Arkham Horror is a cooperative adventure board game designed by Richard Launius, originally published in 1987 by Chaosium. The game is based on Chaosium's roleplaying game Call of Cthulhu, which is set in the Cthulhu mythos of H.P. Lovecraft and other horror writers. The game's second edition was released by Fantasy Flight Games in 2005, with a third edition in 2018.
Overview
The game board is set in Lovecraft's fictional Massachusetts town of Arkham in 1926. Street, building and outdoor locations are featured. Gates to other planes open throughout the town (represented by tokens placed on the board.) Players take on the role of investigators, represented by a character card. Each investigator has several attributes (such as "sanity"), and cards representing items, spells, and other things. The investigators travel through the city, avoiding or fighting the monsters that enter through the gates, visiting city locations to acquire tools, and ultimately entering the gates.
After traveling to the other world and returning, the investigator can try to close the gate. While exploring city locations or other worlds, the investigators face random events which may benefit or harm them. As gates open, a "Doom Track" advances; if the track reaches its end, a powerful horrific creature known as the Ancient One breaks through into Arkham. In the 1987 edition of the game, this ends the game, and all players lose. In the second edition, when the doom track fills, this typically begins a final opportunity for the players to directly defeat the creature and win; otherwise, they lose.
History
Arkham Horror was originally submitted to Chaosium Inc. by Richard Launius as Call of Cthulhu: The Board Game, a new strategic game based on their Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. It was edited in-house by Chaosium, who added such features as the Doom Track, a method to track progress toward the total failure of the players, and was published in 1987 as Arkham Horror. The game won the "Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Boardgame of 1987" award in the Origins Awards, becoming the first Lovecraft themed board game to achieve significant popularity.
Arkham Horror was one of several Lovecraft-based board games submitted by Launius, with other designs from the same period including 'The Trail of the Brotherhood', 'DreamQuests', and 'Imprisoned with the Pharaohs'. Arkham Horror was the only of these games to see professional publication.
The original printing of Arkham Horror sold out. Chaosium announced reprints several times, but they never occurred, and Chaosium discontinued production of the game in 1991.
In 2004 online game company Skotos acquired the rights to Arkham Horror from Richard Launius, and later arranged publication with Fantasy Flight Games. The game underwent several revisions in this process. Skotos reorganized many of the elements in the game for improved cohesion and arranged for it to more carefully follow the maps of Arkham created by Chaosium and used in their own Lovecraft Country: Arkham by Night online game. Launius added several new elements, including clue tokens and some rearrangements to the decks of cards. Finally, Kevin Wilson at Fantasy Flight massively revamped the game, throwing out a roll-and-move system as well as other concepts and also expanding much of the gameplay. The 2005 edition shares art and other elements with Fantasy Flight Games' other Cthulhu Mythos-based game: Call of Cthulhu Collectible Card Game.
The new edition was released in July 2005 and sold out, with a second reprinting also being released in 2005.
In early 2011, Fantasy Flight released Elder Sign, a game based on Arkham Horror but which provides a much faster-paced alternative. By streamlining many of Arkham Horror's mechanics and using dice to solve encounters, games of Elder Sign lasts 90 minutes on average, rather than 2–4 hours.
In 2016 at Arkham Nights, a celebration of Cthulhu games by Fantasy Flight Games, the original designer Richard Launius returned to host a special event using a modified version of the original game. Multiple games were held over the course of the weekend.
In November 2019, Aconyte Books announced a-tie in novels based on the world of Arkham Horror, titled Arkham Horror: Wrath of N’Kai. The novel is set to be published in May 2020.