What’s the game about?
Players are hikers trying to prevent a Lovecraftian apocalypse by gathering up the correct items to perform rituals at multiple keystone locations. So it’s about hiking and the Mythos in equal measure.
What do I do?
Hike around on branching paths on a modular board that’s different every game, try to find the proper materials and bring them to the proper keystone sites to do the necessary rituals. Try not to run out of health or sanity. Each player is alotted a certain number of action points, based on their current stamina and a dice roll, to move around the board a given number of spaces and/or perform actions. Landing on certain spaces will prompt the player to draw a card from one of a number of different event decks (like a discovery deck, hazard deck, horror deck, etc.) and address the situation introduced by the card, usually by spending a resource, rolling dice, and/or meeting certain stat requirements. Normally, any space calling for a card draw can’t be skipped and must be addressed when the space is passed through. It’s not like Candyland where you’re only affected by the space you end your move on. Risk management will play a huge role–for example, there may be a path that will get you to your objective quicker, but there’s an unavoidable hazard space you’d have to pass through, or you can take a longer, safer route that will cost you valuable time.
There will also be a day/night cycle. At night, players have the option to camp out or leave the site and go home for the night (they can also opt to keep exploring, but will normally be penalized for doing so.) During these periods, a card must be drawn from the nighttime deck that affects all the players currently camping out–players who rest at home are exempt from this, usually.
Board starts out as a pretty, idyllic nature setting, but slowly gets corrupted, causing pieces of the board to get swapped out for nightmarish vistas, typically becoming more dangerous and gaining additional hazard and horror spaces in the process.
There would also be a general store that players could leave the trail to go purchase supplies from, such as equipment that provides useful perks and materials for rituals.
There would also be NPC characters who would periodically show up on the board. Typically they’d just be fellow hikers and bystanders, but as the players start to attract the wrong kind of attention, some of these NPCs might start to stalk players or behave in other hostile and unpredictable ways.
Accompanying soundtrack would start out as soothing acoustic indie rock and folk, then give way to dark, unsettling industrial.
How do I win?
Perform all the needed rituals before the doom tracker fills, stop the Old One from waking up. Would ideally be a semi-cooperative/competetive game, where win conditions for individual players can unexpectedly change over the course of the game–for example, a character gets corrupted and must secretly work against the other players, trying to kill them all off or awaken the Old One.
Some Character Ideas:
Maxine Caulfield expy: Has a camera and is especially proficient with it. Can take pictures of stuff and post it on her blog (in areas with reception) for beneficial effects like extra money/experience.
Mountain biker: Starts with a mountain bike, which grants extra mobility and a limited ability to skip over hazard spaces and clear gaps, but the bike can’t be brought into certain areas and must be left behind to retrieve later.
Climber: Can access certain areas off limits to other characters
Musician: At nighttime, can perform around the campfire/at home to boost the team’s spirits and restore a small amount of sanity.
Survivalist: (Something cool? IDK I’ll fill this in later.)
Weightlifter: Can carry extra gear.