MAR 25, 2024

Arkham, Tabletop game

<aside> 📒 Very polished campaign, nicely designed and well-written.

</aside>

SPOILERS ahead.

https://mysteriouschanting.wordpress.com/2020/10/17/dark-matter-campaign/

Currently, I have played the first two scenarios: Tatterdemalion and Electric Nightmares.

The first is about waking up on a spaceship and trying to understand what murderous nonsense is going on. The other crew is dead, you remember dying in XX century, the ship systems are trying to kill you.

The second i about delving into AI’s dream and trying to ‘fix it”. Features an unbeatable enemy that just smashes into you – which is pretty effective at conveying a nightmare. No evade, no nothing – you probably just hitting the two horror from it. The only solace, the doom it generates can be remedied.

Great stuff, of top of my head:

• Solid writing. “Your eyelids haven’t thawed yet…”
• Jettisoning stuff from the airlock is a flavor win!
• The plot twist with the ship’s AI being a few kids’ brains combined
• The aesthetic of sci-fi spacetravel and cosmic reality-jumping horror – it’s wildly cool
  • “Digital Dreamlands of Tatterdemalion’s AI” – a pretty neat concept :)

It was a very polished scenario, with a bunch of moving pieces. Encounter cards, foreshadowing upcoming mechanical pieces (like, treacheries that can be bypassed with equipment dug up with Search). Setup and hooks for other moving parts. It feels very polished like a lot of rough edges very smoothed out – and extra steps were made for different pieces to click together.