The Spawn invited her cousin, Ghost, and her friend, Kindle Girl, over for Arkham Horror and a sleep over on Friday. This kind of took me by surprise, since The Spawn has never played Arkham Horror, and doesn't like games that last more than 30 minutes.
The first thing she asked when we sat down to play was if the game was really going to last for 8 hours. The game did last 4 hours, with a break for pie, and The Spawn spent a good deal of it standing up (she just can't sit that long). I tweaked the game a bit so we were playing in easy mode. It was pretty much a cake walk for the investigators. For veterans it would have been a rather dull game, with few tense moments, but the girls didn't realize this. They spent most of the game in fear of their characters dying a horrible death, although none of them ever got close to it. I think this game wins the prize for the most time spent in the Hospital and the Asylum, as whenever the girl's characters where down even a couple sanity or life points, they went directly for the heal up.
I was getting a bit worried that the girls were going to decide that Arkham Horror was a bit long and dull, as despite my love for the game, it was beginning to feel that way to me. But, no, once they sealed that last gate, and did their victory dance, they all declared the game awesome. They decided, however, it would be even more awesome to play with just their friends, rather than us boring grown-ups. Ghost, who is an experienced player, was the voice of reason and explained that the rule book was about a zillion pages long, and there was no way they could run a game by themselves without a bit more practice. So, yay, I get to run at least one more game for them this summer to teach them a few more rules before they abandon me.
Arkham Horror with the Girls
Hot
-
Cool, I was thinking of bring my copy Arkham Horror to WBC for Ghost to play with her C30 friends. I'm going to pull out most of the expansion stuff and pack it into one box. This year we can have an under 18 Arkham table and you can bring your AH on wheels set to Bourbon drinkers table.
-
Arkham Horror is great fun. After not playing for a few months, I got it out on Sunday to play with a good friend. We each ran two characters against Arkham+Dunwich+Azathoth. No heralds or guardians or anything else special.
It was a great game, very satisfying. We lucked into two Elder signs early on, plus a freak Mythos card that dumped an extra 10 clue token on the Miskatonic U. campus. And we beat a nasty rumor early on and picked up another 2 clue tokens per character. It was starting to look like a cake walk after we had three seals before mid-game.
Then things got ugly, like the game was fighting back. Two gate bursts, two more rumors, two trips to Lost in Time and Space, and a curse. The freaking Dunwich Horror itself showed up while the Doom Factor was at 10, as we started drawing into a streak of Mythos cards with crescent moons on them. At one point, a roll of a 4-6 would have ended the game, but we rolled a 1 and sealed for the win on the following turn. Arkham was safe at last!
-
Squishy rules set but I still enjoy the general fun of Betrayal at House on the Hill for beginners. Just easier to set up and go, might be a nice compromise for the girls.
I own Arkham and love it but can't devote the time to getting it on the table.
My 6 year and I and I need some good two player games. She's becoming a reader but finding a game that we can play just the two of us has been a bit difficult.
Suggestions, Uba?
-
If you have time over the next few weeks you should take Ghost and your spawn through Mansions of Madness. I found lighter gamers like Mansions of Madness better than Arkham Horror. Ghost has played both scenerio #1 and #3. The Witch house scenerio might be fun before after watching the witch house video. I was going to teach Ghost how to be a keeper but we never got around to it.
-
@ mads b.
The upside is that when she says she wants to play games with friends she means playing board games with that well-groomed, polite, honor student who comes to game club/coventions with his dad, and not spin-the-bottle with that skanky turd I caught smoking dope the the hotel stair well. The bonus is when she casually suggests that we should host a family game day and invite, you know, like that guy with the kid, you know, the one with the blue eyes.@daveroswell
Elder Sign kind of sucks as a board game. The Spawn does like the the Elder Sign app, and plays it on my tablet.@Stan Leer
The problem with Betrayal at House on the Hill is one person gets stuck reading and interpretting the traitor's rules on their own and can't ask the other players for help if they don't understand them.
For a 6 year old that I don't know anything about, my standard recommendations are Rat-a-Tat-Cat, Sleeping Queens and Guess Who.@KingPut
I'll suggest Mansions of Maddness to them. See what they think.
-
I don't know if I'd call it turning a page. Kindle Girl and Ghost are both RPGers, and The Spawn plays RPG one-offs at Cons. With me performing the role of GM for Arkham Horror, it essentially played like an RPG for them. They didn't feel that they had to know all the rules. They just needed enough information to make the immediate decision about where to move that turn.
The most difficult part of Arkham Horror, as an investigator, is assessing your strengths and weaknesses, and then working together to determine each players best course of action each turn. The girls did an awesome job of this, and really enjoyed the social aspect of group problem solving.
So what you say is your kids will only just get old enough to play Arkham with you, and then they'll prefer to play it by themselves? That's just horrible.
Luckily it reguires not only rules knowledge, but also English, so I'm hoping I'll get a few more plays out of it with my own spawn. Of course, she needs to be a bit older than three first ...