Hey everyone! Long time player, short time lurker, first time poster. I have a bunch of ideas for original content, including expansion boards, but I've decided to start with something a little smaller that I think could be fun. Please tell me what you think or if it's been done.

The Traveling Carnival is a location that appears and moves in the streets, much like a wandering gate. However, it's its own location with its own encounter deck. I'm thinking the encounter deck would be divided into 2 sections. The top would be a normal encounter. The bottom would have a "game", which would have a cost (usually money) to allow the player to roll on a table and ignore the normal encounter.

Example:

Traveling Carnival: That clowns laugh is disturbing, almost knowing. Roll Will(-2) to resist losing 1 point of Sanity and moving out of the Travelling Carnival to any adjacent location. If you pass, you may question the unhinged man, gaining 2 Clue tokens but losing 1 Sanity.

Games: "You there! You look like someone who knows how to handle a gun. Care to try your luck at the air riffle?"
Pay $2 in order to ignore the above encounter and roll a die. Consult the table below to determine the effects of the roll:
1: You don't hit a thing. You realize you are Cursed !
2: Someone cut your pocket while you were playing! Lose $3 or any item (your choice).
3: The gun misfires! You lose 1 Stamina but regain your $2.
4: You win an adorable stuffed animal! Gain 1 Sanity.
5: What a prize! Draw 1 common item.
6:Bulls eye every time! As you draw 1 common item as your prize, you realize you are also Blessed !

This layout encourages players to enter the location with money (like you always should when visiting a funfair), and gives them the option of rolling random effects on random tables instead of encounters they cannot, or likely wont, pass. I'm also considering random stalls (pay some amount of money to look at the top 3 cards of an item deck and buy them as normal) as possible alternate encounters to games, but static effects are the opposite of random rolls so I'm not sure. In fact, all of this has potential balance issues because of the additional options it allows, and other mechanical issues such as slowing down the game (imagine someone drawing 2 encounters and trying to decide between all of the options!).

As for carnival movement, I'm not sure what dimensional symbol to give it. I'm thinking monsters can be at it's location normally, but are dragged with it when it moves (as are players). Also, if it runs into an actual wandering gate, I'm thinking it disappears, leaving monsters on the gate and investigators sucked into it! It also might disappear if it collects too many monsters considering the problems it's wandering and collecting beasties could bring. The carnival would reappear the next time a gate with its symbol appeared, in the streets adjacent to it. Thoughts?

Very interesting thought! A moving location that winds through the streets I thought was a pretty cool idea. Do you plan to make this carnival help or hinder the investigators? Maybe you could add some insidious effects to the game, such as adding doom tokens when it lands on a monster, raising the terror level when certain conditions are met, etc. This would add a lot more significance to this add-on, instead of just being a novelty that bored investigators would visit once in a while.

I would like to see this idea come to fruitition!

Thanks for the feedback!

I'd like it to be somewhat double edged, but I suppose I'd like it to be more of something that can make things go horribly wrong in some way. Maybe I can allow it to have up to 5 monsters, and if that amount is exceeded, they are all discarded along with the Carnival, and the terror track is raised by 1? Or maybe it could turn into/be replaced by a gate with all of the monsters still there? Or maybe it can flip upside down (it's a token, after all) under some condition and make something horrible happen at its location from then on?

None of these ideas quite make me happy yet, but I'm not sure what the best way to make it enhance the game is yet . I'm open to suggestions. Oh, and I'm starting to feel like this might need a herald card to help explain all of its rules, so maybe some other herald effects might make things work?

Okay! Finally figured out how to post these images directly here, so yay. This is my first draft of this idea as a Herald. (It's also in the Herald section)

And the Token.

Front (the traveling location):

Back (the wandering gate):

These images are just from an image search and are placeholders for now. I plan on making custom pictures at some point.

Heh... I was about to suggest photoediting the carnival picture to make it look more sinister. Generally speaking, it sounds interesting, I'm a bit worried the maze of mirrors will take too long to get through 8-12 turns (sans delays and unconsciousness). If I understood it correctly (I may not have, I only have time for skimming right now). Regardless... Speed up the time passage mechanism. Perhaps sending investigators through two OWs per turn. That's my initial suggestion.

Great idea!

Considering adding the arrow symbol (from Lurker at the Threshold) to the Travelling Carnival counter. I would suggest that the Carnival could be Darke's Carnival from Dunwich. If so, close Darke's Carnival at the start of the game.

The ability Show on the Road could be rewritten so that the Carnival appears as the next Gate. Sure this means that the Carnival might turn up at the Unnameable, but it'll soon move off. Heck, those crazy carnies might even hold a fair on Devil's Reef! Additionally, it's important to sort out the timing issue. I'd suggest that Darke's Carnival always moves before other monsters. This allows it to jump on other monsters and add them to it's sideshow.

Monsters "collected" by the Sideshow ability, should no longer count towards the Monster Limit and can no longer be encountered normally. (This is important, or else the Carnival could collect up all the monsters in once location giving the players a easy passage through the rest of town.) You might even want to add a box on the Herald to collect Monsters in.

Under a new heading: All the Fun of the Fair add the following. Whenever a player stops at the Carnival, they choose on the following:

* Draw an encounter from Darke's Carnival. (This gives players an opportunity to experience some encounters they wouldn't normally encounter.)

* Use the Wheel of Fortune ability. (You'll probably want to add this text verbatim to the Herald.)

* Fight a monster at the sideshow. Pay $1 and choose one monster at the Sideshow. You may immediately engage this monster in combat, but if you choose to do so you may not flee. (Kinda like a permanent Terrible Experiment but where you have to pay money.)

A new ability: Roll up, Roll up The Carnival crowds clog the streets. An investigator who moves into Darke's Carnival must immediately end their movement. (Reasoning: Prior to this Monsters would have ended Investigator movement. Now they are stopped by crowds instead! Just imagine the hi-jinx when the Carnival moves on next turn and the Investigator gets stopped by the crowds again.)

The ability (It's) All Part of the Act could be problematic. Player's can't enter Vortices, so perhaps it should read:

If, during any Phase, Darke's Carnival ever has more than five monsters on it or would ever be moved onto a Gate or Vortex, flip Darke's Carnival over to The Hall of Mirrors instead. When this occurs, immediately increase the Terror and Doom Levels by one and place all monsters collected at the Sideshow onto the Hall or Mirrors, even if they would normally breach the Monster Limit. Unlike Darke's Carnival, the Hall of Mirrors remains stationary.

This stops the "freed" monsters scuttling off to the Outskirts. Furthermore, because of the timing, a bunch of monsters suddenly turn up and the immediately move. That'll teach you to snigger when Darke puts on his carnival at Devil's Reef.

The Maze of Mirrors could be simplified: Draw Outer World card until you draw a card that shows at least two locations. The first is your "start", the second is your "finish". The -5 modifier is excessive. Finding your way through the Hall of Mirrors could take ages, so players could be out of the game for a long time. They don't need an incredibly hard modifier on top of that. Make the Modifier +0, but don't allow the gate to be sealed and award no Gate Trophy. The gate is still a threat: it counts towards the gate limit, must be closed for a closing victory and still spews out monsters into Arkham and the environs.

Thank you for the excellent suggestions! I am going to implement many of the ideas that have been offered, and I'm going to begin playtesting with various versions of the cards and tokens before finalizing. I probably wont update this thread again until I'm satisfied with how this herald changes the game and have some of my own pictures made.

this carnival is an awesome idea. Any updated version ?

This is very cool. I agree with many of the suggestions Jake made, however, I do like the idea of getting the 2 gate trophies as a prize, so to speak. -5 is indeed too harsh, though, so I'd switch that to -4. It's already harder to navigate for the extra encounters you need to deal with.

A nice idea. I would be keen to see any work you have done on location cards. I have made a program that simulates the locatio decks and character cards (before the official toolkit was released) and what I want to do is rework it to allow fan to build up 'decks' of location events to play with. All I need is somebody to help me come up with some....

I have been playing this game since inception and have rarely been impressed with custom fan based content. I lurk these forums constantly but rarely reply to anything anymore, but I must compliment your excellent idea here. This is one I would like to use depending on how its implemented in the final stage.

Here's my 2 cents on this. Take it as you will:

My biggest problem with custom content is too many new parts. I agree with herald cards like you have done and can even go as far for this one idea to have a custom gate token (would love to have a professional one from FFG!) but thats where I have to draw the line. I do not like the idea of new location cards and rather love "Jake Yet Again"'s idea of using the rarely used, all ready existing cards/abilities in this new way. Please, dont this the wrong way, but it is how I feel personally about fan expansions and my major deterent to using any. If it has a ton of stuff to print off, i wont use it.

Closing Darke's Carnival is superb. Its a rarely used stable location so having both it and the travelling show is redundant if dunwich is being used. It makes no difference otherwise if dunwich is not being used and should still hold water by being able to use this without it. Using Darke's Cards for the traveling show is a good idea I think, although I have not actually looked through those encounters in a long time. I also dont remeber much about the Wheel of Fortune ability, but it sounds like thats the way to go with this also instead of having to print out new cards and adding further abilities.

Futhermore, this could be expanded on to say that the carnival is/starts at Darke's and when the traveling condition hits, then close darkes and place the traveling carnival wherever they start the show. I like your mechanic on this (adjacent street to newly opened gate from mythos card with moon symbol) and do not know if there is a better or more elegant way for this to happen. Moon symbol seems right to me also as it should be one of the highest frequency symbols (is it? unsure?).

I love all your ideas so far added to everything "Jake Yet Again" has suggested. Having movement stop for investigators who enter the location is great and really amps up the theme of a crowded street show. I also like your idea to make it double edged. I dont feel everything needs to be geared to harder or easier and like the idea that one mechanic could do both depending on luck, etc... I can actually see my group making this idea a fairly permanent part of the game if all the conditions are right.

I have a few remaining sticking points for me. How the gate "Hall of Mirrors" is closed I think could be worked better. Here are some thoughts on that.

First, -5 is simply ridiculous. Ryleh is the toughest gate around and it is -4. I personally feel no gate should ever be harder than this. Then there is the whole idea of moving through multiple outerworld locations and possibly taking longer than a normal gate to close. My suggestion is to choose one. Make it a hard gate to close by modifier (not my first choice as it loses its theme this way) or make the modifier negligible, but use the multiple OW location idea (fits the theme much better). Even with the gate modifier being -0 or -1 AND using the multiple OW locations the potential for taking 6-8 turns to get out of gate (finish in ryleh?) is too penalizing.

I do love the idea that each turn in that gate uses a new OW location, but I feel the number of turns to navigate the maze needs to be addressed. A couple possible ideas is to make the turn progression of these OW's more random (you are in a maze after all and could find your way out quickly if your lucky or smart or long if not), by rolling a die. the die result could determine where you go next, or how many OW's you get to move through per the trun, etc...or you could use some kind of skill check (as stated earlier, luck or intelligence seem to make sense) to make some type of determining progression. Just thoughts on this and I'll leave the real deatils to the better, more creative folks here. One final idea on this could be that it takes 4 turns to close this gate, one turn in each color. I'll leave what worlds to use for each color up to you guys if thats the way you see it, But obviously Ryleh would constitute the final world and color.

A side note on that is, Why use Ryleh as the final space? This could again be changed to some other one. Another Time or Another World could be used to make sense of this thematically (or some other world that the carnival could be tapping into), or even this part of the maze could be randomized also somehow so that each time, the final OW location is different. Building on this idea, which I really like, it could be that the ending OW location, instead of being Ryleh, could be the OW location of the gate that spawns the travelling Carnival. This gives it a nice thematic link to the connection of the gate/OW and carnival without having to rely on the gate itself. I also like the replayability and randomness this gives the entire mechanic, so that it is not always the same.

The other sticking point is how the carnival shows up, goes away etc...and it all come down to how you envision this.

I see that currently the show is almost always on the board (place with first gate, then when moon mythos is drawn, place traveling show if it is off board) and can continue to come back after being dealt with. I think this works as a scenario played once in a while, but it might also work as a permanent rule card that shows up once and then once closed by investigators, never comes back for the rest of the game, almost like a rumor (barring stars are right). This makes some of sense as the investigators actively ousted the Carnival, shut down it's connection with OW's/GOO's, that the carnival could not immediately next turn return to power, so to say. I think in order to make it work in this way though, there needs to be some reward/penalty condition. Something like a permanent reward for shutting it down or a permanent penalty for not doing so. It could be like a personal story/Rumor in this way. I wont bother offering rewards/penalties and leave it to you to think about if this entices you.