This abuse arises out of a carefully-controlled application of luck. For all of its gewgaws, Arkham Horror really consists of just a few elements: a system of constraining change, a system of introducing change, and a system of measuring change.
The board, the investigators, and the monsters define the boundaries of the game. The streets and sites of Arkham are what they are. The same goes for the investigators, who have their abilities and background defined on small sheets. The gangster is good at shooting things and wants to know where the reptilian creature that killed his buddy came from. The librarian has facility with spells and books of forbidden lore. She read the Necronomicon, saw something nasty in the Library, and wants to chase it down. While there’s room for some manipulation of the characters and environment of the game, they and the monsters are essentially constants.
Cards provide the variables, in decks both large and small. Broadly put, the large cards determine changes in Arkham, while the smaller provide the resources players use to augment their abilities. Visit Miskatonic University’s Science Building or jump through a gate into The Dreamlands, and you’ll draw a card that describes the horror or wonder that you encounter. A deck of Mythos cards tells you where gates open, where monsters move around town, and introduces a new event in the game’s narrative. “Headline“ reads one Mythos card. “Southside Strangler Suspected! However, the press is mistaken…the murders were caused by 2 monsters that are released into the Southside streets.”
Wilson thinks of the Mythos deck as the Artificial Intelligence of Arkham Horror. “You could almost call it a difference engine” he says, “a very simple machine that has different states it can be in and the goal is to move between those states.” Play the game enough and you see patterns emerge in the movements of monsters, as in a video game.
Launius and Wilson and their colleagues and play-testers have fine-tuned Arkham Horror to provide something like a 30% success rate, similar to hitting averages in baseball and with similar results for participants. “Players get really superstitious about the game” says Wilson. “It can feel sinister, as if it’s working against you.”
If the resource cards don’t inspire quite so much trepidation, it’s probably because they’re often funnier. Players can acquire Tommy Guns, Flamethrowers, the Necronomicon, bottles of whiskey, the Lamp of Alhazred, even a Mi-Go Brain Case. The luck of drawing from these decks can result in odd combinations of character and gear. “I do like seeing a dynamite-carrying, shotgun-toting nun” says Launius. “I always like that.”
Even better, on a good draw from the deck of Allies, that nun will find herself teamed up with bare-chested, pistol-brandishing artist Upton Pickman or the monomaniacal doctor Herbert West, of Re-Animator fame. And how do we tell how the nun is faring as she blasts her way through Arkham? We look at the tokens.
Cardboard tokens are the last element. They register changes in the game. Investigators can take only so much damage during their travails against the Ancient One. You count off harm to the body with little hearts and harm to the mind with those little brains. Arkham Horror borrows the Sanity mechanic from the Cthulhu role-playing game, which reflects the Lovecraftian notion that merely learning of these alien entities, never mind encountering them, may shatter the human mind. Potentially, every encounter can reduce your pile of precious brains.
This holds true for the town as well as for the investigators. Along the bottom of the board runs the Terror Track, a measure of the townspeople’s panic in the face of their monstrous invasion. It runs from 0 to 10 and increases when certain conditions are met. Each increase penalizes the players.
The Doom Track works similarly. Each time a gate opens, you place one those staring eye tokens on a sequentially numbered track on the Ancient One sheet. Fill the track and the Ancient One awakes. This is the game’s hourglass, running out time on the investigators and therefore beating out the rhythm of the game’s narrative.
The Blood of Arkham Horror
The game’s rules and components form its skeleton, but solid solo and co-op play aren’t enough for Launius and Wilson. They want to flesh out play with story. “You’re almost trying to design a little emotional experience” says Wilson. “That’s the tricky part.”
Arkham Horror chains together its encounters in a narrative with a Lovecraftian tone, but it has to balance the influence of Lovecraft against the viability of the game. Too much H.P.L. will ruin anyone’s good time, not enough or too diluted a concoction will disappoint fans.
“I’ve heard a few people who say, well, ‘it’s not Lovecraft because players can beat a Great Old One,'” says Launius. “If you want to be totally Lovecraftian, then just get rid of the box, roll the dice and everybody goes insane”"or half of them go insane and the other half get killed.”
“That’s not really a satisfying experience for players” says Wilson.
So‚ Arkham Horror is not pure Lovecraft, but neither was Lovecraft pure. He drew from many different traditions, borrowed from his peers, and experimented with many forms and styles. Of course, his habits, obsessions, and neuroses always drew him back to a certain manner and mood, but his works amount to more than a private grindstone for milling the world to dust.
Nice…review?
Kind of convinced me to give it a whirl. I would have liked to know a bit more on mechanics, (that you may have seen as pedestrian information, such as setup time, as the box pic looks huge, learning time (how well it fares with 2 players, (just me & the missus).