I've gotten a few friends to play, including one up in Syracuse, NY. I live in Pittsburgh, PA, and for those of you not able to look that up in Google Maps, it's about a 6 hour drive back and forth. Everytime I go up, all night the first evening is an Arkham Horror game or 3.
We got to talking one trip about ways to make the presentation and transport of the game a lot better. As of this writing, in my posession there are 3 big boxes and 2 smaller boxes worth of game to lug around, plus some printed out. This lead to a litany of wild ideas, a list that I am just now starting to scratch.
The monthly GASP Games day (Gasp Guild) (Gasp Website) starts in a few hours, so as I'm going to show off what I have there, I figure I'd upload a few images to the geek and update this thread as I add more and more.
The first thing to address was ease of transport. I carry this game around to play, wither across town to a games day or up north to Syracuse, I need to transport this. I've been able to consolidate AH, Dunwich Horror, King in Yellow, and Curse of the Pharaoh into the 2 big boxes, but I wanted something more, thematic.
What I found was www.woodboxsupply.com (Or more accurately, my friend up in Syracuse did.) One of the things they have are wooden briefcases with rope handles. These are pretty much the same dimensions of the various briefcase solutions posted here on the Geek, but it has the feel of an old, discarded box hidden away in a dusty, attic.
I purchased one of these (price including shipping was around 60 bucks. Think of it as the price of some other Euro game you're going to play once and never touch again...) as the start to my modification, but I wanted something more. My goal was for the entire game to tell a story without having to play it. If I continued along with this idea that this case has been hidden away for some time, say, since 1926 or so, then there needed to be something on the front of it that would set it apart from the rest of the non-descript boxes and crates in my theoretical attic, but still notably Arkham-ish.
One wood burning tool later, you can see the result. The elder sign seemed the easiest and most symbolic way to brand my case. Nothing more need to be said, those in the know have a hint of what's in the case, and those humans without any clue tokens are mystified.
So now I have said case, how do I condense all the cards and chits that make up Arkham Horror into something that belongs in there, as well as fitting my 'themed' constraint? After a lot of tossing ideas about, it hit me in the least likely of places: A lunch discussion at work about movies. Someone mentioned the Shawshank Redemption, a classic movie, and that lead me down a path to consider books as storage.
As players of any game involving the Cthulhu Mythos knows, many bad and foul things are found within books. Yet sometimes, that single pinprick of light that is hope can only be found within the same tomes. Using websites like How2DoStuff, and having a wide collection of hard cover books from college, I realized that hollowed out books would not only be an awesome way to store and transport the cards and chits for Arkham Horror, but definitely fit the thematic approach I was going for as well.
Book closed
Book opened
One thing, however, is that most of my books that could be used are on techy things. Computer networking, operating systems, they don't look like they belong if you judge it by its cover. So, I turned to an unlikely source (Also a common theme within the Mythos), my mother. She's a crafter, a scrapbooker, and a stamper, and if anyone knew how to make, say, a faux leather cover on a book, she would. The process used in the photos above can be found here, and an alternate way to recover the books can be found here. Be warned, those of you who have never (willingly) stepped foot into a Michael's or Jo Ann Fabrics store, all these are crafting solutions, which involve things like embossing powder and stamping ink pads and heat guns (Of which the only color heat gun they had left was sparkly purple. I lost a sanity point with that purchase).
I only have 1.5 books done at this point, which is enough to have the chits from the base game in one book (All sorted in the bags that came with Agricola. My sorting box that I used to store all the Arkham chits in, ironically, is perfect for Agricola) and the base cards in another. My goal is to have all of the Dunwich cards and chits in another larger book, and the two smaller expansions each in their own, smaller book. Combine this with all the base monsters stored in a blood red dice bag, and all my dice stored in a carved container I found at The Thousand Villages, and I'm well underway to having a very thematic storage for Arkham.
What are some of the things I have planned going forward?
- Arkham maps printed on leather or cloth, that can be rolled up. Something someone would draw on a scrap piece of something while trapped in a cave in an alternate dimension, praying for a way home. Perhaps leverage the smaller board pdf that exists here on the geek.
- An old leather courier folder for all the character cards, elder god cards, heralds, etc
- (Getting real out there) After seeing something at the Steampunk Workshop about brass etching brass plates, etched with the elder sign, that hold the character cards. Things like dials and counters for sanity and stamina, and sliders for the stats.
- An elder god stand, where you can slide the elder god's card in and it stands up, lording over the board in its lessening slumber. Especially if we are able to mod the boards, have the other world locations circle it somehow.
So that is the status at the moment. As I work more and more on this, I'll try and update my status here. If anyone uses any of these ideas and has tips on what works and what doesn't, please share. The success of Agricola modding has shown there are plenty of creative ways to extend a game, let's see what a game already dripping in theme can look like with a few creative extensions!
(edited because bookClosed image was declined by BGG)
Last edited on 2008-12-13 09:30:50 CST (Total Number of Edits: 1)
Posted Sat Dec 13, 2008 3:26 pm
