Summary
Betrayal is somewhat of a merger between Clue and Cabin in the Woods. The players all start out as Explorers, investigating a house (for whatever strange reason). They map out the floor plan of the house and discover bits and pieces of the past of the house until finally they uncover the haunt, which starts the second portion of the game. Once the haunt begins, one of the Explorers may become a traitor and the remaining Explorers become Heroes, working to stop whatever nefarious plans the Traitor has.
Important Bits (Summary of the rulebook)
- All dice used are d6's, but the faces are 0, 1, and 2. That means that they're effectively d3-1, and you can in fact roll a 0 on a trait roll of 8.
- Your character can move a total number of spaces equal to your character's current speed, unless otherwise hindered. However, your character is stopped after discovering an item, event, or omen. In this case you either pick it up (in the case of omen or item) or the event occurs.
- If it's an omen, you also make a haunt roll (6 dice) to see if the haunt begins with that omen's discovery. The player must roll higher on 6 dice than the number of omens currently in play.
- Movements are counted by doorway crossings or "hops" if you want to think of it that way. Only directions connected by doors on both adjacent room tiles can be crossed. If a room does not have a door in one direction, or the adjacent room does not have an adjoining door, an Explorer cannot move through it.
- Combat, unless otherwise modified by items, is always might vs might. The attacker can make use of weapons, but the defender must defend only with might (unless an item says otherwise).
- Combat cannot be initiated by the Explorers before the haunt begins.
- There are two types of damage, unless specifically targeted to a trait by something. Physical damage is distributed amongst Speed and Might, whereas mental damage is distributed between Sanity and Intelligence. An explorer taking 3 physical damage can take all of it in Might, all of it in Speed, or some in Speed and some in Might.
- When an attacker rolls his attack and a defender his defense, the difference is dealt as physical damage, unless otherwise noted.
- During the haunt, a player can attempt to steal as an attack instead of a plain attack. In this case, if the attacker rolls 2 or more higher than the defender he steals the item successfully, otherwise damage is dealt as normal.
- Traits move up or down by "notches" on the character cards (here represented by number sequences). The number under the notch is your trait value and corresponds to the number of dice you roll on a test in that trait. Gaining or losing points in that trait moves the notch up or down along the continuum.
- When a trait runs off the bottom side, the Explorer dies and all of their items drop to the ground. Any Explorer can then go loot the item pile.
- Explorers cannot die before the Haunt occurs. If a trait bar would run off the bottom end, the notch simply stays at the lowest point. This is obviously not a great sign for when the Haunt DOES occur, but at least you're still alive right?
- When the haunt happens and a Traitor is chosen, that Traitor (and his monsters, if any) may ignore events and room effects if he wishes.
- Monsters may climb up several rooms that are normally one-way paths, however they cannot use the mystic elevator by themselves. They must be accompanied by the Traitor if the Traitor wants them to use it. They can, however, enter it and sit in it.
- Monsters move differently than Explorers. At the end of the Traitor's normal turn, he rolls for the speed of each monster class he controls (separated by Speed). The number he rolls is their speed for this extra turn after his normal turn.
- Some rooms have special effects or requirements to cross them. In this case, the room is logically split into two zones, pre-movement and post-movement. If the player attempts to move forward but fails the requirement he may still move forward but will usually lose a point in the trait tested in the requirement. If the player wishes, however, he can simply stand in the pre-movement section of the room without taking the movement requirement test.
- The entrance hall/foyer/staircase is a special tile that contains 3 subtiles, each treated as normal tiles with doorways that require movement to pass through.
- Moving up or down a staircase also counts as a single movement, but going down the coal chute or falling through the collapsed room does not.
- Some rooms have special properties, such as giving you a point in a trait once per game if you end your turn in that room. They should be self-explanatory.
- Items can be traded between players, but they must be in the same room while doing so. A player moving through a room that another player is in can trade items as if both were in the same room, even if he moves away in the same turn (in other words, you do not need to end your turn in the same room to trade).
- An Explorer can attack only one thing per turn, but does not have to stop moving to do so.
- Heroes obstruct monsters and the Traitor and vice versa. This means that an Explorer attempting to move out of a room requires 1 extra speed per obstructing person to leave the room, moving a minimum of one space.
Important Bits About Winning
The way to win changes depending on which haunt and what side in the haunt you are on. When the haunt is revealed and the Traitor is chosen, he is sent off to a private room to read the Traitor's Tome, which will give him all the knowledge what he needs to do to win. Similarly, the remaining Heroes read the Secrets of Survival to learn how they win. The information contained within each tome may be different for each group, and as such you should not give away information that the other party may be overjoyed to know.
Each party should conceal their objectives as much as possible so that the other party does not know how they win. For instance, because the Traitor's Tome and the Secrets of Survival differ in the information they give, it is possible that a Traitor does not know that their monsters can be removed from play using a particular omen in a particular room and using a trait roll.
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