Well, that was a bit more interest than I expected to generate with that poke. Hm. Discussion, then... There are some points on online Arkham games that are getting rather meh to me, and that I'd like to address in the planned game.
1. Concerning Those Who Have Seen All (And Survived)
Arkham Horror was intended as a once in a long while party game, with huge stacks of cards to generate randomness and surprises. Some degree of familiarity is expected after playing a few times ("Independence Square is a bad scene, don't go there unless you have to"), but we've kind of moved beyond that - every single card in the game, more or less, is viewable online, and folks have been calculating things like the exact odds of getting X random encounter at location Y or "What's the worst that could REALLY happen by going here?" and so on. You really aren't even supposed to know what you can get from the item decks, or to flip over monsters and look at their combat stats before engaging them. I think this detracts from the fun a bit, as it feels like there aren't really any surprises left.
Obviously the solution here is to generate more surprises. I know Soppy and Tai and some others have been messing around creating entire custom card sets from scratch. I'm not going to be going that far myself, it's just too much work given the amount of other stuff I want to pack into this game, but I do plan on having a lot of custom content planned - and to adjust a lot of the base ones on the fly, taking a more "Mythos Master" role than just running a setup via Hatbot.
Thoughts on this?
2. On the Advent of Ancient-Slaying Automata
The second major issue comes straight from the other side. Once a group gets Arkham gameplay down to a science, a sort of optimal play hivemind develops and 90% of the decisions in the game are either rendered meaningless by a clear optimal solution, or immediately answered by the group. While this is good for encouraging cooperation and winning and all that, it does kind of take away the feeling of individuals playing their characters. As we've gotten into the swing of things here, it seems almost silly to still be assigning one character per person instead of just having everyone interested get in the IRC channel and play all the investigators communally.
Unlike the first point, though, there's a tradeoff here. One of Arkham's biggest draws for many people is that it is entirely cooperative and has the players all work in perfect harmony. "Arkham Mafia"-ish setups where, say, one player is secretly a cultist? Yeah those don't work, and would drive players off. I'm definitely planning on injecting some individuality into the setup, but the question is - how far are people okay with going in that direction?
Ideas include...
- Personal Stories that are much more in depth and only revealed to that specific investigator's player. These are all but guaranteed in. Some of them may have pass conditions that are detrimental to the rest of the group ("Get $15 without an outstanding loan and send it to your Swiss bank account", for example), but of course are easily balanced so that the player has no reason to actually do these things other than flavor.
- Additional win conditions, like the personal stories but a little more imperative, where certain players have to deal with the ancient one AND do something else in order to win.
- Hidden content, where the players don't have their usual omniscient view of the game board, where every gate leads to, what and where every monster is, etc. This plays into the previous point as well. I'm definitely planning on hiding the Ancient One's identity, and maybe gate destinations and monsters, providing clues to them through flavor. For a time I considered running a completely individual game, where investigators wouldn't even know where each other were and couldn't talk to each other unless they actually met, but that seems too much trouble and not enough fun.
Suggestions and discussion will be appreciated!
