betrayal at the house on the hill

As my final term at university passes by, I often sit back and reflect on how far I’ve come. From admitting I had mental health issues, to starting medication, to starting Mind Games and preparing to go out into the world as a fully-fledged adult – it’s been a hell of a journey. A big part of that process has been the time I have spent with my friends. Since I don’t really drink and the university clubbing scene is the definition of a panic attack for me, I tend to stick to sober events. Watching films, playing video games, chatting with friends and sucking at minigolf, I’ve done it all. My favourite thing to do though, is play board games with those friends. Especially ones that stay with you.

I’ve spoken before about Dungeons and Dragons on the site and anyone who follows my Twitter will know that I’m currently running a campaign for some friends. However, the world of tabletop gaming is not just D&D, much to the shock of many. Thanks in part to the afternoons I’ve spent in board game cafes with my friends from school, and to communities like Dicebreaker – I’ve gotten to explore the genre that I love, a bit more deeply. From Dead of Winter and Betrayal at The House on The Hill, to Call of Cthulhu and Band of Blades, there’s a massive range of games out there for you and more are being developed every single day.

If you read my Betrayal article, you’ll know what these are for.

One tabletop game that has really hit close to home for me recently is the horror RPG, Ten Candles. There aren’t many games that can stun my friends into silence for more than a few seconds, yet Ten Candles manages it. Every decision that my players made were given an extensive level of thought, detail and care, before committing to it. Considering these are the same players that tend to throw fireballs first and ask questions later, it’s an astounding difference to witness. So, what is Ten Candles? Why am I committing an entire article to it? Why should you play it? Let me tell you.

Humans have always feared the dark. Though when you delve further into it, it’s more a fear of the unknown. We can cope with what we can see, what we know is there. It’s a quantifiable problem that we can take steps to combat. In the pitch black, you don’t know what’s there, what it’s doing or whether that prickling on the back of your neck is it creeping ever closer. Ten Candles is played mostly in the dark. Once you finish creating the characters you will tell the story with, you turn off any lights in the room. Your only illumination is by the ten candles sat in the centre of the table.

The sky has gone dark. No sun, no satellites, no phones or GPS. Power grids have failed across the continents and the world you know has been plunged into darkness. Creatures known only as “They”, stalk the shadows, cutting down the last remnants of humanity as you struggle to survive in this post-apocalyptic world. “They” will claim your life in the end. That much is certain. Ten Candles isn’t about survival or “winning”. It’s a game about loss and hope, about finding light in the darkness and making your last moments of living worthwhile.

This is how to grab an audience’s attention.

There aren’t any overly complex rules or time-consuming preparations to make in order to enjoy Ten Candles. All you really need are candles, paper, pens, some regular dice (6-sided) and something to dispose of/burn the paper slips in. Time is marked by the extinguishing of candles. For each failed conflict (dictated by dice rolls), a candle is darkened. If you don’t fail any conflicts, a candle will go out eventually. The end comes for us all, eventually. When you have one final candle left, the Last Stand begins. This is the final scene of the game in which every character will die. It’s inevitable.

Once every character has perished, the final candle is blown out. You sit, in complete darkness and listen to a recording your players recorded as their characters at the start of the game. Their voices, speaking words of hope and sorrow, are haunting, especially with their death scene ringing in their ears. When the recording ends, you all sit there in the darkness – lost in your own thoughts and reflecting on the dark journey they will have taken over the past few hours.

Before the lights go out and the game begins, you must create your characters. Characters are made up of five characteristics – Virtues (positive trait), Vices (negative trait), Concepts (who are you), Moments and Brinks. Your Virtue, Vices and Brinks are made by the players either side of you – allowing totally unique characters to be made in every session. Your Concept and your Moment are entirely your choice. A Moment is a scenario in which your character can find hope. Be that reuniting with a lost family member, taking down one of “Them” or finding somewhere safe to stay the night, these Moments provide you with another dice in the Last Stand – increasing your chances of achieving something significant in your final moments.

As much as I didn’t discuss the Establishing Truths phase, these three lines are what stays with you.

Brinks are a bit different. A brink is what your character is like when pushed to the edge. What do they do when faced with loss or grief? Do they fly into a rage? Were they a murderer before this all began? The possibilities are endless. As the players decide the Brink for the person on their left, this means that the GM is also involved. The GM plays as “Them”, and they have seen one of the players at their breaking point. This means the players Brink is kept secret. Meanwhile the player to the right of the GM gets to decide what form “They” take in the session. Do they worship the moon? Do they shapeshift? Do they mimic voices? What powers do they have?

This story is not a happy one. It is a joint tale of hope, desperation, fear and co-operation in the darkness. Although the GM is there to lead the story, they are not in control of everything that happens. Sometimes, it is up to the players to narrate what happens. Everyone at the table works together to weave a story they deem worthy of telling. Their interactions, their moments of hope and loss, their eventual deaths – they all must have meaning and weight behind them. At the end of the world, you are what will be the difference between the light and the darkness.

We may be destined to die but it is up to you how it happens.

If you can, I’d suggest playing this yourself. You can get a PDF of the rulebook or a paper-copy from cavalrygames.com to support the creator Stephen Dewey – a very talented developer. It is an experience that I feel will stay with you for a long time and bring your friends closer together.

Till next week,

CaitlinRC.

When you finish secondary school, one of the main fears you have is that you won’t be able to cope with the drastic changes it forces upon you. In the UK, you are required by law to remain in some form of education or training until the age of 18. After that, you are deemed an adult by society and mostly left to your own devices, except when bill payments and the tax man come around. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a young person, especially considering you’ve been asking them to make decisions that could impact the rest of their lives, with little to no life experience to back up those choices.

The other big fear is that you will lose all the friends that you made. For many, they were what kept you going in tough times, provided a shoulder to lean on and a place of safety when everyone else seemed out to get you. They want you to succeed and you want only the best for them. Which often means, you must let them chase their dreams, even if you don’t get to see them for a long time. In the case of my friends from school, I only really see them about twice a year. So, the little time I do spend with them, is very important to us all. How do we spend that time? Simple. We spend an afternoon at a board game café, messing around, catching up and claiming to be the princess when in fact we are an evil cat (it makes sense in context, I swear).

Board game cafes are my life blood when it comes to socialising.

It was at our usual place that I came across what is one of my favourite board games now, Betrayal at The House on The Hill. To start, the players choose a character from the selection – such as a demonic little girl, a headstrong jock or a mad scientist. As a team, you explore the house – building it from a pile of tiles and discovering the secrets that lie within. From sinister whispers to a literal madman, each room you uncover leads you closer and closer to the main event. Some tiles have an omen symbol on them. Whenever an omen is triggered, you must roll to see if the “Haunt” begins.

Up until the Haunt, you are all on the same side. Exploring the house, helping one another, discovering the truth as chaos unfolds around you. However, when the Haunt begins, there’s no real way to tell what is going to happen next. With 50 scenarios in the standard game and dozens more in the expansions, no one playthrough of the game is the same. The type of Haunt you experience depends on what room you are in and what omen last occurred, so there are a ridiculous number of combinations to choose from.

Because who doesn’t want to play as a girl that would be better suited to a horror movie?

The Haunt is where the “betrayal” part of the game’s title comes into play. Depending on the scenario, one of you has turned to the dark side. That player must take the traitor’s tome and read the scenario’s instructions, in private, such that the remaining players are kept in the dark. The rest of the group reads their copy of the scenario, which explains what they need to do in order to survive and escape the house alive. This ranges from performing a séance to put a spirit’s weary soul to rest, to taking down a seemingly immortal axe murderer that is trying to axe them a few too many questions.

It’s a fascinating dynamic, as the game actively encourages you to work together. So, when the traitor reveals themselves and the ghouls of the house start to wreak havoc, it’s jarring and unnerving. I’ve known my group of friends from secondary school for nearly a decade now, so to say we know one another quite well is a bit of an understatement. Yet, when we play Betrayal, we often see a darker side of our normally kind-hearted friends.

It is great fun to just pick up the traitor tome and walk away, leaving your friends to wonder what you’re going to do in order to win.

I’ll give you an example. In one round, we played in teams of two, pairing the experienced players with the newcomers. As there were only three new players and five experienced ones, it meant that my close friend and I ended up on the same team – such that the two gamers weren’t given any advantages! However, when the Haunt was triggered, we became the traitor. Our character had discovered an ancient sarcophagus in the house and had to reunite him with his loved one – reincarnated in the body of a little girl we had rescued from another room in the house. When reunited with one another, they’d become so powerful that the leaders of the world would bow before them instantly. The world would burn and be remade in their image. The others wanted to stop it.

However, the problem with one of your own team turning on you, is that you are intimately aware of one another’s strengths and weaknesses. There’s a sense of familiarity and trust that is shattered when the players who protected you earlier in the game, are now the one’s holding the knife at the end of an unlit hallway. One of the other pairs had the most intelligent character and had the highest chance of thwarting our plan. So, we chased them down and killed them. It was a ruthless act, but it ended up winning us the game (that and the fact the others kept failing the elevator roll and taking damage from it).

More than anything, I think the reason that betrayal appeals to me so strongly, is that it hints at the darkness in humanity. Sure, zombies and vampires can be terrifying but, in our minds, we know that they aren’t real. The true horror of psychopaths and traitors is that they could be us. For all we know, they could have been stood where we are standing only a few months ago. Human psychology is as fascinating as it is terrifying. We often surprise ourselves with what we are truly capable of, and not always in a good way. So many crime dramas have the least suspicious person turn out to be the killer.

As a core principle, I believe that everyone is inherently good. I do not see the point in anger or cruelty or hate. To me, it feels like needless aggression that takes a toll on all involved parties – be they active participants or merely observers. The sad thing is that these good people can be swayed, manipulated and led astray – to believe in twisted causes and harmful world views, to betray those they care about. Which is why games that have you think from the villain’s mindset, are always intriguing.

Anyways, that’s my two cents on a very fun board game. There are expansion packs and a D&D inspired version of the game so if you’re interested, go find it! I highly recommend it, especially as a late-night bonding experience for a small group.

Till next week,

CaitlinRC (Happy new year 😊)

Tag: betrayal at the house on the hill

Ten Candles – We Fear The Dark For A Reason:

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