Whilst I never played Mansions of Madness again with that group, I did reignite my own passion for tabletop gaming and that, in turn, led me to the dedicated groups I play in today. The blaze raged through the middle of the map, separating my friends into two pairs without any realistic way of completing the story.
A few turns in and things were beginning to improve, but through the bad luck of the investigating team or bad judgement on my part (as the DM one must take full responsibility) the mansion we were playing in caught fire. I had not only drastically miscalculated how long it would take to place stacks of equipment into rooms and timed event cards beside the board, but I hadn’t even begun to appreciate the complexity in the rules. Some two hours into the most elaborate setup that I’d ever encountered (either before or since) we were ready to start, but my then girlfriend (now fiancée – yes, she stuck it out) and three of our friends had been sat idle for over an hour. I knew that Mansions of Madness was a deep, complex game with lots of different rule interactions, but I felt certain that the strong story and occult theme would shine through if I could act dynamically in my role as a fair and reasonable Dungeon Master. I’ve always loved board games, but for several years in my twenties, I had no one to play them with and MoM was the game that I decided I would use to change that. For me, it was the original edition of Mansions of Madness. For most people, the introduction to modern board games comes by way of Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride or maybe Carcassonne.