I would be curious about your favorite coop games. I often find them a big lacking, often being a bit unbalanced. An example is Battle for Hogwarts, where one game can be a walk in the park and another absolutely impossible and rarely is there a balanced match.

  • tetha
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    1 year ago

    Maybe. There is 120 different engame scenarios depending on the board state.

    Most of them have the haunt-triggering player turn into an obvious monster - Frankensteins Monster, a Hydra, a Mummy. Then it’s a fight.

    Other scenarios mean that whomever has all the artifact pieces (scattered across the board) wins. So now it’s a free for all and it turns into a very messy brawl.

    Even other scenarios mean that one secretly chosen player wins, if they have a specific set of items. This one is especially gnarly, because this is the one that causes the words “Alright. I fire the shotgun at Jane as my first action.” and everyone is like “Oh my god! wat!”

    • dpunked@feddit.deOPM
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      1 year ago

      that sounds like a lot of fun! Is the game with a lot of reading about things that happen?

      • tetha
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        1 year ago

        IMO, no.

        Assuming one bloke knows the rules, the game flows fairly smoothly. In the pre-haunt phase, you:

        • Generally move through an unknown door to a new room
        • Draw a room card on the right floor, repeat as necessary
        • Draw an event card based on your room card and execute the event card.
        • Roll if haunt happens.

        Once the group knows these base rules, the pre-haunt game goes very quickly, because you mostly move 2-3 squares (depending on your move points), draw a room, place a room, draw a card, resolve the card and pass on. If the group knows the game, this goes very quickly.

        Once the haunt triggers, you have a builtin bio-break. Both the survivors and the evil guy have a bunch of new rules to read and understand. For my main crew, this usually takes 5 - 10 minutes to read and discuss strategies, and we usually combine this with bio-breaks, drink refills, snacks and such.

        Comparing this with games like Arkam Horror, Eldritch Horror, or even worse, actual P&P games like DND, It is very smoooth and low-rule-lawyers to play.

          • EvilEwok@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’ve played a lot of Betrayal. I play tested it at AvalonCon back while I was in high school.

            It’s very random, and has the potential for some really great games and some real duds. I know in the later editions there have been efforts made to tighten up the scenario balance, do maybe things are better. But From my experience, maybe 1 in 3 games has been ‘good’, 1 just meh, and the last a steamroller for one side. So many of the scenarios depend on thr size of the house, with too large or too small of a house making it unbalanced. Or specific items being useless or over powered. And many of the scenarios have pretty loose rules.

            As long as you understand that, it’s a fairly light game that can have a decently large group working together.

            I’ve enjoyed my copy, but there was a stretch where it was OOP and going for big money. It wasn’t worth that, but for a regular in-print price, it’s fine.