Inspired by Pittplayer's challenge, I've been wracking my brains trying to work out how to make 'traitors' work. Giving them bonuses whihc help them achieve 'Join the Winning Team' is all very well, but it's not very imaginative and to be honest, it's a bit dull because the other investigators can't actively do very much to 'stop' the traitor. In fact this is the main problem. There are quite a few items which will help a traitor make the game more difficult, but there aren't many counter-measures for right-thinking investigators to use. So it becomes a mere race rather than an actual battle, and the two sides aren't even racing for the same goal.

Anyway, I went through the item decks and tried to identify which items help screw over the other investigators. There aren't many - maybe a dozen that really work. Here we go:

Join the Winning Team - too obvious. There's no need for a 'traitor' because this makes any investigator into a traitor - just not usually a very successful one.

Call Ancient One - too dangerous. If the 'traitor' character has any incentive to awaken the AO, this card makes it a bit too easy and will spoil the game.

Call Friend - ironically this can be used as an absolute pain. If a traitor has it, he can use it to pull investigators off gates, stopping them closing.

Summon Monster - if the traitor has the ability to evade the monsters he creates, he can run around spawning monsters all over town.

Lure Monster - same principle as 'Summon Monster' applies.

Implant Suggestion - this is quite good fun for the traitor, but it's hard to make a big difference with it.

Arcane Insight - this can be used to make this immeasurably worse as well as immeasurably better.

Massa di Requiem per Shuggay - same problem as 'Call Ancient One'. Either you incentivize it (in which case it's too good) or you don't (in which case it's no more useful to a traitor than to anyone else)

Mi-Go Brain Case - you can cause havoc with this if you do it right, because the other investigator doesn't have to consent to the swap. I have a question though: when Brain Case says "spend all your movement points for the turn", can you first use extra movement points from a motorbike? If so, you can pull off all sorts of stupid stunts using this item - move on to a whole heap of nasty monsters using motorbike movement points, then swap with someone else who has already moved that turn.

Naacal Key - potentially lethal, but you can only use it once. Opening a Rlyeh gate at the Asylum is probably the way to go.

Milk of Shub Niggurath - the ultimate superweapon of monster control, but it can't be used more than once.

Astral Mirror - in theory you can use this to get rid of a beneficial environment card - but in many cases environment cards simply apply low-level annoyances to all investigators, and traitors might be just as inhibited by those as anyone else.

Gate Box - can be used to get other people Lost in Time and Space, although it requires them to be foolish enough to enter a gate when they know you're about to come out of one. Of course they can't just ignore gates for the whole game, but it's not likely you'd get this to work many times.

Plague of Locusts - this spell is (I think) the only one which will actually directly hurt other investigators. You don't need to exhaust it, but it's very self-destructive so it will rarely be worth it.

Premonition - I just noticed that it might be possible to use this to move someone else's skill slider, although that's a bit of a generous interpretation.

Special mention also goes to the Book of Anubis exhibit item, which heals you when bad things happen to other investigators.

Looking at that lot, I think there's potential for a Mi-Go character (who has some special ability which helps him abduct people using the Brain Case) and a sort of evil version of the Dreamer, who has an ability which helps him use the gate box to get ahead of people in OW and take the gate away. But none of these ideas solve the real problem of how the other investigators can fight back.

Any thoughts?

Join the Winning team seems the way to go because its already has the, "I'm going to Win your going to Loss" reason behind a traitor. All the other ways seem your more of a trouble maker.

The trick is building abilities that still encourage interaction and make the game engaging for the traitor.

Obviously they need a built in "If the investigators kill the Ancient One or seal 6 gates, you lose. And if the Ancient One awakens and kills the investigators, you win"

Next look for fun abilities that allow participation...

"If you seal or close a gate, add one doom token to the doom track"

OR

"If you gain a spell, raise the Terror Level by 1"

You can come up with numerous ideas.

I don't know if you need a way for investigators to fight, because this requires building in a mechanic to discover the traitor in the mix.

No, I think making the traitor more subvert versus overt is the way to go. He does things that benefit the investigators but hurts them at the same time. This way he still wants to play the game and help, but it's also furthering his goals too.

I would not start him with specific items like "Call The Ancient One" etc. That would be over the top.

But really, the game is not built with a traitor mechanism and I'm not sure you can easily incorporate one. You'd have to find ways to do the following:

1) Fight the traitor

2) Discover the traitor

3) difference between overt and subvert traitor

4) Will everyone know the traitor (ie, do you want auto-traitor investigators, or the option that any investigator can be a traitor?)

5) How does the investigator fight WITH the Ancient One

Not an easy task

there are many items that can cause damage to investigators like time bomb, plague of locusts,etc. I am not a big fan of making a bunch of rules, think things should be as simple as possible. How about since investigators are in a town with people open fighting cant take place. You have to be creative to combat like using milk { that is a scr**ing!! } on someone or time bomb them!! The existing rules do allow you to damage other player or mess with them, thecorinthian made a excellent of ways to do it. The only problem is how does the traitor win or combat the goo? Traitor wins if the goo wakes on his turn, if it wakes on someone elses turn he can use clue tokens to make people reroll successes. Its a start! And thanks to thecorinthian for helping me with this idea!

easy way to go is shuffle and deal out the mission cards, everyone keeps them face down until you accomplish the first goal of it. And maybe you can spend 5 clue tokens to make someone reveal their card. I love arkahm horror but sometimes i want to play a evil character to spice it up, and the game seems to be customizable to make that happen. How about deal out mission cards before game starts and then pick characters!! Jtwt guy could go straight evil or pick Mary to mess with people! haha

SOLVED!!!

If any one likes this idea, lets make it into a herald or something

LURE OF THE OLD ONES;

Skip the mythos phase. When the mythos would have happened the active player rolls a lore -2 check, resolve a mythos card for every success rolled. If four turns go by with no mythos phase, the ancient one wakes up at the beginning of the fifth turn.

LURE OF POWER;

If the ancient one wakes up during your turn you can make a pact with it, you can not be harmed by the ancient one, when it is your turn to attack instead roll a lore -4 roll, for every success rolled put a doom token on the ancient one.

This would be so fun! Everyone needs to roll mythos phases to keep the ao from awaking, so you never know who the traitor is!! You can even get games where everyone is trying to be the one to wake it, or no one. This is the kind of house rules i like, simple rules, complex gameplay.

Woah! No way! That creates waaaaay more problems than it solves.

How does rolling to determine Mythos cards prevent you from knowing who the traitor is? Surely if someone was deliberately making bad rolls (by setting their skill slider to low Lore, or by failing to add clue tokens even though they had some) it would be obvious that they were trying to get the AO to rise? And you can't 'skip' the Mythos phase. I mean, you can , but you'll completely break the game. What about all the effects that rely on the 'next Mythos phase' for their timing? The implications for game balance will be absolutely staggering.

And the 'pact with the ancient one' is very ambiguous. What does 'harmed by the ancient one' mean, exactly? Can you just not be devoured? If so, how does the traitor win? Just by getting everyone else devoured?

That's not to mention the fact that these rules make heavy use of Lore, so anyone with Lore lower than 2-5 is very unlikely to be able to make use of them.

No offence Pittplayer, but these are the kinds of houserules I don't like: simple rules, no idea how to use them!

1. Harmed means you dont get attacked, lose anything, or get any negative actions from the ancient one. You dont get attacked.

2. Things that would happen at next mythos would happen at NEXT mythos! If you crazy rumor was happening and you needed a mythos as soon as possible you all could roll for it. If not you could delay.

3. Since the house rule says ao wakes up if no new mythos phases happen then you dont know who is TRYING to make it wake, and who is trying to make it not wake. You wont know till the end of the game if a player makes a pact. The traitor could pretend to be looking for a good spell to help but then get call ao and screw everyone!! If makes the game a lot more dynamic.

4. I dont see a huge problem with my house rules, name one case where it would screw up the game? Its different yes but i think could be a lot of fun. If you are going to say my rules dont work say why.

and i guess we could make the checks lore or fight.

and yes you win if the goo eats everyone else! i should have been more clear my bad

pittplayer said:

Maybe I didn't explain enough: I don't think the rules will necessarily 'break the game' as such, but the changes to the Mythos phase particularly are so fundamental that they will have a knock-on effect that will change the way the whole game plays, and it's difficult to work out what the effect will be. The power of a lot of particular cards will also be affected. For example, if Mythos phases are happening rarely, monsters won't move much; more monsters will therefore be sitting on top of gates instead of street locations, which changes the street-sweeping, monster-fighting and gate-closing dynamics of the game.

And I still don't get how this Mythos phase skipping thing actually works. Each turn, you don't get a Mythos card unless the first player passes a Lore (-2) check, right? Did you work out what the effect of this will be for the most likely ratios of traitors to investigators?

If there's one traitor, then in order for the AO to awake this way, it requires at least three other investigators to all fail their lore checks sequentially. If those investigators are trying their hardest to pass, it's very very unlikely. Seriously, with 1-4 Lore tracks, it's like a 1 in 80 chance that they'd fail, and that's across a four-turn sequence. How many games would you have to play before the AO would even be likely to have awakened this way? It's a bit tricky to work out (quite a few variables) but the answer is probably in the order of 20+ games.

In fact, even if you have only one 'honest' investigator and three traitors, the honest investigator can nearly always be sure of stopping the AO awakening, and to top it all off, he'll only be suffering one Mythos card every four turns, so the game has slowed down to a crawl. If there are four or more traitors then they can almost certainly awaken the AO automatically.

If there were four or five players and a reasonable expectation that only one or two players were traitors, then the optimum strategy for the honest players would be to always try to pass the test, and they nearly always would be able to pass it often enough.

nonono! i dont think you are seeing this right. Since you will have a least one player actively trying to wake the goo, if you comboed that with reg mythos phases you are done! No help for you, the game is hard enough without someone screwing you! By my rules you could have 3 turns go by then have 3 mythos phases IN A ROW!! maybe even 4. What this does is allow the corrupt player(s) to control the mythos phases. Maybe the traitor will try to boost his lore just to make 6 mythos phases happen in a row!! How is this not cool! I think most games will go all against the mythos until one player gets way to injured, knowing he will lose to the goo, he will do anything he can to wake the goo so he doesnt have to fight!

i get what you are saying, but i think in play it will work out better then you think. Someone make a herald of this and we will playtest?

There is another possible approach, though it is not exactly a traitor mechanic. Something I have been playing around with, inspired from ideas from a few other games (such as Descent) is a Versus game. You have a Mythos player vs the investigators. The much of the basic game remains the same, one of the main additions would be something like an adapted Mythos deck, although I have some thoughts that might make that unnecessary too. This variant would be a much faster paced game lasting only half the time of a typical game. A Traitor in this kind of variant would be an investigator player who has a condition played upon him by the mythos player. The investigator would be played as normal until certain criteria are met and then a 'Traitor' action is performed (eg. criteria: present at attempted gate closure; action: disrupts closure attempt). Of course these cards would be played by the Mythos player at specified moment. An investigator would receive a 'Traitor' status card which confers certain penalties (eg. cannot trade with others, etc) although it may possible to remove the 'traitor' status.

I know this is all very vague, as I say it is something I am still toying with; so keeping the details under wraps for now. If all goes well and there is interest I will post it up in the future (although distant future since my gaming group has kinda collapse at the mo ;o/ ).

Sorry if this is taking the discussion a little off track Corinthian, my bad )

Nyogtha said:

No! No! It's great! Well, it's given me an idea or two, anyway.

Maybe the way to go is to take a leaf from Descent's book, and have a kind of resource (equivalent to Threat from Descent) which the traitor can gather and then spend. Dedicated traitor characters won't be necessary if there's an elegant-enough system for characters to become traitors during the game.

How about something like this:

There are tokens on the board called 'Betrayal' tokens, or Temptation tokens or Treachery tokens or something like that. They're placed at every stable location at the start of the game, and whenever a Mythos card places a new Clue token it also places a Betrayal token. They're anti-clues. There are a few ways to spend them. Six of them will destroy a seal, five will open a new gate on an unstable location, or four will cause a monster surge where there's already a gate. (Those are just ballpark figures, obviously they'll need playtesting). Anyone can pick up Betrayal tokens in the same way that you pick up clues. 'Honest' investigators have an incentive to pick them up in order to keep them out of the hands of traitors.

HOWEVER the Betrayal tokens are what create traitors. Every time an investigator picks up a Betrayal token, he rolls a die. If he rolls under the number of players who already have Betrayal tokens, he takes a special 'Turncoat' card (small special card) which inverts his motivations, so that he 'wins' if everyone else is devoured. These cards would need to have a clause saying that the AO couldn't wake up by any 'special' means (Massa di Requiem etc) otherwise you've got the same problem. But...

...ok no, I've gone mad. This doesn't solve any of the problems. Tiny tokens? Special small cards? That's elegant design, is it, Corinthian? Aaargh! I've become everything I ever hated. I'm going back to the drawing board. Stay tuned.

Heh heh, that was getting a little convoluted. As you say, I think the best additions keep things simple. I do have more detailed ideas than what I posted above, but they are a jumbled collection of notes both on paper and in my frazzled brain at the mo. But you are right, you don't need special investigators or complicated mechanics. When I get some spare time I will try and put some order to my notes/ideas and see if there is something more definite I am comfortable posting.

Ok, here a few of my many ideas about this. Note these are just a collection of ideas at the moment grouped together under headings to give them somekind of order, they have not been vetted for balance, theme, pr anything else for that matter. The only definite thing is that it is meant to be played with just the base game.

Artifact: Investigators must find pieces of an artifact before the AO appears to aid in defeating it, doing so (for example) forces the AO to appear prematurely without a full Doom Track. A selection of different artifacts possible with different benifits, one selected at random during setup.

Monsters: The Mythos player is in control of monsters. Movement may not be dictated by cards anymore and/or monsters can be moved from the Outskirts to replace defeated monsters (observing Monster Limit) of course this lowers the chance of Mythos player being able to raise Terror Track. Instead of (or as well as) the Monster Cup, the Mythos player may purchase monsters to place on the board (monster limit is observed, you cannot purchase monsters to place in the Outskirts). Possible currency for Mythos player equal to combined toughness of all monsters killed by investigators (Mythos player would have to keep a tally of this) cost of a monster token would be dictated by a number of factors which influence the difficulty of an monster. Alternatively, discard cards to pay for monsters, ala Descent.

Ancient One: If the Mythos player has any monster tokens in play that are listed as the AO's cultists/followers they can be used in a number of ways in the Final Battle. Examples of such: Attack an investigator before/after AO's attack, sacrifice one to one to heal a lost Doom Token, hinder investigator attacks (-1 per cultist, each success made by the investigator kills one of the hindering cultists), etc, etc.

Mythos Cards: These are drawn only by the Mythos player. The deck is modified, some cards remain unchanged, some are altered slightly (reversing beneficial effects, for example), some cards are removed and replaced with new cards (eg. 'Traitor' cards, etc.)

There, that's all for now.

With regards an actual true traitor mechanic I think it would be very hard to fit into the game (I think FFG would have done it by now if it would work). The main problem for me is whether an investigator would be openly declared a traitor or if it would be a secret until they were revealed. How would you reveal them? If they were tagged traitor right from the off then why wouldn't the other players just team up and remove them from play. Creating a traitor mechanic was my original intention but because of the many complications I started working on the Versus varian instead which is essentially a disembodied traitor with all the complications of it being a fellow investigator. At some point I will post something a little more cohesive, but that is all ya getting outta me for now. ;o)

Alright, first things first. This game is amazing without a traitor mechanic. My group has considered different variations on such a rule, mostly because we like blaming our scapegoat (Dammit, Scott!). In the end, though, we always play the normal way, because we have played a lot of games, and we like not playing against each other.

That said, I think it could work. First, it clearly takes the place of a herald, and the player does not count as a character for the purposes of gates, monsters, etc. Second, I adore the random assignment of the traitor, and think they should be working towards it from the start (our other favorite game is Bang!). This has the slight problem of negating backstories, so to that end, a mechanic by which somebody becomes a traitor during the course of the game might be appropriate instead.

Next, I don't think the traitors *need* specific equipment. Sure, whipping the honest investigators around with Call Friend, or opening a gate with Naacl Key are obvious things to do, but there are plenty of things to do without the fun items listed above. The most obvious to my mind is to close a frequent gate instead of sealing to add doom when it reopens. Something else they might do is attack other characters -more on this in a moment.

Another bonus for the covert traitor is the use of other people's items. They may be able to convince people to trade with them and take the use of good things away from the party. This has the side effect of suspicion above all else! This cripples the investigators severely if they aren't able to trade for fear of giving something to the traitor.

The traitor would be unmasked mostly by obvious actions. To this end, there should be rules for something else: PvP combat. Because shouldn't you be able to remove them as a threat, if they are a real human walking around? And shouldn't they be able to attack you to hinder your progress? This adds a whole bunch of possible fiddly numbers, however, and may not be what we're looking for. For what it's worth, my possible rules for PvP follow. Untested, but it would seem like they work.

If the traitor is known and attacking someone, or if someone is trying to attack the traitor, the defender counts as elusive, with their awareness equal to their current sneak. Next the fighting, to continue until someone dies or evades. Attacker hits first, then defender. Fight + Weapons, as usual, modified by subtracting the current fight score of the defender. To change this up, we could say that max stamina 7+ means physical resistant, and max sanity 7+ means magical resistant. Subsequent successes inflict stamina damage. Regardless, both parties lose a sanity afterwards. If this seems too fiddly or annoying to track, you're probably right. Suggestions? Looking at these rules, however, McGlen out for blood would be almost impossible to stop, so maybe a sanity check of some sort is in order. Also, there is a slight problem with what happens when somebody goes unconcious like this. Would they get to keep playing as normal, getting sent to the hospital and losing stuff or getting injured? Or would they have to quit playing, as the opponent would neutralize the character by death or imprisonment? The first seems more in the spirit of the game, but makes much less thematic sense.

Finally, what is the objective of the traitor? To summon the ancient one and help it wreak havoc in Arkham. To that end, they should make the final combat more difficult. I'm thinking of something in the way of Nyarlathotep's Sinister Plot Join Me! When the Ancient One wakes up, a surviving traitor automatically joins him, casting his lot in with the success of the Ancient One and decreasing the combat modifier by two. They take a passive role in the battle, but at least there's precedent.

As a result, we get an interesting active herald that would, in a practical sense, read something like this:

Determine a traitor, randomly and secretly (Rail Pass cards, one marked with a T, would be perfect). If the investigators lose, this player wins, and vice versa.

Players probably won't trade with each other, until someone acts like a traitor.

Players can fight each other, using the rules outlined above.

If the ancient one awakens, reveal the traitor and decrease the ancient one's combat modifier by two (From -4 to -6, for instance). The traitor does not fight.

One last thing before I finally stop typing: it's possibly even more interesting to me if there might not actually be a traitor. Pass out one more card than there are investigators, and the traitor card might be left out. Nobody would know, however, so suspicion would still be in order, and you might get people beating up on random investigators! However, that means they would be playing the game as if there was one less investigator, which is immensely helpful.

I hope there's something useful in that for you guys.

Also, I would be behind taking Call Ancient One and that tome out of their respective decks for this style of play. That's really just too much in most cases.

I had an idea I wanted to throw out, but didn't get time to finish it for the "contest" on Saturday.

So the traitor investigator has two abilities pretty much:

1) If the traitor investigator stops in a location with another investigator, they both make a (I had will but it could be anything) check. The one with the most successes wins. The loser is delayed. An investigator (except for the traitor) can only be delayed once by this before an another investigator gets delayed. (That way the traitor can't just sit on an investigator over and over and continually delay him.) This could also cause the traitor to become delayed, so that it's not just bad for the investigators.

2) The traitor can discard an ally at a location with a seal to remove the seal. Similar to JTWT, but just removing seals for discarding an Ally. Since Allies are fairly rare, this isn't hopefully isn't a game winning ability. Also if the ancient one wins, the traitor wins.

I also like having a task or mission LIKE JTWT, but not the same, since that is a bit ridiculous. I came up with a task this time (similar to the Damien mission) where you visit four locations. The first was the second area of R'yleh. The other three were Wizard's Hill, the Historical Society, and the Strange High House. I thought it might be good to have a task with far reaching places to visit, so that it wasn't easy to accomplish, but it also isn't impossible. However, the R'yleh position might be able to be changed to something else if people think that is too remote of a place to get to. Oh completing the task adds a doom token, makes sealing gates require 1 extra clue, and increases the toughness of monsters by 1. (this of course can be changed.)

I figured these three things might be a good mix of ways to hinder the investigators. You could just run around delaying people. Or you can try to get things to get allies to remove seals. You can also run around trying to finish the task since the locations are a bit remote.

Anyway... it probably needs work, but it was another idea....