up with a Drive for their investigator – basically a goal or concern they had related to the scenario or the other investigators. We didn’t have much opportunity to actually use those Drives in the scenario, but it allowed a bit of customization without requiring a lot of time.
I’ve though quite a bit about how best to handle creating characters in my game. I like the idea of starting with pre-generated characters for the first scenario or two and then allowing custom characters to be created. I also think providing the option to use pre-generated characters in later scenarios could useful – especially if you have additional players join the group. The option to customize pre-generated characters could also be useful. I want character creation to be quick and simple, but still allow for player choice and customization. When it comes to creating investigators from scratch, I’m also thinking of starting with a limited number of choices and then expanding them over time. This makes it easier to get familiar with the process without being overwhelmed and helps support character creation being quick.
I’ll probably deviate a fair bit from typical Fate Core character creation. The focus on the player characters in cosmic horror is very different from that of vanilla Fate Core, and the likelihood that investigators will die or go insane is usually fairly high in these types of games. I want the players to be invested in their characters, but not feel so attached to them that they are put off when they have to be replaced.
Character Creation Design Goals
Incorporate pre-generated characters
Allow pre-generated characters to be customized (Drives, Stunts, Ties)
Allow creation of new characters
Quick and simple character creation combined with player choice and customization
Limited initial character creation options that increase over time
Character creation is one of the areas where I have some developed, but a lot planned conceptually. I’ll create a separate post delving into this in more detail.
Clues
A central element to investigation-based gameplay is the discovery and interpretation of clues. One mythos game that really embraces this idea is Trail of Cthulhu, and it also touches on there being different types of clues. Building on this idea and adding a Fate twist, I handled clues a little differently with Peru than I did in The Haunting. This ended up working to great effect.
When we played The Haunting, I used lots of props, so there were plenty of documents that provided clues to the investigators. While these were great for immersion, they did little to overcome some of the common challenges with investigation games. Without going too much into it here, the players had difficulty parsing through the documents to separate the clues from the fluff, keeping track of the clues they had uncovered, and piecing together clues any sort of helpful way. When we ran Peru, which has far fewer physical documents, the players nevertheless had a far easier time keeping track of clues and figuring things out. They still had to find the clues and interpret them, so the core of this kind of gameplay remained intact without many of the usual challenges. (They even interpreted the clues incorrectly, but were still able to bring about a generally successful conclusion to the scenario.)
The first thing I did was to give clues a little more of a defined structure. Rather than a document or “the information Mr. Knott told you” being treated as a clue, each piece of relevant information obtained from those sources is a separate, discrete clue. So a document may contain several clues, each of which is written as a short, bite-sized, phrase or sentence. (Each Clue is also an Aspect, which has some other interesting advantages, but more on that elsewhere.)
I then created cards for each Clue, which were given to the players as the investigators uncovered them. I still gave the players documents and other props, which continued to provide immersion, and the players only received the Clue cards once they had read the documents. The Clue cards proved extremely helpful. The players could use them to keep track of and review what they learned and easily differentiate between actual clues and information that was just fluff/detail. I also categorized Clues as either Core (vital to the successful completion of the scenario) or Supporting (helpful or background info, but not indispensable), which is useful when determining how to handle investigator efforts to find those Clues.
Clue Features & Design Goals
Clues written as Aspects on Cards
Clue types – Core, Supporting, Floating
Use props whenever possible for documents, etc.
Clue and Encounter maps for the Keeper/GM
Some Clues lead to other scenarios (Fragments, Seeds, Hooks)
Locations
Mock up of Boston board used in The Haunting
One thing I had a lot of fun with when we ran The Haunting was a map of the locations in the scenario. I printed a large 20s-era map of Boston and put it on a bulletin board. I then printed out small collages of images for each place and pinned them to the board, with thin yard tacked between the place and its location on the map. As new locations cam up in play, I added them to the board. Gave everything a nice investigation/conspiracy feel and provided the players with some images to help visualize each location.
However, using this board did have a couple of issues. First, it was rather large. We had to either let it take up one whole side of the table or put it off to the side, which meant the players had to get it and walk to it if they wanted to look at the images or reference the map for any reason. It also meant that any time a new location was added, it took a minute to post it to the board and tie it to its location. Most importantly, using the board meant that putting everything away between sessions either took up a lot more space or a lot more time.
When we played Peru, I took a page from Arkham Horror: TCG and decided to use cards. In that game, each location is represented by a single card. Obviously, this doesn’t take much space, and it has the added benefit of allowing for any size location to be represented in the same way. I made a card for each location that contained its name, an image, and an aspect or two describing the location. I started out with only the starting location in play. As places came to the attention of the investigators during the scenario, I put the cards for those locations into play (assuming they knew enough of the location to actually get there).
In practice, this worked extremely well. The players were provided with an array of options of where to go, and as they gathered Clues and learned more they revealed new locations. Essentially, it provided a visual path to follow. They still had to decide where to go and what to do when they got there, but they always had some idea of where to go to look for more Clues.
I also created a sort of “board” for the Ruins in Peru. The idea was to echo the process of exploring a location in Mansions of Madness. I showed the players the map of the Ruins and they described what they were doing as they checked them out, but once they went underground, I laid out tiles representing the tunnels under the ruins. They started out with only a couple of tiles branching in two or three directions. As they explored I added more tiles (and also a few Aspects that described the environment). Combined with the creepy sound effects of the Peru module for Syrinscape that I was using, the players were definitely spooked and cautious. It worked fairly well, even with just basic white tiles with no art. The descriptions provided by the Aspects and the process of revealing the map only as they explored it, plus the atmospheric sound effect, was more than sufficient to set the mood and keep them on edge.
There were a few things that need to be refined too. I think providing the players with the map of the ruins worked okay, but I think using cards to represent each area of the ruins could have some benefits. The ruins on the surface were kind of an odd middle ground between the “Encounter” and “Investigation” levels of the game, so I need to look at that some more. When there wasn’t anything of consequence for a couple of tiles in the tunnels, the process of “Which way do you go? That way. Here are more tiles. Now where?” got a little tedious and pointless. Obviously, Mansions of Madness has a lot more structure defined with turns, actions, and such, so I’ll have to work on how to structure this Investigation level of play better. I hadn’t really delved into that yet for this first play through, so all in all it went well. And of course having art for the tiles would be a big improvement. I’m a little concerned that while converting scenarios to this system should be fairly simple for the most part, creating tiles for the Investigation of specific locations could be a challenge and big time sink.
Location Features & Design Goals
Support quick set up and tear down
Include image and descriptions/Aspects for each location
Use cards for locations at most levels of gameplay
Put location cards into play as players learn of them
Player pieces can be placed on cards to indication their location during Encounters
Investigation of locations transitions to tile-based board/map with player pieces
Additional tiles are added as players explore
Support additional locations not specified by the scenario, as players desire to visit other places
Non-Player Characters
In games like Call of Cthulhu, keeping track of all the non-player characters the investigators come across can sometimes be a bit of a challenge. This can be such a big issue in larger campaigns that Chaosium’s most recent edition of the epic Masks of Nyarlathotep includes 12 pages of NPC portraits that Keepers can present to players just to help them keep things straight. It’s always a good idea to provide information in more than one form (spoken, text, images, etc.) whenever practical, since different people have an easier time processing and recalling information in different ways.
There aren’t that many NPCs in The Haunting, and only one of them is all that memorable. Since we didn’t reach him during our play through, NPCs weren’t that big of a deal during that game. On the other hand, investigators in Peru will actually get most of their clues from NPCs. There is a lot of repeated interaction with different NPCs, and even one that uses an alias. Again, I used cards for each NPC, including the image from the scenario guide and a couple of descriptive Aspects. Worked really well for helping the players get a quick impression and keep track of everyone.
One thing I need to do differently is with the Aspects for each NPC. I included some information on the cards that the PCs wouldn’t reasonably be aware of at first. I need to focus on basic first impressions and allow for additional details to be added as they are uncovered. Additional details/Aspects could be physically written on the cards, put into play as separate cards, or an alternate version of the card could replace the original. I actually used the last approach for one of the named NPCs in Peru whose “true physical nature” is revealed partway through the scenario.
Character Features & Design Goals
Use cards for each named NPC or mob
Include name, image, and descriptions/Aspects for each character
Allow for additional details of NPCs to be revealed and put into play, beyond what’s on their card initially
Wrap Up
Obviously, there are plenty of other elements to the game – details on the investigators, character advancement, tying scenarios together, etc. – but these are the big ones that made a clear difference in our two games, so they are taking center stage to start out. As I mentioned, I already have more developed or planned for character creation and clues as well, which I’ll hopefully get around to posting in the near future.
This series of posts is going to discuss some of the existing games set in the Cthulhu Mythos that are currently popular and why I’m not just playing one of these games. To be fair, I actually am playing some of them and have great opinion of the others, but they just don’t fit what I want to play with my family – at least not on their own. I also touched on some of this in my last post (Background and Early Concept), but this will explore the issues in a bit more detail. Beware that this point could conceivably contain some minor spoilers related to some of these games.
Of course, there are numerous mythos-themed games on the market right now. Specifically, I’m looking to play a game that embraces the cosmic horror of Lovecraft’s mythos, as well as the investigative gameplay suggested in numerous mythos fiction and brought to gaming most notably through Call of Cthulhu. With this in mind, quite a few games are ruled out, particularly those where players take the role of cults, Great Old Ones, etc.
Roleplaying, Board, and Card Games
The mythos games I actually play most often are those produced by Fantasy Flight Games, specifically Mansions of Madness (MoM) and Arkham Horror: The Card Game (AHTCG). I’ve played the original Arkham Horror board game (and have the latest edition preordered). I’ve also played both editions of MoM, and while I mainly play the second edition these days, I expect to draw some inspiration from the first edition as well. Needless to say, Fantasy Flight Games has made a fair amount of money off me.
Likely the biggest reason that I play these games more often than others is that they can actually be played solo. This is a huge advantage in making these games accessible for easy play, but it also results in some drawbacks which I’ll come back to in a moment.
As with most of FFG’s games set in the mythos, both of these games derive their difficulty from a combination of time pressure and trying to make the most efficient use of available character actions. While this works to help realize the overwhelming odds the character’s face, it also results in every game feeling similar in many ways. It also strongly encourages a very meta-based approach to playing the game, which tends to discourage any roleplaying or attachment to characters. It also makes the game much less accessible to the people that are less avid gamers.
Mansions of Madness (image taken from the FFG website)
Between these two games, Mansions of Madness is the most detailed. Each scenario includes rooms or buildings the investigators can explore in detail, there are detailed clues that must be pieced together, and it is probably the closest board games currently get to a Call of Cthulhu type of investigation. However, the fact that each scenario is limited to a single location is a major drawback. There is one level of detail, and the level of complexity that can exist within a single location is very limited. There is no campaign of any kind, nor any character development. While it might be theoretically possible to link related scenarios together, each occurring at a separate location, this has not been implemented and would also create some other issues.
Mansions of Madness also tends to be fairly straightforward in the win-or-lose department – even to the point that it sometimes departs from what would make sense in a mythos story. For example, I played a scenario in which the investigators had to locate some information and then escape town by boat. This is generally considered one of the most challenging scenarios in the base game and involves exploring an area around the docks to find what you need while evading wave after wave of enemies. I played using three investigators, and managed to get two of them and the information to the boat. I had used one investigator to lure the enemies away and create an opening to the boat for the others. Due to some poor in-game text it was not obvious that I had to get everyone out, so the remaining investigator was not in a good spot. Nevertheless, I managed to get him to the docks, which were now surrounded. Using a lantern he started a fire that cleared the docks of enemies so the others could escape, but died in the process. Now in terms of mythos fiction, this would probably be considered a “good” ending – one character sacrifices himself to save the others and ensure they escape with information necessary to save the world – but in MoM this was just ruled a loss.
In MoM, there are standard actions that are always available to characters, and occasionally some scenario-specific actions, but the players are always limited to just a handful of predetermined actions. I also decided to try playing a scenario using my work-in-progress system in place of the basic mechanics to see if it would work. While successful, this experiment also made me realize something else about the game: It involves a LOT of rolling. Once each scenario gets to a certain point, you’re making a minimum of 1-2 rolls per investigator every turn. Once I realized this, I felt like this was just rolling because the system said so, not because of anything that happened in the fiction. The game does a fair job of providing flavor text to justify the rolls, but once you notice this issue, it’s hard to ignore.
Finally, the game is actually very atmospheric. Employing a modular board composed of individual rooms, streets, and other locations, lots of different types of environments can be created. The required app provides sound effects and visuals which work well. Most importantly, the fact that the board is revealed a little at a time does a great job of adding to the suspense and mystery of the game.
Arkham Horror TCG (image taken from the FFG website)
Arkham Horror: The Card Game handles some things better than MoM, but that comes with some tradeoffs. Rather than a modular board, AHTCG uses cards to represent locations (as well as most other things). This use of cards allows for a much broader variety of locations in terms of scale. In one scenario, each location could be a single room in a house. In another, each location could be a different building or area in a town, or even an alien environment on the other side of a strange gateway. This gives the game significantly more flexibility compared to MoM and is one of its biggest strengths.
The other nice thing about AHTCG is that it is designed from the beginning to support campaign play. The players’ actions in one scenario can actually have an impact in later scenarios, eventually building to a conclusion at the end of the campaign. There is also a degree of character customization and development. There’s a lot of potential here, and some interesting story lines can be experienced, but there is a downside that prevents the game from delivering the kind of investigative experience I’m looking for: A decided lack of detail.
Similar to MoM, players are limited to a fairly standard set of predetermined actions. More actions can open up through development, but their abstract nature means they are usually chosen for their mechanical affect on the meta side of the game, rather than for any roleplay-based reason. Far more problematic is that both typical character actions and clues are even more abstract. Exploring a location to obtain clues doesn’t get any more detailed than that. There is no mention of what the character is doing at the location, nor is there any mention as to what the clues are – they’re just tokens. The game ends up boiling down to acquiring clue tokens in order to advance a deck to progress the story before something bad happens. Since there is no detail to the clues, there is very little sense of mystery or investigation.
The game also employs a set of tokens in a cup or bag instead of the usual dice. While this does allow probabilities and effects to be altered from one scenario to the next, I personally don’t like token-based systems. They just don’t feel as random/balanced, and I seem to get the same tokens repeatedly. It may just be a psychological thing, but it’s a big turn off for me.
Ultimately, both of these games in their current forms suffer from a shared limitation: Players choice is severely limited. The game and setting cannot adapt to whatever ideas the players may come up with, so players are forced to stick to a narrow set of options. Essentially, it is railroading to its fullest. Without a GM or similar role, there just isn’t much of an alternative. The lack of a GM opens up some doors in terms of solo play, but in my opinion it’s just not a good trade.
There’s a lot of good ideas in these games – as well as a few others – that I plan to steal borrow, but on their own they just don’t provide enough of what I’m looking for.
Why not just play an existing roleplaying game?
This got a bit long, so I decided to split this up into a series of posts. In the next post, I’ll look at some of the main mythos roleplaying games.
I’ve been working on a system to play mythos scenarios that incorporates elements from other tabletop games. It’s inspired by Call of Cthulhu (CoC) and Trail of Cthulhu (ToC) – plus a couple of other RPGs – as well as board games like Mansions of Madness and Arkham Horror: The Card Game (FFG‘s got their hooks in me). My main goal is to make playing more of the wealth of content easier with my family, so a lot of my efforts are based on making the game more accessible and minimize some of the challenges that can come up in play. In the end, I expect it to end up occupying a middle ground between pen and paper roleplaying and a board game.
Background
I’m a big fan of both Mansions of Madness (MoM) (both editions) and Arkham Horror TCG, as well as numerous other board games. At the same time, I also love the greater player freedom (and corresponding greater potential twists) afforded by a tabletop RPG.
I ran The Haunting using Trail of Cthulhu a couple years back with my family – two adults and two kids. None of them had any roleplaying experience. I used lots of props and the adults fell into the swing of things naturally. Had fun, though we didn’t actually engage the system that much. The kids had a more difficult time, partly because the abstract nature of the game (no board, pieces, turns, etc.) made it more difficult for them to engage.
On the other hand, there’s a lot my kids like about Gloomhaven and Descent. They seem to enjoy the basic dungeon crawl concept (although the tactics of how to use their cards was a little challenging) and they liked how missions were linked together to tell a larger story and unlock other missions. Obviously we all also liked unlocking character options and how even when your character died you didn’t feel like you had lost all progress.
On its face, something like Mansions of Madness would seem to strike the ideal balance between dungeon crawler and RPG for myself and the kids. However, there are a couple of shortfalls. The actions are too restrictive to allow for the freedom seen in an RPG, but too varied for my kids to easily decide what they want to do. The scenarios are generally win/lose with little variance. Decisions have no impact outside of the current scenario, so there is no campaign feel.
So the idea is to borrow concepts from all of these games to be able to play the way I want.
Preliminary Concept
So here’s the basic idea so far. You have a Keeper and Investigators a la 1st Ed MoM, or CoC/ToC RPGs. You have two basic levels of play.
I originally referred to the first level of play as the “World Map”. This could be the entire world, just a region, or a town. For more involved campaigns you could even have multiple maps at different levels. I originally conceived of thus as a map showing the various locations the investigators can travel to. As they progress in the story, the map can change. New locations can open up, locations can be closed off, or travel restricted in some ways. Having converted and played a CoC scenario, I have taken to actually using cards to represent these locations.
Investigators can visit locations and engage in Encounters. Think of Encounters like common scenes in an RPG, for a Lovecraft game something like looking up some information in the local library or purchasing supplies. You may talk to some NPCs and make a few skill rolls, and the scene could even be really important. But if there isn’t any detailed combat or exploration, and the relative positions of the investigators don’t matter, then it can be handled as an Encounter.
However, at some locations the investigators can switch to the second level of play: Investigation. This is very much like the missions from Gloomhaven or Descent, the scenarios from MoM, or a big scene from CoC/ToC that involves searching through a location room by room, combat, etc. The Keeper builds out the map of the location as the Investigators explore. In addition to the advantages that this brings to keeping things straight in combat, the level of tension created by revealing portions of the map a little at a time is a great addition.
A typical adventure/story would involve at least a few Encounters and one or more Investigation Missions. Depending on what the Investigators do the details of those Encounters and Investigations would vary as determined by the Keeper. Investigators could also come across clues unrelated to the current scenario, but which lead into others. In other words, these are hooks which unlock other locations/scenarios.
Using Existing Content
Given the wealth of mythos content out there that I want to play, I need to be able to use my system to play it, which means I need to be able to convert it. Playing converted content is also a good way to test out and continue to develop the system, so converting and playing existing mythos scenarios has become a major focus. I’ve already played the Peru Prologue for the Masks of Nyarlathotep Call of Cthulhu campaign, and I’m currently converting the classic Call of Cthulhu introductory scenario, The Haunting.
One concept I’m incorporating into my The Haunting conversion is giving the Keeper tools to resolve scenes in different ways, depending on what the Keeper and players want to focus on in terms of story and gameplay. In essence, the game could be played as a full pen & paper RPG, a simpler (and shorter) tabletop game, or anywhere in between. To that end, each scene could be played using one a variety of methods. The Keeper chooses how to play through each scene depending on how important the scene is to the story, what the players are likely to find most interesting, how much time and focus they all want the scene to take in the scenario, etc. In addition to helping the Keeper keep things interesting for the players, this also allows for gameplay to be sped up or slowed down depending on how much time everyone has to play and in how much detail they want to explore each scene.
Before I start posting details about my mythos gaming project, I’m just going to post a quick list of the various games and products that are serving as inspiration and sources for the game:
Differences Between The Haunting and Peru
The first thing I did was to give clues a little more of a defined structure. Rather than a document or “the information Mr. Knott told you” being treated as a clue, each piece of relevant information obtained from those sources is a separate, discrete clue. So a document may contain several clues, each of which is written as a short, bite-sized, phrase or sentence. (Each Clue is also an Aspect, which has some other interesting advantages, but more on that elsewhere.)
Investigators can visit locations and engage in Encounters. Think of Encounters like common scenes in an RPG, for a Lovecraft game something like looking up some information in the local library or purchasing supplies. You may talk to some NPCs and make a few skill rolls, and the scene could even be really important. But if there isn’t any detailed combat or exploration, and the relative positions of the investigators don’t matter, then it can be handled as an Encounter.