Let's Play Arkham Horror Already!

sorry to hear it poetfox. Take out your frustrations on the big guy for us, will ya? "Oops, how'd those extra dozen d6 find their way into my combat rolls!"

Whew, I guess it was just a plugin not active? Well, things seem to be working again now. If they aren't, please please tell me.

I see them, pf.

I'm seeing them too. At least as well as I can on 56K.

My box arrived in the mail the other day! I haven't had time to slowly digest the contents but a quick look over has me excited with the prospects of playing!

Poetfox, I didn't read this thread till today but it made for some great storytelling.

This would have made a fine damn movie. Especially with Marie's adventure and sacrifice counterbalancing the monster-hunting private-eye we had in Diamond.

I really want to buy this game, but that would be $50 I would spend on a game that none of my real life friends will have time or desire to play.

Would anyone be interested in finding a regular time to play this through AIM/MSN?

Oooor over the forum?

Yes. A million times yes.

The logistics of it might be a little difficult to play with though. It's a big board, and the thought of leaving it out for a few evenings is a bit off-putting.

(So in looking at my schedule, I realized I was stupid for deciding to do all the hard, time consuming stuff on the day I have work and the easy stuff on my day off. So... epic battle tomorrow. But here's some more story bits! We're almost to the start of the game, which is where said story bits end. I hope you've been enjoying them.)

---

"So I thought, maybe, you could help shed some light on this... I wasn't really sure where to turn."
"Well, I'm glad to help out... it's... well, it's a pleasure, ma'am." The young man grinned behind his glasses. I had another admirer, the last thing I needed. But hopefully he would at least prove more useful than annoying. "Let's move to the back and see what you have."
I followed the man to a back room, filled with crates and odd objects. Near the center was a workbench of sorts with various tools of some trade, I suppose. I have to admit, I'm not quite sure exactly what museuming entails.
"Just set it down here, and I'll take a look at it."
I nodded, and set the package down, unwrapping it, and revealing the odd statue inside of it.
The guy's eyes immediately lit up. "Oh my." He slipped on a pair of latex gloves and grabbed a magnifying glass, starting to look the thing over from top to bottom.
"What? Do you recognize it?" I peered over his shoulder, trying to see what he's finding so interesting.
"No... no I don't. Which is why it's so... you know, exciting. It's obviously old. Very old. It's not something someone just made... and, look, see, down here?" He pointed to some scratchings on the bottom of the thing. "This is some sort of writing..."
"Just looks random to me..."
"No, there's definitely a pattern here... it's writing. If we can translate it, that might help to figure out what it is."
"Well, alright then. Let's do that."
"Exactly!" He snapped off the gloves and grinned a childish grin. "Of course, this is probably going to take awhile... I'm likely going to have to head to the University library for some research and such..."
"Oh... well, when do you think you'll be done?"
"Well, don't worry, I'm an expert at this stuff. Best in the area. I should have some answers for you tomorrow, if you'd stop by?"
"Well, sure. I suppose I could do that..." My interest was intrigued enough to stay in Arkham one more night, I supposed. What a bad idea that was.

A few hours later, as I lay in bed thinking all that had happened so far, there was a knock at the door of my room. I certainly wasn't expecting anyone. I didn't know anyone in Arkham, and I certainly didn't tell anywhere back in New Orleans where I was staying.
"Who is it?"
"They're coming for you." It was muffled, but I was pretty sure it was the voice of the man who had given me that strange package.
"What? Who's coming for me?"
"They want the package. Get the hell out."
"No, seriously, what..."
"NOW."
Outside the door, I could hear footsteps of a couple people running up the stairs. I hesitated. I wasn't sure this could be happening. But as the man outside the door starting talking to him, seemingly trying to stall them, I knew it had to be real. I wrenched open the window and climbed out to the fire escape, making my way down quickly. I could hear fighting behind me, faintly. Not good. I hit the street and ran, anywhere away. I kept moving, and moving, until I was so exhausted I had to try to think of somewhere to go. There was only one person, really, who I even vaguely knew in this town, had talked to for any length of time, and had asked a favor of. I headed back towards the museum.

---

I saw her duck into an alley up ahead of me, behind the museum. It was a weird place for a lady to go on a night like this, but I try not to judge. I tried to pick up the pace and finally catch up to her.
Suddenly, there was a scream.
I broke into a run and covered the rest of the gap between me and the alley. A strange chant filled my ears all the while. It was... unearthly. It wasn't natural.
They say that you'll never know what you'd do in a dangerous situation until you're faced with it. Will you be the kind of person who dives in front of a moving train to push someone out of the way, or the kind of person that watches? Will you be a hero or someone on the sidelines? I'd honestly never put much thought into it before, but if I had, I probably would never have guessed I would have done what I did.
My body seemingly on autopilot, I punched the woman square in the face.
That seemed to stop the chanting, but not the thing that was being chanted at. It seemed to be made of living shadow, and growing. Or at least it was before I punched the cloaked woman in the face. Now it was just kind of seething in a pool of human blood.
I started to tremble. The fact that I had just jumped into an insanely dangerous situation was catching up to me, not to mention that I couldn't see this thing. It was in my vision, but it wasn't. It made my head swim. I wanted to curl up and hide.
Luckily, it was around that point that the other lady drove an odd knife right through the creature's head. At least, I think it was a head.
I looked to her. She was shaking as badly as I was, her hands gripping that knife like that was the only thing keeping her safe. Maybe it was.
"W-we s-should go..." I stammered. The woman could wake up at any moment. Then what?
"Y-yeah... yes..." The lady with the knife said.
I took a deep breath. "This way."
I started running towards the dorm, dodging the dead man in the middle of the street. Hopefully we wouldn't be found there. Hopefully.

---

I wanted vengeance.
It had been years since I had seen that symbol, since I was a much younger man, out with my dad on one of his adventures I had so wanted to be on.
It wasn't my fault, but it felt like it was. I sat there, unable to do anything, looking at the bloody symbol on his forehead and cursing the heavens.
I was a different man now.
Back at the private dick's office, we discussed what to do. He still didn't want to have anything I was selling, but I wasn't about to let him out of my sight. I had basically given up the search, and to have something like this fall right into my lap... Well, I wasn't about to let it slip away.
Of course, there was nothing we could do but let time slip away. We couldn't think of any other possible leads. We needed to get to that crime scene.

It was hours later before the cops cleared out. The streetlights were already turning on as we finally got a look at the place.
"Blood," Diamond said, looking at a spot on the road.
I came over to look and he was right. "Yeah, they didn't do too good a job cleaning up."
"They were rushed. Why, I wonder."
We walked slowly over the alleyway, looking for anything the cops might have missed. It was slow work with low visibility, and I was giving up hope when I spotted a glint of metal.
"What do we have here..."
"Found something?" the detective asked.
"Yeah... some sort of key." I took it under the streetlight to get a better look at it. "Not a normal key..."
"That's a safety deposit box key."
"Like they have at the bank?"
"Yeah. Someone involved in this shindig must have dropped it."
Our eyes met. "To the bank, then?"

"I'm telling you, I can't tell you whose key this is. We promise confidentiality in that sort of thing."
It was after hours, but a bunch of banging at the door had gotten a Mr. Bradley to talk to us. He was apparently working on some paperwork or whatever it is bankers do. Lucky us.
Joe flashed his card. "This is a very important clue to a very serious murder case, Mr. Bradley. Your help would be appreciated."
"Look, I'm sure it is, but you aren't cops with a warrant, and it's not right for me to go giving out that information. There's nothing I can do for you."
"Now, we can do this the hard..." I started.
Diamond put out an arm to stop me. "Let me handle this." He turned back to Bradley, pulling a bill out of his pocket and placing it on the table. "You sure there's nothing you can do? Nothing out of the ordinary you can tell us about?"
Bradley eyed the cash in front of him. "There was an interesting incident last night involving a key like that."
"Start talking." I said.

As implausible as this sounds, yes. Like I said earlier I don't have nearly enough board game nerd friends here.

We walked up the stairs towards the dorm room in question. The bored student at the front desk had said this was where one Amanda Sharpe lived. She had left the Bank, where she worked, carrying a key that very well could be the one we had. We had to check it out and find out for sure.
Monterey was still tagging along behind me. A pain, though I wouldn't have found this potential clue without him, I had to admit.
"This the place?" he asked, looking to the door.
"Yep." I knocked. The sounds of frantic movement could be heard behind the door. I knocked again.
"Who is it?" a worried voice called.
"Are you Miss Amanda Sharpe?"
"Who is it?" the voice repeated.
"My name is Joe Diamond. I'm a private eye. I'm looking into a safety deposit box key I found at the scene of a crime, and I have reason to believe you might know something about it."
"I'm not interested. Go away."
"I just want to ask a few questions, Miss Sharpe."
"Go away!"
"Let's just bust the door down. We need some answers." Monterey said. "She obviously knows something, or she wouldn't be so nervous."
"Yeah... yeah..."
Just then, I heard some footsteps on the stairs behind us. I turned to see two oddly-dressed men coming up the stairs. They were wearing cloaks of some kind. I couldn't see their faces.
They pushed Monterey out of the way as they went to the door. "Hey!" Monterey said, "I was standing..." He stopped taking, his eyes caught on the symbol on the back of the cloak. I saw it too.
Monterey looked to me. I looked back. I knew I couldn't stop him, even if I wanted to.
The taller of the two men started chanting something, messing with the door. It was an odd sound. I'd never heard anything like it.
I drew my gun. "Stop what you're doing. Hands behind your head."
The chanting continued.
"Hands behind your head!" I yelled.
The other man turned. He started chanting in a similar tongue. I could feel everything seem to ripple around me. My grip wavered.
A loud crack of a whip broke the sound as the man fell over, legs pulled from beneath him. "Enough of this 'Hands up' bullshit!" Monterey yelled. "Shoot him!"
I pulled the trigger. The loud gunshot mingled in the air with the sound of the door falling in.

---

A rumble from the woods... a loud crack. Our investigators look out into the darkness to see a mass of gaping mouths... hungry mouths... before they can do anything, one such mouth snaps out and eats Marie... with her scream echoing through the air, she's gone, like she was nothing... our investigators have failed... the end has arrived...

With final ultimate epic conflict comes final ultimate epic rules. We have a new set of phases to move through. We'll start with...

Epic Battle Turn 1: Refresh
Here's where all of our investigators pass the first player token about, refresh all of their items, adjust their stats as if it were the upkeep of a normal turn, and trade items about. See that? Trade items? Oh. So. Important.

In any case, our first order of business is keeping our three investigators alive for as long as possible. We'll get to Shubby's attack later, but it involves everyone making Sneak checks, so we'll max that out for everyone first, and then put the rest into other things like fight for hitting and lore for casting our single copy of Shriveling. Let's see our investigator's stats before we get started here after I make these adjustments...

Monterey Jack (J): 1 Sanity, 5 Stamina
Speed: 1
Sneak: 3
Fight: 5
Will: 0
Lore: 4
Luck: 2
Cash: $7
Clues: 3
Items: Bullwhip, .38 Revolver, Alien Device, Wave of Destruction, Stealth, Brass Knuckles, Eye of Light and Darkness
Trophies: Ghost, Cultist, City of the Great Race (5 pts)

Amanda Sharpe (A): 5 Sanity, 2 Stamina
Speed: 1
Sneak: 4
Fight: 3
Will: 2 (+1)
Lore: 4
Luck: 1
Cash: $1
Clues: 9
Items: .18 Derringer, Enchanted Cane, Wrack, Will +1, Expert Occultist, Sir William Briton, Cloud Memory, Shriveling
Trophies: The Abyss (5 pts), Cultist (2 pts)

Joe Diamond (D): 2 Sanity, 4 Stamina
Speed: 4
Sneak: 3
Fight: 5
Will: 0
Lore: 0
Luck: 3
Cash: $0
Clues: 0
Items: .45 Automatic, Knife, Ancient Tome, Spot Hidden, Tablet of Bast, Golden Sword of Y'Ha-Talla, Elixir of Life, Enchanted Knife
Trophies: Witch, Hound of Tindolos, Wraith, High Priest, Goat Spawn

There might be a couple spells I'm not noting there because they no longer have any effect on the game. In any case, Joe didn't have enough focus to get his Sneak maxed out yet, but hopefully that won't be a problem for this first turn. Monterey is going to start with the Eye because he can make the most use of it off the bat, and spends all of his Stamina (keeping one back so he isn't devoured) to give him +4 to checks this turn. Note that all of those physical weapons are completely useless, as Shubby is physical immune.

As prepared as they're going to get, our investigators head into battle. I hope you all like pictures of dice on my bed, cause there's going to be a lot of them.

Epic Battle Turn 1: Investigator Attack
Here's where the investigators throw down. They each attack. For every 4 successes our investigators get as a group, we remove a doom token from the doom track. Note that that number if 4 because we started the game with 4 investigators. Of course, we only have 3 now. Ick.

Shubby has a -5 difficulty to hit, so that's going to be subtracted from everything. This basically cancels out the bonus from Diamond's badass sword, but his fight combined with the Enchanted Knife our departed Marie left him leaves him with 8 dice. He swings at the Ancient one...

And score two successes. Not an auspicious start.

Now comes Monterey. With his Eye bonus of +4, combined with his Alien Device, he gets an exciting 6 dice. He swings his fists, powered by the device and eye...

And woah! Knocks it out of the park! After rerolling one of them with his Bullwhip ability, he takes off a Doom token by himself, and leaving Diamond's two successes still for Amanda to take advantage of.

Amanda needs to cast Shriveling to be effective... she spends a point of sanity and chants the spell...

Casting it without problem. This gives her +6 dice of magical damage! Combined with her Enchanted Cane, that means she gets 7 dice... she slings her spell at Shub-Nigguarth, swinging her cane as well...

Three successes! That takes off another Doom token. Unfortunately, that last success is just going to go to waste. We need to score all four in the same turn for it to count. Still, two doom tokens down. Not a bad start!

Epic Battle Turn 1: God Attack
Shubby is all mouths and not eyes, and can be easily hid from, at least in the beginning. Every turn, during this phase, he's going to force the investigators to pass a Sneak check. The difficulty starts at +1, but it goes down by 1 every turn. If they pass, they're safe. If they fail, they lose a Monster Trophy. If they have no more Monster Trophies, Shubby will devour them, soul and all.
Amanda is most in danger here, as one failed sneak check for her, and it's all over. Monterey can fail once and still be in the game, and Diamond has an impressive 4 hits from being a monster hunter.

Diamond didn't manage to max out his sneak, but he does his best to hide anyway...

...shit. Even with the +1, he still fails spectacularly. I return one of his Monster Trophies to the cup.

Monterey, still under the +4 influence of sacrificing all his life to the Eye of Light and Darkness, has no problem passing this check. Of course, next turn, when he loses that bonus, he might be in trouble.

Amanda, too, manages to hide from Shubby's gaping maws without issue.

Epic Battle Turn 2: Refresh
Monterey gets the first player token. Shriveling and the Bullwhip and Diamond's awesome sword get refreshed, and Diamond manages to max his sneak, as well as Amanda managing to max her fight. Monterey hands the Eye to Amanda, who blows her last point of Stamina on a +1 boost, then immediately cannibalizes Sir William Briton to max her Stamina back out. Such a delicious feast can only lead to victory! I hope!

Epic Battle Turn 2: Investigator Attack
Without the buffing might of the Eye of Light and Darkness, Monterey is in a bad place, only having 2 dice to attack with, which come up 2s. Even his bullwhip doesn't help him land a hit. His fists do nothing against the awesome might of Shub-Niggaurath.

Amanda once again must cast Shriveling if she has any hope of dealing obscene amounts of damage. It takes using her Expert Occulist skill, but she manages to pass. Once again, she slings her spell at her enemy, powered a bit by a slight Eye boost...

Three successes! Not bad. But you know what? She's the most likely to die at random. We should spend these clue tokens while we have them. Amanda uses the rest of her clues for 4 more dice...

nd lands one more hit, taking off a Doom token. Go team!

Diamond, of course, is still pumped up and ready for battle, with 8 dice ready to go. He rolls...

Wham. Bam. Thank you, Ma'am. Diamond slices through the Ancient One, removing another Doom Token!

We're doing better than I expected actually... can we pull this off?

Epic Battle Turn 2: God Attack

This time, the difficulty is +0... Monterey and Amanda make it by fine, but...

Dammit, Diamond! Sneak better! I guess subtlety isn't his strong suit, it's kicking ass. He loses another Monster Trophy.

Epic Battle Turn 3: Refresh

Bullwhip, Shriveling, Sword? All Refreshed. No items change hands, but Amanda sacrifices all her newly-cannibalized Stamina for a +4 Eye boost to this turn. Huzzah! Also, it's Amanda's turn to be first.

Epic Battle Turn 3: Investigator Attack

Once again, it's Amanda's time to cast Shriveling. With that huge boost from the Eye, though, she has absolutely no problem. She heads into battle with an impressive 12 dice, and casts at the darkness... or Shubby. Whichever.

Man, all those dice and only 3 successes. Oh well, not too bad.

Diamond once again draws his sword and slices bravely...

And scores a measly 2 successes. That takes off a doom token, but with Monterey only having 2 dice, that other success is likely to go to waste...

Yep, it does. Even after the bullwhip, he only scores 1 success. I could use his clue tokens, but better to use them when I have more of a chance of taking off another token than now.

Epic Battle Turn 3: God Attack

We're up to a -1 modifier...

Amanda has 0 problems with her Eye bonus.

Diamond manages to finally sneak this time! I'm so proud of you, monster slayer...

Even Monterey comes through with his measly 2 dice! Rock on! We might beat this yet...

After three rounds of epic combat we've managed to take off the bottom row of Doom Tokens! Yay! Of course, we ate William Briton to do it and have nearly exhausted the usefulness of the badass Eye of Light and Darkness, so it could be tough going for the rest... also, Diamond took 2 hits because he stands bravely in the face of danger.

Can we pull this off...?!?!?!?

We'll find out late tonight, most likely, when I finish this mother up. (I mostly wanted to get this far posted before I get totally confused as to which dice roll pictures go to what, as I didn't have anything in the middle of them this time... also, because I had like... exactly 2 story bits left, so... the last one is on the last installment! Yay!)

So awesome! Slice off those toothed genitalia!

oh man oh man oh man

This exciting stuff, poetfox. Go team humanity!

This is awesome. I didn't expect to see so many Doom Tokens being removed so quickly.

Wow, you're actually turning it around. My bet's on Diamond dealing the finishing blow.

I still think they're fucked. Really, Diamond is going to be the only damage dealer in a turn or two since that buff spell Amanda has seems like it only has one more charge left. So when you have that and bullwhip guy only having like 2 attack/sneak/whateveritis dice, they're pretty much doggie chow. I can't see the trio knocking off 7 more HP in that time.

I like this, it looks like a Final Fantasy boss fight. You can even imagine that the woodstain is a swirling hypnotic background

Yeah, they're not yet halfway and every turn that goes by it's going to be harder to get away from Shubby - and every adventurer that gets devoured makes it harder to get successes, which prolongs the fight, which increases the chance for devouring.

Go! Dismember that formless void!

I suddenly feel compelled to pray for the safety of Monterey Jack and his friends, even though I have never met them.

Hell yes.

Bless you sir. You make me H*A*P*P*Y.

CURSE YOU POETFOX! CURSE YOU FOR MAKING ME BUY THE EXPANSIONS!!

Which I'm having a bit of trouble finding, because Thoughthammer only has the Dunwich Horror in stock.

The only question I have is: what is the boss battle music for this fight?

This.

more like this.

This is probably because I'm still on a FES high, but I'm going to go with this.

I always imagine these battles sounding like this.

Amanda screamed and jumped back as her door slammed to the floor. She hadn't known what she was getting herself into. I mean, neither did I. But I was tired of being a victim of circumstance, and I wasn't about to scream. I was going to take matters into my own hands.
"Shit... shit...!" Amanda said, picking up an odd cane that had been sitting in the corner of the room and attempting to wield it in what she hoped was a menacing manner.
I stood up, knife in my hand. The cloaked figure started to enter, chanting.
"You get the hell out of here." I said in as calm of a voice as I could muster. It felt like there was a wind in the still room, a crackle of energy.
Outside, I heard a voice yell "Then shoot him again!" There was a gunshot, followed by another.
I raised my knife, and began to hum a little song, advancing. The energy was stronger now, making me want to tremble, to hide and never come out, but I was in control now, dammit.
Suddenly, there was a thud as Amanda brought the cane down upon the man's head. It startled him for a moment, but that was all I needed. I tackled him, and we fell out into the hallway, startling the two men. I thought I noticed them turn guns on me, but I didn't care. I brought the knife down into his chest, again and again.

I'm not sure when I stopped, exhausted, hands covered in blood. It was hazy for awhile there. I do know that soon I found myself back in the dorm room, in bed, with Amanda and the two men talking around me.
"I don't think we can be passive and hide anymore... I mean, we were trying to, but they obviously want to get us. We should do something about it." Amanda said.
"There is something going on here, the likes of which I've never seen... we've got to get to the bottom of this." said the man in the suit.
"What's... going on?" I asked.
"Marie! You're back with us!" Amanda said. "Thank goodness..."
"Who are you two?" I said, looking to the two men.
"I'm Joe Diamond, private eye." He flashed me a business card. "This is..."
"I'm Monterey Jack. I'm an archaeologist. Well, sort of."
"Well... nice to meet you both, I suppose..."
"Marie, we were just talking about how we can't hide anymore. There's something going on here." Amanda looked to me.
"Yeah... yeah, you're right." I got up, and sat on the side of the bed. "What are we going to do, though?"
"We have to look into this further. Those attackers have all the cards. We need to investigate further." Diamond said.
"If we're going to get information quickly, it might be best to split up," Monterey added. "I think we've all proven we're not useless if we get into trouble back there, and the sooner we know what's going on, the better. Not to mention we can hope they don't have the manpower to go after all of us."
"Good idea. I'll head to the police station, see if they can't tell us more about this murder... it has to be tied into all this."
Monterey nodded. "I'll head to the Curiosity Shoppe. I don't know if you know of it, but they... deal in questionable artifacts. Like that statue..."
"You know about the statue?" I asked.
"I tried to fill them in while you were out," Amanda said. "Sorry but... we need allies, right? They were willing."
"Right... right... well, I guess I'll go back to Ma's... that guy who helped me out... he knows more. I can see if anyone can identify him for me, or even if he's okay."
"Then, well, I guess I'll head back to the Bank... I might be able to convince Bradley into letting me know who's box that is, or at least letting me look inside it... we do have the key, after all, and he knows me, so..."
"Then we've got a plan," Diamond said.
We set out, going our separate ways, armed with what we could carry.

That was the beginning of the end, they say. But no matter what, remember this: we tried. We tried to stop the darkness. When others hid in safety, we tried.
We tried.

---

Epic Battle Turn 4: Refresh
Bullwhip, Sword, and Shriveling are good to go once again. Amanda hands the cane to Monterey and the Eye and first player token to Diamond. She's in the most danger of dying right now, so, you know... gotta protect the important items. Diamond uses his one spare point of Stamina for an Eye bonus.

Epic Battle Turn 4: Investigator Attack
Diamond stares bravely into the gaping maw of evil and slashes forth again...

Booyah! That's another doom token gone! Nice.

Monterey gets 5 dice now that he has the Cane, and so he rolls...

But even with the Bullwhip, he completely whiffs. Harsh.

Amanda once again must cast Shriveling to be able to do anything. She spends her last spare point of Sanity and casts...

And fails! Even after I rerolled with Expert Occulist, she still failed. That gives her -1 dice to attack with. Shit.

Epic Battle Turn 4: God Attack
-2 penalty to hide now...

Diamond isn't about to repeat the blunder of the first few turns, scoring double 6's to keep him safe! He even got an extra die on this that I forgot to roll, from the Eye, so he is, you know, super extra safe.

Monterey's 1 die, though, isn't so lucky. He loses a monster trophy. With no dice to defend with next turn, he's going to be devoured unless I spend his clue tokens on defense. I'm probably going to spend them on a last ditch attack, though.

Amanda manages to hide as well, keeping her alive for another round, though now that nobody has any sanity left to cast Shriveling, it might be a moot point.