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Jan 8th, 2009 at 15:02:12 - Betrayal at House on the Hill (Other) |
House on the Hill: Sunday, Jan 4th (Games One and Two)
Betrayal at House on the Hill is a multiplayer, semi-cooperative board game for 3-6 players. The theme of the game is (campy) horror: It emulates all those classic horror B-movies and Victorian penny dreadfuls. Players are members of a group that have been locked inside a mysterious mansion and must explore it in order to find a way out. All the while, they risk uncovering the haunting secret and potentially the identity of the traitor amongst them.
= Players =
As mentioned, each player represents a hero with four basic stats: Might, Speed, Sanity, and Knowledge. These range from 1 to 7. Rolls are made against these stats using a pool of modified 6-sided dice while values from 0-2. For example, if Ox (a jock-like brute) must make a Might roll, he rolls as many dice as his Might statistic value (5 to start). The stat values increase or decrease based upon events in the house.
Each player represents a horror stereotype: E.g., The dumb jock, the absent-minded professor, the creepy girl. Each is given a brief bio that comes into play in some scenarios (i.e., the bug collector might have some relationship with the giant mantis in the basement...)
= The Board =
The House is built dynamically, using shuffled room tiles for each floor. As new rooms are added, different sorts of things occur: Unusual events are triggered, strange items are found, or omens of portent are discovered. Events are colorful strangeness that may help, harm, or just do weird things, often depending on the success of a roll. Items are very beneficial, and the game does somewhat become a "find the widget"-fest to help fight off monsters. This, however, is a double-edged sword as the person with the most items may become the Traitor (more on this later). Omens are a small set of events, items, or people that presage the second phase of the game (the Haunt).
= The Haunt =
The first phase of the game is freeform exploration: The heroes explore the house with no real plan. As omens are triggered, the chance of the Haunt beginning (the second phase) increased: Each time an omen is found, six dice are rolled. If the number is less than the number of Omen cards in play, the Haunt begins. Thus, on average, seven Omens will be discovered before the Haunt begins.
When the Haunt is triggered, the room where the last Omen occurred and the Omen triggering it determines what happens. The game comes with rule books for about 50 different scenarios, not enough for every permutation, but good enough. Each scenario also determines who the Traitor is: The player who now controls all the monsters which are about to appear. The Heroes and the Traitor then have different rules for determining their winning outcome.
The Haunt introduces monsters and other oddities to the game, represented by tokens. There are a lot of monsters (it takes a good hour to sort them all the first time). They are never used all at once, but it is a lot to keep track of.
= Game Play =
First Session: We played BaHotH with four people—two long players, one casual one, and a first time player. The rules are pretty simple, so we were off and running quickly. My character as the creepy girl who liked to dissect things.
Exploration was pretty standard: All of us quickly split up. My character lost her flashlight, so was slowed until another could give her a new light. The new player fell through the floor into the basement and was stuck in the Junk Room. This room is so full of detritus that you take damage if you cannot escape. She quickly was reduced to her minimum speed, never escaping the room before the Haunt occurred.
When the Haunt was triggered, the scenario was Ghost Bride. The Traitor was the woman stuck in the Junk Room (due to her character's love of old movies). As Traitor, the player was no longer hindered by the house and thus could escape the Junk Room. Her goal was to have the Ghost Bride kill one of the players, bring him to the Chapel, and marry him. We, of course, needed to stop her by finding the true name of her dead groom, dig up his body, and drag it to the Chapel. We did so, with barely any time to spare.
It was during this haunt that one of the endearing "features" of House on the Hill appeared: The rules, especially in the scenarios, are sometimes ambiguous or self-contradictory. When the Ghost Bride kills her "groom", they are to "put" the two tokens in the Chapel. At first reading, it was unclear if they should just appear there or had to move their manually. This comes up in other games, where, depending on the scenario, the game could be quite unbalanced towards the Hero or the Traitor.
Second Session: We played another game immediately afterwards. This time, I was the college student that had spurned the jock. House exploration was similar to the previous time, though no one got stuck. My character and my wife's character spent most of the game trying to open the vault for its precious items. Meanwhile, the other two players picked up more items by exploring normally. Statistically, we should have opened the vault much sooner, but sometimes the dice hate you.
The Haunt occurred when Ox discovered a girl who was immediately kidnapped by the Thing from the Lake. Here, the game changed dramatically a normal exploration was no longer allowed: We had to explore a dynamically created lake filled with sea monsters and other things. The scenario was a departure from the main game, using a totally different sub-system. Several scenarios does this, some with better success than others. Eventually, we rescued the girl, beat up the star-fish-tentacle-thing, and escaped.
= Overall =
House on the Hill is a quick and light game. It suffers from some balance issued, but even then, most people ignore them and have a blast.
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