Julia said:

Hey Julia,

I think I have to correct you on that.

When I read the rules on Magnifying Glass right, you have to use the additional action right after the first explore action. When you want to explore two adjacent rooms, you have to move after the first explore and this move would be your additional action. And since you allready used your first action for exploring, you can't explore the second room.

Or am I reading the card wrong?

Tromdial said:

::laughter:: thx!

el Igore said:

Nope, you're absolutely right. Sorry, I didn't cross-checked the card before answering.

Sigh. A Mansions-wiki a la Arkhamwiki.com would be great

@Tromdial: sorry, I forgot to answer to one of your points: I still haven't created anything for Mansions of Madness. I honestly don't like the game as much as I like Arkham Horror (it's a good game, but still, too many flaws for my personal taste), and I don't have much free time to start thinking about Mansions custom material as well

Hi there,

although I don't want to hijack this topic and drag it too far away from the OP-question, I have a couple of new questions about what you discuss here.

I am very impressed about a few things: First of all I am happy to know that there are at least some people "around" who play this game more often. Since MoM was released here in Germany as the German version I only had the opportunity to play it for six times in my region (60km / 40mi radius around my place) now. And to my disappointment: although there is a huge Arkham Horrors fan community in my neighbourhood, Mansions of Madness is only very seldomly played by other gamers around. Also you made me curious about this optional rule; I will definitively take a look at it.

Now for the questions:

a) From what I learned during gameplay, I as the Keeper spend a lot of time reading all the different Mythos- and Trauma-Cards during the game session. And it happens quite often that I simply "forget" that I have a "good" or "valid" Mythos card in a given situation, therefore it does not get into play as likely as it should have been. So my question is: Besides simply playing more often and getting used to all the game components, do you also "prepare" more before a given game session? In other words: How do you manage this huge amount of different tools for the Keeper?

b) Reading about your winning scores I really wonder: Isn't this too frustrating for the gamers? How do you manage it that your gamers still like to play the game? Is there some kind of "competition mentality" or something? I hope you don't play and win the game so often, because you have to change friends on a weekly basis. (And I bet that is not the case ...)

At least your discussion so far "opens" my eyes. When friends and I played MoM on last Friday, the gamers were not overly excited by the game; they also believed it was broken in some ways. Also to me it seemed like a more disappointing then a good game-experience. And - especially with reading your comments on your gameplay-style and the win-ratio as the Keeper - I truely draw the conclusion that my Keeper-style is probably too passive, too friendly. Reasons for this are pretty simple: During the first turns I nearly do nothing accept of gathering Threat Tokens and Mythos/ Trauma-Cards, but I let the Investigators do what ever they like. And all of a "sudden", everything explodes right before the end-game, the game becomes hectic. The big flaw in this way of playing the game is that there is no real "threat-feeling" or "insane-story-feeling" about it ... Too bad.
Just as a reminder: Although I believe that the Keeper is bound to play the game in order to win it, I don't see it as my fulfillment to win as often as possible ... But I don't see any reason why not to play it the hard(er) way in order to give the other gamers a challenge and to evolve a dense game-atmosphere ... Maybe my friends would start thinking different of the game as well ...

All the best!

Mad

Hi Maddock,

sorry you don't have many chances to play Mansions because of the lack of players in your area. That's just my opinion, clearly, but I don't think Mansions is a particularly great game. It's good, but it's very long, and the set-up is very long too (and frial: if for any reason - people talking around you, or what else - you put a card in the wrong place, you screw up the whole game) and often we had the idea that the stories have some weak points (I posted some question at this regard about the "Til death do us part" adventure), and this ruins the pleasure of playing the adventures. So, personally, if I had to choose between Mansions and Arkham (or some other games, from Twilight Imperium to Doom), I'd certainly put Mansions down.

As for your interesting questions (it's really cool to exchange impressions on games and not only doing rules lawyeries):

a) being a Keeper, I generally look at the conditions on Mythos / Trauma cards, so I can see immediately which can be played in the coming round and which not.. Then it's kinda easy, and I have a good memory. The thing requiring me the most time is learning how to use properly the Keeper Action Cards. Some of them require some care with the meaning of their wording, so I generally spend the last 5 minutes of the set-up trying to figure out how to play them in different combo. But that's all

b) frustrated players. Clearly, I cannot compete with the 50 victories of Tromdial, but I can tell you of my experience. I believe this strongly depends on the attitude players have in front of the game. In the last game played, the third event card allowed me to spawn a Shoggoth in the chapel. One of my friends started saying "ok, game's lost, what's next? there is no reason to keep on playing". Now, I believe it's really unlikely to beat any Scenario before the third event card is revealed. So this comment could have referred to any Keeper style. This kind of things turn me down *a lot*. Players should live an adventure, and sometimes adventures can be difficult. Other players I play often with, play the opposite: "a Shoggoth? Let's try to see if we can have shogghy steak for dinner", and accept the challenge. As for myself... consider this: I'm a chess player. In the last six years, I played 143 games with my usual chess partner. I won only one game (96 games ago). But I keep on playing. Is this frustrating? Dam(n) it is. But when I win? It's the sweetest thing, because it means I've started playing on a whole new level. This is the way I play boardgames. You beat me hard? Next time I'll try to do my best to improve (that's one of the reasons why, playing Arkham, I started Avi's Advanced League: at the beginning I thought I'd not have been able to beat any of the Scenarios, today I slaughtered the 22nd and I'm two Scenarios away to winning the League

During the last days, I had an interesting discussion with one of my friends (also writing on these forums; it happens we are friends even in the real life), and he said I play Sam Raimi's style, while he's searching for a dramatic crescendo. He has lost more or less all MoM games played so far. So, yeah, probably your gaming style can be too friendly, especially in the beginning. Just try to see which the best experience both for you and your friends is :-) After all,the main goal of every boardgame is having a good time in good company

Dam said:

I respect your passion to win, but from my side I get no pleasure in stomping to the ground a bunch of casuals. I get a pleasure knowing my guests had a fun time playing with me, and all from the flavor, conversation and discussion during the game.

And those modified scenarios with investigators being separated by their objectives.

MyNeighbourTrololo said:

Of course house rules change things, which is just another reason I don't use them if at all possible. IMO the game is already Keeper-favoring RAW.

Those houserules does not all benefit keeper, and they're are more of a making game deeper than making it plain harder.  And some can compensate.

MaddockKrug said:

The game has fallen out quite a bit from when we used to play it, but for many different reasons than Keeper always wins. I've had one person who refuses to play it because he can never win as Keeper and then doesn't like playing as Investigators either. Another reason is myself and others were expecting to get some fresh gameplay with Forbidden Alchemy, especially the new characters. However, because the game fell through so badly, we haven't really played it for months, exempting a few times here or there.

I assume when FA is finally re-released (and hopefully with some PoDs too), Mansions will be again a must-play. Still, I do hope something is done to give Investigators more strength to pull off wins too, down the road, or the Keeper is given a new rule to lessen his ferocity. I assume maybe that is why FA is taking so long to be re-released as well.

Re-release of FA won't bring anything to fresh your gameplay(if it already didn't), it will only fix the mistakes were made.

It is interesting to see how different the game styles can be (the same discussions also apply to arkham). I typically do not play to win and to tell the truth, I could not care less to win or loose (neither as an investigator nor as a keeper). I enjoy much more the story telling aspect, the ambiance and the unexpected entertaining situations it can bring. This is true in general for all games but become especially evident for games of the arkham series, where I am not entertained by the strategic aspects ; though I totally respect those who enjoy them that way, I meant no offence ^^.  In the same line, I usually play rpg without their rules to fully enjoy the "role-playing" aspect without being bothered by boring things that polluate the role-playing spirit.

Anyway, I guess you know about the revised version of MoM by bleached lizzard, but it most likely balance more the game. For those who did not know about it, see there.

warm regards

amikezor said:

Amikezor,

thanks for stepping in and sharing your way of playing :-)

And thanks for the link. I didn't know anything about this revised version. Looks interesting :-)

 I definitely agree if the keeper is an aggressive, competitive, I want to win type of person the game is loaded in his favor. As I have been a a 30 year RPG veteran running games wanting to facilitate a story and not win is my objective, I like to play the keeper to really enhance the telling of the story, not just clobber players. The game really gives you the option of playing a I've got to win them against us or a cooperative play like most RPG games. The psychology of I will always win usually leads to loss of players, unless they're a bunch of masochists who joined one sadistic keeper.

and because I use mansions of madness in a campaign each adventure linked to the next with character development and subplots, the investigators losing every time would destroy the campaign. But to make the story exciting the investigators usually complete the case by the skin of their teeth, I like to bring them to the edge of sanity and health, having them desperately flee the mansionusually within an conscious are half crazed investigator thrown over their backs in hopes of saving their very lives but with enough success in solving the mystery to move on to the next case. Sometimes investigators have to spend some time in a sanitarium or a hospital, forcing the player to use a stand-in investigator ( never as powerfull as their player characters) for the next case. As the keeper there are times that you need to sternly deal some chastisement to foolish investigators. but punishing them with losing their life or going completely bonkers, would be shortsighted for any kind of keeper that would want the same players to return to their gaming table again and again.

As with all humanity some people have not evolved past I've got to win at the cost of all others

I like mansions of Madness as it tests the mettle of a good keeper

Julia said:

Hi Julia,

I certainly over-claimed my view  but it was worth emphasizing the other way. Anyway, for me the major annoyance of the game is the linearity of the official scenarios. Luckily, there are fan-made ones that break the linearity (I mean clue 1 from room A leads to clue 2 in room B that leads to...). At least four: Incomplete Circle, Artic explorer in english (here) and two in french the Esoteric Order of Dagon and Is The Spirit Here (here).

best