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Mansions of Madness
A board game of occult horror and mystery for two to five players
Moderator: FFGMarkThe Spaniard Topics: 598 | Posts: 3447
Do we know anything about the rules/mechanics yet?
Published on 18 September 2010 - 20:49:30
Page 2 of 2 (24 messages) « First page... 1 2
Reply #16 | Published on 02 November 2010 - 13:39:36

I assume when you're asking about resolving conflicts, you mean like fighting a monster? I'll respond assuming that that's what you mean.

When you are fighting a monster, you can attack with a weapon that you currently possess... or you can pummel it with your fists if you so desire. There is a combat deck where cards are drawn until you get to a card that describes an attack that uses your type of weapon (ranged, sharp melee, blunt melee, no weapons/fists). You roll a 10-sided die to resolve a check against one of your stats (strength, marksmanship, etc.) and if you roll LOWER than your stat, you succeed against that check. Successes are typically pretty good, and failures usually result in a miss or grazing blow. There are similar mechanics for when a monster attacks you.

TL;DR version: it's a combination of a 10-sided die and cards.

Reply #17 | Published on 12 December 2010 - 07:43:11
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i had the great pleasure of playing the prototype on a game convention in germany.

and combat works like codemonkey said ... you got card decks for different type of monsters (animal,human(like), monsters/ancient ones) and cards are drawn from them for player and monster attacks usually followed by  rolling a die on one of your attributes.

the guy presenting it (and taking the part of the gamemaster) told us there are several different scenarios. we played one that seemd to be modelled after the lovecraft story  "The case of Charles Dexter Ward" (which happens to be one of my personal favourites =) ) . The gamemaster plays vs the others players and gets some kind of tokens every round and on special events which he can use to play cards that e.g. spawn monsters (mostly zombies in our case) or change the environment by setting places on fire. The playing field is constructed at the beginning of the game with double sided tiles of different sizes (a bit like Zombies!!!!) so the board will be different for every scenario.The characters seemed to be the same as in Arkham Horror...i played Mike McGlen and a friend of mine Jenny Barnes. We had to choose from 2 different setups for our characters with slightly adjusted attributes and items (dynamite or tommy gun in my case). After that we rolled to decide (as the gamemaster called it) a "chosen one" . At first we didnt get what that actually ment but it became clear after we were introduced to a card deck that kept revealing the story over time with the chosen player as its centerpiece. In our case he inherited a mansion from his recently  deceased uncle and the other characters joined him to check out his inheritance. Someone asked what our goal was and the gamemaster simply told us, "There isnt one....yet." (He had a scary smirk on his face when he said that and he enjoyied leaving us in the dark most of the game). So we went exploring the playing field. The mechanic was pretty simple : 2 movement, 1 action, usable in any combination and with the option to use the action as a third movement point.  When someone investigated a lock we found out about another interesting feature of the game...puzzles. The gamemaster handed out a few small tiles to the player investigating the lock and placed them in a 2x3 pattern...the player could now use his intelligence points to rearrange the tiles by swapping two adjacent ones or by replacing one with a new tile drawn from the box. We encountered different kind of puzzles throughout the game with varying level of difficulty. The game started rather peaceful with our party running around trying to investigate the place but soon things got nasty and fire was everywhere and zombies kept popping out of the graveyard. I even got the chance to shot a Mi-Go in the face with my tommy gun (which was really satisfying after beeing chased by flames for 3 rounds ;) ). Unfortunately we couldnt play the game to the end because the convention closed its doors and most people left already and the staff was cleaning up around us =)

 

My first impression of the game was really great. Im a huge fan of Arkham Horror and the gameplay immediately felt familiar and elaborate. I like the idea of having an evil mastermind playing vs the crew of investigators and it turned out great in our test game ( the guy introducing the game did a really great job in creating a nice atmosphere (lovecraft nice not cuddly nice ;P ) and he had to do it mostly in english because we had two guys from spain playing with us). In comparison to Arkham Horror the playing field and the range of things you can do felt smaller but the story and atmosphere felt much deeper and kept sucking us in (and we were sitting in a huge hall with hundreds of people passing by and playing on tables around us). I cant await the release to get my preordered copy =)

I hope i could present some interesting information on the gameplay but keep in mind that we were playing a prototype and they mightve changed stuff although the game already felt like a finished product. And please excuse my english...its not my first language so it might be a bit rubbish. we germans arent that good with english grammar ;)

 

Without Signature
Reply #18 | Published on 14 December 2010 - 01:36:16

From everything I've gathered, this game looks like it throws in Arkham Horror, Descent, and Avalon Hill's Betrayal at the House on the Hill into a blender, and flips the "puree" switch.

I'm not going to lose my mind over card combat, as I'm actually a fan of games I have some control over. Card combat still has a random element (drawing a hand). I wouldn't mind either way, though.

Considering the fact that Marksmanship is a skill, I doubt combat would be card related.

A wizard did it...

www.docbelmont.wordpress.com

Reply #19 | Published on 14 December 2010 - 12:10:37

Doc Belmont said:

From everything I've gathered, this game looks like it throws in Arkham Horror, Descent, and Avalon Hill's Betrayal at the House on the Hill into a blender, and flips the "puree" switch.

I'm not going to lose my mind over card combat, as I'm actually a fan of games I have some control over. Card combat still has a random element (drawing a hand). I wouldn't mind either way, though.

Considering the fact that Marksmanship is a skill, I doubt combat would be card related.

It seems to me that combat has a chance to utilize  both a card draw and a die roll.  I think the Keeper draws a card until it matches the weapon the investigator is using  (ranged, melee, etc).  Then it'll state what the investigator needs to roll, as compared to their skill, and then results are tallied.

At least, that's my current understanding based on what comments have been made by those at Arkham Nights, Essen, and one of the previews on the site.  Not sure how it'll affect flow of the game, but I'm interested to try it out.

Reply #20 | Published on 17 December 2010 - 00:46:45
32
13

It doesnt have a card driven combat mechanic. Causeitwsfunny is correct.

Also, thankfully, it has little relation to House on the Hill other than a group of people investigating a horror themed house.

Reply #21 | Published on 20 December 2010 - 11:48:48

Hellfury said:

Also, thankfully, it has little relation to House on the Hill other than a group of people investigating a horror themed house.

LOL.

You don't care for Betrayal, I take it?

A wizard did it...

www.docbelmont.wordpress.com

Reply #22 | Published on 20 December 2010 - 16:13:59
32
13

Its a fine game for what it is, I am just thankful that MoM is not simply a rehash using many elements from Betrayal.

MoM is more involved and what you do during the entire game matters instead of just running around blindly until the haunt is revealed.

Reply #23 | Published on 22 December 2010 - 12:35:23

That's all the more reason to eagerly anticipate its release!

A wizard did it...

www.docbelmont.wordpress.com

Reply #24 | Published on 27 January 2011 - 20:49:28

Bleached Lizard said:

el Igore said:

 

Fingolfin80 said:

 

Still I can't figure out wich kind of game is this. Is it a dungeon crawler? O something more like Android? Description is quite criptic to me. I am a great fan of Arkham Horror, and I'm really interested in this game, but all I can understand at the moment is that graphics looks great. And thats not a news, FFG games are always graphically cured.

 

 

I would describe it as adventure game.

The investigators explore the mansion, search for clues, find new items, solve puzzles, fight the occasional monster and generally try to hinder the keeper at whichever evil plan he is up to.

 

 

So yes - closer to Android than Descent.

Hard to tell, I noticed threat tokens or counters for the Keeper, so I think game elements for Descent can be found in MoM.  meaning that you shouldn't linger arround too much, else the GM will draw too many threat tokens.

A blend maybe?

anyway, It looks like an awsome game.

A lifetime member of Liber Fanatica.

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But its not like this compulsive need to be liked...like my need to be praised. -Michael Scott, the Office

                  

 

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