| Manufacturer |
Hasbro/Avalon Hill
|
| Year |
2004
|
| Designer |
Bruce Glassco, Rob Daviau
|
|
|
Betrayal at House on the Hill
A group of people find themselves trapped in a haunted house. One of
them holds a terrible secret.
Background
Long ago, there was a game called Chill: Black Morn Manor, in which
players explored a haunted house, placed down tiles that built the
house, and had to deal with one player who was working for the evil
master of the house. That pretty much describes this latest offering
from Avalon Hill, with the exception being in Betrayal at House on the
Hill, no one knows who the bad guy is until the game has been going on
for a while.
Jump to my opinions
The Gameplay
The game begins with each player choosing one of 12 characters, and
placing the figure representing this person in the entrance hall of the
house. Each character has differing abilities, broken down into four
categories: Speed, Might, Sanity and Knowledge. Speed determines how
far a character can move each turn, might determines strength and
fighting ability, sanity represents sanity, and knowledge represents
how smart the character is. Of these, speed is the most used ability,
as most characters move every turn. The others are used less
often. A tile is placed for the Upper Landing and one is placed
for the Basement Landing. The former is reachable from the staircase
that is visible from the entrance hall space. How one gets into the
basement is unknown...
On a player's turn, the player moves their character through the house,
spending one point of speed for each room entered. If the explorer goes
through a door beyond which there is currently no room, a new room tile
is drawn. The room tiles are kept in a large stack, and on the back of
each tile there is a marking that shows what floor of the house the
tile can be placed on, (Upper, Ground or Basement). The stack is gone
through until a tile that matches the floor being explored on is
reached, and it is revealed, and placed into position. Now many of the
rooms have special rules and/or conditions that apply to them, and many
contain a symbol representing either an Omen, an Event, or an Item or
Items. Items are stuff you find in the house, that add to the abilities
of the explorer, (Revolver, Medical Kit, Toy Monkey, etc.). Events are
weird, creepy and bizarre happenings that occur. All have interesting
flavor text, and generally require an explorer or explorers to make
trait rolls, (Speed, Might, Sanity and Knowledge). When a character
makes a trait roll, they roll a number of dice equal to the current
trait value shown on their character card. The dice are special,
containing either 0, 1, or 2 pips. The number rolled is then
cross-referenced against the card, and good or bad things happen.
Generally this involves gaining or losing a point of the trait being
rolled for. These gains and losses are recorded by moving a small
plastic clip up or down on the character card. Each trait has a
sequence of numbers, and these are not necessarily in a perfect order,
(2,3,4,4,4,5,5,5,6,6,6,7 would be a typical sequence). So gaining or
losing a point might result in no change to the number of dice the
character would roll, or it could make it go up or down by more than a
single die value. This is kind of a nifty feature, and gives some
decision making as to how to take gains and losses, (when you have a
choice of traits to increase/decrease).
Finally, there are the Omen cards. These cards are what drive the game,
as after each one is revealed, a "Haunt Roll" must be made.. A Haunt
Roll is six dice, and if the number rolled is less than the number of
omens that have been revealed so far, the haunt begins and the
"Betrayal" part of the game begins. The omen card that was last
revealed is cross-referenced with the room in which it was revealed,
and this tells the players which of 50 included haunts is going to be
occurring, as well as which of the players is the "Traitor". The
traitor takes a manual off somewhere, out of hearing/sight of the
players, and consults the manual for the description of the haunt, and
what needs to be done to win. The other explorers, ("Heroes"), consult
their manual, which describes the haunt and tells them what they need
to do to win.
After both teams are ready to go, the traitor returns to the table, any
monsters or other baddies that are supposed to be setup are placed into
the house, and the haunt begins. While before the haunt the explorers
cannot die, (their trait markers can never go down to the skull listed
below the lowest number), after the haunt begins death is a definite
possibility. So the monsters and the traitor chase around the heroes,
while the heroes attempt to kill the monsters, or find a certain item,
or perform rituals in particular rooms etc. Attacks are might rolls
against the monster/traitor's might rolls, with the difference being
damage taken. Physical damage can be taken as either might or speed,
and if mental damage is incurred, this can be either sanity or
knowledge. Play continues until one side or the other has fulfilled
their victory conditions.
Why this game is so great
Theme baby! This game is <b>ALL</b> about the theme. The
flavor texts are well written, and the haunts are interesting and often
clever.
Why others don't agree
Well, the others in this case has to include me as well. There is a lot
of things wrong with this game. The first thing that has to be
mentioned is the fact that the rules, tiles, scenario booklets have
been terribly proofread/edited. One of the tiles is misprinted, (the
Underground Lake tile is marked as being on the Upper floor of the
house). There are a ton of rules issues that are not
adequately explained. The scenarios have many errors, from
incorrect traitor assignments to missing monster traits. Some of the
scenarios special rules are not explained well enough, to the point of
making some of them nearly unplayable. The FAQ for this game is a must.
In addition to the above, there is really very little game to this
game. It is very random, and despite the flavor text, most of the cards
end up being "roll some dice and if you roll well, gain a point in a
stat and if you roll poorly, lose a point". This can get a bit
old. This improves somewhat once the haunt begins, as generally
there is some point to what you are doing at that point. The scenarios
are also pretty random, in terms of whether or not they end up being at
all balanced. Some end up being way too easy for one side or the other,
due to rooms/items/omens that have already been discovered/not
discovered. Sometimes you will end up with a really good, contested
fight, and at other times it is a foregone conclusion about how it will
end. Also, there are several haunts in which all of the Heroes except
one really have nothing to do.
Finally, the components in the game are a bit lacking for what you have
to pay for the game, as only the explorers are represented by figures,
and all of the monsters and the like are just cardboard chits.
However, with all of the above being said, I still felt like the game
was unique enough, and fun enough to buy, and that it filled a niche in
my game library, and I have played it 10 times in the couple of months
I've owned it. It has pretty much worn out its welcome, and I'm hoping
to put it away for a while, but it is a game I can see playing many
more times in the future.
Recap
| Strategy: |
2 |
| Complexity: |
5 (only because of the misprints/errata)
|
| Fun: |
7 |
| Overall: |
6 |
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