Only because of Strange Eons is such a thing possible, but I was considering making an expansion board for when an investigator is lost in time and space. Rather than be delayed and lose a turn while chilling near the sky and outskirts, they go to a small expansion board. They could be hurled back to the Hyborian Age where they travel about Cimmeria, Stygia Aquilonia, etc. They get a random task or mission card and must go to several locations in order to return to the present (as well as get a payoff for the hard work). Monsters would spawn in different areas based on the movement symbol displayed on the drawn Mythos card, and there is a great opportunity for drawing magical weapons and spells while undergoing encounters there. The map would be the continent of Hyperboria, and the encounter cards would elaborate that several months or even years go by every turn, so basically the character comes back after a longer time than experienced by the other characters (where each turn is a day).

Other maps could be during the heyday of the roman empire, the european dark ages, the Arabian Islamic golden age, american civil war, or the distant future where deep ones have humanity on the verge of extinction, not to mention world war ii. Declaring the use of this option would count as using one of the expansion boards, so you deduct one from the total number of players when calculating monster limits, outskirts limit, and portal victory/loss conditions. Should a character be trapped in another era when the ancient one is awakened, they would still participate in the final battle as if they were in arkham (let's not forget that the ancient ones don't conform to our three dimensions and euclidian physics)

some ideas floating around in my head are allies that are easily gained in the past (or future) and are very powerful, but do not follow you back to the present (1926) when you complete the task card, though you may keep any other items or skills gained. Any monsters in your location when you succeed at the task come back with you to the present. Each board or particular areas of a board have their own environment permanently printed on the board itself (kinda like the sneak modifiers on the innsmouth board), so they ignore the Arkham environments but have their own thing (like in Stygia or golden age arabia you have sand storms that deal stamina damage in open areas just as ithaqua's icy wind). past eras would permit limited draws (example: search through the unique items deck, starting from the top card, and take the first magical weapon you come across), future eras would require me to make new items on my own that can only be drawn while in that future era. it would also require the injury and madness cards from the dunwich horror expansion, since there is no asylum or hospital to fall back on to cure your ailments. each board would have 3-4 open areas, and 6-9 locations.

What do you guys think. Any tips or suggestions before I put mouse pointer to text box?

I think that sounds pretty neat, but I don't play custom expansions.

Ambitious. I would make the map a little more abstract than just being Hyperboria, afterall you are Lost in Time and Space it seems silly that you would end up in the same or similar place each time. You may also want to consider factors of how this would affect the overall game, if investigators are taken out of the fray for more time being lost than they currently are it could cause some serious balance issues.

Avi_dreader said:

Why bother saying that?

Anyway, I agree with Veet that it should probably be more abstract, and IMO the simpler the better... basically just to have one encounter or one experience during that lost turn. I like the idea in general, though, because losing a turn in a game is pretty much always a sucky thing, and it's one negative aspect about AH that happens with some frequency. To give the player whose turn is lost something to do during that time would be a good thing. Your idea is much more ambitious and expansive, and if you want to pursue that, by all means, go for it, but I'm thinking more of a simple LITAS encounter deck. During your turn while LITAS, you draw a LITAS encounter and deal with it.

One thing that could sort of be the "prize" is what the normal exit rule is... that you get to move to any location you want when you return. But perhaps, depending on your encounter, that could be different. So if you are successful, then you can return to any location you want, but if not, then you are sent to a street location, or to the Graveyard or the Silver Twilight Lodge, or wherever... but something that might not be so ideal of a place to end up.

Hmm, I may have to play with that deck idea...

Hello.

Impressive idea you have thought up for an expansion.

Perhaps, you have read this before, or not, but regardless I'll mention it again - a Dream Land Expansion with Lost in Time and Space.

Over all the Gate cards are rather two turn killers that don't offer a lot of choice or fun, so how about making a really wild surreal Dream Land board, that would take into account all the realms, and being lost among realms? Imagine the items, allies, skills, spells, tomes, artifacts and oddities that could be found among all the realms.

Hopefully, you might develop an idea that would introduce your new map boards in a way that interact with Arkham in some diabolical manner.

If you just want to do something specifically for being Lost in Time and Space, a deck seems like the simplest solution.

Grudunza said:

Why not? It's true.

Veet said:

you make an interesting point, as have others in this post, but here's the deal. the balance issues of a player being taken out for longer than normal is covered by the standard expansion board rule of adjusting numerical factors such as monster limits at the outset of the game. whenever you play with a legit expansion board you're trading in the expediency of sealing portals for more options. true, a deck in of itself would be enough for some people, just to have something happen and not lose a turn, but i like the idea of moving around a map. it doesn't take a whole lot more effort than making the deck itself, and helps create more of a feeling of being lost in time and space.

as for the point about being truly lost, i agree, and rather than have multiple lost in time and space boards with multiple physical areas, i'll make one board that has multiple chronological areas. So for example on a single expansion board you have Hyperboria as a street location, with Stygia, Aquilonia and Cimmeria as the locations, Islamic Golden Age with Egypt, Arabia, and Persia as locations, and Civil War America with The North, The South, and Kentucky as locations.

the real benefit of the board depends on the quality of encounter cards i create. every encounter should at least have a chance at drawing an item, skill, or whatever, as well as clue tokens. It may require a skill test or a monster fight, or it may just be given it to you. the idea is that you come back to the board with some great equipment. yes, you lost a few more turns, but it was better than losing turns buying stuff from the stores.

personally, i hate losing turns buying stuff, and am constantly tempted to risk an encounter just because they're more fun. i like the idea of a board that grants you (a chance at) lots of items, and while you are losing turns in doing so you're still being active. Personally, i'd be thrilled if fantasy flight games just made a board like this, or a deck for use with the lost in time and space square. in the meantime, i'm giving this a shot.

please, feel free to give any more advice. (when i make this board and deck, i'll post a link to it here for more critiques.)

Okay, here's a rough draft of the board. the rules are fairly straight forward. If you would become lost in space and time, draw a card from the Lost in Space and Time deck. It will either be a task or a mission with a starting location. Move your investigator on the starting location (you are not delayed). If having your stamina or sanity reduced to 0 or less is what caused you to become lost in space and time, you have that trait brought back up to 1. The task/mission functions exactly like standard tasks/missions, you must be present at the location during the upkeep, the locations must be visited in their listed order. When the task/mission is fulfilled, you get the payoff AND you may move to any location or street area in Arkham.

and here's an example task card and an ally card

and an example encounter card

I'm seeing nothing but "Image hosted by Tripod". Better check the image settings on the post.

yeah, it worked in preview, but not when i published it, so i had to quickly create a yahoo group to store it in. it should work now, sorry about that

Virgil Octavius said:

Nope. Broken links now...

I'm not even seeing broken links just blank spots. Tripod and Yahoo are horrible about sharing try to get a photobucket account.

okay, using photobucket, can you see the images now? (i've never shared photos in a message board before)

I do not think having Persia in Islamic Golden Age is such a good idea. I know that now Iran is nowadays an islamic republic but Persia was not :-). Other than that, it looks beautiful. :-)

Persia was conquered in the seventh century. I mean, yeah, Egypt was majority Christian until around 12th or 13th century, but it's been considered a part of the islamic world since much longer than that because it was ruled and culturally influenced by Islam.

You have done an amazing job of packing locations onto that board. Seeing that made the hours of work that I spent adding curves to the deck editor worthwhile.

I wonder if you would be so kind as to send me a message with your email address using the contact form on the Strange Eons site . I'd like to discuss something with you and I don't want either of us to have to post our email addresses for the spam bots to find.

Cheers,
Chris

Impressive!

Do you have any plans for the orient, and the countless worlds and dimensions of the multiverse?

Virgil Octavius said:

All true. I was just pointing it out because some people could be picky about persian being not muslims. I thought it may be a constructive comment. But it is not of first importance (at least for me). Congratulations for the work anyway.

sorry if i sounded curt in my post about persia and everything, I am one of those people that depends upon vocal inflection,i didn't take it personally or anything, and i hope you didn't either.

as for the far east, i thought about it only after i saw the board was full. i tried moving things around but couldn't squeeze it in anywhere. i mean, the I Ching has been a handy tool in several Call of Cthulhu RPG campaigns and i'd hate to neglect it completely. i suppose that part of the reason why i didn't put in the three kingdoms or something was because i couldn't think of any cthulhu stories that took place in china, and I don't know much about china's history past world war ii. I know of the opium wars, and that china lost against england and had to import opium from afghanistan, but that's about it.

i should get rid of cimmeria and replace it with kitai. conan made his name in aquilonia anyway, so it would make more sense to recruit him there. now that i think about it, having cimmeria as a location on the board would be as cheesy as putting tattooine in 5 of the 6 star wars movies. it's supposed to be the middle of no where, yet the main characters spend more time there than any other single location. but i digress.

part of me wants to do three kingdoms china, but it would have to be coupled with rome, greece, and ancient egypt, and in trying to imitate the actual game boards i would violate the unspoken three locations to an area rule. since i need the other three, i guess i'm stuck without three kingdoms china.... though if i had to pick one to ditch, i suppose it would be ancient greece.

now i also feel bad for neglecting japan. meiji japan could have a lot of possibilities. i can't get rid of france... i could get rid of zothique... but then you lose the mobius strip fun of starting back at the beginning again (for those who don't know, zothique is a distant future where the modern world was destroyed and humanity rebuilt itself up to the middle ages, except that they worship ancient ones out in the open, basically hyboria all over again.)

this is why my original idea was multiple boards for different time periods, there's too much i want to include and i feel like i'm missing something. as i built the board a lot of locations originally included were deleted to make room for others (Brittania, Germania, Judea, and Moscovy to name but a few, plus my personal favorite, zombieland [as a potential future]).

what do you guys think?

Don't lose Zothique. I was rather tickled to see that location.

You might include a few more future locations. The three you have are quite lovely, but the future has endless possiblities.

The three location rule isn't a dicate from the Holy of Holies. The main board has only two location where the Twilight Lodge is located, with a special second location as you know.

It would be shame to ignore India, China and Japan. Maybe, a secondary board at some future date. Most of us occidentals know little to noting about oriental history.

Okay, so here is the final version of the board. I don't know how i did it, but i managed to sneak in an extra location. I may spend some time tweaking it, but that'll just be spit polish (making the lines look neater, changing around the images, and all that anal retentive type stuff). I don't like the idea of making another board to do other areas. I mean, no single board of this size and design could hold all of human history, but I believe I covered enough that I can leave it as is and be relatively satisfied (for the record, if i could find the room, imperial Japan would find it's way onto the board in the industrial revolution group). I very much think that the three potential futures are enough to cover immediate consequences of the game. You have the world in ruins with The Ancient One Awakened, a deadly threat on the horizon in the form of Nazi Germany, and a distant future where humanity had to begin anew (the futility in the grand scheme of things is always a nice perspective when it comes to Cthulhu).

Now onto the cards. While I have a few ideas, including the most of the cast of Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem as ally cards (below is what i have so far) I would welcome any suggestions or thoughts people might have on encounters and allies. I don't intend to make any items outside of the mission/task cards.

to keep in mind, the encounter cards will have monsters appear frequently, with an additional reward if the creature is defeated. a few will be specific, ( a mummy in stygia, ancient egypt or arabia, for example) but most will probably be generic draws.

i realize that there is a problem with a few creatures that make you lost in time and space, and they need specific redress.

Yithian - if you lose your combat check you lose all tokens on your mission/task card and are returned to the starting location

Dimensional Shambler - if you lose your combat check you are devoured

Night Gaunt - if you lose your combat check you are taken to your choice of either the Dreamlands or Unknown Kadath, have an encounter there, and are returned.

Initial batch of Hyborian Age cards.

Someone clearly liked Eternal Darkness :')

I had a lot of problems with the game itself, but I really enjoyed the story. Plus, it's easy enough to find images and call it a day.

Classical Era cards, first draft. Suggestions always welcome

Really nice and thought out work. I will keep following this thread to see what you do. Very original. I only have base game but am getting all expansions within the month. I have followed some of the fan creations and really like the idea and uniqueness of them.