Of the 49 investigators in the current Arkham Horror Files universe, almost half are women, with five people of colour.
How are board game characters used to make tabletop worlds more interesting places to be? How do developers use these characters to create a rich universe? We look at two series – Fantasy Flight Games’ Arkham Horror Files and Matt Leacock’s Pandemic – to see how they use characters, and why having lots of different people to choose from makes a board gaming a richer, more welcoming place to be.
Fantasy Flight’s Arkham Horror Files universe is a 1920s occult world full of peculiar occurrences and sanity-shaking monsters. The series visits locations from author H.P. Lovecraft’s stories and beyond. Eldritch Horror takes players around the world and allows them to visit locations like the Mountains of Madness; Arkham Horror and its expansions take place in the titular town and surrounding areas (Dunwich, yay!); Elder Signs explores the Miskatonic Library in Arkham; and Mansions of Madness is set in the Vanderbilt Mansion. (Cool fact about this; the mansion is based on the Cornelius Vanderbilt II house, the largest home built in New York. The Vanderbilts were a dynastic family who created and lived in buildings built to a style best described as ‘creepy old house’.)