Mythos Horror

[Ajsalium]

How to start? I'll try to be brief.

Over the last years, I've been developing, very slowly, three rpg's that use the same set of rules but have different settings (one fantasy, Ajsalium; one science fiction, Galaxtar; and one horror, Necronomicon). I too have been thinking of "lite" versions of each, in the guise of a boardgame. My horror boardgame project is titled, as of now, Mythos Horror.

To spill the beans, it's based mostly on the boardgames Arkham Horror and Doom. Perhaps it's closer to Doom in its rules, but with the lovecraftian flavour of Arkham. As such, it's a "game master versus players" type of game; and it's mostly centered on combat against different creatures. But the ultimate end is to close portals to avoid a Great Old One appearing and summoing forth the Outer Gods.

What follows is the sketch ideas I have written so far:

MYTHOS HORROR

What is this?
Horror boardgame with miniatures, in which a Game Master (GM) confronts three-six players (preferably four-five).

Game background:
The stars are right. For the first time in over a millennium, the stars are correctly aligned, and portals to eldritch energies have opened all throught Arkham, drawing the attention of worshippers of the Outer Gods. They'll start to come out of their hides and commit sacrificial killings, raising the hysteria until enough insanity permeates the zone so that a Great Old One raises, who will in turn summon forth the dreaded Outer Gods.
It is the mission of the players to stop this madness, killing the evil minions and creatures, and learning the secrets from thomes of occult lore to seal off the portals.

Rules:
1) The boardgame is the city of Arkham.
2) Time must be tracked because the evil side has only a set number of turns to invoque a Great Old One and an Outer God before the stars become misaligned again. Each turn, the time counter advances one position; if it reaches a set point before an Outer God is summoned, players have won the game. Changing the number of established turns will make the game easier or more difficult.
3) Hysteria must be tracked, too. Whenever the GM kills a victim, the hysteria counter raises as much as the insanity value of the minion used. The hysteria counter is used to determine the type of die that will be used for generating monsters; whenever hysteria reaches a certain point, a different type of die must be used.
4) Initial layout. At the start of the game, the players will place their characters at the Miskatonic University. The GM will place some monsters, too: a cultist, a deep one, a tcho-tcho, and a ghoul.
5) Generating monsters. At the end of each turn, one random monster is generated in locations with an active portal. The location will be choosed by the GM. Then, to determine which monster appears, a die is rolled and the corresponding table is consulted. The type of die that should be rolled depends on the hysteria level; begining with a d4, and increasing until a d12 is used. The "bigger" the die, the more dangerous the creatures that can appear. If there are no more minis of rolled type left, then no monster is generated.
6) Awakening a Great Old One. Once hysteria reaches its maximum, a d20 is used to generate monsters; but the last 8 entries in the table are actually Great Old Ones. Each has its own rules for summoning the Outer Gods.
7) Special places in Arkham. Silver Key Lodge: a character may go there to join that group, at the cost of one sanity point; the benefit is to receive one occult lore book (needed to seal a portal). Hospital: when a character loses all his hit points, he'll lose all items, benefits and allies he may have gathered, and is sent there; he'll recover one hit point per turn, and must stay there until he recovers at least half his original HP. Sanitarium: equivalent to the hospital, but for when the when the character loses all his sanity.

(6) 1-  Cultist
     2-  Tcho-tcho
     3-  Deep one
     4-  Ghoul
(4) 5-  Serpentfolk
     6-  Mi-Go
(3) 7-  Servitor of the Outer Gods
     8-  Hound of Tindalos
(2) 9-  Hunting horror
     10- Leng spider
(1) 11- Dark spawn of Shub-Niggurath
     12- Shoggoth
(*) 13- Itaqhua
     14- Y'golonak
     15- Yig
     16- Chauga Faugn
     17- Tsuthoggua
     18- Hastur
     19- Cthulhu
     20- Nyarlathotep

So if you have any suggestions, please post them.

[LidlessEye]

While I'm sure you've put extensive work into this, it pains me to tell you that what you're proposing is a simplified version of an existing game: Arkham Horror (produced by Fantasy Flight).  Furthermore, Arkham Horror already has a very strong following in the boardgaming community, so it'd be very difficult to pull those players away.  What you do have working in your favour here is simplicity.  Arkham Horror has about 60 pages of rules, takes up to two hours just to set up (thanks to an enormous number of components) and at least 3-4 hours to play, so a more straightforward Mythos adventure game would certainly be welcome, but I expect it will have to mechanically differ from the existing offering considerably in order to have any hope of success.

[Ajsalium]

Oh, I do know. In fact, I mentioned that on my post. And I'm not trying to pull anyone from Arkham Horror. I'm creating this game solely for playing with my mates, although I'll upload the rules if and when I finish them for anyone to download and have a go if they wish. Anyway, the general mechanics of the game are more of a [Advanced] Heroquest type.

One thing I'd like your opinion about is the boardgame per se. I've thought of three different possibilities, and can't decide.
1) Fixed board. I'll craft a map of Arkham (likely with Dundjinni, or similar product), and that will be used every game. The main pro is that it's the more realistic approach. The main drawback is that it may make the games become rather repetitive.
2) Modular board. I'll craft a "blank" map of Arkham (i.e., just the borders of the city, the Miskatonic river, and the rest will be an asphalt texture); then I'll create some maps of different types of buildings. The GM will arrange the buildings tiles on the blank map as he wishes, creating different versions of Arkham every game. Said building tiles will be placed only when they fall within line of sight of player characters. The pro is that it allows for variety; but the con is that it's not realistic.
3) "Rooms and corridors" board. A weird idea. The map will be built using tiles that resemble the rooms and corridors typical of Space Hulk or Doom boardgames; only that the "rooms" will be buildings, and the "corridors" will be street tiles. This option has no realism whatsoever, but may be worth considering?

[Anatoli]

Arkham Horror is imo an excellent boardgame, many of the expansions are worth the money and necessary to add some depth and character to the core game. However there should not be more than 1 expansion in play at any one time else the game capsizes severly.

What you describe sounds like a mix of Arkham Horror and the Mansions of Madness (which I have yet to play). But, if the game is good I'm sure it would find it's fan base. But I would really try hard to make it stand out from Mansionf of Madness and Arkham Horror in terms of game mechanics and rules. Don't mind the Lovecraft stuff being shared with several other games, as long as it is different in a good way you'll get people to play it 

[Uncle Mike]

I'd go with options 2 and 3. Modular board sections with tunnels and corridors possibly triggered by reaching a token or something like that.
Good luck, never enough 'Thulhu games out there if you ask me. 

[Ajsalium]

Decided for modular board. Decided, too, to get rid of the time (turns) limit. And added a good amount of stuff. This is looking more like a dungeon-crawl or gun-crawl, but set on a modern open urban area and with a lovecraftian taste. Updated rules bellow, additions/changes italicized for your convenience:


MYTHOS HORROR

What is this?
Horror boardgame with miniatures, in which a Game Master (GM) confronts three-six players (preferably four-five).

Game background:
The stars are right. For the first time in over a millennium, the stars are correctly aligned, and portals to eldritch energies have opened all throughout Arkham, drawing the attention of worshippers of the Outer Gods. They'll start to come out of their hides and commit sacrificial killings, raising the hysteria until enough insanity permeates the zone so that a Great Old One raises, who will in turn summon forth the dreaded Outer Gods.
It is the mission of the players to stop this madness, killing the evil minions and creatures, and learning the secrets from thomes of occult lore to seal off the portals.

Rules:
1) The boardgame is the city of Arkham. This is a modular board, composed of a gridded "blank background" with some minor elements, like the limits of the town and the Miskatonic river, and an asphalt texture. Buildings and other similar elements will be printed on card tiles, to be arranged on the blank board as the GM desires.
2) Initial layout. At the start of the game, the GM will place all the tiles that make up the town face down, except for the Miskatonic University. The players will place their characters there. In his own map, the GM will mark the position of four creatures, too: a cultist, a deep one, a tcho-tcho, and a ghoul.
3) Turns, rounds, and actions. One turn consists of everybody (players and GM) taking one round each. The order is players first, GM later. Regarding the players, the one whose character has the highest initiative (INI) value goes first, and so on. Each round, a player can do up to two actions. A list of actions: move, attack, activate, investigate. The GM will take one round for every creature he's controlling.
4) Movement and exploration. All character and creatures have a movement (MOV) value: that's the number of squares it may move, horizontally, vertically or diagonally, in a single movement action. They can move all across revealed tiles and adjacent asphalt. Buildings are revealed (its tiles put face up) whenever a character gets within line of sight of them. Since the action of the game takes places at night, the line of sight only goes as far as three squares away from the character (some items, such as a flashlight, may provide bonuses).
5) Hysteria must be tracked. Whenever the GM kills a victim, the hysteria counter raises as much as the insanity value of the minion used. The hysteria counter is used to determine the type of die that will be used for generating monsters; whenever hysteria reaches a certain point, a different type of die must be used.
6) Generating creatures. At the end of each turn, one random creature is generated in locations with an active portal. The location will be chose by the GM. Then, to determine which creature appears, a die is rolled and the corresponding table is consulted. The type of die that should be rolled depends on the hysteria level; beginning with a d4, and increasing until a d12 is used. The "bigger" the die, the more dangerous the creatures that can appear. If there are no more minis of rolled type left, then no monster is generated.
7) Awakening a Great Old One. Once hysteria reaches its maximum, a d20 is used to generate creatures; but the last 8 entries in the table are actually Great Old Ones. Each has its own rules for summoning the Outer Gods.
8) Special locales in Arkham: Silver Key Lodge. Once discovered, a character may go there to join that group, "paying" one salvation point and at the cost of one sanity point; the benefit is to receive one occult lore book (needed to seal a portal). This can be done only once. Also, this place is a safe haven: the GM can't place an eldritch portal there, neither can creatures enter the place.
9) Special locales in Arkham: Hospital. When a character loses all his hit points, he'll lose all items, benefits and allies he may have gathered, and is sent there; he'll recover one hit point per turn, and must stay there until he recovers at least half his original HP. If that happens before the hospital tile is revealed, the mini will be put away; and once the minimum recovery turns have passed, the GM will reveal the hospital (turn the tile face up) and place the character mini there. Bear in mind that creatures can enter the hospital, and portals may be opened there.
10) Special locales in Arkham: Sanitarium. Equivalent to the hospital in every point, but for when the character loses all his sanity points.
11) Salvation points. These points measure how well the characters are doing in their efforts to save Arkham and the world, and specially the public trust they gain through their deeds. Salvation points are earned by defeating a creature or closing a portal, for example. These points can then be used to enlist an ally, make the hysteria counter go down, or gain access to the Necronomicon.
12) Damnation points. Sometimes, immoral acts must be committed for the greater good. The GM will get damnation points when players, for example, break into buildings, loot a corpse, or sacrifice an ally. Then, he can use these points to generate more creatures, or a portal, or to make the hysteria level raise.

(6)  1-  Cultist
     2-  Tcho-tcho
     3-  Deep One
     4-  Ghoul
(4)  5-  Serpentfolk
     6-  Mi-Go
(3)  7-  Servitor of the Outer Gods
     8-  Hound of Tindalos
(2)  9-  Hunting Horror
     10- Leng Spider
(1)  11- Dark Spawn of Shub-Niggurath
     12- Shoggoth
(*)  13- Itaqhua
     14- Y'golonak
     15- Yig
     16- Chauga Faugn
     17- Tsuthoggua
     18- Hastur
     19- Cthulhu
     20- Nyarlathotep