Introducing Arkham Mysteries
2025 / 02 / 24
Hello fellow investigators! This is Leah here, one of the designers for the Arkham Horror Roleplaying Game. I’m excited to give you all a bit more information on the upcoming third release for the line—Arkham Mysteries! This supplement follows the release of the starter set in August and the core rulebook in November and offers game masters more stories to tell with their players.
Inside this 96-page hardcover book you’ll find three separate investigations, each written by a different author, that vary in length and complexity. They all tie into the city of Arkham and use locations established in the core rulebook, though we also introduce new locations. In future posts we’ll explain a bit more about each scenario, but for this article I’ll just be going over how we structured the book.
Each adventure—The Ophidian’s Nightmare by Brandon Perdue; One for the Road by Keith Ryan Kappel; and The Thricefold Power by Christopher Hunt—starts off with an investigation brief that outlines the gist of each investigation by summarizing each scene, what’s really going on, and the major antagonists (including the Ancient Ones involved, if there are any!). Generally, when we write investigations we’ll follow the template of having the first scene or two being fixed, the middle scenes being more free form (meaning the players and their characters have leads and options to follow in whatever order they want), and the ending scenes have different outcomes depending on the choices and success/failures of the investigators.
The scenarios all include unique non-player character (NPC) profiles and, when appropriate, suggest profiles that would work for minor NPCs from the core rulebook. You do need the core rulebook to use this book, as the rules aren’t included, and the core has a ton of great background information on the different locations that the scenarios feature like Hibb’s Roadhouse, St. Mary’s Hospital, Miskatonic University, and the Silver Twilight Lodge.
For those of you wondering if there will be any extras like you might have found in the starter set—the answer is yes! Inside the back of the book, you’ll find three fold-out maps that you can use to enhance several of the structured scenes throughout the investigations.
That’s all for now. Oh, and a friendly reminder that shoggoths can look like anything. Happy investigating! –
Leah Hawthorne
Arkham Mysteries is designed to be played with the Arkham Horror RPG – Core Rulebook and will be released on March 28th.
