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Comment by scarmig | Hacker News Reader

Betrayal at the House on the Hill is a pretty social and friendly game. It gives the illusion of making choices, but usually the right one is pretty obvious, and everything after that is pretty random, so anyone can win. It's rare (though possible) for someone to die and sit around waiting for half an hour.

Much of that makes it frustrating for extreme gamerz, but for people who aren't invested in complicated rule sets and deep strategies, it's perfect.

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Betrayal is more of a psuedo roleplaying game set in a cheesy B horror movie. It's a lot of fun, but the boardgame is more of a prop than anything, and people that don't get into the theme are unlikely to have fun.

Not a complaint - but something to be aware of.

The only thing that bugs me about Betrayal is that it feels like the game can get "used up"; if you've played a scenario once, a huge game mechanic (imperfect information) is lost on the second playthrough.

One you've got a group of people who've played a dozen times, it's time to introduce a new game :)

There are 50 scenarios, though, and the rules include provisions to choose a different scenario if you'd get one you've already played. That happened only twice to us so far, though. Yes, technically the game is less fun after playing it 50 times. But that's a lot of fun hours until then.

What I like about that game is that you don't /know/ what's actually going to happen in the end. However there's a high degree of random chance. Sometimes outcomes are biased really strongly in favor for or against the "betrayer".

I don't think that's a flaw, I believe it's more intended than not, but it is something to be aware of so that players have good expectations.

I don't think really think of it as a game at all. It's more of a shared narrative scenario generator. To be a game, I think there should be a competitive edge, and Betrayal ends up being cooperative for most players.

That's why it is one of my favorite games. Though we have certain scenarios that we won't play (eg: Hangman). We also let players reset if the haunt hasn't happened and they die.

Though I have not found it to be a good intro game. Even though it is simple I think people get confused with the rules. Also, it really sucks if the newcomer is the betrayer.

The rules state you cannot die before the haunt.

IIRC doesn't it say that you keep your low stats? It has been awhile since I played. We just discard all your items and flip your character card over, returning to base stats, and restart you at the entrance.

Before the haunt, any effect that would lower a stat below the lowest value cannot do so and the stat stays at the lowest value. You cannot die, but yes, you're pretty weak, which can make the time after the haunt fairly deadly.

And this is exactly why we reset people. Because we found that more often than not people tend to have items and more bonuses. So resetting their character tends to still be a disadvantage to the average character. We played a few where we let the character get to the lowest stat and they tend to die really fast, which makes the game not fun for them. Feels a little more balanced, at least to me.

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