Hello,

I'm looking for a little guidance on what publications to read in relation to Arkham Horror. I have read several Lovecraft essays and have found only a handful of the monsters and characters used in Arkham Horror. I have read Mountains of Madenss, Innsmouth Horror, Dunwich Horror, Haunter of the Dark and of course Call of Cthulhu. however, I cannot find were a lot of these quotes come from or what the Small Box expansions are based on. Can you folks out there help me find where most of the content from the Arkham Horror game comes from? For example, there are several female characters/allies in the game, however, none of Lovecraft's writing contain any women. I've also never seen Zombies, Ghosts, Mummies or Ghouls in any of his publications. A little help?

Well, as far as undead are concerned, I belive "The Outsider" has undead in it, implied at least. "Pickman's Model" also references figures that may be undead.

Nevertheless, I think you're missing the point. Arkham Horror is a board game for people who live in the 21st century. Lovecraft himself died in 1937. Basically I'm trying to tell you not to look for these references. Probably a lot of them don't exist, and it doesn't really matter. I mean, take Professor Armitage for example. Is there anything in AH that gives you the feel for that character? Not really. He's a guy on an orange peice of paper that gives +2 to lore. That's it.

The theme of Arkham is loosely based on the work of Lovecraft and others, but it's a game. Zombies are mechanically helpful to the game. Female allies and investigators make the game more appealing to today's audience. Try not to dissect things so much. Enjoy the game because it kicks ass. I can't honestly say that my enjoyment of Arkham Horror has improved because I started reading Lovecraft after I bought it. I don't think such searching for minute references that might be in the original stories is really a good use of your time, nor will it improve your enjoyment of the game.

GalaxyUC said:

Attractive women are hard to find in Lovecraft. I haven't found any actually. A mummy is in the Horror in the Museum. Ghouls are in Pickman's model and Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. Ghouls aren't your D&D or Warhammer Ghouls however. They are aliens, I think. Also if you go to the Off topic section, Vicimizer will answer all your questions. I have yet to run across ghosts and zombies, per se unless you count Keziah Mason in Dreams in the Witch House. She may be a ghost or just a figment of dreams.

When I started playing Arkham Horror I know next to nothing about Lovecraft. Now I've read a lot of his stuff. It's really helped my enjoyment of the game. Essentially some of the Arkham Horror locations are references to a Lovecraft story with a few locations thrown in to create the feeling of a town. I haven't actually found references to most of them however.

The small box expansions are based on the writings of other Horror writers as far as I can tell. The only one I've read is the Repairer of Reputations which has a little to do with the King in Yellow. It's also quite well written IMO.

Zombies, arguably, are created by Herbert West, Reanimator.

(As regards female allies and Investigators: given Lovecraft's infamous racism and sexism I'm quite glad that FFG produced a game that was less bigoted than the source material)

I possess only the base game and the Innsmouth expansion. I started playing the game because I was looking for a cooperative game, and I love the Cthulhu Mythos and the writers that Lovecraft inspired (as well as much of the writings of Lovecraft himself).

Needless to say, nearly everything in Innsmouth is solidly from "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." The new mechanics, such as the Fed raids and the Innsmouth Look, almost all of the locations and even many of the specific encounters are drawn from or inspired by that story. The flavor of Innsmouth is simply amazing.

Many locations within Arkham are referenced by various short stories. "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" includes the first reference to Arkham's Historical Society. "The Dreams of the Witch House" reference the Witch House (obviously) as well as the Unvisited Isle. (As suggested above, this story also includes a significant ghost, and is likely also the source for the witch.) If I recall correctly, the Unvisited Isle also appears in "The Colour Out of Space", which Lovecraft considered the best of his works (according to The Annotated Lovecraft). The Unnameable is featured, of course, in "The Unnameable". "Herbert West Reanimator" was the first mention of Miskatonic University, and the source of zombies as monsters.

The monsters and Other Worlds in Arkham Horror are from all over Lovecraft's works. The "Great Race" (the Yith) first appeared in "The Shadow Out of Time", as did the horrible Flying Polyps. Lovecraft did an entire series of stories of the Dreamlands, featuring the novella "The Dream-Quest of the Unknown Kadath" which includes ghouls, nightgaunts, ghasts, gugs and more... plus the Plateau of Leng. Shoggoths are everywhere.

The collection "The Best of H.P. Lovecraft - Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre" include many of the above-mentioned stories, as well as "Pickman's Model" and "The Silver Key" (which surely inspired the Unique Item of the same name).

Other places and creatures are featured in the works of the subsequent writers of Cthulhu tales. I most highly recommend "Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos", a collection of some of the most notable works by Lovecraft and those who followed in his tradition. Many of the stories (including "The Hounds of Tindalos" by Frank Belknap Long, and "The Return of the Lliogor" by Colin Wilson) will feature monsters and madness that will be familiar to you from Arkham Horror. (I'm partial to the works of Robert Bloch and Ramsey Campbell myself.)

As for Tomes, the Necronomicon first appeared in Lovecraft's "The Hound"; Cultes Des Goules was first referenced in Robert Bloch's "Suicide in the Study"; The King in Yellow was featured in Robert Chamber's "The Yellow Sign", and Nameless Cults can be found (amongst other places) in Robert Howard's "The Black Stone" (which is in the collection mentioned above).

Hope this helps. ^.^

Kkat

Thank everyone. I was not implying that I was trying to dissect things. I am taking an interest in Lovecraft writing, although I agree they are Sexist and biggoted. I am merely interested in which stories I could read that would be loosely tied to the game. And yes, was curious if there were other writers that contributed to the collection of creatures in Arkham Horror. I feel that it adds to the Roleplaying aspect of the game if you have just a little background on creatures and more specifically, I would love to know much more about the Ancient Ones. What are they? Are the Gods? Banished Aliens? Super Villans? What? Where do they come from? In the stories I've read, there are only ever quick one sentence references to these Being, other than Cthulhu.

They can be loosely categorised as Outer Gods, or Great Old Ones. Outer Gods are truly unfathomable and exist (some say) as manifestations of absolute concepts, personifications of cosmic forces. GOOs, on the other hand, are vastly powerful alien beings, more limited. This distinction is practically irrelevant from our perspective however since to humans OGs and GOOs are so vastly powerful that the issue is moot.

Outer Gods: Azathoth (primary, "Daemon Sultan"), Yog Sothoth ("The Key and the Gate"), Shub Niggurath ("The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young" - this refers to her Dark Young, allegedly spawned in a tryst with Hastur), Nyarlathotep ("Messenger of the Outer Gods"), some say also Abhoth ("Source of Uncleanness"), Tulzscha ("The Green Flame", part of Azathoths "court") and Daoloth ("Render of Veils"). I think a case could be made for Hastur the Unspeakable too.

Great Old Ones: everything else.

Essentially, the GOOs arrive on Earth at different times millions, billions, trillions (sextillions?) of years ago from other planets, planes or times. The OGs have and will always be. Sources cannot agree on much else.

Yes! Where do you find THAT information?

lol, erm, over 20 years of reading Lovecraft, Campbell et al. I recommend you start now - oh, but you are! The best all-in-one guide is by Daniel Harms. "The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana". I have a sadly somewhat rare 2nd edition but I believe he finally just launched a 3rd edition. There is a lovely mythos timeline in there. You can also pick my brain. Or I could arrange a visit from a migo with a certain cyclinder...

also, use wikipedia.

I can't help you with hunting down specific quotes - as has been said they might not even all exist - but as for reading Lovecraft, I recommend these two books:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Whisperer-Darkness-Collected-Wordsworth-Supernatural/dp/1840226080/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255461502&sr=8-8

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Loved-Dead-Collected-Wordsworth-Supernatural/dp/1840226226/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255461502&sr=8-10

Both contain a lot of his short stories and both are very cheap.

awp832 said:

PROFESSOR ARMITAGE! YOUR LIFE IS A LIE! YOU ARE A MAN ON AN ORANGE PIECE OF PAPER!

dj2.0 said:

For what it's worth, I reckon that even that much detail is too much. Nearly all of these attempts at taxonomy took place after Lovecraft's death, and if you look at HPL's own work, there are almost no gods/creatures which are identified as being in any way "equivalent" to each other. In many stories, that sort of specific terminology for what something is would have dispelled the atmosphere of unknowable horror.

(The example which particularly annoys me is Hastur. It wasn't until Derleth got his grubby mitts on the Mythos that Hastur was defined as being a sort of cosmic god at all. When Chaosium were forced to decide what Hastur itself looked like, they seem to have gone for the obvious fall-back position that it's a big tentacled monster - which is the version that FFG inherited for AH,. So the original nebulous ghostly non-entities from Chambers have been explained as being parts of a giant purple space squid, which the Mythos already had more than enough of already. Rant over.)

There's really no way to satisfactorily explain what all the Ancient Ones are. When my friend asks "What IS Tsathoggua?", I am forced to reply that "It's a sort of giant underground toad-bat from Saturn," and my friend understandably does not feel very enlightened. Really you're not meant to know what the AOs actually are, exactly; the best way of preserving their character and atmosphere might be to read the originating Mythos stories, but stay away from any later material which is too explanatory (like Derleth's letters, and any Call of Cthulhu sourcebooks).

P.S. Professor Armitage may not be a particularly well-developed character (either in The Dunwich Horror or in the board game) but there are a few people in AH who are certainly not just bits of cardboard: the ally Erich Weiss is a real historical figure, more commonly known by his stage name "Houdini". He's part of the Mythos because the HPL story Beneath The Pyramids was ghost-written for Houdini and purported to be a real account of things that Houdini experienced.

Also:

awp832 said:

Tthat's exactly the sort of thing that I do enjoy! A big part of the fun of the Mythos (for me, anyway) is cross-referencing the little details, picking up on references and allusions in the works of different authors, and tracking down other stories which expand on minute details in what I've already read. The more obscure, the better! I don't see why the board game can't be part of that. (And for the record, easy-to-defeat monsters are mechanically useful, but they're zombies because of Herbert West. Everything in this game is an allusion of some kind, including almost all the actual events in encounters.)

thecorinthian said:

Testify!

I actually agree. When Chaosium came along they made huge changes to a mythos that was prior to them only a very loose collection of tales strung together by certain names. Before that, Derleth was the driving force behind organising the pieces into a whole. Both attempts were failures in the sense that they undermined the unknowable nature of the mythos. But to be fair Derleths motivation in bringing order to chaos is philisophical and stylistic, chaosiums is practical, since they had to systemise it for a game. This has had an enormous impact on shaping the mythos, arguably more than Derleth had...its true, for example, that the term "Outer God" can be traced back to chaosium, Lovecraft used "Other Gods". And yes their take on Hastur is unimaginative. Delta Green, however, showed how it should be done.

It seems that chaosium have a lot to answer for, in the end...what was before a nebulous collection of individual writings that were freely added to, expanded on and even contradicted by one creative writer after another have now become more codifed, more concreted in peoples imaginations. That may be the price of wider popularity. It isnt complete, though.

thecorinthian said:

This would have been my next point - people love *solving* a mystery, Lovecraft writes endlessly about this - and so the mythos was somehow doomed to become less nebulous as time went by. It could not really remain so and expand indefinately. It *needed* chaosium to grow. People have a natural inborn curiousity to know the unknown, Lovecraft himself recognises this and adds "but in the infinite gulfs, there are things unknowable". People love to puzzle out the mythos. It doesnt mean that they will, or that anyone will produce a definitive pattern for it. The mythos will mutate out of control again. It will concrete to a new degree as well. Most likely, the next step will be when someone makes a colour, modern film that shows Cthulhu in all his glory - forever fixing him in peoples imaginations in a way the page, even a chaosium page with stats on, could not - Cthulhu bound by celluloid. It is somewhat inevitable in a sickening and compelling way at the same time. But, in the end, our tiny minds will break at the strain of trying to contain and codify something that has no meaning we can perceive, because there is none. We invent them. They are the best we can do, given the fragments Lovecraft provided.