The prosecution rests? Thank you. As public defender, I’d like to take the floor.
Betrayal at House on the Hill is not perfect. It has a terrible name, which sounds like someone jumbled up the words of the real title and lost a definite article along the way. It had a gajillion errors in its first printing, and probably dozens in its second. Some scenarios, even in the new edition, are not good, and a few are probably just bad. Preliminary proceedings against the Blob scenario for undue pain and suffering begin next week.
Questions about the rules are indeed tricky when you have two opposing sides, especially if the newbie at the table ends up as the traitor.
Most egregiously, even a perfectly fine scenario can tee up a haunt whose result is a foregone conclusion, due to how the other random elements shook out leading up to the haunt. I won’t bore you with my story of the time the Invisible Man got hold of a Pistol and was literally impossible to stop.
So. Is that all there is to say? String up BaHotH and good riddance? Is it, to quote my esteemed colleague, “One of the worst board games ever made”?
No, my friends. Betrayal is flawed. But it is nonetheless a flawed classic. And for good reason.
Observe that all the aforementioned problems with BaHotH–except for the downright criminal title–are a result of the game’s core premise: Random house, random items, random teams, random story. Let’s examine this closely.
Why so many errors in the scenario rules? Imagine playtesting this game. How many mistakes do you think you would find? How many test sessions is enough?
Confusing rules can lead to play mistakes, especially when you’re trying to keep secrets from your opponents. And you can’t put the most experienced player in as traitor, because randomness!
Foregone conclusions? Always possible, because of the variability of the game state when the haunt starts. Could be the survivors have a cakewalk. Could be the traitor is unstoppable. Could be you only have one of the rooms where you can search for the MacGuffin that can stop him… and it’s placed behind the Lord of All Demons.
Yes, they could have playtested more. But probably not sufficiently. And the result would have been pages of notes covering dozens of edge cases that don’t apply to most games.
Yes, they could have constrained the scenarios to work more consistently. But the result would have been more generic scenarios, where every object of power is found on the stair landing–because we know you have one of those!
Now I am just a simple country lawyer (puts thumbs under suspenders). But as a lawyer, I know contracts, and it seems to me that a board game is like a contract. The game publishers pay with their thought and labor, and you pay with not just your hard-earned money, but especially your time. So every game player ought to ask themselves: “What am I paying for, and how much?”
Now, my opponent was out in the field this morning, collecting up a bunch of straw to make his very own straw man that he could pummel in court today. “Betrayal is a great haunted house experience!” he says we all say. Is it? Sometimes. But a lot of it is seeing weeping women in the garden that have nothing to do with anything else that happens. Now, that’s not scary, or a great experience. It’s just a thing that does one die of Mental damage.
No, what BaHotH provides is the unexpected. And every board game can do that, but BaHotH does it in spades. And it does it with story, not just with the variables of game mechanics and player strategies.
Now as I’ve shown, the problems with Betrayal are not failures to capitalize on the core premise of the game. They are inherent properties of the core premise.
I believe my opponent may not like the game’s core premise. Or can’t abide the inevitabilities it contains. He may not think it worth his time and his money to sign that contract with BaHotH.
Now, I am just a simple country lawye— oh. Oh, I’m sorry, did I already say that. Sometimes, my head. I just don’t know where it’s going. You see, I’m not as smart as our Mr. L here. I have simple tastes, and I don’t need every I to be dotted and every T to be crossed, just so, when I play a board game. Let it be sloppy, if it provides me and my simple country friends with some fun! Why, when Margerie is the traitor and can’t figure out her secret rules… where’s the harm in her just asking me to read them and explain them? The secret’s out, sure, but it’s just one of many permutations that make this particular game unique, and no harm done. It’s a messy game, so it can be messier and me and my messy friends don’t mind none.
If the game lasted four hours? Well, that would be another thing. I don’t want to spend four hours only to find out in the last thirty minutes that I could never have won after all! Who does? But an hour, maybe hour and a half? And plenty of interesting things will happen, even if the scenario’s broken or my team gets a raw deal? Whatever! When we can laugh at the end at how Little Timmy tripped over every evil artifact imaginable and should have been dead before the haunt even started? It’s probably worth it. Who won again? I can’t remember!
Betrayal is like a gonzo horror story generator that throws every genre trope into a meat grinder with you and your friends. What comes out is never a filet mignon–that’s what you have Scythe for, or whatever. It’s always sausage, but if you enjoy all those things–especially your friends–then it’ll be some tasty sausage.
And if you like tasty sausage, then you must acquit.
Dagnabbit, now I’m hungry! Your honor, can we adjourn for lunch?
