I can't find in the rulebook any mention of the in-game effect. There's a blurb saying that something is happening in that location, but I can't find anything to tell me how to resolve it.

Can someone point to a page number or blurb?

The three numbered activity markers are simply placed on the board in areas that are experiencing activities.

For example: if the Stars Are Right rumor is currently in play, an activity marker is placed into the Downtown streets so that the players remember that that is where someone has to be to pass the rumor.

If Blood Magic is also in play, it will direct the players to place an activity marker in a specific street to remind the players that that is where they can take advantage of the offer.

They are numbered so that you can keep track of multiple activities, although I have never used all three at once and the printed numbers are completely arbitrary.

I usually skip the markers and don't place them on the board. The effect doesn't last that long anyway and you have the card in play that's causing the activity. I wondered about them myself at first till I discovered they don't do much anyway.

Eddie said:

I never use the activity markers either. If a card is in play that directs an activity at a specific street, I simply place the card directly on that street location. I have run into situations where all the investigators have piled into the other worlds at the same time, I we end up with more than three explored gates. In that case I use the activity tokens as extra explored counters.

I find a nice secondary use for them is to track the hits on Ancient Ones short of a whole doom token. You can measure from 2-7 players by just placing the appropriately numbered markers on top of the current doom token as you pile hits on it, and can measure for 8 players by pretending that the '3' is actually a '4' (or for a doom token that was 7/8 removed you could take the numbered markers off and use an explored marker instead, I suppose)

cim said:

That is totally cool. We always futz around trying to keep track. I'm going to use this idea from now on. We were using the terror track (when it didn't have an effect on the final battle.) by moving the terror marker until we got a full doom token worht of hits, then resetting to zero.

I've never had more than 6 investigators, so I doubt we'd need to worry about that.

I use them if Mythos card affects a certain area. I use to leave the card on the board but would forget it was out after drawing another one and have two in play at once. So now I just leave the Mythos card on top of the Mythos card deck and use the marker to mark the appropriate location.

cim said:

That a good idea. We add Clue tokens to the GOO as well and then take them off along with Doom markers whent eh right ratio is hit. The advantage to Clue tokens (or any otehr game marker) is that you can wait until you get a lot of successes and then take off a lot of doom. So if we play 4 player, we may wait until we get 8 or 12 clues and then take 2 or 3 doom. Of course, you can't wait that long for Cthulhu

ColtsFan76 said:

It is not that we can't wait for great Cthulhu, it is that when his time has come, Cthulhu will not wait for us!

At the start of Final Combat I put one stamina heart token on the AO for each player, and then pull it off and set it aside for each hit we make. When all of them are off I put them back on and remove a token. Of course, if we do 3 hits in a 4p game, I just remove a doom token and add a heart, unless it was at full 4.

I also add a yellow sign token after each AO attack so I can better track our defense modifier (for the base game AOs).

While we're on the topic of seldom-used tokens, I've never used Explored tokens. Instead, they've done very well tracking whether we've used Mandy's or Leo's abilities during any given round of play.

Yellow Sign tokens don't really have a use. If you're playing with the KiY herald, you either put a yellow sign on the doom track or the terror track. On the terror track, you draw a blight card. On the doom track, it is the same as a doom token. I just draw a blight or add a doom token. Unless the yellow sign doesn't count towards Diana Stanley's healing ability when it is put on the doom track, then there is no significance to using them.

Yellow signs get used as generic markers for things like the Enchanted Jewelry or how many turns we have left before we fail a rumor, etc.

At the start of Final Combat I put one stamina heart token on the AO for each player, and then pull it off and set it aside for each hit we make. When all of them are off I put them back on and remove a token. Of course, if we do 3 hits in a 4p game, I just remove a doom token and add a heart, unless it was at full 4.

Heh. We do pretty much the same thing, but we use brains instead of hearts. I say it's because they look cooler, but really, it's because they're rounded (lacking the heart-shape), and I like picking them up more.

While we're on the topic of seldom-used tokens, I've never used Explored tokens. Instead, they've done very well tracking whether we've used Mandy's or Leo's abilities during any given round of play.

We still use Explored Tokens...

...if anyone from FFG out there is reading this, you must know by now that a viable strategy to defeating Atlach-Nacha is a mass Gate-Sealing ritual. I've had as much as five Investigators standing on Open Gates and Explored Tokens, all Closing in the same phase/turn...oh wait, that's not right...I've never had five Investigators standing on Explored Tokens because I don't HAVE five Explored Tokens. Would it be possible to throw a few more of those into the next cardboard chit release?...

...but we track Mandy and Leo with Bast Tokens. After a few games with Bast just lying there, completely unused, we've retired her. (We once tried a House Rule to make Bast's Favor more frequent, but like always, for the entire game no one wanted to spend the $2 for a chance to lose their Focus every turn.)

I also add a yellow sign token after each AO attack so I can better track our defense modifier (for the base game AOs).

Yellow Sign tokens don't really have a use. If you're playing with the KiY herald, you either put a yellow sign on the doom track or the terror track. On the terror track, you draw a blight card. On the doom track, it is the same as a doom token. I just draw a blight or add a doom token. Unless the yellow sign doesn't count towards Diana Stanley's healing ability when it is put on the doom track, then there is no significance to using them.

Yellow signs get used as generic markers for things like the Enchanted Jewelry or how many turns we have left before we fail a rumor, etc.

For everything for which you use Yellow Signs, my cult uses Eihort Brood Tokens. There's 48 of them, for pity's sake.

jgt7771 said:

Yeah. And if you choose your AO and herald randomly, there's a much higher chance of using KiY herald than there is of Eihort. That's a good idea. But I do like seeing yellow signs all over the place

I changed Bast to $1. Still mostly useless, but $1 makes more sense because now cat food isn't more expensive than people food. Plus people find ways to use it more. Oh and I changed her wording so that if the First Player doesn't have a Bast token, someone else who does will get Bast's Favor.

Bast sucks.