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K-Li (5 KP) rated Betrayal at House on the Hill in Tabletop Games

May 25, 2018

Betrayal at House on the Hill

2004 | Adventure, Exploration, Horror, Miniatures

8.3

(56 Ratings)

Tabletop Game Rating

So many variables - you'll never play the same game twice (0 more)

Lots of rules to remember. (1 more)

Depending on a couple factors, the game can last for minutes or hours

Quit following me with that monkey

We recently played this with some friends and loved it. It's a tile game with an RPG element, during which the players construct a creepy mansion, then once activating the Haunt (the mission) one player is turned against everyone else, and the game shifts from tile exploration to a mission.

Each room added to the house has an event to play out, item to pick up or leave there, or omen that may behave like an event or item but also may trigger The Haunt, depending on die rolls.

The part I enjoyed was strategizing once The Haunt was triggered - once it happens, the scenario you play depends on the room you were in, and the cards drawn. The enemy has their own rule book, and everyone else shares another rule book. It really is great fun.

*We were preyed upon by aliens intent on taking us back to the mothership.*

I think the biggest downside to this game is the amount of things to remember, but I've heard the 2nd edition greatly improved on the first, which is what we played.

Kudos

Awix (3310 KP) rated Star Wars: Edge Of The Empire Core Rulebook in Tabletop Games

Mar 7, 2018 (Updated Mar 7, 2018)

Licence-to-print-money Star Wars RPG has had an impressive amount of work put into it; absolutely not a quick cash-in. The game manages to balance crunchy rules, narrative flexibility, and that elusive Star Warsiness with impressive elegance. The main rules mechanic, which involves pools of proprietary dice, may be off-putting for some (the rules are not especially intuitive and you'll be buying a lot of special dice), but once you get used to it the opportunities it gives everyone involved to shape the narrative of the game is rather special.

The EotE-specific material is good; the main 'obligation' mechanic is likely to get overlooked/house-ruled out, but the rest of the book is very solid. A beautiful looking book, very solidly put together, and the line as a whole is well-supported and of the same quality. Fully compatible with the Age of Rebellion and Force and Destiny lines, too: lack of repeated material between books is either a good thing (you seldom pay for the same thing twice) or a pain in the neck (if you're dying to have the rules for a certain race/ship/whatever you will end up buying a lot of other books). My group played this game for almost a year and never got close to feeling bored with the setting or the rules.

Kudos

Awix (3310 KP) rated Mutants & Masterminds (3rd Edition) in Tabletop Games

Mar 7, 2018 (Updated Mar 7, 2018)

Green Ronin's supers RPG is probably the best ever published; owes a lot to some of its illustrious predecessors in the genre but is definitely its own thing. D20 mechanic keeps things mostly simple, although people used to dealing with hit point may find the damage resolution system tough to get their heads around.

This is a game which really demands that everyone is on the same page in terms of the tone and style of game they want to play: the character creation system is point-based and it's potentially very easy to create unbalanced, unstoppable combat monsters. Character advancement can also be a little tricky over an extended (20+ session) campaign. Getting to grips with the finer points of the creation system can also be difficult; using a character-building app is an extremely sensible idea.

That said, when a group is sympatico and the GM knows his comic book tropes, this game allows you to play through superhero adventures with an ease and sense of fun like few others. I played in a group running this system on pretty much a weekly basis for 15 months and the individual sessions were almost all great fun; it was long-term problems with the campaign rules that caused the whole thing to grind to a halt.