A month or so back one of my Arkham playgroups 'died'. Technically 'was assassinated' might be a more valid term but as it may still be lurching on without me who can tell. Since venting online is a tradition as old as the internet itself (so what, 30 years?) I felt it would be therapeutic to discuss why. Feel free to ignore if you are after more Arkham specific content though.
Throughout the following (no doubt long and unnaturally rambling) post there is one key thing to keep in mind. The first is that I have very little actual free time where I am free to pursue my primary hobby of 'games' . Counted out after work, family commitments etc and I probably have around ten hours a week free time. This is not a lot and is a big reason for the group fail.
Anyway this story begins at the beginning of the year. At that point my primary hobby was actually Legend of the Five Rings LCG. I was not particularly good at this hobby mainly because I had no time to practice and secondly because the time I did have was spent running the ratings for the online league I was being continually squelched in. My 'second' live game hobby was Arkham Horror and I played with a family group consisting of my older brother (lives in New Zealand) henceforth to be known as 'Player One' and younger (London though moved to California over summer) - 'Player Two'. We played over whereby.com so not being close geographically was not a major issue.
Anyway around the New Year I hit a crisis point in L5R that had nothing to do with Arkham. The monthly change over was a horribly busy time as all the results for the last month had to be entered (by hand) and then the groups organised for the next month. This coincided with the death of my wife's grandmother. When I should have been looking after my wife more I was spending all spare time desperately trying to sort the league out. Now this is all on me as opposed to the game but when I recognised this I did something I quite commonly do when something becomes an issue and this was to violently push away the thing I had decided was causing difficulty. I resigned from being a league admin and dropped from the league and game. I decided that Arkham would be my number one game as being co-operative it did not need the time L5R required and I could relax more with it.
Happy with this decision I looked forward to Arkham games. The problem was they started to not happen. My older brother could only play (his) Saturday morning , Sunday Morning (my Friday evening , Saturday evening) but then went through a period of not playing at all because he was volunteering as a nights watchman or doing this, doing that and for a two month period we went through something like two games.
So from having almost every second of my free time filled I went to having nothing at all and I am too mercurial to let that stand so I started a second Arkham Group. I also re-started L5R without so much league work (I wrote a couple of applications to vastly reduce the overhead of the ratings which I continued running eventually writing a display site so I did not even have to post on the blog the results ).
This then caused one of the groups fault lines as the second group turned out to be brilliant if not outstanding. Both the other players were truly excellent at the game. As opposed to group one we stormed through the scenarios (bar the first campaign all the reports on this blog were written about the second group). Anyway as spring approached the first groups games started to increase in frequency again so I ended playing (usually) 1 game every two weeks with group one and 1 game every week with group two. Arkham was therefore taking around 4.5 hours of my spare time weekly allowing for approaching three hours a game.
Therefore I was also very busy again.
This is the situational background. I now have to go into specifics about playing methodology. To be frank group one was less decent at the game because, usually, my older brother was not playing the actual game - mainly because he was, how shall I put it, unwilling to sacrifice himself for the group. To give some actual examples: In our Carcossa Campaign he played Mark Harrigan the Guardian. Now the Guardians classes primary raison d'etre is to be a meat shield to protect the clue gatherers who then do the work of solving the scenario - and yes investigators should help out in other areas but they do have fairly formed primary roles.
Throughout the following (no doubt long and unnaturally rambling) post there is one key thing to keep in mind. The first is that I have very little actual free time where I am free to pursue my primary hobby of 'games' . Counted out after work, family commitments etc and I probably have around ten hours a week free time. This is not a lot and is a big reason for the group fail.
Anyway this story begins at the beginning of the year. At that point my primary hobby was actually Legend of the Five Rings LCG. I was not particularly good at this hobby mainly because I had no time to practice and secondly because the time I did have was spent running the ratings for the online league I was being continually squelched in. My 'second' live game hobby was Arkham Horror and I played with a family group consisting of my older brother (lives in New Zealand) henceforth to be known as 'Player One' and younger (London though moved to California over summer) - 'Player Two'. We played over whereby.com so not being close geographically was not a major issue.
Anyway around the New Year I hit a crisis point in L5R that had nothing to do with Arkham. The monthly change over was a horribly busy time as all the results for the last month had to be entered (by hand) and then the groups organised for the next month. This coincided with the death of my wife's grandmother. When I should have been looking after my wife more I was spending all spare time desperately trying to sort the league out. Now this is all on me as opposed to the game but when I recognised this I did something I quite commonly do when something becomes an issue and this was to violently push away the thing I had decided was causing difficulty. I resigned from being a league admin and dropped from the league and game. I decided that Arkham would be my number one game as being co-operative it did not need the time L5R required and I could relax more with it.
Happy with this decision I looked forward to Arkham games. The problem was they started to not happen. My older brother could only play (his) Saturday morning , Sunday Morning (my Friday evening , Saturday evening) but then went through a period of not playing at all because he was volunteering as a nights watchman or doing this, doing that and for a two month period we went through something like two games.
So from having almost every second of my free time filled I went to having nothing at all and I am too mercurial to let that stand so I started a second Arkham Group. I also re-started L5R without so much league work (I wrote a couple of applications to vastly reduce the overhead of the ratings which I continued running eventually writing a display site so I did not even have to post on the blog the results ).
This then caused one of the groups fault lines as the second group turned out to be brilliant if not outstanding. Both the other players were truly excellent at the game. As opposed to group one we stormed through the scenarios (bar the first campaign all the reports on this blog were written about the second group). Anyway as spring approached the first groups games started to increase in frequency again so I ended playing (usually) 1 game every two weeks with group one and 1 game every week with group two. Arkham was therefore taking around 4.5 hours of my spare time weekly allowing for approaching three hours a game.
Therefore I was also very busy again.
This is the situational background. I now have to go into specifics about playing methodology. To be frank group one was less decent at the game because, usually, my older brother was not playing the actual game - mainly because he was, how shall I put it, unwilling to sacrifice himself for the group. To give some actual examples: In our Carcossa Campaign he played Mark Harrigan the Guardian. Now the Guardians classes primary raison d'etre is to be a meat shield to protect the clue gatherers who then do the work of solving the scenario - and yes investigators should help out in other areas but they do have fairly formed primary roles.
That is not what would happen when group one played. In our games Player One (Mark) would spend the first few turns tooling up with all manner of weapons/assets so he could fight and do his job but then some horrific nasty would arrive and Player One would appear to take one look and seem to think, 'hmm that looks nasty..lots of sharp teeth, limbs that could crack a bone. If I took that on there is a chance I might get hurt!', so would then announce ,' tell you what. I have just seen a little old man over there (or a swarm of rats). If he fell over he might 'hide' a clue. I am just going to leave this location - move over there and deal with that. You deal with this. Bye!
And off Player One would go leaving the Seeker and Survivor to try to cope with the big nasty on own own. We would fail and die .. a lot.... In one famed occasion Player One drew an encounter card of some variety of unpleasant hunter and as party leader he had a choice of whether to send it towards himself or the Seeker. He chose the Seeker. 'A distinct unwillingness to put himself in any risk at all for the party' should be written on all his characters many graves.
This was not a major issue (only to the extent it made the Scenarios more challenging) as it just gave an interesting spin on the scenario - plus it does not matter if you actually fail in Arkham. At one point I even deliberately retired my Survivor and took on Agnes as the group needed a character who could fight or at least support fight as a method of mitigating 'Mr No Fight'.
Now came the breaking moment.
Around the summer we started Forgotten Age. Things looked bad even before we started. My older brother took Ursula Downs (great! - I always want to see a seeker in a three person group and a seeker supports my older brothers play style of 'utter refusal to fight or go near anything dangerous' so this was a relief. He probably matched more Rogue or Survivor mentally but Seeker would do fine). My younger brother decided on Calvin Wright. 'For fun'. This looked worse as as far as I could see Calvin sucks worse than a lemonade tester at the national lemon testing convention. The problem is that he appears utterly useless until he takes damage but once he gets at a level where his stats are high enough to help then he is so close to death that one unlucky card kills him. Therefore his 'sweet' point is probably as a 3-3-3-3 which are the same stats that Jenny starts with. Then there was myself. I went for Finn as evading looked good for the campaign. I had also played a seeker, guardian, survivor (turning to mystic to help do the guardians job) so wanted to try something new.
And off Player One would go leaving the Seeker and Survivor to try to cope with the big nasty on own own. We would fail and die .. a lot.... In one famed occasion Player One drew an encounter card of some variety of unpleasant hunter and as party leader he had a choice of whether to send it towards himself or the Seeker. He chose the Seeker. 'A distinct unwillingness to put himself in any risk at all for the party' should be written on all his characters many graves.
This was not a major issue (only to the extent it made the Scenarios more challenging) as it just gave an interesting spin on the scenario - plus it does not matter if you actually fail in Arkham. At one point I even deliberately retired my Survivor and took on Agnes as the group needed a character who could fight or at least support fight as a method of mitigating 'Mr No Fight'.
Now came the breaking moment.
Around the summer we started Forgotten Age. Things looked bad even before we started. My older brother took Ursula Downs (great! - I always want to see a seeker in a three person group and a seeker supports my older brothers play style of 'utter refusal to fight or go near anything dangerous' so this was a relief. He probably matched more Rogue or Survivor mentally but Seeker would do fine). My younger brother decided on Calvin Wright. 'For fun'. This looked worse as as far as I could see Calvin sucks worse than a lemonade tester at the national lemon testing convention. The problem is that he appears utterly useless until he takes damage but once he gets at a level where his stats are high enough to help then he is so close to death that one unlucky card kills him. Therefore his 'sweet' point is probably as a 3-3-3-3 which are the same stats that Jenny starts with. Then there was myself. I went for Finn as evading looked good for the campaign. I had also played a seeker, guardian, survivor (turning to mystic to help do the guardians job) so wanted to try something new.
This meant the group had no (real) designated combat person. Perhaps we could take a different path so we continued.
Things went badly
from the very first scenario. In one of the first encounter draws I gained the card that gave one
mental trauma if you do not successfully explore and both other players drew pit
vipers. Moving first and being unfamiliar with my new character I attempted to get
the explore out of the way - succeeded and moved away. Ursula (Player One) then evaded
successfully and also moved and investigated. That left the 0-0-0-0 Calvin who was
utterly unable to do anything to the snake and he was most pissed off with the pair of us for moving. Now I had forgotten about the 'free' evade the character had and
did not expect the weakest snakes in the set to cause a problem for the others
and since Calvin needs damage/trauma to improve his stats then why not get some
from the snake?
Calvin next turn
then had both snakes as he could not leave and no one else was there and so generated some attacks of opportunity to increase his stats before deciding to kill one of the vengeance loaded snakes before finally evading
and leaving. He was at 5-5-5-5 ! at this point and killed off a guardian before a
single encounter card draw killed him.
This left the
remaining two players with an uphill battle as we still had the *3 investigator
costs but only 2 investigators to work with. We managed to flip the act to
three but then decided with only two turns left (and lots of doom adding cards
available) that we needed to bug out and resign.
Let's map out the
board before we made our bug out attempt.
We had the camp.
Next to it was a location with a pit viper and another snake. The other
location had two other monsters (one with retaliate due to the vengeance and the
other with alert). Then a location joining to both that contained me and two
more large monsters (engaged with me). Then finally another location linked to
the last that had Ursula and a monster with hunter. Ursula's turn was in play
and she announced she was moving to me. I stated that might be unsafe as I
would be moving but she was ok with that. Then on my turn I evaded both my
monsters moving to one of the next locations and (finally remembering the
ability) evaded the monster there. Now the encounter deck rolled through. I
drew 'Curse of Yig' which amused Ursula as the health loss would kill me. I then quick played 'You handle this one' and gave it to Ursula instead. This did not appear to please but since I would die when I attempted to move this was apparently acceptable. Unfortunately for that players mental state I then immediately played Elusive as a fast action, disengaged both enemies and moved to the resign location. This infuriated Player One who said he had
a card that could push me to the camp and how dare I move on my own. This rant went on a
while before on the following turn he announced that he was going to ensure I was punished by his
next actions. He then deliberately pathfindered twice and resigned in an attempt to drag all the monsters with him on top of me putting four monsters on me (more than I could evade)` (fast move actions so no Attacks of Opportunity but the monsters follow). Unfortunately for his cunning plan I then simply resigned.
Still unhappy Ursula and
the group now went into the scenario resolution. We went to the 'who would be lookout'
and after reading the responses (Player One didn't like to be surprised so would read the 'results' before deciding on the action...) Player One then decided I would be as punishment for not being killed by player action in the fame. Now we had
a character in the group who 'needs' to start with trauma and damage but rather
than ensure he was semi usable he decided to deliberately weaken a player who had low stats so wanted to avoid that as much as possible.
Now I was distinctly also unhappy. The problem, to me, is that
Arkham is a co-op game. If you want something to happen you can suggest it but
you cannot order it. If you don’t suggest it then , to be frank, it's your fault
if something else happens. If you do and its ignored then that’s the game. The
end result is the completion of the scenario and hopefully beating the
campaign. What the game is not is 'Arkham battle royale' where players compete
to defeat the other players to allow them to lose to the campaign.
This was compounded by an unfortunate family trait of rubbing things in. Player One has a tendency to crow about faults in direct proportion to those he shows. So as every single character he plays is unwilling to sacrifice themselves for the group so therefore any slight excuse he has to call someone a coward will be used to the full during the game and every day for the week after in whatever forum is being used. Anyway I found it distinctly irritating to be insulted out of game for in game actions that did not deserve the character they were given by someone who did exactly what he was calling in someone else but had not been called (until this post). If you remember my start point which was that I have limited spare time - spending any of it to get insulted or play a non-co-operative co-operative game seemed like a waste of that limited time especially as I had a very good group that played the game co-operatively so I quit the group.
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