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Mythos (card game)
Encyclopedia
Mythos is a collectible card game
(CCG) published by Chaosium
. It is based on the Cthulhu Mythos
stories of the horror author H. P. Lovecraft
, as well as on Chaosium's own Call of Cthulhu
role-playing game.
and initially sold well. Later expansions however, most notably the non-collectible Standard Game Set, did much more poorly and forced Chaosium to discontinue Mythos. The production was stopped to New Aeon in 1997, only a year after the game's heyday.
In 1999 Pyramid
magazine named Mythos as one of The Millennium's Best Card Games. Editor Scott Haring said "Mythos was a very deserving game, with great art and gameplay that involved more than just monsters fighting each other."
. Its game play somewhat borrowed from previous CCG titles, but also managed to introduce new, innovative mechanics.
The game is playable by two players, but is really intended to be a multi-player experience, where trying to complete your adventures becomes more important and viable strategy than just disrupting your opponent's game. Mythos tournament games are carried out in tables of four.
Like in most collectible card game titles, a Mythos player constructs a deck from available cards using certain rules and card limits. A player chooses an investigator card to represent him or her as a character. Each investigator has special abilities and numerical attributes, most notably sanity. Certain cards can lower an investigator's sanity, and when it reaches 0, he or she is eliminated from the game.
The main objective of the game is to collect points by completing adventures. Adventures are cards that include certain keywords consisting of different card names and types. Once you have the required cards in your story deck or on the table, you can play the adventure and receive its points. When a player reaches the agreed amount of adventure points (usually 20), the game ends after the current round and the winner is decided.
Each player can normally play only one card at a time, after which the turn is passed to the next player. This continues until a certain number of players have passed instead of playing anything.
Braincase.
, Summon Great Cthulhu
.
, Randolph Carter
.
s,Tommygun
.
, R'lyeh
, Nyarlathotep
.
, Unaussprechlichen Kulten
.
and starters
, which contained a fixed number of common, uncommon and rare cards distributed randomly. The Mythos Standard Edition Set deviated from this practice.
Cards are illustrated by various artists using very various styles, some cards being photo-realistic paintings, some computer-generated and some examples of modern arts.
Collectible card game
thumb|Players and their decksA collectible card game , also called a trading card game or customizable card game, is a game played using specially designed sets of playing cards...
(CCG) published by Chaosium
Chaosium
Chaosium is one of the longer lived publishers of role-playing games still in existence. Founded by Greg Stafford, its first game was actually a wargame, White Bear and Red Moon, which later mutated into Dragon Pass and its sequel, Nomad Gods...
. It is based on the Cthulhu Mythos
Cthulhu Mythos
The Cthulhu Mythos is a shared fictional universe, based on the work of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.The term was first coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft, who used the name of the creature Cthulhu - a central figure in Lovecraft literature and the focus...
stories of the horror author H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
, as well as on Chaosium's own Call of Cthulhu
Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game)
Call of Cthulhu is a horror fiction role-playing game based on H. P. Lovecraft's story of the same name and the associated Cthulhu Mythos.The game, often abbreviated as CoC, is published by Chaosium.-Setting:...
role-playing game.
Overview
In 1996, Chaosium decided to join the on-going CCG-boom and published Mythos, designed by Charlie Krank. It received critical acclaim, winning the 1996 Best Card Game award at OriginsOrigins Award
The Origins Awards are American awards for outstanding work in the game industry. They are presented by the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design at the Origins Game Fair on an annual basis for the previous year, so the 1979 awards were given at the 1980 Origins.The Origins Award is commonly...
and initially sold well. Later expansions however, most notably the non-collectible Standard Game Set, did much more poorly and forced Chaosium to discontinue Mythos. The production was stopped to New Aeon in 1997, only a year after the game's heyday.
In 1999 Pyramid
Pyramid (magazine)
Pyramid is a gaming magazine, publishing articles primarily on role-playing games, but including board games, card games, and other sorts of games. It began life in 1993 as a print publication of Steve Jackson Games for its first 30 issues, though it has been published on the Internet since March...
magazine named Mythos as one of The Millennium's Best Card Games. Editor Scott Haring said "Mythos was a very deserving game, with great art and gameplay that involved more than just monsters fighting each other."
Game play
Mythos was designed towards high player interaction in the vein of some traditional card games like rummyRummy
Rummy is a group of card games notable for gameplay based on the matching of similar playing cards. The Mexican game of Conquian is considered by David Parlett to be ancestral to all rummy games, which itself is derived from a Chinese game called Khanhoo and, going even further back,...
. Its game play somewhat borrowed from previous CCG titles, but also managed to introduce new, innovative mechanics.
The game is playable by two players, but is really intended to be a multi-player experience, where trying to complete your adventures becomes more important and viable strategy than just disrupting your opponent's game. Mythos tournament games are carried out in tables of four.
Like in most collectible card game titles, a Mythos player constructs a deck from available cards using certain rules and card limits. A player chooses an investigator card to represent him or her as a character. Each investigator has special abilities and numerical attributes, most notably sanity. Certain cards can lower an investigator's sanity, and when it reaches 0, he or she is eliminated from the game.
The main objective of the game is to collect points by completing adventures. Adventures are cards that include certain keywords consisting of different card names and types. Once you have the required cards in your story deck or on the table, you can play the adventure and receive its points. When a player reaches the agreed amount of adventure points (usually 20), the game ends after the current round and the winner is decided.
Each player can normally play only one card at a time, after which the turn is passed to the next player. This continues until a certain number of players have passed instead of playing anything.
Investigator
A double-sized card played on the table at the start of the game to represent the player. Examples: Adventurous Dilettante, Obsessed Agent in Mi-GoMi-go
The Mi-go are a race of extraterrestrials in the Cthulhu Mythos created by H. P. Lovecraft and others. The name was first applied to the creatures in Lovecraft's short story "The Whisperer in Darkness" , taking up a reference to 'What fungi sprout in Yuggoth' in his sonnet cycle Fungi from Yuggoth...
Braincase.
Adventure
An Adventure card consists of a short story, in which certain key phrases are highlighted and need to be completed to play the Adventure card. Some Adventures are of general type, some try to recreate famous events from Lovecraft's stories. Examples: The Dunwich HorrorThe Dunwich Horror
"The Dunwich Horror" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft. Written in 1928, it was first published in the April 1929 issue of Weird Tales . It takes place in Dunwich, a fictional town in Massachusetts...
, Summon Great Cthulhu
The Call of Cthulhu
The Call of Cthulhu is a short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written in the summer of 1926, it was first published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales, in February 1928.-Inspiration:...
.
Ally
Allies (as well as all other card types) are used to satisfy different Adventure requirements and know languages that make comprehending foreign Tomes possible. They also protect your Investigator from Monsters and other cards. Examples: Edgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
, Randolph Carter
Randolph Carter
Randolph Carter is a recurring protagonist in H. P. Lovecraft'sfiction and a thinly disguised alter ego of Lovecraft himself. The first tale in which Carter appears--"The Statement of Randolph Carter" --is based on one of Lovecraft's dreams....
.
Artifact
Artifacts are items that can be found at Artifact Locations. They help the Investigator in myriad ways or give bonuses to his or her Allies. Examples: Jewelry of the Deep OneDeep One
The Deep Ones are creatures in the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. The beings first appeared in Lovecraft's novella "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"...
s,Tommygun
TommyGun
TommyGun is a retro development toolkit. It is an integrated development environment made for creating games and other software for old 8-bit computers. Because it is a modular and open-ended application it can support any type of computer, but is intended for 8 and 16 bit computers...
.
Event
Events represent calamities, phobias, weather conditions, day-night cycle and other surprising things that can happen to one or more investigators or cards. Examples: Eclipse of the Sun, Townsfolk Riot.Location
During the game, investigators travel to different locations by walking or by using different methods of transportation (by playing Event cards such as Train). In true Lovecraftian spirit, some Locations are real while others are fictitious. Examples: Massachusetts State HospitalDanvers State Hospital
Danvers State Hospital, also known as the State Lunatic Hospital at Danvers, The Danvers Lunatic Asylum, and The Danvers State Insane Asylum, was a psychiatric hospital located in Danvers, Massachusetts....
, R'lyeh
Monster
Monsters are played into one's directed threat, where they attack against other Investigators and their allies at the end of round. Most are drawn from Cthulhu Mythos and some are Great Old Ones or Outer Gods with powers that affect every Investigator. Examples: Colour out of spaceColour out of space (species)
A colour out of space is a fictional extraterrestrial in the writings of the horror fiction author H. P. Lovecraft. It first appeared in Lovecraft's short story "The Colour Out of Space" .-Description:...
, Nyarlathotep
Nyarlathotep
Nyarlathotep, also known as the Crawling Chaos, is a malign deity in the Cthulhu Mythos fictional universe created by H. P. Lovecraft. First appearing in Lovecraft's 1920 prose poem of the same name, he was later mentioned in other works by Lovecraft and by other writers and in the tabletop...
.
Spell
Spells can be found in Tomes. Some corrupt allies can also know Spells. Casting spells costs your Investigator sanity, but can help you or hinder you opponent in many ways. Examples: Create Gate, Thirty-five Abominable Adulations of the Bloated One.Tome
Arcane literature that contains Spells. Reading Tomes costs sanity. Examples: NecronomiconNecronomicon
The Necronomicon is a fictional grimoire appearing in the stories by horror writer H. P. Lovecraft and his followers. It was first mentioned in Lovecraft's 1924 short story "The Hound", written in 1922, though its purported author, the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred, had been quoted a year earlier in...
, Unaussprechlichen Kulten
Unaussprechlichen Kulten
Unaussprechlichen Kulten is a fictional work of arcane literature in the Cthulhu Mythos. The book first appeared in Robert E. Howard's short stories "The Children of the Night" and "The Black Stone" as Nameless Cults. Like the Necronomicon, it was later mentioned in several stories by H. P...
.
Distribution
Mythos was available in boostersBooster pack
In collectible card games and collectible miniature wargames, a booster pack is a sealed package of cards or figurines, designed to add to a player's collection....
and starters
Starter pack
A starter pack is a sealed package of cards or figurines, designed to serve as the beginning of a collection, in collectible card games and collectible miniature wargames....
, which contained a fixed number of common, uncommon and rare cards distributed randomly. The Mythos Standard Edition Set deviated from this practice.
Cards are illustrated by various artists using very various styles, some cards being photo-realistic paintings, some computer-generated and some examples of modern arts.
Mythos Limited Edition
Mythos Limited Edition (1996) was divided into starters, which also contained a random investigator, and into 3 different boosters:- Expeditions of Miskatonic University
- Cthulhu Rising
- Legends of the Necronomicon.
Mythos Standard Edition Set
Mythos Standard Edition Set (1997), unlike other Mythos sets, did not have boosters. Instead it came in two pre-constructed, out-of-the-box playable decks packed together.Mythos: The Dreamlands
Mythos: The Dreamlands (1997) introduced the concept of a different dimension, Dreamlands, with all new Investigators, boosters and starters.New Aeon
New Aeon (1997) was a stand-alone expansion distributed in the same way as The Dreamlands. The setting was modern age, with a lighter, popular culture overtone in illustration and card design. Due to the game's cancellation, New Aeon had a far lower print run than preceding sets (especially The Dreamlands), and sold out quickly after it became known that the game was discontinued.See also
- Call of Cthulhu Collectible Card GameCall of Cthulhu Collectible Card GameThe Call of Cthulhu Collectible Card Game or Call of Cthulhu Living Card Game is a collectible card game marketed by Fantasy Flight Games. It is based on the fiction of the Cthulhu Mythos, primarily the writings of H. P. Lovecraft and Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu role-playing game...
- Cthulhu Mythos in popular cultureCthulhu Mythos in popular cultureThis article provides a list of cultural references to the work of author H. P. Lovecraft. These references are collectively known as the Cthulhu Mythos. For works that are stylistically influenced by Lovecraft, see Lovecraftian horror.- Film :...
- List of collectible card games