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Feb 10th, 2015 at 17:35:23 - Betrayal at House on the Hill (Other) |
Our second round played out fairly different from the first. We had an additional player this time. The haunting took much longer to occur this round, so much more of the house had been explored beforehand.
The haunting for this round involved giant alien eyeballs that floated around. The "traitor's" character was abducted by them. That player then proceeded to stop playing as their character and instead played as the aliens. The haunting began with a ship and two aliens spawning in the room the traitor was in. The traitor determined the actions of the aliens, much like in a strategy game. The aliens could attack a player and mind control them. The traitor then controlled that player's character, and had to move that character to the alien ship. If that character started a turn on the same tile as the ship, he/she was abducted and out of the game. It was the traitor's goal to abduct or kill all the players. The players' goal was to destroy the alien ship. Destroying the ship worked much like digging up the buried friend. The players had to succeed a certain number of attacks that was determined by the amount of players. If a player was mind-controlled, another player could attack the victim and free them. Any players freed from control were then immune to it.
This scenario was much better designed. It incorporated much more strategy into the rules, as the traitor and players were actively working against each other. The players had to strategically deal with the aliens while also working on destroying the ship and protecting each other.
However, this scenario also highlighted a flaw of the game. The rules were too vague in some spots. It did not clarify whether the aliens were vulnerable to attack or not. This led to some confusion until the players agreed on how to treat them.
Also, it was at this point that I felt there wasn't much difference to the playable characters. While they had differing starting and potential stats, it didn't seem to make much difference. Everything was ultimately determined by rolls of the dice, and there wasn't much difference between character stats to make a significant impact in the rolls.
Unfortunately, the players failed, again. One thing I failed to mention in my first entry is that the game provides an ending for each outcome of the scenarios. This adds some flavor to the game and makes it much more engaging.
From my two rounds of the game, I feel that the game stands the most on its interesting atmosphere and sense of exploration. The variable game rules is a great feature, and makes replaying the game more interesting. However, the rest of the game doesn't hold up that well, and it too luck-based for my tastes.
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Feb 10th, 2015 at 17:14:46 - Betrayal at House on the Hill (Other) |
We first played the game with five players. There were a multitude of characters to choose from with a variety of stats. While the characters differed in these stats, none seemed much more powerful overall than another. Unfortunately, the pieces meant to track a character's stats on his/her card slid about very easily, making keeping track of them a pain. There's a phone app that serves the same purpose as well as functioning as a convenient scenario book, but that has an additional monetary cost. Otherwise, the interface of the game is just as functional as any other tabletop game. Your stats are monitored on one card, and it's easy to understand.
The board itself is procedurally generated as the players explore unknown sections of the playing environment. This is implemented via tiles that act as separate rooms in the titular house. There are three floors to the house: the ground floor, the upper floor, and the basement. While there are exceptions, you can generally only travel between the ground and upper floors via a stairway in the starting entry corridor. The basement may only be reached via special tiles or events. Exploration is risk for reward. Which tiles the players find are drawn from a deck of them. The player does not know whether the next room will contain a beneficial item, some sort of protection, or a trap. Also, players must stop upon revealing a room containing an event or omen, which are the majority of them. So, exploring the unknown will likely stop you short of taking your full movement. It follows that exploring more of the house opens up more area to freely traverse. Each tile makes its information easy to understand, so there was no confusion what one did.
Events are triggered by finding appropriately labeled rooms. Upon finding one, the player draws an event card, which is then applied to the appropriate targets. There are also items, which may be found in labeled rooms, or received from an event. Omens, which are found the same way as events, may act as events or items. However, each one found has a chance of triggering the "haunting," the probability of it increasing with each omen found.
There are a number of possible hauntings. The one that is activated is determined by the omen that triggered it and what room it was found in. Upon the start of the haunting, one player is labeled as the traitor. It is at this moment that the objective of the round is revealed. The traitor is given one goal, and the other players are given an opposing one. What proceeds to play out depends on the haunting.
For our first playthrough, the traitor had supposedly buried a friend of ours in the basement. It was up to the other players to find the room the friend was buried in, and then dig her out before she died. The traitor had to lay an appropriate amount of tiles in the basement, if there weren't enough already, then choose one that the friend was buried in. The non-traitors had to travel to each room, and roll their knowledge score to determine if the friend was buried in that room. What is interesting is that the difficulty of the goal scaled with the number of players, making it fair for the sole traitor. In our instance, it took a certain number of successful diggings to free the friend. Each player could attempt to dig once during their turn, if they were in the right room. The number of successful attempts required was equivalent to the number of players, meaning that having more players wasn't an outright advantage. The traitor, on the other hand, had to do everything he could to stop the others from finding the trapped friend. This mostly involved trying to kill them.
Each character had four stats: might, speed, sanity, and knowledge. They were categorized under either physical or mental traits. A player could take either physical or mental damage. The player could choose how to spread out that damage among the two traits in the appropriate category. If any trait reached zero, that player was out of the game.
Among killing the other players, the traitor also had time on his side. In every turn of the traitor's, the trapped friend had a random number of damage dealt to it, the maximum potential damage increasing with each turn. Only the traitor knew how much health the buried friend, meaning the others had to race as fast as possible to free it. Ultimately, we failed, and the traitor won.
From my experience, I feel that specific haunting is too determined by luck. Once it starts, the non-traitors must get to the basement, the ease of which is determined by what has been randomly found in the house. Then the players must roll to find the buried friend, which is admittedly more favored to characters with a high knowledge core. After that, they must roll their might score within the room the friend is buried in, adding another element of luck. Finally, the friend is dealt a random amount of damage each round, and a few really high rolls can end the game fairly early. All of this adds up to a very luck based game, which isn't very fun. It's hard to feel that your skill at the game matters when so much is up to chance.
Another issue we experienced was that the game only one book for the non-traitor rules during hauntings. This meant you either needed to acquire more copies or wait for everyone to read through it one at a time. Thankfully, one of the players had a digital copy on a tablet, which somewhat alleviated the problem. Overall, it was a fun round and an interesting first time experience.
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TripodRanger has been with GameLog for 9 years, 9 months, and 11 days |
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