Chill: Black Morn Manor or Betrayal?

Okay, so amongst my ever-dwindling collection of games that have yet to be played I have copies of Chill: Black Morn Manor and Betrayal at House on the Hill.

Someone's offered to buy my copy of Black Morn Manor. The game is long out-of-print and I have no idea if I'm being offered a fair price (£25, so that's what ... $40) for a game in pretty good condition (one of the cards is marked, otherwise fine). If anyone knows whether that's a sensible offer I'd like to know.

The game doesn't sound like one that's likely to hit the table often, if it all (I've had it for years and never played it). It seems very random and runs quite long. I know Betrayal is also supposed to be very random but I understand it wraps up in 60-90 minutes which is cool by me, wheras the length of BMM is clearly very variable. Players changed sides a lot which could potentially extend the length of the game almost indefinitely. And I don't think I can really justify owning a game which has such a poor length/luck ratio. Also the components suck, and I hear the rules aren't actually as clear in practice as they seem on paper.

So, do I flog it? Will Betrayal likely fill the void it leaves, only in shorter play time and with nicer components?

That price sounds fair - I ordered a new-in-shrinkwrap copy for about $30 relatively recently. (By relatively recently I mean 6 or 7 years ago. ) My group played the game fairly often, then I got Betrayal right when it came out and we all found it vastly superior, and played the hell out of it. My excitement waned and now I'm pretty tired of both.

It's been a while, but I don't think BMM took us longer than about 90 minutes to finish, even with the side-flipping. Betrayal lasted about 60 on average.

I'm a big fan of boardgames with a horror theme, so I have played both of these games extensively. Hope my answer is helpful.

I bought Black Morn Manor back in the day, not out of any interest in the Chill rpg connection, but just for the haunted house theme. For it's time, BMM was a very good game. The map tiles looked good and offered a lot of replay value. The idea of having one player start out working for the bad guy was promising. Tuning the entire card deck based on which secret bad guy was in play was a very cool idea. I also like that good players are all on the same team, but each evil player is competing for an individual victory.

However, moving across the map tiles was a little procedural, rolling a d10 vs each tiles numeric value, in order to gain a card or gain some corruption. Combat was quick enough, and the cards all worked pretty well, though there wasn't much in the way of card combos to exploit. And the haunted house never looked right, it was always this awkward sprawling layout that looked dumb.

Now for the really bad stuff: in Black Morn Manor, players switch sides. A lot. Over the course of the game, a typical player starts good, becomes evil, then switches sides even more frequently after those first two alignments. The good players are tying to reach the mansion at one extreme corner of the estate, in order to confront and defeat the bad guy with a particular magic item, while the evil player(s) are trying to throw the item out the front gate at the opposite corner. These distant opposing goalposts and variable alignments often turn BMM into an endless soccer match with two unstable teams. The first hour or two is reasonably fun, and then it's just tedious until the indefinite end.

The last time we played my copy of BMM, we quit after nearly four hours. Then I sold it (in '98) for $20 to a friend who was willing to pay twice that. But I assured him that BMM was certainly not worth more than $20. Btw, I tend to horde possessions, so it's very rare that I actually get rid of anything, even by selling it. BMM is probably one of only a handful of games that I've ever sold.

Betrayal definitely replaced the void left in my collection by selling BMM. It's more fun exploring the house in Betrayal, because the random map is gradually revealed instead of constructed at the start. The event cards in Betrayal almost always have a ghostly theme, but then the big bad isn't revealed until midgame. I always enjoy the exploration phase of the game, but some people find it to be little more than a prolonged setup phase. That's because they suck at appreciating theme and have had part of their souls destroyed by reading too many posts at BGG.

After the midgame reveal of the big bad, Betrayal is an unreliable game. More often than not, the combination of scenario and map layout will conspire to make the second half of the game a brutal and anticlimactic beatdown by one side or the other. But sometimes a close game will happen, and those are pretty good. 60-90 minute games are typical, and if the game runs longer or shorter, it isn't by much.

Betrayal has better map tiles than BMM, and the cards are really nice stock, both durable and easy to shuffle. The odd dice seemed a little spooky at first, because some of the faces are intentionally blank. I like the little painted figures and the two-sided character "sheets", which are mounted on sturdy cardboard pentagons. However, the monster and item tokens are mostly very generic, and it's difficult to find a given token unless you sort them into small bags or something similar. And since it probably seemed hopeless to playtest all 50 scenarios, they clearly didn't try, so you will want to download the very large errata booklet. I put mine in a three ring binder, and hand off the bad guy's errata page when the reveal happens. Still, the fact that you get 50 potential scenarios is cool enough to tolerate the errata issue, I think.

So yes, sell Black Morn Manor and play Betrayal at House on the Hill.

Agreed on all accounts Maddog. I will add that the brutal beatdown in betrayal is not that anticlimatic. In my mind, once a horror movie bad guy is revealed either people all get butchered or they dispose of it handily. Betrayal is easily in my top 20 favorite games.

Steve"Ghostbuster"Avery

Stephen Avery wrote:

Agreed on all accounts Maddog.

Huh?

Oops- I meant shellhead. Its the hazard of posting while you have 1st graders chttering in your ear.

Steve"Hard@work"Avery

If you're playing on Robert Martin's custom 3D BLACK MORN MANOR set, that one.

BMM is one of those games...sometimes it's awesome, and sometimes it completely sucks. The last time we played it, it completely sucked. There's some really, really stupid stuff in it. But I love some of the stupidity.

BETRAYAL is defintely inspired by BMM in many ways, and I do think it ultimately plays better if only because it's more stable. Well, a little.

I love Betrayal, I just wish they had play tested the scenarios better. I'd say about 33% are really bad.