Arkham Horror is a Bitch to Teach.

I practiced teaching Arkham Horror last night. The guys at my game group were really great about it, but I realized how much there is to remember. I totally could not remember all the monster special movement and ability rules, all the delayed rules, the arrested rule, or the selling stuff back to the store rule. Are there rules for selling stuff back to the store? After a couple of minutes of trying to find that rule, we decided to just house rule it and keep going. I think I have some studying to do.

jeb wrote:

Dammit, woman, printout and laminate Skelly's flowcharts.

Skelly and his friggin flowcharts. I'll have to print some of these to hand out at Trashfest, so he will at least be there in spirit.

Harkonnen13 wrote:

There's definitely a lot going on in Arkham Horror. I want to say that there's a card or something in one of the expansions that allows you to sell stuff back to the store but I'm not at all sure.

I thought that you couldn't sell things back to the store. You can just sell and trade with other characters. But a couple of people remembered that there were selling rules. Today I re-checked the rules to the base game and couldn't find any selling rules. I'm going to check the revised rules in the DH expansion tonight to see if it is in there.

Thanks. I couldn't find anything about selling in the DH rules or in any of the FAQ, so I'm going to stick with NO selling stuff back to the shops when I demo, or if anyone asks me. If a group wants to house rule that, I don't think it makes any difference, since win or lose the group gets the same number of trash points.

Re: Pawn Shop

One of the fun things about AH, and other similar games, is that you can tweak them to your liking without breaking them. In the game I played Thursday, some of the people had played before. Therefore, the first thing we had to establish was if we were going to use anyone's favored house rules or variants.

Re: Teaching Big Ass Games

Looking back on my practice session, I now think that I did a pretty damn good job. I was using someone else's copy of the game, so I didn't have all my cheat sheets or player aids. I got most of it off the top of my head.

My trick to teaching or playing games like AH is to make each player responsible for a different set of rules or a process. I have little cards with a summary of the bit for which they are responsible. One person is responsible for reading the Mythos card in the correct order. One person is responsible for placing and moving monsters. One person is responsible for terror track conditions. One person is responsible for turn order and phase. One person is responsible for combat. Everyone gets a chance to GM their bit, and everyone also gets to relax and enjoy the narrative when it isn't their turn to be the boss. It keeps the game moving along to have someone saying "Everyone do your upkeep now. Joe, don't forget to roll for your Blessing. Okay. Everyone done. Sam, you move..." But you don't feel like that person is being bossy, because your the one doing the same thing during combat or Mythos or what ever it is you are responsible for. I think it also enhances cooperation. For example, if you are considering fighting a monster, you might consult with the "combat GM" to check what you would have to roll to defeat the monster. Then people start giving opinions on whether you should fight, or evade, or go do something else.

Thanks for the Kingsport info. Once that expansion comes out it is going to be even harder for me to not slip into calling places by their RI names. I have a bad habit of calling Arkham, Providence, and referring to Brown University, Warehouse Point, etc. I know I'm going to start calling Kingsport either Newport or Kingstown.