Jake yet again said:

I have to admit that since I don't yet own Innsmouth Horror, I was not familiar with the Sailor's special ability. I think I'll make the change you're suggesting, and I'll try to think of whether adding something else might spice things up some more.

For those of you who are Charmed fans, I have created a version of The Source that I thought was enjoyable and interesting. It introduces a new mechanic into the game. I look forward to all of your feedback! :-D

Wow, The Source sure is ugly! The yellow teeth, the destroyed eye, the ear "stud", and the black eye all add up to something I don't want to do too much looking at. For a show that features a lot of looking at pretty girls (although not as much as Buffy imo), it's ironic that their main villian (?) is so unattractive. But obviously that's not your fault, and I only mention it because a lot of the Ancient Ones are very cool looking.

Well, I like how you make one player become "mind controlled" by The Source. That's really neat because then players will be wondering who the mind controlled player will be! It's like Betrayal in that way. And I like how you did the combat modifier so that the difficulty adjusts based on how big a blow it would be to lose an investigator. I'm not sure how the (-X-1) will match up with the The Source's resistances and the Empty One, that's something that's complicated enough that I can't tell just by looking at it. You'll have to playtest it if you're unsure. I also like how you disallowed trading so that the players can't just soften up the Empty One the turn before The Source awakens.

Personally, I don't like The Tides Can Turn . It would add a lot of rerolling to the game, and I already feel like there's a lot of rolling as there is. Also, I always just roll 5 at a time, and if I have to remember what number the successes were as well as how many of each of them there are, I'm not gonna be having fun

But overall, very well done!

Thanks for all the great feedback!! I have to say I was a bit nervous posting my first set of investigators and Ancient One to the forums. I def. can understand why you wouldn't like The Tides Can Turn . I wanted to introduce a scaling modifier to the game that I had not seen before. That is, if one rolls and they only need one success this ability doesnt affect them. Trying to get two successes will result in a slight, but not impossible, reduction in the win percentage. Adding the number of successes needed does, in essence, lower percentages of average success rolls; however most of the time one success is usually all that you need. I am a mathematician so I love doing percentages of success and I worked out the 1 success and 2 success requirements and they seemed to work out well, but I do agree with you that he needs to be playtested, as I just created him last night!! :-D. Also, I thought of adding 4's into the mix for non blessed people, and then 3's for blessed people this would add a smidge of surprise as an investigator could be forced to re-roll two failures that then end up in success: what do you think about that? Just to poke fun--you should be rolling all your dice at once mister :-p-- but yea I get your overall point :-D.

It is funny that you should mention Betrayal , because I was thinking of EXACTLY that game when I created that ability. Thanks for the feedback!!

@Brooks:

Props for kickin' it old-school. Leviathan is a fairly classic AO in that it just requires you to have high Speed, high Stam and a pile of weapons. Obviously the big feature is the Aquatic thing, which is long overdue, since in my experience, aquatic monster movement does bugger-all and the only way to make it interesting is to submerge half the board. Which is what you've done. I'm surprised to see that you don't own Innsmouth Horror though, since it seems to me that without the Innsmouth monsters, even Leviathan isn't going to make Aquatic movement common enough to matter much. But you can rest assured that if Innsmouth monsters were in the mix against Leviathan, Deep Ones and Deep One Hybrids will be cropping up everywhere.

I'll re-state my usual preference: I'm not so keen on Worshipper abilities which make small changes to every stat on cultists. If I were you, I'd just give them +2 Toughness, which in most situations is equivalent to the changes you made anyway.

Also, can't you find a better picture? There must be a ton of sea monster pictures out there. The one you've got looks a bit like an alien spaceship or something. I prefer sea monsters that are really scabby and scaly and slimy. Try www.tyranx.com/concepts/leviathan.jpg or fc05.deviantart.com/fs37/i/2008/283/b/8/Leviathan_by_Ruth_Tay.jpg or fc08.deviantart.com/fs45/f/2009/140/0/c/Leviathan_by_l_Scarecrow_l.jpg or fc03.deviantart.com/fs26/f/2008/033/7/e/Sea_Monster_by_NgJas.jpg or even fc05.deviantart.com/fs40/f/2009/026/5/9/Sea_monster_by_zgul_osr1113.jpg .

@PrimeObsessed223:

First of all, I mostly agree with Brooks. Although I don't think it's ironic that Charmed has an ugly villain, since everyone knows that good people are always beautiful and ugly people are always evil, and Charmed is only one of many TV shows that reinforce this extremely realistic message.

'The Tides Can Turn' does add too many extra re-rolls, but there's a bigger problem. Did you work out the probabilities for this effect? It seems to me that it makes high-difficulty skill checks almost impossible. In order to expect to pass a skill check, you normally need to be rolling three times as many dice as the difficulty, because only one third of rolled dice will generate a successes. However with The Tides Can Turn, you're discarding two thirds of the results (as normal) than two thirds again (because you're re-rolling most successes). The most common skill check which requires multiple successes is the combat check against a monster. In order to have even a reasonable chance of killing a Toughness 3 monster, the investigators are going to need to roll almost 20 dice on the combat check, after modifiers. The game's best fighter, Michael McGlen, would need almost all of the game's best allies, skills and weapons in order to have a chance of killing a Dark Young. As for Cthonians, Dholes, Gugs, Flying Polyps etc - it's barely worth bothering to try! I'm not saying this ability is necessarily too much (although I think it'd be frustrating to playing against), just make sure you know what you're letting yourself in for....

The 'Empty One' idea is good fun, but as usual with 'betrayal' rules, it's a nightmare to fit it all on the AO's sheet and it ends up full of loopholes and glitches. A few problems which spring to mind immediately:

- Don't worry about rolling a die to determine who becomes the Source in the event of a tie. AH tradition is that if there's a tie, the First Player decides, so you don't need to specify. Making it random isn't a balancing element anyway in this case, since...

- The players can rig who the Empty One is . As long as they set started early enough, the investigators can set one guy up to the 'fall guy' by giving him loads of useless items. When the whole game is at stake, the trading ban isn't enough of an incentive in my view. In my experience it's quite easy for the other investigators to avoid accumulating extra items without inconveniencing themselves too much. If all else fails, you can always go mad on purpose in order to discard excess items. Not that it matters much, because:

- The Empty One can commit suicide anyway. There's nothing to stop the Empty One reducing himself to zero sanity by casting a spell; if this happens, he'd be devoured like anyone else would, in accordance with the standard Final Battle rules. After he'd gone, the AO has no attack, so as long as the other investigators can get at least one die per turn, they'll certainly win. Of course, it's fair enough to say that it's up to the Empty One to roleplay his situation and not commit suicide, but even if he really does try to defeat his former comrades, there's another problem:

- The Empty One will eventually become the First Player and attack himself. Is this meant to happen? I know you said that the Empty One now "fights against the remaining investigators" but you need to specify which investigator rules still apply and which don't. The Empty One is still in play, rather than being devoured, and the player has not been eliminated from the game, so that player will receive First Player marker as normal. The words "is controlled by the Source" don't mean much unless you specify exactly what the investigator can and can't go. Presumably he can still exhaust and discard weapons in order to get a combat bonus? If so, what other items can he exhaust or discard? There are plenty of Uniques which will allow the Empty One to help the investigators defeat the AO. Ther The distinction between players and investigators really matters here. On that subject:

- Making a combat check "against a player" is meaningless. The only thing you make combat checks against are AOs and monsters, because the rules for those things define the modifier and the effect of successes. Saying "make a combat check against a player" doesn't carry any more rules meaning than just "make a combat check", because you have to specify what happens anyway. This is a phrasing problem more than anything else: I think you can phrase the attack better. Try something like this: "The Empty One investigator makes a Combat (+0) check. Then the First player's investigator makes a Combat (+0) check, the modifier for which decreases by 2 each turn. The First Player's investigator then loses X Stamina, where X is the Empty One's successes minus his own successes."

- The attack isn't very dangerous. The First Investigator will soon be reduced to no dice each turn, but how many successes will the Empty One be getting on a +0 check? Three or four at most? That caps the Stam loss at 3 or 4 per turn for the whole group , which is not all that painful.

The main problem really is just that there's no rules framework for changing a player's motivation, so just saying that the Empty One is working against the other investigators doesn't mean much. If you let the Empty One player use his or her items/abilities, then you can't rule out certain uses based on an arbitrary assessment of what the Empty One should be trying to do. As it stands, the Empty One player is either eliminated from the game (turning their character into little more than a reference card beside the board) or else remains in control (in which case you can't rely on them making the optimum decisions for screwing over their teammates).

Sorry, I know that all sounds kinda negative! I'd like to see it work, it's just that I think it's gonna be a helluva tricky thing to get right.

Another one for your consideration. Any thoughts? Too tough? Too easy?

In case the last card there is blurry for any reason (Flickr is being a pain), it says this: "Any phase: You automatically fail all Evade and Horror checks. If you ever reduced to 0 Stamina, discard this card."

Interesting slumber effect. Unless I'm missing something, it doesn't really scale -- it's easier the more investigators you have. The improvement to aquatic monsters is nice and should make Deep Ones much more of a pain. I think my two biggest suggestions would be adding an additional idol, or perhaps having a small "idol deck" which scales with the number of investigators (maybe one or two less). Other than that, the second idol seems a little out of place. It's more of an inconvenience than anything, but one that can be avoided. And really, since there's no built-in penalty to devourment (not saying there should be) there is really no reason that an investigator couldn't just go ahead and get devoured, assuming they can't seal in the first place.

Anyway, you have probably taken these things into account already. It does look like an interesting AO to face, and the final battle seems pretty tough as well. Have you played any games with it yet?

mattherobot said:

Thanks for feedback! I hadn't taken much of that into account really. I did already think that it might be good to make a larger 'Idol Deck' composed of maybe ten or twelve idols, and at the start of the game you deal out one for each player, so there'll always be one per player, altohugh of course when you actually go and get them, you can put several on one person if that person can live with the stacked up disadvantages. It seems a bit complex, although it might be the only way to get this AO to scale up enough.

Some of the idols are going to be more of a pain than others. The idea with the idols is that each one would mess up attempts to fulfill a specific 'duty' which an investigator might wish to perform - so it's a question of teamwork and 'juggling' the idols so that their penalties don't matter to the person who has them. Although yeah, the close/seal one might be too weak.

I haven't playtested this AO yet, I just posted it because I think the basic idea is fairly sound. How many idols there should be, and what they should do, is a question of balance/difficulty which I'll try to resolve once I've worked out how hard this first version is. I think it might actually be far too easy to "work around" at the moment, so increasing the number of idols is obviously the way to go.

I'm also unsure about the status of the idol cards - right now they're just 'misc small cards' but I'm not sure whether I should make them be an existing card type, like items, detriments, or even madnesses. Their card text will make sure they "get home to poppa" whatever happens, so it wouldn't matter if they were affected by other game rules.

Also, has anyone ever found any good pictures of eldritch idols or creepy alien statues? I've scoured DeviantArt using all kinds of search terms, but most of the good pics are photos of beautiful Cthulhu idols, and I don't like using photos of real objects as card art, no matter how cool the real objects are.

Nice! That looks like it would be pretty fun/challenging to play against. The -6 is rough, but with no resistances, it seems doable. I guess you'd want to get all those cards distributed asap. I play in a two player group, so that would severely handicap one of us. Still, it's a neat concept!

An interesting twist in my eyes would be to change the last line to this:

If there are no more cursed items on this sheet, the investigators cannot pick up any clue tokens. This would make for a very nasty effect and would force players to get rid of the curses asap.

I absolutely love Xoth-Ommog. He's so polished and professional-looking already. In my own mind, I'll be nicknaming it Xoth-Ommygod.

First off, fantastic pictures. I actually like the current appearance of cursed idols picture just fine, but it's your show so obviously if you're not happy with them then by all means do what you like. I also like how you conformed the wording to the standards set by official Ancient Ones. A lot of these custom jobs use wording that doesn't fit in with how FFG likes to state things. I also really like the Attack. That's a creative way to proceed and I'd be curious to find out how many rounds people will be able to survive. It's really hard at this point to think of new attack mechanics that haven't already been used! Props to you for thinking of one.

For a group of four people, he seems pretty tough right now, before the changes. I agree that unless there are more idols it will be a lot easier for big groups.

Are you going to create Sinister Plots? My group really likes to do Epic Battle, so those would be great. You said you're gonna playtest and tinker with X-O, so once you get it into a final form, could you repost it? I'm gonna want to try it out too.

kilrah said:

But wouldn't that reverse the effect of the ability? The idea was really to force the players to have the cursed idols, not force them to get rid of them (although they do need to get rid of them before the final battle). The Cursed Idols aren't something you have to pick up when you get Clue tokens; they're something you have to pick up instead . So if there are any Cursed Idols still on Zoth-Ommog, it's impossible to gain clues. Someone has to take the idols first, then you can go and get the clues as normal.

@Brooks: glad you like it! I will playtest it and probably make some changes. I might change his modifier to -5. Also, since I think the attack is pretty harsh, one of the sinister plots will probably "reset" the amount, like Ghathanathoa.

I've got another new AO idea too, I'll post it in a bit.

Here you go, more from the nightmare worlds of Clark Ashton Smith.

... and so on. In theory there should be one Protoplasm for each monster movement symbol, but in practice you can use them in almost any combination and it probably wouldn't affect the game that much. You just need to print out a random bunch of them so that you have as many as there are players, and with a bit of variety in the dimension symbols (otherwise monster movement will be too "samey").

Here's how this is meant to work: most of the monsters which appear during the game will be Ubbo-Sathla protoplasms. Sometimes you'll get other monsters, and you'll still get normal monsters from encounters, but most fights will consist of entering combat with a Protoplasm without knowing what sort of monster it's going to turn into. So basically it's a "hidden monster" game. Fight a Protoplasm and it might turn into a Cultist or it might turn into a Dhole. This seems to me to be easily enough of a problem to be an AO's only slumber ability, but does anyone else disagree?

(Btw, Protoplasms have only one printed stat (the damage) because you might fail to evade them before they turn into another monster. As far as I can see, the special ability then means that the Protoplasm's other stats will never been needed).

If anyone's mental arithmetic isn't that good, the Final Battle against Ubbo-Sathla is pretty harsh. Assuming that all the investigators are on full San/Stam when the battle beg ins, a solo player will definitely be dead on the fourth turn. Two- and three-player teams will definitely be dead on the fifth turn. Turn six delivers enough damage to finish off everything up to an eight-player team, although one or two people from seven- or eight-player teams might survive. The seventh turn is unsurvivable unless you have more than fifteen investigators. The idea behind this ability is that it resonates with amoebas dividing and doubling in number and other single-celled organism type stuff, which is what Ubbo-Sathla is all about. However, it's a bit predictable, so I will probably do some sinister plots which prolong the battle (otherwise there's no way it would ever last into the red EB cards).

Another neat one! I had an idea on Xoth-Ommog; what if you had the number of cursed idols set to the number of investigators-1? I'm not sure if that would add too much text, or if it would take away from the idea of the AO, just a thought.

I like the idea of Ubbo. I think the unknown monster thing sounds pretty challenging and cool. I don't really think it needs to be changed; as, like you pointed out, you could end up getting a Dhole, or the one I hate, Shan! So I think it adds an interesting and new tweak on regular play. Nice!

I'm working on one right now that's similar, I guess, to Ubbo. I'm working on a giant insect AO that infests Arkham with it's pestilence. I'll put it up when I have a little better polish on it, as I'd like to get everyones feedback.

Another nice one, Corinth!

Ubbo-Sathla sounds great, I'd love to give it a try. One question, and maybe I just missed this, but how would they interact with things which need to know monster toughness, like Plague of Locusts?

Admiral142 said:

I did think of various ways of deciding what number of idols there should be, but the problem with "one less idol than player" is with solo play. If there's only one investigator, there'd be no idols at all, so there'd be no barrier to picking up clue tokens, and the AO would basically have no effect during the game. I'll probably make it "half as many idols as players, rounding up" instead.

@Matttherobot: hmmmm. A VERY good question about the locusts. I may just have to give the Protoplasms arbitrary stats so that other cards won't glitch when they need refer to them. It makes a mess of the back of the cards (since it adds symbols that are never going to be used, which might confuse people) but at least it means there's no real clash).

Thanks for feedback, anyway, guys. Expect to see later versions of these at some point.

Would minimum of 1 work? Also, it should definitely be based on the number of investigators, as a single player might decide to play with more than one. Just throwing stuff out there. I totally ripped of your guy too for my AO. I'll post her anyway, even though I feel like a jerk.

Admiral142 said:

Saying "A minimum of 1" would technically work, but I'd have to phrase it something like this: "Place X Cursed Idol cards on this sheet, where X one less than the number of players, and at least one" which is very confusing grammar and almost unreadable. Also, I don't just want there to be one per player, because they'd have to be less annoying. I'd prefer to make them really very unpleasant, and force the investigators to choose who suffered. I think "half, rounding up" is the way to go.

Cool, sounds good!

We had discussed monsters acting as parasites at one point, and I thought it would be cool to do an AO that capitalizes on that. Thanks to Corinthians recent posts, there are some mechanics that I can use to make it work ok, I think. Here she is:

Since the maggots have different abilities, it may be better to do a BGotW thing and have a separate monster cup. Also, I know that dice rolls on investigators and AO's are not generally ideal, but I didn't want the maggots to have anything really to do with the gates because they're meant to all be from our world. The dimensional symbols are there for convenience of getting rid of them when gates close.

I look forward to critiques!

Curses! The internet doesn't have enough "giant gross insect" pictures! I'd found those two pictures myself and was saving them for later horrors. Still, never mind... really, really nice work! I can't find fault with the concept, but the wording of the rules could use a bit of tightening up:

- Worshippers: Saying "When Mukrillion is the Ancient One..." is a bit redundant, since if Mukrillion wasn't the AO, none of the rules on Mukrillion's sheet would apply anyway! I reckon you also need to specify that the Worshipper ability "happens" during Game Setup, just to make things clear. And since the Muck Maggots aren't strictly 'spawn' monsters, you need to specify what happens if they're removed from the board by a gate closure. Special monsters like this are always tricky to keep under control, because some smartarse player will find a way to return a Muck Maggot to the box or swap it with one in the cup or trap it in the outskirts or something like that. So try this:

"Mukrillion is worshipped by her spawn. Place the ten Muck Maggots on this sheet during Game Setup. If a Muck Maggot is spent as a trophy, or removed from the board without being taken as a trophy, return it to this sheet."

I think that closes all the loopholes, and means that there's no way to get Muck Maggots out of the game without keeping them as trophies. (Btw, if you want to save space on the AO sheet, you could cut the 'flavour text' part at the start of the worshipper ability (since it's fairly obviously anyway), or you could come up with a shorter name for Muck Maggots. Calling them 'Muck Grubs' would save quite a bit of space since their name appears quite a few times on Mukrillion.)

Also, if I were you, I'd reduce the number of Muck Maggots (see my bit about Muck Maggots, below).

- Infestation: I'd just have the Maggot appear at the start of the Mythos phase, because if it's "before monster movement" it creates a bit of an ambiguity about whether it happens if there's no monster movement pattern (whcih I think only happens on the Intermission card from KiY, but I might be wrong).

The main thing I don't like about Infestation is that it adds an additional die roll, which is a bit fiddly. Couldn't it just be done based on the gate locations on the Mythos cards? You could do it like this: "Whenever a Mythos card is drawn, place a random Muck Maggot from this sheet on the gate location shown on that Mythos card. If there are no Muck Maggots on this sheet when a Mythos card is drawn, add a Doom token to the Doom track instead."

That fits neatly into the ability box. On the other hand, if you want to keep the 'dice roll' thing, I reckon try this: "At the beginning of each Mythos phase, if there are no Muck Maggots on this sheet, add a Doom token to the Doom track. Otherwise, roll a die on the following table, and place a Muck Maggot from this sheet on the location indicated: <br><b>1-2</b> Woods<br><b>3-4</b> Black Cave<br><b>5-6</b> Unvisited Isle"

- Start of Battle: When in doubt, always copy the wording from an official AO who has a similar ability! In this case, Rhan-Tegoth. Mukrillion's SoB ability should says "Mukrillion gains 2 extra doom tokens for each Muck Maggot in Arkham." You don't need to say the "may exceed" bit, I don't reckon. Rhan-Tegoth doesn't have that bit, anyway.

- Attack: Put " Fight (+0) " instead of "fight +0", and put "check's" instead of "checks", and you're sorted.

- Muck Maggots: I think there are too many of these, especially since they always appear and they do count towards the monster limit. This AO is adding an additional monster every turn, which is pretty harsh, so it might not be a bad idea to limit the supply of extra monsters to 6 rather than 10. And also you probably don't need to specify "while Muck Maggot is a monster trophy", you can just say "While Muck Maggot is a trophy" (since it's not like it's ever gonna be a gate trophy). And if I were you, I'd mix up the dimension symbols more, so the maggots with the same move type won't move at the same time (just to encourage a bit of chaos and havoc). Here are some other thoughts:

The black-bordered Maggots are too fiddly - I don't like these little petty stat penalties, since it's too easy to forget to apply them. Also, they're just not as interesting as some of the other maggot penalties.

- The stalker Maggots : the focus-reducer should probably just stop you moving your skill sliders at all. I don't think that'd be too harsh, it's less fiddly than a 1-point reduction in focus, and it's almost the same effect on many investigators anyway. The movement-reducing maggot should say "2 fewer movement points" not "2 less ". And you don't need to say "minimum 0" in either case, because having a negative number of movement points or focus is probably the same as having zero.

- The aquatic Maggots: To be on the safe side, the hand-loss one should copy its phrasing from the Broken Hand injury card, so it should say "While Muck Maggot is a trophy, you have 1 fewer hand to use during combat." The other aquatic Maggot is a bit more of a problem since it affects different investigators in very different ways. Not all investigators' abilities are things that you use voluntarily, or are even beneficial; for example, if the Urchin had this Maggot as a trophy, would she be able to ignore her Unique Inability and gain a Bank Loan? Could she become cursed while she had an Elder Sign, and if so, what happens when she spends the Maggot? The Martial Artist's unique ability explains how her entire crazy-ass investigator sheet works, so it's almost impossible for her to not be able to use those rules. Similar problems with the Spy. Nothing totally insurmountable, but I just thought I'd mention that this sort of ability is asking for trouble...

- the flying Maggots: I think the "curse" maggot is a spanner in the works of the blessing/curse system. Does it override a blessing? If so, why does this particular card have 'priority' over a blessing? The safest way to make it work might be to say "When you take Muck Maggot as a trophy, you are cursed. While you have Muck Maggot as a trophy, you may not roll to discard a curse." That fits on the card (though you might want to move Mag Resistance to another Maggot just to make things a bit less crowded), and if they can get blessed before fighting it, good luck to 'em.

thecorinthian said:

I misred the GOO. I was under the impression that you get the clues in addition to the cursed idols. It makes more sense now.

Excellent suggestions Corinth, thanks! You should use those pictures anyway, as you're right, there aren't enough giant gross insect pictures on the net and these two are pretty sweet! I'll apply the changes and re-post.

With the Muck Maggots, do you think having a special ability as well as a penalty for taking them as a trophy is too much? Should they all have a similar stat line to the black bordered ones, so that they're super easy to take as trophies, and a little harder to spend (I find that 1 toughness monsters are harder to spend than 2 toughness monsters, since it takes more to get the 5 toughness you generally need.)? Also, is there a way to make them appear besides using gates? I like the idea that Mukrillion isn't from an Other World, but from ours and just really ancient. That's why the standard maggots are moons. I know that having the maggots appear at a gate doesn't necessarily mean that they're from that dimension, I just think that for many players, it implies that the creature is from an other world. Mostly just a flavor thing, I guess. Do you have any ideas for placing them other than a dice roll? I agree that a dice roll is not ideal.

Thanks again for the comments!

No problem!

I'll have a think about how best to spawn the Muck Maggots, but coming up with 'timing mechanisms' is always tricky and you might not find a better way than the random D6 table.

Anyway....I feel like I'm getting the hang of this "designing AOs" business. All you do is, you pick something nice that the investigators can normally do, something that helps them, and then you make it almost impossible by having really horrible things happen whenever they do it! Like these so-called "Clue tokens" that people keep talking about. Sounds like they make the game a bit too easy, if you ask me. I'll soon fix that.

(I haven't bothered making Rot tokens yet. I'll probably just use Brood tokens. In fact, I might just change this guy so he uses Brood tokens too, since there's not a lot of point having a seperate pile of Rot tokens anyway.)

Nice one, Corinth! I like that picture, and it would give another way to use the brood tokens, which is nice. Cool concept too!

I had a crazy idea. Here it is. I will be changing the Muck Maggots still, but I wanted to get some feedback for this crazy idea first. I realize it takes away a mechanic from the game; I just think it adds to the idea of Mukrillion being from our world. Check it out.

It probably doesn't actually "break the game", since the game rules more-or-less function if there are no gates anyway (which can happen in some games). But it's going to make a lot of specific item cards and investigator abilities useless, and although it replaces the gates with special monsters, it still feels like you're taking away more variety than you're adding. So it might just be less fun. I don't mind the idea, but I think most people (myself included) wouldn't ever want to use it! Each to his own, I guess.

Is it meant to be adding Doom tokens as normal when Muck Maggots are placed? If so, it's almost impossible to prevent the AO awakening in ten turns, since there'll be no seals and no monster surges; just a doom token and a monster per turn and no way to slow it down.

If you really want it to work, you've gotta be very careful about the way it's worded - presumably you still want monsters to be placed during the Mythos phase as normal, so if you're gonna be thorough, you need to check which rules in the rulebook say "place such-and-such on the gate" because those rules will cease to apply if you cancel all the gate-openings.