Has Veeky Forums played Betrayal at House on the Hill? Pros? Cons? Favorite/memorable Haunts?

Has Veeky Forums played Betrayal at House on the Hill? Pros? Cons? Favorite/memorable Haunts?

Personal favorite Haunt is Voodoo. It is one of the most tense first-time haunts, watching your stats slowly dwindle away

>randomly move around
>place random tiles
>find random loot
>randomly start haunt
>random player becomes random baddie
>with random wincondition
>did you guys randomly find the baddie-beating mcguffin?
>role some dice
>maybe you win

I'm not saying it can't be a fun experience with the right people, but it is a categorically shit-awful game.

It's definitely not a serious game. Good beer&pretzels game, or for a night when some players can't make it for whatever reason

My friends, family and I have a lot of fun with it. A little hectic and very much driven by luck so hard strategy is often thrown out the window but that makes for more wacky experiences and less frustration compared to games like Risk, Hero Quest or Monopoly. Some of the most fun comes from the two sides not being in on all of the rules.

Favorite moment was one scenario where I was the betrayer and I became invisible. I gained the ability to pickpocket where only if I succeeded or had a critical failure did I have to announce why I was always rolling the dice.

> Each turn I roll, just shrug as I keep failing but no critical failure
>"Dude, why are you rolling all the time?"
> Finally succeed, turn to my cousin
> "Give me that gun you have."
>Table loses their shit as they fan out and panic about long chains of doors since the invisible dude can now plug them from five rooms away

Sadly I died when my brother in law blew me up with dynamite but that was one of the funniest runs we ever did.

That's a fantastic haunt. Always seems to end with dynamite for some reason.

I like it quite a bit but its really a pain to explain the rules to normies. Like if a friend gets traitored it ruins the game for me a bit because I am gonna have to read the traitor entry for them and explain what everything means. And like 99% od humanity cant understand that in a game with cards you READ. THE. CARD. to find out what it does. The google everything generation just reads the title of the card and then looks around the table and desperately asks what it means.

It also gets repetitive. Most haunts are solved by making 3 knowledge rolls then killing the monster.

>Get evil duplicates
>Have Mystic Elevator
>Shit load of holes that go straight to the basement
>Basement is current just long hallways
>No stairs revealed yet
>One character is trapped down there
>Duplicates have to take shortest path to their duplicate
>Bait them over holes using mystic elevator
>Zip down and rescue party member
>Trap them in the basement, unable to reveal cards
>All of us pile into the elevator
>Priest has the crystal ball which lets you kill duplicates and a gun
>Go down to the basement
>Run out
>Bum rush duplicates
>Priest shoots one
>Go back up
>Go back down at opposite end of hallway
>Shoot
>Go back up
>Rise and repeat until we win

Yeah those really do get boring. I like the ones like, for example, everyone fighting over the parachutes

>First and only time playing it
>Get the professor
>Decide to roleplay a bit with the other players being my students studying the abandoned mansion
>We get the not!SAW scenario
>Try to be a responsible professor and take care of my students
>Find an item that increases my intelligence at the cost of looking into Hell or something
>Do it FOR SCIENCE!
>Go insane.
>I'm the first one whose head goes pop.

Well, I tried.

My was just the crazy old guy haunt with the zombies.
Course, that was the only three haunts we got that wasn't FRANKESTIEN
It was pretty good, I have still yet to pick it up myself.

I remember one game where the traitor was a necromancer or something and had a bunch of zombies that tried to eat us all. I was the little asian kid and wound up getting a magical weapon of some kind that just shredded the zombies, and one of the other players got a music box that basically made it impossible for the zombies to swarm us. We holed up inside a room and I basically fended off every zombie myself.

The mental image of a little asian kid using kung fu on the zombie horde while somebody provides theme music in the back ground kept me laughing for awhile.

> Turn into giant snake
> Everyone's attacking my head
> Meanwhile, my other head's gone down a chute to the basement and expanding with ease
> By the time my first head is weakened, I've already torn down the house

Good stuff.

Pros: exploring the mansion in phase 1 is awesome, thematic and fun.

Cons: everyone loses interest once the Haunting begins, and it's fiddly as fuck. 2nd edition tiles are all warped and shit. Also, even 2nd edition has too many fucking counters. As for 1st edition, My friend almost beat the shit out of someone for tipping the box on it's side to read the bottom, because of the shitty counter storage in the box.

Betrayal needs a spinoff that's just exploring the manor.

>Games are only fun when you've predetermined all possible outcomes
Fuck off, Deep Blue. The fun is in winning despite being dealt a shit hand. Or in losing to someone that can overcome the dice. It's a great game because there's so many different possibilities that it's impossible to get stuck in a rut no matter how often you play it.

>roleplay Ox while I play
>continually lose knowledge thanks to ghosts
>beat one up
>"Take THAT ya spooks"
>eventually die from int loss

>>Games are only fun when you've predetermined all possible outcomes

No, but because the game is so random you can end up with games that are unwinnable for one side pretty much as soon as the Haunting begins, which is annoying as fuck. For instance, I played a game where the house was falling into hell once the Haunting began. Tiles fell off the map into Hell in increasing numbers as turns passed by. To stop it you need to take the amulet to the ritual room inthe basement and pass a check. You know what the first room to fall into hell was? Yeah. Fucking unwinnable.

typical namefag.

Can be super fun with the right people and super boring and frustrating with the wrong people. My group are the wrong people. Instead of enjoying the mood that the game sets the fucktards try to powergame through it. Especially my roommate, fuck that cunt. Is there a way to teach people out of powergaming? Because that shit has been bothering me with every tabletop game I've ever played, and I am not the only one.

the Veeky Forums board game scene pretty much hates it because its not a tactical game, doesn't hold up to replaying 600 times in a row and luck is a factor.

if you just play board games once a week or so its fine.

perhaps a game that doesn't have progression as a reward?
Call of Cthulhu
Marvel FASERIP

> has a trip
> namefag
Typical newfag.

There's an expansion coming out for it. Adds more haunts and more rooms, including a new "floor": the roof.

I have it and its really fun to play with your friends

My first haunt was Airborne, where the house is stolen by a giant bird.

There's no betrayer. Instead there's parachutes, half as many as players, and you have to get one and escape. Instant Lord of the Flies.

I got out right away, pic related, and three of the remaining fought over the parachute until they realized stealing doesn't do damage and it'd be easier to just kill each other.

In the end the noobs got out and the guys teaching us died.

One con I can think of is Ox Bellows. Ox as traitor is total bullshit. Last time Ox was traitor was the firebat haunt and while we were running from the bats he just walked up and knocked the green kid's head off with one punch.

Me and my friends love it. We all tend to play as a the same characters and sort have developed an ongoing narrative based on some of our early games. Short version is we're all stuck in a Groundhog Day-like time loop, except things keep happening differently.

>randomly move around

Your movement isn't random...Explorers can move a number of tiles equal to their Speed trait. It's only monsters that have to roll their movement.

Most haunts are insanely one sided for either the players or the traitor, it usually depends largely on if the requisite rooms have flipped before the haunt or not.

The most interesting haunt I've played is the alien impersonator one where no one knows who the traitor is and you have to make the antidote.

>Pros
pretty fun for a decent sized group of people.
the events being determined by x item found in x location is pretty fun.
>Cons
can get repetitive/boring.
some scenarios can get dirty if the traitor gets a certain item.
Case in point, my fave Haunt, Werewolf:
>Wind up with the dog, before becoming the werewolf.
>Gun and Silver bullets on the table, other two players have to go for them to have a chance against me.
>Player A gets one space out from the gun.
>Puppy swipes it on my turn, runs off.
>Murderize Player A, two werewolves then massacre Player B.
Good times.

My favorite run of this game was when we our foe turned out to be the poltergeist. Four of us scrambled to gather the stuff necessary to banish the spirit while our traitor chased our final player (the eight year old boy) around upstairs, gradually beating him within an inch of his life. One of our players killed herself exploring by falling to the basement, then another player promptly did the same trying to get her items. I managed to get down safely and gather the items, giving me the mask, the armor, the revolver, and the smelling salts. My character, who had max speed, then sprinted upstairs, shot the traitor, and placed the final two candles necessary to banish the ghost.

We all just loved the mental image: a young child has been pursued by a psycho, trying desperately to flee while getting injured worse and worse. Eventually, he stumbles to the staircase, with the traitor right behind him, and tries to catch his breath.

At this point, an armored man wearing a terror mask and clutching a fistful of candles and a revolver sprints up the stairs, immediately fires the gun over his shoulder, hands him some drugs, tries (and fails) to light a candle, then sprints out of the room.

He was fine, I'm sure.

Pros:
It's easy to pick up
The rules are fairly simple
The scenarios are the right mix of creepy/funny to make for a fun theme night party game
It takes up to six players
If you have a sense of nostalgia for old random dungeon explorer games like "Sorcerer's Cave" this will hit that feeling pretty well.

Cons:
The character art depicts for the players are all terrifying mutants, especially the children.
The coffin shaped sliders it comes with, while cool looking, are absolute dog shit and will not stay even vaguely in place.
I hope you have a big ass table to game at cause this mother fucker spreads out like the legs of $3 hooker.

Overall a fun little game that is good for indoctrinating new board gamers into the foetid cash devouring pits of the hobby.

I think it is a very fun pick up and play game.

However it does get kinda boring when the haunt starts.

>As for 1st edition, My friend almost beat the shit out of someone for tipping the box on it's side to read the bottom, because of the shitty counter storage in the box.

My friend has this game (But, fuck if I know which ed) and she showed it to us, and I went "Neat" and flipped the box to read the back. I head aaaalllllll the shit rattle around in the box, and I went "oops"

The giant bird haunt is the bane of my existence.

Is there a good version of this for Roll20? So I don't have to fuck around with the counters

this

Yes.

>Pros
Great beer and pretzels game

>Cons
Some of the consultants in the latest edition

>Favorite haunts
The one where the house is slowly filling with water.

One of my favorite haunts was the bomber one. Basically, due to the layout of the house, with secret passages, the bomber could toss dynamite into the secret passage to the mystic elevator and and hit things a few squares out from the elevator.

This might not be RAW, but it was so fun that we just rolled with it.

>at gaming convetion
>become baddie
>figure out their win condition is to steal the evil mcguffin i found my win condition is to kill them
>hide behind a room with collapsed floor and i cant fall down and there is only one entrance in my room, have 3 of my semi invincible demons with me in the room 4th hunting the good guys
>2 player characters get disabled by repeated falling damage alone. even if someone makes it thorugh and make it past my demons who keep pushing them back one room i could just drop down the hole without damage myself.
>players rage quit one after another about how broken the game is
>game is still broken af

1st ed is the red/orange and black box. The Green box in the OP is 2nd edition. 1st edition had even MORE counters than 2nd does.

Plastic baggies are cheap. People who don't solve their own storage problems are morons. Personally, my buddy and I recycle all penny sleeve bags we have. They're the perfect size for groups of tokens.

"Snack" size plastic bags also work well.

This game is hard to rank because I've played it a couple times and had some of my favorite gaming memories with it.

I've also spent 45 minutes rolling haunt rolls, just to have the bad guy win or lose in 2 rounds, and the whole game feels like a waste of time.

I liked it enough to buy it, but be aware, as much fun as the game can be, it can shit the bed just as much.

You need a ton of them for 1e, and snack sized baggies are usually overkill.

2nd Ed Betrayal is easier to manage, due to having fewer unique tokens.

Of course, 2nd ed has the fucked up house tiles compared to 1st ed, and takes out the fun of the Underground Lake occasionally appearing on the upper floor.

>cons
Apparently it's all RNG.

Love it, own it, play a game once a week with it.

Stairs and revolving doors to the Mystic Elevator are OP.

Never let Ox have the spear.

It does not matter if the house tiles go around the back of the entrance.

>Underground Lake occasionally appearing on the upper floor.
That has led to some wonky things with certain haunts. I would houserule that the it can appear upstairs

Any dice game is predominately RNG.
Go play card games if it bothers you.

Your English is broken af

I can still understand everything he is saying, Apu.

My last game, I ended up with the 12 year old girl because my group picks the PC tiles randomly. A haunt was rolled literally every turn while I ran around the house and continuously took mental and physical damage before failing the haunt roll. The house was filling with water and I was the traitor. I spent 3 rounds getting to the other players who were already exactly where they needed to be. They killed me in two hits and escaped on the boat the next round. Literally everything was stacked against me from turn 1.

I said them's the breaks. Still a badass game.

>my group picks the PC tiles randomly
This is how you should do it. I don't have the math handy, but some of the PCs are outright worse than other choices, and will never be chosen by a competent player.

Exactly. We're all adept enough gamers to realize whoever picks first is going for Ox/Flash. So we keep it blind, draw a tile and pick from either side.

I dunno. I always go for either the old guy or one of the little kids. Fun to mix it up, that gives me 6 favorites to pick from.

A friend of mine always goes for Flash, though.

Just use tabletop simulator.

I own it.
Pros:potential replayability
Cons:This is a friend-breaker game, specially if you have a rule lawyer. RNG as fuck.

>This is a friend-breaker game
Literally how?

> specially if you have a rule lawyer.

The main appeal is the replayability from loads of haunts.
The man drawback is that many of the haunts are just kinda crap for one side or the other.

It's a lot of fun, but the mechanics aren't quite up to the potential the game has. Are there any homebrew rules for it?