I have persuaded my brother to take a punt with the game (he is a keen gamer generally) and suddenly realised that this, more than any other LCG/CCG, is perfect for skype play without a computer program.

As far as I can tell you can have any number of players with their decks at different locations. The locations/agenda/act out as the scenario prescribes and each with their own setup Chaos bag. Then one player controls the encounter deck (and the others have their encounter cards in order) and when encounter cards are drawn it is 'Roland has 'flesh eater' card 45' and so on. Over the skype connection then actions are described and the board state is verbally kept in sync. No real need to keep player state in sync.

I think this could even help with roleplaying as yopu cannot look over and 'see' what a player has available so as to give handy hints.

Have I missed anything or is this as viable as I think it is for long distance play..

I like the idea as I do not like to play solo and my fellow gamers are all in different cities. I play RPGs online and have been thinking of how to fit regular Arkham games into my routine.

I guess the added complication is that all the deck cards also have to be handy. For example, if I give assets to other players, they have to have a card handy etc.

I still want to try. If you try it out, I would be interested in how it went!

that is true, the other players would need the cards organised. I have then numerically in card binders so as long as all could access in a similar fashion then all would be well.

@Matrim This is great idea. We have been playing AH that way for a couple of months and it works almost perfectly. We only used messenger and recently switched to Discord app as via Messenger the quality was really poor and the glitches made the game uncomfortable. Of course it is better to see someones face and all that emotions (especially when the auto fail token is drawn - then you probably have to mute the sound when there are kids around you:D) We play as following: One prepares the scenario and mix all encounter cards. The others just organize them. The rest is going as you described it: one person tells each time what card has been drawn for which character. Of course not so formal but trying to give some color to it. Regarding chaos bag each player has his own as we trust each other.

Of course we can try a scenario one day If you want to

OK here is a problem I just thought of but to describe it I have to spoilers some news that I heard about an encounter card mechanic of the new Deluxe

SPOILER ABOUT A NEW ENCOUNTER CARD DYNAMIC

I heard that there are new cards that players can draw and they stay on the players hands. These cards are secret and the player cannot tell the others what they drew.

SPOILER END

With this mechanic, it won't work that one player draws the encounter card for another player. I thought maybe everyone can draw their own encounter cards and you record the numbers of cards that were drawn and any card for which a duplicate is drawn is discarded. But that also doesn't work with encounter cards that stay on some other players hand unrevealed.

The only way I can think about solving this is when you play with a camera and the player that draws the encounter cards holds the cards that the other player draws into the camera for the other to see but without looking at them. Then, if there is a card that the other player has to solve by themselves, or keep on their hand, they say so and take that card while the other doesn't look at it...

worked very well in a game with a newbie, though this newbie went mad right at the end leaving me to be visously killed we had no real problems playing over skype. We did not bother keeping either of the investigators deck in sync and just trusted each other with that and results. Looks like I will get a repeat experience with my elder brother and his son on friday also over skype.

ParinorB's dilema is the same as Peril mechanic.

Skype isn't bad for video calling, but it's not many devices and everyone cannot use it because it's not easy. I am also a Skype user, but nowadays IMO app , Kik app is in trend. you can easily find them in pc.