Custom Great Old Ones

By ThorGrim2, in Fan Creations

Well. It looks good. And I think it will work. In theory. But keep in mind, this is highly abnormal, so I can't really be sure. You should probably playtest this a few times and see if it's possible to exploit it (if it gives way too much time).

Just started playing Arkham Horror a day ago. I never even knew what Lovecraftian horror was until then, but I love this game already.

I made a Beezlebub Ancient One for this. For those of you who don't know, Beezlebub is the Lord of the Flies and member of the Unholy Trinity in Christian theology. In short, he's another form of the Devil.

I planned on doing Lucifer and Satan as well. I also made a Scenario for Beezlebub and an other world (HELL) complete with other world cards and gate markers that I may post later.

Just remember I'm new to this game so if I made a mistake be sure to let me know! Feedback would be great.

Also, does anyone have a better image of Beezlebub? I want something alien and Fly like but in color.

beezlebubfrontface.png

Wait... So today's your second day of Arkham Horror and you're already posting custom creations? Hrm... I'd suggest you give the game a month or so of intensive play before creating things (otherwise they're likely to have significant design flaws, and you'll end up having to change them later anyways). That being said, a -1 sanity loss per six turns isn't even an issue if it's mandatory (there's a creature in Dunwich that does that). Make it a 2 sanity loss and it becomes a considerably more significant threat. Also, setting theme aside (since your theme is your own) blessings aren't that major a part of the game once it grows in size and complexity. A far more influential Ancient One ability would be raising the price of blessings at South Church to 10. Killing or evading cultists is far too easy to avoid for a blessed investigator (and so is passing a will -1 check *especially* if blessed).

Anyways, good places for hunting for images are Google Images, and Deviantarts.

This board game is *not* Lovecraftian Horror, it's based (loosely) on Lovecraft and other writers who built on his work. If you want a better sense of the source material, find a good Lovecraft anthology. I'd recommend The Necronomicon, or the Library of America version. Or, if you don't mind reading online, this page is good. The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Dunwich Horror, and The Call of Cthulhu would make a good start.

http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/index.html

Lovecraft's isn't exactly a Christian universe... The board game is kind of a child friendly version of Lovecraft suitable for mass digestion, which is why I can often be seen walking down the street with the board in my mouth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft

Anyways, I hope you enjoy the game and return for posting custom materials (although I still think it would be a good idea if you had a bit more gaming experience first though). Welcome to the forum!

Welcome to the asylum Slagar3000.

Like mentioned by Avi this ancient one is a little tame. It looks like you kind of want to make his schtik into an ability to mess with blessings. If this is the case I would attack blessings a little harder. Perhaps instead of his ancient one power happening on the random roll of a dice it would happen every turn but only to blessed characters, pumping it up to 2 sanity would also help that sting a little and make someone thing twice before spending trophies at the church.

As you get to know us here on the boards you will learn that we tend to take a little bit of sadistic glee in a tough ancient one or herald but after playing arkham a while you will learn to appreaciate the value of getting your butt kicked once in a while.

I personally am a setting purist (or snob depending on how you view that) so I tend not to play with custom content that doesn't fit the scope of the setting, Beezlebub would fall into that category. Though I should note that most scholars believe he began his life as a derogetory term for Ba'al Zebul (litteraly lord of the high place) A god worshiped in many mesopotamian cultures. Zebul sounding close to zebûb (the hebrew word for flies) made for an easy school yard type taunt. The links that Avi posted are good for setting info. Dagonbytes in particular is where I myself have read most of lovecrafts works.

Oh yeah, the Christains demonized the hell (aha, hell, he's the devil, *snickers*) out of Beezlebub. I got a new version that's a bit harder, and I considered Beezlebub to be the most mild of the Unholy Trinity. Lucifer was gonna be the middle ground, and Satan was meant to be the hardest.

I'm no Christian or anything, I'm just fascinated by the Devil. I'm an atheist. Nor did I think that Arkham Horror was real Lovecraft stuff, **** corporations tone everything down.

I've revised Beezlebub, made him harder and got a better picture. And here's the 2nd Beezlebub:

beelzebubfrontface.png

And here's version 1 of Lucifer (picture will most likely change):

luciferfrontface.png

Looking back, I may have made the penalties for being cursed a bit steep on Lucifer.

Lucifer is going to lead to a high turnover of investigators, ie the second time a monster surge occurs every investigator will likely be devoured. Ironically this will be a huge help to the players as investigators tend to get weaker as the game goes on instead of stronger so you will possibly be getting several rounds of fresh reinforcements throughout the game.

Also his attack is stated redundantly it should just read "All investigators must pass an evade (+0) check or lose 2 stamina. This checks modifier decreases by 1 each round". Being reduced to zero stamina or sanity in the last battle always results in devouring, it doesn't need to be stated.

On a thematic note I myself am christian and well versed in medieval christian/catholic mythology/lore and have never heard those names refered to as an unholy trinity. I have heard of an ecenomic principle refered to by that name but I can't remember what it was.

Formless Spawn normally have two toughness.

Veet said:

Lucifer is going to lead to a high turnover of investigators, ie the second time a monster surge occurs every investigator will likely be devoured. Ironically this will be a huge help to the players as investigators tend to get weaker as the game goes on instead of stronger so you will possibly be getting several rounds of fresh reinforcements throughout the game.

Also his attack is stated redundantly it should just read "All investigators must pass an evade (+0) check or lose 2 stamina. This checks modifier decreases by 1 each round". Being reduced to zero stamina or sanity in the last battle always results in devouring, it doesn't need to be stated.

Normally I'd agree with this, but keep in mind, his attack could wipe out an entire team in two turns (I think it's a bad idea by the way, the way it's currently done— but I think tying curses to monster surges is a good idea— I just wouldn't shut down the church or have investigators be devoured for double curses. The bleeding curse is also very overpowered. It should be must lose one stamina or sanity per turn. If you want there to be an additional double curse penalty, make it something like double cursed investigators must discard an item.

Also, there aren't really many undead monsters (and the ones that move are pretty easy— with the exception of Wraith and Mummy).

A revamped Nyarlathotep for my Masks of N. Campaign. Am wondering if I should put his track to 13

nyarlathotep.jpg

The campaign is basically about stopping Nyarlathotep's plan to turn the Earth into a playground for the Outer Gods, thus I figure an end of the world battle makes sense. This expansion goes heavily after investigator sanity, which again makes sense given N's goal of spreading chaos, but several monsters reward sanity points for being defeated and several of the new allies provide some form of sanity boost as well. There will, of course, be new Mask monsters. Let me know what you think.

Note: This image belongs to Chaosium as part of their Mythos CCG

I don't really have time to properly comment on anything this week (I have a major project due Friday); however, I do want to say that how the non-placement in outskirts functions is unclear.

Avi_dreader said:

I don't really have time to properly comment on anything this week (I have a major project due Friday); however, I do want to say that how the non-placement in outskirts functions is unclear.

I wouldn't say unclear I would call it redundant. If masks don't count against the monster limit they will never go to the outskirts anyway, barring an effect that would switch them with a monster in the outskirts but those are fairly rare.

oh yeah, since they won't be in the cup the won't be drawn for possible addition to the outskirts. Consider that part deleted.

Veet said:

Avi_dreader said:

I don't really have time to properly comment on anything this week (I have a major project due Friday); however, I do want to say that how the non-placement in outskirts functions is unclear.

I wouldn't say unclear I would call it redundant. If masks don't count against the monster limit they will never go to the outskirts anyway, barring an effect that would switch them with a monster in the outskirts but those are fairly rare.

oh yeah, since they won't be in the cup the won't be drawn for possible addition to the outskirts. Consider that part deleted.

Veet said:

I wouldn't say unclear I would call it redundant. If masks don't count against the monster limit they will never go to the outskirts anyway, barring an effect that would switch them with a monster in the outskirts but those are fairly rare.

Um, that too. Make sure you say they are spawn monsters.

Here's a picture for beelze that'd be even better if edited.

Beelzebub

65216495.jpg

52026436.jpg

18294226.jpg 61614417.jpg

For Luck of the Drawn, you might as well just auto devour the investigator. The odds of not drawing the Innsmouth Look card are infinitesimal, and not worth the hassle.

You could also make Cultists treated as Deep Ones, that would raise the aquatic monster level and the Innsmouth Look threat.

Also, it's Luck of the Draw, not Luck of the Drawn (unless that was a deliberate phrasing with a meaning that escapes me).

It might also be a good idea to raise the combat modifier to -4. I'm not sure though.

1) It's only 10 cards, not that of a hassle.

2) It was deliberate. Something about drawning. I guess it didn't come out well.

kroen said:

1) It's only 10 cards, not that of a hassle.

2) It was deliberate. Something about drawning. I guess it didn't come out well.

At best they have a 70% chance of being devoured (unless you have Wilson, or Camilla's Ruby). I guess it doesn't matter that much (and I'll admit I thought there were only 8 Innsmouth Look cards). Seeing that that's not so, I'd rather see that as the Ancient One attack against first players each round— it'd be pretty tense. If you swapped it around, you could raise the combat modifier to -4 or -5 and change one or two of the sinister plot cards to all players must draw 3, 4, or 5 cards from the Innsmouth Look deck (depending on how difficult you'd want it to be— personally, I'd go for four cards, I think that'd create the most dramatic tension when it was drawn).

Final combat would be quite different, but I think it would go a lot smoother.

I still don't understand the "drawning" thing. Did you mean drowning?

Here's an actually difficult 14-doomer AO:

cxaxukluth.jpg

kroen said:

Here's an actually difficult 14-doomer AO:

cxaxukluth.jpg

Pretty good.

One problem, the image quality is a bit low, can you reupload a higher quality image?

Have you seen the 14 doom herald and ancient one I made yet?

http://s622.photobucket.com/albums/tt307/avi_dreader/?action=view&current=TheDarkness2.jpg

http://s622.photobucket.com/albums/tt307/avi_dreader/?action=view&current=TheCreviceofChaos.jpg

Mmmm... Now that I think of it, I'm not really crazy about the picture selection here (but maybe it's just me— Azathoth's head— if I remember correctly what the source art is— reminds me of Central Tower from Masters of the Universe. Would it be possible to move the image down a bit. More tentacles and dying humans. Less of that silly (in my eyes) head on top?

Are you planning to print it? If so I will do the modifications you asked, otherwise I see no point.

kroen said:

Are you planning to print it? If so I will do the modifications you asked, otherwise I see no point.

I'm planning on putting it in my print file. I only go to the printer once every year or so, so I can't be certain that I'll print it at that point, but as of now (not seeing any other Ancient Ones like it that I think function better) I'd be willing to (provided it was updated).

kroen said:

Yes. I really like the picture now. I'm glad the head and what looks like a bomb blast are cut out, I thought they looked like some kind of cheesy allusion to atomic holocaust.

I'm trying to decide if I should include it in the fan creation league (I've already designed the scenarios and the plot outline, but I'm trying to figure out where I could put it in). I actually really want to (I know a perfect herald for it). I'm just trying to figure out some scenario tweaks and where I can put it (I have a vague idea how to incorporate it into the plot).

Okay. Done. If you're curious to know what it will be in advance, I'd be willing to tell you privately.