I was just pondering that after Innsmouth is released I might try a variant where the three towns are used, Kingsport, Dunwich and Innsmouth, without Arkham. There would have to be a lot of adjustment in the mythos deck, terror track, and such, but I think it sounds fun.

Impossible.

Good luck.

You can do it, but it'll be hard. You'll have to re-think things like being arrested or unconscious or insane (where would you go?) You'd have to adjust where everyone starts, and remove a lot of items and cards that reference the Arkham board or require the Arkham board to complete.

You may wish to keep the Arkham board around so you can see the terror level. Also the Sky and Outskirts and Lost in Time and Space are on that board.

If you wanted to peek the Arkham board out underneath the others you could use all 12 Other Worlds. Otherwise you'll have to settle for the four expansion worlds. How many unstable locations will there be? There may be fewer than the Arkham board, so hitting the gate limit might be tough.

I honestly don't think it would be worth the hassle for something that's possibly much less fun and balanced.

One thing I have thought about house ruling for a more difficult game, is that instead of ending up Lost in Time and Space, investigators who would usually go there are instead sent to a random Other World and are delayed. This idea was, however, purely for instances where a card would send you there, not from being unconscious or insane. The potential remains that if you want to up the difficulty even more, investigators unconscious or insane in another world are devoured instead.

or play with the AH board but just use the important parts of it... Hospital, OW, etc and just teleport from Hospital to Train Depos, etc

It might not be as difficult as all that. The main thing you'll miss is location special abilities. Everything else can be easily made to work by carefully cutting the Mythos deck. Of course, you won't have many choices about which Mythos cards to use, so it might end up hideously unbalanced. And won't you only have four OWs? You might need to print up extra gate markers which go to those OWs.

On terms of the main board:

- Congregation Hospital stands in for St. Mary's and the Asylum.

- Some locations probably need to stand in for the Gen Store, the Magick Shop and the Curiosity Shop

- Most of the trophy-trading locations (Ma's, South Church etc) are very useful but they seem like the sorts of things that you can manage without. I've played plenty of games where no-one ever managed to buy anything very good with trophies, and it's still possible to win. It's a pain, but it won't break the game.

- Starting locations are an easy fix; just randomize them. After turn one, they won't matter anyway.

As with a lot of AH variants, the sane thing to do might be to create a herald which has the key rules changes on it. Even then, it's probably going to have to basically be a 'crib sheet' for a wide variety of house rules, because once the main town is gone there are going to be dozens of places were the rules in the main rulebook cease to make sense.

You could use the Carnival or depot for common items and that place you can restore 1 sanity/stamina as the hospital and asylum on the Dunwhich board. I'm pretty sure there's another stable place you could concievably get spells.

Curiosity = Shop Neil

General Store = Dunwich Village

St Mary Hospital= Congregrasional Hospital

Arkham Ayslem= Harvey Jones Shack

South Church= Dark's Carnival

Ma's = Rope and Anchor

Sceince Building = Light House (?)

Ye Old Magic Shop = 7th House on the Left

Yeah, I'd have to figure out how to handle the outskirts, terror track, and only having a few other worlds, but as mentioned above, there are locations that closely mimic some of the location abilities in Arkham.

Even if it's not possible, it will be fun finding out.

MrsGamura said:

Dunwich, Kingsport and Innsmouth are tiny decrepit little towns with next to nothing in them. I used to work in such a town, a Mississippi river town, who's only businesses were a bait shop and a church. Didn't even have a mayor or a grain elevator. The only elected group was the cemetery commission. If you go to those towns, be prepared to have few amenities. Their nickname for the whole area was Forgotonia.

If I wanted to emphasize Dunwich and Kingsport, I'd just use the Dunwich Mythos Deck and go from there. I suppose you could shuffle in Kingsport Mythos but then you'd have more Arkham action. Actually that is way we play. I always have all the boards out and anybody can go anywhere. But we randomly determine our emphasis and place cards from that expansion on top of the Mythos Deck. If you are really needing something the little rancid town can't provide then go without or jump on the train and head to the big(?) city of Arkham.

Or maybe your table isn't big enough? I've considered putting the different boards on different tables to stress the distances between the towns.

mageith said:

......Nyarlathotep, is that you?