Gaming at The Keep
Tuesday January 10, 2006 • Howard Tayler
I've been having a great time lately gaming at Dragon's Keep. This last Friday night we had a role-playing session, and the gamemaster had shamelessly borrowed, stolen, lifted, and plagiarized material from an unknown number of horror-genre works in order to create a really enjoyable campaign. I actually got the creeps a couple of times-- like when I turned on a TV set and saw myself staring back at me, only from a room that was different from the one I was standing in. (When I say "I," I of course mean "my character," but when I role-play I try to get into it. I may munch a little kin when it comes time for combat, but mostly I RPG for immersion.) Yesterday I headed down to the Keep after coloring a week of strips. I needed to get some pencilling done, and getting outside of my box often helps. Well, I ended up pencilling six rows while playing Arkham Horror. This was my first time with the game, and I enjoyed it. I really like games where the players play WITH each other rather than AGAINST each other, and in Arkham Horror the players work together to beat the game board. My only gripe with the game is that just setting up and sorting the different play decks and tokens takes half an hour. Oh, and the rules are so byzantine they're nigh-incomprehensible. Oh, and it takes too long. But other than that? Great game. Three hours in we realized it was time for everyone to go home (closing time at the store, after all), so we checked the next few cards in each deck, rolled a few dice, and determined that we would have had about 2 chances in 3 to win. So Jason, our dealer, rolled a six-sided die. On a 1 or a 2 we "lose." He threw a 6. For me, putting the entire outcome of three hours of game play on a single die roll was thrilling. No, that's not in the rules anywhere, but I suspect that often enough it comes down to that, one way or another.
