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Meet the destructoid Team >>   Conrad Zimmerman
Conrad Zimmerman's blog
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Destructoid's head of video operations. An avid player of tabletop and video games throughout his life, Conrad has a passion for unique design mechanics and is a nut for gaming history. Conrad organizes and produces video content for the site (including Sup, Holmes?, Office Chat and Saturday Morning Hangover) and is a regular host on Podtoid.

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While I adore video games, I'm equally fond of board and card games. On the Table is a weekly feature of my cBlog that examines some of these analog entertainments. If you have a suggestion for a game to appear in this column or suggestions on how to improve it, please let me know.

Last week, On The Table was all about Arkham Horror, a cooperative horror board game for 1-8 players. If you haven't read that column yet, I highly recommend you check it out before reading this one. Continuing with our Lovecraftian theme for the month of May, I now bring you the first major expansion to the game: Dunwich Horror.





The Dunwich Horror is one of H.P. Lovecraft's most beloved tales and the fictional locale has been the focus of many stories by writers who continued the Mythos long after its creator passed away. It is only fitting, therefore, that the village receive a treatment in the board game and Fantasy Flight has really put a lot of love into this expansion. It is designed to be integrated seamlessly with the main game, forcing players to deal with threats in two locations.





The first major feature of the set is a brand new board, intended to be placed along the northern edge of the Arkham board. Investigators can travel there from the train station in Arkham or through certain encounters. It contains nine locations that Investigators can visit and have new encounters in. Just as in Arkham, most of these sites have the potential for gates into Other Worlds to open and two brand new Other Worlds are also added on to the border: Another Time and Lost Carcosa.

Also present on the Dunwich board are a group of portals, which deal with the first major mechanic added to the game, the namesake "Dunwich Horror". As monsters appear and move around in Dunwich, they will be inexorably drawn into these portals. Every time one manages to make its way to these special spaces, a token is placed on the "Dunwich Horror Track". Once it is filled, the Dunwich Horror enters play.





The Dunwich Horror is a special monster that can have grave consequences and great reward. As long as it remains in play, there is a chance that it can speed the arrival of the Ancient One. Defeating it is a far greater challenge than any normal monster, however. Whenever an Investigator goes into combat with the Dunwich Horror, a card is randomly drawn from its deck to determine what stats and special abilities it has. It's entirely possible to feel very prepared to fight it, only to discover that none of the equipment you have can actually hurt it. If you should manage to succeed, however, you earn the privelege of taking any one item or spell of your choice.





Of course, there are many new items and equipment included with the expansion. Mixed in with these are some new cards, called Tasks and Missions. Instead of an item, you're given a series of locations either within Arkham and Dunwich or in the Other Worlds. Having encounters in these locales in sequence will result in successfully completing them and will grant various effects. In the most extreme (and challenging) circumstance, completing a Mission could provide an alternate avenue of victory for the Investigators.

To make an already challenging game more difficult for even the most experienced players, the concept of a "Gate Burst" is introduced. One of the easiest ways to slow down the progress of your enemy lies in sealing locations, effectively preventing new gates from opening there. While it can be a challenge at times to accomplish the task, it is utterly vital to success. Gates which open with a Burst serve to throw a monkey wrench in the plans of Investigators who have successfully sealed locations by breaking these seals and destroying your hard work.





The most ingenious addition in Dunwich Horror are "Injuries and Madness". Under the standard rules, Investigators who have their stamina or sanity reduced to zero would lose some or all of their equipment and have to spend a turn in the Hospital or Asylum. With the inclusion of the expansion, however, they are given a choice. Instead of losing all that valuable gear you've accumulated, you may take an Injury or Madness card. These cards provide a wide range of negative effects which are extremely difficult to be rid of, ranging from reduction of various skills to being unable to remain in the same location as another Investigator or even indoors without losing sanity or health.

This expansion is almost a necessity for players who enjoy Arkham Horror. The Madness and Injury cards alone add so much. It does tend to complicate an already complicated game but the changes are simple enough to integrate if you've had a few rounds without it.





If there's one complaint I can lay upon Dunwich Horror, it's that the effect on play balance can seem unfair at times. Some games will have players racing back and forth between the towns while others might prevent them from going to Dunwich at all. The randomness is part of the charm, though, and helps put into focus the hopelessness that Lovecraftian protagonists must feel.

Next week, things get really nasty as I examine two smaller expansions for Arkham Horror: The Curse of the Black Pharoah and The King in Yellow.



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Legacy Comments (will be imported soon)


Oh damn it, I really really want to check out a copy of this game now.
Another great post in my favorite cblog series :) Dunwich sounds cool, but I think I'll try Arkham by it own first.

On an unrelated note, the HP Lovecraft mythos looks very interesting. How would you recommend someone who has no prior experience with the tremendous bastion of works start? Is their a certain book, or series of books I should read first?
@ Scary Womanizing Pig Mask:

Read Call of Cthulhu, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Dunwich Horror, and At the Mountains of Madness to start. Oh, and you can do so right here if you don't mind reading them online.
@SWPM: Del Ray books released a trio of decent compilations that run the gamut of Lovecraft's fiction, which is probably as good a starting place as you are likely to find.

Blodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre is the best of the bunch, featuring some of his most notable works. The Call of Cthulhu, The Dunwich Horror and Shadow over Innsmouth are pretty much required reading for beginning Lovecraft readers. It also features what's probably my favorite of Lovecraft's weird tales (which is completely unrelated to the Mythos) called The Rats in the Walls.

The thing about the Cthulhu Mythos is that while it is attributed to Lovecraft, he was really a two-bit pulp author who couldn't sell his work. The stories that would eventually form the "Mythos" were loosely connected, at best, by a focus on New England with a dominant theme of man's insignificance in the universe.

It wouldn't be really unified until another author, August Derleth, proceeded to write stories about Lovecraft's stories, creating the Mythos as we know it today. Some, like myself, find Derleth's changes to the base concepts of Lovecraft's work to be frustrating (he turned it into more of a good vs evil struggle, due to the influence of his Catholicism) but his contribution is the primary reason people still read Lovecraft today. So, be warned, while Derleth's work preserved that of Lovecraft, his stuff is very different.

You might also want to check out Arkham House the publishing company who owns the rights to all of Lovecraft's work and also puts out some of the best Mythos-related fiction.
I actually just picked this up today, thinking it was the original game and not realizing it was an expansion until right after I'd already purchased it and left. Oh well, just means I'm definitely going to have to get the main game now.

@Conrad: I noticed on the Dunwich box that it's for 1-8 players. Can you legitimately play the Arkham Horror game (expansion or not included) by yourself and still have a good time with it? Also, does the number of players in general affect the enjoyment of the game? Kinda like how Munchkin is much more fun with 5 or 6 players than with 3?
I'll give major props to Derleth for keeping Lovecraft's works from disappearing into obscurity, but his "restructuring" of the Mythos was flat out terrible. Meh. I pretty much just ignore the Derleth-inspired canon myself.

The Wikipedia article for "Cthulhu Mythos" is a good read.
@conrad and mxzyptlk
I'll check them out! Online reading is actually prefered as its convient just to have it bookmarked on my phone for easy readeing. Can't wait to start reading!
@Negfactor: I've played Arkham Horror alone and enjoyed it, though it's pretty much impossible to win without managing at least three Investigators at once. Using an expansion and upping the difficulty further can make things excruciating for a group of less than four or five.

Obviously, cooperative games are more fun with more people (provided you enjoy the company of those you play with), but it's certainly serviceable alone as the game itself is a more than worthy opponent.
With your last post on Arkham Horror and now this on Dunwich Horror, I think I'm going to have to force some of my friends to play these. Being the huge fan of Lovecraft that I am, I love the treatment his idea's get with tabletop games, I just wish they got the same attention in video games.
wow. I just started reading Call of Cthulthu. Soooo good! Thank you do much Conrad and Myzkltb! I'm going tofonish it now!
What Pig Mask just said.
@Faceless: Dark Corners of the Earth for XBox really had potential. I seem to remember an early trailer featuring a multiplayer mode where players could go insane and accidentally kill their co-op partners.

I remember playing only two examples of great Lovecraftian games, however. The first is The Lurking Horror, an Infocom text-adventure game which is deeply based in the Mythos. The other is the original Alone in the Dark, which not only makes repeated reference to Lovecraft but essentially created the Survival Horror genre as we came to know it.
I played Dark Corners of the Earth a while back and thought the exact same thing. I remember being so excited afterwards because at least two sequels were hinted at before Headfirst went bankrupt.

I've always meant to get into the Alone in the Dark series, and I think I may just try and play some before the new one is released soon.
Ok this is getting weird...

...I just got this expansion in the mail today...
I'm actually playing Arkham Horror right now Solo play with 6 investigators against Azathoth.

Great write-up again and thanks for the book information.
@Butmac: Yeah, I've been stalking you and keeping track of your shipping manifests.
This was fucking epic, I played it about 2 months back. The only problem is finding another 2 or 3 people that are into Lovecraft tabletops that aren't internet friends.

Also, @SWPM: I got into the Cthulu mythos a while back when I picked up a real life book from Barns and Noble (it was actually THIS compilation). To quote Mxyzptlk from a few months back: "The best way to read him is with an actual book in your hands, late at night when the house is empty, and with only the light of a few candles. If there happens to be a thunderstorm going on outside, bonus. :-D"
I played a round of this with Dexter345 this afternoon. We wound up winning in the final battle but, with four people playing, things still managed to get out of control between traveling to Dunwich and back. Just too many gates too quickly.
I'll be following SWPM's lead as well-- thanks for the links, guys. I've heard Eternal Darkness is very heavily inspired by the mythos and if that's true, I think I'm going to really enjoy reading this. Such a pity it's not a dark rainy night. I don't quite understand how they're available so freely online though... are they in the public domain?
@Qalamari: Well, the copyright status of his writings has been disputed several times over the years (I was mistaken in my claim that Arkham House owned them; it seems they were given exclusive rights to publish by the man who supposedly owned the copyright).

Apparently, as of April of this year, the vast majority of his works have fallen into the public domain and much of it had been there for a long time, as there's no records of copyright being renewed for them. And, as of January 1st of this year, everything is public domain in the EU.
I played this!

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