<strong>Clues:</strong><br/><br/>Clues can be found all over Arkham.  They can be spent to various useful effects, most notably in sealing gates.  Additionally, clues can be used to add dice to any roll, to help you get through those difficult times.<br/><br/><br/><strong>Monsters:</strong><br/><br/>(http://i440.photobucket.com/albums/qq125/1460311/Cultist.png?t=1260974617)<br/><br/>Monsters can be tricky little buggers, to be sure, but their stats aren't particularly difficult to read.  The number in the top right corner of the left side of the monster frame is the monster's<em>awareness</em>, how good the monster is at spotting investigators who try and sneak away.  Our cultist here is very aware, and will be hard to sneak from.<br/><br/>The right side of the frame has the real meat of the monster's stats.  The top of the frame is generally flavor text, but also describes any special abilities of the monster.  Italic text is non gameplay related.  At the bottom left is the monster's sanity damage, reflecting how disturbing the monster is.  When you first fight a monster, you must make a will check modified by the sanity damage modifier, or take a number of points of sanity damage equal to the number of blue circles if you fail.  In the middle bottom is the monster's toughness, which is how many successes you need to score to kill the monster.  Finally, the bottom right is the monster's stamina damage, which has the modifier on your combat check, and how much stamina you lose if you fail.<br/><br/>The color of a monster's frame indicates how the monster moves.  The monster frames include:<br/><br/>Black: Normal.    Blue: Flyer; takes to the skies and swoops down on investigators tarrying in the streets.  Red: Fast; moves twice as quickly as normal.   Green: Special; uses specific rules indicated on the monster card.  Purple: Stalker; always takes the shortest path to the investigators.<br/><br/>Monsters can also have special abilities.  The common ones include:<br/><br/><strong>Physical Resistance:</strong>Physical weapons have half effect.  (round down)<strong>Magical Resistance: </strong>Magical weapons and spells have half effect.  (round down)<strong>Physical Immunity:</strong>Physical weapons are useless!<strong>Magical Immunity:</strong>Magical weapons and spells are useless!<strong>Nightmarish X:</strong>Even if you succeed on a horror check against the creature, you take sanity damage equal to X.<strong>Overwhelming X:</strong>Even if you succeed on a combat check against the creature, you take stamina damage equal to X.<strong>Ambush:</strong>Retreat from the monster is impossible, once you have engaged.<strong>Elusive:</strong>The monster tries to avoid combat rather than engage in it.<br/><br/><br/><strong>Combat and Evasion:</strong>When you end your movement in the same location as a monster, a monster moves into you, or you attempt to move away from a monster, you must either evade or attack the monster.  To evade a monster, make a sneak check modified by the monster's awareness.  If you succeed, you get past the monster without incident.  If you fail, you take damage as if you failed a combat check against the monster and must fight it.<br/><br/>When combat begins with a monster, you must make a horror check.  Roll your will modified by the monster's sanity damage modifier.  If you succeed, the monster does not drive you mad.  If you fail, you take sanity damage equal to the number of blue circles on the monster's sheet.  If you are still sane after making the horror check, you may make a combat check modified by the monster's combat modifier.  If you get a number of successes equal to the monster's toughness, you defeat the monster.  If you don't defeat the monster, you take damage equal to the number of hearts on the monster's sheet.  If you are still concious, you may attempt to evade the monster or fight it again.  Evading a monster after engaging it in combat works just like evading the monster initially.  After the initial round of combat, you no longer need to make horror checks for the rest of combat.<br/><br/><br/><strong>The Character Sheet:</strong><br/><br/>Name: Mr. N<br/>Occupation: Man of Mystery<br/><br/>Stamina: 6/6<strong>&lt;----Stamina measures your resistance to injury.  Losing fights against monsters and mishaps during investigation are the main way of losing stamina.  If your stamina falls to 0, it's off to the hospital with you.  If you're in another world when that happens, you'll be lost in time and space  </strong><br/><br/>Sanity: 6/6<strong>&lt;----Sanity represents how good your character is at coping with the horror creeping across the city.  Witnessing betentacled monsters attacking, scary ass things, and casting spells are the main ways you lose sanity.  At sanity 0, you're shipped off to Arkham Asylum to cool your brains a bit.</strong><br/><br/>Focus: 2<strong>&lt;---Your stats are a series of linked values, each one linked with the one above it.  So, if you want one stat to be at a certain value, you have to accept the value of the stat above or below it.   At the start of the game, you can set your stats at any level.  Later on, you can only move your stat choices a total number of moves to the right or left equal to your focus each turn.  So if your character was surrounded by monsters and you wanted to be good at sneaking to evade them, at the start of your turn you could move your speed/sneak stat two levels to the left, to increase your sneak from 1 to 3, because your focus is two.  If your focus was higher, you could adjust your stats more.  A focus of 2 is pretty good.</strong><br/><br/>Speed    1  2  3<strong>4</strong><strong>&lt;---Speed is used primarily for moving around Arkham, and sometimes escaping traps.</strong><br/>Sneak    4  3  2<strong>1</strong><strong>&lt;---Sneak is used for evading monsters without a fight, and general purpose criminal activity.</strong><br/><br/>Fight    1  2<strong>3 </strong>4<strong>&lt;---Fight is used to beat up monsters, and can be used to close gates to other worlds.</strong><br/>Will      4  3<strong>2</strong>1<strong>&lt;---Will is used to not go crazy when beating up monsters, and also to convince people of things.</strong><br/><br/>Lore    1  2  3<strong>4</strong><strong>&lt;---Lore is used to cast spells, and also to close gates to other worlds. </strong><br/>Luck    4  3  2<strong>1</strong><strong>&lt;---Luck is used to get better results from random encounters.</strong><br/><br/><br/>Unique Abilities:<br/><br/><br/>Posessions: $3, 3 clues<strong>&lt;--- Clues are needed to seal gates permanently, and also to reroll dice when you're not satisfied with your roll.  </strong><br/>Rifle: +5 to combat checks, two handed physical weapon<strong>&lt;--- Weapons provide a bonus to defeating monsters, and usually require either one or two hands.  You may only use two hands worth of weapons.  Weapons can be either physical or magical, some creatures are resistant or immune to weapons of the wrong type.</strong><br/>Ancient Spear: +4 to combat checks, two handed physical weapon, can exhaust to change to a magical weapon till end of combat.<strong>&lt;--- Some items can be exhausted to give them a special power.  An exhausted item can't be used again until the next upkeep phase.  Weapons only take up your hands when they're providing you with a bonus, so exhausted weapons don't use hand slots.</strong><br/><br/><strong>Spells have two main components; a casting modifier and a sanity cost.  To cast a spell, you must pay the sanity cost, then roll a lore check with the casting modifier added.-----&gt;</strong>Spell: Dread Curse of Azathoth: Casting Modifier -2, Sanity Cost 2; Cast to gain +9 bonus to combat checks till end of combat, 2 handed.<br/><br/>Skill: Fight: +1 Fight<strong>&lt;-----Skills usually boost your stats, and provide some kind of secondary perk.</strong><br/><br/><br/><br/><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 12pt;"><strong>House Rules:</strong></span><br/><br/><br/><strong>Connected Worlds:</strong>An investigator moving from the second area of the Dreamlands may choose instead to move to the first area of the Underworld or the Plateau of Leng.  An investigator moving from the second area of the Underworld may instead choose to move to the first area of the Abyss.  An investigator moving from the first area of the Plateau of Leng may instead choose to move to the first area of Unknown Kadith.  An investigator moving from the second area of Unknown Kadith may instead choose to move to the first area of the Dreamlands.  An investigator moving from the second area of another dimension may instead choose to move to the first area of a random other world.<br/><br/>Summary:<br/>Underworld --> Abyss<br/>/<br/>Dreamlands <                                            Another Dimension --> Random other dimension<br/>\<br/>Plateau of Leng --> Unknown Kadith --> Dreamlands Again<br/><br/><br/><strong>Death Penalty:</strong>When knocked unconcious, an investigator must either lose half of her money (round down), half of her items, and half of her allies or suffer an injury.<br/><br/><strong>Insanity Penalty:</strong>When driven insane, an investigator must either lose half of her clue tokens (round down),  half of her skills and half of her spells, or suffer madness.<br/><br/><strong>Attacking other investigators:</strong>An investigator that ends his movement at the position of another investigator may attack that investigator by spending 3 sanity, the attack occurs even if this would drive the investigator insane; the investigator with the highest sneak skill attacks first, rolling off on a tie.  The first investigator rolls a combat check and the other investigator takes that much stamina damage.  If the other investigator survives, he rolls a combat check and inflicts stamina damage as well.  Either investigator can decline to keep attacking or attack in the first place.  After another investigator's stamina is reduced to 0, any investigator in the location can permanently reduce his sanity by 1 to cause that investigator to become devoured.  If another investigator is devoured this way, the investigator who reduced his sanity must make a sneak (-2) check.  If unsuccessful, raise the terror level by 1 and the investigator is arrested.  This sneak check fails automatically if the investigator was driven insane.<br/><br/><strong>Fickle Guardians:</strong>When a being other than Bast agrees to become a Guardian, it remains in play until a Great Old One awakens, at which point it leaves humanity to its fate after rendering any assistance in the final battle described on the herald card.  Battles in other worlds do not count as awakenings for this purpose, unless the great old one fought is Nyarlathotep and the investigator fighting him loses.  There may never be more guardians than investigators minus two.  In the event the limit on guardians is reached, the guardian who joined the investigators first retires as guardian.<br/><br/><strong>Harming other investigators:</strong>An investigator that intentionally causes another investigator to be lost in time and space, or otherwise inflicts major harm on the investigator, loses 2 sanity.<br/><br/><strong>Suicide:</strong>During upkeep, an investigator may commit suicide.  The investigator is devoured, and if another investigator immediately replaces the investigator, every investigator in Arkham loses 1 sanity.  An investigator with an unexhausted firearm (any item with "rifle" "gun" or a caliber in the name) may commit suicide at any time, rather than just at upkeep.<br/><br/>Small Gates: An investigator at the same location as an open gate during the Arkham Encounter phase may choose whether to move through the gate or have an encounter at the location.  When a gate is closed, any monsters at the same location are taken by the investigator at that location as trophies.<br/><br/><strong>Campaign Rule:</strong>After the end of each scenario, the investigators are moved back to their home locations, all gate seals are removed, the terror track is reduced by 1, any monsters are relocated to the nearest open gate, and a clue token is placed on every unstable location. All investigators recover to full sanity and stamina.  Investigators then discard all injury, madness, and corruption cards, and begin preparing for the next scenario.<br/><br/>Investigators may keep $34 worth of assets on their character between scenarios, increasing by $3 for every scenario they have survived.  A character may take things with a negative value between scenarios, and may always use inherent cash to get fixed or random posessions.  Between scenarios, a character may adjust its stats, subtracting one from all levels of one stat line to add one to all levels of another stat line.  This may not be done if it causes more than one stop on the focus track to read 0.<br/><br/>After discarding down to the value of assets they can take between scenarios, investigators may spend $5 of assets to close an open gate or lower the terror level by 1.<br/><br/>Cash Value of assets:<br/><br/>Common Item: Printed Value -$1 ($3 for random item )<br/>Unique Item: Printed Value +$2  ($5 for random item)<br/>Skill: $8<br/>Spell: $4<br/>Gate Trophy: $5<br/>Monster Trophy: $1 per toughness<br/>Blessing: $4<br/>Ally: $9<br/>Deputy of Arkham: $6<br/>Captain of the White Ship: $12<br/>Changed: $10<br/>Great Seal: $5<br/>Beloved of Bast: $8<br/>Retainer: $5<br/>Gang Membership: $2<br/>Silver Twilight Lodge Membership: $2<br/>Rail Pass: $2<br/>Cult Membership: $1<br/>Clue Token: $2 each<br/>Kept Injury or Madness: -$5<br/>Kept Curse: -$4 (may not be possible to keep curse)<br/>Kept Corruption: -$2<br/>Bank Loan: -$10<br/>Cash: Value of cash<br/><br/><br/><strong>The Outskirts:</strong>Investigators may travel to the outskirts by using a special encounter in the woods, jumping off the train while riding it to another city, or exhausting the patrol car.  Once in the outskirts, they may fight monsters in the outskirts by moving to the outskirts location, and have special encounters at the outskirts locations.<br/><br/>Old House           Abandoned Church<br/>\                /<br/>\             /<br/>Railroad Tracks <----- Outskirts ----> Copse<br/>/             \<br/>/                 \<br/>Army Barracks     Redman's Swamp<br/><br/>Outskirts, Abandoned Church (2 moves outside Arkham): Discard 15 toughness worth of monster trophies, 10 toughness worth of monster trophies and one gate trophy, or 5 toughness worth of monster trophies and 1 gate trophy to remove 1 doom token from the ancient one's doom track.<br/><br/>Outskirts, Army Barracks (2 moves outside Arkham): Discard 5 toughness worth of monster trophies or 1 gate trophy to make a Lore +0 check.  If successful, either add 3 clue tokens to the feds raid innsmouth track, or roll two dice for every monster in the outskirts and one of Arkham, Dunwitch, Kingsport, or Innsmouth.  Each monster that both dice show a higher result than the toughness of is returned to the cup.<br/><br/>Outskirts, Copse (2 moves outside Arkham): You may either: Travel through the dark part of the woods: Make a will +0 check or lose 1 sanity from the spooky surroundings.  Observe the cult of the thousand:Make a sneak +0 check,  on a success, draw 1 spell or gain 2 clue tokens.  On a failure, you are cursed.<br/><br/>Outskirts, Old House (2 moves outside Arkham): Become delayed and make a luck +0 check to discard an injury or madness.<br/><br/>Outskirts, Railroad Tracks (2 moves outside Arkham): To move to or from here by rail, make a speed +0 check.  On a success, if departing, you may move to any depot and have an encounter (if applicable), on a failure, lose 1 stamina.<br/><br/>Outskirts, Redman's Swamp (2 moves outside Arkham): Make a fight +0 check.  On a success, move from Redman's Swamp to any aquatic location, on a failure, lose 2 stamina.