I'm running a tournament for MOM at Owlcon at Rice University in Houston the weekend of Feb. 15-17. Since MOM is a cooperative game I need some suggestions on determining a winner, and maybe 2nd and 3rd places. I looked through the first 15 pages of postings in the forum and didn't notice any headings related to keeping track of winners or leaders.

XerxesAragon said:

Unless the cooperative play you hint at means you are using the new Call of the Wild's scenario "A Matter of Trust", I don't see how else it would be fair or easy to perform a tournament otherwise excluding duels between a Keeper player and an Investigator player (1v1). If you have multiple people on a winning or losing team (i.e. investigator team), will that be fair that the joined effort weighs in either a tie of points or possible elimination from the tournament?

I have a rush of questions:

• how many people are you expecting?
• how many boards you have available?
• do you have expansions or PoDs available?
• will everyone use the same map?
• is one scenario predetermined or is it still random A B or C format?
• how will you rotate players being investigator/keeper or does player elimination eliminate rotation?
• if you die as an investigator are you eliminated from the tournament midgame?
• what elimination rules do you want and expect are fair for a Mansions of Madness tournament?
• if investigators win but one player still died does he still get a win?
• how will you balance investigator to keeper tallies?
• can you rack up points when certain things happen both midgame and endgame without weighing in one side's favor or is victory the standalone determination for VP?
• do you plan on having tiers that determine as elimination occurs what new map and scenarios become accessible overtime?

The biggest questions again are how many people you expect and how many boards will you have available, and if you are using any expansions or PoDs, especially Call of the Wild? The remaining questions are more easily answered once this information comes into light.

Another suggestion that may be worthwhile is expanding the 1v1 format and turn it into an investigator team of players against an even amount of keeper players assuming the role as the keeper.

So let's say you have 3v3. What would transpire is the three players would each have an investigator to control, and is as normal rules for the investigator team. The Keeper players however must decide who goes first as Keeper for the round (whether this may be utilized by group decision or die roll). This must be determined after set-up, as that keeper player may wish to play mythos and trauma before the keeper reaches his first turn. Likewise, the appointed player assumes control of the Keeper for the round. Next round one of the other two remaining keeper players would decide who goes next. The round thereafter the last player assumes the roll. This assignment from now on stays in that order (use markers to represent this). The Keepers may each give one another advice but the active keeper makes all final decisions for his round of play. They also each are knowledged to what the objective is and must be careful not to alert the investigator players what the objectives or next clues are. Each team may use a silent form of communication, whether it be texting or paper (or even whispering to one another). Players may not communicate though when someone is attempting a puzzle.

In a 2v2 game, the investigator team is always given the choice whether they will each play with one investigator or two investigators each. One player may not have 1 while the other has 2; the format is strictly 1:1 or 2:2 investigators.

Also, what time frame are you looking at? Is your assemblage lasting 8 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours each day!? Do your points carry throughout the weekend? How do you deal with absences? Will there be intermissions? More and more questions, I have…

If you have large time-frames with a small assembly, I recommend best of 3 games. The winning team gains point while the losing team assumes the opposite role they just played and chooses the next map (if you will allow players to do so). I recommend random A B C and # format when Keeper does set-up. In case of tie games:

• if points are currently tied, the next game with a victor wins at their table
• if one team has one point more than the other side, that team wins at their table

At the start, take your total amount of contestants and divide by the board games you have available. For instance, if you manage 26 contestants attending, and have 6 cores, you will end up with five 2v2 tables and one 3v3 table. Alternatively, if you have 23 contestants and 3 cores, you will end up with two 4v4 tables and one 3v4 table.

There is the chance you will have from your total an odd man (woman). This final player is teamed with the first table and becomes a "n" versus "n+1". I don't see this negatively formatting your game, as the Keeper assignment of respective rounds should balance out. Always keep your tables low on the amount of players when able, as dividing the Keeper's round to being only the active keeper who makes decisions will work better with low assemblage.

Draw players out of a hat to determine table arrangement and teams. For example, Eddie is the first name drawn out of the hat, and is assigned to table 1. Becky is the second name, and goes to table 2, so on and so forth. When a person is seated at each table, cycle back to table 1 and allocate a new player there, and then to the 2nd, and so on and so forth. Each odd draw to a table is a Red team member while each even draw to a table is a Blue member. When all players are seated, the red team decides if they want to choose the map or the player role. The blue team then chooses the option they are left with. The first Red member always gets final say, as does the first Blue member get final say when determining these choices. For example, Eddie counsels with the teammates that they choose "Role" and they will be Keeper. Blue's Sam counsels with his teammates who are left with the choise of map, and they debate between "Green-Eyed Boy" or "Blood Ties". Because Sam was the first Blue member, he addresses Red team they will set up the "Green-Eyed Boy", as Sam believes a "Blood Ties" Keeper would result in the investigators being slaughtered mercilessly.

When a team has won, they are reassigned back into the hat with the other victors and drawn again to create new tables and teams. Rinse and repeat until you have a final set of players. Your final table match should be 1v1. If your odd man survived every team he was put on, play a round of Call of the Wild's "A Matter of Trust" (assuming you have it). The first player to be killed off is eliminated from the tournament. The scenario proceeds until it is over. If there is a sole victor, he chooses which map and which side to start with. If there is two victors or no victor, the last to have died chooses either map or role, and the second to last to have died makes a choice with what is left. If both or all three investigators die at once during this match (or all live), the match is restarted with the final participants of the last game round till there is a clear factor in deciding the next match.

If you do not have Call of the Wild yet you do have a 2v1 dilemma for your finale, draw a name for the Red member. The other two instantly become Blue team. If Red ever loses a match, he is eliminated and coin flip determines which blue member is now red. If Blue team ever loses a match, the Red member gains a match point and a coin is flipped, heads representing one blue member while tails the other. The side revealed is the blue member who then defects into a red member. Then a second match occurs. If red wins, blue is eliminated and another coin flip produces who stays as red and who becomes blue. If blue wins, then the blue member who defected to red is eliminated and blue gains their point. Then continue as normal until one victor remains.

Again, so much of this depends on your board game to player ratio. If you have lots of Mansions copies available, you are pretty well free to opt for however way you want to set your tournament up. If you are limited on your board copy supply, I recommend 3v3, and 4v4 if you got way more than you expected.

Tromdial said:

To answer the above with the new recommendation.

1. How many people are you expecting? Yet to be addressed.
2. How many boards? Yet to be addressed.
3. Expansions/PoDs? Yet to be addressed.
4. Same map for all? Recommendation: let players choose via red vs. blue set-up as stated in last post.
5. Predetermined or random set-up? Must be random. If not random, chance of weighed game increases for Keeper or investigator team may have chance of determining by outside info what to do to win.
6. Player rotation? Addressed, see above in last post.
7. Investigator elimination midgame? Cannot, as the Keeper player has a solid edge because he can only be eliminated at end of game while blackballing at same time opposing players he feel will threaten his winnings later in the tournament. Team loss eliminates blackballing.
8. Elimination rules? Addressed, see above in last post.
9. Still died but won? Investigators dying has nothing to do with points. If the game says you win, you get a point. If you lose or tie, no point.
10. Balance tallies? Addressed, see above in last post.
11. Victory? Victory must be achieved simply by what the objective, event cards, and rules clarify. No bonus points should exist.
12. Tiers? Addressed, see above in last post.

Owlcon is a small games con, so this is just a one board tourney. I just checked the web site and it shows no open slots left so it looks like I'll have the full limit of 4 investigators. I will be taking the role of Keeper during the game since beginners are allowed and trying to teach them both sides of the game would obviously be problematic. The scenario will be one from the basic game, no expansions.

So I guess a formula for determing a winner would entail some combination of survival, damage taken to health and sanity, monsters killed, items found/acquired, and…?

idk if that's possible then because it will be difficult for a Keeper, even when trying to be neutral to both protect himself and penalize investigators gaining too much advantage while also cooperative investigators acting semi-cooperative to gain bonus points… just seems to counteract the heart of the game.

I was going to go with I think your best bet would be to go with straight reward with monster kills (along with winning as investigators, not necessarily survival, but double as bonus if you win) as a team, but then again you would want to rotate the Keeper role to each player and also not all maps would have as strong of monster generation and would likewise make the Keeper think twice on summons to better balance his score.

You can't do clues because a lot of the time only one player can gain those clues because they specifically are the clue finder; damage can become too likely one will get more damage than others because they are a more prime target for Keeper's survival, Joe Diamond and Monteray Jack would be able to hoard items to get themselves more bonuses… these are just surface difficulties. The only remedy in my book is the group totals its points and then you rotate the Keeper role once for every player so it is on the Keeper to stop his once-allies from gaining too much advantage in comparison to his points, but this requires each player to Keep (not necessarily what every player may want to do, especially alone and unsupervised potentially). Yet, this offers the most balance I think to managing a tournament game. Whatever you decide as points will be up to you and be sure that there is no window for opportunity to unbalance the game either intentionally or unintentionally. Definitely good luck; lemme know how it goes.

On a side note, pick up Call of the Wild it's very awesome, and again, the scenario 5 would make a tournament set-up way easier.