Hey guys,

Just wondering if anyone out there plays with the house rule of being able to cure madness and Injuries by going to the Hospital and Asylum and paying 5 bucks. Money is hard to come by in the game anyway so for those who ABSOLUTELY must take a madness and injury card for that turn instead of losing their items can then heal up later (albeit at a higher cost than the 2 dollars at said institutions).

Has anyone played this way and do you feel this might unbalance the game somehow? It just seems a bit unrealistic that you'd be stuck with an injury for the entirety of the game. Just thinking of instituting this as a house rule and wondering if there are any downsides to this?

Happy gaming!

Injury and Madness cards tend to be a little bit more of a benefit than a drawback (because they heal your stat and let you keep your stuff), so they don't need that rule. Plus, playing with such a rule would make the random encounter that lets you try to heal the injury/madness for $5 become worthless and a lot less special.

Tibs do you use Injury and Madness for immersion? Just wondering how many players sacrifice challenge for immersion.

I use them because:

• They're a neat component. Watching your characters wear down, exhibit ailments from their trials, and even sometimes die of Schizophrenia? That's extremely thematic. Just had a 1-focus character get a concussion today, and it was an interesting dilemma.
• They're a component! Injury/Madness, Relationships, Personal Stories, and Epic Battle are used in EVERY game of mine, even when introducing new players. Also, I'm an all-in, every-expansion kind of player. The more the merrier!

Certainly they aren't a giant sacrifice to challenge. Though, showing new players a Nyarlathotep/Curse game is often more fun than playing an all-expansion game with veterans, so I'd likely pick immersive components (or components that perpetuate the game's theme) over difficulty-increasing components if given the choice.

Curator said:

Always. But "challenge" is in the eye of the beholder. (So is immersion, for that matter.) I am deeply more concerned with playing a game that feels like an old Chaosium CoC session. Most of my cultists were won over by the theme. I doubt I would have been able to do that with elves and magic missiles.

Usually, by nudging my game focus that way, the game becomes naturally more "challenging" because we're deliberately NOT metagaming. (This is why Avi doesn't respect meeee! Waaah! ) We lose a lot more than we win, but we enjoy dying firmly invested in our roles.

Perhaps one day, after a slow gradient climb, our natural playing style will catch up to a positive win ratio. If that ever happens, there are dozens of ways to make the game harder at that point. So I'm not really in any rush.

thanks so much for all your thoughts guys. I also recently picked up Lurker and was wondering what everyone's feelings were on the pact cards. I've read many reviews saying they were very easy to abuse and seemed unbalanced. Anyone out there get a chance to play much with those cards?

According to my stats report, there are 53 logged games that used the pacts. And the Lurker herald is proving to be embarrassingly beneficial, far beyond what it should be, as the "game loss" percentage for games using the Lurker herald are way, way below the other heralds. They're way below games that don't use a herald at all!

Tibs said:

Again, I shouldn't say anything, but let's not forget that your Stats report is filled with players that have been playing for years. Many of them could easily be considered hardcores. And it has been firmly established that the hardcores do not appreciate the Lurker Herald. But there have to be many many more players out there of varying levels of skill and practice that haven't gone anywhere near the Stats.

A simple disclaimer from one of those players (who loves the Lurker) that the Stats report is far from a final authority of fact.

Oh! And welcome to the Carnival, meanmunkee! Don't mind us grognards. Whatever our differences, we all dig new players!

meanmunkee said:

We played a long time using the house rule that a player could go to the hospital and search for the card that gave the experimental cure for injuries (and the asylum for madness). Cost is $5 and but you had to succeed at a die roll. I don't think anyone ever used it, so it died a death from neglect. I do think players would use your rule because it absolutely works and so wasting a turn and spending $5 for a sure thing.

As to the realism of a whole game injury or madness, I think the stories really talk about life long madnesses (if the heroes even survive).

However as one who as been devoured by a double case of double vision, there really are some unrealistic components to these cards.

mageith said:

Perhaps your eyes went so cross-eyed, that they ripped right off their eye stalks and you bled to death. Unrealistic? I think not!

DoomTurtle said:

Oh I see! I see! I see! I see!

Final authority from fact is true, but the fact that the percentage is so low when compared to other heralds and expansions after so many games is rather... telling. I'd say that it's a statistically significant difference.

As for the quadruple-vision issue: the second "Double Vision" card instead becomes a "died" card. You didn't actually die of having severe double-vision!

If you're Rita Young, the second Double Vision card instead becomes a "nothing" card.

Tibs said:

53 games reported by...21 different people. (22 if you count your game with Jeff as different from "just you".) Not saying I need to know playing styles or anything............hmm. Maybe I am.

Curator said:

Me...

Although recently I've been forcing investigators to just take madness and injuries with additional penalties (like lack of healing, or still losing half items, or both). I usually let them block clue loss though since I'd rather the game not get longer.

DoomTurtle said:

Well... I'd imagine it this way, the first time you got double vision, the second time your double vision somehow caused you to be murdered by the monster you were fighting or the event you were encountering.

Or your double vision was a symptom of an aneurysm that went pop when the second card was drawn.

As for lurker I think saying its beneficial is far from not liking it, quite the contrary I think its the best guardian that has been made for the game.

I think it just means that you went blind. You might not be "devoured," but you're out of the game.

I'd ramp up the cost from $5 to $10.

avec said:

Nope. Implausible. Because if that were the case why would you take all your items and money with you instead of sharing them with your allies (I guess you could say they were lost when you went blind, if you really wanted this bloodless vision of reality). Reality :')

Jake yet again said:

Makes sense to me. A ten-dollar sure thing versus a five-dollar card hunt seems reasonable. I might try this variant meself!

Avi_dreader said:

Maybe the blindness keeps you from magically turning up at the Hospital after losing a fight against a Shoggoth on Wizard's Hill