No matter how hard I try, I cannot rationalize how does a motorcycle allow me to read faster than normal. That 's it, I give up and ask for your ideas.

That's easy :-) With the motorcylcle you go much more faster than usual. So, before entering the next location, you can just relax on your bike and read some good stuff ::wink::

Also, even when you're not moving from one location to another, you're presumably moving around within the location, as you look for clues, have encounters, and so on. Since everyone can engage in such movement on their turn, this baseline movement cost is normally just abstracted away by treating it as 0, but if you're on a motorcycle, you have more time for reading because you're more efficiently looking for the sheldon gang in the woods, or exploring the unvisited isle, or uh browsing the library.

As the others have described, the time frame of what happens in the game is pretty elastic, but seems to approximate several hours or so per turn. I think the base speed implies how far someone could travel if they had to walk across town, so vehicles give not only extra distance that one can travel, but also (or otherwise) extra time for doing other things.

The motorcycle allows you to spend time reading and also get to where you needed to go. That's the justification.

Of course, it doesn't work at all if the investigator doesn't move.

Try reading whilst the motorcycle's vibrations are pounding your larynx. All those ungainly spells become a snap! "Err... Really?" comes out as "Ia Ry'leh!" and "Cut fuel out, then throttle again" becomes "Cthulhu Ftagn"

Advosan said:

Because in Arkham, that's how people read, by running books over with wheels. Ever wondered why so many tomes are discard after use? Well, that's why. Not durable enough.

I always wondered how eating some eggs circumvents getting stabbed by a cultist. Or why the stores have such limited inventories. Or how I get the money from my retainer when I'm in Carcosa. Or what the hell those guys at the River Docks do with all those dead monsters and gate bits.

Maybe you use the exhaust to turn the pages.

There are many thematic problems in Arkham, but my vote for the most egregious is how people in Arkham manage to affect investigators in Other Worlds. I still remember when we got Silver Twilight Lodge on Trial and I had to explain to someone how the police managed to get him in an Other World...

arkhamresident said:

For the Retainer, it's money given to you over time - you simply are considered to collect all of it when you return to Arkham - that, or you were smart enough to set up direct deposit with your bank.

And the guys at the Riverdocks sell them to Miskatonic U, Museums, and Cultists.

And for the shops, well, the Curiosity shop is basically a pawn shop, and it's always getting new Inventory. The General Store has a limited selection, and someone else bought their supply of Tommy Guns already. And the gal who owns the Magic Shoppe is a little crazy anyway.

And I sure know when I'm bleeding from open wounds, all it takes is some Eggs and Bacon to brighten my day!

Our group loves the fact that the best way to deal with the unbelievable horror of these terrible creatures by getting drunk.

Well, to be fair, that last one is pretty realistic.

arkhamresident said:

I've always thought that trophies were a combination of minor physical evidence and "grapevine clout". Because hauling around piles of corpses is at the very least rank and unsanitary, and exactly how does one haul around a Gate? (Portable Hole!) No, I figure they're small doodads of an unexplainable sort--Loch Ness photo, byakhee tooth, a twig of purple tree--combined with some "what I heard was" rumor mill: "All's I know is, one day we're losing men to 'shadows that move', and the next some stranger empties his gun into the air, and we ain't lost a man since. I dunno what it is you're up against out there, but could you use a hand? The boys and me took up a collection..." Arkham isn't that big of a town, and I'm sure word can spread pretty fast.

A stretch, I suppose, but trying to explain the unexplainable? Isn't that Arkham Horror?

jgt7771: Ah, your post reminds me (not by its content, but by the fact that you are the author) of a major one you pointed out in one of your reports: Wilson using his ability at Devil's Reef or Y'ha-nthlei. I...there's really no explanation for that one. Does he...pretend to be a Deep One...?

Walk said:

Instead of exploring, Wilson takes one of the many small gold ingots scattered throughout Y'ha-Nthlei.

Avi_dreader said:

That is two rationalizations in one! So efficient, it is scary!

subochre said:

Acctually, this sounds like some decent rationalization. Afterall, the Library may be a complex of buildings rather than "a" library building... So, what you do is use the motorcycle to get to a more quiet or safe (or bright) spot of the same location and do your reading. p.e. the back yard of the Unammable or the parking lot of the General Store, the northern wing of the Graveyard or the Upper Caverns of the Black Cave (it has to be an enduro bike to do so though, but noone says it is not!!).... All I need to do is think Locations as big as possible. Nice,nice, very nice!

Advosan said:

They call me the rationalization ninja.

It's easy to see how a motorcycle would benefit your ability to read during your turn assuming you're moving at all. If you aren't moving, it's a bit trickier, but it's easy to imagine something like that is at play.

I've been waiting several years for someone to adequately rationalize how the "Shotgun 6s" clause affects Physically Immune monsters...or worse, a Weapon-Immune Lloigor...or worst of all, Shub, Eihort, Chaugnar, Quachil or Rhan.

Or how someone can drive the Patrol Wagon BACK from Y'ha-nthlei or Devil Reef? "Jackie-Channing" the Patrol Wagon down from the Kingsport Head is ludicrous enough, but at least there's a slim possibility of it: "Durable" is far more credible than "Buoyant" or "Submersible".

Here's one: monsters have Horror checks because they're so alien and terrifying. The mind rebels at the sight of them because of their unnatural quality. So...why don't the Ancient Ones require Horror checks? Why is it that seeing a zombie can drive the weak-minded insane, but seeing Cthulhu has no effect at all?

One complication with the "shotgunning the immune" question is that it's not entirely clear what unarmed (or, for that matter, uselessly-armed) combat is like. Nonphysical , I guess; maybe you're using your fight stat to exorcise a ghost, or flank and trap it or something. In that case, a shotgun spray, while not directly harmful, startles or distracts the enemy enough for you to strike more effectively. One could tell a similar story about Martial Arts.

Horror checks I don't know about. Final combat is likewise pretty underdescribed; fighing Cthulhu (or, in particular, someone like Daoloth or Ghatanothoa) will, of necessity, be a very different sort of situation from beating up a zombie at Hibb's.

I was going to make a joke about the patrol wagon having Witch-house-style geometric properties, but maybe the police just have a really comprehensive towing service.

I guess there's still an unresolved issue with the motorcycle, namely, why you get things done even faster in the rare event that you get both motorcycles. My theory: huge motorcycles . Having a second motorcycle enables you to drive more quickly from one end of the first motorcycle to the other.

Walk said:

Good one. Perhaps it's a time-dilation thing? The Final Battle isn't so much Bruckheimer as it is a mental construct the human mind uses to protect itself. It happens in the infinity between seconds. If you're devoured, then the moment you glimpse the Ancient One, you're shattered, but if you survive, you're probably broken just as bad anyway. Maybe you never fought it at all; maybe it just came, zonked you, and left...and your brain turned the whole event into a board game...

Or maybe it's a matter of scope. Everyone fears a twenty-foot fall, but no one can really quite imagine the length of the universe. One year vs the lifespan of a star. One walking corpse vs one huge cosmic thing. The brain finds comfort in abstracts, and in that, people can find different ways to cope with the grand horror of it all. Some joke, some rage, some philosophize. In this case, they fight.

"Ray has gone bye-bye, Egon...what've you got left?"
"Sorry, Venkman, I'm terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought."

Since when did we need to rationalize abstracts?

subochre said:

::LAUGHTER:: ;'D BRILLIANT!

jgt7771 said:

Obviously it's not a normal shotgun. Six is the number on the blessing, and six is the number of the shotgun's power so it is logical to presume that shotgun is powered by some mystical force behind the scene. We do not know why it works. It merely does. Blessed art thou, O spirit of the shotgun!