BETRAYAL AT HOUSE ON THE HILL

WHAT IS BETRAYAL AT HOUSE ON THE HILL?

Welcome to Betrayal at House on the Hill, or Betrayal for short, a scary game designed for 3 to 6 players. The main goal of the game is to survive and achieve your own winning goal.

When we play Betrayal, we go through two main parts. In the first part, we all work together to explore the spooky house, find precious artifacts and useful items, and become stronger. But watch out, because eventually, something dreadful happens, and that’s when the second part starts. This is where things get really exciting! One of us will turn out to be the traitor with their own secret goals, and it becomes a thrilling race to see who can complete their objectives first.

HOW DO I SET UP THE GAME?

First things first, let’s choose our characters and put the markers on our starting numbers. The markers are those little plastic things, and the starting numbers are marked in green. Once we’ve done that, we can set up the game board. We need the starting piece, the basement piece, and the upper floor piece. Oh, and don’t forget about the floor pieces! Shuffle them up, and put them face down in the middle for everyone to reach. Now let’s shuffle the event deck, the item deck, and the omen deck. Put them all near us, so we can easily grab cards.

Alright, now we need to place our characters in front of the starting tile, right by the front door. And don’t forget about the dice! Let’s put them close to all of us. Oh, and here’s an important rule – the player with the next birthday gets to go first!

GAMEPLAY

When the game starts, the players take turns in a clockwise direction. On your turn, you can do several things. You can move, explore a new room, use a card, try to roll dice, and attack (but you can only attack once the haunting starts).

Moving

If you choose to move, you can move a number of spaces equal to your current speed trait. You can also divide your movement to do other actions in between. However, if you have to draw a card for any reason, your turn ends and you can’t move anymore.

Exploring Rooms

When you discover a new room, step out of the doorway onto the tile you have found, and draw another tile for the current floor. Any tiles that don’t belong to your floor should be discarded face down. You can connect rooms in any way that makes sense, but make sure you don’t block off the floor. If your tile would do this, discard it and draw a new one. Once you connect the new tile, you can move into that room.

Some rooms have text or symbols on them. If you are the first person to enter and end your turn in one of these rooms, you will trigger the text or symbol (some rooms can be triggered once by each player). This might involve following the instructions on the card, drawing a card, or both. If you need to draw cards, do that first before leaving the room.

Using Cards

Did you know that items and omens can be really helpful cards? Each card I have can only be used once. When I decide to use a card, I have a few options. I can do what the card says, trade the item with someone else who’s in the same room as me, drop the item, steal an item from another player by making a special attack roll, or pick up a new item.

Rolling Dice

Rolling dice isn’t something I get to choose whether or not to do. Sometimes I have to do it multiple times during my turn. When it’s time for me to roll, I’ll take as many dice as I need for the situation (usually based on one of my abilities) and roll them. The goal is to reach a target number.

Attacking

When you go on the offensive, you’ll usually roll a dice to determine the outcome of your attack against another person in the room. Both of you will roll dice, and the person with the lower number will receive physical damage based on the difference between the two rolls. However, the rolls and damage may be affected by the items the attacker possesses. Keep in mind that when attacking a monster, you can only stun them unless otherwise stated.

There are two special attacks you can use. The first is a stealing attack, which is essentially the same as a regular attack. However, if you manage to deal 2 or more damage, you have the option to steal an item from your opponent instead of inflicting damage. Additionally, certain items allow you to perform ranged attacks. To execute a ranged attack, you need to have a clear line of sight to your target. If you lose the attack roll to your victim, you won’t take any damage.

Character Traits

So, there’s this game, you see. And in this game, there are four types of character traits that you need to know about: speed, might, sanity, and knowledge. These traits affect your ability to roll dice and how far you can move. Now, the traits are split into two categories: physical traits (might and speed) and mental traits (sanity and knowledge).

When you take damage in the game, it will specifically target one of your traits. But here’s the thing: you get to decide which trait or combination of traits will be affected. It’s all up to you, really. However, there’s a catch – if any of your traits ever drop to the skull, your character dies. And once your character dies, you can’t participate in the game anymore.

Let’s Talk About Cards

When you play the game, there are three types of cards you can draw on your turn: items, events, or omens. Items are cards that give you an advantage over other players. They can be really helpful. Events are special things that can happen to you in the game. They can be good or bad, and you have to roll a die to see what happens. Omens are different. They can be something that happens, or they can give you an item or introduce a new character to the game.

Something Spooky Happens

Sometimes, something spooky happens in the game. It can happen at any time. After you draw an omen card, something called a haunt can occur. This happens at the end of your turn. To see if the haunt happens, you have to roll all 8 dice. If the total number on the dice is less than the total number of omens that have been drawn in the game so far, the haunt begins.

Alright folks, let’s get this spooky party started! At the beginning of the game, I’ll hand out some booklets to all the players. These booklets will reveal who the traitor is, if there even is one. Now, here’s the twist – once the traitor knows their role, they’ll have to sneak off and read their win conditions in secret. Same goes for the survivors – they’ll have their own objectives, but they won’t know what the traitor is up to. We want to keep things suspenseful, after all!

The Grand Finale

The game keeps on going until either the survivors or the traitor reach their win condition. For the survivors to come out on top, at least one of them needs to stay alive. But here’s the twist – the traitor can still win, even if they’re no longer among the living!

Oh, before I forget, let me introduce you to Amber. They’re an awesome writer from Austin and a true gaming aficionado. They call themselves a gaming master, and they’ve got a soft spot for dogs, plants, and D&D. Can’t go wrong with that combo!