H.P. Lovecraft

[Soft Serve]

I just read some of his stories and I love it.

The Reanimator is amazing!

and Call of Cthulhu is about twice as incredible as everyones said it is.

I didn't get to read too much into Dagon, or Nyarlathotep? (idk if I spelled that right it's a guess...) I only got to at my friends house while he was asleep. I can't wait to buy his books for myself though, I probably won't put them down for a long long time.

I'm not so sure about the necronomicon though. Like nobody can really tell me what it is.



EDIT: now that I think about it this might belong in general discussion...well if it gets moved thats ok.

[Mindbomb]

I actually just picked up Arkham Horror from Fantasy Flight Games and I absolutely love it, especially how they've adapted everything from Lovecraft so well.

http://new.fantasyflightgames.com/ed...rkham%20Horror

[Soft Serve]

That looks amazing!

I want it now...


I can't really play to many bord games with my usual group though since we play between two different states online.

[MortonStromgal]

its a great single player board game (yes you can play it with 1 player)

[Soft Serve]

Wait how does that work?

Like you can play any board game by yourself if you try hard enough, but this one is designed that way?

[Webhead]

H.P. Lovecraft is a master of horror story-telling. One of my favorites of his Mythos stories is the very first one I ever read: The Temple. Read it. Very good.

The Necronomicon is perhaps the most prolific and often misunderstood creation of Lovecraft. The book is entirely fictional, introduced by Lovecraft through his stories and consequently cross-polinated into virtually every corner of horror fiction since. According to Lovecraft's original conception of the book, it was written by Abdul Al-Hazrad, the "Mad Arab" and is a collection of insane insights, terrible rituals and other occult knowledge "man was not meant to know".

From my understanding, the Arkham Horror board game can indeed be played solo. Arkham Horror is unusual in its design in that the players work together against the game rather than competing against each other. The concept is that eldritch horrors are descending upon Arkham and the players have to stop them. By the end of the game, either the players are successful and save humanity, or the players fail and are consumed by the chaos and insanity of the emerging Great Old One (each time you play, a random Great Old One is drawn to determine which one is trying to destroy reality).

It's a game I really want to pick up, and may end up doing so shortly. From every indication, it is virtually an RPG in boardgame form.

[Soft Serve]

like that old game I played...uhm...I think Dungeon Quest or something?

[fmitchell]

The Necronomicon is perhaps the most prolific and often misunderstood creation of Lovecraft. The book is entirely fictional, introduced by Lovecraft through his stories and consequently cross-polinated into virtually every corner of horror fiction since. According to Lovecraft's original conception of the book, it was written by Abdul Al-Hazrad, the "Mad Arab" and is a collection of insane insights, terrible rituals and other occult knowledge "man was not meant to know".

Which didn't keep various parties from publishing a mishmash of badly translated Babylonian texts, theosophical gobbledygook, and necessary quotes from Lovecraft as The Necronomicon.

Unless the work before you violates your every assumption about the Universe and reduces you to a shrieking madperson, it's not the real Necronomicon. Accept no substitutes!

[Mindbomb]

Arkham Horror is designed to be able to be played solo, although I think you'll find yourself playing 3 or 4 investigators in order to even have a chance at winning(lol). It's fun either way but admittedly the battle of which bad decisions you should make is more fun with others(as with any game I believe). There are 16 different investigators with their own backgrounds and motivations and 12(I think)different Ancient Ones along with other minor monsters for gameplay. If you add in all the expansions you'll have 40 investigators and 24 different Ancient Ones which each make for a different experience every time you play. It really seems almost limitless with all the options they've made available although it is a hefty bit of jink for all the options but I think that the basic game will keep me happy for a good long while before I need to consider all the other options available to me.

[Soft Serve]

I like to have everything all at once, lol.

So like is it all based on die rolls and strategic movement like Risk or something?

[MinipainterUS]

I like to have everything all at once, lol.

So like is it all based on die rolls and strategic movement like Risk or something?

The thumbnail version:
Dimensional gates are opening in Arkham. When enough gates open, the Great Old One appears, and Arkham is pretty much doomed. Fighting the GOO is usually a very bad thing. The investigators each start the game with their own set of resources (money, weapons, skills, spells,etc) and spend their time gathering more resources, killing monsters in the streets and closing dimensional gates. The ultimate objective is to close all open gates and stop the GOO from waking. Much of the investigator success is controlled by the outcome of die rolls, and there are ways to maximize your odds at success by rolling more dice.

Each turn has a "Mythos Phase" where the placement of gates, strange events and monster actions are dictated by the rules of the game rather than by die roll or random chance.

It is possible to play it solo by playing multiple investigators, but cooperative play with 4 - 8 players is a riot. This game comes as close to a classic CoC investigation as anything I've seen outside the actual RPG.

[Etarnon]

The necronomicon is a great read, with lots of easy to use diagrams. At one time, I had two copies. I rebound the worst copy, and have used it in the past as a prop for CoC games.

It's also a handy backup when those pesky tentacles come up out of the floor grates. When the cats start running and the ears go flat, we know it's either something from Beyond Space and Time, or a renegade from LV-426.

[Webhead]

...or a renegade from LV-426.

Gorman: "All we know is that there's still no contact with the colony and that the Xenomorph may be involved."

Frost: "I'm sorry, sir. A what?"

Gorman: "A Xenomorph."

[Mindbomb]

I like to have everything all at once, lol.

So like is it all based on die rolls and strategic movement like Risk or something?

It is based on rolls but if you're used to most rpg rolling this will seem VERY strange to you as it did to me at first. Almost everything in the game gives you modifiers to your rolls, however the modifier is the number of dice extra/less that you roll and not an addition to the numbers you rolled. Everything is either a success (on a 5 or 6 on a 6-sided or a 4,5,6 if you've somehow managed to get blessed or only a 6 if you unluckily become cursed) or a failure and the more you're able to roll, the better. The rules can be extremely confusing just by reading through them but once you start to put them into play it's really very easy and a lot of fun.

[Soft Serve]

I saw it at a game store... Is itworth $50??