A few friends do not like the idea of full cooperative game.

I was wondering if someone has developed, read or thought about a variant that includes an investigator that actually helps the Old Ones, messing with others investigators without them knowing this.

I think this will make the game more difficult, since they not only they will have to deal with the monsters and gates, but also with the traitor.

any ideas?

thanks

It's pretty hard to do so. There really isn't any secret information in the game so even if you secretly chose swomeone to be the traitor there's not much that person can do short of not closing a gate at a very important time, not fighting the AO during the final battle and stockpiling the teams items and weapons. Course if you do any of these things it becomes instantly apparant who the traitor is and unfortunatly makes the game kinda messy. You might get 1 big chance to mess with an investigator by not helping them when you said you would but that's not nearly big enough to make a huge differnece in the grand scheme of things. On the other hand if you choose not to seal a gate in hopes that the AO will awake (ie at the gate limit and promised to close but then don't) this is a much too big an impact on the game which will prolly result in groups sending 2 peole throgh the gate as a precaution.

::Shrug:: just off the top of my head (no playtesting having been done), perhaps do a modified game where one investigator has something similar to join the winning team, except instead of 4 ally sacrifices, they only need to make 2 or 3, whereas the victory conditions are somewhat relaxed with only 4 or 5 seals required. Playtest it a bit, I think it could work with a bit of tweaking. If you want a really easy way of making a traitor variant... Or you could be creative and try and come up with something more elaborate and interesting. Right now my feet are freezing (and my hands too), so I'm going to do something else :') bye.

If your playing KH Shop for Massa Di Requiem Per Shuggay to awaken the AO.

But isn't the card "join the winning team" already a treason? I mean, I don't understand why this card should be considered part of a cooperative game. If an investigator has it, and wants to complete this mission, why others have to help him?

While I can't think of a "secret" way of making a single traitor, how's this for a quick mock-up of a competitive AH variant. I've kept it completely free of custom cards, it just uses the standard game cards, and where noted takes into account things like Injury cards from DH etc. This is my first write-up of it, I am making it up on the spot, so anything I miss/overlook/screw up, please forgive for now. If this sounds even half appealing to anyone I will think some more on it and write up a more fanciful version. Any play-testing done or comments/critisicm would be welcome too.

The game runs as per the usual rules except in the following circumstances:

Set-up

Divide the players (or investigators if playing more than one per player) by 2. Half (round up) are Heroic investigators, the other half are Cultist investigators.

Calculate the monster limit and other such things as if the number of players were equal to the number of Heroic investigators.

Draw and resolve two Mythos cards for gate placement, but ignore the special rules listed under the Mythos Phase below.

Investigators

If an opponent uses an item or spell against an investigator that has an effect on monsters above and beyond combat bonuses, the target investigator may make a Will or Luck check to avoid the effect with a negative modifier equal to the opponent's Lore.

If an investigator is hit by an effect that states it would return a monster to the cup, the investigator is instead returned to their home location (or Lost in Time and Space if in an Other World) and is delayed.

Elder Sign trophies can be spent instead of gate trophies.

Movement Phase

Heroic investigators treat all monsters normally. Cultist investigators may ignore monsters during the movement phase as if they were not on the board, but must still face monsters normally as a result of an Arkham or Other World encounter.

Cultist investigators may choose to attack monsters during the movement phase, but they must engage all monsters at their location and all such monsters are considered to have Ambush, Overwhelming 1 (or +1 to their current Overwhelming ability) and an additional -1 combat modifier.

Opposing investigators treat each other as monsters in terms of needing to be fought or evaded during movement.

Combat

To evade/attack an opposing investigator who is in the same location as you, both must roll an evade check. Whoever scores the most successes may choose to attack or evade. If a tie occurs, the investigator with the highest Sneak wins. If you choose to evade, combat is over and you can still move this phase if you have movement points remaining (if you evade an opposing investigator who finishes his movement in your location earlier in the phase, you do not have to evade them again if your movement is later in the phase).

If you choose to attack, resolve an attack as normal, with the opposing investigator's Sneak as a negative combat modifier. Damage is dealt as normal; the number of successes you roll is the damage you deal. If the opposing investigator is still conscious, they may then counterattack in the same manner.

If both investigators are still conscious after one attack each, roll another opposed evade check, and repeat the combat, except that investigators who evade on any round other than the first cannot move after a succesful evade check; they merely end the combat and do not have to engage that opponent in any way during the current movement phase.

If an investigator knocks an opponent unconscious they may select a single gate or monster trophy owned by the opposing investigator and either take it for themselves or return it to the cup/gate marker pile. If there are no trophies to return, the triumphant investigator may instead discard one item of their choice from the defeated opponent before that investigator selects items to discard or draws an Injury card.

Encounter Phase

If an encounter names an ally who is currently held by an opposing investigator, you cannot choose to skip the encounter if the option is there, and you automatically fail any skill checks listed.

If a location has an Elder Sign, a Cultist investigator may attempt to remove it by forcing a gate burst from within another world. Instead of having an encounter at that location, draw a gate marker but do not place it on the board. The Cultist investigator must succeed at a Lore or Fight check, modified by the number on the gate marker to abuse the Elder Sign's power to open a gate long enough for him to jump through. If he succeeds the check, he is drawn into the Other World indicated. Once the Cultist investigator has navigated the Other World normally (ie. would return to Arkham and receive an explored token) he returns to the location from which he left, places the gate marker at that location, recieves an explored token and takes the Elder Sign as a trophy.

Mythos Phase

When drawing a Mythos card, a location must have a Cultist investigator there and must not have an elder sign token for a gate and monster to appear. If no Cultist investigator is at that location or an elder sign is present, skip placing a gate and monster on the board and resolve the rest of the card.

Gate bursts happen as per the normal rules, but will spawn a gate even if a Cultist investigator is not present at the designated location.

Waking the Great Old One

Do not awaken the GOO if there are no gate or monster tokens left when one should be placed on the board; instead the first Cultist investigator to the left of the first player who is not cursed gains a curse.

I couldn't be bothered right now thinking up a way to create an oppositional Final Battle. As I said earlier, if people like the idea I'll work some more on it. I've already got a couple of ideas for variant rules to what I have written, but it is yet to be seen whether the above rules work or not.

Once again, if I've overlooked anything, forgive me, it is almost 1am on a long day as I finish writing this.

@Thorgrim

Hrm... It seems like the investigators would want to go for a closing victory (and that would be pretty easy), considering how slowly the enemy gates would open.

I had a couple ideas for spicing up a traitor variant a bit... For one thing, you might want a variant that doesn't use multiple players as traitors (because that will make balancing issues difficult). And for another, lets say you make the traitor capable of freely evading monsters, you might want to give them a custom ability where perhaps they can pay one sanity and do a lore check of some sort to summon a random monster (i.e. defense when another investigator lands on them, or offense when they land on another investigator). This could make them more threatening, but also make it so all the other players can't just gang up on him and beat the hell out of him... You might also want to reduce the investigator's movement by half, rounded up (to prevent it from interfering with the other players *too* much.

I think it would actually be pretty fun to throw one of those in in a large game :')

If you wanted to add some of a secrecy element to it. You could chose the traitor by a random card drawing, and make it so that the players can't show eachother their cards. That way you wouldn't know who the traitor is until he or she attacked one of the investigators, ostensibly while "trading" ;') only after which would you want to handicap their movement.

Avi_dreader said:

Well, I guess the number of trophies needed for a closing victory would need to be tweaked, and it wouldn't be too easy, as Cultist investigators can force Heroic investigators to discard a gate trophy if beaten senseless in combat.

Cultist investigators being able to summon monsters would be an idea, and I was also thinking (but just forgot to add it in last night) that a Mythos card designating a location that doesn't have an investigator and does not have an Elder Sign spawns a monster, to make up for the slowness at which gates open.

Seems like you should try out the "Betrayal at House on the Hill" game...

Thanks all for your ideas.

I think dividing the players in two teams will be a little complicated, since the game is not designed for that.

I started thinking about the main goal the investigator are trying to achieve: Closing gates and sealing them as fast as possible.

If there is a traitor between them, the best way to make things difficult would be:

1- He behaves as any other investigator when the game begins... collects clues and items. He can even close gates (since if you run out of gate counters, you ALSO awake the Old One.. that is a strategy when there are very few left).

2- His main attack will be when he arrives at a gate: After travelling through it, he can decide to "lock" the gate, instead of closing it (since he has now the knowledge to do so) He can try a roll (or automatically, with some clue tokens) and lock it. I have thought about rising the difficulty to close it by 1, or even better, an heroic investigator will need 2 turn, one to remove the lock and another to actually close the gate... that is devastating in terms of game time (one mor turn means one more mythos card)

3- another attack would be to use 5 clue tokens to actually remove a seal from a closed location. That means that a gate can reappear there. Also terrible for the heroic investigators...

4- the traitor can plan his attack up until he reveals himself (all investigators will have to worry only until he reveals, eliminating the need of a game machanic to "accuse" or reveal a possible traitor). Then, may be the investigators can pursue him, attack him, or sending him to jail, in order to prevent his actions.

5- If the traitor is not in jail at the moment of the final battle, every success he gets is actually substracted from the total successes from the rest of the team (the Old One is being defended by the traitor).

Those are my ideas... any comments?