“I think the 2nd edition is the culmination of the kind of perfect pulp adventure game. When you get down to it, that gritty, raw, chaotic story is exciting to go through. Whether you’re reading a book, watching a movie, or playing a game, it’s the hero’s journey. It just comes to life in Arkham Horror.” – Richard Launius
The second edition of the Arkham Horror board game is being remastered as part of Fantasy Flight Games’ first crowdfunding campaign on Gamefound. Arkham Horror is the title that launched a thousand games, and, for Fantasy Flight Games, that legacy all started with its second edition. But that wasn’t what started it all.
To celebrate the legacy of this historic title and learn how the story all started, I sat down with Richard Launius, the original designer of Arkham Horror.
The Story Begins
The story of Arkham Horror started in Rochester, New York in 1983 when Richard transferred there and suddenly had a lot of time in the evenings. After his kids went to bed, he’d go to the art room in their basement and get to work. Even from the beginning, Arkham Horror started with a very clear identity:
“When I started designing, what I had in mind was an adventure board game that would be in the world of Lovecraft. I started drawing the board, putting the pieces together, creating the characters, and creating cards for all the monsters. Everything was a card at that point, not really tokens.”
Arkham Horror began as a passion project by Richard, who was looking to make a game for himself.
“I love adventure. I really designed it around that. You can be this hero in the story, doing these things. You can make them come to life. It comes through the cards and the stories you tell. You kill monsters, you go to other worlds, you close gates, and you get to do all those things.”
Arkham Horror is more than just the mechanics; the theme of the game is what connects all the stories together, and that was there from the start.
“The 1920s really appealed to me. I really saw the era as a pulp era, and Arkham Horror is a pulp game. I created characters around that. The first character was Joe Diamond. He was my archetype character: the private investigator who’s not in the world that he understood.”
Meeting the Characters
With so many characters in Arkham Horror, it would be easy for some of them to start feeling like different versions of the same person. That is why Richard—and the other designers since—have worked so hard to make each character feel unique.
“I wanted to feel like I’m in the story. ‘This is now me. I’m doing this. This is my character.’ You start having some ownership of that character. Each one is unique in its own way. If you look at the different characters—and they’ve expanded over the years—I think we’ve still followed this route. Whether I made it or somebody else made it, they’re not ‘just another character.’ They are complete people with a real history. And people can adapt to that. I talk to people, and a lot of people play the same character over and over again, or the same two or three characters over and over again, because they like that character. They feel some kind of kinship with them.”
While Joe Diamond may have been the first created character for Arkham Horror, he wasn’t alone for very long. Jenny Barnes, Gloria Goldberg, Dexter Drake, and Carolyn Fern all followed shortly afterwards, and each of them came with their own inspirations.
“There was a girl who worked for me as an artist. Her last name was Barnes. And there was another girl named Jenny. They were in their early 20s, and they had this adventurous aspect. I put their names together to make Jenny Barnes.”
“Dexter, I created because we had to have a wizard, and I like the name Drake. All my brothers have the same initials, RDL. So, when we had our children, we were looking for a middle name for my son, and I kept saying Drake. My wife kept saying no, we’re not naming anyone Drake. So, I always loved Drake, and then I picked Dexter.”
“Another combination. My wife is a nurse, and my mom was a school nurse. I wanted there to be a medical professional. I decided on psychology, and I put their names together to make Carolyn Fern.”
“I crafted Gloria Goldberg after a lady I worked with in my first art department out of college. She was very rigid about what she did, but she knew her stuff.”
One of the most important parts of Arkham Horror both to Richard and to Fantasy Flight Games has been that players can find characters they want to engage with. Characters whose stories call out to them. It all started with those original five characters, and it hasn’t stopped to this day. As any fan will tell you, new characters are always finding homes in Arkham Horror.
Collaboration and Publication
“To be honest with you, I never thought about getting it published. It was just to have fun with.”
While Richard didn’t design the game with the intention of getting it published, the idea kept coming up as he and his friends spent night after night playing the game. But even just submitting Arkham Horror to a publisher in the 80s was a more complex and careful decision than you might realize. It all starts with how games were built back then; designing a game in the 80s was a very different experience than it is today.
“It was all handmade. Every piece of art was handmade. Hand-typed cards, hand-drawn art, hand-painted board. The rules were stapled together in a folder. That was the game. If you look back at the original first edition, some of those drawings were my drawings from my original cards. Like the .45 pistol, which looks like a black L.”
While handmade cards, boards, and rules paint a charming picture, it also meant that when Richard sent the game to the publisher, it was the only copy that existed. Had they not picked up the game, not only would it have never been published, but there is also no guarantee that Richard’s prototype would even exist.
“I couldn’t recreate it again; it was just too much stuff.”
Once the prototype was out of Richard’s hands, the fate of Arkham Horror was (also) out of his hands for a time. Specifically, it was out of his hands for 8 months.
“I remember my wife called me in, and she said, ‘Greg Stafford’s on the phone.’ He was the president of Chaosium at the time. I had no idea why he was calling. He tells me that he couldn’t get his playtesters to play anything else. ‘They keep wanting to play your game. We need to publish this.’”
The Evolution of Arkham Horror
“I am proud of the foundation I built, but I think the key thing is everybody brought their best to this game. There’s not a designer I know that worked on this game that didn’t absolutely bring an improvement to it. Nobody chipped away and made it worse. That’s why it’s fantastic.”
When I asked Richard about how the game changed throughout the publication process, he emphasized how collaborative everything felt. Even if he hadn’t seen something as an issue in the past, as other designers pointing things out, it quickly made it feel like the game was shaping up to be even better than it had started.
“I had numbers that you’d roll and add, kind of like a role-playing game. Kevin added where we use just fives and sixes [for successes]. The minute I saw it, I said, ‘This is brilliant.’ We can do all kinds of stuff with this. Everything can key off this really well.”
While much of what Richard originally put in the game stuck around almost unchanged, one thing really stood out to me as a very big change: the ending. Or rather, that it had one at all.
“My game had no ending. You scored points, you killed monsters. That’s why you got trophies. You’d get trophies for gates and monsters, you’d score points, and you’d come back the next day. You just keep playing. You just keep scoring points.”
That’s right, when Arkham Horror was first designed, there wasn’t an ending to the game. You either kept winning and fighting or went down in a blaze of glory. As fun as an endless game of Arkham Horror sounds, I don’t think I’m alone in being thankful that the doom track was added to the game.
The Legacy Continues
Arkham Horror 2nd Edition is returning to fans in the form of Arkham Horror Remastered. My last question to Richard was about the fact that this iconic game was returning to fans. I’ll just leave his comments without commentary below:
“I think it’s fantastic. First of all, I’m excited to get a new copy. Granted, I’ve already got full complete copies and all kinds of stuff [for the original]. I love the board from what I’ve seen of it. I love what I’m seeing graphics-wise, and how it’s all been put together. I love all the ways that it’s going to have table space appeal and playability appeal.
I’m super excited for people who have never played it to have an opportunity to get what I think will be its best form. I’m excited for people who have worn-out old copies that they played forever and they’re certainly happy with. That they’ll be able to pick up the new one that has all these kinds of benefits. I think all that’s fantastic.
I’m flattered that it’s the first one that Fantasy Flight Games picked. I’m thankful to Fantasy Flight Games as a company. I always have been. They have always treated me well, and they’ve always treated my designs with the utmost respect. I’m honored to work with them.
I think it’s a great opportunity. I know it will be top-notch production. It’ll be, you know, fantastic art and layout. I know the rules are going to be cleaned up and reorganized some. All the stuff [is being] put together. I’m thrilled about it. And selfishly, I’m thrilled by the fact that I’ll get to play it again. So, all that makes me very happy.”
I want to personally thank Richard Launius for making one of my favorite games, and the title that first brought me into the wide world of board games. Arkham Horror is the game that launched all that came after.
The Arkham Horror Remastered Gamefound campaign starts on October 21st, 2026. Join us there to see what is coming and follow along for updates: Arkham Horror Remastered – Vault Series by Fantasy Flight Games – Gamefound
Written by Liv Sheppard
