I found a good and fun way to make use of the often useless Cult Encounters (and in effect, the Corruption cards). I pick one monster from each dimensional symbol except the star and triangle. Place it in the monster cup and have someone randomly draw one. What happens is that for the rest of the game, whenever a monster of that dimensional symbol is defeated, you draw a cult encounter card. I made additional rules to it. Whenever a cards is the kind that forces to you to decide between getting the effect or moving to the street, you just place that card at the bottom and draw one more. Putting into place the idea that "move to the street" is changed "draw another card". You are not considered to have the Cult Membership, so any card and effect that says that you should lose it is pointless. The idea behind this is that the Ancient ones watch out for their ilk and you have to be careful in killing willy-nilly. What do you think?

So far, my friends enjoy the sudden boost in difficulty and we spend more time planning out attacks. Also, to avoid the bulk up of one character, making the entire party active in the whole operation.

Lovecraft said:

Sounds cool. Personally I'd keep thinking about it, add it a bit more and make it into a herald. I did a drastic redesign of a Black Goat herald that makes the cult encounter cards and corruptions more usable. You can view it on a number of the threads (I'm kindof in a rush so I'm not going to go find a link for you, there's definitely one in the Heralds thread, and if you google for my photobucket page under the name avi_dreader you could find it there too).

Personally what I'd do instead of making a random selection of monsters from the cup, I'd either decide the symbol before the game, or attach them to a die roll. But maybe not :')

I've been toying with the idea of generic Cults similar to a Herald, where the investigators join a cult to help gain informatin about the ancient ones. Cult members can auto-evade any other Cultists, but take a corruption card if they fight one. Cult members would get a benefit from being in a cult, but also suffer drawbacks (corruptions) as they get drawn more into the cult and away from fighting the threat. It's still something I'm working on, but I think it has potential if done right.