I'm curious what others are doing to streamline the setup process as much as possible. I pretty much love MoM, except that the moon has risen and set three times over before we're done setting up half of the time.

Anyone have any words of wisdom here?

Let's see.

1) Each investigator in a separate container - with starting items and stat-choices.

2) Each scenario in a separate container - objective card, event deck, clues etc..

3) All exploration cards sorted alphabetaically. The are listed alphabetically in the guides, so it's quick to extract the needed ones.

... and all other types of cards are separated too. I find the most time consuming part of the set-up is find which cards to use - so I try to make that as painless as possible.

About point 2: I thought some cards crossed over different scenarios !

Or am I wrong ?

About point 2: I thought some cards crossed over different scenarios !

Or am I wrong ?

Exploration cards could, hence sorting them alphabetically. But event, objective, and clue cards would certainly be unique to each story.

About point 2: I thought some cards crossed over different scenarios !

Or am I wrong ?

Exploration cards could, hence sorting them alphabetically. But event, objective, and clue cards would certainly be unique to each story.

Yes it's true.

Point taken, I'm going to try this right now

Here are some things I do to reduce the fiddly pieces needed, and speed play, if desired:

1) Remove the monster’s oversized base. Put them on a regular base and let the referee use the tokens for reference.
2) Remove all the damage markers except the 1’s and 5’s
3) Remove the stun tokens: turn miniatures on their side to represent stunning
4) Remove the darkness tokens: leave the card that caused darkness in the room.
5) Remove the threat tokens: use horror tokens instead
6) Remove the time tokens: use damage tokens instead
7) Remove the sample tokens: use a horror token instead
8) Remove the story choice markers: either use all A (or all B), or write it down
9) Give each player a 10 side die.
10) Separate the puzzles into clearly labeled zip-lock bags
11) Remove most of the sealed door markers. Tell players they can’t move through one-way doors.
12) Houserule that puzzles effectively end the player’s turn, allowing them to work on the puzzle until their turn next comes up (without stopping the game)
13) For new players: have the character and trait cards (optimally) pre-selected for them (for an easier, faster first time experience where they can focus just on the rules and not choices that they have no context for).

For extreme streamlining, I've also removed: Skill points, Horror checks, Darkness modifiers, Hiding, Barriers, Hiding/Barrier Monster attack cards, Mythos cards and Trauma cards, and replaced Investigator attack cards with:
Ranged weapon : Markmanship
Sharp melee weapon : Dexterity
Blunt melee weapon : Strength
Unarmed : Strength (2 damage)

I just use a tackle box for the tokens, so they are not mixed. The most important thing is just to group items that belong together.

As for point 3 - if you have each investigator in a separate bag - with the trait cards, it's quick to select one.

12 is more or less the same.

11 is a good idea

As for point 3 - if you have each investigator in a separate bag - with the trait cards, it's quick to select one.

Absolutely (your's is an excellent tip). However, my tip #3 above was strictly for new players, and it has a different purpose. New players can sometimes be intimidated by learning new rules. Even if a character is chosen for them, the two additional selections (based off abilities that they have no idea about) can still just add to this.

For a first time experience, having those choices made for them (preferably optimally) allows them to intially focus on learning the basic mechanics. Then they'll have context for making character selections in future games.

I can't tell you how many games my friends eschew due to being initially overwhelmed.

Ah, so true

Here's a possible idea for quicker setup at someone else's house:

Have the room cards presorted into 2" coin sheets (like you use for coin collecting), each pocket labeled with a room name.

Then when it's time to set up the board at someone else's house, just place a magnifying glass in each room (to represent whether it's been searched or not).

Thread ++, good stuff. Mack

So far, all I've done is putting all cards of same types in small zip-bags.

Same thing for the tiles and puzzles.

Here's what I did:

a) Rubberbanded scenario-specific cards (objective, event, clue) for easy separation.

b) Extra compartment for the small cards, except one for "misc" cards, you know, time eras from FA for example.

c) Everything investigator-related in a seperate box, deliberatly unsorted. That'll keep the investigators busy while the keeper sets up the board.

d) Each puzzle type in its own ziplock bag.

e) Sorted out all story choice markers and sealed door markers

f) Sorted exploration cards alphabetically.

g) Monster seperated by type in their own compartments.

But that wasn't even done to speed it up, mostly to make it more convenient.

I'm all ziplock crazy, doing a lot of things mentioned here. Each puzzle in it's own bag. Each scenario in it's own bag. Each investigator in it's own bag. Originally I had each monster type in it's own bag, until I decided it was actually more annoying to dig through those bags, and now I just have them all in a box, at the ready.

I've also got three boxes of my stuff, one is the box of stuff I deal with (with all the cards sorted into types), one is the box of stuff the investagators deal with, and one is my monsters. We get things set up in about 15 min now, but we're also getting pretty experienced at it, and don't have too many newbies.