I'm currently trying to make an Arkham game variant in which three games are played that lead into one another. For example the first game is just base Arkham, the second incorporates one expansion pack without a herald, and the last one is the same expansion but with a herald. This was to simulate a mini campaign like the the Arkham league scenarios in which it gets increasingly difficult over the games. I wanted to incorporate a feature that made it so that after each game the players could choose to keep their current investigator and all the items they had accumulated or retire and draw a new one and start fresh. The only problem is after the first game it's clear that being able to keep all their items would make the rest of the games not a significant challenge at all... Does anyone have any thoughts or ideas on how I could make this system more balanced? Perhaps letting them keep one item of choice or only keeping unspent trophies? Any ideas would be appreciated =)

Clearly letting a character keep his full equipment is crazy, the simple number of items/allies/whatever will severly unbalance the whole game. A possibility could be to allow a character to keep a single item from the last game replacing one of the random objects from the standard profile.

arachnidshadow9 said:

::Laughter:: you want an Arkham game variant? Tell me which expansions you own, and I'll tell you which of my custom creations you should play with which Ancient Ones in what order. Actually, I think being able to pull even one item per investigator across games is too much. I would say each investigator can choose to substitute an item or ally with the same type of random or fixed item they start with, AND whether or not you can do that should be determined by a die roll (50% odds at max, so 1-3 the item can carry over, 4-6, it can't). Also, make it so investigators can only do this with items they're holding (which won't be a problem in final battle— but might be an issue if you go for a sealing victory).

Hell, I'll even arrange them in a couple mini scenarios for you with three or four character pools to choose from (I think that'd be a fun resource to post in the Custom Heralds thread— we certainly have enough stuff there now that we could do something with them). An undead group of scenarios. A monster group. A Nyarlethotep group. And an alien apocalypse group. :') Do you own all the expansions?

I own all the current expansions =). I'd love to hear about your custom scenarios they sound awesome. I think in regards to keeping items across games I may just have them all start fresh for round 2. Still toying with the idea of keeping unspent trophies, any thoughts on that?

arachnidshadow9 said:

I've played a campaign where investigators got to replace starting items with acquired items (as suggested above). I suppose whenever additional choices are given, this makes the game easier but with few exceptions, I think the carryover from the last game with make the game more like a campaign.

I never once considered carrying over trophies because I've never really come up with a definition of what those are or are supposed to represent. But keeping them would present some problems. What if the investigators have four left over trophies and no gate opened on the opening. Do they have a closing victory.

For campaign purposes, I'd say trophies was merely specific information against the last Old One and that information isn't relevant anymore, so no keeping of trophies.

On the other hand, if you do want to carry things over, be sure and carryover your loses, such as mi-go, allies and elder signs and other things returned to the cup. They are removed from the campaign. Certainly you'd want to carry over injuries and madness and if by slim chance an investigator ended up with less than he started with she'd be at a disadvantage. Maybe they should begin with their current sanity and stamina.

My suggestion: allow players to switch starting random possession with objects acquired in the previous scenario, as previously suggested by Woodclaw and Mageith, BUT for each item they want to keep, draw a corruption or a madness or an injury (which flaw they have to draw depends on the kind of campaign you want to run; if you believe that fighting evil taints even the most pure soul, go for corruption, and so on; I mean, you decide from which deck all flaws have to be drawn). Madness, injuries and corruptions carry over from scenario to scenario regardless of the fact players decide to keep some items or not

And yes, use Avi heralds for the last scenario. I've never ever been able to beat one of them (although I haven't tried as hard as I'd like to, my shame)

And if you want something really tough to beat, try Avi's "Galaxy of R'lyeh" scenario, enhancing it with some nasty herald, like the custom herald Basatan or (AND?) Father Dagon and Mother Hydra. Use only the Innsmouth expansion to avoid dilution of events and then... well, break a leg!

arachnidshadow9 said:

Oh, no, I don't have a custom scenario, I figured I'd just spend thirty minutes to an hour putting some of my favorite heralds (you've seen my heralds I assume?) and a few AOs together and in a sequence of ascending difficulty (by type of challenge), giving you a limited character pool to from, and possibly altering game dynamics in some way (I'm not sure if that'd be necessary though— I never was much of a fan for sorting decks). Are you still interested? I'll start thinking about it today, and perhaps I'll write something up tonight. I'll set things up so it will play like a puzzle :') it'll be fun. But now that I think about it, it might take me two or three hours to set it up, even though I've already gotten some ideas.

Here's my custom stuff.

http://s622.photobucket.com/albums/tt307/avi_dreader/

Heh... I've been working on this for the last 40 minutes actually. I've nearly finished mapping out the Ancient Ones Heralds combinations. It's going to be quite nasty :') and hopefully a fun challenge.

Julia said:

Galaxy of R'lyeh is a herald, but if you want to call it a scenario and play it with Basatan I won't stop you ;'D

Julia said:

Really? None of them? Many of them have tricks to beat, and some of them are just overall all around difficult, but none of them are impossible :') If you think they're tough now, wait until you see what I'm going to do with them for this custom league thing :'D I'm actually really excited— constructing these combinations has been an exercise in creativity and sadism. A few of these pairings will give nightmares :') Hee hee hee... I've even created a backstory to explain the reason for the game set-up, and for why some of the game rules operate the way they do (I might post up a few pages of flavor text).

arachnidshadow9 said:

I'm going to make it so investigators can roll for exchange/keeping one item each. And make a roll for keeping one monster trophy each. I might change this rule for a couple of scenarios and actually remove the roll (because otherwise I'm worried they might be a little too hard).

Okay, I've designed a series of 23 matches in order (it's in four segments divided by theme). Do you guys think you can handle them? :') And do you want advanced list of the matches? Or do you want them just listed by segment? Or should it be a total surprise (I can post these either weekly, or bi-weekly for a year)? It's possible that I'll list partial segments. That way you'll have some preparation without knowing what's in store for the final parts of most of the segments ;'D

Avi, great custom heralds and ancient ones I really like these a lot and am printing them right now. As for the keeping items across campaigns I've decided that this mechanic in of itself should deserve some custom cards. My idea is that after each campaign one character will have become corrupted by the ancient one and have to draw a card to represent that much like what was mentioned in this thread about having them draw a madness or corruption. However, for this my idea is that each ancient one will have it's own unique corruption that it gives to the chosen player. Each of these will have a good and bad quality about it as well.

arachnidshadow9 said:

I hope you're not color printing them, because I'm going to modify Wendigo, The Maskless, The Lich King, and The Creature in the Clouds.

Avi_dreader said:

Well, actually, they stopped me twice in a row ::laughing::
Sorry for the scenario vs heralds mistake. Still make confusion on it. Anyway, the picture of the Galaxy is great; where does it come from?

Avi_dreader said:

Well, I haven't tried all of them yet, just the three impressing me the more, which means: Galaxy of R'lyeh, Creature in the clouds and The lich king.
I'd like to play more with your custom material, but I think I have to improve my knowledge of the game with its basic elements. So I'm planning to start everything over again, and see how things have changed during these months. There are tons of possibilities still unexplored for me

But I definitely love the idea of a custom league with some nasty background. Can't wait

Avi_dreader said:

::shock:: have to reprint everything again... sigh...

Julia said:

::Laughter:: I'm sorry Julia, you seem to have bad luck. Perhaps a Jinx or a Curse. But look on the bright side ;') at least you haven't printed out The Maskless yet. It's essential for me to change them. I like Wendigo as it is, but I'm going to make it a little more fix (and make its cultists immune to handcuffs— someone pointed out that combo to me, and I think it's ridiculous thematically, and tactically, so I'm going to close that unintentional loophole). I also want to make it so skill sliders are frozen during final battle vs. Ithaqua, and so that it can cause permanent sanity/stamina losses under certain conditions.

The Lich King is one of my oldest creations and it has a *lot* of textual problems. I've wanted to fix it up for a long time, and I will (I already have the corrected text in a word document). Sorry again. If it's any consolation, it'll probably get a little easier :') (If I remember correctly, I'm dropping the Rain of Maggots ability). ::Laughter:: Don't worry, this won't make it easier for the Fan Creation League game (it's going to be unbelievably nasty— it's one of the four, um, boss fights?)

I'm altering the Maskless significantly so it will work better with a Nyarlathotep herald I'm making. I also wanted to alter how it generates masks and remove its double mask movement ability. So, basically I'm nerfing it too ;') although when coupled with the other Nyarlathotep herald, it will actually be *more* difficult :'D

Creature in the Clouds is going to have a bit of a difficulty increase. It will increase the terror level whenever it devours an investigator, and it flips two blight cards when the terror level is at 3, 6, and 9.

Julia said:

Anyway, the picture of the Galaxy is great; where does it come from?

Long ago I went around looking for pictures of galaxies and constellations for Corinthian, I think. I kept a few that looked really cool, or sinister, or like faces :') I probably found my way to it through Google Images.

Avi_dreader said:

Well, actually I printed ALL your custom creations, Avi, so even the "Maskless2", as it's called on your Photobucket. But no problem, I'll gladly print everything again ::smile::

Julia said:

::Laughter:: sorry again, calling older files by the same name (back in the day when I wasn't excessively careful prior to posting this) would cause image display errors.

Avi_dreader said:

No problem at all, Avi. I'm more excited for the things to come rather than disappointed for something it's not your fault. Can't wait tomorrow for reading the first scenario. Hope to be able to play AH finally again this w-end (three week of abstinence at the moment, and this disappoints me a lot) ::

And... what about adding a new FAQ in the FAQ you're checking out: "what has happened to the 2nd league final resaults?" I mean, they are a little late with posting results...

Julia said:

I don't think that's really within the purview of the FAQ :')

I'd say don't expect 2nd league results, but who knows, someday you might be pleasantly surprised, FFG has a way of doing that (but don't count on it).

I need to point out, it's not really a "scenario" it's more like a preselected series of fan creation/game set combinations of heralds and Ancient Ones. (Although there will be some carry over of equipment between the games, and an overarching plot). It's more like... A series of challenges :') (and it will be challenging I hope— I tried to organize the investigator pools and Ancient Ones in a way that might be puzzling and fun). I'm hoping that the series of challenges will feel thematic at times, and challenging at others. I might slightly alter some of the game parameters for a few of the matches, but generally I don't intend to. Some of the matches will be fairly obvious. Some will be... Um... Surprising and horrifying :'D I did put four hours into thinking about Ancient One/Heralds match up after all— and then another hour thinking about thematic investigator clusters, and how to make sure that each set of Ancient Ones would be beatable (and then placing a few necessary investigators in a couple of the clusters), and then I spent a couple more hours thinking about plot— it was a busy day yesterday, but if some of you guys enjoy this, at least I'll feel like I did something worthwhile with my Spring Break— besides read.

Avi_dreader said:

I'm not expecting them at all. It seems to be quite evident FFG ha no interest in completing this task. But I still wonder why. I mean, the most complex part should be writing the scenarios (or what they should be called), playtesting them at least once, answering all the related FAQ, decide in what-on-earth should be changed Calvin every time some new problem rises up, and all of this has been done.

So what's the problem with publishing the results?? I personally feel they mocked me and I'm not that happy with this sensation. I'll gladly play some custom league like yours, but I personally won't ever waste my time in a league run by FFG.

But please, do not misunderstand me. Last league was fun, but the deadline was very... close? strict? don't know the english word, I mean we had not that much time to finish it before the deadline. I'd like to finish on time, to be there with all the others, and so I sacrificed a lot of the few free time I had for this. And then 8 MONTHS passed without none from FFG being able to write "sorry, we are having troubles with XYZ and...". For me, it's not accettable.

Julia said:

I think the guy running them was moved to a different department (I'm not sure, but I think it's the same guy I'm thinking of), but yes, you're right, obviously they should have notified players if they weren't intending to post results, or if they thought there would be long delays ::shrug::