here is a whopper of a challenge for ya!! i have never seen this done right and i think it will be a good challenge for you expert custom creators!!

Make a ancient one that uses the corruption cards or the blight cards in a new and interesting way. what i mean by that is no " goo attacks get a corruption card if you have 3 you lose" garbage, i mean one that bases around it and uses them in game. i havent an idea myself but i am working on some ideas i will be posting. maybe using blights as pusedo spawn monsters or using the corruption as an alternate doom track? i know its hard but i also know you guys are good!! Let the challenge begin!

Perhaps have an ancient one that flips a blight card every three or four turns. I'd hate having to fight against something like that, but it would give me a use for the blight deck (other than wasting space in my KiY box).

I'll see your challenge, and raise you my variant Hastur from a little while ago:

I'll have a think about Corruption cards. They're harder to integrate with an AO because they have their own mechanism for 'disappearing', but I don't think it'll be impossible.

that is a really good version of Hastur!! cant wait to see what you do with corruption cards!

The Blights are a great resource; we haven't started to skim the surface of the possible ways of using them. All I did with this Hastur was to cram all the Hastur/KiY-related game effects and cards on to a single AO. So it uses the Terror level, the Acts, the Blight cards and the tokens.

That's the easy part, however. The Corruptions are much harder. Whatever you use them for, it's got to take account of the fact that they come and go of their own accord. If you want to change how frequently they appear, trigger, and disappear, you have to rewrite too many rules and there isn't really space on the AO.

For example, here's one based on the proto-Shub-Niggurath god that gets a passing mention in Lord Dunsany's A Dreamer's Tales:

That's the SIMPLE version. The first version had no Doom track at all, and depended solely on Corruption cards to awaken. Either way, this just doesn't work yet. The final battle can be made absurdly easy or it can end up being impossibly difficult.

Ok, I'll take a shot at this:

I am going to guess that opening the gates during the final battle doesn't add another doom token. Or did you mean it to act that way?

Here's my GOO.

Wagnard said:

Fairly interesting... The will check with no phys res or immunity. Interesting. Essentially doom track ten (personally I prefer longer doom tracks) actually it's a bit shorter, because the terror level will rise naturally. Hm... It's definitely a final battle then. ::Shrug:: still cool for a short game. I like the picture :'D

Wagnard said:

Quite good. Nice picture. But one or two problems that I can see:

- Eliminating the Doom track isn't as easy as it looks. What happens if the players use an Elder Sign? There's no provision for where you get the Doom token/seal from, since the rulebook specifically tells you not to get it from the 'pool' of spares. Also, all the rules about the Final Battle refer to removing Doom tokens from the Doom track and this guy doesn't have one. These reasons are also why I gave up trying to replace the Doom track entirely with Corruption cards on Sheol-Nugganoth (above). Removing the doom track might clash with other cards too, I'm not sure.

- 'Use Will instead of Fight' should specify 'when making combat checks', because otherwise it's unclear how weapons (and almost everything else) would work in the Final Battle.

- What happens when Doyle Jeffreys appears? Would he 'move' the Riot monsters on to their starting locations, or would he only spawn the ones which weren't already on the board?

I know it says Sheol has no worshippers, but the picture definitely shows a few nice people enjoying themselves. How do I get into that cult? XD

seriously these may be the most interesting custom ancient ones i have seen. i will definitely play with them all! wow

i love the void! his name is a little blah but the mechanics are soooo solid and fun. I think ao's should change the way you play ah in a fun different way and he sooo does that brilliant work!!! I am working on some ideas but now i have to really come with the heat since you guys really raised the bar!!! And thanks for supporting my challenges!

hey thecorinthian!! you seem well read have you ever read any Thomas Liggoti? If you had want to work together to make some TL content. If you havent you owe it to yourself to read some. I recommend starting off with Songs Of a Dead Dreamer. Anyhoo....

These are some fantastic Great Older Ones. Extremely creative.

Sothis said:

They might not be enjoying themselves. They might be human sacrifices who are writhing in psychic agony.

Although, who was sacrificing them? Yeah, it's not a completely appropriate picture for a god who has no worshippers. This AO is based solely on a single line from one book a hundred years ago, and there's no description at all, so I had to go with what I could get. It's the same pic I used for my 'Feast of Pan' herald. 'Sheol-Nugganoth' is probably were HPL got the name 'Shub-Niggurath' from. The pic has a certain orgiastic sex-god-gone-wrong quality to it, which is appropriate for anything with a Shub connection.

On balance, I think that joining the cult of the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young is probably a very bad way of meeting women. You will meet a lot of extremely uninhibited women,but you may also get stabbed with onyx daggers and fed to a giant slobbering eyeless mouth. So, swings and roundabouts, really.

Pittplayer - nope, I haven't read Thomas Liggoti. A couple of the short stories which are online for free - I'll read them and see what I think.

Lord of Squirrels said:

You guessed right, it doesn't add new doom tokens, although I considered it. I'll have to clarify that on the card.

@thecorinthian: Does the "The Great Night" ability on Sheol-Nugganoth still work during the Final Battle? If so, it will be almost impossible to get rid of all corruption cards.

Morgaln said:

Bugger! No, it's not meant to keep happening during the battle. The ability did originally say "While Sheol-Nugganoth stirs in his slumber..." but I deleted that part in order to save space. Unfortunately, this does highlight the main problem with this AO: it's got far too many words on it and there aren't many you can get rid of. Probably a sign that the ability is too complicated and contrived. I'll think about how to rephrase it.

You could just change the phase during which it happens; best would probably either at the start or at the end of the Mythos Phase. As there is no Mythos Phase during the final battle, the problem will solve itself that way.