Exploring Arkham

Hi there - I'm a long time lurker, and a first time poster. All the talk of Kingsport has re-spiked my interest in Arkham Horror, and caused me to revisit one of my old questions about Arkham. One of the reasons I really enjoy the game is the ability to 'explore' Arkham - wandering around from location to location having encounters and seeing what's out there. It appears as if Kingsport is going to have a lot of this as well - plenty of new locations to explore and encounters to have.

The problem that I've encountered many times when playing the game is that you don't have much time to explore Arkham before you have to get down to business. After about turn three, you really have to get on top of open gates, or the doom track is going to fill up really quickly and then, game over.

My gaming group has often thought of have a 'grace period', so to speak, early on in the game when you're not flipping over mythos cards to open new gates, giving the players time to have some encounters, get some equipment, etc. But, this really reduces the difficulty of the game in the long run (thus making it un-fun).

Anybody else encounter this?

An interesting idea, especially since much of the atmosphere of the game comes through the encounters. It should be easy enough to adjust the difficulty back up to compensate. For example: add a herald, reduce the outskirts and open gate limits by 1, move the terror track to two when the "grace period" ends as the first signs of the AO manifest themselves. But, being a co-op game, there isn't so much need to worry about keeping it at the same difficulty level. The important thing is that there is a good balance between the investigators (so that all the players have more or less equal opportunities to participate) and not between the investigators and the game. The only thing that matters about the overall difficulty of the game is that (as you imply) you have enough of a chance to win that it is fun to try and not so much of a chance that there is no point in bothering. That's a pretty wide margin, and it ends up being different for every group anyway.

Cheers,
Chris

timf wrote:Hi there - I'm a long One of the reasons I really enjoy the game is the ability to 'explore' Arkham - wandering around from location to location having encounters and seeing what's out there.

My gaming group has often thought of have a 'grace period', so to speak, early on in the game when you're not flipping over mythos cards to open new gates, giving the players time to have some encounters, get some equipment, etc. But, this really reduces the difficulty of the game in the long run (thus making it un-fun).

Its my major disappointment with the game is that there's so much in the Arkham that hardly ever gets encountered.

Solutions I've considered and/or tried.....

No gates for the first three turns.
Then two gates each for the next three turns.

or

A gate to begin the game, then no Mythos cards for a number of turns and then two Mythos cards until the game is back in balance, ie 3 turns of no more Mythos cards, then three turns of two Mythos cards.

and/or roll a dice for each Mythos phase

on a certain number no mythos card
on other numbers two mythos cards.

ie. As radical as no Mythos on 4-6 and two mythos on 1-3. Or as conservative as No mythos card on a 6 and two mythos cards on a 1. This could randomly make the game more difficult or easier, but over all keep the same ratio.

Another solution I've worked on is making Strange Eon cards is to have a location deck where clue tokens are placed instead of the location on the card including bothing stable and unstable locations (I haven't yet added streets. That means there's a reason to go there (and have an encounter). It makes the game a little easier in the sense that there's less chance of being accidently sucked through a gate.

From the description of the Hypnos cards, you might be able to use those cards to determine random locations for clues and not have to make your own cards.

Exploring Arkham is fun. I believe it is supposed to be based on the city of Providence, Rhode Island of Lovecraft's day. He used to live there.

One interesting feature of Arkham is the river, which runs across the entire board. In later re-issues of the game board with different background colors, the river is difficult to see. With the original release game board, it is quite apparent. Some of the encounter cards make reference to the river.

As for exploring Arkham, Millmaster used to encourage players to visit some of the locations that are not unstable, or locations that are seldom the site of an encounter. The Train Station is one such site. Sometimes a player can get an ally at Velma's Diner. And there are others. How many take an encounter at the Church, versus just buying a blessing? How many choose an encounter at the Police Station, versus just getting arrested and dragged there?

One darn shame for those playing with their DH board largely inactive is to miss some encounters at the DH sites. When we say "explore Arkham" you probably mean Dunwich as well.

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It is too bad Millmaster is not around lately. He was wrong about "Enchant Weapon," but other than that, he was one of the sharpest experts to ever post to the forum.

Does anyone hear from him?

Your reply makes it sound like you are not happy with any of the things you have tried so far. Did anything work particularly well, or poorly?

Some of the things you mentioned seem to end up with the same overall rate of gate opening. I suspect that did not end up being satisfying, as in the back of your mind you would always know that the gates are coming and you had better be preparing. I think what would be needed is a way to add some breathing room to the start of the game (without compensating by opening more gates later). Basically, a few turns that represent the "good times" in Arkham before everything falls apart.

How about assuming that the game starts on a Sunday? For the first two turns, no mythos cards are drawn, but you cannot use the special text at the bank, administration, or any of the stores (because it is Sunday and they are not open for regular business). You could simply close those locations, but that would eliminate several of the places where you might have an encounter. At the end of the second turn, increase the terror level by 1 as the first signs of trouble appear, and then draw a Mythos card and proceed as normal.

I think you have a good idea in placing clues at stable locations, as it gives you the incentive to go to stable locations. On the other hand, there is no time pressure as with unstable locations, because nothing threatens to remove the clues the way an opening gate will. Perhaps the cards should list two locations (or draw two cards in a row). One is a location where a clue appears, and the other is a (preferably stable) location where a clue is removed (if present).

Cheers,
Chris

Thelric wrote:Your reply makes it sound like you are not happy with any of the things you have tried so far. Did anything work particularly well, or poorly?

Most of the players I tried it with like the additional clue token flow. Curiously, some of the clues went begging because, as you note, there wasn't any urgency to get them.

Some of the things you mentioned seem to end up with the same overall rate of gate opening. I suspect that did not end up being satisfying, as in the back of your mind you would always know that the gates are coming and you had better be preparing.

Those were mostly just ideas and the design was indeed to keep the net mythos flow the same.

I think what would be needed is a way to add some breathing room to the start of the game (without compensating by opening more gates later). Basically, a few turns that represent the "good times" in Arkham before everything falls apart.

How about assuming that the game starts on a Sunday? For the first two turns, no mythos cards are drawn, but you cannot use the special text at the bank, administration, or any of the stores (because it is Sunday and they are not open for regular business). You could simply close those locations, but that would eliminate several of the places where you might have an encounter. At the end of the second turn, increase the terror level by 1 as the first signs of trouble appear, and then draw a Mythos card and proceed as normal.

Very thematic. So your "compensation" would be a terror level increase rather than a Mythos card. I could certainly live with that.

I think you have a good idea in placing clues at stable locations, as it gives you the incentive to go to stable locations. On the other hand, there is no time pressure as with unstable locations, because nothing threatens to remove the clues the way an opening gate will. Perhaps the cards should list two locations (or draw two cards in a row). One is a location where a clue appears, and the other is a (preferably stable) location where a clue is removed (if present).

Clues are pretty precious in our games even though some stable, out of the way, clues did go begging.

I like your suggestion to remove a clue. I did only have one complaint (from about 35 people at the last convention) that he thought there were too many clues and made the game too easy. (He left the game before the end and we did win the game against Azathoth but only because three turns in a row Azathoth bumped against a sealed gate instead of pulling out the gate that would bring him out due to too many gates and we finally sealed the sixth gate.)

Your suggestion would keep the clue token flow roughly the same and give urgency to go to the stable locations.

*The location deck is really called the "Keep Out" deck and has two functions. One function is to bring out a clue if the Mythos phase doesn't bring one out (due to sealed or closed locations) and the other function is to close locations as the Terror level raises. It replaces the automatic closing of the Stores. A closed location, of course, would eat any clues that a there.

You could always wait for my Mi-go supplement that includes a novel and original prequel variant.

This allows time for exploration of Arkham, gain valuable clues and strength and a chance to tackle the mi-go incursion before the GOO even comes on the scene.

Cheers, Hal

mageith wrote:
Very thematic. So your "compensation" would be a terror level increase rather than a Mythos card. I could certainly live with that.

Right. There are three goals I was trying to meet:

(1) adjust the difficulty without reducing the amount of time the investigators have to complete the game (and in fact, increasing it)

(2) prevent the players from using the extra time to gain a huge advantage by disallowing shopping

(3) encourage the players to have encounters at locations they would not normally visit (by disallowing shopping and not opening gates)

To further support (3) it would be useful to add some way of randomizing the initial clue distribution (as your deck does) so that:

(1) some stable locations have clues

(2) the set of locations with clues varies, so that players get to explore different places each game

Alternatively, place the initial clues on stable locations rather than unstable ones.

If adding one to the terror level isn't enough of a threat, draw an extra monster or two for the first gate. (You can't increase the terror level by 2, or the store could close before players are allowed to shop.)

*The location deck is really called the "Keep Out" deck and has two functions. One function is to bring out a clue if the Mythos phase doesn't bring one out (due to sealed or closed locations) and the other function is to close locations as the Terror level raises. It replaces the automatic closing of the Stores. A closed location, of course, would eat any clues that a there.

An interesting idea. I suppose you could even vary the effects of the terror track rising with cards like, "If the General Store has not been abandoned, the list price to purchase any item there is increased by 1. Place a $1 token there to indicates this." (Where "abandoned" means permanent closure as opposed to the closures that last only a turn due to Mythos cards.) Then you could draw a card every time the terror level goes up and not just when it hits the predefined points.

Cheers,
Chris

I like the idea of a few "grace" turns without shopping. That would really allow for more exploration without really biasing the game towards the players. If there were more ways to remove doom tokens from the GOO, I guess you'd have more time to explore Arkham. Again, though, this may make the game easier.

Personally, I dislike the idea of grace turns to allow the Investigators extra time, since I think it would make the game considerably easier. I play with four players, and though we're admittedly kept pretty busy, there are times when there is nothing for one of the Investigators to do, allowing him to take an encounter at a stable location. As an example, I have had an encounter each at two separate stable locations which made the difference in winning those games for me.

Solan wrote:Personally, I dislike the idea of grace turns to allow the Investigators extra time, since I think it would make the game considerably easier.

OK. But most of the discussion here has been about the best way to counter that and keep the difficulty more or less the same.

Cheers,
Chris

Hello,

I've only played a few (solo) games, but I've been following the discussion with interest.

For the last couple of outings I've used a variant from the web (BGG?) where the GOO is hidden for a number of turns equal to the monster limit. Doom tokens are played to the back of the GOO card, but gates not opened until it is revealed. This did allow me to get more familiar with the board, try shopping etc, but I'm sure it made the game considerable easier. Also I never took an encounter at a shop location, I was always choosing to use the special ability.

Anyway I have a couple of suggestions:
1) encounters at locations with special abilities
for special ability. An ecounter card must be drawn as normal (a funny this happens on the way to the forum). Special abilities are accessed between the arkham ecnopunter phase and the otherworld encounter phase.

Would this be too unbalanced? In the few games I've played I seem to have had almost as many negative encounters as positive, but I may have just been unlucky & I'm sure folks here have a better feel for this than I do.

IF it would be imbalancing, then how about the encounter draw is mandatory, withthe special ability can only be utilised if an optional option is turned down. I.e. if an unavoidable encounter such as "a monster appears" is turned up then no special ability can be used. Likewise if a player chooses to go for an option presented on the card they they forfeit the special ability. I f this would make healing too slow then a successful luck role may allow the encounter draw to be missed.

2) clue tokens & stable locations
a) start with a clue token on every location, stable & unstable. Each mythos phase remove a token from a random stable location. It does increase the number of initially available clues, but at least people will try to visit the stable locations before the clues disappear.

Or

b) when a clue would be placed on a location that already has one or more clues it is instead placed on a stable location in the same neighbourhood. If this is not possible then no clue is placed? this makes people go to the stable locations to ensure the clue supply doesn’t dry up. It does prevent multiple clue stacking at popular locations, but then that may partially offset any advantage gained if option 1 above is used.

Apologies if there is any obvious problem with these suggestions, I’m still getting a feel for the game.

As an aside for nyarlathotep, has anyone tried keeping the masks to one side & placing then as the first monster appearing in monster surges? (I haven’t seen the spawn rules yet for dunwich, so apologies if they use this mechanism). If three or more masks are on the board in the mythos phase then nyarlathotep arrives. I’ve seen a few posts complaining that N is week in the final battle, perhaps the investigators have to face off against the masks present on the board before the final battle?

Cheers - Chris

Some suggestions:

Don't draw a Mythos card to start the game. That gives you one turn's grace and acts as a prologue to the game.

Do not turn over the AO until the end of the Mythos Phase when it receives the third Doom token. Until this time, Investigators may not pass through gates, Rumours do not appear and Mosnters do not move.

Put "benefit" tokens in all the stable locations at the start of the game. When an Investigator visits those Locations and chooses to have an Encounter (i.e. draws card, not uses the special text) they may remove the token and restore one point of Sanity or Stamina.

Each time the Terror Level rises, draw a Mythos Card and remove the Benefit tokens from the neighbourhood in which the Clue would appear. This represents people becoming more guarded as terror begins to grip Arkham.

we (house)rule that, before taking a "special" encounter in a location you MUST (and MAY) take a regular encounter. This doesn't seem to change the difficulty a lot, but gives us encounters at Church, Asylum, Hospital, Shops, usually never explored

Hi folks,

I just picked up Dunwich Horror today in town & a quick look at the AOs revealed that the waht I'd suggested for Nyarlathotep above almost exactly matches what happens with the AOs who have sapwn monsters

I also notice that the central Dunwich neighbourhood (dunwich village?) has only stable locations. For my suggestion about clues & stable places to work in Dunwich this & the all unstable neighbourhood (backwoods?) should be considered one big neighbourhood for purpose of clue placement.

Cheers - Chris

btw Dunwich looks great. I jus picked up Arkham Horror about 3-4 weeks back and had to get KiY when I saw it on Saturday & go into town today just to pick up DH.

Best - Chris

geki wrote:we (house)rule that, before taking a "special" encounter in a location you MUST (and MAY) take a regular encounter. This doesn't seem to change the difficulty a lot, but gives us encounters at Church, Asylum, Hospital, Shops, usually never explored

Nothing is Free!

It probably shouldn't change the difficulty much because from what I can tell the the encounters are pretty much balanced among good, neutral and bad. What it probably will do is lengthen the game (but make it more fun).

geki wrote:we (house)rule that, before taking a "special" encounter in a location you MUST (and MAY) take a regular encounter. This doesn't seem to change the difficulty a lot, but gives us encounters at Church, Asylum, Hospital, Shops, usually never explored

I like that a lot, although I might change it to getting a regular encounter after the "special" encounter. Although it might be more exciting to take the regular encounter first, my friends are likely to become frustrated if they go to the Hospital to heal only to have a monster appear and knock them out first.

geki wrote:we (house)rule that, before taking a "special" encounter ...

Why before? When I've tried it, I did it afterwards too.

mageith wrote:Why before? When I've tried it, I did it afterwards too.

We have the same house rule as geki. I think it's a great idea, seeing as, IMHO, the encounters are one of the most interesting part of the game.

We toyed with placing them before or after using the location's special ability and we found that it worked better placing it before. The reason is that most encounter at those locations (green) are beneficial to the investigators. I don't remember the ratio, but it's definitively not 50/50 good/bad. Therefore, to still add the flavour (more encounters is always better!) but keep the balance more or less the same, we basically changed the text from:
"Instead of having an encounter..."
to
"After having an encounter, if you are still here and not delayed..."

which seems to work really neatly for us.

BladeRnr wrote:
"Instead of having an encounter..."
to
"After having an encounter, if you are still here and not delayed..."

which seems to work really neatly for us.

We're going to play our first game of Kingsport tonight, and will probably try these rules tonight.

We've also decided to try a variant to allow more exploring in the first few turns. For the first six turns of the game, we're only going to draw a mythos card every other turn. I'll report back on how this turns out.

This thread has a bunch of neat ideas!

BladeRnr wrote:"Instead of having an encounter..."
to
"After having an encounter, if you are still here and not delayed..."

How about making either of the encounters optional? So instead:

Either before or after (if you are still here and not delayed) an encounter here, you may...

Yes, it makes it a little wordy, but the concept is simple.

Also, adding the extra clues could be balanced by, if any location would have a third clue placed there, remove all the clues at that location and place a Cultist from the monster cup in that location. Mark that Cultist with a clue token. When the Cultist is defeated in combat, the Investigator gains that one clue token.

I was thinking of a neat way to allow for extra turns to explore as in the original post, and I picked up on the idea of double Mythos cards for three turns or using dice to see if you have extra Mythos cards (Thanks Mageith!). I came up with my own variant option (which is a hybrid of the two) that should allow for both a balanced game (same net number of Mythos cards), as well as variability. It could also potentially push the extra Mythos phases back enough so that you don't need to be worried about them as much in the brief reprieve you get at the start. Eventually, things should even out.

Now, as a word of caution, I tend to make things a bit overcomplicated (and I obviously know this). If this method is overly complex, it is because I came up with it thinking that I would probably be doing the bookkeeping on this myself. Still, it isn't that complex...

Each Mythos phase, roll a die and consult the chart:

If the die roll indicates that you do not draw a Mythos card this Mythos phase, then increase your Deferred Mythos count by 1.

If the die roll indicates that you draw 2 Mythos cards this Mythos phase, then decrease your Deferred Mythos count by 1.

If at any time after turn 4 the Deferred Mythos count is 0, continue play as normal (stop making rolls each Mythos phase).

If no gates are open, add the number of gate trophies to the die roll before you check the chart.

The investigators can not win the game before the GOO appears unless the Deferred Mythos count is zero.

If the Deferred Mythos count is not 0 when the GOO arrives, place that many extra Doom tokens on the GOO, where each is worth a number of hits equal to the number of investigators.

The idea is that Mythos cards can be deferred at the start of the game, to give investigators time to explore, but that you still end up with the same number over all. This game flow could be exactly like a normal game or it could be 6 turns of no Mythos at all, and then 6 turns where you get slammed. It's all left up to your luck with the dice. As the turns progress you have a steadily increasing chance to flip a new Mythos card. This continues until the number of Mythos cards that have been deferred dwindles to zero - which will be when the number of Mythos cards in the game has been equal to the number of turns.

This variant should make the game a little easier, but not by much if the number of deferred Mythos cards has gone to zero.

Example1: On turn 0 (before the investigators first turn) you roll a 5. 5 = 0 Mythos cards drawn, so instead you note that you have 1 Mythos deferred until later. On turn 1, you roll a 1. 1 = 0 Mythos cards drawn, so your note an additional deferred Mythos. Turn 2 you roll a 4. 4 = 1 Mythos drawn. Draw one Mythos as normal. Turn 3 and 4, you roll a 5 each time. 5 = 2 Mythos cards drawn each turn. Both take full effect. At this point you have 0 deferred Mythos cards. Continue the game as normal. At least you had a little bit of a break at the beginning!

Example2: On turn 0 (before the investigators first turn) you roll a 1. 1 = 0 Mythos cards drawn, so instead you note that you have 1 Mythos deferred until later. You continue to roll 1 every turn.... forever. You get your first gate on turn 7. As you keep rolling 1s, one gate opens per turn. A few times, you have all the gates closed (because you had so long to prepare!), and because of this you get two Mythos cards the next turn. The Deferred Mythos count is still not reduced to zero when the GOO eventually shows up, and he is extra strong.

Thoughts?

I would love it if the Kingsport 'Rifts' mechanic required you to visit stable locations in Arkham and Dunwhich (as well as in Kingsport) in order to control the rifts.

I don't have Kingsport (yet) - does anyone have a good reason why making a new set of rift investigation tokens containing all the stable locations on all boards wouldn't work?

Steve

One idea I've toyed around with is placing a clue token on all of the stable locations and none on any of the unstable locations. No gates are opened immediately, and we don't even know who the GOO is going to be at this point. Two turns are passed as investigators explore Arkham and try to collect some of the freebie clues. I like Thelric's approach, and would agree that no "special" encounters may be taken at this point in the game. After the two turns pass increase the Terror Rating by one, all clues at stable locations are removed from the board, draw your GOO and proceed with the remainder of the normal set-up (placing clues at unstable locations, first Mythos card, etc.). This would make starting a bit easier (as each investigator has two free clues), but would also get some of the less commonly visited areas a bit of action. Haven't tried it yet, but may give it a shot next game.