Greetings, everyone. I've been reading these forums for awhile, but I haven't yet posted here. I'll begin with the questions, both of which (partly) originate from the mission Walking the Ley Lines. Firstly, when playing with more than one expansion board, does the number of gate trophies needed for a closing victory decrease along with everything else based on number of players? I seem to recall reading conflicting answers about this somewhere on here. There seems to be no particular reason that this should be a special case, but then, saying that it remains the same regardless of the number of expansion boards prevents a number of bizarre situations (principally first-turn De Vermiis Mysteriis coups). Secondly, when you are at a location with a gate on it (and are not sucked through) during the Arkham Encounters phase, does this allow you to "check off" that location for the purposes of a task or mission? The reason I ask is that there seems to be some dispute over whether a location with a gate on it "counts as" itself. Does closing the gate while you're there change the situation?
Then, the ode, beginning with its origin. No guarantees that this will be of any interest to anyone, but, who knows? Anyway: in generall, I get very excited whenever I am planning and/or anticipatiing something new and interesting (embarking on a project or planning a series of purchases). Thus was the case at the time of me writing it. I was online cruising around the FFG website and looking at things (I think it was mostly Arkham and its expansions, but it might have been Mansions of Madness as well). I didn't yet have Arkham, and this excursion helped cement my decision to purchase it. I was very, very excited about it and, thusly drunk on anticipation (as well, no doubt, the malevolent spirit of this wondrous and terrible game calling my soul into its dark embrace) and wishing to immortalize my feelings, I opened Microsoft Word and dashed off the below bit of nonsense. I...really don't know what I was thinking, but I thought it would make a decent ode to Arkham. In my throes of mirthful madness, I entitled it "The Dark." How creative.
They lie open before me
The endless wanderers
And I can merely stare upon
What is this world
Nothing
Endlessly adrift in meaningless life
And yet what joy there is in it
In this
The irony
What lives inside the meaning
I dwell in this moment
I see what lies beyond the end
We are here
I am here
Laughter
Endless
This is what it is for