Played Blood Ties today: some questions. thread may contain spoliers

By The Thing In The Attic, in Mansions of Madness

Horror tests

1: Due to the large open spaces in this adventure i wasn't sure how the horror test trigger works as the rules only refer to 'rooms' and the rules define the word 'room as being contained within the brown walls. so when out in the open hor do you perform horror tests, i ruled that a test is only made when exiting a building and seeing the monater or when the monster suddenly appears in the open.

2 do you make separate tests per monster of the same type, the rules state only that you need to make one test per monster per turn, but what if there are two of the same type of monster in the room?

Fire

In this story the keeper gets the Pyromaniac card, as written the card seems very restrictive for example i'm not sure you'd ever get a campfire in a room in any of the stories but tell me if i'm wrong as i've noticed the campfire does have floorboards on one side.

However this card seemed usless in this story. the closest i got was when the Event card 3 'Memory' instructed me to put a fire token in the grave yard space. but by definition in the rule book this space was not a room, so again how does this relate to the card and the story? . this event card was based on keeper clue choice 5 pertaining to the entrance to the cave being under the Patio… this seems week game design to me, i just didn't get it

Actually, a room is not defined as being contained within brown walls. A room is defined as "an area of a map tile that has a name and is separated from other rooms by solid brown walls, doors, or the edge of the map tile." -page 8 of the rulebook.

Therefore, outside areas are still considered rooms. They don't have borders but they still have labels (such as the graveyard), and, thus, they are rooms. This should help with your understanding of how Pyromaniac works, too. I found this keeper action to be extremely useful when I was the keeper during Blood Ties.

You make horror checks for every individual monster. If you enter a room containing 2 cultists and a witch, then you'll make 3 separate horror checks, 1 for each monster.

Thanks for that

it makes a lot more sense now, I'd missed it in the rules for some reason, due to the fact its burried in an illustrated sidebar, I'm surprised that they kept the terminology simpler, and went with all spaces including outdoor spaces as "rooms" my view using separate keywords for outdoor rooms and indoor rooms would have given the cards more 'room' for scope and story sense.

Hi all

I played Blood Ties again today, using a different objective and different players. It was my Christmas-all-day game event, an anual game day i have every year with my mates. We got a game of this in and a game of Battle Star Galactica. what a great time we had - thanks FFg for super games that put old Christmas staples like Monopoly to shame!

Any way i noticed something rather odd with this story. In the story's prologue it's been raining and the rain only lifts as the players start the scenario in the start space around the makeshift campfire. Now one of the keeper Action Cards is Pyromaniac. The only fire is out side, and all the foilage around is wet so I felt a bit of a cheat setting fire to the grounds. I did it once then decided thematically this isn't right so I opted to not use that action for the rest of the game. to cover my tracks though i described the fire i did cause as a maleovent fire spirit that was able to work its evil even on wet foilage.

It didn't spoil any fun or anything it was just kinda wierd to set fire to evrything that was wet .

Happy new year all

PS for the BSG owners: I was the cylon player {starbuck} and won the game. Yay me !

Yeah, normally, it doesn't make much thematic sense, but your imaginative description is great and, in my opinion, accurate for the scenario. Keep in mind that as you're playing the keeper, you represent a mystical evil presence, not an actual person. So it's not hard for me to believe that, with the awesome power contained within the evil, a magic fire could spark up and engulf and entire area, even through rain.