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We've looked at the spooky in writing; we've looked at the spooky in art. We've looked at the spooky in movies, games and music, and even then, it's just a start. Now, we're gonna see spooky in a different vein, in the realm of
Horror tabletop games.
I'm excited as hell to write about this, because there are a lot of different horror tabletop games out there. The horror may not pop out at you right away, but, like a good horror book, it can make your imagination run wild with what's happening. With these kinds of games, you get the chance to play out a horror story, be it your own or others. For this game, the beginning is always the same...but the story and setting always changes. Prepare to enter in a house, with potentially 6 of your friends…one won't be your friend for long. It's your job to discover the Betrayal At House On The Hill.
Leave it up to a haunted house to fuck with ya, right? Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil and House of the Dead taught us that well. With Betrayal, you all start off in an entrance hall of a two-story creepy ass house. You have the ground, upper and basement floors to explore. As you explore, you'll find things left behind by the previous tenants...or something that may have wandered in on its own. While you explore, spooky shit happens, and as this does, it effects every person in the house.
This spooky shit translates in game as haunts. As you stumble upon ominous occurrences, the haunt draws ever closer until it overcomes everyone. When the haunt begins, one person is going to turn on the rest...and...well, to say that that's where the fun begins is an understatement.
The game is played using minis, cards, tiles, and a custom d6 which has the values 0, 1, and 2 in equal parts. You choose whomever you want to play out of a total of 12 characters in the game, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. A character has their own Speed, Might, Sanity and Knowledge stats. If any of these hit 0 during the haunt, the character dies.
As a character explores the house, they flip tiles of the respective floor. Some tiles can have multiple floors (for example, a laboratory can be found either on the upper or lower floors of the house). Each tile has the potential for the an explorer to find either an item, have something spooky happen to them, have something ominous happen to them, or nothing at all. This is where the uniqueness of this game comes into play.
When you find an omen card, not only does this move the game closer to a haunt, but if it actually starts, where you find it and what it is can actually make a difference. There are 50 haunts total, and it may not even be the haunt revealer themselves that's the traitor. But once the traitor is revealed, the dynamic changes completely, and, if the players get into it, the game can get creepy really fast.
The heroes band together and take a look at the survivor's tome and read from that, while the traitor goes off into another room and read's the traitor's tome. Each side forms a plan to complete their respective objectives. At that point, it could very well be any side's game, and each side's cleverness could either lead those in the light to safety, or they can suffer a brutal, gruesome...death.
Whether it's letting the imagination of the players run wild with what's going on, or whether it's the traitor inciting panic into everyone else, there are a fair amount of scares to be had with this game. As with all horror media, it's all in the delivery...
--Choco (10/3/16)
Image credits: avalonhill.wizards.com (Both the title and the layout) sf.funcheap.com (Big haunted house picture)
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