Trashdome - Arkham Horror VS Tales Arabian Nights

Arkham Horror is the most ridiculously overrated game in print. It's clunky, slow, and for every awesome game of it you get, you get three that feel like a chore where you just want it to be over.

ToTAN isn't perfect either. Hardly any of your decisions really matter, and doing the stupid or insane thing in any given encounter is just as likely to advance your position as acutally playing to your skills, but the game makes up for it by pretty much forcing you to care about the little story it's trying to tell. Also, it doesn't take an hour to set up.

Vote: ToTAN

Arkham Horror
(Everyone collectively goes, "No shit - The King in Yellow voted for Arkham, who would've thunk?")

I've only played the German edition of TALES, and IRCC the newer version although having an extra 1000 or so paragraphs in the adventure book no longer has the rules for interaction (using your skills against other people) , merchant (different way to win) and the story telling optional rule. I believe TALES can be multiplayer solitaire but I think only when played with the wrong crowd. I also love the comments the TALES hat0rz (my spell checker recognizes this word) make: "I hate this game because I was turned into a monkey".

ARKHAM is a nice game, but I don't like cooperative games and I don't understand how people could pick it over TALES due to lack of decision making, because I think ARKHAM is just as chaotic (which isn't a bad thing). Well, apparently adding all expansion gives the game a real epic feel, but I haven't played it that way. Also, it always seemed more like a slimmed down version of the role-playing game.

Vote: TALES OF THE ARABIAN NIGHT

dragonstout wrote:
Where are these "choices that have more of an effect" in Arkham Horror? Sure, you can choose whether you want to be a monster-fighter or a gate-closer, but in specific story situations you can almost NEVER choose what you want to do.

In Arkham Horror the choices are usually about risk, but there are also a fair number of choices related to resource management and planning... Where to move your skill sliders during every Upkeep phase can be important, at least on some turns. And many of the encounters (certainly way more than "almost never") offer a choice; "You find a weird book... If you choose to read it, make a Lore (-2) check. If you pass, etc." That's a good choice to have to make, based on your current situation, the likelihood of passing that check, and what you stand to gain or lose from it, and the result is clear and thematic. Contrast that with TOTAN, where the results of an encounter can sometimes seem out of character with what action you took and there's little effect your choices or abilities had on that result. There are also different approaches to the whole game in AH; you can go for gate sealings, gate closings or you can bulk up to fight the final battle, which in itself might involve a particular type of gameplan in order to be successful.

There are more risk choices in AH with which monsters to fight and which to evade, and it can be important to figure out which items to trade among your team to make best use of the items' abilities and the characters' abilities. Managing your limited money, sanity, stamina and clues are also important decisions, as well as what to spend your gate and monster trophies on. Also, when is it important to spend a clue token for an extra roll on a skill check, or just say, nah, I'd rather fail the check and keep the clue(s). I'm not saying AH is heavy in active decisions... it isn't, really, and the high level of randomness often squashes your best laid plans. But in that sense, it's also a good exercise in making plans and then adapting to what happens when your plans fall through due to fate. But at least there are a good number of decisions throughout the game. There's really a lot going on in AH and you are a good part of that action.

In TOTAN, you always have a decision every turn as far as what action/reaction to take with every encounter, but a lot of times that's just a guess and the result won't necessarily make a lot of sense based on what action you chose. Sure, it's fun to see what happens and it can create an interesting story and a good experience, but other than that, what choices are there in the game, really? I don't think it comes close to AH as far as active and meaningful choices that have a real impact on what happens.

Well, shit. The vice-like attachment to theme and the characterization and rich narrative that emerge from gameplay are the only ties that I see between these contenders - they're otherwise completely different games.

If narrative is the only point of intersection, I vote Tales of the Arabian Nights because it doesn't end with a retarded dice-off where a handful of piss-pants investigators pistol-whip Shub-Niggaruth back into an alternate plane of existence. Arkham Horror's Final Fantasy-esque I-go-you-go slapfight end-game is lazy and gamey and it kind of puts a damper on the whole thing for me (since it almost always comes down to that.) You know how Arkham Horror should end if the Great Old One breaks into our dimension? Everyone fucking dies.

Schweig! wrote:

...the adventure book no longer has the rules for interaction (using your skills against other people) , merchant (different way to win) and the story telling optional rule.

Au contraire! Z-man has rules for a Character Interaction Variant and a Storytelling Variant (as well as a Solitaire Variant ) posted on their site. I'm curious - what's the Merchant Variant?

Arkham Horror:
Pros: Huge replay value, fun co-op game, decent psuedo-narrative, lots of combat, great theme.
Cons: Long, somewhat complex, takes up a lot of table space.

Tales of the Arabian Nights:
Pros: Strong narrative, beautiful board, great theme.
Cons: Extremely random, multi-player solitaire with almost zero strategy, limited replay.

In this trash dome, Arkham Horror is completely immune to criticism about strategy, because it still has tons more strategy than Arabian Nights, which is basically a narrative randomfest. Take that, you silly bastards.

SleightOfHand12 wrote:

If narrative is the only point of intersection, I vote Tales of the Arabian Nights because it doesn't end it doesn't end with a retarded dice-off where a handful of piss-pants investigators pistol-whip Shub-Niggaruth back into an alternate plane of existence.

Whereas Tales of the Arabian Nights ends by one guy going back to start...yay.

You know how Arkham Horror should end if the Great Old One breaks into our dimension? Everyone fucking dies.

You could very easily house rule that, but the ancient one would lose some of its character, as you wouldn't have to make special preparations for its arrival (e.g. gathering clues before Nyarlathotep shows up).

SleightOfHand12 wrote:

Schweig! wrote:

...the adventure book no longer has the rules for interaction (using your skills against other people) , merchant (different way to win) and the story telling optional rule.TALES OF THE ARABIAN NIGHT

Au contraire! Z-man has rules for a Character Interaction Variant and a Storytelling Variant (as well as a Solitaire Variant ) posted on their site. I'm curious - what's the Merchant Variant?

Good thing they offer these online.

The merchant was allowed a player to be a merchant, who also traveled around the board but didn't adventure and established trade routes instead. I don't remember how exactly it worked, but it did work. If more players were merchants, then they both manipulated some sort of trading matrix which indicated supply and demand. The goal of course was to become stinking rich instead of sultan.

There was also another variant where a player had to complete three quest (through adventuring) instead of becoming sultan to win.

ubarose wrote:

See, when you know the stories, you can make informed choices, and the game is far less random, and far more interesting.

By the way, I'm not voting yet. I need more time to think about it.

So you're saying I have to memorize all of these stories before I can enjoy a strategic game of ToTAN?

vote: Arkham Horror

clockwirk wrote:

So you're saying I have to memorize all of these stories before I can enjoy a strategic game of ToTAN?

vote: Arkham Horror

Prime example for an uninformed choice.

Uba's right....I've read the Burton translation of 1001 Tales, and the game seems much less random.

This is a difficult Trashdome for me -- I love both games. However, Arkham handles its narrative much worse than ToTAN. The cards are really just a poor man's version of the "paragraph book" with less effort in tying them to each other.

Vote: Tales of the Arabian Nights

Space Ghost wrote:

Uba's right....I've read the Burton translation of 1001 Tales, and the game seems much less random.

This is a difficult Trashdome for me -- I love both games. However, Arkham handles its narrative much worse than ToTAN. The cards are really just a poor man's version of the "paragraph book" with less effort in tying them to each other.

Vote: Tales of the Arabian Nights

Good thing Arkham Horror has a lot more to it than the encounter cards. Tales of the Arabian Nights is a paragraph book and not much else.