This
article at NPR—“H.P. Lovecraft's Monster Is Wrapping Family GameNight Up In Tentacles”—discusses the ever-growing number of board games based
upon Lovecraft’s ‘Cthulhu Mythos.’
I
must confess that I’m not a ‘board game’ person. I rarely play them—and when I
do, it’s invariably because others want to, and they teach me the rules. Now I
have nothing ‘against’ board games; I just don’t really have anything ‘for’
them either. (There was a time in the distant past when this was not the case.
Much of my final year of high-school was spent Axis and Allies. But that was a long time ago! And I had a lot more
time back then…)
I’ve
owned Arkham Horror for a decade now,
and yet have never played it. Every time I’ve tried to read the rules in the
past my eyes glaze over after a few minutes. Strangely, the AH rules seem more
involved than those of Call of Cthulhu—and
it’s not clear to me what AH does better
than CoC (aside from being prettier and eliminating the need for a Keeper). Now
I’d be happy to try AH with someone who was already quite familiar with the
rules and could show me the ropes. But I just don’t have the patience or
interest to sort them out myself.
In
addition to board games, there also seems to be a growth in the number of
Lovecraftian role-playing games being produced in recent years. Yet, aside from
playing in a couple of one-shots with other systems (including one game of Trail of Cthulhu), I’ve stuck with The Call of Cthulhu for decades—indeed,
CoC is one of the games that I’ve played the most in recent years. CoC does
what I need to do, really well, and I simply don’t have much interest or
patience (or time) to learn new RPG systems these days. I’m happy to read about
new settings or adventures, but reading new game systems generally bores me (in fact, I have yet to properly read
through CoC 7e; when I’ve run that system over the past two years I’ve
primarily relied upon the ‘quick start’ rules and my general knowledge of BRP).
So
while I’m happy to learn that more people are enjoying Lovecraftian games (both
board games and RPGs) these days, I’m also pretty content to stick to the
Lovecraftian game—CoC (5e/6e/7e)—that I’ve been using since eldritch times.
[Image of the Cthulhu Wars game from the NPR article.]
Arkham Horror is a nightmare to play, even with people that know the game. 8 hours plus and yes, a session of CoC would be far better. However, there are good HPL board games-- notably the Martin Wallace Deckbuilder: A Study in Emerald, which plays in about an hour or so and is not trying to simply replace a GM like AH.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the recommendation!
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