Wrath of the Old Dog is a horror board game created by Andrew Grondin. The game features art by Pink Saphires
and Boneitis. It was successfully funded on Kickstarter in 2015 and released in fall of 2016. The game's premise follows a pack of ordinary neighborhood dogs as they battle a who's who from the Lovecraft bestiary. Two maps (one cul-de-sac, and one a dockside) represent the playing field, and each map has two Scenarios. Scenarios describe the monsters and win or loss conditions for each of the three "nights" of play. The game has a dynamic difficulty, with the Dogs getting powered up for each win, and the subsequent nights becoming harder with each loss. As getting a custom Dog in the game was one of the Kickstarter goals, there are a ton of playable characters in the game. The Scenarios are:
- Wrath of the Old Dog - Druidic cultists worshiping Shub-Niggurath are trying to summon the Black Goat.
- Icterus Daybreak - A fragment of the King in Yellow's soul still exists on Earth, and a group of maniacs are attempting to give it new life.
- Homecoming - The razing of Innsmouth wasn't the end. Cthulhu is waking, and his progeny across the planet are rising with him.
- A Flash of Light, then Darkness - A trio of people from out of town have brought something otherworldly with them.
- Jormungand - A bonus Scenario exclusive to Kickstarter backers. Deals with the slow corruption of a human into an avatar of Yig.
The game uses six-sided die to resolve challenges, modified by Attributes associated with each Dog or Monster. Dogs use Sense, Scamper, and Scrap to represent their abilities. Monsters use Vigilance, Velocity, and Violence for the same. Similarly, both parties have special powers that affect gameplay. Monsters have powers related to their classic stories, while Dogs have Breed and Unique powers. Breed powers are based on the AKC classification of the Dog:
- Large Dogs use Big Woof, a debuff that removes an enemy's Actions.
- Medium Dogs use Pack Alpha, which gives their Action to an ally.
- Small Dogs use Little Scoot, a passive that gives them the ability to move through other creatures.
Unique powers are specific to each Dog. They include passive buffs, active enemy debuffs, attack options, and defensive abilities.
Monsters are controlled by the player with the Monster Token, which rotates at the end of each turn. A ten point Doom Track monitors how close the players are to a win or loss condition.
Wrath of the Old Dog is available on The Game Crafter.
This game provides examples of:
- Apocalypse Cult: Unnamed in the game proper, but the majority of the Scenarios use a "Cultist" character who want to bring about The End of the World as We Know It.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: Comes with the territory. Especially prevalent with the Mi-Go and their Grey puppets.
- Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Happens from time to time, generally in the final night of a Scenario. Heroic Sacrifice and Last Stand can be effective strategies to run out the clock for a win.
- Combat Tentacles: The Old Dog (aka Shub-Niggurath) uses them, as well as her kin, the Dark Young.
- Cosmic Horror Story: The backdrop of the game. Assuming all of the Scenarios are canon, then the world of Wrath is in serious trouble.
- Lovecraft Lite: The game proper. These monsters from beyond time and space can be banished or killed by average everyday dogs.
- The Day of Reckoning: The last night of each Scenario. The gloves come off, no holds are barred, and it's do-or-die for the dogs.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: With careful planning, strategy, and luck on the part of the players, the abominations can be defeated.
- Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?: In Jormungand. Catherine Bishop loses her husband, and responds to this by reanimating his body with eldritch magic. Karl Bishop, the secondary protagonist of that Scenario, is Catherine's decedent.
- Eldritch Abomination: Cthulhu, Hastur, Yig, and Shub-Niggurath.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Presumptively why the dogs are handling the monsters, and not humans.
- Evil Only Has to Win Once: Since the bad guys are summoning the heavy hitters from the Cthulhu Mythos, the world is right and proper boned if they win.
- Expanded Universe: The game takes place in the world of the Cthulhu Mythos.
- Fish People: The bad guys in Homecoming.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: Why Shub-Niggurath looks like a horrible, giant dog.
- The Greatest Story Never Told: It isn't exactly like the dogs are able to tell anyone what happened.
- The Greys: Featured in A Flash of Light, then Darkness. Implied to be the same artificial life forms as featured in Delta Green.
- Guns Are Useless: Averted! The human NPCs from A Flash of Light, then Darkness use firearms to great effect against the monsters of that Scenario.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Classic Deep Ones. Karl Bishop and the owners from Homecoming are further up the family tree, but the influence of their ancestors is still felt.
- Hero of Another Story: The three agents from A Flash of Light, then Darkness.
- Hostile Weather: A hazard in night three of Homecoming, complicating the fight against the Aspect of Cthulhu.
- Humanoid Abomination: The Avatar of the King from Icterus Daybreak. Should the dogs fail Jormungand, Karl Bishop as well.
- Insectoid Aliens: The Mi-Go.
- Just Before the End: All of the Scenarios (sans A Flash of Light, then Darkness) end with the world being destroyed if the dogs fail.
- Multiarmed And Dangerous: The Aspect of the King, the Dark Young, and Shub-Niggurath can use their many tentacles to attack one or more targets.
- Mushroom Man: The Mi-Go, as per their classical representation.
- Never Say "Die": For the dogs, at least. A dog reduced to zero hit points is "KO'ed", and can come back in at the beginning of the next night. Averted with humans, since the Scenarios detail in no uncertain terms that a lot of people will be killed if the monsters aren't stopped.
- Once per Episode: Nyarlathotep, or an avatar thereof, appears in the background of each Scenario as a provocateur.
- Plant Aliens: The Mi-Go, as per their half-fungus biology.
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: The enemies in Jormungand are snakes, very big snakes, and a guy who is turning into a snake. All of them are bad news.
- Secret War: Dogs battling monsters. The only way we would know about it is if they fail, and the world ends.
- Shout Out:
- A Flash of Light, then Darkness involves three human allies. They're a small cell of highly trained, government agents. All three have code names starting with 'T'. They're being attacked by Mi-Go in retaliation for a mission they just finished.
- The Mi-Go also use a teleportation device named "Heaven's Door", and a powerful hand grenade called a "D4C bomb".
- Icterus Daybreak mentions Inspector LeGrasse, Dr. Willett, and Dr. Morgan as the three that stopped the original play from being completed.
- Homecoming references the plot of both The Shadow Over Innsmouth and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.
- Taking the Bullet: A valid strategy. Distract the monsters with a sacrificial dog so that the rest of the party can complete a mission objective.
- Total Party Kill: Possible, but it only sticks on the final night of a Scenario.
- The Unfought: While he shows up in the background causing all manner of trouble, Nyarlathotep himself never shows up as an enemy.
- When the Planets Align: The reason why the dogs can win in Wrath of the Old Dog. Since the stars are right on the final night, the dogs only need to stall Shub-Niggurath until the window of opportunity to fully summon it passes.
