Mansions of Madness

When this was announced I was stoked. When people started posting about the scenarios being awful I backed off. When Forbidden Alchemy came out with huge problems I shoved the game out of my mind.

I played it yesterday (Yellow Sign print on demand scenario) and LOVED it. Narrative, mystery, and I had visions of True Detective 1920's in my head.

I'm thinking hard about picking it up along with Call of the Wild.

Question - do expansions add anything besides scenarios? Are the new monsters in the big box expansions able to be used in different scenarios or only those included?

Also, what's up with the print on demand scenarios. Yellow Sign was great, but really paying that much for just a one off scenario?

I've got the base game from release day, but I never got around to getting any of the expansions. A big part of that was that I suck at getting people together regularly.

From everything I remember reading, Call of the Wild is the must-have expansion that fixes a lot of the problems with the base game. I think one or two of the scenario expansions were good, but the reviews seemed to be all over the map for them, so I never got any of those either.

I still have the game, so I keep looking at Call of the Wild, but then remember I never get people together, so I keep passing. But then I think "but it'll eventually be out of print", and start thinking I should get it again.

Mansions of Madness is an attractive game with some neat ideas, but it's a hassle to set up and some of the scenarios were bad. I played three times and gave up, though I have since used a couple of cool map tiles from it in my D&D campaign. I have heard from multiple people that Call of the Wild fixes the game, so I should either pick that up or sell off my copy. Haven't decided which yet, so I am very interested in what people say in this thread.

You're pretty much paying for the scenarios with the bigger expansions, though the additional cards in the combat decks and whatnot are nice additions.

The POD expansions are pricy, but remember that the scenarios can each be played out quite differently based on the Keeper's set-up choices. They're completely unnecessary unless a) you've played out the scenarios you already have, or b) a POD has a particular setting you dig.

Great game. I should get this to the table again soon.

I ended up biting and purchased this. Looking forward to introducing it to my group.

MoM is a game that my wife (well, I guess also the kids) gave me, along with Call of the Wild, for Father's Day, and, unfortunately, it's still sitting there. (It's one reason I'm going to ask that I get no more games as gifts until we've cleared the backlog).

There are a few BGG resources I've noted:
Fan-created scenarios
Base-game scenario fixes

I'd really like to get it, but I'm afraid that the fam/group will not like it, and it's not cheap.

I also don't like to always have to be the GM, and I know I'll end up that way. Same reason Descent was not going to stay here for long.

One distinct problem with the base set was the GM cards that let you take control of a character for a turn. Scenarios frequently had players on a tight timetable to go somewhere and get something done, while hitting specific checkpoints along the way. Allowing the GM player to control a character for a turn generally resulted in negating two turns of progress with respect to the timetable, simply by sending that character in the opposite direction. It wasn't fun for the players having one turn reversed and then needing to repeat the original turn to get back on track.

Yellow Sign is considered the best (and most recent) of the POD expansions. All the others vary in quality from decent to actually broken. I probably would not recommend any of them except for Yellow Sign.

The other issue with the POD expansions (and small box expansion) is that they are based off of the linear mechanics of the base game. The opening clue tells you where to find Clue 1, which tells you where to find Clue 2, etc. Once you find the final clue, you reveal the objective. The game is a race. You need to get all the clues and complete your objective before the Keeper can fulfill his objective, which he is doing from the start of the game. It is usually best to ignore monsters because fighting them will slow you down. If you make a wrong choice and go in a direction that leads to a dead end, it can be hard to come back from that mistake.

Call of the Wild dumped all that. The scenarios are more free form and varied that give the investigators the power to tackle what they want in any order they choose. The first scenario, for example, has 3 NPCs, one of which is a murderous mad man (as chosen by the Keeper). The investigators have to talk to all of the NPCs, who are all pointing fingers at each other, and figure out who the mad man is based on discrepancies in their stories.

The Dunwich Horror scenario has ritual puzzle pieces scattered around the board that the Keeper has to collect, and then spend action points to put in the right order (as secretly chosen by the investigators at the beginning). So the investigators are competing directly against the Keeper.

They added a bunch of variety and flavor to the Call of the Wild scenarios when they ditched the hard path linear mechanics of all the previous scenarios. Honestly, I would play the first scenario from the base game to get a feel for the rules, then skip all the rest and go straight to Call of the Wild.

Do any other expansion scenarios make use of the less-linear format of Call of the Wild, or is that it? Those scenarios are pretty much universally praised, so it seems weird and sad if they basically fixed the game with that expansion, then abandoned it.

Nothing has been released since Call of the Wild.

I'm playing Call of the Wild on Saturday for the first time. Any recommendations on a scenario to play. A review on TOS seemed to like the first on a Cry for Help. I set that up and soloed 4 turns to get the feel for the new Ally rules. It seems less like Mansion of Madness and more like "True Detective".

A Cry For Help is a good scenario, I'd definitely start with that.

Disgustipater wrote: A Cry For Help is a good scenario, I'd definitely start with that.

.

Thanks. That makes it easy. I have it all set up ready to go.