Is there an overall continuing storyline going on throughout Arkham Horror and the expansions, or is the game simply a matter of individual games fighting and defeating the Ancient One that has been chosen

Hail Cthulhu

It's really more of a game-by-game basis. There appears to be no overarching plot.

Tibs said:

Me and the missus wrote our own though. She keeps "minutes" of the games and I write scripts which she wants to animate. Quite a lot of fun making a story to go with it XD

I know you've been looking into my scenarios. Well, it's certainly fitting if you permanently remove investigators from the league if they are devoured. Likewise, investigators who are retired should be out of the pool until no "healthy" investigators remain.

If you lose a scenario, all those investigators are devoured. If you lose against Azathoth, you lose the entire league!

Of course this can be applied to any series of games.

There's no fixed story running through the game, but me and mine have a lot of fun telling a story based on the encounters and items (and monsters) our investigators stumble across while playing. I would say the game is very story-heavy, but it's also a new story each time with the same primary goal of defeating the Ancient One.

Thats a little dispointing, but I like Ebon's idea, I just may write some Lovecraft type stories based on my gameplay, when I get a handle on the game machanics first of course.

H.P. Lovecraft said:

Nope. But the fan creation league I'm doing has a story, and it's fairly long (considering that there are 24 scenarios).

There are few camapigns out there.

The are two american leagues. Although they are not campaign sensu stricto, you can play them as it. The two spanish leagues are clearly designed as campaigns and are, in my opinion, of a better design.

Tib's league is meant to be discover the game step by step.
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=5&efcid=1&efidt=349784

the Fan's league of Avi that is a campaign. It is designed to play fun and difficult scenarios that uses custom content.
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=113&efcid=1&efidt=306738

There are 3 scenarios that makes a campaign that I found particularly interesting (I like when the mechanics are really tweaked)
http://files.boardgamegeek.com/file/download/5gtlbt5ik0/Ancient_Artifacts.pdf?
http://files.boardgamegeek.com/file/download/5gtlbt5ik0/Distant_Rumblings.pdf?
http://files.boardgamegeek.com/file/download/5hculb1lw1/Vengeful_Acts.pdf?

And, well, if you are interested in stories, you should try the excellent arkham investigations:
http://arkhaminvestigations.barkingdoginteractive.com/

Well, that being wrote, if you read french, I can dig out more for you :-)

What exactly are these scenarios?

These are Arkham Horror games that are played with special rules and restrictions. For instance, where familiar Ancient Ones may gain new powers,where the starting terror level is 10, or one where allies are not allowed. There are lots of ways to modify the rules of the game.

H.P. Lovecraft said:

What Zealot said. Although I'd like that add that you probably shouldn't try mine until playing the game for a year or two (it was designed for advanced players), unless you're willing to use spoilers ;') in which case, go ahead.

Also, they usually have a storyline.

Tibs said:

"Hey, Joe, didja hear? Another one of them cosmic horror things is tryin' to bust inta Arkham again."

>sigh< "Must be Tuesday. Better leave me the bottle."

jgt7771 said:

LOL.. My gaming groupd always speculated that the reason you lose your retainer from the Newspaper is that you keep writing stories about extradimensional beings, elder gods, and various other scary things. The newspaper has too many stories like this. Their looking for something nice. A wedding story, a new birth, or maybe a non-mythos related death. Something uplifting.