Hello! Question/thought about Omens in Cthork Borg: if the player-characters get around 4 or 5 Omens each, and you've got four players at the table...isn't that roughly 16 to 20 re-rolls or Difficulty Number reductions, etc. per scenario? Is there a concern that so many Omens being available to the party per investigation/scenario that the player-characters will steamroll the opposition with that many 'bennies' available to the group? Thus lessening the horror feeling of it all? Would be eager to hear your thoughts...thank you!
Yep! More players means more Omens, more Actions in combat, more equipment, etc.
It also means you have more room to play a bit mean as the GM. You can throw more dangerous situations at them, include enemies with strong attacks or nasty gimmicks, use cults that are tactical and smart, etc.
You can definitely reduce Omens if you want to, but my experience is that this makes the game feel a little more random. The fewer Omens the players have, the easier it is for them to get picked off by a couple bad rolls.
Also, some of this will depend on the tone you want to go for. If you like tense, desperate, anyone-can-die style scenarios, you might want to reduce everyone's starting Omens by -3. The current starting Omens is a little bit more geared towards adventure pulp.
I haven't experimented with this specifically, but if you really want Omens to scale with group size, you might try -1 Omen for all players per group member over 3. That'll give bigger groups an advantage in numbers, but anyone who gets isolated will be in more danger.
This is great - thank you! I was thinking about the Omens overnight, and am reminded by way of your response about Luck Points in Call of Cthulhu. In that game, investigators get to cannibalize their Luck scores to directly influence dice rolls, thus working in intent and manner very akin to Omen spending in Cthork Borg. And your point about playing the opposition as craftily and mean as possible is well taken, since Cthork Borg players can attempt to mitigate disaster with Omen spends. In my last Cthork Borg game, my players were slinging a bunch of Omens around to defeat the opposition at the finale of the adventure and keep their own fat out of the fryer. Thank you sir for a) a great game like Cthork Borg; and b) a speedy and thoughtful reply to my observation. I love this game!