Today we are looking at what i had planned for Return to Search for Kadath. And why it doesn’t really work so far.
The Search for Kadath
But before we do that, i want to go over the things that stick out to me about Search for Kadath, as they might provide angles to pursue when thinking about additions from the Return.
Midgame Setups: An otherwise pretty nice scenario, the hassle from having to rebuild the board and encounter deck several times as the game goes on is grating and a noticable dampener to my enjoyment of Search for Kadath.
Pirates: Thematically, there is lot of talk about the corsairs, but in actual play they aren’t really represented all that much.
Multiple Islands: The board is rarely all that large. Often, it’s just three locations. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but does have implications for enemies with Hunter and cards like Wondrous Lands.
“Scripted” Interactions: Most of the islands feature some linear path to go through. Read the Veiled on one location, get the “remember that X” line that enables you to do Y, do Y, discard the enemy. These sort of take the ability to explore the islands out of the players hands, there is a correct path and if you deviate from it that will cost you precious time. The islands feature signature enemies that appear on fixed locations. For all its masquerading as an open world exploration, Search for Kadath is ultimately more linear than most other scenarios.
Lack of variance: On replays, the information you have about what expects you on which island means that you might find yourself taking the islands on in the same order every time. Some sort of randomization or cost of choice to the decision on where to sail next could help with making the scenario less “solvable”.
Return to the Search for Kadath
Alright then, let me rip the bandaid off straight away and talk about travel events and the travel deck.
The idea here is that removing the midgame setup is not going to be possible within the scope of a Return To. So what if we went the other way and added something to the midgame setups so that they’d feel more worth doing? After all, you are interrupting your gameflow already, might as well make it count for more. I made four travel events that together make up the travel deck. Pulling one at random whenever you change islands, they’d introduce some bits of uncertainty. Let’s take a look at these events.
Smooth Sailing simply lets the investigators reach their destination as planned. Even gives them a little bit of a bonus before it lets them continue on their way. Corsairs! however introduces a complication. Pirates are forcing the players off course and towards a different destination. This doesn’t lock out the original destination permanently, but the players would need to go there later.
Fortune in Misfortune awards a Sign of the Gods, albeit at the cost of 2 doom. The players are allowed to immediately resign, so this 2 doom won’t be able to advance the final agenda. Finally, A Strange Island adds a new location to whatever destination the group went to. The Island That Cannot Be is set aside at the start of the game and this is the only way for it to enter play. Like the other locations in this scenario, it’s Veiled:
This is a rather fancy location which can be unveiled and flipped for another Sign of the Gods (and a VP), however any clues discovered here are added to other locations, making it harder to investigate those.
And that’s the full picture with regards to travel events. It was an attempt to make the midgame setups more meaningful, introduce some more piratey and explorey themes and to put some variance to the order you visit the islands. Long story short, it introduced too much hassle for what it added. Several playtesters noted that they disliked it, i wasn’t really loving it either in my plays of the modified scenario either. My thought right now is that i should just scrap it and come up with something else.
The travel deck isn’t the only thing I had planned for Return to Search for Kadath. I also added a fourth location to both Oriab and Mnar, simply to make those islands a bit more than just three locations in a triangle. They are meant to provide an alternate way of finishing the island.
The Lake Yath lies in the center of the island of Oriab. Investigating it represents mapping out the island from this central location, allowing you to take clues from another location. If they are okay with spending more time here and encountering a Nightgaunt, they can even discover all clues from all Oriab locations (so not from the Island That Cannot Be, if it is in play). If they obtained supplies from Baharna, this becomes easier, however doing so means clearing off the clues from Baharna first, limiting the payoff from spending time at Yath.
The river Ai allows the players to move faster across the island, both through an activated ability on the front and through the “Otherwise” text on the back. It also gives an alternate out to the Beings of Ib (or any other enemy that is giving you grief at the time).
I think both of these extra locations work well in giving you some extra options in how to tackle the two small islands.
Return to the Return to the Search for Kadath
Where does this leave me with regards to getting this Return to scenario done? Well, i’d say about one third done? It is clear to me that the way forward is to scrap the idea of travel events and maybe salvage the good parts. I do like the Island That Cannot Be and will probably want to find another way to randomly put it into play. Maybe through an encounter card that gets shuffled into the deck when you first travel away from Skai. The two additional locations to Mnar and Oriab work well and can probably stay as they are.
So i have three new locations in total, two of them tied to a specific island, the other a wildcard. That’s solid, but not quite enough for a rather long scenario like Search for Kadath. The encounter deck already has a lot of enemies going on, but maybe i can fit some more pirates in there? Honestly, i am really not sure and i didn’t spend all that much time on developing this one further yet. So take today’s dev diary entry more of a “where we are right now” type of thing, with the “where are we going” still wide open.
In any case, that’s all i have for you today. Feel free to let me know if you have any suggestions on what you think the scenario needs. I’d also be interested in your takes on the midgame setups. Do you think they are a bother? Maybe it’s just me that has an issue with them and they are actually fine?
I decided I want to talk about a couple topics related to designing encounter cards for AHLCG and things to consider when deciding on what mechanisms you can use. This is intended as a reference for aspiring homebrew designers, to help them recognize their options and which way to go with whatever they intend for their own thing, no matter if it’s a full campaign or simply a replacement encounter set. But it can of course also be of interest to players of the game to realize what the encounter deck has going on right now and how to best meet the presented challenge.
The topics i want to look at can get very niche but i found that these sort of details are exactly what you spend the most time on when designing your own encounter cards. It’s always easy(ish) to come up with a general principle and a card that works and does a passable job at what you want. But if you are aiming for higher than “passable”, then you need to put in that final 80% of effort to close out those last 20% of quality. While we’ll surely be talking about the Numberwang here and there, i am mostly interested in the mechanical aspects. Numbers are easy to fix through rigorous playtesting and iteration. But mechanics need to be considered with more intent behind them as they will often dictate the feel and impact of a card beyond mere numbers.
Discarding treacheries
Alright then, let’s get to today’s niche topic then. As you all know, not all treacheries are purely revelation effects, some of them stick around on the board, in the threat area, attached to a player card or wherever else is room on the table. For these treacheries you will need to define some sort of trigger or activation that discards them from play (or do you?…) Let’s take a look at these discard conditions, using treacheries from official campaigns, so we can use them as templates for our own creations. We’ll start with the least interactive ones (from a player POV) and work our way forward from there.
This is about the closest a persistent treachery comes to a simple one-shot revelation treachery. It has an effect that persists through the round and is discarded at the end of that round. There is no printed way of interaction to get rid of it, basically the treachery is added to the board simply as a reminder that the card is still in effect beyond the mythos phase. There’s a couple advantages to this approach. As the designer of the card you know exactly how long the card is going to be active, limiting the amount of variance from its effect that you’d have to account for. It’s a simple trigger that is easy to execute and doesn’t ask anything from your players beyond remembering the card is there. So it doesn’t complicate gameplay. As you can see from the examples above, you can get a lot of different vibes from this sort of card depending on where you put it for the turn, too. While not primarily what i want to talk about today, let’s just acknowledge for now how different the card feels and plays depending on whether it stays for a round in an investigator’s play area, in an undefined area next to the agenda deck or attached to a location. There’s two major variations to this discard trigger, both showcased above. Path to Carcosa’s The Pit Below adds another effect to the discard trigger, meaning you can use this template for a delayed effect instead of a persisting one. And Forgotten Age started with adding a “max once per round” to this type of treachery if it affects more than just the player that drew it. This stops cards that are redundant in multiples (like Deep Dark) from becoming freebies if multiple are drawn in the same round, but also has consequences for cards like Children of Valusia that have effects that actually stack with each other. This is mostly only relevant for full groups, but it’s a worthwhile safeguard to keep in mind if you want to prevent double draws of a treachery from not mattering. While overall not that interactive for the players, there are some considerations. For one, these can technically be dispelled with Alter Fate, ending the effect prematurely or preventing the delayed effect that was scheduled for end of the round. They also are clearly designed to be drawn during the Mythos phase. They can behave weirdly or as near-freebies when drawn at another time, for example from a Drawn To The Flame. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing, this sort of fringe interaction is in my opinion mostly a positive, but it’s worth mentioning. As a final note on this type of discard trigger, contrast this templating with the one on Whispers of Hypnos. Like Dissonant Voices and Children of Valusia, Whispers of Hypnos sets up an effect that persists through the turn. Whispers however gets discarded after revelation, which can cause memory issues when an investigator takes a relevant test twenty minutes later during the investigator or enemy phase. Personally, i would advise to try and use the templating on Dissonant Voices for this type of effect. Having a physical card on the table as a reminder for the effect does wonders to make sure players don’t forget about it.
Rarely, the official campaigns use a testless “end of turn” trigger instead of a “end of round” one. The difference being that these treacheries don’t persist through the next player’s turns, the enemy phase and upkeep. I think this templating should be avoided, for two reasons: One, consistency. I would strive to have all cards with this sort of automatic discard trigger at the same time. Makes it easier to handle for the players and the difference in play is minimal. As an example, you might be playing Depths of Yoth. One of you gets Lost in the Wilds, the other one draws Children of Valusia. Instead of being able to just clean up all cards at the end of the round, you need to pay attention to what discards when. Seems minor, but this sort of thing stacks up. Even an otherwise widely praised scenario like Light in the Fog can misstep here, as showcased by Totality, which discards at the end of your turn and Kiss of Brine, which has a very unusual “end of enemy phase” trigger. My advice: When putting together your encounter deck, check to see if you can make it so you have as few trigger points as possible to keep the administrative upkeep to a minimum. The other reason is that it just doesn’t make much sense, right? Consider three players A, B and C, standing at the same location. B has Safeguard in play and drew (and failed) Lost in the Wilds. If player A goes first and moves, B won’t be able to use Safeguard to follow them. If B goes second, they will discard LitW at the end of their turn and then be able to Safeguard following C’s movement on their turn. It all seems a bit arbitrary to me that player order matters in how this treachery plays out. And you might think that this is a very niche example presented by me here, but that’s kind of my point. The distinction between “end of turn” and “end of round” only matters in such niche cases, so you might as well go with the established templating and have all your cards trigger at the same time to reduce the mental upkeep. Unless interacting with player order is your actual point of the card, but i don’t really see that be the case with the two examples above. Kiss of Brine at least has a reason to not persist through the end of the round (so the affected player gets to draw and gain resource in their upkeep again). But … why the enemy phase, though? While I think that an “end of round” trigger is usually going to be preferrable here, that is not to say that a different timing can never work out. The Shadow Behind You is a card that discards at its timing point depending on your actions taken during your turn. Postponing this trigger to the end of the round would just invite memory issues, so it makes perfect sense to have this right at the end of your turn. That being said, this is a weird and exceptional card through and through. Breaking an assumption about timing points is just a small part of that. To sum this up, you can introduce an aspect of player interactivity through moving your discard trigger from end of the round to end of the turn, as this will make player order matter. But there should be a mechanical reason for it, because ultimately it just reads a bit weird and is inconsistent with what the game usually does.
Now, Sordid and Silend also has an end of the round trigger, but that’s not what we are here for. The interesting part here is that it discards when the agenda advances. This way of doing it shares a lot of DNA with the previous two templates: No explicit player input, no tests to discard it or anything like that. Just a trigger waiting for the time to go off and then discard the treachery. And until then, the card does its thing. If it was just Sordid and Silent, this wouldn’t even be its own paragraph on this page, but the interesting part here is that you can replace this Forced trigger by instead attaching the treachery to the agenda, a trick that is first employed by Light of Aforgomon in Dunwich Legacy. Now you don’t need a trigger at all anymore, the thing will just hit the discard when the agenda does. How very convenient. Since the agenda is (usually) just a timer running downward, we just found out another way to have a timed treachery. Kidnapped!, also from Dunwich, showcases that you can use this to set up a delayed effect instead of a persistent one as well. I quite like this way of attaching a treachery to the agenda or act because not only does it serve a purely mechanical purpose, but it also gives the treachery a lot of weight. It just feels important getting to sit right there on what is basically the scenario rules. Of course, the treachery effect needs to match this special spot on the board. That is certainly the case with Light of Aforgomon. And with Sign of Hastur as well, for that matter. And Kidnapped is a very central card to its scenario (Blood on the Altar) too, deserving of that special treatment. A potential downfall of this sort of treachery is the variance from when you draw this card. Sign of Hastur hits very different when drawn right after going into Unspeakable Oath’s 7 doom agenda than when you draw it 6 turns later and are about to advance anyways. When drawn during the turn before you’d advance the agenda anyways, this treachery (which was clearly intended to be impactful and gamechanging) can just end up a dud that only sticks around for a turn. Or even less, if it also is allowed to attach to the act. But still, this is a very cool way to highlight a scenario defining treachery and give it that extra bit of importance. Kind of like putting “Power.” or “Endtimes.” on the trait line ;)
Cool cool cool. Now that we figured out that we can attach treacheries to other things to create an implicit discard condition (tying it to how long that other cards sticks around), what else can we attach stuff to? We just talked about Silent and Sordid which actually attaches to a location. Now, locations usually don’t have a habit of disappearing mid-scenario, so unless that’s part of our scenario gimmick we can’t use that as a discard trigger. In Silent and Sordid’s case, there was the need for its own discard trigger based on agenda advancement. But if you are doing an Essex Express style scenario or something with midgame setups like Search for Kadath, then attaching something to a location could be a viable way to at the same time define how long it stays on the board. More commonly, you can use attachment to enemies or player cards this way though. Altered Beast attaches to an enemy and gives it a new effect while in play. There’s no explicit way to discard Altered Beast itself, but that’s fine because there’s one implied: Kill the Abomination. I actually didn’t find an example for a card that attaches to a player card that doesn’t also come with its own separate discard activation. Threads of Reality and Fungal Rot attach to items you control, but they do offer ways to get rid of it without losing your item. One could imagine the option of making a card that attaches to a player card, but can only leave play if the attached card does as well. Seems like a bit of untapped design space to explore? I suppose cards like Scarlet Key’s Touch of the Beyond that put doom on player assets are the closest we have to this right now. So …. Design Challenge! Design a treachery that attaches to a player asset without an explicit discard trigger or activation. There’s got to be something there ;) With this type of discard trigger (based on the discard of a card it is attached to) we have crossed an important line. We are now looking at discard conditions that respond to player input. Purely timed stuff like “at the end of turn” or “when the agenda advances” are mostly out of player hands and just happen. But attach something to an enemy and now players can actively do something about it. This is huge for the impact and the feel of the treachery in play, especially when the treachery doesn’t just enhance that particular enemy like Altered Beast does, but has an effect that reaches beyond just where the enemy can attack. Like Abandoned to Madness from Edge of the Earth which will reinforce the newfound importance of the attached enemy with a doom token. Several player weaknesses also fall under this umbrella, like Zoey’s Smite the Wicked and Hank’s “Where’s Pa?”. A possible drawback of using this templating is the variance from where the card attaches. Conditions like defining a trait (“attach to a Cultist enemy in play”) or excluding a trait (“attach to a non-Elite enemy in play”) can help you to make your card a bit more predictable, but depending on what enemies are in your encounter deck, there can be some heavy variance. Taking Altered Beast as an example, it’s bad enough when it lands on an Avian or Lupine Thrall, but it can also stick to a Brood of Yog-Sothoth. This variance doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but you should at least be conscious about it. If you are attaching treacheries to player cards, things become very unpredictable. But again, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. As players, we already know about keeping sacrificial assets around for Crypt Chill and its derivatives. Likely, the same philosophy would apply to whatever you as a designer plan on doing to your player’s assets. My advice here is to not try and make it player-proof to force your card to have impact. Let them play around your card, it makes for good gameplay.
Now that we crossed the line into player interaction, let’s dive straight into that with the double action discard. Note that we are still testless with our discard effects here. Words of Power asks for two actions, to be spent at your earliest convenience. Until then, it does its thing. The trick here is of course that spending two actions is never convenient. It’s two thirds of a turn and that stings like hell. This way of attaching a cost to discarding a card is often seen as a bit boring, especially on weaknesses, but i do actually quite like this for proper treacheries from the encounter deck. One of the biggest advantages of this template is that every investigator is able to perform this discard condition. Your stats don’t matter, Mark Harrigan is just as good at discarding a Words of Power as Preston Fairmont. At the same time, actions are a valuable commodity, arguably the most valuable in the game. So there is a big decision space for the player behind when to go ahead and finally spend those two actions. There will always be something better you can do for your actions than ditch the treachery, but if you feel like you have to do it anyways eventually, maybe you should do it now rather than later and suffer through whatever effect the card is for more turns? Or maybe you can wait a bit until there’s nothing pressing going on with the board? Maybe the agenda or act is about to advance and you want to go into that without a potential burden in your threat area? Or maybe you even think you can sit the card out for the whole game and just never spend the actions! There is a lot to this, the opportunity cost of two actions is a lot higher than one action, even if that one action would come with a test of some sort. No other card illustrates this as well as Compulsion from Scarlet Keys. That card is just a fantastic design. It doesn’t do anything bad while in play, except threaten to force you to spend those two actions. So you constantly have to weigh the opportunity cost of spending the actions now vs having to spend them later. Brilliant card. Adding to all the decision space on top is that any investigator at the same location as the treachery can activate it. So if your fighter is affected by Words of Power but also engaged with a cultist they’d really like to fight, then another player can move into the fighter’s location and get rid of their Words of Power for them. You definitely do not want to overdo it with this sort of effect however. Costing players two thirds of their turn once or twice a game is good to create pressure, to force things to stack up and the board to worsen a bit. This is great to ramp up the tension and make them work harder to catch up on the following turns when they have their actions for themselves again. But if players get bombarded with this sort of effect, possibly even in back to back to back turns, then this can leave them without the ability to actually play the game. Sadly, this is what happens in Scarlet Keys in most scenarios that have Compulsion, undoing much of the good will i have towards the card itself. This is also why the double action discard hits so much harder on player weaknesses. The two actions are asked of the player in addition to what comes from the Mythos phase and suddenly Ashcan finds himself Wracked by Nightmares, with a Deep One Bull in his threat area and his pants assets down. Consider how urgent the effect is your treachery causes while in play. I’d argue that the decisions around when to spend those two actions play best when the effect is less impactful and when you are able to play around it in other ways. To use another weakness example, i like Nihilism a whole lot. It’s a card that really tempts you to just leave it in your threat area. And it’s often fine, even if it triggers once it’s not worth spending two actions… until it suddenly isn’t fine, you took 3 damage and 3 horror from it already and are considering spending two actions now when you should have done so seven turns ago because if you don’t the next tentacle you draw defeats you. I think this double action discard should be a thing that most encounter decks have. Not a lot of it, just on one card with two or three copies. But it plays just very, very well as long as the action taxes don’t pile up.
Which leads us to what is probably the most common discard activation: An action and most often, a test. At this point, player interaction is pretty huge. An action is required, and usually this action can be performed by any investigator at the location with the treachery. This is important not only so that the players can try to optimize where in their turn sequence they can fit this extra action that is required, but also because there is now a test involved and different investigators are differently well suited for those. This leads to dynamic lines of play that not only are just simply good and engaging gameplay, but also can do a solid amount of emergent story telling. The rogue has to pick the locks on the Locked Door to enable their seeker teammate to start searching the place. The booksmart character fixes the Malfunction on the car for the others. The Mystic frees their fighter teammate from the Dreams of R’lyeh they are suffering from. Requiring only one action instead of two as in the previous template lets these stack up with each other much better without becoming overpowering and you can use a multitude of treacheries with this sort of activation in your encounter deck. Notably, the test on the activation means that it can fail and thus require another activation. Preventing this might entice investigators to throw skills or other spare icons at these tests, for even more interactivity. The most common thing we see on treacheries is that a specific test is required at difficulty 3. This is by far the most common case. A common variant is like on the Locked Door (or Circle Undone’s Primordial Gateway, for an example that uses the other two skills), which increases the difficulty to 4, but allows testing one of two skills at the player’s choice. There is of course no hard rule preventing you from using other numbers here, but if you don’t have a specific reason for it, i’d suggest starting with this expected template. Willpower and agility are commonly accepted to be the most tested skills, since intellect and combat are already tested plenty by other parts of the game. This is a rather lowkey discard condition that doesn’t ask too much of the players. Since anyone in the team can attempt the test and the timing is up to the players, there’s not a huge amount of opportunity cost to it. In case of a fail to the test, the players can even try again. This is probably how most discard conditions should work. What’s also nice about this is that there’s no trigger that needs to be tracked or that can be forgotten. It is all consciously activated, there’s no “Oh, i should’ve tested this end of last turn, btw” with these. They are just clean and simple, both for the designer and for the player. Rarely, there will be no test here and the card will just discard for an action. This is not used very often and for examples i actually have to dig into Return to Dunwich (Violent Commands, which adds another cost to the discard) and The Blob That Ate Everything standalone (“It’s Got Me”, which adds another condition).
We had activation for two actions, activation for one action… obviously the next one is activation for zero actions. This is not used a whole lot as you’ll usually want your treachery to have some cost for the player to it. So this will come with an additional cost to the activation, like the discard of a card on Undertow or the damage on Idle Hands. Depending on these additional costs or the feasability of any attached tests, this type of treachery can become a near-freebie for some investigators, leading to them being very swingy in terms of impact. If the investigator has not trouble passing combat or agility tests, then Undertow is a rather mild card… but if they don’t then it can be quite vicious. Idle Hands can even be borderline helpful to the investigator. In many cases, a straight revelation treachery that discards after resolving can do a very similar job which is why you see this template used so little.
There is another way to have players take a conscious action to discard something without actually costing them an action, however. Obscuring Fog discards when the player takes a successful investigate, but without replacing that investigation. So if they succeed, it didn’t cost them an action (but might have cost them an extra Perception or similar to throw into the test) but your treachery still gets the benefit of the things we talked about earlier. There are similar considerations for the player to make when it comes to turn order, who takes those tests, etc. Arcane Barrier does something similar through attaching a test to an action that would usually be testless. As long as you pass that test, you are fine and have actually not lost anything. Fail? That has consequences. If you compare Undertow from the previous set of examples with Arcane Barrier, the difference is that Undertow frontloads the discard test. You have to do the test to discard it first, otherwise you won’t be able to move without consequence. With Arcane Barrier, you move first, then have to see if Arcane Barrier does something to you. Similarly, Locked Door will prevent all investigations unless handled first, while Obscuring Fog will let you investigate… but might get in the way. So, using this sort of trigger instead of an explicitly frontloaded test introduces some uncertaintly into the player actions where they don’t know whether they will succeed at what they attempt, but if they do take the risk they are rewarded through not having to go through a separate step to discard the treachery beforehand. Both ways of doing it definitely have their merit and which way to go will depend on what you want to achieve with your treachery design.
To take stock for a second, we started on testless timed triggers, went into testless activations, then into activations with tests. So clearly, we have to go into timed triggers with tests next to close the circle. There is a prominent group of treacheries that allows testing to discard it, but only once per round, usually at the end of the affected player’s turn. As you can see from the horrorshow of examples above, some of the more impactful and crippling treacheries belong to this group and that’s no coincidence. This discard condition is one that leaves very little in player hands and enforces multiple restrictions on them compared to the standard “action + test” thing. First off, moving the test to the end of the player turn ensures that they will have to suffer through the effect of the card for at least one full turn. An activation istead of a trigger would have given the opportunity to get rid of it before performing the rest of their turn. Then, this also means that no other player can take the test for you. An activation in your threat area could be performed by another investigator at the location, for example if Skids draws Dreams of R’lyeh, then Agnes could spend one of her actions and do the willpower test for him. No such luck with Frozen in Fear. Agnes can toss a skill card into the test if she shares a location with Skids at the end of his turn, but the test will need to be done by the investigator that drew it. Finally, there is only one try per trigger. If you end up failing the test on Dreams of R’lyeh the action is wasted and that kinda stinks, but you at least get to try again right afterwards. With Frozen in Fear, failing the test means you will have to suffer through it for at least another round before you get another attempt at passing the test. These limitations stack up to make the “end of turn, test” template one to put on treacheries that you want to be particularly impactful and punishing. Through limiting the player’s options to interact with them, these treacheries are elevated to something special. The one silver lining from a player’s perspective is that if you pass the test on the first try, you didn’t spend one of your precious actions on discarding the treachery. An interesting detail i would like to point out here from a “treachery design best practices” point of view: While we established earlier that testless discard triggers are best put at the end of the round so the players can discard all of them in one go and don’t have to care about different timing windows for the same thing, these ones are (without exception in the officially released content, if i am not mistaken) all triggering end of turn. That makes sense, considering there is a test attached. The player just had their turn, did their things, is probably still holding the chaos bag. So they might as well do the test for the treachery at that point too.
We’ve now run the full circle around having a test, having no test, having an action, having a trigger and even triggering on an action. What’s left at this point? Well, you can actually trigger on a lot of things. Beyond the Veil and Evil Past both have their discard triggers based on a deck running out of cards. One has a test, the other doesn’t. Psychopomp’s Song triggers on taking damage. There is all sorts of things that you could trigger the discard condition of your treachery on and it’s of course going to be hard to talk about them in a general sense. Often, as with all the three examples i just mentioned, these type of treachery will be delayed effects that do something when they trigger. But one could certainly imagine a continous effect as well that only gets lifted once a certain condition triggers. This can get as weird as you want. Just look at Daemonic Piping and Terror in the Night for something weird and interesting. How much any of this is in player’s hand, is going to depend on the specific trigger, of course. There is little to no player input when it comes to Daemonic Pipings, but Psychopomp’s Song can be played around at least to some extent.
Okay, at this point we pretty much covered everything. That last one was open enough. But i have two more options for you. The first one: Consider making your treachery an enemy. Looking at the enemies we face in this game, not all of them are of the same variety as a ghoul or a nightgaunt, out there to engage you and beat you down. Many of them just stay in play, are most happy when you don’t bother them while they put some sort of effect on the table. They are basically just treacheries, and their bodies provide a discard condition through defeating them. The best example from the Core Set is probably the Acolyte which is, if you squint a bit, just an Ancient Evils on legs. If you see Aloof and Hunter on the same enemy, you are likely dealing with this sort of thing. No matter if its Whippoorwill, Brown Jenkin or Weeping Yurei, what you have there are persistent treacheries that don’t go into a threat area but to the board and follow you around. Well, and then there is Cavern Moss which… uhm… i am not really sure what’s up with that one. Please don’t use it as a template, it’s way too weird. Enemies are very interactive from the player side and quite a few investigators and player cards care about having enemies around, defeating them, evading them, parlaying them… in short, they are a very important part of a scenario. Turning a treachery into an enemy is a rather huge change to the feel of the card and will not be appropriate most of the time, but it’s absolutely a tool at your disposal to keep in mind. Designing the treachery to attach to an enemy can be sort of a half-way compromise.
And finally, there’s the last option: Just don’t have a way to discard it at all. Your treachery enters play and unless someone pulls an Alter Fate out of their hat, it will still be there when the game ends. Now, this can obviously get quite obnoxious, especially when it’s a treachery that exists in multiple copies. But there are some ways to get something like this done. Infinite Doorway and Stone Barrier both attach to a location, allowing players to play around the card by not going there. At least that’s the theory… because as anyone who had multiple Infinite Doorways on the Museum Halls in Miskatonic Museum or a Stone Barrier on Lair of Dagon’s central location can confirm, the impact of these swing wildly depending on where they attach. (To be fair, Lair of Dagon at least has a safeguard printed on its act card that allows discarding Stone Barrier, albeit at a steep price.) Fate of All Fools is an example of a card that can not be played around this way. Actually, once you have it on you, you will even suffer from any copies your teammates draw. It’s rough and the only way to not die to it over time is adding doom through one of its choices or finishing the game before it kills you. Either way, you are now on a serious clock to get the scenario done. This sort of thing is best used sparingly and/or with restrained effects. While i do think that Stone Barrier is overall a pretty gross card, i will at least say that i like that it has two levers to interact with it through the activated abilities on the card itself and on the act for Lair of Dagon. Consider how a player can still interact with your card even if you make it never expire. The effects on Infinite Doorways and on Return to TCU’s Mists from Beyond are solid examples for cards that don’t do a whole lot unless they get to be relevant many times. Even if a two-action discard was printed on them, it would be unlikely that anyone would feel pressed to use that, which points towards these cards being fine even if there’s no hard out against them.
Coming to a close
Time to wrap this up. I believe i have given a comprehensive overview of discard conditions for treacheries here. Is it useful for anyone? No idea, feel free to tell me! This is one of these things where i started thinking about something minor and it then snowballed into a bigger thing that i might as well turn into an article. Also, I’d be happy to hear any suggestions for other topics that I could shine a spotlight on.
Today, i want to share a look at the planned additions to Beyond the Gates of Sleep for the fan-made Return to Dream-Eaters.
Goals
Before getting to the changes, let’s recap what sort of issues i have with Beyond the Gates of Sleep that i would want to touch up with the additions from the Return.
The “Prelude” : The first bit of the scenario is completely narratively driven. Walking down the steps, the players meet Tweedledee and Tweedledum and learn that they can change their clothes with their mind and that their mind is thus their greatest weapon. Sure, makes perfect sense. Once we have accepted that there is no spoon and that if we die in the game of Arkham Horror we die in real life, we move on. There’s no encounter deck, so all we do is discard some cards, possibly take some horror and add some skull tokens into the bag. Just follow the instructions on the locations, there isn’t really much gameplay here. It’s all very thematic and kinda cool on the first play (well, as thematic as the dreamlands can be…) but tbh on replays it’s possibly the most boring that Arkham Horror: The Card Game has ever gotten. So what do i do with that? Is it even fixable within means of what a Return To box usually contains? I don’t really think it is. Or if it is, it takes too many resources away from other more deserving endevours. I am going to treat this first bit like a Hemlock Vale prelude (except that i like the preludes) and just act as if the actual scenario starts with the investigators reaching the Enchanted Path. If it turns out that i still have a few extra cards available in the budget near the end of the project, i might throw a token replacement location or two at the intro to Gates, but for now i am going to ignore it.
Staying on the Path: “All you have to do is stay on the path.” That’s what it says on the act and indeed some players actually did this. And got promptly punished for it through earning zero or close to zero XP for the scenario. Basically costing them more that a third of what they’d otherwise get all campaign. While i am all for clowning a bit on those that could be dissuaded from having fun just by threatening them with an entry into the campaign log (ooooh spooky) that does seem a bit excessive. It’s not like Search for Kadath and Dark Side of the Moon are particularly easy either, so going into them with 10XP+ less than scheduled is likely just going to tank your whole campaign. So I’ll be going ahead and fix that. I don’t want to encourage taking the boring way through the scenario, but i do at least not want to punish anyone for just wanting to do it once on a replay.
Locations: The setup for the scenario is super basic. A central location connected to a bunch of randomly assembled wood locations around it. While that is terribly unexciting, it does present a great opportunity to add some extra locations for variety. So that’s definitely on the menu.
Hook for later Payoff: As an attempt to link the two campaign sides closer together, i want to set something up in each campaign that pays off in the other one. I already talked about this before, but the plan from the beginning was to have something in scenario 1 that is referenced later in scenario 3 of the other side. For Waking Nightmare, this was easy, Dr. Maheswaran was right there as an open thread waiting to get tied up. Gates of Sleep only has the “Staying on the path” thing as campaign log entry and i didn’t want to pay that off because as mentioned i don’t believe that to be something worth actively encouraging. There’s also the thing with the zoogs vs cats decision in the resolution, but ideally i’d want to pay off something based in the gameplay. So i had to come up with something new here.
Return to Beyond the Gates of Sleep
Let’s start looking at the actual changes to the scenario by looking at the encounter deck: Chilling Cold, Agents of Nyarlathothep, Dreamer’s Curse, Dreamlands and Zoogs are used. Of those. Chilling Cold and Dreamlands are replaced by new sets, Chilling Blood and Dreamscapes respectively.
Freezing Blood doesn’t interact with the scenario itself all that much, but acts as a suitable replacement for Crypt Chill. Fogging Vision works very well in Gates of Sleep. It plays into the discard theme that is present for much of the scenario and is relevant both for investigators staying on the path and those straying from it.
Some more stalling and discard that fits in well with the rest of the scenario. Treads similar grounds as the encounter set it replaces, but in a more lasting manner.
Overall, these two replacements don’t do much towards changing how the scenario plays out, but they do provide some variety and i feel like using one of each card from both the original sets and the replacement sets is going to work particularly well here.
While we are on the topic of the encounter deck… Slipping Deeper is added to it, with a full three copies. This card is intended to play differently depending on whether you stay on the path or not. If you aren’t, then this will cause anyone who currently happens to be on the Enchanted Path to just discard a card (the minimum) and Surge. For those who actually do want to stay on the path, this can even end up being a boon as it can generate additional clues on The Enchanted Path, which would otherwise cost you three actions per clue to spawn. The cost in cards is steep however and can leave you unprepared for whatever you draw from the Surge. The intention here is to either harass the players and push them into the wood locations if they are straying from the path or to throw them a bone when deciding to stay on the path. I am still debating changing it to only give a clue for each three cards discarded instead of two. That would mirror the three actions better and make it a little less insane in bigger groups. Alternatively (or in addition) i will probably put a limit on how many clues can be spawned this way on one draw of the card.
On the topic of staying on the path, here’s the fix for the feel bad moment of getting royally screwed over for doing as told. You simply gain the XP from the unrevealed locations. I think the process of going through the effort of spawning the clues and discovering them one by one is annoying and tedious enough to warrant this. A bit of a brute force solution to the issue, but this should do the job just fine.
And that leaves us with the final bit added to the scenario. Two locations, to shuffle in with the original ones. You still use the original amount of Woods locations, so which ones you get is supposed to be random (feel free to randomly remove from the originals, then shuffle these in though…). The first location, the Clearing, does once again play into the discard theme of the scenario. There’s no player scaling on the number of clues here, so grabbing everything will cost you a total of 3+2+1=6 cards… but no actions. Unless you need to spend actions to draw those cards, of course. The Wishing Well triggers a scenario interlude. This provides the hook for the later payoff in the other campaign half.
The Interlude is forward with the sacrifice asked of the investigator that triggered it and gives them a choice on whether to go through with it. If they don’t, they get an immediate reward:
An easy 2VP. But if they do decide to chuck something into the well, they… uuuh…
While ending on an anticlimactic note here, this will pay off for the other group during the setup of Return to The Point of No Return, when the item that was sacrificed here will fall before an investigators feet, ready to be picked up, starting in their play area and added to their deck.
And there you have it, the planned changes for Gates of Sleep. Nothing earthshaking, but it all seems solid enough. A bit gimmicky in parts, but again that seems appropriate for the Dream-Eaters campaign. Three copies of Slipping Deeper, two locations and a scenario setup card is going to take 6 cards out of our card budget, which isn’t a whole lot, leaving plenty of room for changes to other scenarios. Or as mentioned, i might come back in the end with a replacement location or two and just fiddle a bit with the walk down the Steps.
Next Up
Well, next would be Search for Kadath. To be quite honest, what i have for that right now is a bit of a mess. But i suppose that could make it interesting to show off as well. After all, this dev diary thing is not for showing off the final thing, but to show how i get there. And showcasing something that (probably) doesn’t really work is a good case study. So yeah, next up: Travel Events, or: how to make Search for Kadath midgame setups even more annoying ;)
It’s been a hot second since my last entry in the Diary for the custom Return to Dream-Eaters. What happened?
Well, the plan was to finish up one side of the Dream-Eaters campaign before moving into the next one. Entry #6 was originally supposed to detail all the final changes to The Web of Dreams and include a TTS playable version of that side of the campaign attached. However, that’s not really coming together the way i want it to right now. Especially the Return to the Point of No Return is giving me a bit of grief. I have this notion that i should do something with the ghouls and Pickman in this scenario, but nothing that i threw at the wall managed to stick so far. There’s also the whole thing with the Black Cat where i was tinkering with cards referencing your choice with regards to it and that is also not coming together. Bottom line is, i think i hit a bit of a wall there and i need to refocus on something else for now and get back to it later. So that’s what i am doing now, starting to peek at what i have so far for campaign A, The Dream-Quest.
With all the scheduled Hemlock Vale coverage being done, it’s about high time to get this going again!
State of the Project
So, since it’s been a while, let’s take stock of where i am with this.
Player cards: Mostly locked in, but i am still changing details on some of them. I shared a rundown of the designs in entry #5. Since then i did redesign both of the Mystic cards (Open Gate, Mind’s Eye). The weakness locations are still the thing that needs the most work here. Aside from the weaknesses, i believe i am in a good place with these now though and i don’t foresee any major changes to them.
Encounter replacements: Looking good. The two cards that were giving me grief the last time i posted about the URtTDE on here were Freezing Blood (the replacement for Crypt Chill) and Looming Evils (the replacement for Ancient Evils), both of which i tweaked and updated over the last weeks (Freezing Blood, Looming Evils).
The Black Cat: I had some ideas for having more consequences from your choices regarding the cat. None really felt all that great in the end so far. My current thought is to just leave it be.
Campaign A: – Rt Gates of Sleep: A bit of a boring scenario and the first half is so non-interactive that there’s not much to grip at with a Return either. I fix the heavy punishment for staying on the path (i don’t think you should get rewarded for doing so, but getting screwed over is just an unnecessary feel bad). The Woods gain some extra locations and a hook for a later payoff. Overall this looks fine to me, even if it doesn’t fundamentally solve Gates of Sleeps primary issue of being just a bit too bland. – Rt Kadath: This is still a big construction site. I had an idea of introducing travel events that would happen whenever changing islands. Those would interfere with the travels, making you change course or add something new to wherever you go. This all ended up a bit too fiddly for its own good, though. My current thought is that i am going to scrap that idea and start fresh. So, in conclusion, Rt Kadath isn’t really all that far along yet. – Rt Dark Side: I like what i have here and this is mostly done, i think. A rather flashy change in that the players meet Cadet Maheswaran, a projection of the real-world Dr. Maheswaran that is watching over their sleeping bodies (provided she survived Waking Nightmare…). Also some more classic Return To style location replacements to change up some things. Looks good to me! – Rt Where the Gods Dwell: I’m not going to lie, I am very excited about what i have going on here. I spend a considerable amount of card budget on making the finale with Nyarlathothep more dramatic. Among other things, everyone is going to encounter the Nyarlathothep amalgamation in the end now. I also attempt to fix the bad player count scaling of the scenario through a combination of extra turns available and scaling the encounter deck size by player count which will help solo and 2p groups with finding the hidden cards they need. These scenario changes aren’t fully done yet, but i am about 80% towards where i want to be, i think.
Campaign B: – Rt Waking Nightmare: Talked about here. Subtle changes, but overall this looks good to me! – Rt Thousand Shapes: Talked about here. Large sweeping changes to streamline the scenario. I consider this finished, too. – Rt No Return: Talked about here. I think this still needs work. I like the Tar Tyrant, but the rest of it is all a bit flat and doesn’t change anything much. – Rt Weaver: Talked about here. I am happy with how these changes play. The extra movement rules for the spider are nice and the nerfed clue damage also plays well.
So what’s happening next?
To identify the big road blocks: The Return to No Return and the Return to Kadath are the two big ones that i am still very unsatisfied with. Rt Gods Dwell also needs a good amount of tinkering with its numbers. And the weakness locations need to get to a less wordy, less awkward spot. Honestly. the rest is not all that dramatic. For the most part, this is looking promising, but as is so often the case, the last bit is what takes the longest. I also want to rebuild the TTS implementation from scratch which is going to take a good amount of time.
Sooo… still don’t expect the release of this thing too soon. But it’s coming along and even though i didn’t talk about the project much in recent months, it is still slowly progressing in the background. But i simply can not make it a priority for me right now, so who knows when it gets there. I am shooting for a release before Winds of Winter, but if i don’t manage that, i should at least beat Doors of Stone?
I do plan on continuing the “dev diary” soon though, with my notes on Return to Beyond the Gates of Sleep.
