Now in its eighteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2025 took place on Saturday, June 21st. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.
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Arkham Horror: Comets of Kingsport – A Quickstart Adventure includes everything that a gaming group needs. It explains the rules, provides a full scenario that can be played in a single session or so, and gives a set of six pre-generated Investigators. Apart from copies of the pre-generated Investigators, the only thing it needs is a set of six six-sided per player, plus a lot more for the Keeper and some dice of a different colour. Arkham Horror: Comets of Kingsport – A Quickstart Adventure and Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game use what is called the ‘Dynamic Pool System’. An Investigator is primarily defined by ten skills—Agility, Athletics, Intuition, Knowledge, Lore, Melee Combat, Presence, Ranged Combat, Resolve, and Wits. Of these, Lore is how much an Investigator knows about the occult and how to apply it, if necessary. Skills are rated between two and six. He has a variety of Knacks, special abilities that might grant him extra dice, alter the number of dice rolled, allow special actions, cast spells, rerolls of the dice, and more. There is a wide variety of Knacks, even presented in the six pre-generated Investigators in Arkham Horror: Comets of Kingsport – A Quickstart Adventure.
Lastly, an Investigator has a pool of six-sided dice, typically six. These are used and refreshed from one scene to the next and they represent a combination of an Investigator’s effort and health. In the case of the latter, when an Investigator is injured, he loses dice, limiting his actions until he can rest, heal, and receive medical attention.
When a player wants his Investigator to undertake a Complex action, such as climbing a fence in a chase, shooting cultist in a gunfight, researching a newspaper morgue for clues, or casting a spell, he takes as many dice as he wants from his pool and rolls them, comparing the results with the skill being used. For each die result equal to, or greater than, the value of the skill, a success is scored. In general, only a single success is required to achieve whatever an Investigator wants to do, but more successes are needed to trigger the effects of some Knacks. For example, Silas Marsh has ‘Skilled Shot’ and can throw a harpoon as a ranged combat action, and if his player rolls three successes, the target cannot use a reaction to avoid the attack. (This is in addition to the weapon itself, which inflicts a base of two damage—most weapons inflict one or two points of damage, and if three or more success are rolled on an attack, in Injury is inflicted and extra damage is inflicted per Injury, making it a very deadly weapon.) Complex actions can also be rolled with Advantage or Disadvantage, rolling with one more or one less die in either case.
In addition, an Investigator has a supply of Insight points. These can be spent to add an additional success to a complex action, take a Complex Action with Advantage, to add a narrative element to a scene, or to avoid certain trauma.
Play itself in Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game is handled as a series of scenes, either Narrative or Structured scenes in which Simple and Complex Actions are attempted. Narrative scenes rarely involve peril, and allow an Investigator to undertake Simple Actions without his player needing to roll dice, whereas Structured scenes do involve peril or great difficulty, such as a combat scene or a confrontation with the Mythos, require a player to roll for both Simple and Complex Actions. Although a player only has access to six dice in his pool—or less depending upon trauma and Injury, this pool refreshes from one scene to the next, and in combat, they are refreshed at the start of an Investigator’s turn. In combat, damage is inflicted in two ways. Primarily by reducing a defendant’s dice pool, limiting his capacity to act, wounding him if the dice pool is reduced to zero, after which he can strain himself to restore his dice pool to full at the cost of suffering an Injury. The other way is by a weapon specifically inflicting an Injury. Injuries are determined by rolling on the Injury Table. These are rolled on a single die, to which are added the number of injuries already suffered. Since the Injury roll is made on a single die, it takes a lot of injuries—at least five—before someone can be killed straight off. There is no little grievous Injury in the meantime, but it is difficult to kill a defendant and certainly an Investigator.
The way of handling Horror Damage or exposure to the cosmic truths of the universe is more interesting, though similar to that used for injuries. When an Investigator suffers Horror Damage—whether from a spell cast at him, seeing a creature of the Mythos, or reading a horrific tome—his player replaces a number of dice in his dice pool with Horror Dice equal to the Horror Damage suffered. Horror Dice work exactly like normal dice in a player’s dice pool and can be lost if an Investigator suffers damage. However, should a player roll a one on any single Horror Die, his Investigator gains a Trauma. The rolls a single die and consults the Trauma Table, adding one for each one rolled on the Horror Dice. Where an Investigator is physically resilient, the same cannot be said mentally. It is a lot easier in comparison to get Horror Dice, roll ones, and suffer Trauma and since there are fewer results on the Trauma Table, for an Investigator to be ‘Lost Forever’.
Horror Dice can be healed from one round to the next, as well as by certain Knacks and spells, replacing them with standard dice. This is an action though and in a Structured Scene, the Investigators might not have the opportunity. Whereas injuries can be healed though, traumas cannot, although they can recede over time. The combination of Horror Dice and Trauma is intriguing as a means of handling the escalating danger of being exposed to cosmic threat, but it does feel undercut by the ability to heal Horror Dice within a scene.
In terms of pre-generated Investigators, Arkham Horror: Comets of Kingsport – A Quickstart Adventure gives six. They include a clever and helpful postal woman; strong sailor armed with a harpoon; a student with first aid skills and good at improvising weapons; a librarian who can cast spells and draw upon the horrors she has seen to gain Horror Dice and bonus dice to a roll; a prepared researcher who is good with people; and a professor who can choose to suffer an Injury or Horror Dice and who is also a skilled shot. All also have a section of equipment and besides a short background, there is also an explanation of the basic rules and the use of Insight on the back. All of the Investigators have travelled to Kingsport, some of them from Arkham’s Miskatonic University, to conduct an anthropological survey in the New England port. Players with a bit of history with roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror will appreciate that the professor in the included Investigators is none other than Harvey Walters, who appeared as the sample Investigator for the first time all the way back in the first edition of Call of Cthulhu.
The included scenario in Arkham Horror: Comets of Kingsport – A Quickstart Adventure opens with the Investigators visiting the Hall School in Kingsport to examine its rare book collection. Both the school secretary and the headmaster are welcoming, but they are concerned about a member of staff, Cecil Blackburn, who has been behaving oddly, even erratically. When they encounter him, he is found in a bath of salt water, weirdly mishappen, and rage-fuelled! The question is, what has happened to him? The plot and clues link to other citizens of Kingsport acting strangely and ultimately to somewhere otherworldly and further confrontation with something even stranger. It is a solid mix of investigation and interaction leavened with some action, decently presented and written. The primary difficulty with the scenario is the need to make slight adjustments to the plot links with fewer players and Investigators.
Physically, Arkham Horror: Comets of Kingsport – A Quickstart Adventure is decently presented and written. The artwork is disappointingly restricted to just the front cover and the Investigator illustrations, but still very good. A map or two might have been useful, whether of Kingsport or the scene of the scenario’s climax, and it does feel odd that the scenario is presented before the rules are explained.
Arkham Horror: Comets of Kingsport – A Quickstart Adventure provides everything that a group will need to try out Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game. It is accessible and comes with a decent investigative and interactive scenario that has a certain weirdness to it. The rules are clearly explained and easy to grasp with a good explanation of the ‘Dynamic Pool System’ on the back of each Investigator sheet, making them also easily accessible. The ‘Dynamic Pool System’ itself lies at the lighter and Pulpier end of the Lovecraftian investigative horror spectrum, both mechanically and thematically. The Investigators are tougher and even augmented in comparison to other roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror spectrum and because of this, the likelihood is that Arkham Horror: Comets of Kingsport – A Quickstart Adventure is going to divide its intended audience very much along the Purist-Pulp faultline.
