It seems like the intention is for you to start each campaign with a fresh group of investigators, but the written rules easily allow and enable you to take them from campaign to campaign. What do you guys prefer?

We are finishing up the core set, and then moving onto Rugaru, and Dunwich...we would really like to keep our investigators for as long as we can...they are our "characters"...but we don't want to be too strong for future adventures.

I've heard a few opinions on the board here that racked up damage and weaknesses offset having more powerful cards, even perhaps being so detrimental to the group that it's EASIER to start over.

Does anyone have experience with this? Also, if it's preferred to start over each campaign, what is really the point of doing the side adventures in between campaigns in nothing carries over? Or are those meant to be more for between the smaller clam pack expansions?

If you like the characters you are using - then feel free to carry on with them. I think it is more fun when you add up all of the bonuses and penalties between the campaigns. What my playthrough currently looks like is:

We played through Carnivale and then played through the core set with those bonuses. We had a lot of fun, but as it was the first time some people played, we wanted to play as different characters.

Our next game was to do Curse of t Rougurou, then House Always Wins, then Extracurricular Activity, and our next move will be to Carnival before we proceed through the rest of the missions.

Will this be more difficult? I think it balances it out. The cards you upgrade to are more powerful than the earlier cards, but by how much? Not that much. From CotR the only real takeaway is a few xp and a weakness and asset for 1 character. The xp gave us a few upgrades, but it's not enough to transform a deck. The weakness from CotR came up in both Dunwich adventures and did effect my play because I was Rex, and had to work in some attacks while uncovering clues to keep from going insane. (CotR I ended with 1 sanity and 1 health remaining, HAW I ended with good surplus of both, EA I ended with 2 sanity and 1 health)

If you feel it is too easy - I would recommend just cranking up the difficulty to match. I don't find it too easy.

As an aside - if you want to experience it both ways, you can always review your campaign log and set up yourself "as if" you had not played the other mission to compare how you feel about it.

The standalones as part of campaign mode are meant to be played as side quests between scenarios, not between entire campaigns.

There are rules for all possible play styles. If you want to continue with your characters onto the next campaign then go for it, just don't forget to carry all that trauma and weaknesses with you.

I personally like to start fresh with a new investigator.

35 minutes ago, mwmcintyre said:

The standalones as part of campaign mode are meant to be played as side quests between scenarios, not between entire campaigns.

If you're carrying over characters then "between scenarios" and "between campaigns" are the same thing

If you are carrying over, then yes. But when you are doing the standalone as part of the campaign mode, remember that 1) you need to spend XP to do them, and 2) you use the chaos bag from the campaign you are currently on. Which between campaigns I would rule you should use the chaos bag of the campaign you just finished.

14 hours ago, mwmcintyre said:

If you are carrying over, then yes. But when you are doing the standalone as part of the campaign mode, remember that 1) you need to spend XP to do them, and 2) you use the chaos bag from the campaign you are currently on. Which between campaigns I would rule you should use the chaos bag of the campaign you just finished.

Actually, if you've finished the final scenario of the campaign, and wish to continue using those investigators in new adventures, playing a POD scenario is basically playing it as a one-shot stand alone, so you'd use the (much tougher) Chaos Bag for the POD, not the old scenario Chaos Bag.

Rules as written, side adventures in a campaign have to be played after the first scenario but before the last scenario in the campaign. Otherwise, they're just a new campaign, and thus new bag.

3 hours ago, Gaffa said:

Actually, if you've finished the final scenario of the campaign, and wish to continue using those investigators in new adventures, playing a POD scenario is basically playing it as a one-shot stand alone, so you'd use the (much tougher) Chaos Bag for the POD, not the old scenario Chaos Bag.

Rules as written, side adventures in a campaign have to be played after the first scenario but before the last scenario in the campaign. Otherwise, they're just a new campaign, and thus new bag.

If you want to get picky on this, then it would also mean that you don't pay the experience to run it in Standalone mode. That doesn't seem right.

Since this is an "officially endorsed but not really strongly defined" set of optional rules, I think it's a bit of overkill to be enforcing some rather nonsensical RAW because someone happens to run the side quest between the third and fourth scenario instead of the second and third scenario. And honestly, the story benefits of doing so make it worth ignoring the sillier interactions, because playing it "right" is even worse... "Oh no!! It's midnight, we must hurry and stop the ritual... right after we hop a steamer for a trip to Venice!!"

8 hours ago, Buhallin said:

If you want to get picky on this, then it would also mean that you don't pay the experience to run it in Standalone mode. That doesn't seem right.

Doesn't seem "right"? It's right there in the rules in the PODs themselves. You only pay XP to play Rougarou or Carnevale if you're playing them as a side-story in a campaign. If you're playing them as a standalone, there's no XP cost for them (pages 2-3 of the Curse of the Rougarou instructions). In addition, "a side-story is a scenario that may be played between any two scenarios of an Arkham Horror: The Card Game campaign". Once you've played the final scenario in a campaign, the campaign is over. There's not another one after it, so you can't play a side-story after the final scenario of a campaign. You can carry on the investigators into new cases, but then it's a new campaign (either a standalone POD, or something else), not a continuation of Night of the Zealot.

And they're not optional rules; they're the rules for using side-stories as written. Again, feel free to houserule to your content. But don't complain about getting picky on rules discussions when the point of rules is to be picky.

When I said it doesn't feel right, I meant that it doesn't feel right to dodge the XP cost for the scenario while still taking the rewards. That does seem a bit off, doesn't it? Or would you argue that because it's a standalone they don't keep the rewards, either?

It seems rather clear that the line in question is intended for the "new campaign new characters" flow, and isn't any more appropriate for a chained campaign than having to add extra weaknesses for starting experience, or the level 0 restriction. The point, in this case, is actually not to get picky about RAW - it's to find a reasonable path through the lightly-structured environment of chained campaigns.

I think it is appropriate to pay the xp cost if you are going into these POD missions even if you do them at the end of a campaign. After thinking about it, I think it's fine to start with a POD mission and then move on to the campaign as long as you start with 0 xp decks, since the POD gives a higher difficulty game if you just start here. I feel this challenge balances it out a bit. You can always re-play the mission without these if you want, or even skip around to just replay certain missions as you want to play them (picking which resolutions for each mission and awarding whatever amount of xp you feel appropriate) without these bonuses again to be "satisfied" you "really" beat them... If that is the concern.

The reason for paying XP in campaign mode is because of the story assets you can gain. Carnevalle alone, everyone is guaranteed one pretty good story asset at the end of the scenario. Do what you want at the end of the day, but if you're doing campaign mode where you get to keep the rewards, you should be paying the XP.

10 hours ago, Buhallin said:

When I said it doesn't feel right, I meant that it doesn't feel right to dodge the XP cost for the scenario while still taking the rewards. That does seem a bit off, doesn't it? Or would you argue that because it's a standalone they don't keep the rewards, either?

If you're carrying your characters from one campaign to another (or from one standalone to another), then you get to keep all the rewards and penalties you accrued. And it's not like you're "dodging" any XP cost; you're using a much tougher Chaos Bag than Zealot ever gives you (and if you play it early in Dunwich Legacy you can get an even easier bag than Zealot).