What will it take to get board gamers into this 1920s role-playing game?

Among the swirling mass of Pax Unplugged, frantically running through the labyrinthine halls of the convention, I desperately search for room 103. I’m late to meet Michaël Croitoriu, the head of Edge Studios, to discuss the new Arkham Horror: The Role Playing Starter Set– a Lovecraftian pulp horror game that aims to bridge the gap between roleplayers and board gamers. Earlier that week, a review copy landed on my front door. While the box intrigued me, the wealth of components (including character portfolios, an assortment of punchboards, handouts, cards, decks, and 24 dice) was as intimidating to this RPG reporter as any eldritch horror. Ten minutes past the hour, as I stroll past a group of visitors with their latest winnings, I see Croitoriu waiting for me. As he explains the game, my concerns slowly fade and are replaced by a curiosity about this serious attempt to convert board game purists through the vast world of Arkham.

While it may seem overwhelming at first, when broken down each part of the game is relatively easy to understand. “So easy a ten-year-old could learn it,” was one phrase Arkham team kept repeating when people walked into the room for a demo, although they also said the game’s content was more suitable for ages 14 and older. Leah Hawthorne, one of the game’s lead designers, said she “doesn’t like to use the word simple because it makes people think it doesn’t have strategic depth.” While the system is easy to learn, there is an element of resource management built in that adds the crunchy tactical elements that board gamers have come to expect.

The system’s basic mechanic uses an additional d6 dice pool, with stats that require reaching a corresponding target number, which are different for each character’s strengths and weaknesses. During combat, damage depletes your dice pool, limiting the number of actions you can take per round until they are replenished. There is no initiative during conflict-oriented scenes, allowing players to strategize together and play to each other’s strengths, rather than focusing all attention on a single overpowered character. The game’s format is also intentionally designed to be gamemaster-friendly, adding more story-oriented elements of the game that ask players to work with the GM to build a world in a “bubble of benevolence,” a phrase Croitoriu repeated several times in our interview. This shared responsibility of playing at the table is built into the game’s components, such as a GM screen that lies flat on the table, rather than having secrets (and roles) hidden behind it.

“The person I am today is the result of the games I played at the table,” Croitoriu said. While the Arkham franchise was previously known for other tabletop iterations, such as Richard Lanius’ original 1987 board game, that personal relationship with TTRPGs is why the Arkham Horror RPG “seeks to address several preconceptions about RPGs and get people on board for role-playing games. ”

These biases include barriers to entry for people unfamiliar with tabletop gaming. That is why the starter set is divided into one-hour sessions. Croitoriu believes that a lot of pre-match preparation is also a barrier, which is why the starter set includes a 48-page tutorial-style booklet that teaches players along the way. The RPG core rulebook is a reasonable 256 pages, a “threshold (EDGE) will never be exceeded,” Croitoriu said, referring to a series of connected materials that would follow the starter set’s release in 2025: an adventure collection in March, a free RPG daily supplement, a box set at Gen Con, and another sourcebook on Halloween.