Description from the publisher:
The shadow of Bhaal has come over Baldur's Gate, summoning monsters and other horrors from the darkness!
As you build and explore the iconic city's dark alleys and deadly catacombs, you must work with your fellow adventurers to survive the terrors ahead. That is, until some horrific evil turns one — or possibly more — of you against each other. Was it a mind flayer's psionic blast or the whisperings of a deranged ghost that caused your allies to turn traitor? You have no choice but to keep your enemies close!
Based on the award-winning Betrayal at House on the Hill board game, in Betrayal at Baldur's Gate you'll return to Baldur's Gate again and again thanks to the fifty included scenarios only to discover it's never the same game twice.
Can you and your party survive the madness, or will you succumb to the mayhem and split (or slaughter!) the party?
Of the 50 scenarios, some end up being purely cooperative, with all the players winning or losing together. But the normal mode is that it becomes one-vs-many.
- Casual gamer friendly storytelling and social interaction
- Replayability through multiple haunt scenarios in the storybook
- Smooths out some complexities of the original house-on-the-hill engine
- First half can feel filler before the haunt starts
- Explorer phases can feel random or meaningless
- No solo mode; designed for 3-6 players
- traitor-based social deduction within a cooperative exploration game
- Dungeons & Dragons-inspired Baldur's Gate city with taverns and catacombs
- scenario-based storytelling with a chaotic Haunt reveal
- Betrayal at House on the Hill
- Tyrants of the Underdark
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- combat_resolution — combat resolves by dice against opponent stats after haunt begins
- dice_rolling — roll dice to determine success against character attributes and challenges
- exploration_of_subterranean_areas — catacombs and subterranean rooms accessible via starting tiles
- item_trade_and_drop — players can drop, pick up, or trade items with others
- omen_and_event_cards — omen cards drive haunt triggers; event cards add narrative twists
- tile_placement — place and reveal room tiles to explore a modular map
- traitor_haunt_mechanic — a traitor is revealed at a haunt phase with different win conditions
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Betrayal at Baldur's Gate takes the engine of the original betrayal at house on the hill and not only changes the setting to dungeons and dragons but also smooths out some of the haunt mechanics making the game easier to manage than the original
- the best thing about this game is when the haunt is finally underway
- what betrayal is though is a casual gamer friendly storytelling and betrayal machine
- you take actions things happen someone yells curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal and you have a laugh about it
- this is a reskin of the classic betrayal at house on the hill
- there's lots of events and equipment cards and the storybook contains a lot of scenarios so each time you play it the haunt should be different and surprising