Over the past few years, my tabletop gaming group has really made an effort to try playing other roleplaying games outside of Pathfinder. By being more receptive to other systems, we have found that every game has its role as far as serving as a vessel for storytelling. Some games, like Blades in the Dark, excel at stories centered around heists and ne’er-do-wells. Pathfinder is for groups that want tactical, grid-based combat. And the Arkham Horror RPG, an extension of its universe established in the board gaming world, scratches the itch for 1920’s eldritch horror. We’ve had an opportunity to play with the Arkham Horror RPG Starter Set – Hungering Abyss, and sink our teeth into the system and its world to see how it stacks up against other games.
Arkham Horror RPG Overview
There are two distinct parts of this review—how the Arkham Horror RPG plays as a whole, and discussing if the starter set fulfills its obligations and promise of being a suitable entry point for the game. We’ll start with the game, extracting the base rules that are sprinkled throughout the included adventure.
First thing’s first, the Arkham Horror RPG is a d6 system, meaning that it uses the standard 6-sided dice that serve as the most common random number generator around. Success of an action is determined by meeting the value of the skill associated with the action. For example, if your character has a Melee Combat skill value of 4+, any roll of at least 4 counts as a success. Improving a skill would make that number go down, thus increasing your odds at being successful.
A core concept of the system is the use of dice pools. Everybody starts with six dice in their pool, which are removed if damage is taken. If all of a character’s dice are removed due to damage, they become wounded, in which case the only thing they can do is strain themselves. This is a risky gambit, raising the dice pool limit back to their original maximum but also causing them to take an injury. Injuries can be temporary (such as a laceration) or more permanent (like a lost limb).
Normal dice can also be replaced with horror dice, nasty little things that can inflict trauma on your character if a 1 is rolled. The inclusion of these horror dice are what make the Arkham Horror RPG unique, tying the flavor of the world to the mechanics. They represent the creeping fear and paranoia of unknown terrors invading the minds of normal, everyday people. You aren’t a superhero when you play this game—you’re simply an investigator trying to make sense of it all.
Gameplay is divided into narrative scenes and structured scenes. The former are lower stakes while the latter are reserved for combat or tense situations in which time is of the essence. Players/Investigators all go first, followed by the Game Master who controls enemies and any NPCs. Dice pools refill up to their limit every turn, and you decide how many dice to devote to a specific action. Any leftover dice can be used for reactions on the Game Master’s turn, creating an interesting push/pull dynamic centered around acceptability of risk. Reactions can only use a single die, although you could save multiple dice if you anticipate multiple attacks coming your way.
Approachability is a necessity when it comes to tabletop roleplaying games and introducing people to a new system. Learning games from scratch can be difficult and games can grind to a halt when you constantly need to reference the rulebook to determine outcomes of specific scenarios. The Arkham Horror RPG leans on traditional roleplaying game mechanics while adding their own twist of artistic spice to reduce that rules overhead.
Using a skill-based system that is devoid of modifiers streamlines the game in a major way, and is reflective of how new roleplaying games are approaching the concept. Instead of requiring a Game Master to set difficulty levels for a skill check, the success condition is natively baked into the character’s skill value.
There are a few points of the game that seem unnecessarily complex for what Arkham Horror RPG is trying to achieve. For example, 10 skills may not seem like a lot—especially if you’re coming from Pathfinder—but there’s some redundancy between the skills. I’ve never really liked the separation of Agility and Athletics, although I understand their differences. The Arkham Horror RPG also has other skills that could have been combined, like Intuition, Presence, and Wits being a single Social skill. Even Knowledge and Lore could seemingly be a single skill, regardless of whether that information is based in the occult or not. The Arkham Horror board game boils down to six skills, and it could have been the same here.
There’s also the indication that this game is one of grid-based tactical combat, although I feel like that’s a bit too crunchy for the narrative-driven focus that the game is also going for. It seems like there is an expectation to ensure that gamers who like that minute level of combat have a home in the system. When running the games, I found myself opting more for a theater of the mind approach instead of getting hyper-focused on exactly how far away enemies were from the players. Gauging things in simple units of dice—since moving 10ft requires a player to spend a die—is easy enough to ballpark and helps keep the game focused more on the overall story.
Play is generally very fluid, and as a Game Master I also appreciate the removal of initiative-based combat. Again, structuring combat so that all of the players go followed by the Game Master—assuming nobody is surprised—makes it so much easier to manage. I don’t mind that it benefits the players—these are ordinary human investigators after all, and they’re already fragile enough.
The Arkham Horror RPG is a player-centric system. From the combat to the inclusion of insight points—extra ways to gain automatic successes or give them advantage on a roll—the game is balanced around the investigators in a way that encourages them to come out on top. In the Arkham Horror world, the core essence of the narrative is entrenched in the mystery, and the mechanics support the unveiling story. Getting bogged down in complex mechanics would be a detriment to the theme, and this game does a decent job at creating tension without sacrificing the fiction.
Overall, the game feels like Call of Cthulhu or even Delta Green, although with more tactical combat. Personally, I prefer either of those two games if I’m looking for investigative horror, but I will say that the Arkham Horror RPG feels very much like a tabletop roleplaying game for board gamers. If you want to dip your toes into the genre—even if you have no experience with other tabletop RPGs or the Arkham Horror setting—this is a really good place to start.
Arkham Horror RPG Starter Set: True Value
Minor Spoilers Ahead!
When I pick up a starter set for a tabletop roleplaying game, I need it to get me into the action as quickly as possible. Even as a seasoned gamer with exposure to a variety of systems, I want to lean on my experience instead of spending hours deciphering a complex rulebook. In that way, the Arkham Horror RPG excels in folding in the mechanics as needed throughout the included adventure, Hungering Abyss.
I’ll avoid spoilers to the actual adventure so that you can experience it fresh for yourself, but I will reference the overarching plot as well as the presentation and physical components of the starter set. You have been warned!
The adventure initially holds your hand as you learn the basics of the game, easing you into the world of Arkham. There has been an increase in disappearances in Arkham, and the investigators begin with a meeting to discuss any leads that they may have. This introduces players to Narrative scenes, and then continues with an overview of Structured scenes that follow. One minor qualm is that the Game Master should read through the beginning of Act 2 (of 3) to understand how skill checks work, as that might be useful for the opening scene.
Each investigator has their own set of leads to start, so it’s up to the players to divulge and share information with one another to get the ball rolling on the plot. Likewise, each player receives a foldout character portfolio complete with their investigator’s abilities and skills and some will even get beautiful handouts right from the jump.
Please note that the starter set doesn’t include any information on how to build your own investigators, although it’s definitely alluded to as a possibility. You’d need the full Core Rulebook for that.
Eventually the adventure opens up into a much wider sandbox style of play. Players will often have plenty of things to do and can do them in any order as they gather up the evidence. This does actually cause a bit more work for the Game Master, although the information in each scene is accessible enough to get there quickly. I appreciate the succinct tables that list key notes and page numbers for various points of interest, which assist considerably.
The adventure is definitely designed to emphasize the investigation, although I would argue that the puzzles and evidence aren’t heavily supported mechanically. You could easily slot such things in another system and they would work seamlessly. That’s not to say these things aren’t good—quite the contrary. There’s a certain puzzle that I don’t think I’ve seen in gaming before, and it was a fun surprise for the players. However, I want to emphasize that the starter set doesn’t necessarily include any methods of designing your own puzzles within the game, only supporting some encoded messages.
In terms of presentation, I don’t think I’ve seen a starter set packed with as much value as this box. At a $35 price point, I would even rate this above the Pathfinder Second Edition Beginner Box, which previously held my top spot as providing the most bang for your buck in terms of starter sets for RPGs. Besides the character folios, you get a collection of adventure-specific handouts and evidence, three pages of cardboard tokens, three double-sided maps, 12 green dice, 12 black dice, a pair of folded dice boxes, item cards, ally and enemy profile cards with a linen finish, puzzles, a game master screen, and the adventure book. I’m very impressed by the quality of these components.
Although the adventure does a decent job of incorporating the rules, the layout does make it difficult to locate things at times. For example, the trauma and injury tables only exist on the game master screen, so if you find a reference to them in the adventure, you’ll need to consult the secondary source. There are also some inconsistencies where I wish certain words were bolded—like injury—the first time they are introduced. It would make references easier to locate.
Whether or not you’re familiar with tabletop roleplaying games, the Arkham Horror RPG Starter Set has so much punch packed within the box. Now, I haven’t read the Core Rulebook, but based on what I see from the starter set and the included adventure, this is the place you should start with the Arkham Horror RPG. It’s recommended to experience the game with at least four players, although five is the number to aim for so the Game Master doesn’t have to possibly run one of them. I think it’s strange to have a pre-generated character be required for a starter adventure, but that’s besides the point.
Arkham Horror RPG Starter Set: Knows its Onions
There are better games out there than the Arkham Horror RPG, but that doesn’t mean that it should be discarded. Especially with the production quality of the starter box and familiar mechanics, the game knows what it’s trying to be. I don’t necessarily want to use the term gateway game because some people view that term as making a game less-than. However, it is a solid bridge game for people who dabble in board games who are thinking of trying a tabletop roleplaying game without the baggage or expectations of a behemoth like Dungeons & Dragons. People who gel with the Arkham Horror setting will also find plenty to like with the included adventure.
I find the game to be solid—buoyed perhaps by the impressive components—and worth checking out. The starter set gives you everything you need to play the game without requiring an afternoon of reading ahead of gametime. So grab your dice and steel your nerves—Arkham needs you!
Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game – The Hungering Abyss Starter Set details
- Designer: Sam Stewart
- Artists: Sam Stewart
- Publishers: EDGE Studio
- Release Date: 2024
- Mechanism(s): Attribute/Stat Based (STR, CON, PER, etc), Dice (Primarily d6), Skill Based (buy or gain skills)
- BGG Geek Rating: 8.14286 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 4.0.
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