“And there are spots on the tiles where more ghosts can live. Some Items and Omens have a type: Weapon, Firearm, and/or Sacred. “The game itself starts in 1666, with the prologue,” Daviau explains. “What’s the spookiest month? You are there to look through their stuff and see if you can find something valuable. Each of you pretends that you’re there to honor the dead, but you’re not fooling anyone. You can keep playing it.” That’s a trait that isn’t shared across all legacy games, and boosts what is already likely to be an engaging game to go back onto the table with frequency. “You can see on the board at the beginning that some of the tiles have ghosts on them,” Daviau says. “Every time you go in, you’re going to get a different story, from the way the house is laid out, to how the house is haunted, to the characters, cards, and actions. All of those come together to generate a story that relies on great haunted house tropes.”. A couple decades later, it’s Edgar Allen Poe’s madness-inducing The Raven that might inspire dread. “Essentially, Betrayal at House on the Hill is a haunted-house short-story generator, which was always appealing,” says Rob Daviau, one of the designers of the original game. In each, the legacy elements layer on additional depth, rules, and storytelling reveals. Few thematic board games have done as much to draw new players to the hobby as Betrayal at House on the Hill. 2 Legacy decks 1 Purgatory deck 20 tile planks. You name those items, put a sticker crest on them, and claim them for your family. As you wait for a chance to confront the dangers of the haunted house, you might want to peruse our backlog of Top of Table articles, including some great similarly themed horror games that are appropriate for Halloween, and our list of the Top Tabletop Games of 2017 (which included Daviau’s Pandemic Legacy: Season 2). “You will have only seen about a third of the haunts that are in the game. If the item shows up decades later in a different session, it’s an heirloom, and it’s more powerful when wielded by a member of your clan. As always, if you’re looking for a personalized board game recommendation for your friends or family, drop me a line via email or Twitter, and I’ll do my best to provide some suggestions. As the game begins, the first task that gets the ball rolling isn’t especially honorable. ‘No, there are monsters that live in the woods, and I’m terrified.’ So, we tried to make Betrayal Legacy a little more serious. At other times, you might play your prior avatar’s descendant. 122 tokens, including: 20 Small Monster tokens(numbered 1 through 20) 2 Large Monster tokens 16 Rune tokens (8 matched pairs) 10 Number tokens (1 through 10) 10 Crest tokens (2 for each family) 12 Searched tokens 8 pentagonal Item Pile tokens (4 matched pairs) The most intriguing aspect of Betrayal Legacy is its treatment of time, particularly the dynamics of family heritage, and the changing nature of horror across decades and centuries. Click on the image for a larger version. “We never give it a particular place, but I live in New England, so in my mind it’s always very close to where I live. He has a special interest in the evolution of game design, the tabletop hobby, and the crafting of interactive narrative. Matt Miller has been with Game Informer since 2004. “It’s a homestead somewhere in the New World,” Daviau says. Players watch it as it twists and reforms across the generations, terrifying and killing its visitors with new horrors fit to that era’s greatest fears. “And every game you play goes forward roughly 25 years – about a generation. Once the campaign is complete, you’ll be left with a fully re-playable, customized board game. New tiles will enter the game as the sessions progress, and newer tiles will be era-appropriate for the years in which they're introduced, Betrayal Legacy unfolds over a prologue and 13 linked chapters. “The original game has a certain tongue-in-cheek quality, and plays on a lot of monster movies from the ‘50s. The content and flavor of each chapter could be fit to that period of history.” In the early 1800s, as Mary Shelley scared readers with Frankenstein, the haunts in Betrayal Legacy echo that unease that confronts the fears of science gone amok. The Prologue was the perfect introduction into Betrayal Legacy. "You walk into a room, and there’s blood dripping from the wall, and ghosts are screaming.”, We got an exclusive first look at the final cover art. Some of those are kind of serious, and some of them are more like a ‘I was a teenage werewolf’ sort of feel. In conversing with Daviau, it’s clear that Betrayal Legacy is a passion project. In each, players follow a campaign from one session to the next and watch the way both the story and rules evolve in response to player choices. Prior components are discarded or destroyed, and cards get written on by the players. In a story spanning hundreds of years, it’s the enigmatic house up on the hill that is the true main character. Place as many unused Items and Omens as you want on your tile. The game encourages emergent stories, mixes horror with snippets of humor, and its modular tile system and multiple “haunts” keep the game replayable time and again. The Hidden Haunt was something fresh and new for anyone who had previously played Betrayal at the House on the Hill, and the ending of the Haunt was a novel twist, playing on expectations. Based on the award-winning Betrayal at House on the Hill, Betrayal Legacy is a unique experience offering you the chance to create the iconic house’s story through decisions and actions taken in the game. “If there’s a bloodbath in the basement in one game, then in a future game there’s a higher chance of drawing an event card in the basement that might be called bloodbath," Daviau explains. Once we figured out what the outside would look like, every chapter started to be fall.”. Well over a decade after the release of the first edition of Betrayal at House on the Hill, the new Betrayal Legacy is aiming for a release later this year. A big part of the ongoing legacy is the deaths that have happened in the haunted house, including the deaths you might face as the story is told, and exactly what is left behind from those deaths. Betrayal Legacy has a high bar to cross when aiming for that same kind of longevity – players can make up their own minds if it succeeds in just a few months. Rob Daviau has returned, this time as lead designer, to guide the creation of this new game being published by Avalon Hill. Sometimes your playable character carries over from one session to the next; the irascible teenager in the early 1900s is the world-weary old man in a subsequent session. If other Items/Omens are DROPPED on the same tile, place them under the same Item Pile token rather than start a new pile. Matt Miller explores the ever-expanding world of tabletop board, card, miniature, and role-playing games in his column, Top of the Table. All Rights Reserved. There are still a lot of winks and jokes, but the cover immediately sets the tone.” While Betrayal Legacy doesn’t go for gore, the cards and narration have an unsettling quality that maintains its roots in horror. People weren’t quite as tongue-in-cheek about their horror in 1740. The formula is immediately intriguing: Join forces with your friends to cooperatively investigate a mysterious mansion, but with the knowledge that one of you might actually be a traitor, actively working to nefarious ends and the defeat of everyone else. © 1991 to “We definitely went PG-13, and not PG,” Daviau says. In addition to exploring the haunted house, Betrayal Legacy also features outdoor locations, Betrayal Legacy is targeting release in November of this year, which works out well, since the game’s sessions are also set in that time of year. “Not only is it different from your first game, but it’s probably different from someone else’s first game, because whatever decisions or actions they took in the first game will change their game in a different way. No matter how your horror novel plays out, after the final chapter concludes, Betrayal Legacy will remain playable. What were people afraid of in 1725 versus 1863? You’re at a house because the family that lived there died. “I have worked on dozens of games, and probably brought to market over 80 in a 20-year career, and Betrayal at House on the Hill is the only game that I have worked on that I regularly want to play after it’s published,” Daviau says. Some places have a higher haunting potential than others. It ups the stakes.”. Take an Item Pile token and place it on that tile. Everyone’s house will have a slightly different ghost population, both in quantity and location.”. Check back every other Friday for the best in the hobby scene. Beyond his experience working on the original Betrayal at House on the Hill, in more recent years, Daviau has been the originating and most strident representative in the design of legacy games, having co-designed projects including Risk Legacy, Pandemic Legacy, and SeaFall. document.write(new Date().getFullYear()); Place the Item Pile token with the same number on them. 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