Version 1.1, September 2026. Written, not yet playtested. The first thing we do is time a baseline scenario; this page changes after that. New in 1.1: the "faster because stronger" block, eight rules taken from M.R. Claxton's 2018 house-rule sheet "Damn Cthulhu to Hell".
Arkham Horror: The Card Game is my favourite thing on the shelf and the slowest. The community says a four-player scenario runs a bit over three hours. Ours run about twelve. Some of that is us: every card read aloud and debated, every skill test a four-way committee, every turn planned by the whole table. Some of it is the game, which scales encounter draws with players but not doom, so the phases that grind at two grind four times harder at four.
So we wrote rules. Pace first, because nothing else matters if the game is twelve hours. Then a few corrections for the four-player-specific imbalances. Then a block that makes the investigators stronger on purpose, because the slowest parts of a scenario are the turns spent setting up, gathering resources and chipping at enemies, and power deletes those. Then the twist: secret compulsions that keep play about seventy percent genuinely cooperative and thirty percent disguised self-interest, without turning it into a traitor game. Every rule had to pass the same test: it removes decision time or bookkeeping, or it fixes something specific to four players; it fits on one reference card; it keeps hands hidden and the campaign playable blind; and it has a named precedent, or it goes in the experimental pile at the bottom. The "stronger" block is the one standing exception to the first test: it eases the game on purpose, and the compensation dial exists to take that back.
What we refused: a full hidden traitor (slows the game further), any rule that makes the group lose on purpose, draw-two-choose-one encounters (the community consensus is that it wrecks balance), and removing the auto-fail token.
Pace rules
- Parallel mythos. The doom keeper places doom and checks the threshold. Then all four encounter cards are dealt face down and flipped together, and each investigator resolves their own at once. Announce only what touches others: enemies spawning elsewhere, "each investigator" effects, doom. Expected saving: half the mythos phase.
- The one-minute turn. Flip a one-minute timer when a turn starts. When it runs out, the investigator declares their remaining actions immediately, with no more table input; anything undeclared becomes "draw a card". Anyone may plan their own upcoming turn aloud while someone else plays. This is the single biggest lever and the one to keep if the group drops everything else.
- Silent commits. The tester states the test and their skill value. Each other investigator at the location may slide one card face down during a "three, two, one" count. No negotiation over what to commit.
- Free turn order. The rules fix no order within the investigation phase. Play in any order, called before the phase starts.
- Table roles, fixed for the campaign. Doom keeper (agenda, act, mythos steps). Bag keeper (draws and calls tokens). Encounter dealer (deals mythos cards, moves hunters, flips a coin on equal paths). Quartermaster (resources, clue supply, calls upkeep). Four people, four jobs, upkeep runs in parallel.
- Session prep. Decks are finalised on ArkhamDB before the session. Opening hands and mulligans happen while the dealer builds the encounter deck and someone reads the intro.
- Take-backs. Any rewind is fine before a chaos token is drawn or new information is revealed. None after.
- Own turn, own plan. Only the active investigator proposes actions for their turn. Others answer direct questions and may say "wait" once per turn to raise one thing. No table-wide planning of someone else's three actions. This is the quarterbacking rule; the timer exists to protect it.
- Rulings on the spot. The doom keeper rules any question immediately, no lookup mid-turn. Disputed rulings go on a sticky note and get checked after the session. A wrong ruling costs less than ten minutes of ArkhamDB.
- Read once. A card is read aloud once by whoever draws it. Nobody re-reads it for the table. Cards that matter later stay face up where everyone can see them.
Four-player corrections
- Ancient Evils, amended. "Place 1 doom on the current agenda. If this advances the agenda, put this card in the victory display." One surprise advance per scenario, never a chain. If that still feels brutal, exile the set.
- Weakness draft. Draw three basic weaknesses, remove one, take one of the remaining two at random. Doomed and its chain are out of the pool.
- Signature in play. Moved to the "faster because stronger" block below: the signature asset starts in play, free.
- Between scenarios. Level-0 for level-0 swaps are free. 5 XP heals one trauma. A killed or insane investigator's replacement uses the standalone XP allotment.
- Second elder sign, retired. Version 1 held a second elder sign as the "we keep losing" dial. Bag memory (below) already gives the elder sign its airtime. If the group still keeps losing, the losing dial is now an easy bag: +1, +1, +1, 0, 0, 0, 0, -1, -1, -1, -2, plus the symbols, the auto-fail and the elder sign.
- Compensation dial. Once the group wins two scenarios in a row, move to a hard chaos bag with standard scenario text, so the compulsion XP and the stronger block don't make the campaign soft. Expect this to trigger early: if the first house-ruled scenario is a walkover, go hard from the second.
Faster because stronger
Eight rules from M.R. Claxton's "Damn Cthulhu to Hell" sheet (2018), a three-mode house variant written for players who want to see every story outcome. We took the rules that remove slow play without adding table debate, and left the ones that do the opposite. They ease the game; that is the point, and the compensation dial above is the counterweight.
- Signature in play. Before opening hands, each investigator's signature asset enters play, free (Roland's .38 Special, Daisy's Tote Bag, Duke). A signature that is not an asset goes into the opening hand instead.
- Fully equipped. Then each investigator searches their deck for up to one asset per empty slot (ally, body, accessory, two hands, two arcane), puts them into play free, and shuffles. Own deck only; a slot with no matching card stays empty. The sheet lets you borrow other classes' cards for this, which would make the deck you built irrelevant. This is the big one: it deletes the two or three setup turns per investigator that open every scenario.
- Opening hand of seven. Draw seven after equipping, mulligan as normal. Hand size stays eight. No shared card pool: it is one more thing for the table to debate, and hidden hands are mandatory for the compulsions.
- Double economy. The draw action draws two. The resource action gains two. Or one action draws one and gains one. Decks stay 30 cards; go to the sheet's 50-card decks only if deck-outs happen most scenarios.
- Rest. Two actions: remove 1 damage or 1 horror from your investigator. Turns "I must retreat and do nothing" into a choice.
- Bag memory. When a resolved chaos token is -1 or worse, a symbol or the auto-fail, the bag keeper sets it aside face up in a row instead of returning it. When a +1, 0 or elder sign is resolved, every set-aside token goes back in. Tokens revealed but not resolved go straight back. Sealed tokens and cards that add or remove tokens work as printed. A bad streak ends itself, the elder sign fires most scenarios instead of once a campaign, and the row is public bag knowledge for anyone deciding how much to commit. In the Carcosa standard bag the elder sign odds climb from 1 in 19 toward 1 in 4 as bad tokens leave.
- Surplus damage. A successful fight deals the printed damage or the test surplus, whichever is higher. A weapon keeps its guaranteed 2; a big commit finishes an enemy in one swing. Not surplus plus weapon bonus, because a Machete then makes every hit lethal and the fight test loses its tension.
- Health and sanity for XP. Between scenarios, 1 XP raises health or sanity by 1, permanently, at most once per scenario.
Left out of the sheet, and why. Ten starting resources (redundant once the slots are filled free; the first dial to turn if setup is still slow). The shared neutral card pool and the hand size of twelve that goes with it (table debate, and hidden hands). Combat tests against every enemy attack (the one sheet rule that slows play: an extra chaos draw and pause per attack; Rest gives the survivability without the draw). Cross-class borrowing for the starting slots.
Compulsions
Each investigator carries a compulsion. Satisfying it pays. Failing it scars. Friends who work out what it is can intervene, which resolves it, imperfectly. The point of the numbers is that announcing your card is strictly bad, so secrets stay secret without anyone having to be told to keep them.
Setup. Deal two compulsion cards after mulligans. Keep one face down, shuffle the other back. The full list of 24 titles is public. Hidden hands are mandatory.
| Outcome | You | Others |
|---|---|---|
| Satisfied, never resolved by the end | +2 XP (Quiet cards) or +3 XP (Loud cards) | nothing |
| Unsatisfied at the end, never resolved | 1 mental trauma | nothing |
| Confessed (your turn, 1 action, name your card) | minus 1 XP, no trauma | nothing |
| Intervened on correctly | minus 1 XP and 1 horror, no trauma, card discarded | intervener +1 XP |
| Intervened on wrongly | nothing; you say only "no" | intervener minus 1 XP, action spent |
Compulsions resolve only if the scenario ended with at least one investigator not defeated; a total loss already carries trauma.
Intervention. An action, once per investigator per scenario, at the same location as the target. Name the investigator and a title from the public list. A correct call resolves the compulsion as in the table and frees the target of the condition for the rest of the scenario. Each investigator can be intervened on at most once. Suspicion may be discussed openly at any time; the accused may bluff, and anyone may act as if they hold a card they do not.
Why the numbers sit where they do. For the compulsive investigator the ranking is success (+2 or +3), then confession (minus 1), then intervention (minus 1 and a horror), then failure (trauma). Announcing your card invites an intervention that turns +2 into minus 1 and hands a friend +1, which is the secrecy incentive. A player who sees they will fail should confess on their own turn rather than fish for an intervention, and confession has no end-of-scenario window on purpose: leaving it late is the push-your-luck decision. For the table, an intervention costs one action, removes the selfish play for the rest of the scenario, and moves XP from target to caller; it does not create any, so the only table-positive path is everyone keeping secrets and succeeding. A wrong call costs the caller 1 XP, so calls happen when someone is confident or when the behaviour hurts enough to gamble.
Loud and Quiet. Compulsions visible in public state (resource pile, assets in play, never committing, never fighting, never being attacked) get caught fast, so they pay +3. Ones hidden in hand size, events played or test margins pay +2. Loud: Hoarder, Collector, Lone wolf, Pacifist, Untouchable, Skinflint. Quiet: everything else. If Loud cards get caught more than half the time after two scenarios, raise them to +4 or cut the catch bonus.
The 24 cards
Greed. Hoarder: end with 8+ resources. Well-read: end with 6+ cards in hand. Collector: end with 4+ non-weakness assets in play, the free signature and starting equipment not counted. Miser: play no card costing 3+. Skinflint: never take the resource action, end with 5+. Lone wolf: commit nothing to others' tests.
Glory. Closer: advance the final act. Vanguard: first into three unrevealed locations. Big game: deal the defeating damage to an enemy with printed health 4+ (redraw if the scenario has none). Spotlight: pass three tests by 4 or more. Cartographer: end farthest by connections from the start. Firebrand: cut if it reads as luck.
Caution. Unscathed: 2 or fewer damage and 2 or fewer horror at the end. Untouchable: take no enemy attacks. Guardian: an ally you have in play by round 3 survives. Pacifist: no fight actions. Bystander: someone else defeats an enemy engaged with you. Second row: never first into a location.
Cover. Looks selfish, helps the group. Clue-hound: 7+ clues personally. Slayer: defeat three enemies. Medic: heal 4+ from others. Sponsor: three times someone commits to your test. Ferryman: end with everyone at your location. Archivist: play 5+ events.
Pace cost. One action per intervention, at most four per scenario, usually fewer. Suspicion talk rides inside the one-minute turn. Silent commits are what let Lone wolf and Sponsor stay hidden.
Open questions for the playtest. Whether minus 1 XP is enough to stop wild guessing at four players, where every target has three potential callers. Whether trauma should become minus 2 XP for groups that hate permanent scars. Whether the same-location requirement makes interventions too rare.
Not in v1
- Split table. Two pairs take investigation turns concurrently when their investigators are at different locations and no enemy is engaged with or adjacent to both; the pairs sync at any act advance, "each investigator" effect or shared location. Could halve the investigation phase, needs a referee. Test only after v1 round times are measured.
- Half draws, harder tests. Two encounter draws per round on a rotating pair, tests at +1 difficulty. Halves enemy density and starves fight-built investigators; parallel mythos gets most of the time back without touching balance.
- Keeper mode. One player plays the Mythos with a hand of encounter cards and doom as currency. A different game, kept for later.
How we test it
Time one baseline scenario: minutes per round, split by phase, total rounds. Then play the next scenario with the pace rules and the stronger block, and time it again. Target: round time from about 25 minutes to 15, scenario under two hours. Add the corrections and the compulsions from the third scenario; a walkover in the second means the hard bag from the third. Track the compulsion completion rate (healthy band 50 to 70 percent) and, after each game, ask whether anyone noticed a disguised play. Turn dials only on the stated triggers.