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Chaosium Digest Volume 25 Number 11
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" <jeremy@ThemeMedia.com>
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" <jeremy@ThemeMedia.com>
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.
--
