Finally got to play the game last night.

Instant hit, our group loves it.

...

We felt like there were some things that were sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiightly off, though. But we couldn't put our finger on it. Like maybe a nuance rule we missed.

So, my question to y'all = do you have a list of common mistakes and/or little house rules for quality of life.

for example, one thing we noticed that we'll experiment / house rule (quality of life) is once per turn the active investigator may either pick up 1 dropped item or hand off 1 item to/from another investigator
* main reason is that we had to burn a lot of actions to grab 1 single item, and a lot of them just didn't make sense to burn an action (like grabbing the knife in the kitchen, that the game said was sitting by the roast ... which really should NOT require a full action).

But yeah, if you have any advice on that front, please let me know. 😃 thanks

That house rule will make many scenarios easier than they should be.

10 minutes ago, robertneaves said:

That house rule will make many scenarios easier than they should be.

Any rule peculiarities regarding range or other mechanics I should be aware of, though?

(Just afraid I could miss that info if the topic derails on an experiment)

46 minutes ago, thinkbomb said:

Any rule peculiarities regarding range or other mechanics I should be aware of, though?

(Just afraid I could miss that info if the topic derails on an experiment)

If you try to encounter all tokens / explore all rooms / pickup all items, you will generally lose the scenario, that's intentional. Scenarios have a ticking clock and trick you into wasting time. The idea is to use the clues (and subtle - and sometimes not so subtle - cues to how fast the clock is ticking) to efficiently solve the mystery.

As for range, it's its always three spaces, but blocked by walls and doors. If a monster refers to an investigator in range but it is on the other side of a door, then you are not in range.

You always get a free movement into a newly revealed room. And exploring outdoors will almost always be a free action to reveal tiles, but the downside is it can trigger stuff you're not ready for yet.

Tests that ask you to specify how many successes you rolled will generally reward you if you rolled in excess with additional clues.

2 hours ago, neosmagus said:

If you try to encounter all tokens / explore all rooms / pickup all items, you will generally lose the scenario, that's intentional. Scenarios have a ticking clock and trick you into wasting time. The idea is to use the clues (and subtle - and sometimes not so subtle - cues to how fast the clock is ticking) to efficiently solve the mystery.

As for range, it's its always three spaces, but blocked by walls and doors. If a monster refers to an investigator in range but it is on the other side of a door, then you are not in range.

You always get a free movement into a newly revealed room. And exploring outdoors will almost always be a free action to reveal tiles, but the downside is it can trigger stuff you're not ready for yet.

Tests that ask you to specify how many successes you rolled will generally reward you if you rolled in excess with additional clues.

Thanks a million. Couple points of advice checked out early with what we saw (parsing down example for non-spoiler)

i.e. game tells us "you hear a crash, shouting, and hissing"
both of us players "sounds dangerous! let's look at the painting first!"
two rounds later ... me "wait a second, this seems like a narrative game! I think the guy behind the door might actually die!"
we click the end round button and the monster breaks out, blood on its body.
we get gold stars for investigating.

Regarding range, though, the house that was generated for us had a winding hallway with a couple bends in it (so technically none of it was "behind a door"). However, for the horror check - according to rules - the nearest monster was around the corner and basically out of line of sight (for most other games).

... I guess a better way to ask would be "would a corner count as a door?, namely if it was a corner created by continued space around tiles"

4 hours ago, thinkbomb said:

Thanks a million. Couple points of advice checked out early with what we saw (parsing down example for non-spoiler)

i.e. game tells us "you hear a crash, shouting, and hissing"
both of us players "sounds dangerous! let's look at the painting first!"
two rounds later ... me "wait a second, this seems like a narrative game! I think the guy behind the door might actually die!"
we click the end round button and the monster breaks out, blood on its body.
we get gold stars for investigating.

Regarding range, though, the house that was generated for us had a winding hallway with a couple bends in it (so technically none of it was "behind a door"). However, for the horror check - according to rules - the nearest monster was around the corner and basically out of line of sight (for most other games).

... I guess a better way to ask would be "would a corner count as a door?, namely if it was a corner created by continued space around tiles"

No, there is no line of sight in this game. Range still counts around corners.

Something that might be overlooked, if you are sharing a space with a monster and perform an action other than attack, or try to leave the space (ie, you trigger an evade check)... If you fail the evade the game tells you what happens, remember to click the evade on the monster with the highest bonus. If the game doesn't tell you that you forfeit your action, you still get to perform it.

That was annoying in one of o ur games, we had to get evidence out of the house so we decided to run for it instead of fighting the main villain and failed the evade check. It's penalty was dropping a random item but I didn't forfeit my action. So I had to still leave the room, but the random item dropped was the evidence! I had to go back in and pick it up and failed more evade checks. Should have just fought the guy.

When trading, you know you're not limited to how many items you can trade or with who or pick up from the ground? If we happen to be standing on the same space, we try to make use of the trade action to shuffle stuff around between us / pick up loot from the ground, for a single action.

9 hours ago, neosmagus said:

... When trading, you know you're not limited to how many items you can trade or with who or pick up from the ground? If we happen to be standing on the same space, we try to make use of the trade action to shuffle stuff around between us / pick up loot from the ground, for a single action.

so, this frustration was part of the reason we had considered the single hand-off house rule in the first place ... namely in that we rarely actually wanted to shuffle more than one item per turn - but the item we did want to shuffle was usually something like a holy water or consumable. (currently still mulling it over, not gonna say more on that for now other than acknowledging everyone says "bad rule, don't do it").

Being said, we did make generous use of the "trade everything" mechanic a few times. One of which was kinda funny, the old butler investigator tried to run with the evidence, then evade-failed a hunting horror and tripped and smashed his head into the wall ...
so the athlete grabbed everything the old man was carrying and left him behind hoping to make it to the exit alive. XD

The main recommendation I can make that hasn't been brought up already is around the insanity conditions. Assuming you're playing with the "traitor" insanity cards RAW, it's important to know what the conditions are so that players can start planning for them when someone starts drifting towards insanity.