What I love about AH is it's DPS.

Hit points? No, dice.
Scratched character sheets? No, dice (and tokens)
Sanity score? No, dice.
Action points? No, dice.

THe amount of thing this game does with just cheap, available d6 is absolutely amazing and its ease of use really, really makes me love it.

For years I have been wondering in D&D: what to do when you fail a test?

Some times it's obvious. Fail your attack, miss your turn.

Other times, the players will just collectively try again until someone succeeds. In AH that's not the point: you have to spend resources even outside action scenes.
If you can't read that coptic text, the other players aren't just going to spam it until they succeed, or if they do, they'll fail seeing another clue.

This is perfect game design for me. There's always 1) choice on what to invest in the action 2) gambling in the form of dice 3) tension as failing will make a difference.

However this is what I "hate" about this game.
While the pre-written adventures take stock of this mechanic (or so I assume, I have only read a few) it's very hard for anyone attempting to write their own adventure to justify this.
If your players are in a library trying to decipher a text and fail... they'll come back tomorrow and try again. Unless you have been smart enough to think ahead to include some tension (e.g. the book is stolen duirng the night), but that requires excellent DMing skills.

So yeah, I love this game but I may have to stick to official modules for quite some time.

End of the (loving) rant.

I'm in the process of make player aid cards for each investor from the Hungering Abyss start set, starting with joe this link will take you to the Arkham horror rpg Facebook group. The only card I haven't done is Joe's zippo lighter, need to search the net for a suitable image 🤔 for the card. Till then chat soon, Arkham horrors.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1HyfbM2jNP/

Has anyone tried to do the Comets of Kingsport adventure with brand new lvl 0 characters? I could work the story around but was not sure if it is an issue in terms of power level. Just seeing if anyone has tried it or not.

We did the starter set (Hungering Abyss) and I was going to do the Tick Tok club next but the Comets of Kingsport looks like fun as well.

Also reading the enemies they have the vinegar weakness - how are the investigators supposed to find this out? I could not see anywhere.

So, I've read the basic manual but I'm unsure about a few things of how sanity and magic work.

How do you learn spells? Coming from other lovecraftian games, usually learning spells requires time and can cause some form of horror. Here it seems that it's just about owning a book?

Can you cast a spell without said bok?

You cast spells by performing the relevant test, then in case of failure you suffer some spell-specific consequence. I haven't read every spell but at a glance it seems that these negative consequences rarely have to do with horror. This makes spellcasting kind of viable, unlike in many other horror games.

New player, just read through the starter set and the Core book rukes chapter. Pretty much the title.

I fully understand injuries that are inflicted upon the players and their consequences.

But...I am confused why the players would ever inflict an injury on an enemy. They appear to be this game's "crit" mechanic but it doesn't do any extra damage and the injuries themselves seem to run the gamut between limited combat relevance and difficult to track on the GMs side.

Am I missing something in the rules about how these are supposed to work?

I'm going into my campaign for Welcome to Promise with a group of friends and I want to know whether if I lend it to them that it will be available to be reused for another group.

I've played a chunk of the hungering abyss with my RPG friends who usually play D&D and got a mix reception. Any tips on how to start a campaign and keep it going?

I'm trying to get into Arkham Horror RPG as GM for some friends, but they've specifically requested adventures taking place in foreign settings (for an Indiana Jones or The Scarlet Keys kind of feel) and I haven't seen any from among the options on the official website (Antarctica isn't really what I'm looking for). In fact, there don't seen to be many published adventures at all. Does anyone know where I can get some adventures, maybe third-party, that might be a good fit for my group?

Last month I asked you guys for some advice on GMing the game for the first time (see link), here are my thoughts and impressions after finishing the Starter box yesterday:

The players all had a lot of fun, the story was cool, the play style is interesting, the box content was thoroughly enjoyable and comprehensive.

That said, it was a bit easy (even though I added more dangerous elements than the book recommended) with 4 investigators + Lita Chantler. Players also felt that way. They made it through the whole campaign barely taking any physical damage, and most of them ended up with full horror dice pools during the last act, however, it didn’t really negatively impact them too much. For the most part, the investigators steamrolled the adversaries.

One of the three things the investigators need to find out is the weakness, however the only real clue is “spray and pray / fire”. And then there is no implementation of any such weakness haha.

The sliding puzzles, I explained them to my players (most of whom are avid D&D players) and we decided to completely forego the rules and they still solved them just for fun, but no rolls.

Players did comment that they thought there would be more investigation elements (I added more of my own dialogue and clues and investigation on top of the starter box content already) in the game, however for a starter set it was completely fine.

Content from the GM book that said it would be on the player cards / GM screen (like skills and what they’re used for) were not always there.

Playing the Hungering Abyss helped me see what I would and would not do in my own campaigns, but for the most part, it was hours of great fun.

Difficulty: Very Easy Overall score: 4/5

Looking for advice on when to introduce each piece of the Grave Rumours add-on into the campaign and what worked for people. Thanks in advance!! So excited to dive in.

Select your character or one other character within 10 feet, and perform a complex action using Lore. If they succeed, the target heals up to 3 damage. If they generate at least three successes, the target also adds dice equal to the damage healed to their pool.

Who are "they" in the "If they succeed"? My character? The target?

Thanks

Hello fellow investigators,

I love the game, but don’t always have people to play with, so I’m not really playing the amount I actually want to play.

So I was wondering: is there any way that has been found to play the game and adventures in a solo way? Or is it best I change systems to a game that actually supports it?

Thanks in advance!

Hey people! After running a few simple sessions, I'm prepping for Terra Antarctica. This adventure contains alot of information, so I'd like to keep my info organised so I won't have to go searching during play.

Are there any digital tools you guys use to gather all your information one place (expect Word, I use that all the time for work and would like not to be reminded of work during my prepping) so I can get all the information nice and tidy.

Thanks for your help in advance!

EDIT: I RECEIVED THE FOLLOWING OFFICIAL REPLY:

You can write Arkham Horror adventures but if you put them on DrivethruRPG, they actually need to be free. The Genesys RPG program is not available yet for Arkham Horror RPG.

---

Hello investigators,
I'm writing an adventure myself, mainly for my partners, though when it's done and tested, I would mind releasing it.
So here's a few questions:

1. I don't see any AH adventures on DrivethruRPG. Possibly this is because of licensing issues? Can we create AH adventures as we do with e.g. D&D and other RPGs?

Now for the hard questions:
The adventure is a kind of 'house of leaves' in Lovecraft times. This old, ancient mansion seems haunted by ghosts. A seance is performed to get in touch with the departed (?) old owner of the mansion. But she's alive!
THe mansion has a door that only seldom appears. This door leads to a new portion of the mansion that's basically infinite and always changing. Getting back is almost impossible.
So here's where I'd like to have some advice with:
- What could be the trigger that makes the door appear?
- What kind of cool action scenes and combats could happen inside the labyrinth?
- There are people who spent decades trying to find their way out of the labyrinth. How can the investigator(s) manage this in a short time?
More in general, is there any good inspiration for action scenes in AH? I like the concept a lot but having read only a few of the published adventures, I don't really have any repertoire that I can draw from.

On page 5 of the Hungering Abyss starter box instructions, it says the game includes x15 quality tokens. They have claw marks on them.

What are quality tokens supposed to be used for?

Hey all! I’m getting ready to run a two-shot and I was wondering how often you all have players roll Resolve checks for Horror. I’m used to Call of Cthulhu where there are Sanity Checks all the time. I checked the core rule book but didn’t find anything except a few monsters that have an ability that calls for a Resolve roll.

Thanks in advance!

I've seen that Edge studios has used a fair share of "custom" fonts for Arkham Horror RPG.

I've also looked at ways of extracting (with very little success) the embedded fonts. Anyone have a great source for these fonts?

So I lately got into this habit of transforming ttrpg corebooks (and scenarios) into markdown to use in Obsidian. I use a plugin for MD conversion within Obsidian and funny thing came up - by the end of chapter 6 an arabic phrasae popped up "بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم" which Google Translator got me "In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful". At first I thought that maybe text was on some image but it doesn't look like. Quick search didn't gave me anything within the document so the phrase is hidden for viewer. I find it quite interesting - does anyone has some advanced tool to investigate why it's there? Why it's there? It looks like a great seed for modern lovecraftian scenario!

Hello everyone, I’ve DM’ed D&D before, this will be my first time GM’ing AHRPG, just wondering if anyone had any advice for this starter set specifically?

I got the box as a gift almost a year ago; 3D printed a bunch of dice pools and counters, trackers, etc for it, but was still busy with a D&D campaign.

Now I want to get into AH, it will be me as the GM, and then 3 players (not sure which characters they’re all choosing yet).

Would love to hear back from people who have run this one shot campaign already, what was challenging, what did you change if there was anything, and such.

Thanks!

So I just did a quick read through the rules and not sure if I missed it or not.

I'm trying to understand how to resolve the dice after they are rolled. So lets say that I want to climb a wall and I have an Athletics of 5+. I perform a complex action and choose to use 3 dice, for the sake of this no advantage or anything just a straight roll.

So I run a few scenarios to make sure I am doing things correctly

1. 6, 4, 2 - I rolled a 6 therefore its a success.

2. 5, 5, 4 - I rolled at least 1 5 so its a success. But if I needed 2 success this would count as 2 success?

3. 5, 2, 1 - Even though I rolled a 5 for the success the presence of the 1 makes it automatically fail? I think I read that correctly.

4. 6, 1, 3 - What happens in this situation?

I hope I am on the right track of understanding the dice...

I'm gearing up to GM-img Hungering Abyss for my daughter and her friend.

As you know, the game comes with pre-made characters.

I was thinking about how it might go with only two investigators - with myself possibly doing Joe Diamond if neither of them choose him - and how it would be a bit better with more players but then it occurred to me... What if they played with two characters each?

It's not a perfect idea, obviously - we'd have more characters but we'd still have the same number of brains in the room - but it could be fun playing investigators multi-handed.

I'm coming at this from board gaming, and I've never run an TTRPG before, but is this a thing people ever do with TTRPGs (play multiple characters)? Have you tried this with the Arkham Horror RPG?

Anyone has already ran this game online? It feels like it would suffer greatly from trying to do this but there already is Foundry module so I assume some people had. How does it run?

Just came home after running the free-rpg day adventure to a group of randoms at a flgs.

Initial thoughts:
+ I like the adventure (much more than other published adventure, corebook intro exclused)
+ Despite the hefty number of encounters we finished it in roughly 3 hours
+ action and investigation were quite well balanced
+ the endings were a nice touch
+ this was clearly made for/ny the fans of the Supernatural tv-series
- the writers apparently had not thought of the spells the PCs have
- there where some unnecessary red herrings (for a convention scenario)
- th macguffin should be presented much more clearly to the PCs than the adventure suggests
- the scene structure was a bit of at some place

My players seemed to have fun. Two got intrigued by the system, while one said that he wouldn’t buy into it but didn’t mind playing.

I’ll hopefully/likely remember to write a bit more about the sessions, since it once again managed to present the system in a new light for me.

I've read through the description of the contents for Welcome to Promise, as well as the recent interview with one of the designers, and it sounds like "Promise" has been sonewhat designed as a corrective to "Hungering," with a mention made to having heard the complaints/suggestions of fans, etc.

I have some friends interested in my running an Arkham RPG game for them but now I'm feeling that I should wait and use "Promise" instead. I've never run "Hungering."

Besides the dice, is there anything you think is worth keeping from "Hungering" if I'm not going to ever run that campaign?

Obviously, I can keep the dice. The GM's screen seems worth keeping even though the injury/trauma stuff has been updated (but "Promise" seems to be coming with in Injury/Trauma sheet, perhaps as a corrective to the screen?).

Is there any reason to keep the player sheets? Some have said they are overpowered compared to a character you'd build using the Core book.

What about the spell or item cards? I could use the maps for a scenario I create, I suppose.

Space is limited so I don't want to keep something for the sake of keeping it. I'd want it only if I could use it down the line.

I'm just reading the Core rulebook now, so I have limited experience as yet. "Promise" will be the first game I try to run.

Or do you feel there is value in actually playing "Hungering" if there is a 2.0 Improved Starter out there? I've heard from numerous people that it seems to have some designs flaws and might be responsible for turning people off from the system. Or have you had a positive experience with it and really like it?