Mansions of Madness
| Players | 2 to 5 |
|---|---|
| Age range | 14 and up |
| Setup time | 30-60 minutes |
| Playing time | 2-4 hours |
| Random chance | Medium |
| Skill(s) required | Problem solving, cooperative gaming |
Mansions of Madness is a tabletop strategy game designed by Corey Konieczka and published by Fantasy Flight Games in 2011. The players explore a locale filled with Lovecraftian horrors and must solve a mystery.
Mansions of Madness requires two to five players. One player takes the role of the "Keeper" and is responsible for the monsters and happenings of the game, while the other players take on the roles of investigators trying to solve the mystery. At the beginning of the game, the players pick a scenario to play and set up the map accordingly. The Keeper consults his rule book to make decisions about the story and to place clues and traps across the board. After setting up, the players begin at the starting point and if there's a main character, he or she begins first. If not, the youngest goes first. Then, the other explorers take turns exploring. Each investigator may move two spaces and carry out one action. Each investigator has a Health and Sanity value that depletes as they are wounded or scared. Each time an investigator suffers damage, the keeper may play trauma cards that inflict further penalties. For instance, after being hit, an investigator might receive a broken leg and be unable to move as quickly as before, or they could develop nyctophobia after having an encounter with an eldritch horror. During the investigators' turns, the Keeper may play Mythos cards, attempting to injure them physically or mentally, degrade or destroy their items, or otherwise set them back.
After the investigators complete their turn, the Keeper then gets to react. He accumulates "threat" each turn, a resource required to use most of the Keeper's abilities. Playing these cards is a large part of the keeper's abilities, and they often cost threat to use.
The goal is hidden from the investigators until near the end of the game, while the Keeper knows the objective from the beginning.
In 2016 a second edition of 'Mansions of Madness' was released . While the gameplay was fundamentally the same as in the first edition, albeit with some minor modifications, the role of the 'keeper' was replaced by a companion app that would run on PC, iOS, or Android platforms . This app expanded the gameplay in several ways including the incorporation of the interactive puzzles that investigators must solve to progress into the app, an expanded range of puzzles, allowing the game to be playable solo, providing new scenarios through DLC and the ability to save the state of the investigation, although the investigators still need to keep a record of their own status.
Each of the investigators originates from Arkham Horror, another of Fantasy Flight's board games.
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