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Author Topic: Let's Play Arkham Horror, Ftaghn!  (Read 2302 times)

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Büge

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Let's Play Arkham Horror, Ftaghn!
« on: April 07, 2010, 02:43:34 PM »

Welcome to my first LP. For the next little while, I'll be LPing Arkham Horror!


Arkham Horror is a boardgame well known for its confusing rules and many, many expansions. But that's okay, because I'm only using the base set. Still, there's plenty of widgets that can fall between couch cushions if you're not as fastidious as me. Also dice. You need lots of dice.


As you can see, there's lots of places to visit and get knifed by cultists or ripped to pieces by shoggoths or sucked into portals to mind-bending dimensions or just generally succumb to the decaying corruption of this sleepy maritime town. We're gonna have fun aren't we?

There's a number of Ancient Ones to choose from. These are the Bosses you send your hapless investigators in to seal away. They impart lots of handicaps on you, and abilities on their minions. Take Hastur for example. Hastur is an ass.


His worshppers are flying, which means they move for the closest investigator on the street or take to the sky in wait. The -X is the modifier you have to beat in order to inflict a hit on him. In this case, it's the terror level. God help us if it goes higher than two, since his physical resistance means that mundane weapons only roll half of their bonus dice.

He also makes sealing gates prohibitively expensive. Oh yeah, and his doom track (timer) is 13. Usually that means that when a portal opens, he's one step closer to waking up. Oh noes!


Your investigators are the meatbags you thrust into this mess for the purposes of taking down the Ancient One and its stooges. Let's look at Joe Diamond, a typical hardboiled, monologuing Private Dick.


Stamina is HP. Sanity is sort of like HP for your mind. If you run out of either, you're pooched. He's got a respectable amount of Stamina, and his Sanity is good enough to last a few rounds with one of the moderately scary monsters.

He starts with his .45 magnum, a physical weapon that gives a +4 bonus to combat, six dollars, good enough to buy himself another .45 if he wants to be The Shadow, and three clue tokens, which are like currency you use to seal gates and add bonus rolls. Speaking of which, his Hunch skill, lets him add a second die when he spends a clue token. Good for closin' gates!

The stat sliders at the bottom are measurements of how many baseline dice you can dedicate to any roll. The higher one goes, the lower its counterpart goes. Focus is how may spaces total you can adjust your stats at the beginning of the turn.

Speed gives you more spaces to move while Sneak lets you get past monsters you don't want to fight. Fight gives you more dice to kill monsters, while Will dedicates dice to not losing sanity. Lore lets you cast spells, use knowledge and close gates, and Luck gives you miscellaneous bonuses. Obviously some investigators are better at certain things than others. Joe has good fightin' skills, but he's kinda dim, so he has low Lore and Will.


Common items are regular things you can find around the house, as well as stuff like dynamite and motorcycles. Unique items are magic weapons and spellbooks and artifacts, some good, some crap. Skills are cards you can draw to get stat bonuses or special abilities. Spells are things you spend sanity on to get helpful effects. Finally, Allies are people who tag along with your investigator and impart skill boosts and items. There are other cards, but most of them are incidental. If they come up, I'll explain.

Those are really the basic rules we need to know at the moment, but I'll get into more of 'em in the thick of the game.

Let's get to choosing the Ancient One and four Investigators. Any request for either is welcome, no matter how much of an anchor around my neck that character is. I'm looking at you, Mister Drake.

Amanda Sharpe, the student
Ashcan Pete, the Drifter
Bob Jenkins, the Salesman
Carolyn Fern, the Psychologist
Darrell Simmons, the Pornographer, I mean, Photographer
Dexter Drake, the Magician
Gloria Goldberg, the Author
Harvey Walters, the Professor
Monterey Jack, the Archaeologist
Jenny Barnes, the Dilettante
Joe Diamond, the Private Eye
Kate Winthop, the Scientist
Mandy Thompson, the Researcher
Michael McGlen, the Gangster
Sister Mary, the Nun
Vincent Lee, the Doctor

And in this corner, the Ancient Ones!

Azathoth
Cthulhu
Hastur
Ithaqua
Nyarlathotep
Shub-Niggurath
Yig
Yog-Sothoth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQkos7WTHjg

what have i gotten myself into
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jsnlxndrlv

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Re: Let's Play Arkham Horror, Ftaghn!
« Reply #1 on: April 07, 2010, 04:17:52 PM »

Oh, THIS game! This game is actually genuinely good. For some reason I thought you were LPing Dark Corners of the Earth. This is much better!
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Frocto

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Re: Let's Play Arkham Horror, Ftaghn!
« Reply #2 on: April 07, 2010, 06:13:43 PM »

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Envy

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Re: Let's Play Arkham Horror, Ftaghn!
« Reply #3 on: April 07, 2010, 06:42:59 PM »

Arkham Horror is amazing.. I have the current sets and a special set of dice.. Now if only I had more people to play it.
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Brentai

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Re: Let's Play Arkham Horror, Ftaghn!
« Reply #4 on: April 07, 2010, 07:25:35 PM »

Mandy seems to be the biggest game breaker, but Jenny Barnes has a totally sweet bio picture and a shitload of pyos to buy toys with.

Going for Shub-Niggurath for the boss monster because I like the mechanic of having had to feed her a bunch of her own dead babies to survive.  Also, female tentacle monster.  :jizz:
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Büge

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Re: Let's Play Arkham Horror, Ftaghn!
« Reply #5 on: April 11, 2010, 12:37:44 PM »


As requested by Brentai, The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young is our villain. I doubt we're going to be able to seal enough portals to defeat her, so we're going to need to focus on collecting monster trophies.


So here we are in the boroughs and piazzas of damp, squalid Arkham. Four hapless mavericks, each with their own quirks and talents will be our playthings. Let's go around the table and introduce ourselves, shall we?


Mandy Thompson is the brains of the group. She's a bit of a know-it-all, correcting others' mistakes like an obsessive teacher.

During a late-night research session at the library, she went outside to stretch and get some fresh air, when she noticed a group of local hoodlums running in terror from a shadowy, fluttering creature. One of the boys fired a bolt-action repeater at the thing, felling it.

Before she had a chance to demand what was going on, he shoved the rifle and a stick of dynamite in her hands and ran off after his chums, screaming wildly. Upon examination of the thing, she found only a slimy cloak and some glittering, alien jewelry. She felt an undeniable urge to don the strange bangles...



Jenny Barnes is a wild spitfire of a trust-fund baby, but it looks like she'll have to forgo spending money on Louis Armstrong records and the latest fashions from Paris for the time being.

While she was looking for her compartment on the train, a strange cloaked man rush past her. Looking in his compartment, she found a couple of leatherbound books and a dagger. She picked them up, intending to return them to him, but he'd disappeared...


Ashcan Pete is a down-on-his-luck drifter, working odd jobs and riding the rails. He shares bedding, food and fleas with his best pal, Duke.

One particularly chilly evening under the docks, he was shocked to find the corpse of a policeman half-buried in the sand, sucker wounds all over him and a weird sword clean through his back.

Never one to miss and opportunity, he swiped the sword and the cop's pistol, stuffing both in his bindle. Maybe he could pawn them and finally buy a decent meal!



The Great Drake's aptitude for magic gives him an edge over those who can only fumble through mystic shibboleths. As such, he's good at finding the better spells in any grimoire.

The wizened old man in the magic shop looked queerly at Drake when he proclaimed himself a magician. He took one of the old folios from behind the desk and passed it to him. "Take this," he said. "Every magician needs a spellbook."

Before Drake could thank him, the old gaffer shuddered. "Quick, put this on!" he wheezed, pressing a filigreed ivory mask into Drake's hands. Drake obliged the man, just as he saw a slinking monstrosity pass by the greasy window. He was sure he felt the thing's eyes on him, though it never turned its head.

"Go, out the back," the proprietor urged him. "Take my son's motorcycle. It will get you out of Arkham. Go!" Drake hustled out the rear of the shop and the old man tossed him the keys. There was no way he was leaving Arkham now...


Huh. We're one ascot short a Scooby Gang. Oh well! Let's see what we start with.



Ruh-Roh!

Our adventure begins with grisly news: A pair of grotesque creatures are stalking the Easttown streets!



Specifically, a Mi-Go and a Dimensional Shambler. The shambler's gonna be tricky. Losing a combat check against it means you get pulled into the zone known only as Lost in Time and Spaaaaaaaace.

The Mi-Go's a pushover though. When you defeat him, he runs away, dropping a Unique Item! This means you can't collect his ear for your trophy necklace but, hey, free stuff.



Hoo boy. A Flying Polyp is one of the nastier critters. It has Physical Resistance, Overwhelming and Nightmarish. Those last two mean that in the event I do succeed at a horror check and combat check respectively, I'll still take a stamina/sanity hit.

First, Upkeep. We'll adjust some stats to better suit the situation.

Mandy heads to the Historical Society to pick up that clue token. Jenny wants to buy something at the Curiosity Shoppe, Pete is looking to try out his sword on those monsters, and Drake's going to man up and hit the Woods.



Hmmm, that doesn't seem too bad. Sure, let's check out the cave!



Note to self: find Cindy Fleming and shoot her.

Taking a risk on the bats, Mandy succeeds in evading their swooping and guano bombs.

Jenny pokes through the Curiosity Shoppe and finds a bottle of Holy Water in the base of a Romanian candelabra. She turns down the oriental proprietor's offer of free frozen yogurt and purchases the blessed grenade.

Pete, angry at the carnage in Easttown and drunk on a cocktail of tomato juice and paint thinner, ambushes the beasts in an alley.



The chittering of the Mi-Go strikes a pang of fear into the grizzled hobo, reminding him of the cockroaches in every flophouse he's slept in. He swings like Honus Wagner and lops the beast's arm off, driving it buzzing into the sky. An etched stone clatters to the ground.



High on the success of his first victory, he avoids the shambler's clumsy swings and skewers it like a fresh cod. Duke sniffs at the rock and Pete looks it over and pockets the Healing Stone.

Drake ventures boldly into the woods, searching for the portal, when the gooey slinking mass of the Flying Polyp is upon him!



He's fortunate that he can resist the horror of being attacked by the oozing mass, but it's not without its toll. He begins muttering the incantation for the Shrivelling spell...



And succeeds! Time to salt this slug.



Bam! Polyps can cause constipation and cramps, but Drake gets enough fiber in his diet. He finds the portal and steps through to the cold Plateau of Leng.

Only a fool would stay in this desolate place! He marks out an arcane sigil on the ground to cast Find Gate. It's a spell that lets you immediately return to Arkham.



His magic is true, sucking him through the gate and back home. Now to close the gate...



The chill winds cease, leaving the magician panting in the dirt. He stands and dusts off his trousers. It seems Lady Luck has a fortunate son!



...whom she frequently slaps around for a laugh. Before Drake can celebrate he's pulled into Another Dimension!



He's also delayed. That means he spends an extra turn here.



Out from the portal slithers a Formless Spawn! Eeeeeewww...

Oh yeah, and the only two investigators lucky enough to get Blessed are Pete and Jenny.

First Pete...


And Jenny...


Whew. So ends turn one.









Good work so far, gang. But we're not out of the woods yet.



Er, so to speak.
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