Chaosium Digest Volume 27, Number 8 Date: Sunday, February 28, 1999 Number: 1 of 1 Contents: * Ten Killer Cards from the Mythos Standard Game Set (MYTHOS) Jeff Okamoto * Secret Motivations in Call of Cthulhu, Or, Why Curiosity Killed the Cat (CALL OF CTHULHU) Simon Hopper (simon@westmyth.freeserve.co.uk) Editor's Note: This issue, Jeff Okamoto gives us some insight into Mythos cards and Simon Hopper offers up a possible explanation for why Call of Cthulhu investigators are so good at uncovering the machinations of the horrors from beyond. Thanks to them both for their submissions and to Shannon Appel for the Recent Books of Note listing. If anyone has read any of these and/or any of the other books that get mentioned here, how about writing a review? Let us know what you think. Lastly, let's hear from some of you Nephilim and Pendragon fans! I've not received a single submission on either game. For that matter I'm out of submissions as of this issue. You guys need to get me some more or risk being subjected to my insane ramblings! ANNOUNCEMENTS: The new version of Byakhee (version 3) is available at the following URL: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Haven/4173/ RECENT BOOKS OF NOTE: * Call of Cthulhu - _The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath #5_ (Mock Man Press, $2.95), by Jason Thompson, is the final issue in Jason's great comic adaptation of the definitive Dreamlands novel. If it's not at your local comic book store, you should be able to pick up all five issues through Jason's web site, http://www.sonic.net/~jason. Jason has also recently designed the Cthulhu 2000 t-shirt for Wizard's Attic, more details of which can be found at the Wizard's Attic web site, http://www.chaosium.com/wizards-attic/. _Lovecraft Remembered_ (Arkham House, $29.95), edited by Peter Cannon, probably came out late last year, but it's too cool a book not to mention. This 486-page book is full of essays about Lovecraft by neighbors, amateurs, Kalems, ladies, professionals, fans, and critics. ISBN 0-87054-173-0. _Great Weird Tales_ (Dover, $8.95), edited by S.T. Joshi, is a short collection of weird tales from the golden age of horror. It includes pieces by Lovecraft, Machen, Blackwood, and several others. ISBN 0-486-40436-6. * Elric! - _Corum: The Prince with the Silver Hand_ (White Wolf, $24.99), by Michael Moorcock, is book #12 in the White Wolf Eternal Champion collection. It includes the last three Corum novels: _The Bull and the Spear_, _The Oak and the Ram_, and _The Sword and the Stallion_. ISBN 1-56504-188-7. -------------------- Ten Killer Cards from the Mythos Standard Game Set Copyright (C) 1997 Jeff Okamoto. All Rights Reserved. The Mythos Standard Game Set contains a number of cards which are quite useful in a Mythos Tournament Deck. Here are the ten best cards that will be of the most use to you. Most of them are defensive cards to hamper your opponents, but a few of them are offensive in use (and effect). Steadfast Deck 1. Sudden Downpour. This Event forces all Investigators to walk even between City locations. This especially hampers fast decks, which are usually based in a single City. They must now either waste a turn walking or use a (usually scarce) Travel by Land card to regain their former speed. 2. Insect from Shaggai. Should this Monster survive an opponent's Threat and go on to affect an Ally or the Investigator, it eats an opponent's Spell. Only one other Spell can do the same thing (Song of Hastur). The best thing about this Monster is that its effects cannot be Yithian'ed! 3. Cthulhu Rising. This Event causes the top card in the Story Deck to be discarded, if it features the Water location. This is about the worst thing to do to an opponent, since almost by definition, every Story Deck card is a requirement for an Adventure. The only disadvantages are the high Sanity cost and the Uniqueness dot. 4. Faithful Hounds. This Artifact can be discarded to force one Threat card from an opponent to be Buried. You can use it defensively against the big monster coming your way, or use it to open up the way for the monsters in your Threat. 5. Tiara of Opulent Fantasy. This Artifact changes the attributes of your current location into that of any other opponent's current location. Need a gate in a hurry? How about a House or Press location to complete an Adventure? Got to hide from multiple Phobias affecting you? It only costs 1 Sanity point to do it! Corrupt Deck 1. Dysentery. This Event forces all Allies of one Investigator to be flipped face-down, as well as the Allies of any other investigator in the same sub-region as the affected Investigator. Your opponent is now vulnerable to your Threat, and Allies that protect against theft no longer do so, nor can they use any Artifacts or Spells they might know. Best of all, it doesn't cost any Sanity to use! 2. Namquit Point. At this Location you can recover Artifacts that were buried in your Story Deck. Although these Artifacts still count towards Adventures, they might be important enough that you want to use them (especially something like the Sphere of Nath). Now you can pull them out of your Story Deck and bring them back into play! 3. Yithian. This Monster can be buried and cause an opponent's Ally to take its place in your Threat. You can best use it to get rid of a pesky Ally whose abilities or Weapon is troublesome. Steal an Ally with Dynamite and you may be able to completely wipe out an opponent's Defending Allies! 4. Succumb to Temptation. This Event causes an opponent's Steadfast Ally to attack the Investigator. Although the opponent's other Allies can defend, that only lets more Allies be Buried. 5. Government Cover-Up. This Event forces the discard of the Event closest to the bottom of an opponent's Story Deck. Do this to a Unique Event needed for an Adventure and you just forced your opponent to spend 1 Sanity to reshuffle their discards back into the Mythos Deck. Honorable Mention Portaphobia. This Event gives an opponent the fear of Gates. Although it is relatively easy to get rid of Phobias, this really hurts an opponent who needs to summon lots of Monsters. Worst Card Congregational Hospital. This location restores 5 points of Sanity, but the cost is a random discard of a card in the Story Deck. Since almost by definition every Story Deck card is important, the chances are very good that you will get hosed when this happens and will have to spend 1 Sanity to shuffle your discards back into your Mythos Deck. Secret Motivations in Call of Cthulhu, Or, Why Curiosity Killed the Cat Simon Hopper (simon@westmyth.freeserve.co.uk) WARNING: For Keepers eyes only... Most Keepers include red herrings or more mundane horrors amongst their scenarios, the esoteric cult that is a money making scheme, the chemical contamination of the water supply causing strange deformities, the local gang of gangsters etc. Yet ultimately most of us end up making most adventures contain a Cthulhoid menace at their heart and it's rare for a published scenario to be without one. After all, isn't the interaction between ordinary human beings and the Cthulhu Mythos the main selling point of Call of Cthulhu? Yet unless you're playing in a setting where Mythos entities and cults are really ubiquitous (i.e. the stars are right) the PCs will be getting an above average strike rate of discovering the Cthulhoid influence in their world. Ever wondered why? Most players will have built into their character's background a reasoning and motivation as to why they do the things that they do, i.e. be an Investigator who faces death and insanity, yet this does not account for their peculiar ability in rooting out Cthulhoid elements on Earth. What I want to suggest is that the Keeper provides an explanation of why the Investigators have such success by giving one or more of the PCs a secret ability in discovering Cthulhoid influences. One version of this has already been described in the Digest (22.12): that of making one of your players a cultist who has infiltrated the group. My suggestion is to take this a step further by making both the group and the character unaware of the reason or cause for their Cthulhu hunting prowess. This of course then gives the game setting added coherence (at least for the Keeper) and can provide the seed for a scenario in which it is one of the PCs who is under investigation rather than the usual nephew or old school chum scenario hooks. Below are some particular ideas as to how this could work, I'm sure you're capable of devising more. 1) The character has a repressed memory relating to their childhood that they are unconsciously trying to work through in their adult actions. An example would be that they witnessed the sacrifice of their parents to a deity. Unable to comprehend the death of their parents at the hands of such inhuman forces the child grows up believing the official story that they died in an accident. Subsequently the character has taken to investigating strange goings-on as an attempt to "recover" their parents and has developed an instinct as to which cases to investigate. 2) The character is a pre-transformation Deep One/Human hybrid. They therefore have a natural affinity for things related to Cthulhu and the transformation process could make for interesting conflicts within the group. 3) The character, or an object that the character possesses, has been cursed. The "bad luck" is exhibited as frequent encounters with the cults and entities of the Cthulhu Mythos. 4) The character has an entirely different personality submerged within their mind. This mind can either be directing strategic behavior (e.g. Talia Winters in "Babylon 5") or have previously set up the situation leading to the encounters (e.g. like Doug Quaid in "Total Recall"). Alternatively the character can be receiving dreams from Nyarlathotep or Cthulhu that influence their actions but which they never consciously remember. -- Simon Hopper (simon@westmyth.freeserve.co.uk) --