Longtime lurker, first time poster.

I'm reluctant to trawl through all the thousands of posts in the stickied custom herald, custom investigators, custom ancient ones threads and try to evaluate them all. So, what's good? What do people recommend? I'm especially interested in heralds, which seem like the least intrusive way to slot in some fan content.

If it matters, I've got all the expansions.

Summing up 100+ pages of Custom Heralds plus all the other pages written on the other topics is definitely not a "simple" question! Most of the people creating custom material on this forum have developed some sort of "personal style" in creating custom material: hence, the way you would enjoy these creations depends strongly on the way you want the game to be enhanced. Top (and still active) contributors of the Herald thread are Avi_dreader, Veet, Amikezor and myself. From the past, Rovdjuret. You should follow the link in our signatures to go directly on our Photobucket accounts and read the materials published there (it's a really quick way to reach the "final" version of the Heralds / GOOs / Institutions / etc).

Besides, I strongly recommend you to join the Advanced Players Custom League (link scenarios eons in my signature; link for rules and narrative and scenarios text in Avi's signature): you'll see some brilliant interactions between custom Heralds / GOO and some *great* way to play Arkham in a complete different way. It's a lot of fun :-)

And welcome to the Carnival

The following links should point to the material which I regard as the cream of the crop. Your opinion may vary, but it's probably a good place to start.

• 16 Custom Investigators - http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/50107/16-custom-investigators
• Vermont Horror - http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/686818/vermont-horror-machinations-of-the-mi-go See also http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/686818/vermont-horror-machinations-of-the-mi-go for a few extra cards.
• The Gilman Memorial Exhibit - http://cgjennings.ca/eons/samples/gilman.html
• Dark Corners of this Earth - http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/67259/dark-corners-of-the-earth
• Curse of the Gold Scarab - http://megaupload.com/?d=W0LT60Z0
• Nyarlathotep Heralds - http://s622.photobucket.com/albums/tt307/avi_dreader/Additional%20Components%20for%20the%20Fan%20Creation%20League/?start=all
• The Masks of Nyarlathotep - http://www.megaupload.com/?d=BUP4GWLI
• The Haunted House - http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/47628/haunted-house
• The Spanish Leagues: (There are three of them, you can find them on boardgamegeek)
• FFG Official Material: Daoloth and Oliver Grayson (You can find this on the Arkham Horror Wiki)

Blowing my own trumpet (well no-one else is going to blow it for me ;-) ), you might want to try The Lovecraft County Horror too. You can find a link in the sig of this post. (I'm currently working on version 2, which is three times the size, mail me if you want a preview)

In addition to what Julia said, I'm also partial to a few things made by dj 2.0, he didn't make much, but they are good. Plus there are a few scattered things here and there by people who only made one or two things before disappearing. But, they tend to be buried deep within the archives and if you want to find them, you'll have to search ;') Personally, heralds and Ancient Ones are the only custom bits I use, but I could see people wanting to use custom investigators too. I don't like custom monsters because you can't randomly integrate them in the bag. I suppose one could print them out as spawns and it wouldn't be a big deal... But a piece of paper is such a flimsy thing in comparison to a real monster (made of cardboard) ;')

But... Yeah. I'd definitely advise taking a look at the Fan Creation League if you feel you understand this game :') it will force you to... Expand :'D

Avi_dreader said:

I don't think I've ever seen them. A link? An image? An e-mail? ::curious::

Thanks for the responses! I'll look all of these things over (eventually).

Avi_dreader said:

The best way I found to integrate them is to print out 20+ monsters (ideally different ones, but you may want to chuck in a few reprints), mount them on cardboard and add them to a separate cup. When a monster surge occurs, the monster on the surging gate is drawn from the "Saturday Night Special" cup, whereas the other monsters are drawn from the regular cup. Like any custom material, you'll want to consider the ramifications of adding them to the game. I'd suggest that The Cult of the Golden Scarab is a very good place to start. You may need to change a few monsters if you're not using the Day / Night rules which came with that set, but they're pretty strong in theme. You also might want to try here: http://s1113.photobucket.com/albums/k506/jabie1/Monsters/ for a selection of monsters from both Lovecraftian and Gothic horror, with a dash of mythology thrown in for good measure.

Some of the other sets I linked contain monsters too. Vermont Horror gets around the problem by using a separate cup of Mi-Go monsters for use in Vermont and in the "preview phase", whereas the Masks expansion mostly handles monsters (predominantly cultists) as Spawns - which isn't so problematic. Dark Corners of the Earth contains extra Deep Ones, whereas The Haunted House contains extra Dimensional Shamblers.

If you are only using a small number of custom monsters it's also possible to use spawn monsters as proxies in the monster cup, I find the Beings of Ib to be handy for this because of their unique color.

Veet said:

That's kind of an interesting idea... One could use the masks as proxies...

Julia said:

Jay I got a mention! I must add that I liked amikezors heralds as well. But I agree with you all, it´s next to impossible to find some of the good stuff that's been made here. Heck, I've a hard time finding my own contributions (I haven't been as much inactive as I've been lazy). I know that somewhere down the line we talked about making some kind of wiki or wave or whatever with exclusively fan made arkham horror stuff. Maybe like a modern Talisman Island if anyone remembers? Imagine getting every fan made version of, say, Nyarly, ever made, on your screen, at the click of a button? I also imagine that play testing and other stuff could benefit from such a thing...

rovdjuret said:

Yeah, your memory is good :-) some times ago, Sdrollion (IIRC) asked the guys of Arkhamwiki whether they'd host on their site the custom creations done (like it was done with the French wikipedia). Not so sure he has received an answer, yet. But it would be cool. Especially because almost no one has the inner strength to skim all the pages of neverending threads.

I think we should start something on our own, but... it's kinda difficult. It's not a big problem opening a web-site. The problem is finding time to mantain it. Sigh

Well, I can only agree with all previous posts (Avi, Veet, Julia, Riodjuvet's creations are very nice in general).

Most of the creation by Grundunza are very nice as well. I especially enjoyed the Mayor campaign he published recently here .

I think Jake gave good links to most larger expansions (golden scarab, etc)

I would also recommend you to look at arkham investigations . This is more than a variant, it is a whole new game. I think it takes the investigation part of arkham to its best (it does a much better job than mansions at story telling). Plus it is very easy to set up and print (I love heralds and scenario for that same reason).

As for a website with all custom creations it is indeed a recurrent neat idea. The new Strange Eons sites cannot host files, but can be used as a collection of links and picture display. I started some time ago to set up a page for herald (obviously I was just trying to find a nice way to display them). Anyone can contribute by opening an account (very easily). Please visit here and help yourselves adding all your heralds (that'd be great).

As a note, I am really into creating a new game play for arkham/mansions without the gate mechanics. The essence is that arkham forces the players to react to a threat, incarnated by the gates. This still holds when you change the end (see here ) or add a keeper to it (see here ). I would like to find a mechanics where investigators create their own fate and not only react to external elements. It is still under development obviously and will take some time to get to full maturation. ^^

Anyway, I am glad to see all these links in just one thread. :-)

edit: if can read french I have some more links for you. The best french portal being here .

Amikezor, thank you for pointing out the Miriam Beecher's Basement. I had some problems while registering, so I contacted Thelric. As soon as I'm ok, I'll upload there as well all my creations.

Julia said:

excellent. This is a way to go :-)).

Actually you cannot "upload" them but "display" them there. I'll do the same with mine and it would be great if Avi, Veet and other did the same. Please, any of you guys, change anything in the page you do not like.

and happy new year to everyone (I forgot that important point :-)

amikezor said:

Yeah. Love, light and prosperity to everyone :-)

Amikezor,

I registred successfully to Chris's site. May I ask you how you managed to share images on the MB Basement? I created an item a la Sdrolion, but didn't find any way to share images of the Heralds.

Thanks for help

JULIA

Julia said:

Hi Julia,

I did not download the images into MB Basement, I just display the ones hosted on photobucket.

You will have to edit the Herald page . I made life simpler for everyone so that you just need to replace the "x" in the page source by the pictures of your heralds. This picture are displayed with the following line

{IMG(src=" http://..." ,width="300",button="y",desc="Herald'> http://..." ,width="300",button="y",desc="Herald Name (author)")}{IMG}

in which you replace " http://..." with the actual picture address (the one you use to display your herald on this forum :-)

and change the description "Herald Name (author)" by an adequate description.

Let me know how it went.

amikezor said:

Oo... Clearly I should have been reading posts more carefully instead of skimming for pictures ;'D

Will get back to this later. Gtg.

Amikezor,

thank you for the enlightening clarifications on how to edit. I didn't want to mess out Chris's site :-) Now all my Heralds and Institutions are up! Thx!

great. I'll put some more in a very near future ^^

best

Avi_dreader said:

ugh ??? Can you rephrase this Avi ?

best

amikezor said:

Basically my work load has drastically increased recently (plus I've been spending a lot more time on some other things), so, I've been inattentive in the forums (relying on lots of skimming of posts). I would love to see that idea get off the ground though, it's something I wanted to happen for a long time.

Ok, I put up the nyarly heralds used for the fan league.

Excellent. I should really add mine too then. ^^

Alright. I added some more to this page.

Julia, all your pictures are png, which are very heavy. I would suggest you to change them into jpeg, which are much more light, so the page would dispaly way quicker.

Avi, Veet and the others, would you consider displaying your heralds on the same page ? --That'd be great, wouldn't it ?--