This is just the way we play, take it for what it's worth. You probably won't think it's very much since I'm part of those crazy people who play with all expansions at once, but here it goes anyways.

1. Cold Spring Glen is an aquatic location. Has made a few monsters move into Dunwich, though they were killed before moving into a rift, and makes Silas even cooler.

2. Exhibit Items can be purchased at the Library, spending $6 to draw two and keep one. We just wanted to make these items more accessible even though no one has yet to go purchase any yet.

3. Corruption cards are drawn any time you beat a Dark Young, regardless of whether the Black Goat is the Herald or not. This has both lost and won me a game. Not to mention it seems once we started playing this rule, we started drawing Dark Young form the monster cup on every other gate opening. We also considered having you drawn for the Dark Druid and the Child of the Goat but thought that would then not add very much to when you actually did play with the Black Goat Herald. So maybe just the Dark Young and the Dark Druid.

4. When an open rift moves on it's off-color, pop a monster out and raise the terror level. When it moves on it's appropriate color, pop a monster out, raise the terror level, add a Dunwich Horror token and a Deep One Rising token. We considered having the appropriate color add a doom token but there already seems a lot of ways to speed up the Ancient One's awakening so we decided to go with just more in-game mayhem. I also think that along with all the other things, we should add a random rift progress marker placed at the first players discretion.

5. When a monster surge occurs roll a die. On a 4-6 the surge happens as normal. On a 1-3, flip over a random, unused rift progress marker and open a gate at that location (spanw monsters, add a doom token, all as if a gate has opened as normal). The only time you don't roll for this is when you draw the Mythos card with the headline "A monster surge occurs." When entering gates in Kingsport or closing them during the Arkham Encounter phase, that does not count as your encounter to remove or flip over a rift progress marker already on the board. We considered not having these gates count toward the gate limit and not being able to seal them, but figured the previous was a better option. Yes, I know according to Lurker you cannot seal a gate unless in an unstable location, but we bend that here since it is so rare, if ever, that you can get a gate opened in a stable location and that was more meant for the moving gates in the streets.

Anyways, that is just some of the rules we've implemented. Love 'em, hate 'em, have no opinion about 'em, I don't really care. Well, except for the opinion part. I'd like to know if anyone has tried these same things, something similar, nothing similar, just think we're stupid for playing this way, or just basic observations and/or comments.

I like how you intrroduced corruption cards into the game. Tying them to a specific monster, and not an Ancient One or herald.

We actually played today's session with your rule: "Any time you defeat a Dark Young or the Dark Druid,draw a corruption card." I really like the corruption mechanic, and with this ruling you ensure that these cards enter play.

For several sessions already we've also played with these houserules:

1)The game starts at the Arkham Encounter phase, and each investigator has an encounter at his starting location(but cannot use the special ability of the location instead of the starting encounter). This is just a fun way to kickstart the story; add another unpredictable twist to it.

2)And as I mentioned in another thread, we also decided that from time to time one investigator would start the game with a Cult Membership card from the Black Goat expansion(during setup the fiirst investigator who rolls a 1 or 2 gets the card).

3) Whenever facing either of these 4 AOs in final battle: Yig, Nyarlathotep, Hastur and Ithaqua:

The combat rating of these AOs at the start of the battle will increase proportionally to the investigators' sealing progress. That is,

1) The rating would increase by (6-N) where N is the number of sealed gates on the board.

2) (6-N )extra doom tokens are added to the AO's doom track (Dam's supplementary proposal to the first rule).

We actually defeated Hastur today in Epic battle with these rules: it makes him much more challenging this way, and in general, promotes a sealing strategy rather than preparation to final battle(which is an easy victory if you're well equipped ) .

Ooooooooo! I'll have to try that one out. My group isn't the most open when it comes to adding to the printed (would "canonized" be the appropriate word here) rules, but I'll bring it up.

We also have the luxury (and I realize not everyone will have this luxury) to have a spare "The King in Yellow" expansion sitting around, so we've added the 6 "The Next Act Begins" cards for a total of twelve, which is...........nice? Better? Scarier? Helpful? Stupid? Insane? I'm sure one of those words fits it. If not, fill in the blank as you see fit.

We play with a lot of house rules, but I'll just mention a couple that's along the same lines as above.

When you move to a location with a special ability, you draw an encounter card first. I've marked up each encounter (with pencil). If the encounter is too good, or if it's similar to the location's special ability, it has a mark that means you must choose between the encounter and the special ability. If the encounter is bad, in many cases it has a mark that means the special ability is cancelled that turn. It slows the game down, but it makes going to the Hospital, the Curiositie Shop, etc, a lot more fun.

We put three mission cards face-up near the Library. A player at the Library may make a Lore (-1) check to take one of the face-up missions. I've also retooled the missions to make them more practical. (Think Buffy, the early years, when they used the library to figure out how to defeat the bad guy).

The River Docks now costs 3 toughness and gets you $4. It sometimes makes sense to use the River Docks if you don't have enough trophies for the Science Building.

Oh, and if it's not entirely clear, the modifier for the AO's combat rating in our houserule is negative, "so it should be: increases by (N-6) where N is the number of sealed gates on the board.

Yig's combat rating is (-3). If there are 2 sealed gates/elder signs on the board when he awakens, his combat rating increases by (2-6) which bumps him to (-7)

I like some of those house rules! I'm going to start putting some aquatic locations in dunwich, too. And start doing the corruption cards with dark youngs. But anybody have any house rules for using blight cards when you're not using the king in yellow herald? Or for adding more uprising tokens? Or for undiluting the act mythos cards?

Musha Shukou said:

Trim the mythos deck before the game starts. Say you're playing with Innsmouth and King in Yellow. There are 35 mythos cards that either open gates in Innsmouth or affect the Deep Ones Rising track. Take out 5 of those cards, selected at random (and without looking at them). Of the remaining 30, shuffle in the six Next Act Begins cards, "The Story Continues," and 57 other mythos cards, also selected at random. You'll have a 94 card deck.

This is why it works. 6.38% of the cards will be Next Act Begins cards, which is the same probability if you were only playing with the King in Yellow. Also, 31.91% of the cards deal with Innsmouth and the remaining 61.70% will be miscellaneous mythos cards (mostly cards that open gates in Arkham). Ordinarily, if you were just playing Innsmouth, 33.98% of the mythos cards would deal with Innsmouth and the remaining 66.02% would be "other" mythos cards. With the Next Act Begins cards added, each of those percentages has been shrunk equally, to approximately 94% of their original sizes. That is, the 33.98% Innsmouth probability has been shrunk to 31.91%, which is about 94% of its original size. The 66.02% probability of drawing "other" cards has been shrunk to 61.70%, which again is about 94% of its original size. Therefore, the balance between the Innsmouth board and the regular board has been preserved. Each board has been equally squeezed to fit in the Next Act Begins cards.

If you wanted to, you could squeeze the Next Act Begins cards proportionally. Frankly, though, I'm very leery of reducing the chances of drawing those cards. If you wanted to squeeze the NAB probability, you'd discard 3 Innsmouth cards instead of 5, and add 61 other mythos cards instead of 57. Then you'd have a 100 card deck and the probabilities for all three groups of cards would be reduced to 94% of their original size.

In case it isn't clear, the advantage of this method (aside from the fact that it is very precise) is that, once game starts, you don't have to mess around with multiple mythos decks or rolling extra dice. You just draw a mythos card.

I've often thought of ways to try and incorporate the Blight Deck in some other manner but I think that it's a small enough deck, they are strong enough effects, and so much a part of the King in Yellow Herald, that it will take away from playing that Herald, which in my opinion is still the best Herald. We really felt that there were a variety of corruption cards, a larger deck, not as powerful, and not as significant a part of the Herald as the Blight deck, that they should be incorporated more. Not to mention they are just cool to have in play. But that's just my opinion.

As I said previous about how we play, whenever a Rift moves on its matching color we add a Deep One Rising token and Dunwich Horror token, in addition to raising the terror level and popping a monster out. You could also try adding a Deep One Rising token every time an investigator defeats a Deep One monster in combat or when an investigator gets arrested in Innsmouth because of Martial Law, or anytime an investigator is arrested in Innsmouth.

We have the fortune of having an extra "The King in Yellow" expansion so we have twelve "The Next Act Begins" Mythos cards in our deck, but you could try keeping those cards separate then shuffling them in to the top half of your Mythos deck after you've shuffled those for your start of game. A kind of in between of the touring performance and permanent performance style.

Just my thoughts.

And I like those thoughts. Thanks for sharing. If you have any more great ideas, please post them!!

Well I don't know about any great ideas and I've only listed things that I've tested out, tried, and like. But I've been thinking of things in relation to the terror level, both ways of having it increase faster and ways of making it a stronger penalty when it rises.

In regards to it raising faster, you can have it raise any time an investigator is knocked unconscious or driven insane or when an investigator is devoured. Or maybe raise it once when knocked unconscious or driven insane and twice when an investigator is devoured. That's all I really came up with. Any ideas or suggestions will be considered.

I actually had a few ideas for when the terror level rises in addition to the normal penalties. Mind you, I don't mean for all these things to happen, but single ideas that could happen, or pair some up. So here is the list:

1. Each investigator loses 1 Sanity and 1 Stamina.

2. Each investigator loses X amount of Sanity and/or Stamina where X is the current terror level.

3. The cost to travel between towns is increased by $1 every time the terror level increases.

4. Attach a location's special ability to each number on the terror level and you lose that ability when it reaches the paired level. These locations would not close like the General Store, Curiosity Shoppe, or Magic Shoppe, just lose the special ability. We would not include the Hospital or Asylum in this, that just seems overly malicious. If you're playing with expansions, lose two locations special abilities, one in Arkham, one on an expansion board.

5. A monster appears at the location of each investigator or just the first player or something like that.

Again, these are just brain storms, never tried, and I actually don't even like the number 5 suggestion and should just it. But please share your thoughts, what you think, what you play, that I should stay off the forums, it's a whatever kind of thing.

Donut said:

My games are almost always only-one-expansion-board, so when I play Dunwich, I "aquify" Cold Spring Glen AND Bishop's Brook Bridge. Sometimes when I play Innsmouth or Kingsport, I will "flood" the Arkham River (aquify the Merchant District and Rivertown Streets).

If they didn't want me to do that, they shouldn't have provided me with two extra Aquatic Tokens.

We play a modified Bast where you don't have to draw "The Stars are Right" to get the beloved of bast cards... Just meet the other requirements.

jgt7771 said:

Yeah, except Dunwich is landlocked. I remember someone pointing out that an aquatic monster is about as likely to appear in a spring as it is to appear in a bathtub.

I agree with you Avec, and I play that way, but you can't blame someone who wants to make aquatic movement a little more probable.

Funny you use that comparison. A Moon Beast popped up right between my legs while I was taking a bath just two nights ago. There goes that argument!

The funny thing is that moon-beasts can't swim. They were made into aquatic monsters, probably, because of the black galleys they drive in Dream Quest. So what you're really saying is that while you were taking a bath, a black cargo galley rose out of your tub and about twenty or so amorphous moon-toads emerged to kill you with spears or whatever.

If you're playing with the Innsmouth expansion board, it's a good strategy to lure aquatic monsters away from Devil's Reef and Y'nathelei to an aquatic location on another board, so the more aquatic locations the merrier. We also aquafied Cold Spring Glen in our sessions with Dunwich. Sometimes we'll just turn regular unstable locations aquatic by a die roll at setup.

Tibs said:

Obviously he has a very large bathtub.

The largest bathtub!

But it's been like 3 months since I last saw a black cargo galley in my tub, so maybe they dropped a few off then and they just decided to make an appearance. And I thought I was shy while bathing.

You think you're exposed? You can see clear through a moonbeast!

The point is that an aquatic moving monster did appear in a bathtub and it was a very awkward 27 minutes.

Donut said:

"Could you please pass the soap?"

"GWAAAOOOORRRRR!"

Donut said:

Ha, you think we will believe in such a tall tale? It is much more probable for a deep one emerge from the kitchen sink.

What do you mean emerge from the kitchen sink? I keep one as a pet in the kitchen sink. It used to be my brother. Only a matter of time for me I guess.

Oh yeah, what about this: you're getting a cup of water, and suddenly 'YAAAH!' Cthulhu explodes from it! You know what, that would actually be pretty cool...