Hello everyone!

I know it has been already suggested but I'd like to expand a bit…

I would gladly welcome a small box or a book publication (or a POD even) containing the Arkham Nights scenarios and maybe some bonus material in the form of allies or mythos cards ecc. They could even come up with new similar campaigns requiring and intergrating various parts of the AH collection and possibly adding a few new components to enhance the stories and make an even more appealing product. (not that it would not be otherwise! :))

This way they could also easily add  corrections/improvements to aspects of the game that need any, avoiding dreaded new editions. (I got a TShirt with the script "I am a victim of the new Dark Pharaoh").

Cheers!     

LordZardoz said:

I'd say 6 turns. Three to climb the Kigsport Head up, three to go back to the city. Which means that technically no one ever goes there for the Changed card, unless you draw the Mythos card allowing you to go directly to the Strange High House in the Mist.

The main point about the Kingsport board is that, as you said, no gate will ever open there. But if they did, it'd be almost impossible sealing any open rift. In some way, with these rift mechanics, you cannot have gates. But I'd not say that a board is good because it has locations where gates can open, and it's bad on the countrary. Plus, Kingsport board offers you encounters to get Allies, items, clues as all other boards. Plus, it's something new: if you look at the dynamics behind Innsmouth and Dunwich, they're rather similar: monsters entering into vortices induce something bad to happen. Rifts are a completely different mechanic that never suffers dilution: you can play how many expansions you want, and they'll always represent the same threat. Try a Dunwich game with all small expansions in and no Miskatonic Horror: you'll see how you can ignore easily the Dunwich board for the whole game. But in the same game, with the same expansion combo, you cannot ignore Kingsport in the same way.

Plus: between buying Kingsport and Innsmouth, I'll go certainly for Kingsport as second big expansion: there is much more content for everyone (new items, new spells, new allies: Innsmouth does not have Investigator cards but the Personal Story, which is a cool variant but it's not mandatory). So, even if the board could seem a turn off (which is not for me, but that's only my personal opinion), the box content of Kingsport is much more appealing than the one from Innsmouth. Innsmouth is *difficult*. But that's another story

Maybe I'm just biased against Kingsport, but honestly, its Allies are the only small-card content I have much interest in.  Okay, Ancient Language, Credit Rating, Makeup Kit, and the pay-to-refresh weapons are kind of cool, but most of the cards seem either cheap (Eltdown Shards, Crystal of the Elder Things, Livre d'Ivon), redundant (most of the skills and spells), or unmentionable (Massa di Requiem).

On the other hand, I still adore Personal Stories despite all their imperfections, but that is probably my secret theme player side showing (don't tell Avi).

subochre said:

::laughter:. I won't, although I kinda miss his haunting presence here.

Anyway, Messa da Requiem is really… bleargh.

 I like what Julia has said about KS at this point and I'd like to add also to the fact that rifts are absolutely-game-breakingly-brutal if they open.  Every time we've allowed a rift to open in a game (no matter what expansions we have) it will literally screw up the entire investigation and game.  To restate what Julia's already said, paying attention to KS is almost mandatory while depending on deck dilution, IH or DH can be almost completely ignored.

Another poster made a comment about how monsters can never spawn in KS.  While this is technically true because no gates can open there, there ARE mythos cards that release monsters into locations in KS (not too many?).  Couple that with the chance that a flyer or aquatic can sneak up on your in KS, it is generally accepted as unwise to send a completely stripped investigator to KS (by stripped, I mean with virtually no items).  We've found that in AH/KS pure games it's best to rotate investigators through KS instead of confining one to KS as is often mentioned here.

To get this thread back on topic, I really like the idea of POD content for AH.  A lot of us don't have access to some of the AO reprints (think new Yig) in a finely printed AO card.  While it's fun to adapt the rules, it adds so much flavor to the game to have the actual card sitting there.  I do realize that there are definitely ways to obtain these cards.  But it currently involves more work and time than I am able to commit to this hobby.  I'd go as far to say that FFG could release an expansion that their Arkham Nights promotions along with a set of scenarios and probably have several customers, provided they were adding some new content along with that (new investigator cards or specific editions to the mythos deck?).

I've also often fancied an expansion of monsters that require 2+ investigators to take down.  Of course, you would have to add rules to this, but a few more rules for AH wouldn't be an issue at all because of how many there already are in this game.  Monsters that roamed the board which had scaled down properties of an AO would be an incredible experience.  As an example, the DH could be 'adapted' to serve this purpose!

I like to add Kingsport to every game.  I don't know why, but I like visiting up there.

What I’m getting from all this…is what I’ve always gotten from this since Kingsport’s release: some of us really like it, some of us really don’t, and it has very little to do with the actual operation of Kingsport, and more with how a player plays the game.

Kingsport does what it does seamlessly, undiluted, every time. Dunwich and Innsmouth may sleep, but Kingsport will keep chugging at those rifts, waiting for the Investigators to come and do something about it. Or perhaps they won’t, and Kingsport will fulfill its purpose, giving the Ancient One another outlet for Doom Tokens. Obviously this doesn’t interest everyone, but that doesn’t affect the unerring operation of Kingsport one way or the other.

As an example for comparison, the Black Goat’s Cult/Corruption mechanic does NOT work unless you use its Herald, and I just don’t see that many people championing the expansion. Meanwhile, Kingsport has many fans, which proves to me that it works perfectly fine. So if you are one of the critics, I completely accept and understand your opinion…but then I would invite you to just leave Kingsport alone.

And I REALLY want a Yig Expansion!

That is a fair point about Kingsport and how the rift mechanic is dilution proof.  Monsters almost always move, which means rifts are always at risk of advancing.  I also concede that the views of Kingsport depend on how someone derives enjoyment within the game.  If you like gearing up and killing monsters, then your not going to want to spend much time in Kingsport its self.

I think that the only real downside of Kingsport is that an investigator does not need to *do* anything awesome in Kingsport.  My friends and I joke about punching a gate closed when you use a fight check to close a gate.  Closing a rift is just drawing an encounter card and flipping tokens.  Not much of a chance of failure.  They may have to do something awesome in Innsmouth or in Dunwich, but closing a rift does not have any sort of roll.  You do not get a 'rift token' the way you get a gate token.  There is a pretty big but indirect stick and not a whole lot of carrot, and almost no excitement. 

Add just a bit more carrot and Kingsport gets a whole lot more interesting.

Also on the plus side, Kingsport probably plays pretty damn well with the other big boards.  The Vortex mechanic feeds the terror level based on monsters.  If a rift opens up in Dunwich or Innsmouth, you kind of need to close it 'right the fuck now'.  An open rift in Innsmouth at Devils Reef or Y'na-nthlei that moves is going to feed the vortex directly.  That means its feeding the Doom Track, the Terror Track (rift movement), and the monster feeds the Terror track and Deep One uprising via Vortex.  And if your crazy enough to be playing with the King in Yellow herald, your also adding Yellow Sign markers every time a Vortex gets fed.

To be clear, there is a hell of alot to like about Kingsport and what it can add to a game, but it does feel too disconnected from the core appeal of the game (killing lovecraftian monsters and managing the doom track)

END COMMUNICATION

Going back to the main question, I'd like to see AH go in a new direction.  In many ways adding a new big box or small box expansion now would be like the same but more. Not a bad thing per se, indeed, more is better, but still… 

Perhaps an expansion that purposefully didn't work with the other expansions would be exciting.  A kind of Phase 2 set of expansions that perhaps probed the Other Worlds in some wonderful way - Let's go to R'lyeh and fight Cthulhu there! Let's get lost in the Dreamlands on a board so big it was the AH board that looked like an add-on! Maybe we could play bad guys too, or be monsters, or be wizards that could control monsters as our minions!

"cough" Ahem, well.  I was just throwing out randomness there, not actual considered options. But you see what I mean right? A game changer. That would be cool.

K xx

I would welcome big box expanisons of boards that were set on other worlds.  There is enough about the Dreamlands to make this the first one.  Hell, they can make them coexist as each player moves his Arkham Board  ( cause he is awake) then his Dreamland board ( for when he is asleep).

John Bua said:

I hgihly recommend you try out the Arkham Nightmare: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/796568/arkham-nightmare-dreamlands-expansion/page/1

Wow,  you are very talented.   That is awsome.

You did a lot more than I expected.   I was also thinking of something like an explansion, big board, but with ALL the other worlds on it.   Since you have to have a few encounters in the other worlds before you come home,  then the new board would have a few locations with specific encounters for those locations.

So you go to the Dreamlands, then you can choose to go to two different places in the dreamlands before you return home.  So you can have an olathae encounter or a Skae ecncounter.  ( I hope I spelled them right, its early, BC* for me).    If you go to say Celano then you can go to two specific places there before returning.

 How does that sound?

*Before Coffee.

 This is exactly what I was thinking.  Although a board expansion for the different other worlds seems a bit narrow of a scope for a big box expansion, with the right location decks and extra mechanics for entering another world it could be an interesting idea.

The main thing is that in order to stay 'caught up' in Arkham you would be limited to 2 other world encounters which would limit your time on the board.  Otherwise you could get far behind in the gate closing process which would make you loose the game.  The flip side is that you could create an expansion board with only a few other worlds on it (ex: Dreamlands + Yuggoth).  Entering a gate to either of those locations would force you into a 3 turn gate journey process instead of the 2 but would leave the remaining Other Worlds unchanged.  This would add to the difficulty of the game without completely breaking the mechanics.  The other option would be to have players travel around the other worlds for a series of turns with tangible benefits to the Arkham game board.  Meaning they could close gates from the other side and potentially travel to another world.

I like the Other World idea a lot for an expansion because it could streamline the somewhat random sounding gate cards that come up when you don't get an encounter that is tailored to your particular Other World.  However, there are admitted difficulties that are associated with this (not insurmountable though).

John Bua said:

That's very kind of you but I'm afraid your praising the wrong guy. The Arkham Nightmare was written by Michael Hunter. It's an excellent supplement and well worth a place in the collection of any Arkham Horror afficianado.

If you want to try my expansion (the Lovecraft Country Horror) just follow the link in my signature. It's more like a conventional big box expansion; I'm sure you'll find plenty of material in there that'll fit on your dining table.

Whilst I'm at it, I also ought to add that you might want to check out Vermont Horror, which you can also find on www.boardgamegeek.com

 I'm still holding out hope that they release a video game version of Arkham eventually. While I love playing the cardboard version, it's too space-intensive for my apartment (particularly when using all expansions). I prefer to play Arkham with other people, and I don't see that changing, but if there were a video game version. I could kick back on my computer and play a game without all of the set-up time and trying to find space (or traveling to the local board game store with a game area).

FFG has already released a video game version of Elder Sign, so I hope that is a sign of more games to come.