I have Arkham Horror and played through a few times by myself so I can teach other people.

However I can't seem to find in the rule book or a quick search in these forums what the heck the activity markers are for. I see they appear from mythos cards, but I am unable to find what exactly they mean. Do monsters spawn there? Gates? Or are there cards I just haven't drawn that specify what happens at activity markers?

Also I can't seem to find this in the rules or explicitly explained in the forums. If you do not leave the location/street you're in does that mean you are just in a sort of stasis and do not have to enter combat with a monster who is at the same location/street?

Some cards say to put an Activity Marker somewhere to remind you were the card is taking effect, and where the Investigators have to go to resolve the effect of the card.

If you don't move you still have to fight the monsters. In the rules it says you have to fight/evade Monsters when you either "try to leave a location with a monster" or "end your move in a location with a Monster." Not moving is the same as Ending your move.

You can do what ever you want with them... for example I've made little hats for my investigators out of them lol

j/j used for Rumors, Environments, etc where certain things take place in certain areas... yes you could use the Mythos card its self as the marker but then you could forget about it... happens to me so I use the markers.

It's good to remember where stuff is going down. However, I have never used the Explored tokens the way they're supposed to be used, because I've never had so many investigators that I've needed to keep track.

These tokens have worked well as indicators to whether Mandy Thompson or Leo Anderson have used their abilities during a round.

Some cards say to put an Activity Marker somewhere to remind you were the card is taking effect, and where the Investigators have to go to resolve the effect of the card.

I usually place the actual card there instead.

Svavelvinter said:

So do we. We've also never placed an explored marker before. Strangely enough, in hunderds of games no one has ever forgotten whether he just came out of a gate or was supposed to go in...

Although it seems unlikely that anyone would forget what they were doing, the Explored markers are another product of the idea that you should be able to pause a game of AH and come back to the table months later and the state of everything is 'recorded'. I think the theory was that you can tell exactly what was happening even if you can't remember. Unfortunatley, that still doesn't work - there are a few things that you can't tell by looking at the board. What phase it is, for example.

We do sometimes use the Activity markers - to mark the Hypnos location for the turn, for example. Usually, whoever is taking responsibility for drawing the Hypnos card also has responsibility of sliding the Activity marker around the board making a 'wakka wakka wakka' noise until eventually getting bored and putting it in the right location.

We make a production of using the explored tokens as coasters. We do use the activity markers, however, indeed as a reminder of what may be going on in an area. We're somewhat less than prudent, however, about removing the marker afterward, making people ask questions about non-existant environments, etc. The worse case scenario is having someone warp their turn around something they percieve to be still in effect, then finding out that Blood Magic actually left seven turns ago. But they do remind people about good things or rumors that should be ended, so they're not entirely wasted cardboard.

Same for the first player token. We placed it in one of the plastic stands, so that it's more visible. I don't place the mythos cards on the table, however, as we sometimes need to count them to remind ourselves who the first player is. In the excitement, we might forget to move the first player token.