Oh the insanity!

Last Saturday, Carlo brought his coveted game of Mansions of Madness down across the border to run a session with Homer and me. Mansions of Madness reminded me of a combination of Betrayal at House on the Hill and Arkham Horror except Mansions has the difference in that it has a GM or Keeper running the game.

Homer and I decided to each run two investigators. The rules of the game are quite simple so we found it not difficult to control to characters at the same time. I chose the Tommy Gun wielding brute, Michael and the brain, Kate. Homer chose his favorite Arkham character, the nun, and well balanced Jenny.

Like in Arkham, each character has stamina (health) and sanity as well as skill points. The skill points are similar to Arkham Horror's clue tokens where you can use them to help your die rolls. Although, unlike the clue tokens, the skill points are only for trying to help your die roll. In Mansions, you roll a d8. Low is good, high is bad.

The scenario Carlo chose was one involving the monastary. Our characters had received a letter from a friend, Marie, asking for help and that is what led us inside the monastary. I suppose we should have found something fishy when in the chapel there was a big hole in the floor with a ladder leading down into it. Big holes in chapel floors with ladders can never be good.

The objective of the game is unknown to the players until after some investigating, it is revealed. On each character's turn, s/he can move 2 spaces and do an action. Actions include: exploring a room, picking up an item, running (move one more space), using a special ability etc... Each turn, characters can go in any order they decide so the player order can change from turn to turn. Once the characters have made their moves and actions, the Keeper releases what evil he wishes.

Carlo as the Keeper was focusing on Michael the brute and tried successfully to make him insane. Michael seems to be able to go insane at the sight of himself in a mirror. His tommy gun proved to be useful only once. After that one initial success on causing damage to Roger the Shoggoth, Carlo played numerous cards on Michael that made him drop the gun, made the ammo low, and at some point, made Michael blind. We did eventually take down Roger the Shoggoth although he was followed by his friend the 2nd Shoggoth (he wasn't named as the first).

Luckily, or maybe not so much, it was Kate the brain who ended up finding all the of the clues that lead to revealing the objective. Kate's special ability is to make a luck roll once per game to try to get the objective revealed. Her luck is only two but she gets to add +2 to her roll for each clue that she has. Since she had 3 clues in possession, I only needed to roll an 8 or less to succeed. I rolled a 10 :/

Homer and I were chugging right along even with an insane Michael. We managed to figure all of the puzzles revealed to us and even opened some whoop ass on some dog like creature and Roger. Kate ended up finding the final clue which revealed that our objective was to carry a collapsed Marie out of the monastary. Kate was still doing quite well in stamina and sanity so it seemed entirely possible except the objective condition involved that all characters had to remain alive. It seemed our nun was going to be the thorn in our sides since she was down to one hit point left (and almost died earlier when Carlo played a broken leg card on her which said the next time she moved, she'd take a hit point of damage. Luckily Homer had a sedative that negated any trauma card played). But it wasn't the nun who was our ruin, it was that damn, insane Michael. Because he was insane, Carlo could play trauma cards on him at anytime and once the objective was revealed, Carlo played a card on Michael that made Michael die immeditately. And, so, evil triumphed over the monastary on that day. But next time, Carlo better watch out!