Yeah...that would be me who thought this might be a joke...maybe it was because of the WAY THE TITLE WAS WRITTEN IN WHICH CASE I APOLOGIZE.

But yes, it's always fair to ask questions, but to ask them because you feel no one has or ever will ask them is a might-bit silly. That's what these forums are for, so why would anyone hesitate :-D We always get new people to the game that ask all the silly questions we did when we was younger, and there's an entire forum dedicated to variants and houserules! Most people come on and say they don't like certain aspects of the game, and ask us for possible fixes. For example, people think Patrice is over-powered (I just experienced her for the first time last night. Holy COW is she amazing), so Tibs and a few others have a few houserules/fixes/variants to "fix" her

EcnoTheNeato said:

I would fix her with a .45 automatic... Except she'd probably use her **** clues to pass the fight check. How I hate her.

Julia,

Regarding the Atlach Nacha game ~ very, very exciting...very short. I have to write-up the story soon. Right now, I'm finishing-up the last book for my Ai r Command and Staff College , so it may another week. Sorry...but nice to hear that I have a following...of sorts.

The Professor

Hey, no rush & no probs at all! Thanks for the feedback :-)

Avi_dreader said:

Speaking of luck, one game my sister (that enchantress!) was Rita Young, and she unflinchingly plunged into a horde of monsters and wiped them all out easily. After defeating the Shan, the conversation went like this:

Me: "Hey, didn't you have zero clue tokens?"

Sister: "Yeah, so?"

Me: "Did you realize that you only rolled one die for that Horror check?"

Sister: "And-?"

Me: "And that if you failed, you would have - ahem - died?"

Sister: " :::Blinks::: Oh... well, I didn't fail, did I?"

Me: ":::Smacks face:::"

She hardly knew what she was doing! Sometimes, you get the best of luck if you ignore all the odds.

mi-go hunter said:

You should post this on the dice rolling thread

mi-go hunter said:

I'd go into cardiac arrest if one of the people I was playing with did that to me. Sometimes some of my "friends" deliberately make these sorts of decisions because they enjoy putting the horror back into my experience of Arkham Horror... Then I have to murder and eat them ;') Or at least not invite them over for a game of AH as often.

mi-go hunter said:

Fate protects fools, little children and ships named Enterprise.

heh when i was teaching some kids the game some of my friends decided they would make stupid decisions like that on purpose...one kid had just come out of a gate with 5 gates already sealed...and had enough clues to win the game... another kid died to a gug while he was in the OW... and so when he came out of the gate instead of just winning the game he decided he would avenge our friends death by going after the Gug...well he lost that battle and it took us another hour to finish the game...

Hahahaha, love it. Sometimes I prolong the game if I play with others and we're just having fun. That's often when we race to see who will be accepted in the Twilight Lodge or Sheldon Gang first...

RocksLikeToast said:

::Laughter:: add him to my hit list ;'D Best stupid story I've heard so far.

Ah, okay thank you Avec, and others. I really didn't know there was someone who set a precedent for my behavior, and now that I look at it I see that posting in ALL CAPS looks as manic as my high school counselor said I was. Believe it or not I'm a veteran gamer, just never been on a forum, of any kind. I'm glad I read this thread again though—I was just in a gentleman's quarrel over in Cadwallon and I'm not even sure what we were arguing about. It makes more sense now. I'm not trying to take control of or take over the forums. I'm an editor, and I guess a systems editor by hobby, and I apply it to most everything I see. Can I ask you folks' opinion: Do you think it's a good idea to have veteran gamers' lasting complaints about games in one thread, posted along with their discussion of the house rules they use to fix them?

My intent in posting that for every game was so I could see the integrity of the current version of certain games. Some are going to be reprinted (or in perpetual reprinting process ) and from reading till my eyes looked twelve past stoned I kept thinking, man, if the posters who've really gone through this game put all their fixes on one thread I could see how easy it would be to play it at high integrity, whether I should leave it alone entirely, or whether I should wait for the reprint. I assumed there are others like me who were looking for the same thing. Also, I assumed for those reprints currently in production, it would be an easy thread for FFG to draw truly useful suggestions from, and to comment or ask questions in the process. I had no idea a ghost haunted these forums. I wonder if I look like it when I roll from tossing and turning straight into online nightdrunk ranting. That last sentence just answered itself

RocksLikeToast said:

"I must take revenge on the foul beast that has slain my friend!"

"No! Don't! What would he have done if he was in your place?!"

"He..... he would seal this gate and save the world."

"That's right! Don't hesitate! If you hunted down this Gug, your friend's struggle would have been in vain as the world plunges into darkness!"

"But... I can't. I must go!"

"Don't-"

"I MUST SLAY THIS GUG! YOU CANNOT INTERFERE!!!" (Turns away from the gate)

"No... NOOO!!!"

Gotta love the drama that AH can play out!

I just got Tibbs's Constraining Starting Items list and it changed my mind. I might have to get my own copy of this game now. If you haven't seen this 17-page mini-expansion from him you really should ask him to send you a copy. It's less than two Megs and beautiful, and seems well thought-out. Completely off topic, I'd love to see The Professor's 20 pages (really?) of Axis & Allies rules That was our favorite game in junior high; I'd love to see what you did with it.

Pulsar,

I sold about a dozen or so copies years ago. These days, I'm happy to provide it to folks who keep the game alive. As an ol' History major, I tried to reflect some of the realities of 1939. Shoot me an e-mail and I'll send you a copy.

The Professor

I kinda like certain random items/skills. Half the fun is thinking WHY Amanda Sharpe left the Bank with her trusty Flamethrower, why Sister Mary has +1 Fight, or where Michael McGlenn got the Necronomicon! All of these happened at least once in my games. But! Sometimes it's annoying when Bob gets Expert Occultist or Carolyn gets Stealth (those also happened at least once). But! You win some (+1 Lore to Diana? Mythos Lore to Ashcan Pete? Yes please!), you lose some.

mi-go hunter said:

kinda happened like that...except he had becoem the deputy...so he felt obligated to kill the Gug... if it wasn't already 4 in the morning when he decided to try this i wouldn't have cared as much

(I'm aware Arkham can play with one player, I just can't bring myself to do that. I never liked solitaire, and as much as I love systems, my non-writing hours are precious and I rather spend them with people.)

Yes, please, Professor, get at me with that 20-pages-long Axis & Allies expansion. Maybe I'll learn what I missed skipping high school history class. I'm a little initimidated that it's... twice? thrice, the length of the original rules themselves? Yeesh.

Pulsar said:

No. Not can. Does. And does it well. To me communal Arkham is a side-social game for the real strategy game ;') Comparing it to solitare is like comparing a flint knife to a nuclear warhead, except slightly more understated.

Wow, you should be their ultimate go-to whenever they reprint. (After reading ColtsFan76's top-posted thread, it seems the rules could be rewritten several times and still be labyrinthine.) I get you, I just love my four-to-five-player, cooperative or not. You just proved to me that this game is complex enough stand side by side with computer games, if it's so rich on its own. I wonder if that's why I kept thinking of the first Myst game from fifteen years ago when I was perusing it. That's the only game that ever spellbound me into solo play, and that required a screen and (at the time) state-of-the-art graphics.

Pulsar said:

I love this game. If you just think of it as a cooperative boardgame you're missing one of its major draws, that it can be played alone with a completely different feel from coop, but still it will be very engaging (as I said earlier, I prefer playing it alone, I play with others for social reasons, but, I much prefer it as a single player game controlling several investigators).

mi-go hunter said:

I would have told him to just seal the dang gate and then we'd let him play out combat with the Gug to get his revenge or die trying.

Last game I played, we were one seal from winning with one of us ready to make the seal on his next move (he had an Elder Sign, so there was basically no doubt whatsoever). But another guy came first, and wanted to go out on a glorious battle on a space that had like 3 or 4 big monsters on it. It was 4 AM, so we compromised and let him take on another space that had one formless spawn instead. :-P

Pulsar said:

Wow, you should be their ultimate go-to whenever they reprint. (After reading ColtsFan76's top-posted thread, it seems the rules could be rewritten several times and still be labyrinthine.) I get you, I just love my four-to-five-player, cooperative or not. You just proved to me that this game is complex enough stand side by side with computer games, if it's so rich on its own. I wonder if that's why I kept thinking of the first Myst game from fifteen years ago when I was perusing it. That's the only game that ever spellbound me into solo play, and that required a screen and (at the time) state-of-the-art graphics.

I love this game. If you just think of it as a cooperative boardgame you're missing one of its major draws, that it can be played alone with a completely different feel from coop, but still it will be very engaging (as I said earlier, I prefer playing it alone, I play with others for social reasons, but, I much prefer it as a single player game controlling several investigators).

I don't really "prefer" one or the other, but I really like having the flexibility of being able to play this game by myself, without having to play "both sides" as it were (like if you were playing a card game against yourself or something). As I usually say, but will reiterate, when I play by myself, I play to win. And that's fun (except if I lose, of coyrse!), but if I play with others, I just have fun as my character.

EcnoTheNeato said:

Very true, it's the same for me. As a side note, I lose games more often when not playing solitaire. Furthermore, the more people we are around the table, the higher is the chance of losing the game

i play it myself with three investigators a lot, mostly to test-implement house rules or expansion-combos. the win statistics is highest when either we're three players with one investigator each, me with three investigators or two players with two investigators each. adding players and/or investigators quickly reduces win chance. in my group. but it's a special group.