Betrayal at House on the Hill

Yeah, I definitely get that. Like I said, the random nature of the game pretty much pervades every aspect of the mechanics. Some people will hate that, but I find I can easily tolerate it because I fundamentally enjoy the experience of playing it. You just need to go in thinking of it as more of a haunted house simulator than a proper game.

There's no way to adequately 'prepare' for the haunt. Sometimes the breakdown of skills or positioning of the Survivors at the onset of the haunt is totally incompatible with winning. Sometimes the player who ends up being the Traitor is at death's door and one room away from Ox when the haunt starts. Like said, you just gotta laugh.

>Also, anyone else read in the back of the scenarios handbook and saw the backstories all the survivors had?

Yeah! I love it. The bios can also give you some limited insight as to particular scenarios in which a specific character automatically becomes the traitor.

I've heard the expansion was not play tested. Like, at all. But with some house rules they can be made playable.

One of the designers was zoe quinn and another was that guy who made cards against humanity so, it's not hard to believe that the game is rather unstable.

For sure. It's a good beer&pretzels game, but I wouldn't pull it out often.

I think the frequency with which it will come off the shelf is 100% determined by how enamored you are with the setting. I'm a horror movie buff, so Betrayal is absolute tops for me. I just love that shit. For someone who's a bit more ambivalent with regards to such things, I think the game is only likely to be fielded once in a great while after the first couple playthroughs. Even so, the sheer variety of haunts can make for exciting and unique experiences with the potential to overshadow the absolute chaos of the gameplay.

The game itself is pretty simple, and depending on the haunt there's not a lot you can do other than pray that you're lucky.

That being said as soon as I got it I replaced the figures with the Scooby doo gang legos (the old man we made Vincent Price) and we've had a blast with it just half-assed role playing as our Scooby doo characters

I enjoy it, but it's pure randomness. Plus you can't really play it more than a couple of times in close succession, as events will repeat and what was cool and vaguely creepy the first time quickly becomes staid.

Some of the haunts are completely unbalanced, there is one I remember that the monster player won immediately on their turn with no way for us to stop it (something about dreams escaping from outside windows?).

But for some reason I enjoy it despite these and some occasionally badly written rules.

Yeah we've played the dreams escaping from windows one, we got the haunt really early on so there wasn't much for the dreams to travel before they escaped.

Kind of shitty, but I'm guessing that failing the very first haunt roll probably had something to do with that

(OP)

It's a pretty solid party game, good for a few laughs around a table (preferably with drink maturity of the players providing). But definitely not one for competitive people or those who end up feeling victimised if they get ganged up on.

Even without the expansion I've had a decent time playing it with family members, friends, partners, but it's nothing special.

Solid 6/10, 8/10 with booze.

>tfw stuck in the basement alone AGAIN

It's a favorite of me and my friends. I don't recommend playing it with less than 4 people, but if you have at least 4 it's great. Me and my friends have played just about every one of the original Haunts, and have had a great amount of laughs and in-jokes occur because of it, such as the Quantum Axe.

The expansion is, so far, very fun.

Also the game is fucking psychic in that certain patterns somehow keep coming up, as observed. In the case of me and my friends:

- When I turn traitor (I always play Heather), I'm inevitably helping some kind of monster and have a "win condition" that doesn't depend on killing anyone. I am rarely the traitor, however, and am more frequently in a position to stop the traitor. Our ongoing fluff has Heather being a modern-day Paladin.
- One of my friends (who always plays Missy) is inevitably attempting to unnaturally extend her life in some way. Our ongoing fluff has Missy being an ancient lich in the guise of a little girl.
- Another friend (who always plays Zostra) is usually trying to wrest control of the House, or else enact some kind of ritual. Our ongoing fluff has her as a powerful psychic/medium
- The final friend (who always plays Ox) has actually never been the traitor and usually ends up with the dog. Our ongoing fluff has him as Shaggy.

As of the expansion, things have taken a turn in that 3 of the 4 scenarios we played in, I (Heather) was the traitor and was directly trying to kill everyone else, while in the 4th one there was no Traitor. The fluff is that Heather has fallen and become a Blackguard.

*By the way, if you're wondering about the Quantum Axe, it relates to the very first time any of us got the Axe.

>Missy stepped into a room and got an Event: IMAGE IN THE MIRROR.
>She sees her reflection in the mirror saying that she'll need "this", this being an Axe.
>Her reflection hands her the Axe.
>Next turn, Missy steps into another Event room, and gets RORRIM EHT NI EGAMI
>She sees her reflection in the mirror and tells her reflection that she'll need "this", "this" being the very Axe she was handed on her previous turn (she had no other items)
>She hands her reflection the Axe

It was seriously like 10 games before we saw that Axe again. It was caught in a stable - stupid - time loop that was all of, I dunno, 1 minute long and which achieved nothing.

My sessions so far:
>only play as a character that doesn't have a 1 in any stats and has Sanity lowest at 3
>speed is the most useful stat in almost any scenario I can think of
>instead of exploring, end turns at stat-boosting rooms. I can get stronger and wait for others to find the basement and get trapped there instead
>trigger the haunt for the Theater for the third time playing. The third time forced us to ignore since there are only two haunts
>get talked into fighting monsters for my high stats, monsters are slightly stronger than me and much more luckier
>one of the theater haunts is one-sided both in a well-explored and unexplored house in favor of the heroes

It's a good game with good variety so it's almost different each time you play it, but it's not one of those games you play over and over in a single sitting.

My wife hates it so it doesn't come out as often.

I dig it. It isn't really a great game, but it's fun with normie friends that aren't into heavy board games.

Once had one of the event cards make my character fall down into the basement, drawing the mystical elevator.

This meant you could head for the ground floor and then fall into the mystical elevator which happens to be on the ground floor or the upper floor. I need to get that event drawn

>instead of exploring, end turns at stat-boosting rooms. I can get stronger

You know you can only benefit from each room once per game, right? I.e., you only gain 1 Sanity from the Chapel, maximum, per game.

The original game isn't clear on that, but the Errata clarifies it.

Oh, though, that reminds me.

The original game had a misprinted tile: the Underground Lake was a 2nd Floor Tile rather than a Basement Tile. If you have that version of the game, I HIGHLY recommend playing with the errata for it:

1. The Underground Lake remains a 2nd Floor Tile
2. However, once it is found, it "falls" to the Basement, taking the player who found it with it.
3. WHEEE!!!!!

It's silly.

>You know you can only benefit from each room once per game, right? I.e., you only gain 1 Sanity from the Chapel, maximum, per game.
I know that. There is usually a new stat room by the time my turn comes around because we would be playing with 5 or 6, so I am usually hopping from one I used to another one I didn't use, and I end up being the 2nd healthiest party member (the healthiest is the one who has better event luck).

But if you do this, you don't get nearly as many neat items or Omens...

>Even so we all still had a laugh, and I was thinking about getting the expansion, but I've heard a lot of ugly stuff about it
I haven't got the expansion myself, but my excitement about it was completely drained after I found out they included a significant number of people who are the cancer that is dragging down our tabletop hobby.

>TFW the priest follows the little boy around AGAIN

>Owned the base game since it came out
>Had to exchange it because it was one of those fucked copies even
>Had this copy for so long the entire game is worn, character cards have become frayed
>Group would play this at least once every week
>We've done each haunt at least twice
>One of my buddies gets the expansion as soon as it's out
>We try it
>The haunt we get is we're all interns fetching coffee
>What the flying fuck? How is this horror?
>We don't even finish the haunt
>Never play it again

I warned him, I knew the haunts were going to go down hill, only so much of genre is there

Who wrote that one? It should say.
Keep in mind that they got the CAH guys, Quinn, and Anita to work on the expansion, which is not a good sign even if you like any of them.

Lemme guess, if the traitor wins, he or she says "You're fired!".

it's ok, but yeah, everything leading up to the haunt is boring. you explore at random, things happen at random, and there is nothing to actually do until the haunt happens. everything pre-haunt is basically a long, drawn-out board setup

Please tell me this is a joke, there isn't actually a haunt that's supposed to be a piss-take of Donald Trump?

There's one called 'Make america explode again'

Why do all good things end up with fucking scum involved in them?

Why can't I just enjoy something once without it ending up cuckified?

Don't know any of the details, just that someone skimmed the book and found "You're fired" at the bottom paragraph (If you win...).
Wouldn't be surprised since if they are hiring feminist hacks and weird companies to write horror scenarios they would probably think making a potentially dated joke was a good idea.

Well, fuck. Really shouldn't be surprised since things have been going downhill since 2015.

Please don't derail the thread into /pol/itics.

I remember playing the blob haunt. How can the heroes ever win? At least give them a Speed saving throw if the blob expands! Or some way to repel the blob briefly!

That's genuinely stupid

Agreed. After a dozen or so games, the closest I've gotten to a pre-haunt strategy is:
1) don't bunch up too close to other players, but don't stray too far from them either
2) it is always better to end your turn in a stat-boosting room than to try and explore new ones
3) immediately make for the second floor: you have a better chance of finding items and a reduced chance of ending up in the basement
4) try to be the guy camping out in the mystic elevator if possible

>tfw stuck in a room that deals physical damage if you fail a roll each turn and won't let you leave until you pass a physical check

I like it. It's a fun, light, flavorful pick up game. My friends don't really like board games, so this is the most non-normie game I can get them to play.

This always happens to me. I fall into the basement and then cross the Chasm into a dead-end room like the underground lake or vault or whatever, and then I spend three fucking turns trying to cross the Chasm again to get back out.

>mfw the traitor is murdering all my friends on the ground floor while I tiptoe across a rickety bridge

to play devil's advocate/the traitor of this thread scenario: plenty of haunts with have some silly names.

One of the more recent ones I played was 'I Was a Teenage Lycanthorpe'.

Still plenty of horror when I converted two of the other survivors to my side before we all got killed.

not really my thing, played several full games with friends but just never really caught my fancy. games seem to take too long and drag on too much. The sudden adversarial tone is kinda jarring, and overall the whole thing kinda just bores me.

It's more like that movie coming out soon, The Belko Experiment. It's a functional enough Haunt, and it's not like all 50 of the original Haunts are solid gold anyway.

Can you play the other components of the xpac, like the attic, without using the new haunts?

Betrayal at House on the Hill?

More like, "Ox Bellows Solves Every Problem: The Game"

Alternatively: You better fucking hope Ox isn't the traitor or you're fucked"

The haunts in the expansion aren't as good overall I would say, but the extra rooms/items/events makes it completely worth it anyway.

Although I *did* get the expansion for free with all the points I had saved up with my local board game bar

Played it

> Jock with a spear kills 10 zombies and the zombie lord in 1 turn
> Play the dragon haunt. Roll utter shite on the speed roles while the rest of the party searches the basement for the items at their leisure and then run a train over the dragon
> Be traitor, everyone else's win condition is to kill me
> I'm 2 tiles away from everyone else; I get killed before I even get a turn as the traitor

personally find it very heavily RNG

What's a broken arm between brothers?

The game becomes retarded by haunt as the person with the most items by then is basically the winner 90 percent of the time.

Is there a print and play version for this?
I don't want to spend a lot of money on a game I haven't tried at least once (no chance of finding someone who owns it too)

Anyone ever rolled 0 on the very first omen?

My group discussed doing this just for fun - when the first omen is revealed, just pretend the player rolled 0 and start the haunt. We decided not to, figuring it would probably be lame and it'd come up organically at some point anyway. We then started playing and I was the first to reveal an omen. Rolled 0. Then I think we fought... Dracula?

That's not Quantum, that's just shitty time travel. The axe will experience infinite time and eventually wear away to nothing after being handed back and forth for 10^1000000 times. That is, nevertheless, fucking hilarious.

Post the characters

My friend puts the dic in dictator while playing this game, but overall it can be fun. Some of the haunts of the expansion is lackluster to just plain bad, but the added tiles and items have been a great bonus. I really do like those. Still worth playing at least once a month after work.

I lost as the blob but I completely fucked up playing it so that might be why.

>Alternatively: You better fucking hope Ox isn't the traitor or you're fucked"
Every fucking time.

You pretty much nailed it.

No one in my group ever seems to give a shit what is really going on until the haunt happens. And when it does, each side tries their best to win but no matter who wins no one really cares that much because it's such random bullshit.

Great fun.

It's probably my favourite board game. It's fucking sweet. Especially if you treat omen rolls that result in a story someone at the table has tried before, as successful so you can skip those.

That's a tasteful campy reference, though.

Loltrump is like putting a Bill Clinton joke in there; it's tacky trash humor.

We do that as well. Once we run through all the scenarios we'll start replaying them.

I had a haunt where the players had Space AIDS and if players shared a room they'd swap two random tokens, of course the infected player is trying to give everyone AIDS.

So I was playing the old priest, and the only remaining player was my friend who was the little boy, me and him were the only ones in the basement.

I spent a good portion of the game as an old priest chasing a little boy to give him Space AIDS.

I've played that haunt which falls in line with the crapshoot nature of Betrayal others have talked about. The secret traitor never managed to infect anyone, we got what we needed to make the cure and that was it. One of those scenarios that isn't very clear about how the unrevealed traitor deals with the injection. I traded tokens several times, including with the traitor, but by sheer luck I just kept exchanging the same numbers over and over again. Everyone survived but the traitor who failed to infect anyone.

One of the most annoying ones was I, Mutant. That one is nearly impossible to win between how easy it is for players to get caught in nets (which the traitor and monster assistants can keep dropping in a room meaning you can be trapped pretty much indefinitely), and the fact that once all non-traitors are caught it's game over. I got lucky, essentially, and managed to destroy the research laboratory solo despite being hacked on relentlessly by the traitor and his butt buddies (the worst is the one who if you "win" an attack against him you actually receive all that damage to yourself instead). The only thing that saved me was the ability to "mutate" by shifting 1 point in one stat into another stat, allowing me to slowly replenish my strength by draining less useful stats. Still a close run thing.

>Anyone ever rolled 0 on the very first omen?

Yes, with the dragon one, when we had explored maybe 3 rooms total thus far. That was hilarious. We won, incidentally, mostly due to luck.

>We won, incidentally, mostly due to luck.
When they finally make the third expansion they should just call it exactly that.

The one where a bird flies off with the house and everyone has to fight for the parachutes is fun.

Friend of mine played the little girl. Somehow got spear and super strong.
House was airborn with limited parachutes.
She decides to wait till last possible round to jump and stabs the fuck out of all of us

Another game I was the mummy and only person left was old guy. we both have insanely slow movement. cue slowest chase scene since this. vimeo.com/101814554

We had enough time to order more drinks and get started on them. A terrible race of tedium except for the fact that we just kept laughing.

My biggest problem with it is that it feels like a party stye game(in that there's not a whole lot of control to be had by the players themselves), it has some moments of pretty intense rules checking once the haunt is revealed.

I don't mind games like these, you can play them with just about anyone and enjoy yourself, but stopping half way through the game and taking 10-15 minutes to figure out what's next usually just ends people's interest in the game.

I understand the haunts add a lot of replayability, but they need to be smoother as a mechanic. And the biggest issue is that in the current system, the best way to make the haunts fast is to already know what they are, which kind of ruins the main fun of the game.

any repaints of the characters in the base game?

I always found their original painting hideous.

and/or alternate miniatures, as I doubt a new paintjob will save those minis

Ox is simply manifest proof of the axiom that each of us already knew: every interpersonal conflict can ultimately be reduced to "who punches the hardest?"

This haunt was really fun the first time we played it and great on a conceptual level, but we pretty quickly figured out that it can be easily beaten by the group acting rationally. Unless the house has been built railroad-style, you should have time to win while simultaneously staying out of one another's path. The one player who's unwilling to make way for others or needlessly enters an occupied room is pretty much outed as the traitor.

It gets interesting if people are already sharing a room when the haunt first begins, though.

>Played this about 10-15 times
>Traitor never came close to winning any game
Is this par for the course?

No. At least in my group, there's a pretty good split.

Ox isn't all that useful, though, in Haunts that don't depend on the Traitor living.

Personally prefer Mansions of Madness for my haunted house board game, but it's not bad and takes much less to set up.

Excuse you, I've had way more games ruined by Flash than Ox. I played the Ourobouros haunt and he managed to axe both heads to death since he was the only one with enough movement to chase down the other end with all the body segments in the way.

>get the expansion adding roof stuff
>everyone gets excited and goes up to the roof only
>haunt turns the house into a tree
>win condition is to kill the rooms on the bottom floor while there are more roof/upper rooms than root tokens
>there are no explored tiles on the bottom floor
>make two brawn checks to instant kill the tree.

I've played this game with two different group settings. One was a weekly game club on a college campus where the traitors had something like a 90% win rate, the other is a group of friends that plays boardgames sometimes where the traitors have won only ONCE in all the games we played.

I mostly play with a casual group of friends; a couple of can get pretty competitive at times, but those gloves never come off when we're playing Betrayal.

The Survivors probably didn't win until our fourth or fifth game, and by now we've achieved a pretty even split. Certain haunts will be really hard to win/lose based on circumstance, but I've never felt that the Survivors have an inherent advantage over the Traitor or vice-versa.

>Ox isn't all that useful, though, in Haunts that don't depend on the Traitor living.

A lot of haunts nevertheless require someone to dig, break, or pummel something. And god help you if Ox is the Traitor, because almost every haunt encourages them to beat up on the Survivors.

That said, I agree with . Flash, especially when he gets to Speed 7-8, is pretty much a young god once the haunt starts. He also doesn't have quite as glaring flaws in his other attributes like Ox does.

It's too long but fun, especially with a casual crowd. It's real easy to play with people familiar with the basics of a board game and like the idea of a longer more involved one that doesn't require a ton of thought. The setting relates well to everyone.