As a addicted iPhone user and a boardgame geek I couldn’t resist the lure of FFG’s app for Arkham Horror. Only recently I started to wonder if I would ever be using it as I still like the cards and bits and pieces. I toyed around with an idea of a Call of Cthulhu scenario/campaign in Arkham but it seemed kind of pointless.
Then an idea occured to me. One of the main points WFRP (way back when 1st edition was published) was to create a Call of Cthulhu game in a fantasy setting. Nowadays the game has pretty much moved on though an odd cultis plot pops up every now and then when the skaven aren’t behind it all… But for me it was one of the points that made the game so dear to me and it’s still the main idea behind my game mastering.
So I wondered – why not use the app for random effects in Warhammer? Sure the setting is pretty different and there’s no “gate bursts” in the Old World. Or is there?
WFRP is kind of an action packed monster hunt these days. At least if you look at the published material. So how actually hunting monsters from another dimension would fit in quite nicely.
This kind of use would demand some extra effort from GM as the events in Arkham Horror are designed for a boardgame. But as all GMs (at least to my knowledge) are pretty creative it shouldn’t be that big of a problem.
“A gate appears” – does it mean a passage to skaven tunnels, an actual portal to Chaos Realm, a transfer to encounter mode or something else? The GM only knows. And if he doesn’t he can always “draw” a new encounter that could possibly be better suited to the current situation.
This is all just ramblings of course as I haven’t even tried it myself – yet. But it still should point out that interesting sources of inspiration can be found anywhere!
I’ve used encounters from Arkham Horror both in Cthulhu adventures and Warhammer.
E.G., the beneficial effects of dining at Hibbs became the beneficial effects of Keila Cobbelpot’s pie in Gathering Storm. I keep a little notebook to record these ideas in when playing Arkham (as I find it’s “in play” that the encounter “speaks to me”).
And wouldn’t you just love a Warhammer charactering doing research in a Veranan library reading how his ancestry included something not quite right…. (riffing of that Historical Society encounter).
This was exactly what I had in mind. Considering how active WFRP community has always been it’s actually strange that I haven’t encountered this kind of idea before. I’m quite certain that it has been there but I just haven’t encountered it.