.. it's the randomness problem, which ruins the fun.
You get problems like: the Haunt starts, but it happens that the victory condition is already met, so the traitor takes one turn and the game's over. Fun.
You get problems like: the Haunt starts, but it happens that the victory condition is already met, so the traitor takes one turn and the game's over. Fun.
That seems awfully quick: for us, it has usually taken at least a little while, unless some mistake in the rules has rendered the game effectively unwinnable.
__________________
"Vacant heart, and hand, and eye / Easy live and quiet die." (From "The Bride of Lammermoor" by Sir Walter Scott)
Proud Member of the Society of Flowers & the Tangency Changeling Motley (Unseelie Sluagh Grump).
Re: [Board/Tactical Game]: Betrayal at House on the Hill, reviewed by SteveD (5/5)
This game is a train-wreck.
I'm not a "hard-core" gamer, merely a gamer who likes his games to be well-designed, playable, and fun.
This game is, in my experience, none of the above.
Firstly, the game starts off fairly tedious (and random): You draw a random tile. Move into a room and draw a random card. At this point, some people get screwed while other people get lucky. People wander about, gathering clues, which really have little hint of what the future danger is.
Then, the game enters its second phase: the Monster is revealed. The floorboards creek, dust sprinkles down, and an ominous noise raises hairs on the back of people's necks... and then!
Everyone gets up, opens up one of two books and sits down to read for a while. if you're lucky, the scenario makes sense, otherwise you sit there puzzling over the details of the scenario. Of course, if you're the bad guy/Traitor, you can't possibly go around and ask other people to help you out. If you're lucky, someone has printed out the pages of erratta for the scenario off the website.
Once everyone has destroyed the tension by sitting around reading (why, in a game that emulates the horror genre, would you break that moment of tension with sustained silent reading?), you get back into playing. At this point, we've had games where a Banshee flew around in circles on the top floor while everyone was downstairs collecting the needed materials, games where a dragon burst through the door and killed everyone before they could do anything, a bunch of zombies that staggered about slowly, and some giant bugs that were laughed at by the players.
In other words, you randomly set up a game, acquring random stuff and random incidents to encounter a random monster that is by no means balanced or necessarily sensible. We've had requirements like getting something from a room that hasn't been put into play. We've had scenarios where the weakest characters suddenly became the traitor and was murdered by their compatriots in the same room. This game is wildly unequal. We've never had anything resembling a "close" game. It was dramatically one sided with little tension.
Can you have fun with this game? Sure. Does this game deserve a 5/5? Not in my opinion, maybe the group that played this game for the playtests deserves a 5/5, but in all honesty, this strikes me as a grossly over-inflated score not supported by the actual text of the review.
This game shouldn't require that everyone playing should be an enthusiastic role player with a willingness to overlook a nearly completely random game with poorly written scenarios.
That seems awfully quick: for us, it has usually taken at least a little while, unless some mistake in the rules has rendered the game effectively unwinnable.
We've had both cases. A nearly instant death (as in the Dragon scenario), or we've had games which went on for tedious amounts of time, such as the time the Banshee flew around for nearly an hour in the same room, as the result of bad rolls, IIRC. Meanwhile, the players lurked about down below, dutifully gathering their stuff or waiting to find the rooms they needed to find. The only things lacking were dramatic tension, fun, and meaning.
Re: [Board/Tactical Game]: Betrayal at House on the Hill, reviewed by SteveD (5/5)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Scratch
Once everyone has destroyed the tension by sitting around reading (why, in a game that emulates the horror genre, would you break that moment of tension with sustained silent reading?), you get back into playing.
But why do it that way? In our games, someone has always read the relevant passages out loud (generally hamming it up outrageously) after the Traitor has left the room.
__________________
"Vacant heart, and hand, and eye / Easy live and quiet die." (From "The Bride of Lammermoor" by Sir Walter Scott)
Proud Member of the Society of Flowers & the Tangency Changeling Motley (Unseelie Sluagh Grump).
Re: [Board/Tactical Game]: Betrayal at House on the Hill, reviewed by SteveD (5/5)
Quote:
Originally Posted by GrimGent
But why do it that way? In our games, someone has always read the relevant passages out loud (generally hamming it up outrageously) after the Traitor has left the room.
Again, this is something brought to the table by the group. Its not something "inherent" in the game, and the mechanics don't really contribute to this sort of behavior.
Compare this to "Shadows over Camelot", another cooperative game which includes a Traitor in it. Much better designed, rules that encourage character interaction and involvement. The very nature of the traitor does not suddenly bring the game to a grinding halt, but infuses the distrust and paranoia throughout the entire game.
Instead, what we have is a tactical game (observe the stats and the nature of the combat rules) imbedded in a nearly completely random game, with a potential role play aspect tacked on by some groups. This thing is a Frankenstein's monster of a game: what is it supposed to be? Is it a spooky atmospheric game? A tactical board game? A collaborative story-telling effort? A fast paced beer and pretzels game? It attempts to be all of these and ends up failing in every one of these aspects. Tension is constantly undermined, the tactical element is destroyed by the randomness, the collaborative story-telling is surrendered to the whims of a draw deck, and the game takes too long for set-up and play for it to be considered a good beer & pretzels game.
Last edited by Old Scratch; 10-12-2005 at 10:31 AM..
My biggest problem with the review is that it ignores the terrible production of the game. I mean, c'mon, the game has something like 20 pages of errata. At least half of the scenarios are entirely broken when you receive the game. It's impossible to play the game, even with an experienced group, without getting into some argument about the rules.
Add on to that the fact that most of the card board chits are plain chits with text on them. No pictures, and thus no atmosphere.
I don't like the randomness of the game either. The one game I played I got one turn before I stumbled into a spider web where I was stuck until I was killed. That's no fun, and it was a waste of an hour of gaming. However I think that is nothing compared to the terrible, terrible job that Hasbro did of producing this game.
I'd give it a 2 or 3 for Style, depending on if I decided the room tiles and such were nice and evocative enough to offset the awful job done on the rules. And I'd give it a 2 or 3 for Substance. There are considerably better "storytelling" games out there, among them the aforementioned Shadows over Camelot.
Re: [Board/Tactical Game]: Betrayal at House on the Hill, reviewed by SteveD (5/5)
I totally agree with Steve. The game is immense fun.
As to the main beefs I've constantly seen:
1: THE ERRATA IS A PHONE BOOK OOLOL
It's 4 pages, much of which can be figured out with common sense anyway. It's a definite nesessity but it's not unmanagable or hard to come by.
2: Randomness ruins the fun.
It ruins it for some players true. It doesn't make the game bad. It means some people don't like randomness. I think most don't mind it tho or else how could we explain the success of Talisman?
3: The counters suck!
There over TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY of them. For crying out loud, if they had replaced them all with plastic figures the cost would have been insane and sorting them would have been a nightmare. Lots of players seem to really get a kick out of replacing the counters with figures of their own or finding pictures for the counters themselves. I myself have no problem with them.
In any case, this game, like every game (except for Eagle Games), is a gem in the right group. Don't be afraid to try it.
Re: [Board/Tactical Game]: Betrayal at House on the Hill, reviewed by SteveD (5/5)
There are 6 pages of pure rules errata. There are 10 pages of scenario related errata for the traitor. There are 10 pages of scenario related errata for the survivors. That's 26 pages total. I suppose when those were all one file, they might have been smaller, but claiming they're 4 pages is clearly an incorrect statement
Beyond that, you set up a pure strawman on the counters issue. I mentioned that they suck because they're plain and ugly, mostly displaying texts. Your reply was, "Well, plastic figures would have cost too much." Would bits of art for the 250 pieces cost too much? Probably not.
I'll stand by my conviction that the game was very poorly produced. Irrespective of whether the game is fun or not you're supporting that shoddy production, and asking for more of it, when you support this game.
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