A Look Inside the New Dynamic ‘Arkham Horror RPG’ from Edge Studio
Edge Studio revealed some exciting new details about how their upcoming Arkham Horror RPG. Get ready to roll a bunch of d6s.
Edge Studios’ work might be familiar from the most recent Star Wars role-playing games, such as Edge of Empire and Age of Rebellion. If you’ve played one of their games, you might think, “Oh,d I’m going to need a bunch of custom dice and have to figure out how to roll them.”
And while I would never say never, because, with strange aeons, even new RPG engines may die, it does look like the Arkham Horror RPG is going to introduce a new mechanic/engine, the Dice Pool System or DPS.
On their blog, Edge Studios gave a preview of how the DPS works. Though as the name implies, it involves handfuls of dice.
Arkham Horror RPG’s Dice Pool System
From Edge Studios’ blog:
DPS stands for Dynamic Pool System, the brand-new game mechanics invented to bring you into the heart of the action, mystery, and terror of Arkham Horror.
The dice in the Dynamic Pool System are standard, six-sided numeric dice. There’s nothing fancy about them, but they are easily available. And that’s good, because you’re going to need quite a few of them! (Lucky for you, we’ve included no fewer than 24 dice in our Starter Set, which should take care of all your dice needs!)
Those dice will form a character’s “dynamic pool,” which acts like a resource they can spend to do different things. Edge’s examples include running, climbing, studying ancient tomes, and shooting eldritch abominations.
Edge Studios hinted that while rolling the dice will happen, sometimes it will be enough to just spend a die from your pool, saying it might be “enough to do something.” The pool is expected to empty and refill quickly, hence the dynamic part of it:
But what will your character spend their dice to do? It might be minor but useful actions, such as moving from one place to another or picking up an object from the floor. But the most important activities your character performs will be done using their skills. A character has an array of skills, ranked from 2+ (an amazingly talented person) to 6+ (unusually bad at this skill). Of course, if your character is not very good at using a skill, they have the option to roll multiple dice from their pool. Generally, all they need is one successful result in order to succeed on their task. So the more dice they dedicate, the greater your character’s chances of success.
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Your dynamic pool will also fluctuate in size. Things like enemy attacks might decrease your dice pool, but a lasting injury can restore the size of your dice pool. So there’s a resource-balancing trade-off.
Presumably, the mechanics of character-building will help you manipulate your pool. But we’ll have to wait and see what that’s like in a future update.
