Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal

I remember a long time back playing Call of Cthulhu RPG and winding up in a cavernous underground chamber in Egypt with a crazy priest and some sort of relic of power and an invocation starting. My first action on seeing was to lace up my 1920’s Nikes because I KNEW the whole place was going to come tumbling down once we had dealt with Scarab Boy. That’s Betrayal at the house of the hill. Something nasty IS going to happen in the woodshed and chances are you’ll be on the pointy, fiery or toothed end of it. In the event of an emergency, you need to make the following steps. Really BiG ones, out the front door.

Betrayal has been around for a while, it looks like any other dungeon bash with modular rooms that trigger events when you walk into them. It doesn’t contain monsters and the only models on the map are your random characters, one of which unbeknownst will be the bad guy/gal by the time things kick off. You enter the titular house on the hill like a regular swell through the front door and walking through doors which lead to random room tiles being placed. You’ll come across various random encounters most of which are not life threatening (that comes later). Your character starts with five stats health, movement, other ones, all shown on the very worst character sheet I’ve ever seen. A lipstick on the back of a cigarette box would have been a better prop and you’ll curse it every game (but never do anything about it).

So there you and your Scooby Doo style buddies are, wandering around the mansion’s three levels all waiting for the growing omens to click up and BAM! the event kicks off. A quick read of the extensive events list sees one player become the Mr/Ms Baddie and the others scurrying like bugs from an overturned rock.

Say one thing for this game you’ll never play the same game twice. There’s hundreds of possible combos of events that can kick off. One of the players is revealed to be a vampire/zombie/robot/wizard/chimney sweep, the building is flying up into the air/collapsing/on fire/ sinking and you need to do something or other then get the hell out. Meanwhile the bad guy is trying to complete their mission before you can do yours so it’s a race and it’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of lite fun that will last you an hour or so.

It’s one to break out when you’ve more than a half hour and crave something semi heavy to quieten your gaming monkey before wrapping up the games night.

Well worth having in your gaming collection. Chances are someone in your gaming orbit already has it and you may not have gotten around to playing it yet.

well worth a look

Huzzah!

Vic