Hey everybody,
Last month, I played a lot of games. Among the highs and the lows, I also finished my fourth run-through of the Dunwich Legacy campaign, and so I thought it would be interesting to talk about this. Way back in the mists of 2016, when the Arkham Horror LCG came out, I can remember playing through the core set campaign with Roland Banks, and thinking about both how amazing it was as a game experience, but also decrying the fact that, as a story/narrative driven game, how the replayability probably wouldn’t be there. Once I’d been through Night of the Zealot, I felt zero or less compunction to actually play it again, because I knew the story. Even if the experience would have been different because of using different investigators, I didn’t think I would feel a great need to replay this one.
Well, what did 2016 me know?
I have played Night of the Zealot five times now, and despite the fact that it’s the same story each time, it’s still reasonably interesting to play with different investigators, provided you leave enough of a gap between run-throughs. But Night of the Zealot isn’t really the best example of a campaign, as we know, so let’s talk about the first one for the game, The Dunwich Legacy. This was the first full-length campaign for the game, clocking in at eight scenarios that tell a tale that manages to rehash The Dunwich Horror with a few new tweaks that help to make the story its own thing. The premise of the story is that two professors have gone missing, colleagues of Dr Henry Armitage who assisted him during the events of Lovecraft’s original story. We’re presented with the choice of going to rescue one (at the university) or the other (at the sleazy bar), and the story is subtly different depending on which choice we make.
Thereafter, it becomes a fairly linear affair. We go to the Museum to get a copy of the Necronomicon, before we get the train to Dunwich. When we get there, things are going a bit crazy, and the townspeople have been abducted. When we find them, we also learn a bit more of what’s going on, so we go monster hunting in the surrounding countryside. We finally make our trek up Sentinel Hill, as we attempt to prevent a madman from calling down the apocalypse (also known as Yog Sothoth) by travelling through to the Other Side and back again.
It’s all very standard stuff, but with the right mix of investigators, it has proven to be quite a lot of fun, I think! I did make the mistake of building a couple of decks for an investigator pairing which, on reflection, wasn’t right for the scenario, and I didn’t really enjoy it as perhaps as much as I otherwise would have, back when I took Tony Morgan and Mandy Thompson to Dunwich. But I think that was due to the fact that Tony didn’t have a great deal of stuff to do, being built primarily as a monster-hunter.
The Dunwich Horror is one of my all-time favourite Lovecraft stories, and so I am already coming at this campaign from a positive place. I also really enjoyed the Dunwich Horror expansion for the original Arkham Horror board game, it was one of my all-time favourites to include. Getting to revisit not only the story but also the artwork and locations from the board game expansion is one of the high points, for me, when replaying this campaign, and I think it’s interesting to see how my attitude has changed to replaying campaigns. Indeed, I would actually say that I could happily play this one for the fifth time maybe next year.
Interestingly, though, when I played through The Path to Carcosa for the second time, I didn’t feel that same sense of amazement that I had when I first played it. I do wonder if that may have been in part due to the investigator choice again, of course, but there’s also another thing at play, for me at least, that I haven’t really talked a lot about before.
Arkham Horror LCG is one of the most atmospheric games I own. I find that it’s not the sort of game that you can just sit down and enjoy as a puzzle – by which I mean, you’re not just comparing statlines and blasting through for round after round. You need to sit back and read the flavour text, and some campaigns dial this up to 11. The Path to Carcosa is definitely one of those, and you need to really dive into it. Playing it just to get through the campaign isn’t going to lead to a good gaming experience, I don’t think, and while this perhaps sounds obvious, I think it’s something that I need to pay more attention to with my games.
After I had finished playing the Dunwich Legacy, I immediately built some more decks to try out, but with no clear idea of which campaign to play with them. I think it’s really important to have an idea for what I want to actually play with these things, and not just have some decks ready to go, with the intention of using them for any campaign that takes my fancy. It’s really similar to how I was approaching Lord of the Rings LCG until quite recently, where I had my decks almost permanently set-up and ready. I realise this probably isn’t interesting to most people who read this stuff, or else might be obvious to most other people, but it’s something that I think I need to practice more often. I think it was really great to build those decks for Rex and William, then start playing that same day – in fact, it was probably key to playing through the whole campaign in a matter of days, rather than the usual month or so that I tend to take with these things!
In short, then, I am surprised at how much replayability there is in the campaigns for Arkham Horror LCG, despite my initial misgivings about it all. However, I think I need to be more careful in planning out exactly which campaign I’m going to play, and build decks for that campaign, then start playing it. That way, hopefully, I’ll be able to immerse myself more in the story and, as such, will find it a much more enjoyable experience!
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