Arkham Mysteries: The Ophidian’s Nightmare
2025 / 03 / 20
An investigation for Arkham Mysteries written by Brandon Perdue
Greetings, investigators! Leah here again with another teaser for the upcoming supplement for the Arkham Horror roleplaying game—Arkham Mysteries. In this post I’ll be telling you a little bit more about the first featured investigation, The Ophidian’s Nightmare, which was written by Brandon Perdue. And don’t worry, we’ll keep all of the juicy details secret so you can enjoy the investigation without spoilers.
This eight-scene scenario begins with the investigators being called to Miskatonic Museum after-hours to look into an…incident…that has caused some concerns as to whether the museum’s grand opening of its new exhibit, the Natural History of the American Southwest, can still proceed as planned in the morning. Though the museum was closed to the public for the night, several people were still inside working on getting everything ready for the next day when an unfortunate discovery turned the evening on its head. Now it’s up to the investigators to get to the bottom of what’s going on before the sun rises in a handful of hours—and the choices they make in the pursuit of the truth could have disastrous consequences.
We chose to have this adventure take place at the museum because Miskatonic University is so iconic in the Arkham Horror universe, and a location like a museum offered a simple, contained place for an investigation on a timer—when morning comes, it’s over, and that kind of framing can give scenarios a sense of urgency (and I think it definitely does in the case of The Ophidian’s Nightmare). If you’re looking into making your own scenarios and want to try to keep your group focused it can be useful to pick one or two locations and build out your adventure from there. Another example could be an entire investigation that takes place in the Excelsior Hotel in Northside, or in the Arkham Sanatorium.
That’s it for this post, thanks for reading. And remember—not all starfish are friendly, but they are all hungry. Safe investigations!
—Leah Hawthorne
Arkham Mysteries is designed to be played with the Arkham Horror RPG – Core Rulebook and will be released on March 28th.
