Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game Review - A Gateway For New Players To TTRPG

It's hard to get into any TTRPG if you don't have someone to hold your hand along the way. Picking up a ruleset for the first time and trying to steer a party of new players can be a daunting task but Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game starter set goes about it in the most logical way creating a positive to learn in environment.

Arkham Horror, a franchise that fans of horror and board gaming might know from the Arkham Horror board game or Arkham Horror The Card Game, has finally taken steps towards a full Tabletop RPG with their release of the Hungering Abyss Starter Set.

Building The Foundation Of Knowledge

Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game Hungering Abyss puts players into the shoes of one of five investigators in the town of Arkham, Massachusetts. From the hardboiled detective investigating missing persons, to the high school track and field star whose friend has gone missing everyone has noticed things going on and has their own leads to provide.

From this launch point players will get to piece together the mysteries of the town, fight off evil cult members, and stop the quaint town for descending into hell.

The campaign for Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game was laid out in a unique way that gameplay mechanics were only introduced just as they would become relevant. The first scene of the game, the introduction of the characters, is just prompts for them to interact with one another and a succinct list of what leads each player should be able to infer from their background.

Once characters had met each other and established leads a loud noise in the cellar would alert them to the presence of monsters. As you turn the page to reach the first combat encounter you're met with detailed instructions of what a Structured Scene is (one where the Investigators act, and then the Game Master act) and each of the different actions you can take.

It's in this way that the GM isn't just given every single piece of information of how to run the game without the context of where or when they'd apply, instead the GM is learning as the players encounter scenarios. It's not just 'tell', and it's not as daunting as 'show', but is a very educational 'tell and then show.'

In our game, I particularly enjoyed this because as I was trying to explain to players how using dice from their Character Dossier's would affect the game we could demonstrate on the board, and even on the creature cards how things would be affected. 

My table was a mix of those who had been playing TTRPG like Dungeons & Dragons for 40+ years, and another who was having their first experience playing a TTRPG and it was an incredibly positive experience for everyone.

Action Economy In Dice

The main engine that drives what you character can do, whether you're in a Narrative Scene (free roleplaying) or in a Structured Scene, is your D6 which work as action points as well as a health tracker.

A healthy character has 6 dice at their disposal, they can use one to perform a simple action like moving or interacting with items, or they can roll one or more to perform a complex action like aiding an ally or making a melee attack with the number on the dice representing a success or failure. Taking damage reduces your pool of dice so it also hinders how many actions you can take.

Doubling down on the horror and uncomfortability of the characters in this world the fastest way to regain all of your health is to suffer an injury, it's a trade-off where you get a permanent effect against your character but can go back to acting. Too many injuries can lead to death though...

In Structured scenes the Investigators turn is over when all players have exhausted their dice, or have opted to pass with some remaining in case they wish to make a reaction. This allows for a party to be collaborative and act as a group, but in any order individually allowing for some fun synergies to happen.

For the GM this level of collaboration does make it harder to be as impactful with any NPC they are running, especially when a number of player abilities have a chance to nearly one-shot the most common creature in the box.

Narrative Scenes also restrict players' actions to how many dice they have available to them. Like in combat, the dice are used up as they perform actions but now when the party has used up their actions they regain them and the story progresses forward in time.

This is helpful for a GM if events are timely, such as a ritual occurring that night, players will know they can only do so much before they need to take action. It's also a good gameplay mechanic to encourage players who might not have a strong voice at the table to speak up.

Proactive players might have used up all of their actions, but a quiet player could still have five dice available to them in their pool. It's also clear for the GM who they can prompt for next steps to take promoting everyone being included.

What To Play After Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game?

Due to the nature of this being such a heavily curated learning experience it's important to make the distinction that this Starter Set works for this adventure and this adventure alone. You won't find any additional character creation information, prompts for a GM to run another adventure, or items that won't get used immediately in this campaign.

If you're interested in creating your own Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game adventure then you may need to wait for additional resources. Hungering Abyss creates a familiar experience to those of the EXIT: The Room escape-room-in-a-box adventures.

Players will have fun over the 6-8 hour experience following the path of the cult, but after that you'll need an entirely new group if you want to play it again.

The upside of the box being so specifically tailored to the adventure isn't just that the game can teach you how to play as you're playing it, but it means that the pieces you'll find in the box include (almost) everything you could need.

Everything In The Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game Box

Inside the box the GM will find the expected pieces like a GM board, Adventure Book, and Character Dossier, but there are also tokens with artwork specific for every encounter in the adventure and double sided maps for each location.

If a character is searching a room and comes across a shotgun then there's an item card to present to your player.

Players can also get further immersed by the different handouts provided, including autopsy and police documents, as well as an encoded message to decipher and multiple sliding block puzzles.

A lot of Starter Kits say they have everything in the box for you to run a session but this is one of the first I've seen to really follow through on that…. Well, almost.

Some Dice Included

Each character playing, at full health, requires six dice placed on their character sheet to indicate how many action points they have remaining, let alone d6 for the different NPC that the GM is running. Included in this box is only enough for two players, leaving out the majority of the table.

You could easily get around this by sourcing six-sided dice from elsewhere (like your dice hoarding wife) or other board games you may already own. There are also more than enough spare tokens included in the game to create a proxy but you won't be able to set it up as the adventure book describes.

Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game Review | Final Thoughts

As a way to ease players into the world of Arkham Horror as well as to introduce a new TTRPG I think the Hungering Abyss Starter Set does an incredible job. What's even more impressible than that I think Hungering Abyss has managed to create a Starter Set that new GM and players alike can use to learn about playing TTRPGs in general.

While anyone can pick up any TTRPG and begin playing it's normally an easier experience if someone who is familiar with the game is leading the story. In Arhkam Horror's building block 'show and tell' style of building upon gameplay as the story progresses it offers GMs and players alike the best way to learn how to play the game.

Fans of TTRPG will get to have an enjoyable experience throwing too many d6 across the table trying to crush a cult and new players will get eased into the experience.

If you're looking for the basis to create your own adventures or continue the adventure past what's in the box though you're going to be out of luck. This adventure is so specifically tailored to the experience once you've played it then it's worth keeping around for a new group, or could be passed on to another group you know of.

All Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game products in this review were provided by the publisher. All screenshots were taken by the author during the process of review.