Ludifying Lovecraft in Arkham Horror - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 18

Players can never “ind out” the answer, the underlying structure: the Clue token
simply provides a mechanism by which answers are known to be known. here
are no answers at the end of the game; players simply stop (or do not stop) the
monster. he structure of the game—the larger set of underlying thematics that
rule this world—is able to mirror the “unknowability” of Lovecrat's mythos
through the mechanism of literal undiegesis. As players, we have to know
that knowledge exists without comprehending what that knowledge is. his
unknowable unknown simulates the type of knowledge comprehension that
characters create in Lovecrat's worlds as well, as characters must interact with the
Ancient Ones all the while knowing that there are aspects that they don't know.
Further, the character attributes help to perpetuate a sense of unstructure
in the game. At the start of every turn, players can adjust three diferent
settings on their character's card—“speed/sneak”; “ight/will”; and “lore/luck”
(see Figure 1.2). As characters increase speed , they must conversely decrease
sneak . he same applies to ight/will (e.g., as their ability to ight increases,
their desire to do so decreases) and to lore/luck . Ideologically, this last pairing
is an interesting linkage, suggesting that as your knowledge of your enemies
increases, your luck decreases (perhaps education reduces one's ability to rely
on intangible results). he amount of change in these three pairs depends on the
character's “focus”—Jenny Barnes has a focus of just one, meaning she can make
Figure 1.2 Character cards for “Jenny Barnes” and “Amanda Sharpe” from Arkham
Horror. he Board Game © 2005 Fantasy Flight Publishing, Inc. Photo by the author.