Arkham Horror: The Grudunza Horror (Part 1: The GOOs)

I've got me a bad case of monkey mind, so one of the things I do to give those monkeys some busy work is to have them create some variant content for games that I like; games that have a system that particularly seems to welcome new content (whether they need it or not).  Some of the games the monkeys have created new things for include BSG, Last Night on Earth, Space Hulk: Death Angel, Defenders of the Realm, Forbidden Island and Pandemic.  But when there's a game that is as adaptable as Arkham Horror, and a free software program (Strange Eons) that allows you to easily create custom content for it, then of course that's what the monkeys are going to spend more of their time working on.

I've already shared the Streets of Arkham and X-Files variants here, but I realized that although I've shared these other AH variants at TOS and on the FFG forums, I haven't posted them here for my fellow F:ATties. So for whatever it's worth, even though there's already way more than enough published and variant AH content as it is, here's some more...

Included are some new characters, new GOOs, a herald and guardian or two, a new type of thing that is sort of an ally/guardian/investigator, and a few other miscellaneous things.  Some of these things have been playtested and seem to work well enough, but not necessarily everything has been tried yet, so print-and-play at your own risk.  I'll provide a little bit of director's commentary on everything as I go...

The nice thing about a lot of the custom AH stuff is that it can be very easily integrated into the game...  Most things are just a piece of paper.  For example, you can print out a custom GOO and lay it on the table and it'll look comparable to the published stuff and the doom tokens fit just fine on it and all that.  I've tried out a lot of custom stuff in AH games and though once in a while something seems unbalanced or unfinished in terms of the mechanics, usually it works fine and you don't feel like you're playing some "home made" kind of thing.  Whereas, with some custom content for other games, no matter how good it might seem in theory, you might never actually use it because it involves printing out a bunch of cards or tokens or whatever, and that seems like more of a pain than it's worth when you don't even know if it's really worth playing.  But by and large, most of what I'll be sharing here involves things that if you print them out with halfway decent quality, the difference to the published components will be negligible.

First up... Release the GOOs!

Juk-Shabb: This was designed particularly to create a shorter game.  Some of my favorite games of AH have been epic games that took several hours, so I'm not trying to shorten the game in general, by any means, but I thought it might be useful to have a GOO (other than Yig) that is meant for the purpose of moving things along faster or playing when you've got a time crunch.

Full size: http://i746.photobucket.com/albums/xx107/Grudunza/Miscellaneous/Juk-Shabb-Front-Face.jpg

F'non'F: This was created after a game where I kept forgetting to apply modifiers from Environment cards.  I don't know about y'all, but I do that, or forget to do that, all the time. I also forget sometimes to apply Skill and Ally bonuses to skill checks and to check for monsters with matching dimensional symbols when I close a gate.  So this is kind of aimed at the forgetful player (me), to minimize some of the clutter of things you need to keep track of when you play.  Again, I love the game exactly as it is, and I wouldn't want to remove Environments or Skills or Allies from the game in general, but for one GOO I thought it might be an interesting diversion.

Full size: http://i746.photobucket.com/albums/xx107/Grudunza/Miscellaneous/FnonF-Front-Face.jpg

Lmbaa and Sros: These are meant to give Corruption a bigger role in the game. 

Full size: http://i746.photobucket.com/albums/xx107/Grudunza/Miscellaneous/Lmbaa-Front-Face.jpg

Full-size: http://i746.photobucket.com/albums/xx107/Grudunza/Miscellaneous/Soros-Front-Face.jpg

Mogrozh, Vlthu'hmor, Kzaaj Hxra: Some more GOOs. You'll need to use some kind of cubes or chips or tokens or whatever for Kzaaj Hxra's "slime tokens".

Full-size: http://i746.photobucket.com/albums/xx107/Grudunza/Miscellaneous/Mogrozh-Front-Face.jpg

Full-size: http://i746.photobucket.com/albums/xx107/Grudunza/Arkham Horror Outskirts Expansion/Vlthuhmor-Front-Face.jpg

Full-size: http://i746.photobucket.com/albums/xx107/Grudunza/Arkham Horror Outskirts Expansion/Kzaaj-Hxra-Front-Face.jpg

Zoidberg:No comment.

Full-size: http://i746.photobucket.com/albums/xx107/Grudunza/Miscellaneous/Zoidberg_GOO.jpg