2004 Lang Codex Archive

8/3/2004GenCon Report

Welcome to a very late entry into the Lang Codex. It's been a crazy couple of weeks, and I've only begun to recover from them. During this whirlwind of activity, Call of Cthulhu CCG has been my primary preoccupation.

After playing extensively throughout the show, allow me a moment to express something that really needs to be said: I love this game.

I really love this game.

We played at the show, we played at the hotel, we built or conceptualized decks on the drive to and fro. We played in the office, we played at home' I spent this last weekend building decks based on ideas I'd gotten from the convention! One day it was a solo-Syndicate deck trying to abuse Arkham Advertiser to the extreme. Another, it was two different takes on the Great Old Ones deck (you know, Forgotten Temple is a really underrated card, even for a game this young). Yet another, it was the Agency Sniper deck backed up with a splash of Shub-Niggurath and Cthulhu power-weenies. I really love this game.

Alright, enough gushing already! Let's get on with some announcements:

Team R&D Scores a Heavy Hitter
We made the announcement at the show, but I want to repeat it here. A Game of Thrones world champion Casey Galvan will be joining the FFG R&D team as of September 15th. I've been really impressed with his analytical skills, big picture awareness and genuine love for the games over the last year. He'll be doing primary development on both of our CCGs, while I will retain design duties.

What does this mean? With Casey watching my back, I can get even crazier than before! Look for some really fun, really new concepts in the next couple of expansions. And don't even get me started about next year'

Why Vote for the Lesser Evil?
We also had our wildly successful 'Cthulhu for President' promotion at the show, as well as attending the Presidential Rally run by Chaosium (which I unfortunately missed, being too busy running tournaments in the hall at the time). The promo card, a 2-cost event with the text

Play during your operations phase.
Action: search your deck for an Ancient One character, reveal that character to all players, and put it into your hand or discard pile. Then shuffle your deck.

is perfectly legal for tournament play. The art, by Matt Dixon, is pretty hilarious (as a funny aside, one of the sketches Matt originally submitted was Cthulhu posing as the Statue of Liberty. I found that one so hilarious I commissioned it personally for a t-shirt. Oh, what a fanboy I am!). I ended up signing so many of them at the show that I can't remember all of the silly captions I wrote on them.

Vote early, vote often.

Unspeakable Tales Update
We are getting ready to put this baby to bed. It will be releasing approximately two and a half months from now. Don't expect this set to turn the game on its head; instead, I've opted for a rock solid follow-up to Arkham edition, fleshing out the themes that were introduced, while giving each of the existing factions a stable of really powerful cards.

While we are not introducing any new factions or something as drastic as that, don't expect a stagnant set. I expect the expansion will open up a whole slew of new deck types, as well as changing your perceptions of at least a few principles you may have gotten overly comfortable with.

Watch for it!

Multiplayer Rules
We will be putting up official rules for COC CCG multiplayer soon! I've been holding back on them a bit, while we playtest a few variants I've been tinkering with. Ultimately, we will be posting the simplest and most elegant rules set, but don't be surprised if I eventually get some of those fun variants put up on the website at some point or another.

That's it for this week. Things are finally starting to quiet down a little bit, and this column can start looking forward to more regular updates. Expect to see Pat and Casey contributing their thoughts semi-regularly, to round out all areas of the game from design to development to concept.

Tune in next time, when I talk a bit about the 'resource tree.'

7/30/2004Baby's First Booster Pack

Welcome to this week's second Lang Codex installment. I promised another one for my lack of columns over the last couple of weeks, and here it is!

Warning: this column is not filled with strategy hints or metagame insight. It is one of those that I tend to write every once in a while, sort of a 'day in the life,' giving you an abridged peek behind the curtain to see how we mad R&D types tick.

Originally, I wanted to talk about the first booster pack I opened (just like I did in the column I write for A Game of Thrones CCG), but that sort of got sabotaged by a whirlwind chain of events.

You see, I was away from the office when the cards first shipped to FFG, and was not able to partake in the inaugural 'booster opening' celebration. I got my first boosters delivered via UPS... and had solid plans on how I was to open them, documenting every card as I saw it and thinking of stuff to write about them.

Funny factoid: the Game of Thrones column I wrote about opening my first pack was to discuss a 'bad' rare card that is widely acknowledged nowadays as one of the 'most powerful rares nobody talks about.'

So naturally, as all good plans on the battlefield, this one came apart the instant the gentleman in the brown uniform delivered my box to my front door. You see, I was working on another game design at the time (I do most of my first stage design work away from the office) when the cards arrived, and had some of my playtest group over to try things out. The cards came, and I had vowed to finish my work in earnest, leaving the cards sitting in that brown cardboard box until everything was done.

You can see how this is going to turn out.

Almost four whole minutes later, I abandoned all other work and tore into the box with girlish glee. There were two starters in there, and a display box full of boosters. Without even a single thought devoted to an organized opening of the packs, we devoured the contents like a slavering Gug, and within minutes the cards were sitting on my living room table, organized into piles by faction.

The Other Side of the Fence
I've been a CCG player for many years. In fact, my first playing experience was with the first shipment of Magic: the Gathering beta edition in 1994. Having played more CCG's than I can count since that time, I can tell you this: the thrill of opening a booster pack hardly diminishes at all, no matter how many times you do it.

You'd figure that, having designed the game and knowing most of its 'secrets,' that opening packs wouldn't be such a big deal. You would be wrong. See, as a game designer, I exist in a slightly different time and space from the rest of you. Most of my energy is focused towards several months into the future; everything you see now is stuff I've worked on about half a year ago. So, much of my 'fun engineering' (remind me to tell you one day about the science of assigning card rarities based on the projected experience of different types of players opening booster packs) is forgotten to me.

Funny factoid: I very rarely go back to consult my old CCG set collation notes until after opening a few packs of a set. I enjoy the suspense just as much as you.

I was in CCG heaven! Watching my playtest group's reactions to my opening packs ('Omigod! That card is ba-roken!') was immensely enjoyable. Even more fun was that during the last week I was beginning to lay out the semi-final card designs for the first expansion. There was a lot of 'Oh, just you wait until a few months from now!' going on; and as any of you writers, game masters or similarly creative types know, keeping your audience in suspense is a thrill-and-a-half.

Funny factoid: in my first booster display box, I didn't get a single Ancient One!

Playin' da Game
There is a huge difference between playing with little playtest card cutouts and the real thing. For one thing, I love the smell of fresh cards. Ask anyone at the office; for awhile I had played a game called 'Stump Eric,' where people would hand me different CCG cards, I would smell them and often be able to tell which printer the cards came from! Freaky? Yes. Geeky? Even more so. Fun? Absolutely.

Immediately, the group choose some of our favorite factions, grabbed the entire pile of cards belonging to those factions, and began building decks. I chose a Hastur/Yog-Sothoth combination, because the two factions suit my play style like a glove. My studio developer chose Shub-Niggurath and the Syndicate.

We played. I won. I was happy. Then we played again.

Funny factoid: it usually only takes a few weeks, but before long, I usually become one of the worst players in the office (or my playtest group) of any CCG I design. At other CCGs, I tend to do quite well.

On and on it went. Playing, fine-tuning decks, and playing again. Introducing somebody else to the game, playing, and doing it all over again. And boy, let me tell you... I hadn't played the game for about a month and a half at the time (not counting playtesting the new expansion, but that's a totally different experience from just playing). Man, I forgot how much fun this game is!

The best part of the evening was that there were very few 'blowout' games, where one player outright dominated early on. There was a lot of give-and-take, and several players pulled a great win out from under the rug (watch out for that pesky investigate icon!) even while they were being driven insane and killed by nameless horrors from beyond space and time. We got to see plenty of mournful cries when certain story cards came up, which made me smile.

We would have played a lot more had I not so many deadlines knocking at my door.

I really look forward to GenCon this year, because we (FFG) have two major CCG releases hitting simultaneously. Realistically, even though COC CCG is already starting to ship to retailers and will be in players' hands before long, GenCon will act as the grand debut of this game. I can't wait to watch all of you opening your packs and playing the game at the show.

I'll be there with my Hastur/Yog-Sothoth deck, challenging all who dare. Come one, come all!

Funny factoid: I may be lying about which deck I'll be bringing.

Tune in next time, when I talk a bit about multiplayer.

7/23/2004Thomas F. Malone

Greetings and salutations! It's been only days since we last spoke, but it occurs to me that with my recent tardiness with this column, you deserve an early one. It's only fair, right?

This week I'd like to talk about a unique character, and the idea behind 'Heroism' and 'Villainy.' The column is rife with design backstory, so if this sort of thing doesn't interest you, feel free to skip to the strategy bits.

A Word About Uniqueness
The Cthulhu Mythos is rife with unique personalities and crazy one-of-a-kind monsters. But unlike a lot of other 'licensed properties,' there is not one singular vision behind the mythos. In fact, Mr. Lovecraft seemed very adamant about not pigeonholing the mythos into one particular look or feel. One of the unique things about this 'setting' is that there aren't a handful of central characters that define the stories. You don't necessarily want to 'be' these people' heck, I'd say emphatically not!

One of the things we did when examining the mythos from a business perspective (it's hard to disassociate yourself from something you love, sometimes!) was take a look at the elements that interest people. With a lot of licensed properties, the elements are either characters or 'toys.' Cthulhu has character, but it's more often the archetypes that interest people. Most of those archetypes, honestly, are monsters. So you can bet that we loaded this set with lots of monsters.

All of these considerations and more have led me to believe that we needed to have a significantly lower unique character quotient in this game than most character-driven CCGs. There are uniques in the game, believe me, and we'll continue to print them, but when they show up they are going to be more 'special' than in other games.

Additionally, the rules for uniqueness are quite simple in this game. You can only control one copy of a unique character. Your opponent can control the same character; he or she is considered to be 'working all the angles' in this case (multiple puns intended). Of course, if your unique character is destroyed, you can always play it again when you draw it.

And if you draw multiple copies of a unique card early in the game? That's what stacking resources on Domains is for!

Heroes and Villains
This game went through several incarnations during design. Many earlier versions were far more 'simulationist' and needlessly complicated than this one, and I'm extremely glad they did not see print. This game is far more fun than anything else that would have come out of design; a bold statement to be sure, but it is my guarantee to you.

In most of the earlier versions, we had two distinct asymmetrical 'sides': the Mythos and the Investigators. There was a very cogent argument behind the decision: both sides have very different goals, ergo they should play differently. Right? Sure, why not! Of course, there were numerous problems with this.

For one, as with all asymmetrical games, you feel like you are playing just two factions with different customizable flavors. It's not necessarily a truism, but it is an issue of perception, and perception has little to do with the truth. And we wanted a game with a distinct multi-faction feel; those are proven and they are, in the opinion of your humble scribe, the most fun and relatable 'category mechanic' you can have for a CCG.

Another problem was that the ratio of 'built in fans' for each side was proven to be catastrophically lopsided. Who wants to play pure investigators when they can play pure monsters? I realize that there are many of you reading this thinking 'I would! What's the matter with you?' but trust the man with the data on this point; you would be in the extreme minority.

A third problem was that most of our distribution and retail partners were extremely disappointed to hear about a 'two-sided' game. That was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Anyways, while I was designing the final version of the game, I wanted to try to retain some of the 'investigator vs. mythos' feel that we lost when we allowed all factions to mix and match. While working out what abilities would need to be keyworded, I stumbled across the idea of 'heroism' and 'villainy.' Two cabals of extremism that would not work together. Actually, that's not entirely true. I stole it from an old unfinished card game design of mine (when you've got 30-plus games going at any one time, a little cannibalism is inevitable).

The rationale, thought I, was that there is a huge gray area in the vast majority of the people and creatures of the mythos. Does every 'monster' really want to summon Great Cthulhu? Does every investigator really want to save the world? I think not. However, the extreme personalities on both sides would not want to work together, hence the beauty of the two keywords. You can't play Heroic characters if you control any Villainous ones, and vice versa.

To top it off, the Heroic/Villainous duality ties in beautifully to the Day/Night mechanic already in the game; theme decks rejoice! So even the most 'spike'-like player (the ones who enjoy competition and the thrill of victory more than anything else in a CCG) will have to make thematically linked decisions while building their decks. Works for me!

Game design is largely about compromise. And, as you'll learn as the game continues to grow, design is also about making choices when the compromise ends. I will almost always rule in favor of game play over theme (because a fun game is the only thing that will keep a CCG alive if you don't have millions of dollars to spend on perpetual marketing), but will always try to ensure that theme and game play are balanced in the big picture.

Tune in later this week, when I open my first booster pack! Boy, I can't wait.

7/16/2004Unhealthy Curiosity

Welcome to another preview week in Cthulhu-land! I do have to apologize for missing a number of Codex entries to this point. My only excuse: I'm knee deep in the design and early development of this very game! I just finished the first draft of the first expansion, Unspeakable Tales, and am working on polishing it up. Even though I knew how much depth of design space this game had going in, I was blown away while working on this set. You guys won't be disappointed; we've got some amazing stuff in store for you.

Today, we're going to have a look at an event card and talk about some neat possibilities it opens up during play.

"Unhealthy Curiosity" is one of the neutral staple cards of the set. For decks with any degree of icon focus, this card will serve you well. It's also one of the few 'complicated' commons that I feel addresses one of the more unique areas of this game. So let's get to it!

The Struggle Icons
Each story card is printed with the four struggle icons on the left hand side. While this does serve as a reminder for what order the icon struggles resolve in, it also has a practical purpose: the presence of a struggle icon on the story card 'allows' a struggle in that icon to take place. These icons are also cumulative; each story card starts with one struggle of each type, but you can add to these with card effects.

"Unhealthy Curiosity" is one of the few cards that manipulates this aspect of the game. By playing it at an opportune moment, you can suddenly create, let's say, an additional combat struggle at a story where you are already going to win. Which would mean two wounds to the losing opponent when the struggle resolves! The same goes for the other icons. Winning arcane? Why not ready two characters? Playing a heavy-investigation Miskatonic deck? Let's win this story card even faster!

Once you grasp the ramifications of the story struggles, the effect of this card is fairly straightforward. The possibilities, however, are not.

A Word about Neutral
So far, we've only had a look at cards from one of the seven factions in the game. However, there are also 30 neutral cards in the Arkham edition. These are cards that have a cost just like any other card, but require no 'resource match' when you play them. Of course, they make up for this by only providing a neutral resource when you attach them to your Domains. Meaning, if you have a resource stack of only neutrals, you cannot play any non-neutral card by draining that stack.

Of course, neutral cards are a great way to round out your deck, especially if you decide to play only one faction. You won't find any neutral characters in the set, but there are plenty of support and event cards that can help you either supplement your deck's strengths (like this one), or provide some defense against its weaknesses.

That'll be it for this week. Hopefully I've helped you gain a bit of insight into how much room there is for experimentation during game play. And this is even one of the simple cards!

Tune in next week, when we have a look at a main character.

6/30/2004Marks and Angles

Hey folks, this is Pat again. Eric wanted me to apologize for the long delay between Lang Codices. I visited him last night in his cell, and in between the hours of drooling and senseless gibbering he murmured, "The thing... the time that is not time... the hideous alien hordes... Origins..." I took this to mean that he wouldn't object to me filling in this week and spotlighting one of the Call of Cthulhu CCG support cards. I wouldn't dream of trying to explain any gameplay intricacies, but I will mention that this is the first card we've talked about that uses the "Night/Day" feature.

The events during the CCG game-story are assumed to happen at "Twilight" unless a Night or Day card is in play. Keeping with the usual spooky tradition, Night cards are generally beneficial to Mythos factions and Day cards to the Investigators. When a Day card is introduced into play, all Night cards are discarded, and vice versa, though there can be multiple cards of one type (or multiple versions of the same card) in play at one time.

So here's the "Witch-Mark." The first thing you'll notice about this piece, naturally, is the typically excellent Pat McEvoy art. In particular I like the period haircut on the woman and the Art Deco touch McEvoy has given to the pillars. Players will notice a lot of these sort of 1928 details in the art for this card set.

The obvious contrast in the image is between the beauty of the woman and the ugliness of the mark itself. Beyond this, the attitude of the woman is one of revelation: she's showing us the mark. This is emblematic of the Shub-Niggurath cult; they aren't just a bunch of benign nature-worshippers you might run into at your local ashram. There's a dark heart to Mother Nature, a thistle in the kiss. In terms of the game-story, to attach this card to a character is to reveal that character's secret abilities. That cultist of Shub-Niggurath that you thought was only a misguided fool? Guess what: she's actually a high priestess of the Mother, she's got two Terror icons and two Combat icons and man, you're in for it now.

Okay, that's all for now. Next week I'll sneak a razor and some parchment in for Eric, so he can scribble out his depraved and feverish thoughts about Event cards.

Cheers,
Pat

6/10/04The Big Man Himself

Welcome to issue 4 of the Lang Codex. I promised to show off a character this week, and by gum I'm gonna deliver! The green guy you're looking at (although I'm not sure how the formatting for this column works yet; we'll see where the art shows up once Pat gets this column uploaded!) is none other than the Thing That Should Not Be himself, great Cthulhu.

There are, in fact, two versions of Cthulhu in this game. The promo version is the one I'll be talking about. The Arkham edition version you'll have to see for yourself.

The Great Old Ones
Boy, could I tell you some design stories! There was a great deal of controversy about how to handle the gods of H.P. Lovecraft's universe. Traditionally, they are unfathomable and unspeakable. They are beyond space, beyond time, and we the insignificant can do naught but to exist and be forgotten within their infinite span of existence. Ponderous, isn't it? It makes for interesting backstory.

Of course, when have we ever been traditional?

I mean, come on! As a game designer, somebody who is paid to play around with and break rules and rules systems, I have few real mantras. One, however, I will always live by: respect the damn medium. Different types of games call for different types of design, and what we are designing is a Call of Cthulhu CCG. While there are a few players who would rather preserve the mystery of the Great Old Ones and let them be represented as influence or events, who on Earth is not going to be happy to hold a Cthulhu card in their hand? Who is not going to jump for joy when they pay 7 (or less... you haven't seen all the cards yet!) to put this nasty guy into play and watch the rest of the world be sacrificed?

As we've warned you in the past, the COC CCG is nothing like its predecessor (which I did play quite extensively back in the day). This is no roleplaying game, this is no board game, this is no LARP, this is no text-adventure, this is no MUD... this is a collectible card game, and, by gum, it's going to be a helluva collectible card game! It is designed to be a great game first, as we want it to enjoy the same longevity and success as A Game of Thrones (which is almost two years old and still growing).

I am quite aware of how smug the above may sound, but in order to achieve the task of putting the Cthulhu Mythos on cards, a whole bunch of confidence was needed. Trust me, the process was daunting, and there was a lot of sweat and 'what ifs' (and a ton of redesigns). If we hedged our bets right, you'll be seeing a whole bunch of new and old Cthulhu fans with a great, quick-playing game to gather around.

(Yes, I used the phrase 'by gum' twice in this column. Hopefully that's legal!)

It's Not Easy Being Green
Being loyal, Cthulhu is not an easy addition to your deck. You are going to need a very dedicated resource 'stack' (all Cthulhu icons) in order to bring him into play. This means that a multi-faction deck is going to have an even harder time. His ability, while incredible, also means he isn't exactly a no-brainer to play at any time. You have to kill all characters in play, not just your opponent's. Cthulhu doesn't care who he devours.

Of course, there are some ways to make even that work for you. There are at least two cards in the game that give you something beneficial when your characters are destroyed, and two cards that make it less difficult to summon the Ancient Ones. The big guy here is not for every deck, but he'll be fun to see in action.

By the way, you can also expect versions of Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath and Hastur in the set. The number of different decks and concepts you can build in this game is grotesquely high.

Like you, I can't wait for this game to hit the streets.

Tune in next week, when we have a look at a pretty zany support card.

6/1/04Story Time

Welcome to my second instalment of the Lang Codex. So far, we've shared some insights into the game's background development. Now it's time to look at the game itself.

I'm not going to use this column to explain the game to you. On this very website, under the Support section, you can download the beta rules and demo decks to see the game for yourself. What I am here for, however, is to expand upon what you know about the game by giving some insights into design and development.

This week, we concentrate on one of the two fundamental innovations in this game's design: the story cards. They have a very rich design history, which I cannot go into full detail here, but can illuminate a bit for you.

Simulate or Stimulate?
Those of you who play our other CCG, A Game of Thrones, and read my design column will probably find some familiar material here. For the rest of you, here's the skinny: there are two extreme schools of thought when it comes to designing licensed games. I'll go into detail about those below.

On one extreme you have the simulationist, who will balk at any aspect of a game that does not exactly mimic an event or aspect of the property it is licensed from (for example, if Professor Armitage was killed by a random cultist in this game, it would drive our extreme simulationist mad with fury).

On the other extreme, you have the gamist, who views the game as an abstract logic puzzle and is disgusted at any compromise made to the gameplay for the sake of staying true to the license (this type of player would tear her hair out because the terror icon prevents a character from going insane ' this is a pure theme mechanic).

Obviously, I was not interested in an extreme game design, as that would alienate too many of our potential fans. Where I drew the line was a design mantra I follow whenever possible: 'Evocation is better for a game than simulation.' What that means is that, the game needs to be a good game first, and a good simulation second. Rather than take the extreme gamist standpoint, though, we could construct something that evoked the feel of a Cthulhu story rather than mimicking its events.

Why not simply mimic the events of a story, then? It's all about the medium. Stories, by their nature, are linear. Games are not. A story is crafted by an artist to entertain us with a series of complex interwoven events that come out just right. A game is an interactive medium that enables players to test their mettle during a series of events that is dictated by their actions. A story will read the same way every time; a game will play differently based on decisions made by the players. With these fundamental differences in mind, games have to be designed differently from stories.

However, great pains have been taken during the design of this game to allow players the chance to 'roleplay' as often as possible. It is extremely easy to build a theme deck that evokes the flavor of any aspect of the Cthulhu Mythos you want. It is also quite possible to build a deck that does not.

Tellin' a Story
If I told you how many incarnations the story cards went though, you probably wouldn't believe me. It's easy for me to believe, however, having been there and knowing what goals were set. Story cards (which used to be 'case' cards, which had so many different names and functions I can't even remember them all) were one of the showcase mechanics of the set. They had to be a fusion of storytelling and game mechanics, and they had to be something new; something that had not been done before in CCGs.

I tinkered with obvious choices for story cards (one in which you would customize your own deck and tweak it to go after your story cards; another in which you would go after your opponent's stories, and nearly infinite variations of those themes) but they either felt too derivative of our other game, or they created a game play experience that felt too much like solitaire. This is a problem that many storytelling CCGs have; when players race only towards their own goals, they try their best to avoid interaction with their opponent at every turn. And why would you want to? You have your goals, they have theirs, and whoever gets there first wins. It makes for some interesting story telling (sometimes), but ultimately makes for a very unsatisfying game experience... especially when you need to play the game hundreds of times the way you do with a CCG.

I hit on the final incarnation of story cards rather late in the design process. The rest of the game had taken shape nicely, but we were still unhappy. There was too much going on and the play was far too repetitive. It was time to simplify, and go back to the drawing board. At that point, I suddenly became inspired by a board game design principle: that of the 'variable starting boards.' A mechanic in which the game state began in a different way every time, and progressed towards an end that would play differently even if both players were playing identical decks with an identical draw.

Because variety is crucial to the long-term health of a CCG, I developed the new vision of the story deck. One fixed, constant group of cards that contained a variable set of game altering conditions that you could always prepare for, but never absolutely count on. Cards that would have huge, game-altering effects that only went off if the winner wanted them to. This meant that the focal points of the game would change often, and often players would fight very hard to make sure a particular story card does not happen.

The final step was in the design of the individual cards themselves. It was important to make these cards faithful to the spirit of the mythos. It was also important that these cards would resolve in a way that made you feel like you were playing in your own version of a Lovecraftian tale, because that's what these games are all about.

We will be periodically changing the contents of the story deck. Our current plan is to change them once a year, but don't expect the changes to be predictable. We'll be keeping you on your toes!

That's it for this week. Play around with your demo decks a little bit and watch the next few cards unfold over the next several weeks.

Tune in next week, when we have a look at our first character.

5/24/04 Developing the Game

Hi, and welcome to the second installment of The Lang Codex. My name is Pat Harrigan, and since I'm one of the creative developers on the Call of Cthulhu CCG, Eric has asked me to talk a little bit about the development process.

I've been a Lovecraft/Mythos fan for something like 20 years, ever since my stepfather loaned me the two-volume paperback edition of Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, in some misguided attempt to curry favor with his new stepson. The only story I read in those books was Bloch's "The Shambler from the Stars," and it disturbed me so much that I shut the book and tried to forget all about it. But like they say, that is not dead which can eternal lie, and a few years later I read "Pickman's Model" and "The Haunter of the Dark" in some themed anthology ("50 horror stories from all 50 states," or some such) and was hooked.

From there it was only a short step to Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu RPG, and I've been gamemastering Cthulhu games on and off ever since. Just last year, my players and I wrapped up a Delta Green campaign, and I'm currently inflicting Keith Herber's great "Haunted House" scenario on them. So when Eric Lang and Darrell Hardy started work on the Call of Cthulhu CCG, I was eager to contribute.

So what does a creative developer do? A lot of it involves looking at Eric's game mechanics and rough card list, and chatting about various elements of the Mythos, deciding what to use now, what to skip, and what to save for possible inclusion in a later set.

An example:

Working from a large list of card possibilities that Eric and Darrell had developed between themselves, I broke down various races, characters, monsters and tomes into factions. The nature of this particular CCG is that almost every card is associated with one of the seven factions (Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Hastur, Shub-Niggurath, Agency, Miskatonic, Syndicate). Some of this was a no-brainer: we know Miskatonic University has a copy of the Necronomicon, for instance, and byakhee are traditionally associated with the worship of Hastur. Others were more difficult: to which faction do the At the Mountains of Madness Old Ones (which, following Chaosium's lead, we're calling "Elder Things") belong? Or the Mordiggian-worshipping ghouls? Which cults or organizations might have a copy of the Eltdown Shards?

My job was made a lot easier by the faction backstories that Darrell had developed. We know what the goals of this particular cult of Hastur are; therefore we can infer what sort of resources they might have at their disposal. Still, certain assumptions had to be made, and certain ideas more thoroughly explored.

Take the Elder Things. We know they fought a protracted war with Cthulhu and his kin, so they were clearly not in that faction. The insane aesthetic of the King in Yellow would be also anathema to the rational Elder Things; they could hardly worship the sick fecundity of Shub-Niggurath when they were so adept at scientifically creating their own forms of life; and they could hardly be allies with humanity. By happy synchronicity, this left Yog-Sothoth, the deity most commonly worshipped by sorcerers. Remembering Clarke's maxim that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and knowing that most alien races (the Mi-Go, the shan, etc.) have shown advanced knowledge of the big guns of the Mythos (Azathoth, Nyarlathotep), it wasn't much of a leap to think that the Elder Things pay lip service to Yog-Sothoth, in exchange for deep knowledge of the universe, even if they don't "worship" Yog-Sothoth in the traditional sense.

The wonderful thing about the Mythos is that it's flexible enough to accommodate logical leaps like this. If August Derleth can recast Lovecraft in a Christian mode, and Brian Lumley can shoot Titus Crow off to the far corners of the universe in Randolph Carter's weird TARDIS-clock, we can give the Blackwood Detective Agency a copy of the De Vermis Mysteriis.

Later development work included writing the flavor and descriptor text, introducing new creatures and card names, associating Mythos beings with potential card abilities, balancing creature power levels, assisting Darrell with art descriptions, mucho playtesting, and suggesting various human characters from Lovecraft's stories to use as cards ' including my favorite, Sir William Brinton! (Watch for a future column on him.)

Also great fun was the adjective brainstorm. It became clear after a while that we couldn't simply have the cards read "ghoul," "gug" and so forth, so Darrell and I tried to Lovecraftify the names a bit:

"No, how about Slavering Gug?"

"And Degenerate Ghoul?"

"And Cyclopean Dhole!"

In the end, I think the game benefited greatly from this sort of minute attention. Certainly when I first heard about the CCG idea, I was worried that, if handled wrongly, it could lose the Lovecraftian tone in an instant. No one, including myself, wanted to see a game where a librarian, with enough weapon attachments and pump cards, could beat Cthulhu in a hand-to-hand fight. At the same time, the game had to be playable ' a strictly Lovecraftian interpretation would involve the human player dying horribly each game and the Mythos player not even noticing. So Eric's "movie poster Cthulhu" idea was used as a design template, and the game is much the better for it.

That's it for this edition of The Lang Codex. Tune in next week when Eric will be back, to discuss some game mechanics, particularly the Story Card deck.

Cheers,
Pat

5/17/04 Welcome to Cthulhu

Greetings everyone! First off, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Eric Lang, lead designer of this crazy game. You may know me from the A Game of Thrones CCG, and I've done design and development work on many other Fantasy Flight games.

Over the next couple of months I'll be giving you a peek into the design and development process behind FFG's newest collectible card game. I'm extremely proud of this design; it's been a roller coaster of a ride, but the result will surely be worth it. Week after week, I'll be talking certain areas of design and showing off some cool cards. For the next couple of weeks, however, I think it's best to give you all some background. We'll start with factions.

Cthulhu - The Big, Scary Picture
There were a lot of good reasons to do a Cthulhu CCG. It is one of the most recognized and beloved 'genres' in the hobby games industry. And, as you will be able to tell from our stunning artwork, it has a special place in the hearts of pretty much anyone with a gaming background.

Having said that, we had a bigger idea in mind when approaching this game. My boss had a vision; a visual and stylistic update to the Cthulhu mythos. Imagine the world as imagined by HP Lovecraft, but with better production values. A dark, creepy noir set amidst a rich pulp atmosphere. Horrors from beyond space and time - coming up against a human race that is almost prepared to deal with them!

This vision is something I have taken to calling 'movie poster Cthulhu.' I say this because, while working on the background of the game, I have always had a very distinct movie poster image in my head. We really were going to take this genre and make it larger than life. We'd add our own unique twist, and run with it.

The Factions
In order to match this vision, I had to re-think everything I knew about the Cthulhu mythos. We were going for something that was familiar, but fresh. Well, everyone knows that a CCG tends to work best when the cards are divided into factions of some sort or another, so this was an obvious choice. However, to separate it from our other CCG, I wanted to create more factions right out the gate, with an emphasis on mixing and matching in any way that the players would like.

Each faction should have a unique 'feel' while showcasing an aspect of the mythos. This feel should be represented in the faction's mechanics as well as the visuals. Our art director, Darrell Hardy (who also named most of the cards), did a fantastic job of overseeing the look of the game.

With all of the above in mind, I designed the following seven factions with the help of our creative developers:

The Agency - imagine the ultimate detective agency, with connections in the FBI and the military. These guys go in, tommyguns blazing, and leave the rest for the nameless gods to sort out.

Miskatonic University - what Cthulhu game would be complete without these crazy guys? These are the investigators, students and professors who possess all the arcane knowledge about the mythos.

The Syndicate - the human conspiracy. Think 'The Godfather' meets the 'X-Files,' and you've got one shady faction that isn't above using the dark arts to further their aims.

In addition, there are four factions based on the elder and outer gods:

Cthulhu - servants of the great old one, in this faction you'll find deep ones, shoggoths and more. And cultists, of course.

Hastur - the mad artists, criminals and cultists that worship under the horrifying Yellow Sign (which drives you mad just looking at it). Naturally, this faction excels at causing direct insanity.

Yog-Sothoth - this faction, comprised of the servants of the Key and the Gate, contains most of the extradimensional horrors of the mythos. Think Dimensional Shamblers, Elder Things, Star Vampires, and the like. They also specialize in horrifying spells.

Shub Niggurath - the fertility goddess, the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young. This faction contains most of the monsters that Cthulhu fans would be familiar with, as well as some really cool ways of getting tons of creatures into play.

There are also several neutral cards that belong to no faction. We may introduce new factions in the far future, but not too many, and not too soon. I think you'll find that deck-building options in this game, due to the way the factions are constructed, are indeed numerous.

That's it for this week! Shortly down the road, I'll be showing off some of the cards and talking a bit more about how the game plays.

Tune in next week, when our own Pat Harrigan (one of the game's creative developers) introduces himself.