Playing yesterday a very interesting scenario by Scott Anderson posted on BGG that I recommend (http://files.boardgamegeek.com/file/download/5fcf6460vx/Ancient_Artifacts.pdf?), we had trouble with Michael Personnal Story that cannot be passed (in this scenarios almost all monsters are endless :-).

* When does he fail his PS ? When he gains 5$ or more in 1 gain or is it cumulative. I read somewhere that it is cumulative, though considering the drawback of failing, it seems a bit strong.

* When he fails he can never gain money, does this include gifts from other player ? If so, it implies that he can never pay for Hospital or the Asylum.... If you do not play with Injuries and Madness, this is very very tough.

* More generally, when an item/dollar is obtained through trade, does this count as gain ?

In advance, I thank you for your answers.

I don't have the personal stories expansion yet, so I'm not entirely clear on how this works, but I would say that any game mechanic which results in a money token of any denomination being given to the player who controls McGlenn would count as a "gain" of money. Trading, encounters, bank loan, newspaper thingy, whatever.

No clarification that I know of and discussion has been on-going over at BGG. Personally, I'm in the camp that if Mike gains $5 or more in one go (so for example using River Docks), he fails. Most other PS that track things cumulatively (like Minh Thi Phan and her read Tomes), use and mention the use of Clues to track them, nothing in Michael's PS about it.

i played "if he has more money through any event than he had before, he has gained it" this can be a trade, an encounter etc. it does not matter if he gave something away in return. of course, i don't think there is a restriction on how often investigors can trade during movement phase, so he could get single dollars multiple times... but if he defeats a monster that gives $ 5 (spectral hunter?) he has failed.

I just read the card in question and it says "GAIN" so Mike can have as much money as he wants as long as he earns $4 or less at a time. So he can't take out bank loans or sell monsters for money when playing with personal stories.