Betrayal at House on the Hill

As one of twelve mysterious characters, you’ll explore a house filled with deadly secrets

The creak of footsteps on the stairs, the smell of something foul and dead, the feel of something crawling down your back—this and more can be found in this fun and unusual game—it’s a new experience almost every time you play. Explore that ‘creepy old place on the hill’ until enough mystic misadventures happen that one of the players reveals him or herself as the betrayer and turns on all the others. Multiple scenarios and a different layout for every game cover just about every B-movie horror situation you can imagine—and then some.

This haunted house romp is pretty standard fare until the ‘haunt’ kicks in, and one of 50 unique plots pits one of the players as the Traitor against the others. This game aid booklet includes a rules summary, a set of character cards to put players in the mood, 3 versions of the Haunt Chart, and the revised and corrected Haunts plus the extra 20 Haunts offered online by the original designer. All the Haunts have been painstakingly formatted to match the graphic style of the game. Note this is all for the original version of the game, not the revised version.

Update Log

Date Version Changelog
Jan 2013 4.2 A few words missing from Haunt 5 in the Secrets of Survival book returned
Jan 2013 4.1 Fixed the completely incorrect Table #2
Nov 2012 4 Many fixes and additions
Jul 2006 1 Original release

12 Comments

  • Chun says:

    I would just like to clarify something: is the for the 1st edition or the second edition of the game? I am slightly confused, as you use the first edition box art on the page, but you have updated it after the release of the 2nd edition.

    • Chun says:

      Pardon me: “… is THIS for the 1st edition or the 2nd edition of the game?,,,”

      • Universal Head says:

        It is for the original version of the game, not the revised version. Some fixes were made to the original file, but all with reference to the original game. I still have my old copy and haven’t bought the new edition, sorry, so I don’t know what was changed in second edition.

  • Tom says:

    I was disappointed to learn absolutely nothing was changed in the second edition of the game, with the possible exception of some errors in the haunts were perhaps fixed.

    • Universal Head says:

      Well, I guess this summary and reference is still useful then! I spent many hours reformatting the Haunts (including the extra 20), which were released online in corrected form, but just in plain text (the Haunts that came with the original release were riddled with problems apparently). That part of my file is probably not useful to owners of the new edition, but the rest should be. If anyone comes across a rule that was fixed in the new edition let me know and I’ll update this..

  • Chris says:

    I’m confused about how to use Option 1: “combined set of haunts” in this document. Table #2 seems to be exactly like Table #1 (except it says 51+ see next page). I don’t see any way of getting a haunt above 50 on this chart. Table #3 only has the optional haunts, so I don’t see any way of getting a result less than 51. Is Table #2 incorrect or am I missing something?

    • Universal Head says:

      You know, sometimes I suspect no one uses these play aids – you’re completely right! I’ve repeated table #1 by mistake. This has been out for years and no one ever noticed; perhaps no one ever bothered with the extra 20 Haunts. I’ll update the file asap.

      • Chris says:

        Wow, that’s crazy! I find your game aids to be invaluable for games like Arkham Horror, Android and Earth Reborn. I was particularly excited about this one b/c of all the extra haunts…

      • Tom says:

        Man I’ve lived on your player aides for the six or so years I’ve known about this site, and I hope my small, infrequent PP contributions reflect this. Please keep up the good work Peter!

  • Ray says:

    Hello, I really like this updated booklet, and I have some of the information from the newer revised edition which changed the original haunts some as well as the newer haunts they replaced the original haunts with from the original edition. I’ve also noticed some formatting errors, a missing sentence and a few little things here and there. I wanted to combine everything from the original book, the new book, and some from bbg as one large booklet and it looks like you did most of the work already. Is it possible if I gave you the info would you mind adding it?

    • Hi Ray, I appreciate the offer, but I don’t know if I can see the payoff to spending more time on this game. The reason I redid the original booklets was that the first edition ones had been extensively fixed and updated, but only supplied as an unformatted PDF. So I formatted them to match the original design. Now there’s a second edition out (presumably with all the fixes included), there’s no reason to update the booklets again as you can get them in the second edition (and I don’t want to confuse things by updating my first edition booklets to match second edition – not to mention it would be a painful amount of work).

      The only thing that seems worth doing eventually is an updated rules summay for second edition, but again, I don’t know if there are really enough changes to warrant the effort.

      If you want to discuss this in more detail though, contact me from the Contact page. Cheers!

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