So, one of my gaming groups tends to have 6-7 people showing up regularly, and I'm usually the guy bringing the games. I have tried running Mansions with 5 investigators and they tore through the Green Eyed Boy very quickly as they were able to coordinate very effectively. They pulled the last clue prior to the key monster spawning!

My question would be this: how can I manipulate the action economy to spread things out more between the Investigators so that they are still challenged but it is balanced against the Keeper's increased threat?

Thanks!

First gather your surplus gamers, box them neatly up, poke some air holes and ship them to me cuz I can use them.

I'm at a loss really. Havent had to deal with more than a total of 3 in many many years. Are you all actually playing the same game? What I mean is could you break into two groups. If nothing else you could get another copy of MoM and have 2 games running at the same time. Now that would be fun!

Most of the time, on here, you'll find that people are trying to help the investigators (myself included). As you know, it is not just about threat/players ratio. The more investigators there are the more they can do for the simple fact that they cover more area and can team up. The game is not exactly about balance though it does try to maintain some. This game is much more about the story and most assuredly getting there is the fun.

Having more than 4 investigators is a major imbalance (imo). Not only for the reasons stated but it also feel out of theme (save for specific circs). Its less of an investigation and more of a free for all scavenger hunt. The dark horrors lose a lot of power when a mob mentality forms. I played 4-way chess for a while. It was fun enough but it still wasnt chess.

My best suggestion is not a long term one. You could write some scenarios that are themed toward having more people. Something like a dinner party with a seance gone wrong. Stories like Ten little Indians or The Masque of the Red Death would be a good place to start. Actually a mob from town could work as a story too.

Good luck, be sure to let us know how things go.

We've had some luck by using one extra player as a helper for the keeper.

I ran a game last week of Green eyed boy in fact (its not a great case tbh) with 5 investigators and have a problem due to one of my wives friends not being invited over with her husband so the next game might be swinging with 7 investigators. I have decided for every two extra investigators (over max) I add another Mythos card and trauma a turn to my deck this should slow them down enough with drawing 6 tokens a turn with 7. the next case I am running will be the inner sanctum one so that should be a blood bath with me raising 6 cultists a turn and if I run out of pieces I just turn them into something even nastier!

My response would be to make sure you have Forbidden Alchemy and add about 2-3 extra tiles to the outskirts of the map per extra investigator; try to make them look like part of the map; add some random items and "You find nothing of interest." cards to the mix. This will allow players to split up and will allow for more exploration items per map; the threat should self correct, likely in favor of the keeper, so by having more characters, it may be actually a hinderance to the players to have extra character depending on the scenario. I also would probably bulk up any boss monsters by about 2 health per extra player. My two cents.

I just got the game and played as the keeper with five investigators. They all had fun with the game but they didn't find it very challenging or scary. If I have the same number of investigators again I think I will do the following:

• remove 1 skill token from each player
• collect 1 additional threat token per round (1 per player +1)
• allow for a maximum of 5 mythos and 5 trauma cards

I'm not sure if that's over doing it (what do you think?) but luckily if its a scarier fight my investigators want… its a scarier fight I'll give them.

Actually I spotted that the more players there are the game is harder for investigators in some scenarios. I played green eyed boy with 7 investigators, changed nothing in the rules and won. If there are so many players you get more threat tokens and you can focus it on just one player. I think the only problem in playing with >4 investigators is the event cards. Investigators can explore the map much faster and form a chain to pass crucial keys to some doors faster (and they love using Duke for that). Of course I can break it with Uncontrollable Urges some times, but still, they tend to get all the clues before I get some nice monsters from event cards.

I think if you play with 5 players you can leave the rules as they are. They get to explore faster, you get more threat to stop them do it. When playing with 6-7 player i recommend faster time flow (for example: each 2nd turn you add 2 time tokens instead of 1).

And I really don't recommend going over 8 players. The game gets boring, because you wait for your turn so long and you loose track of whats going on. I tried that and made map of all pieces (including Forbidden Alchemy), spreaded the clues all over the map so they have to go back to find them, but game ended after 4th turn, cause people just started doing other stuff.

Actually I spotted that the more players there are the game is harder for investigators in some scenarios. I played green eyed boy with 7 investigators, changed nothing in the rules and won. If there are so many players you get more threat tokens and you can focus it on just one player. I think the only problem in playing with >4 investigators is the event cards. Investigators can explore the map much faster and form a chain to pass crucial keys to some doors faster (and they love using Duke for that). Of course I can break it with Uncontrollable Urges some times, but still, they tend to get all the clues before I get some nice monsters from event cards.

I think if you play with 5 players you can leave the rules as they are. They get to explore faster, you get more threat to stop them do it. When playing with 6-7 player i recommend faster time flow (for example: each 2nd turn you add 2 time tokens instead of 1).

And I really don't recommend going over 8 players. The game gets boring, because you wait for your turn so long and you loose track of whats going on. I tried that and made map of all pieces (including Forbidden Alchemy), spreaded the clues all over the map so they have to go back to find them, but game ended after 4th turn, cause people just started doing other stuff.

In my group we played with more than 4 Investigators once (5 rather than 4) and the only thing I really changed was that of the investigators left I let them only choose from 2 of the remaining characters and I choose ones that were not as well suited for the scenario.(At the time I did have the forbbiden Alchemy expansion with the other charcters from it. (I think I choose Sister Mary or Carolyn Winthrop.) They still had a good time and didn't notice they were not as well suited for the adventure as the others. The characters won the adventure which they were happy with and I think we all had a good time.