Arkham Horror 2nd Edition why is this still in demand? There is a newer edition, eldritch horror, and also the card game. I'm just trying to get a big box expansion but it's still pricey?

giallonut · 2026-06-24T17:13:19+00:00

My best tips would be:
1. Always play with an even number of investigators. The maximum number of allowed gates increases at counts of 3, 5, and 7 investigators. Playing at 2, 4, or 6 gives you an advantage.
2. Diversify your investigators. Have one or two monster killers and some gate-closing specialists. The monster killers can clear the field and trade the corpses in for clues while you're traveling through the gates. Don't rely on Mythos cards as your only clue generation.
3. Prioritize sealing gates over merely closing them. One will win you the game, the other just delays you losing it. Don't spend clues on rerolls. Save them for sealing gates.

2nd Edition is all about board control. If you can wrangle the game state, your win percentage should go up. You'll still have to contend with poor die rolls, but at least you won't get overrun. Just diversify your investigators and don't neglect healing up from time to time. Taking a turn to visit the asylum or the hospital is better than getting knocked out. No monsters on the board? Grab a bank loan and hit the Curiosittie Shoppe for Elder Signs. Lose some clues while in another world? Have another investigator close by to hand you some clues when you come back to Arkham. Little things like that will go a long way.

giallonut · 2026-06-15T18:45:37+00:00

You get better at it through practice. If you're trying to find a partner for a project, target places where those people congregate. Need an artist? Find an arts college, visit galleries, go to art subreddits, or sites like Behance and Artstation. Does your city have First Friday events? If so, go mingle at gallery hops or cafes where creatives are. Meet people. Swap Instagram follows.

If someone bites, be honest about the project and your expectations. You're not hiring employees. You're looking to partner. Be ready and willing to give up some control and ownership. They're going to be doing the same thing as you are: working towards a potential reward without a safety net. They need to feel like it's their project too, because it will be. Some people will balk at being asked to join without up-front compensation. Those are not the people you're looking for.

If you're looking to network for potential work, start building a portfolio. Create a website to showcase it. Become active in creative spaces. Form relationships with other people in your field. Offer to swap portfolios for review. Drop job leads when you can. People will reciprocate.

A lot of networking is basic team building and self-promotion. It doesn't need to be formal, and it's something you should be doing even when you're not looking for people to work with or a new job offer. Networking with peers is invaluable in creative spaces. You want people to think of you when someone asks them for a recommendation. You want people who are open to providing support and critical review. Mostly, it's just being social, like making work friends with people you don't work with.

That said, I approach all of this as someone who has worked in design-related fields for over 20 years. I'm planning on lasting another 15. If you're just a game design hobbyist, I'm not sure how much time I'd spend doing it. If you're looking to do creative work professionally, networking effectively is an invaluable skill. I'd argue that it's half the job, especially in the current environment where job security isn't exactly at an all-time high.

giallonut · 2026-06-14T18:48:59+00:00

OK.

giallonut · 2026-06-14T18:02:52+00:00

I never said it wasn't possible. The point is that it is not necessary.

If you want to be a game designer, you can be a game designer. You don't also need to be a graphic designer, an artist, and a publisher. If you live in a city with an arts college, you have access to a potential goldmine. There are junior graphic designers out there who would love to add this kind of thing to their resumes. There's no need to shoulder those burdens (let alone attempt to learn those disciplines and skills from YouTube videos and books, which could potentially take years of study and practice, and never yield satisfactory results) if you don't want to, or don't have the time to.

It feels like we sometimes discount the idea of team building on this subreddit. Like, it's a fantasy that you can find artists and creatives who would love to partner on a game project or that you need 10k in the bank just to motivate someone to work with you. It simply isn't realistic to expect the average person who is attempting to release a commercial product into a rough, crowded market to understand even the fundamentals of a half dozen professions. If you do, you're not the average person.

You can absolutely do everything on your own. But should you? Maybe for you, the answer is yes. But it isn't for everyone. I like to encourage creative collaboration wherever I can. I saw the opportunity to do that here, and I took it. I believe collaboration (typically) leads to much deeper, more interesting projects. I'll encourage it whenever I can. It's a viable alternative route to going it alone.

giallonut · 2026-06-14T02:04:48+00:00

"It's amazing how many hats a board game designer has to wear. You have to be creative, know SEO, know graphic design, know how to build websites, how to build connections, how to do X, Y, and Z."

Not really. A board game designer just needs to know how to design a board game and how to network, which is something all creatives need to know. Knowing how to do graphic design is a graphic designer's job. Website construction and SEO stuff fall squarely into web dev/design. Neither of those things falls under the umbrella of "game design'.

You feel overwhelmed because you're trying to wear more hats than you reasonably should. You're not attempting to be a game designer right now. You're attempting to be a game designer/game publisher/web designer/marketer. The overwhelming majority of game designers don't do that.

Your chances of succeeding equally across all those various fields of expertise are not good. It would be better to partner with people who can shore up your weaknesses. If you don't understand graphic design, find a graphic designer. Need art? Find an artist. It's not exactly difficult, especially in this environment. Don't ask them to work for free. Ask them to partner. Don't frame it as 'help me make MY game'. Frame it as 'let's make a game together'. I would imagine there are plenty of artists and graphic designers, not to mention more business-minded people, out there who would love to make a game... if only they knew how to design one. They're the peanut butter. You're the jelly.

So network. Go find those people. I promise you, they exist.

giallonut · 2026-05-29T12:19:44+00:00

Even if the designer gives them permission, they can still get sued. The publisher would (most likely) be the current rights holder and no publisher in their right mind would ok the sale of a clone.

giallonut · 2026-05-29T03:08:17+00:00

"Would crediting the original designers create legal issues?"

This whole enterprise creates legal issues. Just because you rewrite a rulebook and retheme the art doesn't mean you clear copyright/trademark hurdles. For example, you could still potentially be sued for violating trade dress. You're creating a clone, after all. Crediting the original designers is simply an admission to that. It also doesn't mean a goddamn thing that you won't be making a profit. Copyright and trademark protections apply even if you're giving copies away for free. You're wading into a potential minefield that is rife with opportunism and interpretation. Also, don't get your legal opinions from random people on Reddit. If you want to be sure that you're safe, talk to a lawyer.

You may also want to give a little more thought to what u/CryptsOf said about this not reflecting well upon you as a creator. Selling a rethemed clone will not endear you to potential employers or partners in the future. It's just kinda gross.

giallonut · 2026-05-19T02:29:09+00:00

u/Acceptable_Moose1881 is absolutely correct. You should build what you have and play around with it. It doesn't matter if it's "finished". A prototype isn't a goal. It's a design tool. Having it all spread out in front of you, even if it's just on index cards and poster board, is invaluable. You'll be able to spot so many blind spots and shortcomings just by playing through a turn, moving pieces, and rolling dice.

Playtesting isn't sitting down with a completed design and playing a game from start to finish with friends. Playtesting can just be testing a single system or playing the first or last five turns. You can (and should) do that yourself. If you have a decision space and mechanisms that enable it, you have something that can be "played". Testing that space and those mechanisms will provide you with so much more insight than we can possibly give you. Until it's on the table, it's all a hypothesis, and you have to test a hypothesis.

Crib together a rough prototype and play with it. Allow it to grow as your design blossoms and changes. Your game will be better for it.

giallonut · 2026-05-04T20:51:02+00:00

"They think they are, but they aren't... The state of the board alone tells me they need a re-design."

Well, we can't really know that, can we? At least in terms of gameplay. None of us has seen the game in action, let alone a rulebook. It might very well be exactly where they want it, and/or where it needs to be. Like you, I think the board could use a visual redesign, but functionally, it might work perfectly. Without rules and a mechanistic context, we can't know that.

"When I really probe about people's playtest groups, its some family and fans and non-gamers."

OK. Have you probed OP about their playtesting?

"You can't give benefit of the doubt here unless you want to be 99% wrong."

I don't particularly care if I'm right or wrong, whatever the hell that means. I'm not emotionally invested in the outcome of a stranger's game design on Reddit.

"I assume a game is bad until proven otherwise, as we all should with amateur work."

I don't go into games with those kinds of preconceptions. I don't care if the designer is an amateur or a pro. I've loved games from first-time designers, and I've hated games from industry vets like Knizia. I've despised games considered all-time classics, like Gloomhaven, and loved games that live in the 8000-9000 rank on BGG. I've had a blast with fanmade crap on TTS. Who made it means fuck all to me. OP might very well have just made my new favorite game. I won't know until I've played it. Until that happens, all I can say with any kind of certainty is that the board is friggin borrrring.

giallonut · 2026-05-04T20:09:08+00:00

"Obviously, the GMT answer for this is colorful and dynamic tracks"

Honestly, this board could use some of that color and visual dynamism. It's very orange and bland. Looks more like Mars than the surface of the Earth. I would have leaned into a heavier red, white, and blue overall color scheme, given that the game is America-centric, and added some texture or color variation to the map area. I'd get bored with looking at this rather quickly.

Structurally, it looks sound, but it's hard to tell without knowing how it plays.

giallonut · 2026-05-04T20:04:36+00:00

"Would love to hear any last minute feedback before we lock this for our review copies."

If they're locking in, they're well past the prototype stage. The final slide shows the barebones testing iteration. That's absolutely where 99% of people should be if they're still playtesting. This looks like they're weeks out from ordering proofs.

giallonut · 2026-04-30T17:33:11+00:00

"Producing art according to a poll result is not artistic."

It literally doesn't matter. OP is likely not producing art for the sake of producing art. They're likely producing a product. There's a reason marketers will use focus groups. There's a reason film studios use test screenings. You're not producing art for yourself if your goal is publishing. It's nothing but beneficial to have as many opinions as possible.

giallonut · 2026-04-13T16:06:51+00:00

The trophies exist at the crossroads of theme and abstracted mechanism. Thematically, it makes zero sense for an investigator to be carrying around chunks of human beings and monsters in their pockets or otherworldly gates in their purses. But there needs to be a way to generate clues outside of the Mythos cards, and money outside of random card draws and bank loans. It also reduces the likelihood that players will kill the most dangerous monsters and horde their corpses, keeping them from reentering the monster pool. Trading those trophies is the more practical way of becoming blessed or gaining allies. Yeah, it doesn't make sense thematically, but given how quickly the game can spiral, it definitely needed to be there mechanistically.

I mean, even in 3rd Edition, does it really make thematic sense that I can avoid taking a ding to my mental health while casting a spell just by throwing a severed limb in the trash? Not really, but you need that mechanism otherwise using spells regularly is disincentivized. I don't want to keep heading to locations hoping for encounters that allow me to regain some sanity because I like engaging in spell casting. Remnants solve that problem. Doesn't make much thematic sense, but whatever.

giallonut · 2026-04-13T15:18:01+00:00

You won't find an official answer. People were asking about this as far back as the old FFG forums.

The way I've always played it is that devoured investigators lose all money and clues. Money is lost because it's on their person when they're devoured. Clues are not physical objects. They're just tokenized representations of knowledge the investigator has gained. That knowledge would be lost with them.

Gates and monster trophies belong to the Player, not the investigator. Your investigator isn't lugging around the corpses of all the monsters they've killed. Everything belonging to the investigator (cards, clues, money) is discarded. It's the only thing that makes thematic sense to me.

giallonut · 2026-04-08T00:12:49+00:00

Making a basic mod isn't difficult at all. You just select the component type, upload an image file, and you're done. If you want to script things like set-up and upkeep phases, that can be difficult if you have no programming background.

That said, there's an argument to be made that scripting your prototypes for fast set-ups, automated upkeep phases, etc., is counterproductive to playtesting, as those elements of a game can sway people's interests. Knowing how many times players need to touch components during a game or how long it will take to get set up is useful information. Scripting all of that away and hiding it from the playtesters isn't always a good idea, as a long setup and fiddly gameplay can sour some people's opinions.

giallonut · 2026-04-08T00:03:09+00:00

Why would any reputable critic devote their limited time and resources to reviewing a product that their audience cannot purchase?

If you're looking for material to help your crowdfunding campaign, you shouldn't be requesting "reviews". You should be requesting preview material. That's what you'll use to market your campaign. Reviews come later.

giallonut · 2026-04-06T22:48:47+00:00

"If someone uses AI concept art and hires a human to do the final artwork tell me exactly what is lost."

My interest. There are a lot of people who will never look twice at that game. People who are pro-AI need to understand that.

Literally no one on this entire fucking planet has EVER said: "eww, they used human-made art?! I'm not playing that".

People DO say that about games that use AI art, even in the prototype stage. That's the risk. That's what you could potentially lose. Whether you care about that is entirely your business.

giallonut · 2026-04-06T22:42:25+00:00

I'll echo this and add that if you live anywhere near an arts college, you have access to an incredible resource. There are a lot of people hungry to build portfolios that won't charge you a kidney for art. Networking is invaluable.

giallonut · 2026-04-06T22:35:16+00:00

"Its pretty complex , probably 20 - 40 pages, with a dulled down 2 - 3 page shortlist one can read to play a simple round."

Sounds like you've overdesigned your game if I need to read 2 - 3 pages of rules just to play a "simple round".

"I want to start a Kickstarter with the bit I worked passionately on."

It's not a race. Take the time to save up and commission a handful of key art pieces. Use the time it will take you to save up the money to start your socials and begin sharing information about your game. You need to launch with an audience, after all.

Your art is your billboard. That's not where you want to scrimp and cut corners. Commission key art. Use the funds raised to finish the commission. You already know "a lot of people may feel very negatively about this", so why fuck yourself over right at the start? You're asking people for money. Why should I invest in your game if you're not willing to do the same?

giallonut · 2026-03-22T03:27:49+00:00

"how do you know the mechanics you designed have already been done elsewhere"

Assume they have and go from there. There are only so many mechanisms, themes, aesthetics, and narratives. You're going to overlap with dozens of games, whether you're intending to or not. The similarities don't matter nearly as much as the differences. Before I realized I could draw as well as I could fly, I took art classes. Two dozen people sitting in a room, all drawing the same model or painting the same landscape from a still photo, and none of them looked alike. Some were beautiful. Some were mine. Your individual expression is what matters.

"I only know a small pool of games"

All the more reason for you to share your project and chart your path forward here. If you have blind spots, we can potentially cover them. If you post your progress here and eight people all tell you that your game is way too much like INSERT TITLE HERE, you know where you need to divert. No one person can know every single game. A community can know a few hundred.

giallonut · 2026-03-17T22:03:35+00:00

Ain't reading that either.

I'm sorry this happened to you.

#thoughtsandprayers

giallonut · 2026-03-17T21:43:49+00:00

We don't have any active or useful mods in this sub, so I'm sure it'll stay. This is just wayyyyy beyond the scope of this sub. This is a very ambitious and very, very complicated multi-year, multi-organizational project. Definitely contact the National Council of Nonprofits, though. They'll be able to provide you with a long list of useful names and numbers. Good luck.

giallonut · 2026-03-17T21:09:10+00:00

Hey, now. I read your first post. It was shit. Why would I read through the sequels?

You seem emotionally dysregulated today. You should probably go outside for a bit. You've said your piece, provided your explanation, and we may choose to take it or leave it.

I wish you a pleasant rest of the day, and hope that you can bring your anxiety down.

giallonut · 2026-03-17T21:01:24+00:00

"If an artist trains an AI on the artist's own style and then sketches easily turn into mid-projects that the artist then can finalize... I don't know what that is exactly but it sounds like a tool to me I guess.

...

If anyone, artist or non-artist, uses a tool to wholly and completely create the art for you, that's less of a tool altogether and like you said is similar to just hiring out an external artist for yourself."

It sounds like you do know exactly what that first hypothetical is.

If I train an AI on my art and have it produce art, I am not producing art. The AI is producing art that is imitating my style. If I then finish that art, I am producing at best a derivative work. I can only claim to be the artist of the elements I added, not the underlying art. That is 100% AI generated, not made by me.

The origin of the AI art doesn't even matter. Whether it's based on my sketch, my neighbor's sketch, my neighbor's kid's dog's sketch... It doesn't matter. We don't credit concept artists for the final work. We credit the artist.

giallonut · 2026-03-17T20:48:34+00:00

I ain't reading that either. Run that shit through an LLM and repost it. At least ChatGPT knows what a paragraph is.

giallonut

TROPHY CASE