My friend is interested in having an Arkham Party that includes a single game encompassing more 9+ players. Does anyone have any House Rules for this new kind of madness?

They do not have to be perfectly balanced; we're at peace that it's going to break Arkham. We just want a sense of how everyone else copes with such things

Thanks!

The biggest issue I can think of is a shortage of skill sliders. Paperclips will do fine, however.

So there are a couple ways I can think of to accommodate a 9th player.

The first suggestion is to use at least two expansion boards. When you do that, technically, you count the number of investigators as being 1 fewer for everything except final combat successes. So you could play a 9-player game while using any two expansion boards and just use the limits for the 8-player game. In fact, if you use all three expansion boards the game is counted as two investigators less, so a 9-investigator game would use all the game limits set for a 7-investigator game; you could even go up to 10. The drawback of this method is that expansions make the game more complicated: if not everyone is an Arkham vet, this session could turn them off big time. A 9-investigator game, I reckon, will take a very long time.

The second suggestion is to designate one person to be a bookkeeper, and not to play as an investigator. You could have 8 investigators play, and have the ninth player just run the game and keep it moving. If you would want the game to flow more quickly and have less downtime you should do this, as long as the bookkeeper doesn't mind not playing as a character. Personally, I've done this before (as I own the game and know all the intricacies) and certainly prefer to do this if it'll ensure a fast-paced, enjoyable game for everyone.

The last suggestion I have is to come up with new limits for a 9- or 10-investigator game, based on the limits used. This is, of course, only necessary assuming you're not using too many board expansions. If you were to use the base game rules as an indicator, then the new limits would be:

9 investigators

• Newly opened gates spawn 3 monsters instead of 1 (1-4 invests) or 2 (5-8 invests).
• The monster limit is 12.
• The outskirts limit is -1 (that is, for each monster placed into the outskirts, raise the terror level by 2!).
• The number of open gates that immediately awakens the Ancient One is 4.

10 investigators

• Newly opened gates spawn 3 monsters instead of 1.
• The monster limit is 13.
• The outskirts limit is -2 (that is, for each monster placed into the outskirts, raise the terror level by 3!).
• The number of open gates that immediately awakens the Ancient One is 4.

No matter which method you choose, I wish you (and your investigators) the best of luck!

Thank you! I think the straight up number adaptation that you gave at the latter half of your post will be closer to how I run. I'll just have to figure out how to do it if she wants 11-16 people. Oh yeah, she's thinkin' big.

Thank you very much for this. You rock. :-)

I feel that we should give you fair warning here. I've played a handful of 8 player games and most of them weren't too much fun. I enjoy playing with 6 IF everybody knows what they are doing. Otherwise a smaller group of 4-5 might be preferable. 8 player games can drag if everybody isn't on the ball, you really dont want players having to question rules all the time etc. I'd try to break the group up into 2 games if at all possible.

awp832 said:

We frequently try 8 player games in geeky mixed company. We usually stop playing at around the two hour mark and derail into excessive tentacle speculation.

Leafwhistle said:

That'd drive me nuts (more nuts), I'd probably flip the board and start shrieking at and/or biting people. My friends complain that I take this game way too seriously ;') although some enjoy watching me play it because it's the only thing they've ever seen me throw temper tantrums over (no, I don't actually bite people or flip the board, both of those would violate the prime directive of ensuring more games of Arkham Horror in the future).