Return to Betrayal at House on the Hill, Group 2

[Kish]

(Missy needs to make a Might roll to resist the axe-swinging Flash.)

[Lex-Kat]

Maybe she heard him grunt, or she heard the near-imperceptible swish as the axe cut through the air, but somehow Missy anticipates Flash's swing of the axe, and is able to jump out of the way in time. (rolled a 6)

The axe cuts through the hem of her skirt, leaving Missy with her mouth agape at the attempted axe murderer. "Flash! My momma bought me this dress!" she says, very upset at the destruction of her dress.

Spoiler: What's my motivation?

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Age: 9
Height: 4'2"
Weight: 62 lbs.
Hobbies: Swimming, Medicine
Birthday: February 14th
Missy can’t remember wanting to be anything except for a doctor. Her favorite gift ever in the whole wide world was her first doctor’s kit. She practices ‘medicine’ on anyone who will let her. She even cuts up dead frogs and stuff she finds in her yard. But sometimes that gets bad, and she dreams of dead frogs hip-hopping into her bed at night and smothering her. Then she screams.

Missy knows Peter (and his gross bug collection) from school. She knows Father Rhinehardt from Sunday school (he talks funny and smells like chocolate). Missy lives in the same neighbourhood as Brandon. He delivers her family’s paper, but she doesn’t really know him. (She thinks he’s cute, though.)

Missy’s greatest fear is of dead things coming back to life and hunting her.

To find the Character Board.

[Ramsus]

Flash shrugs and races past the priest and downstairs to the front door.

[Kish]

Spoiler: Upper Floor

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Spoiler: Ground Floor North

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Spoiler: Ground Floor South

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Spoiler: Basement

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The Hero Turn begins now.

[GrayDeath]

Heather continues onward staigh ahead, as there are no other doors, and going back seems a bit ess appealing than she thought....

[Kish]

Heather enters a furnace room. She resolves to get through it quickly before the heat weakens her...then she spots something glittering on the floor.

Spoiler: Furnace Room

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Whenever you end your movement in this room, take 1 physical damage. This happens to Heather now.

Spoiler: Omen: The Ring

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If you attack an opponent that has a Sanity trait, you can attack with Sanity instead of Might (your opponent defends with Sanity, and damage is mental instead of physical).

Spoiler: Upper Floor

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Spoiler: Ground Floor North

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Spoiler: Ground Floor South

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Spoiler: Basement

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[Deathslayer7]

Father Reinhardt discards the bandages on his leg and raises his hands in prayer while limping to the Game Room. As he moves, it seems like a miracle that he moves faster and easier his leg no longer bothering him. He looks at the statue and motions it out the door. Off it zooms after Flash.

Total movement of 5 for the statue.

Total heal of 9. Heal up to 3 damage on myself up to starting stats.

[Kish]

(You need to roll Speed to move through the Collapsed Room to reach the statue.)

[Deathslayer7]

It's only when it's first discovered that a speed roll applies. Afterwards you can freely move through it. 95% sure on that.

[Ramsus]

No, it's every single time.

"Whenever you enter this room, make a Speed roll. On a 5 or better, you catch yourself. On a 4 or lower, you fall into an undiscovered basement room and take 1d3-1 physical damage."

[Deathslayer7]

The text on that card is correct but its not the full text. This is from the rulebook.

The Collapsed Room
Only the explorer who first discovers the Collapsed Room needs to make the Speed roll listed there. Thereafter, any explorer entering the room can either ignore the room ability or use it
intentionally, in which case that explorer still takes the damage.
Falling to the basement doesn’t count as moving a space. Only the first explorer to fall to the basement from the Collapsed Room draws and places a basement tile. Put the Below Collapsed Room token on the room where the first person landed.

If you want to play where everyone has to make a roll that's fine by me, but then I would change my actions and most likely wait for Missy to cross the room.

[Ramsus]

Considering most of us don't have the rulebook available we have to work off the knowledge the narrator has given us. It seems a bit unfair that the rules would be different for you just because you have access to more information than everyone else. As certainly if you didn't have the rulebook you would have just done what the narrator quoted.
I used to play the game occasionally and I've never seen anyone use that specific ruling either. So I'd basically be punished (since it was obviously intentional I moved there to give the heroes a disadvantage I couldn't possibly know there different rules for than were given here) for your sudden declaration of extra knowledge you chose not to share earlier. If you'd said this the moment the card was revealed or something, that would be fair. Trying to do so only the moment it's convenient to you is practically cheating given you know I almost certainly didn't have that information.

I also think it's a bit unfair to declare you'd change your action. I didn't get to retroactively change my attack on you to stealing when it turned out the Medical Kit wasn't a single use item like I'd assumed it was (since it's pretty dang broken being infinite use and I had no reason to assume that was how it worked).

[Lex-Kat]

I shall wait for Kish's ruling before moving Missy.

[Kish]

I haven't been using exactly the same rules as the board game version, which I thought was apparent (the lack of turn order, for one thing), but if I run this again, I'll make sure to spell out that I'm not using exactly the same rules as the board game version. The way I was handling the collapsed room was in the thread-starting post along with all the other rooms with effects, so it would be distinctly unfair to suddenly change it with "actually, that's not the way it's supposed to be in the board game."

That said, since it's not like not risking falling and not reaching the statue is unambiguously a better choice, I'll let Rhinehardt do something else instead.

[Deathslayer7]

That's fine. Ramsus, I never intended to cheat. So please do not accuse me like that. I've played the board game version before and we had a situation where a player with 1 speed had to cross the collapsed room which is why I know about that rule. I assumed that this was following the board game rules but I stand corrected.

To be fair I will not change my actions, even though it is harmful to me.

Speed roll of 3 to cross the collapsed room. Which means I fall in.

[Kish]

Father Rhinehardt falls...into water.

(0 damage, and you land in the Underground Lake; where is it? It could be attached to the Furnace Room, the Basement Landing, the Larder, the Junk Room (north), or the Junk Room (south).)

[Deathslayer7]

Let's do the furnace room.

[Kish]

Okay. Father Rhinehardt struggles free of the water, only to fall into one of the walls.

Spoiler: Event: The Walls

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This room is warm. Flesh-like walls pulse with a steady heartbeat. Your own heart beats with the rhythm of the house. You are drawn into the walls . . . and emerge somewhere else. Attach the next room tile to the house somewhere legal; it can be on any floor that is legal for that tile. Your Explorer is now in that room; resolve any effects it has.

Father Rhinehardt emerges in the Gallery, which is on the upper floor. Is it attached to the Creaky Hallway, the Servants' Quarters, the Collapsed Room or the Game Room?

Wherever it is, he finds a Holy Symbol there.

Spoiler: Omen: Holy Symbol

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Move your Sanity counter two places to the left now. This will be reversed if you lose the Holy Symbol.

[Deathslayer7]

Creaky hallway please.

[Kish]

Spoiler: Upper Floor

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Spoiler: Ground Floor North

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Spoiler: Ground Floor South

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Spoiler: Basement

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Missy is still up; Heather needs to assign damage.

[GrayDeath]

Ill put it to might.

[Ramsus]

@Deathslayer: Sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound like an accusation.

[Lex-Kat]

Still annoyed that Flash ruined her dress, Missy stomps grumpily into the Collapsed Room. With determination, she hopscotches across, making it look easy to cross into the Game Room with the statue.

Glaring toward the way that Flash ran off toward, Missy points. "Sik'em, boy!"

((I believe with a 6 (knowledge roll) move, the statue can catch up with Flash near the entrance. Yes, no?))

Spoiler: What's my motivation?

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Age: 9
Height: 4'2"
Weight: 62 lbs.
Hobbies: Swimming, Medicine
Birthday: February 14th
Missy can’t remember wanting to be anything except for a doctor. Her favorite gift ever in the whole wide world was her first doctor’s kit. She practices ‘medicine’ on anyone who will let her. She even cuts up dead frogs and stuff she finds in her yard. But sometimes that gets bad, and she dreams of dead frogs hip-hopping into her bed at night and smothering her. Then she screams.

Missy knows Peter (and his gross bug collection) from school. She knows Father Rhinehardt from Sunday school (he talks funny and smells like chocolate). Missy lives in the same neighbourhood as Brandon. He delivers her family’s paper, but she doesn’t really know him. (She thinks he’s cute, though.)

Missy’s greatest fear is of dead things coming back to life and hunting her.

To find the Character Board.

[Kish]

Indeed. The statue moves down the stairs right behind Flash...and Flash falls to the floor as his mind is wiped blank. The Heroes win!

************************************************** *********

The statue fought as if defending not just you, but all the world. The traitor lies vanquished, and you stand in awe of the statue's power. Now it sits, its fist pressed thoughtfully against its chin. No words appear beneath it. All is quiet.

************************************************** *********

Feel free to share your QTs if you wish. I'd also be interested in feedback; was the game fun, did anything stand out as good or bad?

[Lex-Kat]

I'm okay with sharing the Hero QT, if Deathslayer7 and GrayDeath are.

[Ramsus]

I have no interest in reading the Hero QT since if it can't be basically summed up as "oh, we practically auto-win" then you guys missed the obvious.
Mine has nothing interesting in it since.... just me.

I've been told by a friend who knows the game a lot better that this haunt isn't always this brutally unfair to the Traitor. But basically it's brutally unfair to one side 90% of the time. I also got informed that I should have been given a choice of which deck to draw my free weapon from, which I wasn't. Even having known the weapon I got was down to horrible luck (I got the worst weapon I could possibly have gotten apparently) would have been nice to know as it would have felt like the haunt was less rigged against me from the start.

Though even if this haunt was mechanically balanced better, it would still be incredibly dull. There was no monster. The heroes had more information about basically everything than me. Heck it seemed like they even got more explanation of what was going on on my side of things story-wise since I had no clue what in the world the priest's demanding accusation was about.

The only part of this that was fun was the roleplaying. At first I was frustrated and confused because I felt super weak while also having absolutely no idea what was going on. By the time I had enough information to figure out what was happening, that information also amounted to "oh, I've basically lost already". And of course even though I figured out a few clever ways I might possibly have a chance, it comes up that one leads to rules debate drama and the other is "nope, very first roll rolls super well and insta kills you before you can do anything, what were you thinking even trying to have fun here dummy?"
Which is made worse by the fact that I've barely ever gotten to be the traitor so I was looking forwards to it only to get a Haunt where I'm clearly at every disadvantage I possibly could be and mechanically and story wise isn't interesting.
Extra irritation come from the Haunt being from the Mask, but I didn't even get the chance to put it on and get the bonus to Knowledge that might have let me live long enough to have a chance.

None of the blame on this is Kish's aside from not giving me the choice for decks for the weapon or at least letting me know it was an RNG thing (or maybe looking at the state of the game and maybe cheating a bit and throwing me a bone and re-rolling that so I didn't have the worst weapon in the game and have to run around with a whole 1 point advantage on my only means of attack). But I would suggest just.... not using this one again.

[GrayDeath]

I have no objections to sharing the QT either.

As for the Haunt, it seemes less ... deep? than say the Dragon, or the Marry-mad Spirit (never played the Game outsie this forum^^), but the basics are fascinating. An invulnerable traitor, and the Heroes ahving to find and utilize a Statue-Weapon?


Also, lived, yay! ^^

[Lex-Kat]

Can we know your objective, Ramsus? I thought, by the way you initially seemed to be after the Reverend, that you had to kill him to win. The fact that he stayed right there for you to wack him, I thought was going to lose us the game.

I'm sorry you didn't have fun. I tried to get some roleplay into it, but it didn't seem to work.

But I will say that, without having played the boardgame, that it does seem awfully one sided, when it's three vs. one. But, I assume that is how the game works as well.

[Ramsus]

I needed to kill someone and drag them down to one of three particular rooms in the basement and make a knowledge check of... I think 4? So I think on the last turn I couldn't actually even possibly win anymore unless there was some way to get my Knowledge back up (but I could be remembering the number wrong). Also while dragging someone I moved at half speed.
So like... you can see how with the statue being able to move up to whatever someone rolled a Knowledge roll as I was at a pretty severe disadvantage even after managing to kill someone.
Not that I was likely to manage killing anyone with a whole 5 dice while attacking and the Heroes having an infinite use medical kit.

I was attacking him at first just to try and steal the medical kit, but then our difference was much higher than 2 so I just decided to hurt him, not realizing the medical kit wasn't a single use item.

It's really not supposed to work out as 3 v 1. The Traitor usually has at least 1 monster or something to do stuff with. I mean sure they aren't "invincible", but monsters are lot more fun than "I can't be hurt in ways you don't even actually care about hurting me".

The only real advantage I had was you guys couldn't steal from me (not that I had anything worth stealing) and I could ignore Heroes as far as my movement was concerned. And you saw how useful that wound up being for me. (Which is to say it didn't matter until my last turn where it didn't even wind up helping.)

[GrayDeath]

Sorry to say that, but you are overlooking a few things.

Yes, the situation was relatively bad for you, but only because we had already found the statue AND an Item.

Had that not been so, you could have killed us off one by one with impunity, being unstoppable otherwise.

So yeah, its a scenario thats bound to be onesided. But its not as if it was all "oh my, the Traitor cant possibly win, woe is me" as you seem to suggest. ^^