Mansions of madness

I played my first full game of this the other night. Part of me love it, part of me can't help but wonder where the game is.

Five players, me as the keeper. We played scenario one with the, supposedly most climatic ending, and at least on that part the game delivered. Oh, minor spoilers below, but really not something that will ruin the scenario for you.

The players split up I pairs and found the first couple of clues quickly. And they didn't have much else to do since I used my lone maniac to gather samples. Luckily for me the gangster and they medium followed the maniac to the basement which gave me easy access to sample number two. In the mean time nothing much happened in the other end of the house. The zombie I gained was easily offed, and when the shoggoth came they decided (having already looked at clue three with Gloria's ability) that a visit to the garden was unnecessary. So it all ended with a shoot out in the basement. Despite a healthy dose of lead and a fire (which I very smartly put out with uncontrollable urges and an extinguisher) I had a small chance to escape. Especially when I caused the gangster to drop his tommy gun. But alas, he attacked unarmed and squeezed the final life out of the abomination. Very epic finale, but in many ways that was the only thing that really worked.

Afterwards the other players pretty much agreed that they had too little to actually do. Mostly they would enter a room, flip a card and find nothing of interest. Not very exciting, and it didn't help much that the story is extremely linear while at the same time not giving the players an idea of what they're actually supposed to do.

Personally I had fun doing keeper stuff like playing evil mythos cards, but at the same time both I and the investigators hated the administration in the keeper phase. Basically I was just shuffling counters and drawing cards most of the time and it was a bit hard for them to follow. This is a thing at will improve with more playings, but unfortunately my choices as a keeper won't. And they just weren't that interesting. For most of the game I had loads of thread, but nothing to spend it on. Oh, I could just keep drawing cards until I would get some good ones but that felt kinda lame. And I cold have moved the investigators with urges, but since I had almost no reason to do this other than to cost them movement, it too seemed pointless. Of course it could have bought me time, but i think it would cause more frustration than story.

I really like the look and feel of the game, and I think it may be better with a different scenario and two players with two investigators. But as a game it seemed like it was missing actual, meaningful stuff to do, while at the same time failing to deliver in the story department.

mads b. wrote: I really like the look and feel of the game, and I think it may be better with a different scenario and two players with two investigators. But as a game it seemed like it was missing actual, meaningful stuff to do, while at the same time failing to deliver in the story department.

Yeah, playing the heroes is pretty dumb and boring without much to do. First investigator searches the first room, so the rest can either use their action to run a third step or wait up. Then they have to wait until the guy with the key unlocks the right door, twiddling thumbs. Also pretty frustrating when all you do on your turn is move 2 steps, and the antagonist plays a card that makes you run back 2 steps.

I'm gonna try to get a few more games in, but it's definitely not a keeper.

It was an interesting idea but it was always going to find a fine line between a "real" RPG and an adventure game. The hope was that it occupied a middle space with the best of both but as it stands, it misses the charm of either option. I don't think it's the system though - it's the actual adventures. At some point, I could see a fan-made adventure that gets it right and balances the need to keep the story moving with the players actually having some real choices to be made rather than simply go from A to B to C.

One of my favorite games is Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective but the system is nothing special - the adventures are just well written. MoM is a decent system and a good idea but the implementation is lacking.

What kept me buying into MoM is that I think there may be an *awesome* solo game in here somewhere--I'm just not quite sure where it is yet. I played it with a group and thought it combined the worst elements of Descent and Arkham Horror. (Pretty sure I've thoroughly documented how I've come to despise Descent as anything other than a 1- or 2-player game around here somewhere.) But, as a solo game, I think it's got a bunch of things going for it--it's got a little puzzle-game, a bit of randomness, and a bunch of "oh fuck, now what do I do!?!" I just have to figure out which side needs to be automated and how to go about it...

Dogmatix wrote: What kept me buying into MoM is that I think there may be an *awesome* solo game in here somewhere--I'm just not quite sure where it is yet. I played it with a group and thought it combined the worst elements of Descent and Arkham Horror. (Pretty sure I've thoroughly documented how I've come to despise Descent as anything other than a 1- or 2-player game around here somewhere.) But, as a solo game, I think it's got a bunch of things going for it--it's got a little puzzle-game, a bit of randomness, and a bunch of "oh fuck, now what do I do!?!" I just have to figure out which side needs to be automated and how to go about it...

Automate the investigators, I guess. You will lose the puzzle aspect of the game, but otherwise the investigators don't have much in the way of meaningful decisions.

Shellhead wrote:

Dogmatix wrote: What kept me buying into MoM is that I think there may be an *awesome* solo game in here somewhere--I'm just not quite sure where it is yet. I played it with a group and thought it combined the worst elements of Descent and Arkham Horror. (Pretty sure I've thoroughly documented how I've come to despise Descent as anything other than a 1- or 2-player game around here somewhere.) But, as a solo game, I think it's got a bunch of things going for it--it's got a little puzzle-game, a bit of randomness, and a bunch of "oh fuck, now what do I do!?!" I just have to figure out which side needs to be automated and how to go about it...

Automate the investigators, I guess. You will lose the puzzle aspect of the game, but otherwise the investigators don't have much in the way of meaningful decisions.

Yea, that's probably the right answer. I certainly felt like I was in a "roll and move" game as an investigator...

I keep wondering if I'm playing the same game as everyone else when I read the negative comments. MoM is still one of my favorite games ever. But that said I've only played as the keeper, but none of the investigators have ever complained about the game and in fact one of them went out and bought a copy for himself.

I've only had a scenario go dud on me once...I summoned a Shoggoth to slow the path to the next clue which in turn sent the investigators running off in another direction, delayed them, then another person showed up to game so we packed up to move onto the next game. I can't blame the scenario for it going off the rails...I blamed myself on that one.

VonTush wrote: I keep wondering if I'm playing the same game as everyone else when I read the negative comments. MoM is still one of my favorite games ever. But that said I've only played as the keeper, but none of the investigators have ever complained about the game and in fact one of them went out and bought a copy for himself.

You *are* playing the same game as me--but you're both apparently playing the keeper. I think that as a solo or 2-player game it's probably outstanding. With 5 around the table it felt a bit too much like a game on rails. Everyone went off to all corners of the map to uncover stuff; if we triggered some sort of badness, folks regrouped and dealt with it. The puzzles felt like a time-sink rather than an integral part of the game. As an investigator, I felt like I needed to devote about 10% of my attention to the game--ok, puzzle here, monster there, clue obviously in one of these two unexplored places. Someone with a gun please go draw that big @#$@#$@#4 monster away from the door so we can get in and see if it's there. It felt to me more than a bit like Last Night On Earth with a significantly greater rules overhead and half the pace.

The keeper, on the other hand, had a lot of shit to do and most of it seemed like it was pretty entertaining. The investigators seem to play a completely reactive game (at least I didn't see any good way to force the action along, but that might just be me), which is something I think can be automated.

I think it's probably a very good game for casual gamers [in the investigator roles], but I felt like I could have been playing an entirely different game on the side and not lost the thread at all in the MoM game.

Like the way Frank reworked things and ended up highlighting that Runebound--another game I thought was terrible with more than 2 at the table--had a very good solo game at its core, I think MoM has that same sort of vibe going for it.

That may be why the game has been successful with my group. They're more light/casual gamers, but to their credit I've had good success with Chaos in the Old World and Merchants and Marauders with them. My goal when playing the keeper has always to shoestring the investigators but not to cut their Achilles.

Also I tried to keep them guessing by popping/spawning stuff that might not help me in the long run to achieve my goal, but made the investigators try to figure out what exactly is going on. That caused a lot of in game discussion with them as they debated on where next to head or what to do. To me it seemed like they always felt like there was more stuff to do than they were able to.

Overall I guess what kept me engaged as a keeper was trying to work out how to F with them rather than how I need to maximize everything for me to win.

On average I've play with three or four investigators (I can't recall playing with only two) so my experience is that it scales well. But then again as the keeper I start setting up for the later game stuff and leave the investigators relatively alone for the first turn or two with the occasional screwing with them.

VonTush wrote: On average I've play with three or four investigators (I can't recall playing with only two) so my experience is that it scales well. But then again as the keeper I start setting up for the later game stuff and leave the investigators relatively alone for the first turn or two with the occasional screwing with them.

I think for the casual gamer, it's WAY easier to get into the investigator role and generally be immersed in the whole B-movie vibe of the game. That's a very good thing (and why I love LNoE--shut off brain and pile up every d6 in the house next to the beer mugs). Most folks in my crowd [almost all wargamers of one stripe or another with a general love for AT on the side] are the sort that can look at the map and quickly run the numbers and board geometerly (for things like line of sight) in their head to maximize actions while minimizing keeper response capabilities and thus sort of dictate play, either by word or deed, throughout. Even after we barred the complete "NO! YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG IF YOU DON'T GO ONE SQUARE LEFT FIRST!!!!1111oneoneone" folks from games like this, even the most easy-going in our crowd often breaks down the board on the fly and looks for "min/max" opportunities, and the more guys you have like that, the less interesting the game becomes (at least for me).

(This is exactly the sort of shit that made me utterly hate Descent and Doom after a half-dozen plays--until I pulled down the solo rules off the Geek and found that they're pretty cool when treated more like videogames than board games.)