Ludifying Lovecraft in Arkham Horror - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 3

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Ludifying Lovecrat in Arkham Horror
he most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human
mind to correlate all its contents.
H. P. Lovecrat, “he Call of Cthulhu”
Darrell Simmons was on the move. A local photographer for the Arkham paper,
Darrell had seen something that chilled his blood, but was indescribable. Armed
only with a camera and his wits, Darrell let his oice intent on proving that
things were not normal in Arkham. Or maybe just to prove to himself that his
fears—those overriding fears that permeated his grasp on reality—were valid.
Darrell entered the Twilight Lodge and saw Carl Sanford in front of him. A cold
shiver ran down Darrell's spine as Carl led him into a study, intoning quietly but
insistently to himself. Darrell's ability to withstand fear became compromised—
normally able to block out even the most uncomfortable of feelings, he had
recently needed some luck, so he had adjusted his abilities. he hypnotic tones of
Carl lulled Darrell into a trance, and soon Darrell lost all sense of time and place,
his consciousness taken out of the world and into that fearful, otherworldly
nonplace, R'lyeh. His clues gone, his sanity near zero, Darrell contemplated how
it all started….
With over 700 pieces, a table-sized game board, and a 24-page rule topic, the
game Arkham Horror is notoriously complex, a characteristic that game designer
Ira Fay argues “creates excitement in the players.” 1 Memorizing the rules is
diicult; when my game group irst sat down to play, they had already watched
a couple of online videos illustrating how to play (one was ninety minutes long),
and had read an abbreviated (10-page) set of rules. I started setting up the board
and learning the rules myself two hours before the irst guest was scheduled to
arrive; by the time they all did, I still had ive pages to go.
Rules are an integral part of games. In fact, some would call games entirely
dependent on the rules—Salen and Zimmerman argue that “to play a game