I was discussing the 1920's setting with a couple of fellow Arkham Horror players. We all agreed that other than some of card artwork, the only thing that sets the game in the 1920's rather than present day is the lack of certain (modern day) items.

Naturally, that inspired us to think about what cards could be added to the various decks if we wanted to give AH a present day setting instead.

Some we came up with were.

(These are not serious, but I thought they were good for a laugh)

Mobile Phone (common item)

You can spend the clue tokens of any other player as if they were your own. Neither you nor the other player may be in an outer world or LITAS.

(Obviously you'd need quite a lot of these in the deck to increase the chance of multiple players having mobile phones, or add them as starting equipment, or allow them to be specifically purchased at a given location)

Digital Camera (common item)

Any time you encounter a monster (regardless of whether you fight it or sneak past it) place a clue token on the digital camera

You can remove 2 clue tokens from the digital camera to get the equivalent of 5 toughness worth of monster trophies at locations where you can trade monster trophies.

Laptop (common item)

Spend 3 movement points to gain 1 clue token.

Tactical Nuclear Strike (unique item - mission) (okay, this one is being a bit silly.)

Spend 2 gate trophies at the following locations

- Science Building

- Newspaper

- Police Building

(Thematically I'd really like there to be some sort of "Government / Military" building for the final location, but the Police Station is the best I could come up with)

When the Ancient One awakens, roll 1 die for every doom token on it. On a success, remove that doom token. Then roll 1 die for each player. On a failure, that player is devoured.

petszk said:

Not wanting to dimish your hard work…. but there are encounters that fit the 1920's theme. There is a mythos that challenges any player with a whisky card to a skill check or face being arrested - which fits in with prohibition. This is also why the sheldon gang have a distillery hidden in the woods.

So after that I suppose I should get into the spirit of this thread and suggest a modern day item for the game. I suppose what I would most like to see from the modern era is an FAQ…

Yeah, the encounter decks are full of 'Roaring 20s' stuff. But a modern-day 're-skin' of the game wouldn't be too tough. Telecommunications and transport seem like they'd be the things that'd make the biggest difference… you could have computer hacking as a new sub-type of skill, maybe using Lore? Or just re-skin the game to have a 'tech' skill.

Tbh it seems slightly pointless unless you introduce some new theme or story elements that require the present-day stuff. The place to look for ideas is the old 'Delta Green' sourcebooks, which update the Call of Cthulhu RPG to the present day. (Well, to the 1990s anyway).

Long time readers may remember a Shadowrun retheme over which someone had obviously taken a lot of care and attention. Sadly it ran afoul of copyright and got taken down (before I grab the the .eons for myself. Bah! Humbug!) I guess you could try and track it down.

petszk said:

Oh good lord…you turned Patrice into an APP!!!

jgt7771 said:

Introducing the I-Clue… (rofl)

Gotta poke holes in everything (don't take this too seriously)

1) The Investigators already have cellphones, that's why players can all talk to each other no matter where they are on the board. Are they using Telegrams like Sherlock Holmes? (and what about players in the Other Worlds?)

2) With Gates opening and Cthulhu's Call going out to the whole world, do you really think there'd be any WIFI signal in Arkham? Laptops would be useless

3) Mi-Go don't appear in photographs- neither do Vampires. Probably applies to most other monsters, so cameras are out.

4) Nuclear Strikes are a good idea. Remember, in the story the Feds rounded up all the fish-mongers in Innsmouth….

So there I've contradicted everything you had to say. My work is done and I feel curmudgeonly. Harrumph!