Arkham Horror - The Roleplaying Game

Introduction

The Cthulhu Mythos needs no introduction. There is also a very strong chance you've heard of the Call of Cthulhu (CoC) RPG, named after Lovecraft's most famous story. Since its release it has become one of the most famous and widely played TTRPG in the world. Over the years, there have been many games that sought to bring their own vision of the Mythos to the table, notably Trail of Cthulhu from Pelgrane Press.

In the board game world, one of the most famous Mythos themed collection of board games is the Arkham Horror Files from Fantasy Flight Games. Over the years they have created board, card and dice games. Each one has expanded their vision of the town of Arkham and brought a pulp feel to the setting.

Early last year, Edge Studios released a starter set for a role‑playing game set in FFG's Arkham Horror setting - Arkham Horror - the Roleplaying Game. This has been followed by the Core Rulebook and some adventures.

I picked up the core rulebook a little while ago and recently started running it for my group. I've been a GM for about twenty years and played, among other games, Vampire the Masquerade, Deadlands (both Classic and Savage Worlds), Call of Cthulhu and a great many other games. I love "Call of Cthulhu" but, over the years have grown to enjoy more rules-light games. My favourite edition of CoC is second edition, which keeps the rules simple and brief.

Arkham Horror piqued my interest as a more pulpy, rules light take on the genre which I thought may appeal to my players.

So far, we've played the adventure from the core rulebook - Horror at the Tick Tock Club, and a Call of Cthulhu adventure that I adapted from "Adventures in Arkham Country" called "A Happy Family".

Presentation and First Impressions

The core rulebook is just gorgeous. High quality artwork throughout, a clear layout, bookmark ribbon, and easy to read. That said, you may recognize some of the art if you are familiar with other Arkham Horror Files games.

The chapters follow a logical order:

• Chapter 1: An introduction to the game and the world of Arkham Horror.
• Chapter 2: The rules of the game. This is a short and easy to read chapter.
• Chapter 3: Character Creation. I found this to be straightforward and quick.
• Chapter 4: Equipment and weapons. Just what you would expect.
• Chapter 5: Arkham and Its Neighbours. A description of Arkham and the surrounding area.
• Chapter 6: The Game Master. Covers the basics of running the game.
• Chapter 7: The Ancient Ones. Secrets for the game master.
• Chapter 8: Allies and Enemies. A good collection of NPCs and monsters.
• Chapter 9: Terror at the Tick Tock Club. An introductory adventure.

Overall I found the chapters easy to digest without the rules being too scattered through the book.

System and Mechanics

The core game mechanic uses a pool of six-sided dice (d6). Each player character (PC) has a dice pool of six dice (six six‑sided dice in total). When they need to make a roll they can use as many or as few of them as they want. So if they just wanted to do something quickly, they could roll one die. If they wanted to be thorough, they could roll all six. Or anything in between. Once all their dice are spent, they can do nothing else until the next "scene" (see below).

There are two kinds of action - simple and complex. In a simple action you can just spend dice (no roll required). This represents an action that takes time, but there is no chance of failure (like moving from one area to another). In a complex action, you need to roll the dice used from the pool. To see if they succeed, they must check if any of the dice they rolled is equal to or higher than the skill they are using.

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Example: With Observation 4, you roll 3 dice from your pool; any 4–6 is a success. Spend more dice to improve your odds, but you’ll have fewer actions left in the scene

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Within this framework there are, broadly speaking, two kinds of scene - narrative and structured. A narrative scene takes an agreed amount of time up to an hour or so. The scene ends when everyone has used their dice or no longer wishes to act. A structured scene takes a few seconds and is used when you need to zoom in on the action. Usually, this means a combat.

Apart from this there are a couple of wrinkles that add a bit of meat to the system.

First there are wounds - each wound reduces the available dice pool by one. If your dice pool is reduced to zero, you're out of the action. These can be upgraded to injuries that give a permanent consequence for your character until they are healed or may result in the death of a character if the injury is severe enough.

Next there are horror dice. Instead of sanity points like CoC, Arkham Horror uses horror dice. As you encounter horrific things, dice in your pool are replaced with "horror dice". These are normal six-sided dice and work mostly as normal, except they are a different colour. The twist is that when you roll a one on a horror die, you take a trauma, which work similarly to injuries.

Honestly, it's harder to explain than it is to play. The dice pool system is quick and simple in play and gives the players some resource management without getting bogged down in bookkeeping. The interactions between standard dice, horror dice and wounds creates an interesting set of outcomes that drive play forward in a way that automatically keeps track of time. In practice, I found this keeps the investigation flowing and moving forward. For the most part investigators are competent without being guaranteed success. I've generally found Arkham Horror investigators to be more capable and combat ready than their CoC counterparts. This plays well into the pulp feel, but may turn off some players.

The book also takes a leaf out of Trail of Cthulhu's book advising game masters not to hide critical clues behind dice rolls. This advice has worked very well for us with the discussion focusing on clue meaning rather than what to do next.

I've not noticed any particular downsides during play, but it has only been about five sessions so far.

Character Creation and Progression

Character creation is pretty straight forward. Answer some questions to create a character background, pick a personality trait and an archetype (bit like character class, but less constrained) and some knacks (similar to feats, merits, edges, etc), then pick some skills, equipment and a character improvement. Skills are rated between 2+ (best) and 6+ (worst). At the start, skills can't be better than 4+. As there are just ten skills, this does not take very long. While less skills is less granular than CoC, it makes saves looking through laundry lists of skills in play. It feels similar to Old School Essentials where all "skill" rolls just use the attribute.

In our group we had two players who wanted to play the same archetype. Because of the skill and knack customization, they feel very different in play, so character creation remains both flexible and simple.

Character progression seems pretty steady. I can't imagine running very long campaigns with this system, but that suits the genre quite well in my opinion. It's not that I don't expect them to survive or stay sane, like in Call of Cthulhu. It's more that I can see my players maxing out the character to the point it is no longer interesting to play. Which isn't a problem for me as I'm enjoying running short campaigns now. It would also be very good for oneshots and low prep games.

Adventures in Play

I found the introductory adventure to be very simple, but excellent for teaching the game. The designers have crafted a case that requires the use of all the main building blocks of the system (different kinds of scene, combat, etc) and tease out some other mechanics like advantage and assisting other characters. It also builds in a deadline which is quite central to play - as dice pools exhaust, time passes. This stops the players from having an infinite amount of dice to throw at a problem. It also functions similar to a clock (in the Blades in the Dark sense of the word) without any bookkeeping. I'd say this is an important thing to build into any investigation run with Arkham Horror.

We found combat fluid and interesting, and I highlighted to my players the importance of using a fiction first approach in a system like this.

There are a few mechanics that you just need to accept for the sake of balance. For example, in the same scene you can only attempt an action once in the same way. If you fail a research roll, you need to change the circumstances in some way to try again. This is to stop players rolling this skill checks one die at a time so that they succeed with the smallest amount of dice from their pool possible. While it may seem a bit awkward on occasion, it forces the decision of how many dice to roll to become meaningful or for there to be consequences, even if that is just that an hour passed. When there is a deadline, this becomes important.

I found converting "A Happy Family" very simple. The core book has the most common monsters, and it is pretty easy to make your own using the variety of examples as a base. In play, I found it more free-form and role play heavy than the official Arkham Horror adventures, that are laid out in scenes. Wrapping some activity in a scene was very natural and worked well. In some ways I found it easier to run the CoC adventure that the Tick Tock Club due to the simpler structure of the investigation. The tone of the original was a little darker. To fit the more pulp feel of Arkham Horror I made some small tweaks. For example, there is a monster attack in the original where there is no chance to rescue the victim - in converting it I gave the player characters a chance to intervene earlier and fight off the monster. This gave the players more agency and injected a little action.

Atmosphere and Narrative Support

The dice pool system works surprisingly well, making the player character decisions count. The small skill list is diverse enough to cover most situations without being overwhelming. The horror system is very clever, creating tension as the players never know when they are going to be impacted by the effects of the event that caused it while remaining very easy to resolve.

The system leans more to the story first style of play than being situationist, which I like but may not suit all styles of play. The game also suggests using an open table where all characters, both player and GM controlled are visible to everyone. This means that rolls cannot be fudged and does add to the tension.

The setting does a good job of encapsulating the Mythos whilst fusing it with pulp horror, action and at times, a dash of film noir.

Comparison to Call of Cthulhu and Other Horror RPGs

I love "Call of Cthulhu", but I do sometimes feel that whilst it has a simple core, the later editions have become a little bloated. Whilst characters in Arkham Horror are not as detailed as those in CoC, there was more than enough for my players to inject life into them.

Trail of Cthulhu has stronger mechanisms for investigation, and the passage of time can be easily implemented with Clocks. That said, I found Arkham Horror more fun to play, though it is hard to put my finger on why. I think I may just prefer dice rolling to managing points pools. Combat is stronger in Arkham Horror too. For evenly matched opponents it works well. If the PCs are outmatched and play defensively, things can end in a stalemate where neither side can hurt the other - if this happens encourage the players to be imaginative and describe what they want to do in a fiction first way. The game breakes down a little if you treat it like Dungeons an Dragons with the players looking at their character sheets for how to kill the monster. Let them be creative and try to say yes to their ideas.

Final Thoughts

If you are a board gamer looking to get into RPGs, I'd highly recommend the Starter Set (though I found it hard to use on a virtual tabletop, which is why I ran the Tick Tock Club adventure instead). I'd also recommend it to groups who prefer rules light or narrative games.

The pulp feel also makes characters more robust and less likely to be killed or go insane - this may be a pro or a con depending on your individual tastes.

I'll be using it to run short campaigns in the future, and it's nice to have my CoC library to delve into as well.

With the caveats above, I'd highly recommend this game.