How to Play Betrayal at House on the Hill
Components
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Room tiles: placed to build the house across three floors (ground, upper, basement).
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Character cards: 6 double-sided cards (12 characters total) with 4 stats each: Might, Speed, Knowledge, Sanity.
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Stat clips: track current values on character cards.
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Item, Event, and Omen cards: drawn when entering certain rooms.
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Dice: custom dice showing 0, 1, or 2 pips.
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Traitor's Tome and Secrets of Survival: two separate booklets with haunt scenarios.
Setup
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Place the three starting tiles (Entrance Hall/Foyer/Grand Staircase) in the center.
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Each player selects a character card and sets all four stats to their starting values using clips.
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Shuffle the room tile stack, item cards, event cards, and omen cards separately.
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All characters start in the Entrance Hall.
Phase 1: Exploration
Players take turns in order. On your turn:
Move
Move up to a number of spaces equal to your current Speed stat. Each room is one space.
Discover rooms
When you move through a doorway with no room, draw a room tile and place it (matching the current floor). Some rooms have symbols indicating you must draw a card:
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Item symbol (bull's head): draw an Item card. Items give stat boosts, special abilities, or weapons.
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Event symbol (spiral): draw an Event card. Events may help or harm you and are usually resolved immediately.
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Omen symbol (raven): draw an Omen card. Omens are items or companions, but drawing one also triggers a Haunt Roll.
Haunt Roll
After drawing an Omen card, roll 6 dice. If the total is less than the number of Omen cards revealed so far, the Haunt begins. Otherwise, exploration continues.
Stat damage
Some events and effects reduce your stats. If any stat drops to the skull symbol, your character dies (during the Haunt phase; during exploration you typically cannot die).
Phase 2: The Haunt
When the Haunt is triggered, consult the Haunt chart (cross-reference the Omen card and the room where it was found) to determine which of the 50 haunt scenarios plays out. Usually:
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One player is designated the Traitor (the player who triggered the Haunt, or as specified by the scenario). The Traitor takes the Traitor's Tome and reads their scenario privately.
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The Heroes read their scenario from Secrets of Survival (also privately). The two sides have different information about their win conditions.
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The Traitor leaves the room briefly while heroes strategize, and vice versa.
Play then alternates between the Hero team and the Traitor. Turns follow the same movement and action structure, but now combat and special haunt rules apply:
Combat
When a character attacks another character or monster:
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Attacker rolls dice equal to their relevant stat (usually Might).
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Defender rolls dice equal to their relevant stat.
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Higher total wins. The difference is dealt as stat damage to the loser. Ties mean no damage.
Haunt Victory
Each scenario has specific win conditions for both sides. Once either the Traitor or the Heroes complete their objective, that side wins the game. All players on the winning side share the victory; all players on the losing side share the loss.
Winning
Victory is determined by the haunt scenario's conditions. It is always one side (Heroes or Traitor) that wins, and the other side that loses.
