Nice! Well, it's about time they put out a 'real' Silas investigator (i.e. not an alternate book version) - might be too early for an AH 3.0 expansion and I hope Final Hour is a one and done.

If it *is* Innsmouth, maybe...

Survivor: Silas

Seeker: Amanda

Mystic: Gloria (not sure who else)

Guardian: Vincent

Rogue: Bob Jenkins (maybe he's an extra Guardian?)

?

I think we’ll for sure get Kate. The newest pack for dark side of the moon features her on (I think) 2 separate seeker cards.

If we work on the assumption that the T-shirt art might be indicative of the next cycle (since if we don't make that assumption, we don't really have anything to talk about), it does seem to indicate an Innsmouth-y vibe - the background clearly shows a lighthouse with a town behind it on the left, and a building on the cliff to the right.

However, that clifftop building reminds me more of The Strange High House in the Mist, and therefore the picture might be of Kingsport and not Innsmouth. While there is a vague connection between the two in parts of Cthulhu Mythos setting fiction (primarily, that fishermen from Kingsport tried to fish in waters claimed by Innsmouth and got run off by Innsmouthers with the help of Deep Ones), so I guess the story might be that the story starts in Kingsport before leading to Innsmouth, it does mean that the picture might not be of Innsmouth itself.

In a way, I hope so. The idea of going back to Innsmouth seems almost stale and hackneyed by this point, since it's been so thoroughly covered in various games. Don't get me wrong, I love me some Innsmouth, having run a long RPG campaign set there based on the hard-to-find Escape from Innsmouth sourcebook, but since the LCG designers have consistently made very interesting story and setting choices after Dunwich, there's a lot of potential for opening up a story with Cthulhu as the Ancient One to be a far more unique experience. I'm reminded of the Elder Sign: Omens scenario where you end up in a ship exploring islands and phenomena in the Pacific Ocean trying to find R'lyeh - as well as the Dream-Chaser cycle of the Lord of the Rings LCG, which features unique boat-based mechanics in several scenarios and is probably the best cycle they've ever published for that game. There's potential for something really awesome, where you're exploring goings-on in French Polynesia and strange weather patterns in the middle of the ocean, fighting off boarding actions from cultists and ultimately end up desperately invading R'lyeh, like the story Call of Cthulhu or the ending of the Shadows of Yog-Sothoth RPG campaign. Or any number of other possibilities.

Alternatively, it might be set in both Kingsport and Innsmouth before branching out - like how Carcosa spends several scenarios in Lovecraft Country before taking us to France.

However, if we do end up in Innsmouth, that could still be very cool. If we end up with a Cthulhu campaign that doesn't take place solely in Innsmouth, I might someday get around to my dream project of designing my own campaign for Innsmouth based on the escape and culminating in the raid.

Back when Circle Undone was announced, I wrote up a long post about the history of the Silver Twilight Lodge and posted it here and on Reddit. I wonder: if we do get a Cthulhu campaign, would anyone be interested in a History of Cthulhu and Innsmouth (at least in terms of tabletop gaming)?

8 minutes ago, Soakman said:

I think we’ll for sure get Kate. The newest pack for dark side of the moon features her on (I think) 2 separate seeker cards.

I thought one was Kate but Extensive Research looks like Minh. Blue top, white collar, half-moon glasses.

13 minutes ago, Allonym said:

Back when Circle Undone was announced, I wrote up a long post about the history of the Silver Twilight Lodge and posted it here and on Reddit. I wonder: if we do get a Cthulhu campaign, would anyone be interested in a History of Cthulhu and Innsmouth (at least in terms of tabletop gaming)?

Of course! And please include an examination of the Innsmouth stealth chase trope in games. At least, it feels like a trope to me, having first seen it in the Dark Corners of Earth video game and most recently as a MoM scenario.

28 minutes ago, CSerpent said:

I thought one was Kate but Extensive Research looks like Minh. Blue top, white collar, half-moon glasses.

Fair, I just got my pack today and only glanced. But we also have circumstantial evidence in the existence of Kate Winthpup for Barkham Horror.

I do think Kate's coming in the next set. She strikes me as pretty popular. She seems like some combo of Seeker and Guardian, but we already have two of those...

1 hour ago, CSerpent said:

I do think Kate's coming in the next set. She strikes me as pretty popular. She seems like some combo of Seeker and Guardian, but we already have two of those...

I want more science traited cards so she can be a seeker with science trait cards and an errata to give lightning gun the science trait. I also want an actual scientist to want to include the scientific theory composure.

Seekers are one of the few factions with enough cheap allies to use as buffers to make the composure worth it. But nobody is gonna take a composure over higher education.... Unleeeessss they can actually use the combat pump.

4 hours ago, CSerpent said:

Worth mentioning, it's from this line of Hot Topic shirts.

...How much overlap is there between Hot Topic and FFG's target markets?

Another clue pointing to an Innsmouth Cycle could be Tony’s Weakness and of it is, that makes Silas so obvious that maybe this could be a 6 investigator cycle.
I keep hoping for Lily. Taking on Deep Ones Hand to Fin, could be amazing!

1 hour ago, rsdockery said:

...How much overlap is there between Hot Topic and FFG's target markets?

I mean...I do have a very monochromatic wardrobe. If I were US-based, I would be buying more than one of those T-shirts right now. I like to imagine that I have better taste than Hot Topic but that might be wishful thinking...

19 hours ago, Allonym said:

Back when Circle Undone was announced, I wrote up a long post about the history of the Silver Twilight Lodge and posted it here and on Reddit. I wonder: if we do get a Cthulhu campaign, would anyone be interested in a History of Cthulhu and Innsmouth (at least in terms of tabletop gaming)?

YES

1 hour ago, zooeyglass said:

YES

I would absolutely give it a read. I don’t really know much tabletop history and even my Lovecraft knowledge is murky most times. Everything kinda bleeds together for me.

What is the normal time between the announcement of the last Mythos pack of one cycle and the announcement of the next cycle?

51 minutes ago, Mimi61 said:

What is the normal time between the announcement of the last Mythos pack of one cycle and the announcement of the next cycle?

Well, Before the Black Throne was announced 25th March, Return to Path to Carcosa was announced 29th April, then Dream Eaters was announced 3rd June.

Shattered Aeons was announced 27th July, Return to the Dunwich Legacy was 5th September, and The Circle Undone was 12th October.

So just over a month from the final Mythos pack to the Return to.. box, and then just over a month from there to the next cycle announcement.

So I'd expect to see an announcement for Return to the Forgotten Age at the end of January or early February, and then the Innsmouth Cycle the Mountains of Madness cycle whatever the next cycle might be will be announced early in March.

4 hours ago, Allonym said:

So I'd expect to see an announcement for Return to the Forgotten Age at the end of January or early February, and then the Innsmouth Cycle the Mountains of Madness cycle whatever the next cycle might be will be announced early in March.

I figured Return to Forgotten Age would be next, and fully expect Innsmouth after that, but Mountains of Madness wouldn’t make me sad!
Even if it is Innsmouth, there is no way they would spend an inordinate amount of time on the escape/raid.
That focus would be so fun to play campaign style. I don’t think it’s ever been explored from all of the different perspectives involved.
And History of Cuthulu/ Innsmouth sounds interesting too. I’d be very interested to see how a table top version would play.

13 hours ago, Mimi61 said:

I figured Return to Forgotten Age would be next, and fully expect Innsmouth after that, but Mountains of Madness wouldn’t make me sad!
Even if it is Innsmouth, there is no way they would spend an inordinate amount of time on the escape/raid.
That focus would be so fun to play campaign style. I don’t think it’s ever been explored from all of the different perspectives involved.
And History of Cuthulu/ Innsmouth sounds interesting too. I’d be very interested to see how a table top version would play.

I agree that it would likely not directly involve the events of The Shadow Over Innsmouth, would either be pre-raid as a jumping-off point, or something else entirely.

The raid on Innsmouth is described in great detail in the out-of-print Call of Cthulhu RPG sourcebook Escape From Innsmouth, and is a campaign I've run as a GM (it's fantastic, though needs some tweaking). That RPG campaign in turn forms the inspiration for the video game Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, though the events are modified to suit a single-player narrative.

In the RPG campaign, the player party is divided between up to 6 objectives, which take place concurrently. Each of the objectives has just one player character in it, but each comes with a variety of secondary characters that the other players can take control of while their own character isn't the focus of the story. It is truly an amazing piece of design.

You could maybe do something similar with the LCG, but it would be cumbersome. Create 4 objectives, each of which is its own scenario(s), with investigators similar to the Prologue investigators in TCU for the other players to take over. The alternatives would be to run multiple groups, like Dream Eaters, create a more linear consecutive narrative like the video game, or tweak the narrative further with some abstract mechanics. I have a lot of different ideas for how it could be portrayed but I worry that I'll end up just writing paragraph after paragraph reminiscing about old RPG stories...

Between Ikiaq, all the ice cards and Ikiaq again, it's going to be in the Arctic. Canada, Alaska or Greenland.

2 hours ago, Allonym said:

You could maybe do something similar with the LCG, but it would be cumbersome. Create 4 objectives, each of which is its own scenario(s), with investigators similar to the Prologue investigators in TCU for the other players to take over. The alternatives would be to run multiple groups, like Dream Eaters, create a more linear consecutive narrative like the video game, or tweak the narrative further with some abstract mechanics. I have a lot of different ideas for how it could be portrayed but I worry that I'll end up just writing paragraph after paragraph reminiscing about old RPG stories...

That sounds pretty amazing! We’ve played RPG’s for ages, but that one is not familiar to me. That’s one of my favorite pieces of Lovecraft’s writing though, because there is so much going on at once, but the tension stays constant.

It does sound like it would be challenging in regards to figuring out how to bring the different objectives to fruition. But I’m not sure that it would necessarily need to feel cumbersome. Dream Eaters feels that way to me right now, because I have to wait so long between my two groups to play them again, but when it’s all released, it may feel very different to play. When we play DE again, we plan to play each group separately up to their last scenario and then play those back to back.

The cool thing about dividing out objectives, is that the re-play has so much flexibility. It’s like shuffling chapters in a book which is sharing the perspectives of different people during the same time period. Everyone’s story is told, but not always in the same order, if that makes any sense.

My opinion probably means nothing, so feel free to disregard it, but of your two ideas; Prologue Type investigator or running multiple groups, I kind of like the latter. Of course, I don’t know your vision, but the Prologue investigators in TCU while serving a function, felt very peripheral. I think the reason I was never enamored of LTOR the card game, was that the mechanic didn’t make me feel connected to my heroes, which felt more like more studly NPC’s, whereas in AH I feel very connected to my investigators. I have a level of power and flexibility over how they will function and that changes the whole play experience, at least for me. So I’m on the side of Investigators to invest in.
Fear not, you will likely write paragraph after paragraph of exciting, stressful and eventually euphoric gameplay!
This idea sounds very intriguing to me.

1 hour ago, Mimi61 said:

My opinion probably means nothing, so feel free to disregard it, but of your two ideas; Prologue Type investigator or running multiple groups, I kind of like the latter. Of course, I don’t know your vision, but the Prologue investigators in TCU while serving a function, felt very peripheral. I think the reason we weren’t enamored of LTOR the card game, was that the mechanic didn’t make us feel connected to our heroes, whereas in AH we feel very connected to our investigators and that changes the play dynamic, at least for me.
I think it sounds like a very intriguing idea!!

Well, the benefit of prologue-type investigators (like the side-characters in the RPG campaign) is that they're expendable - make it so that they're significantly less important than the actual investigator and add enough of the right kind of threats that players would consider sacrificing their side-investigators for the mission.

Additionally, since I would want the raid to be the culmination of an investigation of Innsmouth (i.e. there would be a number of scenarios before it starts), it might be harder to run multiple groups.

My idea for multiple groups would be something like, one group of investigators looks into Innsmouth and ends up kidnapped ready for sacrifice, and has to break out of captivity during the raid and ends up joining the Government forces, while a second group investigate on behalf of the government and join the raid in an official capacity, ultimately participating in different parts of the raid. I would be interested in some truly out-there mechanics like swapping investigators from one group to the other, but it's currently all a pipe-dream...

20 minutes ago, Allonym said:

Well, the benefit of prologue-type investigators (like the side-characters in the RPG campaign) is that they're expendable - make it so that they're significantly less important than the actual investigator and add enough of the right kind of threats that players would consider sacrificing their side-investigators for the mission.

That makes absolute sense.

I love the idea of having such diverse groups dovetail in the raid and swapping investigators would never play out the same way twice! You have a fertile imagination, my friend.

I like the idea of a campaign featuring Inuit but much prefer Antarctica as a setting due to its isolation and mystery but it is a bit bleak. Maybe we could start the campaign with an Ithaqua plot in Canada/Alaska which eventually leads us to Antarctica.

On 1/16/2020 at 11:38 AM, Antimarkovnikov said:

We might be going to Innsmoth for the next cycle... Or this might be an expansion for Third Edition or Final Hour.

VINDICATION! Both of my guesses were correct.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2020/3/10/under-dark-waves/

Oh boy, with Innsmouth Conspiracy and Under Dark Waves, things are about to get real fishy.

22 minutes ago, Soakman said:

Oh boy, with Innsmouth Conspiracy and Under Dark Waves, things are about to get real fishy.

So much crossover art! I wonder if The fishy guy with the Moustache is Dragon and the one with the frill is Hydra?

Edit: NOPE! Moustache is Hydra according to the live stream!