Opps.. I see a little more has been said, since I last looked.

@lemmingsunday, i just think there has to be a better way, if they are going to move like monsters, why dont we make them monsters? monsters that cause tremors! i would be all for that. you know how the kingsport rifts play off the monster movement in a weird way? my point is that i dont think that is a good idea, but move as monsters? i can get with that! i just think why not make them monsters?

Well, some of the tremors might very well be monsters.

My view is that TheCorintians original idea for "blips" is inspired and what it is being hammered out of blips - tremors, is clever and rather easy to incorporate.

You can just envision all the tremors as green bordered monsters, but you don't know what they are until encountered, and in that way it is like a random monster appearing, from a location encounter.

If you have an innovative idea then do explain it. One never knows.

Frank, how do you want kidnapping to work? Will these kidnappings be an abstraction based off of a certain type of tremor, such as if the Terror Level increases, a kidnapping occurs? Perhaps, the allies are being abducted, or do you want the investigators to be kidnapped? Maybe, all and more.

I grimace with delight when I think about ghouls, tentacles, black robed slavers, gapping maws and other horrors snapping out of the earth and dragging the innocent to darker regions.

If the underground could generate a state of general paranoia in Arkham, so that as a player one never new if the very ground your investigator stood on might crumble away; that level of nail biting tension from turn to turn would be darn fun.

well said sir well said i think that the corinthian is on his way to making the best ah board yet!!

Probably the easiest way to do the abductions is with Blight cards, because they already have an effect that's very bad and you essentially never see them hit play because they are totally optional and so bad that almost no one ever opts to draw one. So even though it's an old board component, actually involving it in the game is very much new ground.

It would probably be good to throw in some additional Blight cards so that notables from Dunwich and Kingport could be in there - and also so that people who did not have the King in Yellow could play with the mechanic.

The big difficulty I see with this plan is that the King in Yellow Blights were never intended to be removable, so some of them have a one-time effect rather than a continuous one. This makes rescuing those people somewhat problematic. I mean, it's fine if Father Michael or Joey the Rat being kidnapped is represented by their Blight Card because if you rescue them by discarding the card it completely undoes the effect. On the other hand, The Dean's blight card gives a modest penalty every turn and a large kick in the groin as a one time event when he comes into play (you have to discard a seal), and Velma and Ma are both completely one time events (raising the Terror level or returning the Ally deck to the box). Now perhaps that's OK, from a thematic perspective once everyone at Ma's gets terfed out by her getting kidnapped they would leave town and ouldn't necessarily come back just because she got rescued again. And indeed, if getting some specific number of Blights in play makes the super beast come into play you'd rather want to rescue them even if all that meant was that there was more leeway on dealing with the thing in the pit.

-Frank

Frank said:

Hehe hehe - different experiences there obviously! My group always takes the Blight. We've never taken the other option, and we love playing against that herald. And I don't think most of the Blights are that bad - the Editor guy is the worst, with the Riots.

About blips: I know it sounds a bit fiddly, Pittplayer. Also Frank was being a bit harsh I reckon! Still, I don't think the blips will work as just 'hidden' monsters. We've have to rule that players couldn't examine the back sides of blips, and the blips would all have to have the same evade check/dimension symbol, otherwise it'd be too easy to work out what something was. I don't think the blips will be that excessive, although the Underground map is starting to look like a map of the London Underground.

About kidnaps: this should be done as a 'subplot' which crops up on encounters all over the board. The cult is kidnapping Allies (i.e. small-time investigators who brave the depths) and preparing to feed them to the Thing in the Pit. The Sheldon Gang is kidnapping townsfolk and selling them to the cult in exchange for... stuff. So at each underground location, there are a couple of 'rescue' encounters, thus:

"You come across a tall, powerful man chained up in a cage of alien metal. "Quick as you like, friend!" he hisses. "Those devils will be back any minute!" Make a Speed (-2) check . If you pass, take Tom "Mountain" Murphy's ally card or, if it's not available, gain 2 Sanity and 2 Stamina. If you fail the check, two monsters appear!'

and the equivalent for non-allies:

"You see a pitiful figure languishing in a gibbet. It's Joey "the Rat", and he bears the marks of torture. Make a Fight (-2) check . If you pass, he tells you everything he overheard about the cult's plans - gain 3 Clue tokens. If you fail, put his Blight card into play.'

About tremors: these can use Blights too. Whenever a tremor reaches the surface, you draw a Tremor card and resolve the 'Tremor Reaches Surface' encounter (we can call them 'breaches' or 'fissures' or 'quakes' or something snappier later). This is basically a very nasty event. Some of them are localized. Because these are powered by monster movement, they will be happening in the Mythos phase, essentially right after monster movement. Here are some examples:

- "Earthquake! Every investigator in Arkham loses 1 Stamina. Raise the Terror level by 1."

- "The whole north side of town is wracked by tremors. All investigators in Northside streets and locations are delayed. Put Doyle Jeffreys' Blight card into play."

- "Molten magma explodes up from the hellish depths , engulfing South Church and incinerating Father Michael's congregation! South Church is closed for the rest of the game. Put Father Michael's Blight card into play."

- "Tectonic disturbances drive the local wildlife into a frenzy. Raise the Terror level by 1. All Flying monsters move, and all monsters in the outskirts move as if they were Flying monsters in the sky."

- "A swarm of cthonic aberrations bursts from beneath the earth. A monster appears in the Merchant District streets and in the Rivertown streets."

Remember that at the moment we haven't committed ourselves to designing any new small cards. The 'components' of this board/expansion are the board , a huge pile of tremor tokens , a deck of tremor effects/lost-in-the-dark cards , a huge stack of new arkham location encounters , and some heralds which create supermonsters . If we want to start 'branching out' into new AOs, items, investigators etc, we can, but it's not essential.

Slightly bigger version: farm4.static.flickr.com/3630/3637834019_189c82bf7f_b.jpg .

Notes on how it all works:

THE PIT - three pairs of movement patterns next to it. When a pattern comes up, a random tremor is drawn from the cup and placed on the appropriate pair of symbols. This determines which of the three tremor tracks that tremor will follow when it leaves the Pit. I'm probably going to replace the monster movement patterns on the pit with three other symbols - one for 'Terror increase', one for 'Monster surge' and one for... something else. Not sure yet. At the moment, having monster movement symbols on the board AND having tremors move like monsters is too confusing I think.

TREMOR TRACKS - red lines. The red arrows show the direction a tremor moves in IF its movement symbol comes up on a Mythos card. Investigators and monsters CANNOT move along tremor tracks unless a card specifically allows it. Tremors ignore 'Closed' markers, so will move through Collapsed locations (see below). PS. Streets and locations are not 'adjacent' or 'part of the same neighbourhood' just because they are joined by a tremor track.

TREMORS IN STREETS/LOCATIONS - if a player ends his or her movement in the same street or location as a tremor, he or she can return to the Tremor to the stack. If this is done, the investigator must draw aTremor card and resolve the 'Tremor Disrupted' encounter. This will often spawn monsters, sometimes not just where the investigator is. It's one of the primary ways that monsters appear on the board. Notice that there are three main 'routes' for tremors.
The Ruins route only gives players one chance to stop a Tremor (at the Dig) before it starts moving through locations which may be collapsed (closed). The Sewers route goes through two 'open' places before going through one possibly-Closed one. Tremors going this way are easier to catch because the locations are more accessible and there will probably be fewer monsters around. The Tunnels route starts out in the closed Temple (quite hard to reach), then moves through open places before going into a Closed place again. The problem is that the Tunnels street is a monster bottleneck.

'THE SURFACE' - this is the glowing skyline thing in the bottom left. If a tremor reaches the Surface, draw a Tremor card and resolve the 'Tremor Reaches Surface' encounter. These are very very bad.

YELLOW-STAR LOCATIONS - this is a new location type, 'Collapsed'. Place a Closed marker on each of these locations during game setup. Investigators will have to open these locations up by exploring the underground board and finding encounters that remove Closed markers. 'Collapsed' locations are also able to collapse again during bad encounters and regain their Closed status.

THE NEIGHBOURHOODS:
New types of encounters that might appear anywhere:
- Quests, i.e. special missions built into encounters.
- Rescues: townspeople who would otherwise become Blights.
- Monster creation: encounters which spawn monsters which stay on the board.
- Excavation/collapse: encounters which open up nearby locations, or collapse them again.
- Encounters which spawn new Tremors or remove old ones.

SEWERS: The 'safest' place. Monsters move off it.
Storm Drain: The 'entrance', I think, although we could easily add other entrances. The Sheldon Gang have a sewer hideout, and many of the encounters should be to do with smugglers, contraband, shipping,crime, stashes of stolen goods etc. This is an aquatic location.
Cellars: Misc basements etc. Wine cellars, coal cellars, archives, store rooms and so on. This is a 'dual' location like the Lodge, in that if you have the right special card you can enterthe Rare Book Room instead (lots of grim encounters involving reading occult books and finding tomes).

TUNNELS: monsters won't ever leave.
Labyrinth : Delays common. Some allies lost in the maze. however the investigators need to navigate the maze in order to open up the other two locations in the neighbourhood.
Crypts : misc gothic ghoulishness, I guess.
Temple : sinister rites, sacrifices, usual rubbish really.

RUINS : The really weird and more dangerous end of the board.
Archaelogical Dig: loads of archaelogical stuff happens, duh. Encounters here are the only way to open up G'harne.
G'harne: the lost city of the Cthonians. Huge dangers, huge rewards. Delays common. Monsters common.
Nameless Sea: This is partly meant to be the weird underground lake/sea from 'The Festival'. Very odd stuff. This location is partly an 'escape route' from G'harne.

THE PIT: There are no encounters here because you just get lost if you stay during the encounter phase. The main reason for going here is if a herald supermonster has appeared and you need to go and fight it.

UNCHARTED VAULTS: A 'blank' location, so that if any of you guys think there's anything really important missing, you can make up the encounters yourself. Otherwise, just ignore this location.

We've still got space for something else in the bottom right corner of the board. If I move the Tunnels up a bit, we could fit in another neighbourhood, although it'd have to include 'Uncharted Vaults' as one of its locations. Also, there's room for a special ability at the Temple - healing Sanity or Stamina, perhaps? Most boards have a 'hospital' of some kind.

If we avoid having red movement lines altogether the board will look a lot cleaner. And I totally think we can. Also, we should definitely make the last area a tremor goes before it hits Arkham be a non-yellow location. After all, we want players to be able to interact with these things right before they explode.

How about instead we set it so that each Tremor Marker is itself Teal, Purple, or Tan. When a Tremor token gets drawn, it goes to the Crypts, the Temple, or the Cellars depending upon what color the token is. (This is assuming that the Crypts switches neighborhoods with the Nameless Sea, because "Tunnels" should go to the Sea while the "Ruins" should go to the Crypts). Then the movement arrows can progress as follows:

• Crypts -> Achaeological Dig -> Arkham
• Temple -> Labyrinth -> Arkham
• Cellars -> Storm Drain -> Arkham

Other locations can have movement arrows that wander around in a circle and never feed into Arkham, it's not important because Tremors won't land there and monters will only spawn as a result of events we write up on cards. Depending upon layout, you may need two or even 3 Arkham entrances on the board. But that's totally fine, because there's more than enough room for that.

I really do think that in honor of Pickman's Model that the way into the Sewers should be in Kingsport's Artists' Colony. Furthermore, I think that the Ruins should come from below the Devil's Hopyard and the Tunnels should come from the Graveyard. This helps tie the boards together a bit, and also references stories fairly well.

-Frank

the board looks like it is done! fantastic job!! it is a dream come true to me to have a underground board! now what are your thoughts on a herald? what are the basic things you want it to do, and i will try coming up with some ideas! are we having it have a spawn monster? i presume it is going to deal with tremors and spawn monsters?

Frank said:

Agreed. I've got to shuffle the locations around anyway.

Frank said:

I agree that the board needs to be cleaned up a bit, but I think that if we restrict the tremors to ordinary monster movement paths, we're removing part of the fun. My favourite part of the tremor movement concept is that the tremor moves along a route that's not open to the investigators, so they have to rush around to get ahead of it.

Anyway I'm shuffling it all around again, I'll see what I can come up with that doesn't use special tracks. I could just keep the 'special arrows' on ordinary monster movement paths, so that sometimes a tremor encounters an 'override' and goes in a special direction whcih monsters won't go in.

I want to keep the Nameless Sea near to G'harne, though, because the Ruins are meant to be the really old pre-human area of the board, whereas the crypts are made by humans. I could re-name the 'tunnels' neighbourhood as 'catacombs' I guess.

Frank said:

Doesn't work unless you're using the other boards though, and especially doesn't work if you don't have the other expansions. I know I'm in a minority here, but my regular group seldom plays with an extra board, and if we used the Underground board, we wouldn't have room for another town on our table anyway. If there are any exits which lead to locations, they should lead to types - for example, the Storm Drain could lead to any Aquatic location, and some other route should lead to any Train Depot. Then maybe we can have a location which leads to any 'shop' or something. It's not ideal, but I really think the only alternative would be to just bring all the exits out in main-board Arkham (which I would be perfectly happy with, btw). Still, I'll try to think of another way.

There's also a serious 'configuration' problem.

It's impossible to stack three neighbourhoods in sideways next to each other on a board this size, without having the 'street' be on the end of each neighbourhood, which is not a good idea. Movement lines can't cross each other, but right now we need four lines come out of the pit - one for monsters/investigators, and three for each colour of Tremor. The first movement of any Tremor is dictated by that Tremor's colour, but after that something has to determine which way Tremors move. If we really do use ordinary monster movement paths, then all the board's monster tracks have to head towards the surface - whcih is a bit restrictive.

i think the board would work as is. it solves the tremor problem, red lines are fine and dont look bad, any more work on the board is nitpicking imo! i mean have at it please try to make to as workable as possible but i think it does the trick!

Why does there have to be an actual line connecting to The Pit? Players can't really go there and it wouldn't matter anyway because the Tremors will have to move to another location before they can pose any threat. In short, the fact that the Tremors "come from the pit" is just flavor text. There's no reason to mechanically represent that anywhere on the board. The Teal Tremors can and should be placed directly upon The Cellars when they are placed.

As for wanting to emphasize play with just the main board: you're right, you are seriously in the minority there. But I think it's still doable to allow the expansion to be stand alone. After all, the Train Station doesn't do anything special in the original game and look how many areas connect to it now. As long as there is exactly one space on each board that connects to the Underworld, you're fine. The Graveyard connects up to the Tunnels, and you're golden for a single board game. However, if you're playng with Dunwich as well, there should be a space that connects it to the new board as well. This could also go to the Tunnels if you want it to be more akin to the railroad connection, or it could go to one of the other places if you don't. But rgardless of what you do, you'r able to just arbitrarly handwave in these connections in the same way that the Bridge now connects to Kingsport: you just make a rule. For thematic reasons, I would put the connection from Kingsport to the Underworld in the Artists' Colony. But there does have to be one somewhere in there. Makng people tak the train all the way to akham and then walk all the way to the graveyard and then go into the tunnels is way too much movment.

-Frank

if you are in Dunwich and the underground explodes tough snookes! if you are in kingsport and the innsmouth deep one track goes nuts you are at a disadvantage! and about the pit, good points frank as it is its a little clanky, but it needs to be there, it is a great location, how about make it have normal encounters get rid of the location ability, and make it so you cant get out of it without a encounter letting you or another investigator letting you out?

pittplayer said:

Frank said:

Quite right - that's exactly how it's meant to happen. If you want to find and fight a herald supermonster, you have to get Lost in the Dark afterwards. Really it's a small price to pay. Of course, you may not survive fighting the supermonster anyway, so you might end up at St. Mary's or the Asylum before you have a chance to get LitD .

Hmmm, I'm still not sure this is working.

It makes more a less cluttered board if tremors share their paths completely with monsters, but it scuppers all the interesting ideas I had about neighbourhood layouts and monster movement routes across the board. If Tremors are moving entirely along monster movement paths, those monster movement paths now have to point towards the 'Surface' space, which means monsters can't ever get into 'loops'. And what happens when a normal monster moves on to the surface space?

We don't have complete control of which locations produce monsters, because of items like Summon Monster and Milk of Shub-Niggurath. Also, if we're putting tremors on monster movement paths and have to keep monsters off monster movement paths, why are we using monster movement paths instead of a new type of path/arrow?

thecorinthian said:

• If a Monster moves to the surface, it goes to the surface connection closest to an Investigator (which would be the Graveyard if you aren't using the other cities.
• I don't think we have to keep Monsters off of the Tremor pathways.

Now you might want to put the connection between the Cellars and the Storm Drains in as Red so that the Investigators have to move out to the "Streets" and then back in to the next location if for some reason you were chasing a Tremor - but that's all. Frankly monsters moving to Arkham is a good thing because once they hit Arkham they start counting against the limits to push the Terror track.

-Frank

Hello-

TheCorinthian it would seem that we/you ought to stick to the red tunnels. It works. Yes, it is a little visually cluttered, but that can be reduced a little, by blurring the background maps tunnels, and also by fading the red out, so it isn't as bright, and won't compete with the other streets as much.

Personally, I don't have a problem the way it is.

Compared to some of the Avalon Hill game boards I played as a kid your map is a work of aesthetic minimialism.

On a side note your suggested tremor events are great. The South Church's congregation incineration from molten lava is Biblical day of reckoning material, and good for a few evil chuckles. That one must be used.

Hello -

Perhaps, TheCorinthian's suggestion to remove streets isn't the wrong way to go. Looking at the current board it strikes me that those three street locations could just as easily be locations. Many players, myself included don't like to end turns in streets, as it seems rather uneventful, unless your monster slaying.

Those three street areas could be transformed into three locations that could largely be based around environmental hazards.

Also, I kind of would like a yellow location in front of the Pit. That seems like the one location that would be really concealed, and then add that with the Lost in the Dark cards and the Pit requires some substanial investigation.

lemmingsunday said:

Re: streets - I now think we do need them. They help define the 'neighbourhoods' on the board, which is quite an important part of a game board, and other effects may refer to them. Also, it's not like underground streets will be uneventful; there'll be tremors moving through all the time.

I haven't put a yellow location in front of the Pit yet, but the Pit might as well be a yellow location itself, so that it can be 'opened up' by a supermonster appearing. I suppose there could also be some other advantages to going to The Pit while it's empty, but I haven't thought of any yet. Anyway, it's a trivial change to make later.

Here we go again then. I hope everyone's happy with this, because I don't know how many more versions I can be bothered doing!

Big size here: farm4.static.flickr.com/3340/3639400457_fae8c5bcdc_b.jpg

Here's how it now works:

Every turn, during the Mythos phase, draw a Tremor from the Tremor cup. It'll have Dark Blue (Ruins) edges, Turquoise (Sewers) edges, or Sandy (Tunnels) edges. Place it on the street appropriate to its colour. There are now three main Tremor 'routes'. Tremor markers move like monsters, according to the dimension symbols on them.

Dark blue tremors will start in the Ruins, go across the Nameless Sea, through G'harne, and finally through the Archaeo Dig, before 'rising to the surface' along the special red tremor path. N.B. A dark blue tremor will DEFINITELY reach the surface on its fourth move, unless it's stopped.

Turquoise tremors will start in the Sewers, and might go straight through the Storm Drain and 'to the surface' - but they might also drift around between the Storm Drain and the Cellars indefinitely. Because turquoise tremors can appear and head for the surface in only two moves, there are going to be fewer of them (see below).

Tunnels tremors will go through the Labyrinth before basically being shunted into the 'Turquoise' route (as above).

So here's what I reckon for the compositionof the Tremor cup:

18 Dark Blue tremors (two with each dimension symbol)

9 Turquoise tremors (one with each dimension symbol)

18 Sandy tremors (two with each dimension symbol)

I know this is going to be a pain in the arse to make (printing out 45 fiddly little counters etc) but I can't think of a better way. Also, if anyone thinks the dimension symbols should be divided up differently so that some symbols only appear on particular colours of tremors, say so - because as far as I can see, it won't matter, unless we decide we want to refer to the dimension-symbols on tremors for something other than movement.

I've also added three 'exits' to the board. The Storm Drain lets you get to the River Docks or the Artist's Colony, the Crypts lets you get to South Church or the Order of Dagon, and the Archao Dig lets you get to the Black Cave or Dunwich Village. Lemmingsunday has created Tunnel markers whcih can be placed on other boards to indicate where the entrances to the underground board are.

Other than that, it's all as before. We need a bit stonking pile of 'Tremor' cards, each with three encounters on it:

Surface Breach (for when a Tremor moves into the 'Surface' space)

Tremor Disrupted (for when an investigator stops a Tremor marker)

Lost in the Dark (for when an investigator is Lost).

Anyway, if everyone's happy with that, we've gotta decide what to do next. Heralds? Encounters?

make the tremors have movement symbols and have them all come from the pit and have fast movement. i dont think there is a need for a tremor cup, that is a lot of work for thecorinthian! how bout like 10 tremor tokens. elegant! lol and instead of a tremor every mythos phase how bout one every time a doom token is placed on the track? all this together makes faster tremors where u dont need to make a whole bunch and a slower clock to catch up with them! what do you think?

There are really only 3 movements. I don't think there needs to be a Moon and a Plus. And there certainly does not need to be a Star and a Slash. You can cut the Tremor tokens down a fair bit and make it easier to print and assemble. Remember that people have to cut these things out with a knife.

There's never going to be more than 12 tokens on the board, so cutting it down to 6, 6, and 3 (or twice that) would be a perfectly reasonable way to make the game easier to construct.

One thing I worry about with the current setup is that it'll take a long time for a Tremor to reach the surface. A Dark Blue Tremor lands on the board. It has a Triangle (or whatever). Now there are of course the occasional Mythos card where everything moves, but basically one third of the Mythos cards has a Triangle on it. Which means that while it could very plausibly hit Arkham in 4 turns, the average number of turns for it to hit Arkham is twelve . That's a very long time, if you're fighting the world's favorite Giant Snake Man, the game will on average be over (one way or another) before the first Dark Blue Tremor successfully comes into play.

I really like the board setup. It's clean, it's intuitive. It's easy to explain it to someone familiar with even the basic version of the game. But I think that the timer needs to be sped up. How about if each token had two symbols on it? A Tremor could move on Triangle and Plus for example. That would get one into harm's way in an average of six turns, which seems pretty reasonable for something you have to deal with in a timely fashion.

-Frank

Beautiful.

That is strikingly eloquent. I totally recant my opinion about having red lines. Seeing the near finished map, reminds me once again, that simplicity is one of the hardest things to achieve, but once achieved it blazes.

The location of the Pit is better located. Clever how just using proper placed yellow marked locations, allows the tremors to move often in areas unreachable by investigators. Completely made red lines redundant.

Frank's concern that tremors won't be active enough, I too have considered and perhaps, the number that comes on any game turn can be in flux, and determined by a roll of the 6d, halved?

Another suggestion is that the underground can have a difficulty scaling built in with the number of tremors appearing per turn.

1- Newcomers.

2-Experienced

3-Nigh-impossible.

4-Fools!

There might be a herald or certain encounter cards that cause a spewing forth of tremors.

I suggest we try and come up with our first herald.

Pittplayer, I suppose you could have the tremors come from the Pit, but the way TheCorinthian has designed the board allows the tremors to appear at different locations, and that introduces a nice randomness - allowing less safe havens for the investigators. It also pushes, some much closer to exiting, and that introduces tension, if not straight out panic.

A herald that has fast tremors won't be out of the question. You could even have one that spawns tremors from the Pit.

Frank has the number mechanics worked out, and his reduction seems solid.

Good work on those Blight Cards, Frank.

TheCorinthian will you be posting on a torrent site, so we can get a hold of those tasty Eon Files?