Chaosium Digest Volume 25, Number 11 Date: Sunday, May 24, 1998 Number: 1 of 1 Contents: CF: Pragmatic Hobo and Homeless Waif (Jeremy York) MYTHOS A Hobo Deck (Jeremy York) MYTHOS Editor's Notes: This week a pair of Mythos article that made their debut on the Chaosium web site. You can find a whole set of card files if you point your web browser to: http://www.chaosium.com/mythos/ And that's it for this week; send those articles in! Shannon RECENT RELEASES: * Call of Cthulhu - _The Bermuda Triangle_ (Chaosium, 96 pg., $16.95), by Justin Schmid, is a 1990s sourcebook on the haunted Caribbean. It contains background on both the oceans and the islands, information on the mysteries of the triangle, mythos connections, ideas for Caribbean campaigns, and a short scenario, "The Privateer's Diary". ISBN 1-56882-122-0. NEW ELECTRONIC RESOURCES: Update # 22 to the Reader's Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos http://www.toddalan.com/~berglund/ For this update, "The Cthulhu Mythos Listings" has added 9 new creators and updated 39 listings. "The Cthulhu Mythos on the Internet has 140 new links and 80 updated links, and has dropped 27 links. "Other Web Pages of Interest" has 9 new links and 9 updated links, and has dropped 10 links. [The rest are borrowed from Cthulhu WebRing Newsletter. You can visit the home of the Cthulhu WebRing at http://www.geocities.com/Paris/8164/ ] The Wererat's Lair http://www.geocities.com/~wererat/ The Wererat's Lair has information on Lovecraft's works and fonts suitable for CoC (including Cthulhu runes!). Miskatonic University, Arkham, Massachusetts http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/ The on-line campus extension of Miskatonic University of Arkham, Massachusetts was established in 1997 in association with Miskatonic University Press and Yankee Classic Pictures as an open educational site for non-registered students of the Lovecraftian strain of horror and fantasy literature. Robert W. Chambers Research Project http://www.ioc.net/~larryloc/yking001.html Robert W. Chambers lived from 1865 to 1933. He wrote from 1894 to 1933. He was the highest paid author of his day, but today he is only remembered for his second work, The King in Yellow, if he is remembered at all. The King in Yellow changed the face of horror fiction for all time and the early works of RWC had a major affect on a number of writers including H. P. Lovecraft and Sax Rohmer. The RWC Research Project is dedicated to the study of Chambers work. -------------------- From: "Jeremy York" Subject: CF: Pragmatic Hobo and Homeless Waif System: Mythos ** THE CARD FILES: PRAGMATIC HOBO AND HOMELESS WAIF ** THE CARD -------- Name: Pragmatic Hobo or Homeless Waif Type: Investigator Education: 4 Hobo / 3 Waif Beginning Sanity: 16 Maximum Hand Size: 7 Minimum Hand Size: 0 Special Effects Box (from Homeless Waif): At the beginning of each turn, draw ("beg") one card from your Mythos deck. You may not pass (to try to end the round). You must play or you must discard one card. THE SOURCE ---------- Hobo - After the U.S. Civil War ended in 1865, many veterans had no home to return to. Some become migrant farm workers, wandering from job to job, often carrying their work tools with them. They were nicknamed "Hoe-boys"; it is thought that the term "Hobo" is derived from that name. As the network of railways was constructed across the US (a great deal of it built by hobo labor), the term came to apply to those who hitched rides on freight trains in search of work or out of wanderlust. During the Great Depression, the US Government at one point estimated that there were 1.5 million people riding the rails on freight trains. See the National Hobo Association for more information, http://www.hobo.com Waif -"Kingsport... That's where I'd have to go after I told folks in town what happened. I'd have some kin there. I wondered if they'd believe me in town when I told them about the way Uncle Fred had disappeared and Aunt Lucy, and about them stealing the cattle for a sacrefice[sic] and about the green slime in the well... I packed up my satchel and got ready to leave." From Notebook Found in a Deserted House by Robert Bloch. CLARIFICATIONS -------------- The Pragmatic Hobo should have a Minimum of 0 and a Maximum of 7. QUESTIONS --------- Q: If I don't play a card on a turn because I walked to a location, cast a spell, used an artifact, or used an ally's special ability, do I still draw a card? Do I have to discard a card? A: You draw a card every turn that you take. You don't have to discard a card as long as you do something. You only have to discard if you choose to take no action or are unable to take any action. Q: What about when I lose a turn because I arrived at a Sanitarium like Conanicut, or a Church or Temple like the Vatican? How about when I spend a turn getting rid of a phobia? A: You always draw a card, at the start of every turn. When in therapy or penance at a sanitarium or temple, you may take no other action, but you do still get to draw a card. You are not forced to discard, because you are doing something on the turn (recovering from therapy, getting rid of a phobia, or whatever). Q: Do I have to beg a card? There are no cards left in my deck, and I don't want to spend a sanity to reshuffle. A: You must beg a card every turn. Q: Do I draw a card on every player's turn? A: No, you draw a card on each of your own turns. Q: I have the bum, Zadok Allen, in play as an ally; he increases my maximum by 1 (making it 8). At the end of the round, do I get to draw up to 8 cards? A: No. While your maximum is 8, your hand size is still only 7. If you had 8+ cards in your hand at the end of the round (this often happens if the Hobo/Waif does some walking), you can keep 8 cards, but you won't draw any new cards. You'll only draw new cards if you discard so that you have less than your hand size of 7, in which case you'll draw back up to your hand size. Q: What if I have Zadok Allen in play, and the Latin Necronomicon (increases hand size by 1)? A: You can keep up to 8 cards at the end of the round; if you have fewer than 8 after discarding, draw so that you have 8 cards in your hand. STRATEGIES ---------- * HoboMath - Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the Hobo/Waif requires a little bit of math. The advantage of a 0 minimum hand size, and drawing a card every turn, are counter- balanced by the huge disadvantage of only getting a 7 card hand. In the table below, you see how many new cards the Hobo/Waif is able to draw in 4 complete rounds of play, assuming that he/she always discards down to the stated amount at the end of every round. This includes the initial hand, the cards begged during play, and the new hand at the end of every round. #of cards drawn by Hobo/Waif in 4 rounds Turns/ Hobo/Waif discards to this hand size every round Round 00 02 04 06 ===== == == == == 3 47 39 31 23 5 55 47 39 31 7 63 55 47 39 9 71 63 55 47 Meanwhile, how's the competition doing? The following table shows you how many new cards an ordinary investigator sees after 4 complete rounds of play. To simplify things, each player is assumed to always discard down to the same hand size before drawing a new hand. # cards drawn by other investigators in 4 rounds Hand size 13, discard to 6 cards at end of round: 41 Hand size 12, discard to 4 cards at end of round (corrupt investigator from New Aeon): 44 Hand size 13, discard to 7 cards at end of round, each round discards 2 cards and draws 2 cards (Adventurous Dilettante): 45 Hand size 13, discard to 4 cards at end of round: 49 Hand size 13, discard to 2 cards at end of round: 57 Put it all together, and you'll see that for you to have any hope of cycling through your deck with the same speed as the opposition, you need to play in a game with very long rounds and/or discard most of your hand every round. Even then, during the first round or two, you'll have seen substantially fewer cards than your opponents, so the chances of drawing an early adventure (to help you decide what to do) are lower. On the other hand, if you can make the typical round stretch to 7+ turns per player, you'll begin to get a substantial advantage in the number of cards drawn. * Build a Generic Deck - One strategy to help you do well in spite of the disadvantages is to build your deck so that your adventures are as interchangeable as possible. This way you can afford to throw things away (plenty more where that came from) and you can lay the groundwork for most of your adventures without having to pick one in particular. For example, The Interesting Shop, Make Them Pay!, The Secret of Power and Glory and Your First Big Story all require you to visit assorted locations. Playing a succession of Artifact or Tome locations that are Gates in different cities will help you complete any of these adventures. Also, you may want to consider including 2 copies of each adventure, or including more than 20 points worth of adventures, to improve the odds that you will draw an adventure earlier. * Drag it out - Another strategy is to do whatever it takes to make the rounds last as long as possible. Fortunately, New Aeon provides several cards which will help you greatly. Nemesis is the best of these; while it is in play, anyone who passes loses one point of sanity. While your opponents are sweating it out, waiting another turn or two in the hopes that someone else will end the round, you are happily drawing cards. Government Quarantine is another - play it early in the round on the opponent who seems to pass the most, and that player won't be allowed to discard at the end of the round. Chances are, he'll try to drag out the round as long as possible so that he can draw a decent amount at the end of the round. Thaasophobia will cause an opponent to lose a point of sanity every time he passes. In The Nick of Time and Blink Of An Eye both allow you to cancel another player's pass. An Unexpected Calamity, a card that allows an opponent to end the round with a single pass, will short circuit most of these strategies. However, if you are at the Giulio Cesare Hotel or the Harbor Place Hotel, or have the tome Azathoth and Others in play, no one can play An Unexpected Calamity. Be wary of the Nemesis and Thaasaphobia - once you set them loose, there's no turning back, and they create an extremely hostile environment. Let's say an opponent has a nasty phobia like Hydro- or Agoraphobia, they have nothing in their hand to get rid of it, and it's steadily driving them insane. However, Nemesis is out, or you've also placed Thaasaphobia on them, so trying to end the round may drive them insane. Unless you've already got a load of Adventure points scored, this is probably a bad thing for you! * Draw More Cards - Cards that allow you to draw more cards are especially valuable to the Hobo/Waif. The Chant of Thoth is a popular choice, since it allows you to discard and replace up to 4 cards. Use it during the combat phase to discard and re-draw; if you don't like what you see, discard and re-draw again as normal at the end of the round. The Dreamlands Howard Lovecraft and King of Ilek-Vad can be flipped to draw new cards. Joe Schienfeld allows you to discard two cards to draw one card as your turn. Joe is particularly handy for the Hobo/Waif : when you're in the position of not having anything you can or want to do, spend your turn using Joe's ability. You'll get two cards (1 begged, and 1 from Joe) and lose two cards - it's like a mini Chant that you can do turn after turn with no sanity cost. * Wandering Prophet - One of the main disadvantages of getting your cards by begging is that you don't see a big pile of them all at once, like a regular investigator; this makes it harder to make decisions about what to play. The Channel Prophecy spell from the Dreamlands provides an excellent solution to this problem. For one sanity, you are able to peek at a number of cards from your Mythos deck equal to your Investigator's maximum; the Hobo/Waif, with a maximum of 7, has one of the highest in the game. Cast Channel Prophecy at the beginning a round to find out if you will draw that last card you needed for your difficult adventure, or to find out if you'll draw another adventure, or to find out that you'll draw an Ally from your current region, etc. Cast it during combat to help you decide if you can afford to discard most or all of your hand. Channel Prophecy is a Star icon spell, and so can only be found in tomes from the Dreamlands dimension, so this strategy is pretty much limited to Dreamlands decks. * Avoid reliance on combinations - Cards that help these strategies, but only work as part of a combination (Yuggoth + survive in space + travel in space, Latin Necronomicon + Latin speaking ally, Tulzcha + solstice + underground gate, etc) are useful but very difficult. The combination is what you need to get more cards into your hand, but with your limited initial pool of cards, the chances of pulling the combination are low. COUNTER-STRATEGIES ------------------ * Short and Sweet - First and foremost, keep the HoboMath in mind. If rounds are going on for 7+ turns per player or more, the Hobo/Waif is going to start going through their deck alarmingly fast. Ending the rounds earlier is the best thing you can do to hurt the Hobo/Waif's supply of cards. * Delousing Skid Row - Government Quarantine and the limited edition Police Investigation are especially nasty against the Hobo/Waif. Both will see to it that the Hobo/Waif player draws next to no cards at the end of the round. Aldebaran Moves In The Sky, An Unexpected Eclipse, Far Side of the Moon and other Star events are useful for eliminating Nemesis. The Hobo/Waif's small hand size also makes them susceptible to Townsfolk Riot, Terrorist Strike and Serial Killer - they may not have another location in their hand! * Learn to read, ya bum - Keep in mind that the Hobo and Waif are illiterate, and cannot read any tomes without allies. If you can keep putting their allies in the story deck, they will have a hard time getting any tomes in play. If you're a fan of Unexpected Calamity, this is especially important, because a Hobo/Waif is likely to have a copy of Azathoth and Others. HOBO 'KIN - A MYTHOS VARIANT ---------------------------- Try playing a game of Mythos where every player uses the Pragmatic Hobo or the Homeless Waif. There will be no normal combat phase, because the round will never end! If your adventures require monsters, you'll need to use Summon/Control spells, or find a way to play them as allies (and then bury them, since while in play as allies they don't count as monsters). Of course, all the anti-passing cards that you'd normally put into a hobo/waif deck will be useless. Thanks to Guy Hail for this idea! -------------------- From: "Jeremy York" Subject: A Hobo Deck System: Mythos Here's a deck designed around the Pragmatic Hobo which includes some of the strategy elements mentioned above; the adventures are very appropriate to the Hobo, since they each have the Investigator working at a different job, and wandering around a lot. Total deck size: 60 ADVENTURES (6) Make Them Pay! (2) Operation Nemesis (2) Your First Big Story (2) ALLIES (8) Any Government: Toodee-6 (1) Kingsport: Ozzy Orne (1) Joe Schienfeld (1) New York: Napoleon Whately (2) Rome: Brother of the Yellow Sign (1) Giovanni Angellis (1) Washington D.C.: Reverend Baxter Lully (1) ARTIFACTS (0) EVENTS (18) Beatrice is Released from the Attic (1) Blackout (2) Blink of an Eye (1) Daybreak (2) Government Quarantine (1) Hitch a Ride (2) In the Nick of Time (1) (or use another Blink, they're exactly the same) Nemesis (4) Thaasophobia (1) Train (2) (To tune deck, at cost of flavor, replace with Hitch A Ride) Yithian Mental Contact (1) LOCATIONS (17) Kingsport: Harbor Place Hotel (1) McCarty's News Stand (2) Moscow: Second Psychiatric Hospital (1) New York: Mr. Shiny's Burger Palace (1) United Nations (2) Oakland: Chaosium (1) Paris: Cite Tatoue (1) Maison Nationale De Sante (1) Rome: Giulio Cesare Hotel (1) INTERPOL, Italian headquarters (1) The Vatican (1) Washington D.C.: J. Edgar Hoover Building (2) Pentagon (1) The Mall (1) MONSTERS (5) Servants of the Silver Twilight (3) Shoggoth Lord (1) Shoggoth (1) SPELLS (4) Chant of Thoth (folk) (1) Keenness of Two Alike (folk) (1) 2 of your favorite Yellow Sign spells (I like Temporal Lash and Steal Life) TOMES (2) Azathoth and Others (1) Whispers Pulp Magazine Collection (1) NOTES ON DECK: Above all, you have to be flexible when playing this deck. Since your cards come in a steady trickle instead of in big waves like a normal deck, you have to be prepared to change directions in the middle of your travels. Train, Hitch A Ride, and Keenness of Two Alike are key for getting Allies into play. Remember that a Tome is needed for two of your adventures, and that you must have an ally who can speak English in play in order to play either tome. Meet an ally on the train or hitch-hiking, then arrive at a Tome location where they immediately translate the tome for you. Many locations in the deck allow you to meet the Shoggoth Lord as an ally; if still in play when you score Your First Big Story, he will count as an ally who costs sanity. While he's in play as an ally, your pet Shoggoth will be especially devastating. Keep a Nemesis in play as much as you can; you can expect people to work hard to bury it, but just keep putting it out as soon as you draw a new one. Play all of the other anti-passing cards at every opportunity - you want to keep recycling these from your story deck to your Mythos deck so that you can play them over and over. --