Premise
In addition to running the premium adventure Terra Antarctica I decided I wanted to tackla Arkham Horror Roleplaying Game with an adventure I had written myself. I have presented numerous criticisms about the way the AHrpg is written, so I needed to confirm (for myself) if it’s the game or the adventures I find lacking. Long story short; it’s the stories.
Most prewritten adventures rely too much on NPCs and remove the player agency to my liking. They remind me of the way adventures in the 1990s were written. And not in a good way.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying my adventures are perfect and all others suck. This is just a personal preference and might have to do with my personal concentration problems. I think the prewritten adventures can be perfect-for some other group.
So for this new short trilogy of adventures I wanted to tackle the ideas that were abandoned two years ago, when we left the Suomi 1930-campaign after the first session. I always believed it was more about the system (hacked Alien rpg) than the story itself. And after our first new session of this storyline, I feel like I was right.
Starting Anew
For this session we drove to the coastal city of Pori with Santtu. For two of the players (Harri and Tero) live there, and this first adventure centred around the coastal region of Pori in 1930. (There’s actually so much to say about the time period, that I’m working on a supplementary book for AHrpg about Finland 1930. Hopefully it and these adventures will be shared this Spring.)
Each of the players introduced their investigators to start the session. We had already mostly built them online, but it was a nice little way to get into the mood and discuss about how they link together. It was also important to share some ideas of how the characters had encountered ”the Mythos” and why they were opposing it directly.
As our Terra Antarctica-group has been somewhat struggling to differentiate Arkham Horror rpg and Call of Cthulhu, I deemed this part very necessary. It was a chance to introduce the themes and the style of play for this group of which only Santtu had played AHrpg before. It was also a subtle way to tackle one of my pet peeves about horror games of PCs shying away from horror.
Having just listened the audiobook with the Lovecraft’s story the Dunwich Horror, I was reminded how it deals with this. It clearly shows how the main characters choose that they must oppose horrors that are too much for most others. This is something I have decided to emphasise. The investigators the players have created are the ones that have made the same decision.
About the Investigators
Tero – Kalevi Rintala, factory worker (paper) / Seeker
Harri – Raimo Kalevi Räty, diver / Guardian
Santtu – Eerikki Koskinen, Lutherian priest / Believer
As each player provided me with a short backstory for their investigators, I was pleasantly surprised how well they aligned with the adventure I had written. While not all of their details could end up in the first part, I think I can link most of them to this trilogy. It not only showed the interest of the players for the story, but also proved I was on the right track while creating it. We clearly shared a mindset for what was going to happen.
In Terra Antartica we use self-made investigators instead of the pregens. As we weren’t entirely sure if the system was for us while we started the investigators in it were tuned for the adventures set in Arkham (of which we did end up playing two). While they mechanically work for the premium adventure, story-wise it can feel a bit forced.
We also discussed how much politics we wanted to include in the game. The 1930s was very politically charged in Finland (it was only little over ten years after our civil war), so we decided that they were going to be showcased but not delved too deeply with. Other than that we didn’t set up any other ground rules about subjects in the game.
The Adventure
I had written the adventure as a pretty straightforward story. After a scene used to introduce some story- and background elements in the riverside marina of Pori, they investigators set out to the international waters with a rented trawler. They contacted a smuggler, how was able to provide them with details that lead them to a location along the coast, where they found the notebook and had to fight of some fierce enemies. (No detailed description of the events, yet, since this adventure will be published here once we have play-tested it.)
While I said I disliked the absence of player agency in the official, published adventures, I noticed that I could have introduced more myself. After the session we discussed about it and my players seemed to think that there were enough for them to decide. We rambled a bit more about investigative adventures vs. puzzles in games, and I had to agree that most of the time they aren’t what makes or breaks an adventure.
The players liked the structure and the setting and were eager to continue the adventure.
As we live busy middle-aged lives about 2h drive from each other, we had agreed upon a monthly gaming session. So if our timetables allow it, the next session will be in March.
Final Thoughts
After the slow death of my enthusiasm about Alien rpg I feel like I’m still a bit hesitant and reserved about AHrpg. While discussing it I praise it, and after this session I’m inclined to think it is just as suitable for me as it is for my players. But I still feel the nagging doubt that cannot be eased.
My feeling is that this system can only improve with time and as our understanding of it grows. I have high hopes for the eventual 2nd edition, but in the mean time it will serve as just right. Even Harri liked the system and we usually look for very different things in running our games.
And it our Discord discussions are to be believed, each player were left thinking how to spend their experience and develop their investigator. This is always a good sign, especially when they deliberated how nicely variable their archtypes were.
Having been actively involved in discussions on AHrpg groups in Facebook and Reddit, I have often pondered on how differently we seem to play in contrast to other groups. In a long run I believe this to be a good thing for the game, as it shows the variability of the system.
So I encourage everyone to try to make an adventure. It doesn’t have to be perfect, nor does it need to have nice cardboard elements and printed out maps. All that is needed is a shared sense of what’s going on and the eagerness to confront the Mythos.
Diceblastes 