Thought I'd share my house rules here. Maybe some of you would want to adopt some/all of them.

(1) At the start of the game, before the first mythos card is drawn, every investigator has an encounter at his starting location. (Reason: During the game there is little time to have encounters at stable locations and some locations that never see encounters [velma's diner, river docks etc.] will finally have some action.)

(2) In the first area of an Other World, the investigator keeps drawing until he draws a card that matches his other world. In the second area he plays as normal. (reason is obvious: without this or a similar house rule all other worlds become another dimension.)

(3) Not sure if I'm gonna do this yet- Whenever a monster enters a vortex both the horror and deep one tracks raise by 1, regardless the town of the vortex (this greatly reduces dilution)

(4) After an investigator activates the special ability of a location, he has an encounter at that location. (reasoning is similar to 1's reasoning.)

You may share your own house rules as well.

Also regarding 4: Do you have any idea of to how to make Usula's (the explorer) ability unique? Because the way I play everyone has her ability, so what can I do? any ideas?

kroen said:

Personally I wouldn't do number 1 or number 2 since I don't really like house rules (if I really want a house rule, I make it into a Herald). That being said, they sound like fun good ideas (except from a rules mechanics point of view), and would probably be fun to put on a Guardian. Rule number three sounds like a bad idea. You don't want The Dunwich Horror awakening because a gate opened at Y'ha Nethlei or Devil's Reef. Unless you make it into a Herald.

Give Ursula an extra encounter per encounter phase (not a two card draw, but actually give her an extra encounter) at all locations. That'd be a quick fix. She'd still be somewhat balanced even though she'd be able to exploit a few locations like Darrell. To get around that, you could only have her take extra encounters at locations with special text (that'd get her away from the Alchemical Process, the Newspaper, and Lighthouse).

Good solution, tnx. I will be using it.

Also, if I may ask, if you're not using any house rules, how can you enjoy other worlds? As far as I know, the chance of drawing a matching other world encounter (with all exapansions other than Lurker) is roughly 17% so you basically render all other worlds Another Dimension which is pretty boring if you ask me.

17% is better than 0%.

what do u mean 0% ?

my house rule is 100% 1st area 17% 2nd area

kroen said:

I haven't done the calculations, but I'm pretty sure that's wrong since the Other World encounters are focused on the seven main dimensions (even with the inclusion of expansions). It's true you're somewhat unlikely to get a dimension specific encounter for Kingsport and Dunwich other worlds, but I can live with that— they're still not like Another dimension since they are color specific, and there's still a decent chance that you'll get something specifically for that world which is always a pleasant surprise). I look at gate specific encounters as (sometimes) pleasant surprises, and other encounters as normal.

I don't go to Other Worlds for exciting new encounters, I go to them armed to the teeth, hoping to get out as fast as possible and seal my gates. Gate specific encounters pop up anyways.

My post was unclear. I meant that he and I don't house-rule the OW encounters because it's just easier to do it the official way. Getting an OW-specific encounter rarely is all right.

Just a thought regarding encounters at stable locations... I often have encounters there. Not in the first part of the game for obvious reasons, but then when I have to move investigators with low speed through the whole board and I split over two rounds of movement the distance they have to cover, I prefer sending them in a stable location for an ancounter and then move again in the next round, rather than abandoning them in the streets to feed flyiers or sending them to unstable locations with no clues, just to add a doomer as a consequence of "a gate and a monster appears". Probably a couple of locations aren't logistically in the best position (the South Church, or the Bank), but nevertheless it happened to have encounters even there.

There have been a bunch of threads with this topic but I don't mind repeating myself. I think my group is down to 2 house rules that came from Richard Launius, who was one of the designers.

1) A gate does not override a location, it exists inside the location which means that a) investigators can co-exist with a gate and have an encounter there while waiting for a friend to come out and b) every investigator is not automatically sucked through. This makes the game slightly easier which brings me to our second rule for balance.

2) All of the gates come into play face down. I understand why people don't like this one because it takes away a strategic tool of the invetigators but thematically it feels right and it is very exciting to go into an unknown gate and either breathe a sigh of relief or groan of exasperation depending on where it leads.

I actually really like 2, but sadly I will never use it because the ability to see gates IS a very strategic tool. Not because of I would rather go into easy OW than tough ones; I will go into any OW, starting with the ones at high frequency locations. It's a very stategic tool because of the gate symbol. That help tremendously in removing tough monsters no one wants to deal with.

Also, if you buy Lurker in the Threshold, you will not be able to use that house rule because some gates move and you need to see them to know which is which...

I used to play with face-down gates, but when Dunwich came around with things like "For the Greater Good" and King in Yellow had "Another Time, Another Place," I decided to go back to the official version.

House Rules: YMMV.

You can move to or from the Outskirts for one movement Point from the Woods, Blasted Heath, Falcon Point or The Causeway. (Thinking about changing this make the Outskirts - Hard Going i.e. must use up all remaining movement when you go there)

Turn the GOO face down. It wakes up at 3 Doom. Up until then, it has no effect on play, but you don't know who you are facing either.

I don't use any house-rules (except the suggested fix for Sister Mary) but I like the OPs first two rules. I don't think they'd negatively (or positively) affect game balance. Maybe I'll give them a try.

Jake yet again said:

What do you do with GOO powers that would've kicked in earlier if the GOO had been known, apply them retroactively? Say you get a weird draw of monsters and kill 5 Cultists before doom 3. Flip GOO, it's Yig or Rhan-Tegoth. Add 5 doomers for Yig, wake up Rhan-Tegoth since he is at 13 doomers?

Dam, how are you getting 13 doom tokens for Rhan? He only gains one every time a Cultist is drawn, not two!

Additionally, Shudde M'ell and Rhan-Tegoth are the kinds of AOs that caused me to stop using the "hidden AO" variant. Besides, three doom tokens is a drop in the bucket anyway.

Dam said:

Ignore the penalty, but apply for any future Cultists you run up against. (Those aren't the cultists you're looking for)

Tibs said:

I was already counting his doomers from when he wakes up, then he gets 2 per Cultist . But Rhan-Tegoth is evil.

With regard to the R-T being the GOO with the lowest number of appearances in a game, is that down to people not wanting to play him or just not drawing him when playing random?

Uh, but that's not what you said:

Dam said:

If you 'retroactively' applied 5 Cultists to Rhan after revealing him, he'd be at 8 doom tokens and would not wake. In any case, not retroactively applying Cultists to Rhan after flipping him might actually make him more fair.

jhaelen said:

Do you not have Innsmouth? This rule was suggested prior to the release of her personal story, I think it'd be inappropriate to continue using it if you have Innsmouth (unless of course you really want to— but her PS fixes her balance problems).

Avi_dreader said:

jhaelen said:

Okay, sounds fair :') I was kindof surprised you wouldn't have Innsmouth (and that you'd keep playing Mary like that if you had Innsmouth), but now it makes sense.

Ia!

This is how I play:

- I have all the expansions mixed together, all investigators, monsters and AOs and Heralds/Guardians with their special cards/monsters

- I use only main board,

- Mythos, Gate, AEncounter cards from Base game and BgotW

- All common items, no Tasks

- One of each Unique item, no Exibith items, no Missions

- One of each spell

- All skills

- 11 Base game allies

- Only Deputy, SilverTL and One of Thousand memberships, Retainers, Blessings/Curses and magical effect special cards

- Including Corruption, Cult encounters and Injury and Madness cards

- I use water counters to make Unvisited Isle, River Docks, Merchant D. Streets and Rivertown St. aquatic

kroen said:

Your math is a little off, I think. With just the base game the chance of drawing a specific other world encounter is 50%. BGotW, KiY, and DP contain the same ratio of other world encounters, except the dual-color DP encounters, which are only going to bring that percentage down slightly.

Dunwich and Kingsport have worse odds for the base game Other Worlds, since they're weighted to the expansion Other Worlds, and Innsmouth uses the same odds, since it's encounters are for one Other World only: 25%.

So I'm going to use R'lyeh as an example, with all expansions included (not the way I like to play, but to each their own) and leaving out the dual colored DP cards for simplicity.

There are 100 red and yellow other world cards; 24 from the base game, 12 each from each of the small boxes, 16 each from DH and KH, and 8 from IH.

Out of those 100, 40 have an encounter in R'lyeh; 12 from the base game, 6 each from the small boxes, 4 each from DH and KH, and just 2 from IH.

40% chance, again, not including the DP dual colored cards. (Too lazy to do the math for that, and I'm pretty sure someone already did, somewhere.)

The odds are the same for all the base game Other Worlds, except Another Dimension, obviously.

Now for the Other Worlds from DH and KH this house rule looks a lot more attractive, and I may start using it, but just for them. The chance for those Other Worlds is only 16 out of 100, diluted by all those expansions.

Anyone want to check my math, please?

Most of my own house-rules attempts have been aimed at monsters.

I don't actually like the outskirts/terror track mechanic very much- the vortex idea from the expansions generally works better. My problem with it is the way it tends to keep the same monsters on the board throughout much of the game.

It's a bigger problem with fewer players (we usually play with only two investigators), because there's a lot less incentive to actually kill monsters and the outskirts limit is much bigger so the Terror track doesn't get totally out of control if you do. Immobile monsters are particularly annoying: a ghost or dark young, once on the board, tends to stay there for the whole game. It's in the investigator's clear interests to leave it there, as it reduces the number of monsters roaming the board. Only if there's a very pressing need to seal the gate it happens to be on top of is there any reason to try to get rid of it. By the end of the game, there are often 3 or more immobile monsters on the board and practically nothing roaming the streets (on the main board obviously).

We play that Spawn and Mask monster don't count towards the monster limit in any way- I can't remember if this is an official rule or not. I've also tried the following rules (not all at once, and I haven't firmly decided on any of them):

* Stalkers move towards the closest hero even if they're further than once space away.

* Whenever an immobile monster "moves", it goes to the outskirts on a roll of 1 or 2 on one die.

* When monsters try to enter the board, but the monster limit is reached, the *oldest* monsters on the board are moved to the outskirts, with the new monsters entering as normal in their place. This works quite well, but requires you to keep track of when monsters entered the board. Not too bad with 1-2 investigators, though.

We have a house rule for Bast as the Guardian...

Because of the dilution problem from expansions, the odds of Getting the "Beloved of Bast" cards is horrible. (Drawing the story continues almost never happens)

We play that if you Have a bast token AND Foolishness then you can claim the beloved of bast. I think we've only used the ability once in 70+ games... But investigators can actively try to go get Foolishness from Ma's... (There is a chance that Foolishness won't be available) If you want to spend the 2$ and 2 gates to try and get what is essentially a "Healing Stone" it doesn't seem over powered