March 25, 2012

Disconnect Between Flavor and Mechanics: A Problem? Maybe?

I’m playing this game of Arkham Horror over a forum, and it’s a lot of fun. But recently it’s just kind of occurring to me how messed up the gameplay of this game is as compared to the flavor.

My character in this game is Minh Thi Phan. She’s a secretary who stumbles across a copy of The King in Yellow, according to her bio. She’s also a spell-slinging, monster-murdering badass warrior lady. Well, so far. Maybe she’ll be organizing some files later on in the game. I dunno. But the point is, who she is on the card is nothing like her in-game stats and gear. I’ve armed her for war, and I’ve gone out and done war with her. Kamikaze attacks. Murderous rampages. That sort of thing.

Arkham Horror is based on these stories of people fighting against insane odds and taking on the unknown while probably losing. The little story snippets on the investigators and things like that really highlight that sort of thing: these are supposed to be, with a few exceptions, normal people thrown into extraordinary circumstances. That’s certainly, say, the theme of Call of Cthulhu, if you do it right. You’re fucked, but you’re struggling: you don’t fight head-on unless you’re in a really shitty, desperate situation. Sure, you can take it in a more pulpy way. In some ways, the cover of Arkham Horror does this. But all the flavor suggests the sort of desperation of normal people against the supernatural.

Basically, Arkham Horror is a game that doesn’t know exactly what it wants to be, flavor-wise. Even with the “weak” characters, if you make it a priority to be a murder machine, you can make that happen, usually. The “unknown” is pretty known, most of the time. Enemies appear and you steamroll them or dodge them with ease. Really, you’re more in danger of forgetting to play exterminator, which will you over because of the Terror Track, than dying from enemies the majority of the time. All that’s fine, mechanically, but when you’re also supposed to be roleplaying a, say, lounge singer that wants to find out what killed her boyfriend or something, it kind of strikes a weird tone when she’s going around slaying demons with a broadsword.

I’m probably thinking too much about it. But that’s sort of the problem with all these games, conceptually. I have such a great time, say, roleplaying Trail of Cthulhu games where everyone is actually as weak and in as much danger as the situation suggests. That’s really satisfying. But the mechanics of Arkham Horror, with the mass slaughter of enemies and collecting of their heads for fabulous prizes… well, that’s nice too. Still, it seems like there would have to be a way to flavor the game to make those mechanics make more sense. I dunno.

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