Betrayal expansion?

As mentioned, sometimes its random nature results in a bad session; this can also happen if the traitor player has no idea what he or she is doing. But if everyone is playing in the spirit of the game, it's a great time. I love this game.

And then sometimes those games that technically should be called duds are hilarious and memorable...such as the time Engineer Al realized that he was Dracula while he was in the garden and the sun was out.

Two major issues with the game:

1) Already mentioned: It can be a total crapshoot. I've had great games and snoozers.

2) This bothers me more: The extra Haunt rules that, especially for the traitor, possibly only one person gets to read. Betrayal should be a great gateway game, but the risk is that someone without a lot of boardgame experience ends up being stuck by themselves with their own Haunt rules and no solid grasp on what they're supposed to be doing or what the extra rules even mean. You can't really help them out without them giving away their objective, and the whole thing kind of falls apart.

I've definitely had crap games of this, but even the non-crap sessions weren't great.

As long as you do not play the game with "serious gamers" and you are not a "serious gamer" yourself, it's a fun game that is sometimes hilarious, weird, confusing, dumb, exciting, annoying, challenging, cinematic, pointless or some combination of those. If you are playing with a or are a "serious gamer", you will probably hate it.

It's super volatile and unstable. But that buys you some stupendously fun moments as long as you can roll with a completely botched Haunt and laugh about it.

I'm really curious if this expansion will seek to smooth out any of the rough edges, or if they will just lean into it as part of the charm.

^it looks like leaning in to me.

I would actually like to play a good game of Betrayal, but every time it's been a case of the owner basically hurrying every turn along "roll dice, get thing, next player" to the point that there was no story in the game, and then the several failures of the game as a system just became the focus.

Wade brings up the very real con of newbs not always being the best to get the Betrayer role.

Here's my description that I've used for my friends-only con:

Betrayal at House on the Hill – During the first half, all players explore a haunted mansion together, but once The Haunt starts one of the players becomes the Traitor and the other players must try to survive and foil their plans. Great game that’s different every time, but some hiccups that’s you’ll need to roll with – but that’s the kind of crew we have. It’s usually like a really violent episode of Scooby Doo.

After one or two instances of a newb getting the traitor, we decided when it happened again to just give it to the person to their left, including the item they had, if that was relevant.

C'mon guys, if you have gamers in your group who struggle at the traitor role in this game then either your group should play other games or you should just have a rule up front that Bob and Bobbie aren't allowed to be the traitor.
Question for those that have both or have seen both editions - are the main components (cards specifically) similar enough that the expansion will blend in with either one (I have the first edition) ?

One minor recurring problem that I have had with Betrayal is locating the tokens during the game. I ended up getting a bunch of zip-lock bags and sorting them alphabetically, but it's still a minor annoyance when putting the tokens away.

JEM wrote: I would actually like to play a good game of Betrayal, but every time it's been a case of the owner basically hurrying every turn along "roll dice, get thing, next player" to the point that there was no story in the game, and then the several failures of the game as a system just became the focus.

The one bad game of Betrayal I had was due to this. They barely read the texts on the cards. The heroes and traitor had no plan, just sort of ran around aimlessly. No one tried to be invested at all. It was terrible.

I love the game though, since my other games have all been great.