Played: Arkham Horror

Game On!

I recently finished a game of Arkham Horror. This counts as a victory, as previous attempts ended when one or more participants suddenly realized that they actually hated the game, and would run off screaming.

Arkham Horror was originally designed in the '80s, when the quality of gameplay was judged solely by how many cardboard tokens were crammed inside the box. There are tokens representing life, sanity, cash, clues, monsters, portals to other dimensions, free passes to avoid being sucked back into these portals, good magical sigils, bad magical sigils, horror, terror, closed doors, the numbers one through three, and "The Button". If you get bored with that, you can play around with the baker's dozen of card decks, or the character sheets for the players and the elder god that's trying to break into the world and eat its cookies.

Everyone at the table plays a group of god-fearing 1920's archetypes, running around town and putting paid to the tentacular ner'do'wells that keep popping up around the place. Eventually, your goal is to jump into portals leading to various lands of dread, survive two random encounters there, and then turn off the portal by reading a book at it or shooting it down. In other words, it's exactly like the way I ran Call Of Cthulhu when I was in high school, right down to the importance of keeping a stick of dynamite with you for special occasions. What this has to do with horror is anyone's guess, because a Will -2 roll is only so unnerving, even when it's backed up by the threat of losing your last brain token and being sent to the asylum for the fifth time.

In short, this is the kind of game designed for fans of this kind of game. It seems enjoyable enough, but it's ultra-cooperative feel actually causes the game to drag in the end. You have a pretty good idea whether everyone wins or everyone dies, so why continue? Also, if your gaming opportunities are as limited as mine, Arkham Horror will have to compete with games that don't require players to remember when the Horror Meter causes the Terror Meter to rise, and exactly how big the Outskirts Stack can become before it causes the General Store to close up shop.