horror stories - Betrayal Legacy

I bought Betrayal Legacy more than a year ago. This is a legacy game. I had originally intended to play the whole campaign with a same group of colleagues. However a few of us moved on to new jobs, and we had fewer opportunities to play. We only managed to play up to Chapter 3. I thought it was unlikely we would complete the rest of the campaign, so I decided to change plans. I tried to recruit my family to continue this campaign with me. There are 14 campaign mode games to be played in total, a tutorial game and 13 proper games. I had done the tutorial and the first three chapters, so there were 10 more chapters to be played. 

When I tried to sell the game to my family, younger daughter Chen Rui was the most intrigued. Playing traitor sounded like a great idea. My wife Michelle wasn't so keen on games with aggression, so she wasn't comfortable with the idea of turning traitor and having to fight. Elder daughter Shee Yun wasn't too interested. She's mostly playing online multiplayer games nowadays. Thankfully I was still able to convince everyone to give it a go, and we had an enjoyable time with the game, playing three chapters over the new year long weekend. Michelle said the game wasn't as scary as I made it sound. I probably oversold the horror part of it. She thought of it more as a cooperative game. She didn't want to play traitor, so we agreed if she happened to be assigned that role, we would find some way to reassign it to someone else. Shee Yun was very engrossed when we played. She usually plays seriously. She learns the rules quickly and knows how to utilise opportunities. She plays purposefully for the win. Chen Rui's life goal is to be the traitor. She plays based on what fancies her and what she finds fun, and she doesn't always care about winning or what the system is driving her towards. In our games she did happen to play traitor quite a few times, which made her happy. Our game sessions took a bit longer than I expected - about 2 hours per game. 

Warning: Major spoilers ahead. If you have not played and intend to play Betrayal Legacy, you may not want to read on. I write about Chapters 4 to 6 in this blog post. 

This was Chapter 4 (Year 1797), and the story started at a funeral. There was a mining accident, and thirteen miners died. The funeral was held at the cemetery in front of the house. In the first half of the game, Michelle and I explored the outside of the house, while Shee Yun (yellow) and Chen Rui (blue) explored indoors. This was the situation when the Haunt was triggered. The Haunt is the incident which changes the game, usually turning one of the players into a traitor, and from that point onwards the game transforms from a cooperative one to a traitor-vs-heroes contest. 

The child in yellow pyjamas is holding a teddy bear behind her back. Chen Rui (blue player) and Shee Yun (yellow player) encountered both the NPC's (non-player characters) in our game. The green one was a man, and the purple one a woman. The man, a grounds keeper, was rather annoying. When you encountered him, you had to swap an item for a random new one, or take mental damage. The woman was good. If you spoke to her you could look at the top three tiles from the room deck and bury two to the bottom of the deck. You would have some control over which room would be discovered next. These NPC's are occasionally changed. In the next game it may be a different character. There are three NPC's in the game - man, woman and animal. 

I was the one who triggered the Haunt. Normally it would be this same person who turned traitor. However in Chapter 4, the traitor was to be the player with the highest Knowledge. At that point, it was Chen Rui (right). So her wish came true. See how happy she was reading the rulebook. 

Our story involved a pukwudgie. I had to look up Wikipedia to learn that this is a creature from Native American folklore. It is similar to "child ghost" in South East Asian folklore. If you rear a pukwudgie, you can get it do things for you like finding something lost, stealing something and cheating when gambling. A pukwudgie is more a handy minion type of monster than a scary predator type. In our game, Chen Rui the traitor was suspected to be in league with a pukwudgie. We heroes needed to collect enough evidence to put her on trial. Only if we managed to convict her could we lynch her. We were not allowed to hurt her before that. To gather evidence we had to catch the pukwudgie and force it to confess. 

At this stage, we had only explored the outside of the house (the group of tiles on the right in the photo above) and the ground floor (tiles on the left). We had not explored the basement or the upper floor. 

Michelle (red) and I (green) were both outside. The tile I was on had a crow icon, which was the omen icon. When you discover a tile with an omen icon, you will need to draw an omen card, and you will need to roll dice to see whether the Haunt is triggered. Often the person triggering the Haunt is the one who turns traitor. It was this specific tile I discovered which triggered the Haunt. 

Since Chen Rui was the traitor, she had to read the traitor's booklet. The heroes (i.e. good guys) read the heroes' booklet. The two sides do not know what is written in the booklet of the other side. You can decide when to reveal relevant information to your opponents, typically at a time convenient to you. 

When preparing to play traitor, Chen Rui placed many components on her player board. These were the traps she could set in this scenario. They looked intimidating. This was a fun scenario for the traitor - so many toys! What was funny was one of the traps she set - the crib - ended up hurting her much more often than it hurt the rest of us. In this scenario the traps affected the traitor too. 

Michelle, Shee Yun and I worked hard at chasing down the pukwudgie in order to force evidence out of it. Unfortunately we had poor die rolls, and we also kept forgetting to use the once-per-game reroll ability. We were all worried about Chen Rui hunting us down. We could not attack her yet because we needed to prove her guilt first. We were slow in gathering evidence. While we were doing this, Chen Rui busied herself outside the house doing searches. We had no idea what she was searching for, but we knew she was definitely up to no good. She placed many "Searched" tokens outside. We didn't know what they meant or how we could get rid of them. We did not dare to go near, in case they would hurt us. We watched helplessly as Chen Rui placed more and more of them. 

Eventually we managed to gather some evidence. Not a lot, but enough to be worth an attempt to put Chen Rui on trial. Shee Yun was the one confronting Chen Rui, and I was present too. Both Shee Yun and I carried evidence on us, and we needed as much evidence as possible on the same tile as Chen Rui when confronting her. Shee Yun's die roll odds were decent, but unfortunately she failed to roll what we needed. She had already used her reroll power earlier in the game so she couldn't reroll. We could not prove Chen Rui guilty. On Chen Rui's next turn, she promptly announced that she had won. It turned out that she wasn't actually trying to kill us off, although she could do that to win. Her target was the pukwudgie too. This pukwudgie had been going out of control, threatening her and demanding things from her. So she herself wanted to capture and imprison the pukwudgie. All that "searching" was actually preparing to capture the creature.  

That pink rectangular token was a piece of evidence I carried. The rune tokens represent evidence in this scenario. I had two (green) omen cards. The second one, a porcelain doll, was treated as a ghost I carried with me. Spooky doll! Whenever a character dies in Betrayal Legacy, you add a ghost sticker to the location he or she is in. Some equipment in the game becomes more powerful when you use them at locations with ghosts. So it can be useful carrying a ghost doll with you. You will always have at least one ghost wherever you are. My Calling was Occultist. Whenever I rolled dice based on my traits, I could add 1 to my result if there was a ghost around. Since I carried the porcelain doll with me, I would always enjoy this benefit. 

This was Chapter 5, Year 1830. I think this is a nod to the classic train game 1830. The house owner was Chen Rui. She was turning mad. Her sanity was reduced, but her might increased. Michelle, Shee Yun and I were guests at her home. This time we mostly explored the upper floor (the group of tiles at the bottom) and the basement (group of tiles at the top). 

This Bloody Room on the left looks scary, but it's a good tile to discover. If you search the room successfully, you can find an item.  The two skull icons at the bottom left are the ghost icons. Two people have died in this room in the past. 

When the Haunt happened in this game, we found that a portal had opened, leading to the underworld. No one turned traitor immediately. We were all heroes and our job was to seal the portal. To do that we had to collect spell fragments found around the house. The problem with these fragments was some of them were active. When we touched these, we would turn traitor. We could only collect the dormant fragments to seal the portal. The dormant fragments could turn active, so carrying them was a risk. A hero working hard to seal the portal may suddenly go crazy. 

When we triggered the Haunt, there were three fragments in the house, two dormant and one active. To seal the portal we needed four fragments, so we still needed to explore the house to find two more. Immediately after the Haunt was triggered, Chen Rui ran upstairs to where the active fragment was, and muahahaha turned herself traitor! After she transformed, she still had one action point. She turned around and smiled at Michelle who was just next door, and shot her dead. Chen Rui had a gun which was operated based on the knowledge trait, and she had high knowledge. This was not good. 

In this game I was a decent fighter, but not Shee Yun. Also, she didn't have any weapon with her. When Chen Rui came after us, Shee Yun immediately turned tail and ran, leaving me to fend for myself. How could my own daughter do this to me?! With only two of us left, it was going to be difficult to gather four fragments, especially when there weren't even enough dormant fragments on the board yet. With Chen Rui coming at us, we could soon be killed. My thinking was to take the fight to her and eliminate her first, before we continued to search for fragments. Shee Yun's plan was to find a weapon first. I did end up fighting Chen Rui a few times. I was lucky I did not promptly get myself killed. Both of us were only slightly injured. 

Then something unexpected happened. Another active fragment appeared. Shee Yun and I looked at each other, and we both thought: screw this I'm going to turn traitor. Both of us ran towards the active fragment. She was closer to it and would beat me to it. She and Chen Rui giggled gleefully. They would be teaming up to whack daddy again. 

I thought I was doomed, but then when I used one of my equipment, I found myself teleported to the room with the active fragment. I greedily picked up the fragment, and turned myself traitor, while Shee Yun looked on in horror. It was going to be two strong fighter traitors against one weak hero. Time to declare game over. At this point Chen Rui asked me, can a traitor attack another traitor? She still wanted to kill me! I looked up the rulebook, and could not find a definite answer. Normally a game has only one traitor. I decided that in the spirit of the scenario, the traitors were on the same team and should not be attacking one another. That wouldn't be logical. Chen Rui was disappointed.  

Red was Michelle. That was where she was shot dead by Chen Rui. 

Chen Rui wasn't too keen about taking down Shee Yun, so I had to do the job. Then another twist came. A third active fragment appeared. That was a life saver for Shee Yun. She quickly grabbed it and joined us at the dark side. The game ended with three traitors winning. It was a dark day for humankind. 

Shee Yun (yellow) transformed in this room. 

Chapter 6 occurred in 1849. This group photo turned up. I don't know what it's actually for. After we completed the chapter, we were instructed to discard the photo. I am guessing that since there were a few possible stories for Chapter 6, the one we had did not use the photo, but another one would have. I am impressed that the game makers took the game components this seriously. The five figurines were not just random characters. The game makers found five models to take this photo, and the figurines were designed to match them. 

Our Chapter 6 was the monster ants scenario. It was one with no traitor. This was a fully cooperative scenario, and that disappointed Chen Rui somewhat. She wanted to play traitor and kill everyone else. In our story, Shee Yun (yellow) was the one triggering the Haunt and she was first to run into the queen ant monster, the large teardrop shaped monster token in the photo above. The queen ant had three drone ants on her, representing her bodyguards. When she fought, these bodyguards allowed her to reroll. 

Once the queen appeared, she would visit a number of locations in a specific order. She would lay eggs at each location. If she reached the final location, the heroes would lose. At the end of every hero's turn, a new tile must be revealed, and a drone placed on it. Drones prioritised filling up the queen's bodyguard team. Once that's done, they would hunt down and attack the characters closest to them, including the NPC's. 

As heroes, we could set up traps for the queen. We knew the order it would visit the series of locations, so we could predict her path. If we managed to ensnare her, we would kill her bodyguards and stall her momentarily. That would be the best time to strike. 

The monster ants acted once per round, like an automata traitor. We revealed many tiles this game, and brought on many drones. The swarm of ants killed both our male and female NPC's. I wished they had killed the animal NPC, the annoying hound, but the hound was a strong fighter and survived. It would have been nice to have the female NPC around. She was the only helpful NPC. Too bad we couldn't save her. 

One thing we were lucky with was the second destination of the queen came up very late. The queen needed to go to the kitchen, but it was nowhere to be found. At one point we were worried whether we had misplaced the kitchen tile and we searched the tile deck to make sure it was there. It was. Phew. When the queen could not see its next destination, it would feel lost and stay where it was. In our game, it squatted at the front door for a loooong time pondering the meaning of life. We had plenty of time to set up traps for it. We knew it would definitely need to come into the house and walk through the main hall to get to the kitchen when the kitchen showed up. In the photo above, the pink rectangles are the traps we had set for her. 

By the time the kitchen tile was drawn and placed, we were ready to fight the queen. I (green) was the designated queen killer, since I was strong in battle this time. Earlier in the game when I explored the underworld I obtained this tool, the Sphere of Amber, which was quite powerful. It was single-use. When I needed to roll dice, instead of rolling I could decide to use a result of 8. The queen's might was 7, which meant when fighting she would roll 7 dice, and her results would be a 7 on average. Fighting her using the Sphere of Amber was not a guaranteed win, but the odds were better than average. When the queen rolled, she got an abysmal 4. I easily slapped her dead. The heroes won with zero casualties! 

The orange octagon on the right is the hound, the animal NPC. Michelle (red) was weak in fighting this time, and hid at the lower right corner. I (green) was stronger so I tried to lure the drone ants away from her. 

After playing Chapters 4 to 6, I was surprised that we didn't have many deaths among the players. Only Michelle's character died in Chapter 5. In previous games I witnessed many more deaths. We tended to prefer to play the same characters if they survived, so many of our family records had the same persons appearing again and again. They always went back to the house again when they were older.  Perhaps that adds to our story.