Who here has tried it (I was talking about AH to a skype friend yesterday, and I was just thinking that it could probably be done if one of the players was pretty familiar with the game), and would you give any advice on how to manage a game?

I'm thinking about one player being in charge of the board and tokens, and the other player keeping track with paper and arkham horror wiki.

Has anyone here done this yet?

Sounds interesting, but I think things would be hard for the player without the board to keep track. Plus you'd have to get an arkham horror set up in front of a computer camera. I dunno, it just seems like a lot of work. Not that i've ever tried, but still. Good luck though!

Minq said:

Actually I've been thinking about it very frequently for weeks now. I don't think it's that hard to manage. You just need a sketch of the arkham map, a copy of arkham horror wiki open, and abbreviations for all the monsters on the board. It would also be helpful to have a word document open with other players items listed (but not necessary). I would go into more detail, but since no one else seems to care about this subject ;') I'll it (even though I have a couple friends who I'm preparing for future skype play).

Yes, arkham horror wiki could be VERY helpful. Maybe, I'Il try some day.

Sigismond said:

You use AH wiki to have a window of tabs open for your investigator equipment (not counting clues, stam/san, and sliders— those would be easier to have the actual things out along with a set of dice) and a window open for monsters on the board.

I would suggest you draw up two maps before the game. An Arkham Map and an expansion boards map. Just draw in the representation of circles and squares and attach their names (you should know the special text by now, and if you don't check it on AH wiki). On each map page, make a list of investigator and monster names, and put abbreviations and movement symbols besides them (that way you'll be able to relocate things on your map easily, since you'll only have to erase one or two letters and rewrite them. I'd suggest you do the Board Maps in Ink and either xerox, or scan them (so they don't erase), or make the original on your computer. Mark clues on the board with C.

Um. And that's basically it. If you want to do your share of reading mythos, encounter, or other world cards, ask the other players to draw for you, then you read the text on AH wiki.

I'd also suggest you keep a list of other player's items in an open word file, just so you know what's available for trading.

And there you have it. Arkham on Skype :')

Whoops, I forgot. If a gate comes up, just write the gate name on your board (it'd probably be helpful if you listed all the OWs on one of the sheets with 1/2 to let you know where investigators are (or you could just record it in your word document when it comes up, either method would work).

I have heard of people doing this with a PBP system at RPG.net. I cannot tell you how it went though as their search function has never worked.

Veet said:

PBP?

Play by Post....over a message board.

Veet said:

Oh no, that's way too slow, unless there's only two people. Skype would be much faster since you can talk instead of typing everything.

I have been giving this some thought. I think some sort of collaboration software would be best, where you can have a whiteboard that gets updated in realtime. I found this

http://shimkus.com/CLI/Collaborate.html

i recommend V1.1.0 for thefact that I could not make V2 work on my mac and V1 is crossplatform.

With a shared whiteboard app, a scan of the board and cards (or the text of cards) that could be sent through skype and voice chat I think you could probably have quite a rewarding online game. It is definitely doable. Especially if both sides has a copy of the game and only a log is needed on the whiteboard.

Let´s get a championship going!

It occurs to me that you could use something like MapTool to create a virtual tabletop. It's designed for stuff like D&D but in it's current incarnation that is little more than a board game of sorts. You would need to either scan in the boards or find an already suffcient image then create tokens for monsters investigators and a few other things...everything else could be handled through skype with the actual decks.

DoctorDR said:

Collaboration software might work if you wanted to play more than one person who wasn't by the physical game; however, here's the problem with collaboration software— you basically want to design a system where the person managing the physical game does as little work as possible (since he or she will need to be managing all the cards). So it's probably more time efficient if the other player does all the writing and card checking on AH Wiki.

Veet said:

I don't know what that means, but it sounds promising. Still, I have to wonder if it would be faster using that than just a simple piece of white paper with minimal markings and abbreviations. I mean, do you *really* need to see the game to play it? I don't. Maybe that just indicates that I've played it too much though ;')

...or everyone simultaneously runs their own board in tandum...

DoctorDR said:

That could also work if everyone has their own board and a laptop. There are a couple problems with this approach. Good luck searching for items and monsters (it's going to be really really slow). Also, if one of the players doesn't have a laptop (oo, me me!) that's not going to work. ;') Actually I have a friend moving back to France who is probably going to buy the game just so she can play it with me (she didn't want to play the abstract version). So she will be doing all this. She'll also be storing all of her materials alphabetically so she can retrieve them quickly (of course, this will add a large chunk of time to clean-up for her, buuut, she likes the actual material objects).

Btw, this is totally off topic, but I thought it funny and can't quite bring myself to create a new thread for it.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/.a/6a00d83451c45669e201310f66a1ea970c-800wi

Arkham Google!

Here is the link to maptool

http://www.rptools.net/index.php?page=maptool

I think that would be the most promising tool to use for internet play of AH because you can create a shared virtual board that everyone has the ability to manipulate. At the risk of exposing my extreme geekness my friends and i use this to play D&D 4th. no character sheets or dice we all just sit around a large screen TV with our laptops accessing a common server.

Veet said:

Hmmm...

If we made a shared resource with map and tokens only, do you think we'd get in trouble with FFG? Or would something like that have to be done entirely privately and independently?

As I see it you would only be using the board the investigator tokens the front side of the monster tokens and various misc tokens like gates and number markers etc.. All this is already available on the Wiki.

That being said I wouldn't post it for public download anywhere. I like FFG and want to support them.

Veet said:

Number markers?

Hooo... This seems very intimidating ;') but if you set it up, send me a private copy (otherwise I'll just stick to pen and paper I think).

I couldn´t sleep last night and was up checking out maptool. It is certainly very cool, but I am left dubious as to whether or not it is the best thing for a board game. It seems to me that it is in the realm of the Vassal thing but not as board game orientated. That being said it could be easier to get happening than Vassal. I know FFG have said they don´t want an Arkham Vassal, but I wonder if that excludes a self made mod for personal use only by someone who owns the game already and does not make it public. Vassal is cool but setting it up is a lot of work and then using it is a learning curve and one can not distribute it to others. So it seems to me like one of those cool things that will never happen until someone else does it and puts it out there.

So there is that side, but back to skype, which is something that most people have already and know how to use, I think that there would be a number of simple ways to have a satisfying game through video chat, but possibly even the text with copy pasting from the wiki. I think though, perhaps obviously, that one person would need to be in charge of the mythos deck so the same cards did not keep coming up. This i guess might be true for the location cards and items too. There could be a card master and the item functions could be copy pasted into a text file inventory for each player to avoid everyone having to shuffle through their own respective decks.

There could be a text template for each skype post that is updated in word or something before posting that gives the active character´s current status, location and object inventory (plus their function if nessasary), the location of monsters, plus the action for that phase, such as movement or the copied text of a card, and every player keeps their own board based on that. It might mean each skype post would be quite long but that shouldn´t be too much of a problem.

If everyone had a searchable text file of all the text needed for the game it would then become a reasonably simple system of update + search + copy/pasting... if everyone has their own board I think it would be nice - looking at the actual board is much nicer than looking at Vassal or whatever, and skype presents almost no learning curve. Using text you could even do it with minimal human interaction!

DoctorDR said:

Yeah... I see how it's possible to have multiple players online, but personally, I wouldn't want more than one boardless player unless you know of a videochat program that allows multiple chat boxes. Part of the fun of Arkham is the social experience, and frankly, a text only chatroom isn't nearly as good as videochat.

I already presumed that a person would be in charge of drawing for the boardless player and announcing which cards are drawn so the boardless player could take notes of them.

Actually i am messing with it now... If you took it over a long period play by skype/forum/email of course would work but I think you are right, video or at least audio is going to be a lot more dynamic and in real time things can be discussed and resolved. I made a template to be updated posted etc... but it is rather laborious - I am bored already and there has only been 2 mythos.

DoctorDR said:

::laughter:: That's fine.

What I'd really like is a minimalist representation of the maps (just squares, circles, names, and lines between them, aquatic locations marked, with little sidebars for listing monsters on the boards and investigators, and their abbreviations and movement symbols) that I can print out instead of having to make something by hand and xeroxing it. I'd want one map (piece of paper) for Arkham, and one map with Kingsport, Dunwich, and Innsmouth. Each map should have a place to list monsters.

And that should be enough. Although it would definitely be nice to have a bit more detail (like the other symbols on the boards), I don't think I'd really need any of it (since I generally know where I want to go anyways— although I'd imagine less grizzled Arkhamites might want a better marked map). I was actually thinking of having little marks in locations with special text, and having another sheet of paper with an alphabetic by town listing of special location text.

The whole thing could probably be make in about an hour if someone has a decent graphics design program (I don't anymore).

Any other info that interests you you could just mark down on some blank space or the word document on your computer (like terror track, doom track, monsters in outskirts, although I'd probably just ask about that last one instead of recording it— too difficult and rarely relevant for targeted removals unless you have a find gate).

Sooo... I basically just finished my quarter today and I have a bit of vacation, who wants to playtest AH Skype with me :')

I only want to try it with someone who uses Dunwich and Innsmouth (I want to try it with complexity). Anyone interested, send me a private message. It's 1PM here and I just woke up. Yar! Let's kill some monsters!