---
title: "How to organise Mansions of Madness"
subtitle: "Cards and tokens"
author: Seth
publish_date: 2025-05-12 08:00
date: 2025-05-12 08:00
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hero_image: haunted-house-1600x800.jpg
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taxonomy:
category: blog
tag: [ gaming, modules ]
---
I've been playing a lot of **Mansions of Madness** lately, and I've noticed that I spend way too much time sorting through game assets.
A character gains a clue, and I grab the container of interaction tokens instead.
A character uses a spell and has to draw a new one, and I grab the Conditions deck instead.
There's a special item in the room, and I grab the insanity deck by mistake.
I must spend 20 minutes out of an hour just juggling decks and tokens.
But after 3 years of play, the correct organisation scheme has finally occurred to me, and it's made a world of difference.
I'm explaining it here, just in case you're struggling with all the assets in the game.
## Things and ideas
Some cards and tokens represent things or ideas that a character can gain.
These are usually physical objects or currency (such as clues or evidence).
Well, this is **Mansions of Madness** so even positive things can sometimes be harmful, but
These are:
* Common Items deck
* Unique Items deck
* Spell deck
* Clue (and keys, from an expansion set) tokens
Place those 4 asset types in one area of your gaming table.
Any time the game tells you to gain an item, spell, or clue, that's the pool of assets you draw from.
## Conditions and penalties
Some items represent conditions and penalties that are usually imposed upon a character, willing or otherwise:
* Horror deck
* Damage deck
* Condiition
Because these get used so frequently, I also include assets that help build the board:
* Search/Interact tokens
* Explore/Sight tokens
* Wall, Door, Barricade, Secret Passage tiles
* ID tokens
Group these assets together in an area of your gaming table apart from your other assets.
When you're setting up a new room, or your character has been afflicted (or benefits from a positive condition, like Focused or Fearless), this is the place you reach for.
## Infrequent components
Finally, there are some tokens that don't get used consistently:
* Person tokens
* Fire tokens
* Special tokens from expansions
Group these assets in a third area of your gaming table, and bring them out as needed.
## Muscle memory
Sort your assets this way, and within a single gaming session you develop muscle memory and visual recognition of which area holds what broad type of component.
Sure, I still might grab the Search/Interact tokens instead of the Explore/Sight tokens, but that's partly because I keep them in near-identical containers.
Even when I do, switching to the correct container is a matter of just picking up _the other similar container_ instead of also picking up the clue tokens and the person tokens and the fire tokens, and so on until I get lucky and pick the right one.
Seeing the assets in 3 distinct sets also makes the game setup in general feel less intimidating.
Yes, there are a lot of assets, but a big, impenetrable, all-inclusive pile is greater than the sum of its parts.
Split them into smaller categories and you trick your brain into believing there are only a few assets to keep track of.
Next time you play **Mansions of Madness**, give it a try.
<div class="mxs_attribution"><p>
Header photo by <a href="
https://unsplash.com/es/@mwrona?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">m wrona</a> on <a href="
https://unsplash.com/s/photos/haunted-house?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a>
</p></div>
