BAHOTH: Let's Play / Novelization

[willpell]

This is an idea I've had in mind for some time, and I'm finally giving it a try, out of boredom and a desire to do something constructive with my time. Easily one of my ten favorite games of all time, Betrayal At House On The Hill is a classic Avalon Hill title which is more or less an interactive horror movie in strategy boardgame form. I've got a card table set up next to my computer here, and I'm going to play a solo game of BAHOTH (which works poorly since one side needs to be ignorant of the other sides' actions; I'm just going to have to pretend as best I can), but as I journal the playthrough, I'm going to write it as a freeform story, with out-of-character commentary confined to spoilers. Hopefully it goes well enough for me to be able to do it many more times, and eventually try out all the various scenarios in the game. I've played the game in reality about 50-60 times, but never managed to turn up around 1/3 of the scenarios, and hopefully after a couple years without playing, the novelty will have worn back on.

Without further ado, let's get started. Our cast of characters in turn order:
Darrin "Flash" Williams
Jenny LeClerc
Vivian Lopez

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I'm using the re-issued version of the game from a couple of years ago, even though I consider the original version better, just because I'm less familiar with this one, and I think its "Hidden traitor" haunts might work marginally better in solo play. For starters I'm using the minimum of three players, even though this is less likely to result in a really satisfying game; this is more of a test run. I selected Flash for being marginally more entertaining than Ox, Jenny as my overall favorite character and as the strongest of the bunch when Ox isn't in play (Ox's Might is too dang high and unbalances several haunts, but it can be just as bad not to have anyone with any physical competence), and Vivian to round out the group with some Knowledge (picking her over Prof just so I don't have to figure out a text color to use for him, given that his portrait is white). It should make for a somewhat more entertaining game that I've omitted any characters who have anything resembling a decent Sanity rating.

The door of the House on the Hill seemed to be stuck fast; had the wind blown it shut before they entered, the three stranded travelers would have had no protection from the rain and bluster outside. Clearly the wood had been warped by humidity and only barely fit in the frame anymore; once the abrupt gale had slammed it, none of the group, not even the husky soccer enthusiast Jenny LeClerc, had the musclepower to get it open again. There was nothing left to do but explore the ruined mansion in search of another exit, or a working telephone, or some other way of enduring the passage of perhaps hours until the storm abated. Hopefully tomorrow they could get serious about liberating themselves; if nothing else, perhaps they would have cel-phone reception again.

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In order to preserve space on my table, which is probably sufficiently large but would require me to do a lot of reaching to the far side if I sprawled out too much, I'll be placing rooms in a very compact and efficient fashion whenever possible. This is kind of a stylistic choice you can make in the game; I know plenty of players who will go out of their way to try and make a wing of the house curve around outside the front door, behind the grand staircase, or in various other strange patterns. Perfectly appropriate and in theme, but I'll be avoiding it.

Ever the impetuous one, Darrin "Flash" Williams decided to sprint the length of the Foyer and up the Grand Staircase to the Upper Landing, finally opening a door and emerging outside, upon a Tower which stretched out across the gabled roof. As he paused beneath an eave, out of the rain, and assessed his situation, he felt Something Slimy wrap around his ankle! Though his reflexes should have catapaulted him into swift evasive action, somehow he was paralyzed with horror, and he felt his whole body going numb as some strange influence had its way with him, releasing him only after a long and hideous moment which left him feeling both limp and stiff at the same time.

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Good zot, no successes on six dice! I should explain for those who don't know the game, in BAHOTH you roll your statistics using between 1 and 8 special dice which have a 1/3 chance each of producing 0, 1, or 2 successes. Something Slimy is an Event card which Flash draws because the Tower has a symbol indicating so (almost all rooms cause you to draw a card, and Events are more common than the other two card types put together); he has to make a Speed roll to get away from the slimy thing, but in spectaculary defiance of the laws of probability, he failed, so he loses 1 Might and 1 Speed.

"Hey Flash, where's the fire? Come back here, silly!" Jenny called up after the younger boy, but received no answer. "Flash? If you think I'm coming up there after you...I'm not letting you pull another fast one on me! Flash! Oh, forget you anyway." Remembering how Darrin had once put a frog down the back of her shirt to impress his meathead buddies when they were still kids - having lived in the same neighborhood for so long, they'd always been sort of casual friends, and might have been more if he weren't such a jerk sometimes, but only sometimes so she always managed to forgive him, just in time for him to do something dumb again - Jenny decided that this had to be another of his pranks in the making, and refused to play along. Instead, she walked into the Foyer he'd disappeared through, but turned left and opened a door.

The bookish girl had stepped through into the room before she realized just what it was...sometimes when she was lost in a good mystery novel, she kind of zoned out and wandered into a different room of her house or something without knowing what she was doing, but this was the first time she could recall having done it while she wasn't reading. She now found herself in an old-style cage elevator, the doors of which were now closing behind her. Whirling around, she was startled to find that there didn't seem to be any buttons to control the lift! "Hey! What the...Flash! Did you shut those doors on me? Listen mister, this is not funny! Flash? Miss Lopez!" Starting to get a little upset at being apparently trapped, Jenny called out first to her fellow college freshman, and then at the older woman who had been driving the two of them when they were caught by the weather. Vivian Lopez ran a bookstore in town, a quaint little place which was a little too stuffy (and a lot too expensive) for Jenny's preferences; they weren't close, but she seemed like a nice lady, and was friends with Sarah Granville, the mother of Jenny's friend Caitlyn.

"Miss Lopez? Uh, Vivian? Could you--AH!" Suddenly, as if reacting to Jenny's rising distress, the old elevator lurched into motion! She couldn't tell for sure, but it seemed to be going up...and up, and up, and up (hadn't this old house had only two floors?). And then...suddenly...it FELL!

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The Mystic Elevator is a special room tile which moves itself around the house. You roll two dice to figure out where it can go; when you roll double blanks, as I just did, it crashes to the basement and the rider takes damage. The die I rolled for the damage in question was the first die of this game NOT to produce blanks; Jenny loses 1 point from her Might track. Another bit of info about the game: each character's stats are shown on a track of 8 numbers, with a starting point somewhere in the middle; it varies how much the numbers change on each character's track. Jenny's Might track reads 3-4-4-4-4-5-6-8, with the second 4 being her starting point; therefore, by taking 1 damage to Might, she doesn't immediately reduce her actual number for that stat, she just makes it less likely that she'll ever increase it.

Some chaperone I am, Vivian thought gloomily as she looked about the Entrance Hall which she was suddenly alone in. So busy admiring the decor of this old dump that I let the children run off by themselves. Oh, I suppose at 20 and 21, they aren't really "children" anymore, but still, I was supposed to be responsible for them. Well, I'll go after Jenny first, she's a responsible girl and once I collect her, she'll know better than to run off again. After that we can go after that hothead Williams boy; I don't know what she sees in him, but I'm not hiking up all those stairs if I don't have to. Maybe when he realizes we're not up to sporting around with him, he'll come back down. While subvocalizing these thoughts, Vivian crossed the Foyer in pursuit of Jenny, not realizing that the door which had closed behind her now had a different room on the other side.

Entering a magnificent Conservatory, with one wall all of glass facing out toward the entrance and giving a splendid (if rain-spattered) view of the surrounding countryside, Vivian then turned around toward the other side of the room...and was startled to discover that it contained a coffin! The vessel was standing open, and with a morbid curiosity, the forty-two-year-old woman walked over to look inside it...whereupon she found that its occupant looked exactly like herself! However, she blinked and the image was gone; the coffin stood empty and spotless again, and Vivian chided herself for having an overactive imagination.

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Drew the event card "Funeral", made the Sanity roll it called for, and gained a point of Sanity as a result. It's amusing to note that the Conservatory room has a window on one side, which is currently an outside-facing window, but if someone explores the door to the left of the Entrance Hall, it'll block that window off. I will be working this into the story if it comes up....

Back to Flash's turn. The Tower requires a Might roll to cross, and stops your movement if you fail, so not wanting to waste a turn, I'll have him go back the other way.

Not wanting to fight the winds which howled across the open Tower, especially not now when he was still feeling rather shaken-up, Flash went back through the door into the Upper Landing, and listened for a moment. He couldn't hear any trace of the two females in the house below, so with a shrug he went back to exploring, taking the door to his right. It proved to be a rather ordinary Bedroom, with a slightly grimy mattress he didn't feel like testing and a door opening in the far wall; a small window with curtains looked out away from the Tower he'd just come from. From somewhere in the room, he could hear a little "Drip...Drip...Drip..." sound; there must be a leak in the roof or something, ("Drip...Drip...Drip...") with the gutters overflowing from all the rain, ("Drip...Drip...Drip...") although the sound was a too slow for it to be much of a flood threat. ("Drip...Drip...Drip...") Still, it was really starting to get on his nerves.... ("Drip...Drip...Drip...")

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One of many Events which often don't do all that much, "Drip...Drip...Drip..." puts a token in the room which causes explorers in that room to roll 1 fewer die on their rolls, due to the distraction. Generally this just means players will avoid staying in that room for any length of time, though, so the impact on scenarios is usually minimal.

The doors of the Elevator slid open and Jenny staggered out, having picked herself up off the floor after the car had crashed into the basement. Her shoulder was throbbing, but she'd taken worse hits on the soccer team (more often from her teammates, who always called her a weirdo for not sharing their interest in gossip and television, than from the opponents). Unfortunately, she was now stuck downstairs, and with the possible exception of the lift, which did still appear to be working despite the crash, but she was understandably reluctant to trust it, she had no other way of getting back up. So there wasn't much to do but look around...at least her flashlight still worked in spite of the fall. Not wanting to go all the way across the dank, coal-piled chamber, she took the first door to her right, remembering the old maze-runner's rule to keep one hand on the wall, though in this case she preferred to obey it metaphorically, as the wall didn't look especially pleasant to actually touch.

In any event, Jenny now found herself in a rather well-maintained Game Room, which didn't look at all as though it belonged down here; the walls were paneled wood rather than the concrete of the chamber she'd just left, with a bearskin rug on the floor and a couple racks of deer antlers mounted on the wall. One comfortable-looking wingbacked chair was placed next to each of a large round poker table and a smaller square table with a chessboard on it, along with a couple smaller wooden chairs (one of them lying on its side); a dead lamp lay on the floor nearby, and a stuffed trout on a wooden backboard lay perilously close to the old radiator in the corner, with a mousetrap on the other side. Hands of cards, piles of poker chips, and a tumbler full of ancient brandy with a dead fly in it all occupied the big table, as if the room had been abandoned in the middle of a round. There were a few books on a shelf in the corner next to the lamp, but just at the moment Jenny was in far less of a mood to read than usual.

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The Game Room has doors in three walls, and I always have to agonize over which way to orient it when I place it. For the moment, the dimensions of my table will dictate that I place the non-wall opposite the entryway, so that the house continues to either side but not further away from the landing. Meanwhile, we draw another Event...

Taking one step back into what she'd been sure was clear space a moment earlier, Jenny suddenly found herself colliding with a massive cobweb. She reached up to brush them aside...but they clung to her, seeming fresh and sticky and of improbable strength. It took a great effort for her to wrench herself free...but once this was done, she felt as if she'd popped her dislocated shoulder back into place.

Vivian had no idea how Jenny had disappeared from this room, which had no other visible exits, but she could see no evidence of anything else to do in here, so she went back out into the Foyer and then crossed it, opening the door on the far side. It was as if this house were determined to dazzle her, for she now found herself in a beautiful formal ballroom, the floor still polished to a seductive slickness and the chandelier overhead brilliantly lit (apparently at least part of the house still had electricity). Overcome with whimsy and feeling twenty years younger than she was, the spinster stepped out onto the dancefloor and twirled in place a couple of times.

When she came to a stop, there was a foot-tall mannequin sitting in the middle of the dancefloor, which she was certain hadn't been there a moment ago. With a puzzled expression, she took a single step toward the curious object. That was her mistake.

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Holy crap! The Creepy Puppet event card rolls a Might 4 attack against the player who discovered it, and I just got 7 successes. Vivian has only 2 Might, so even with an above-average roll of 3, Vivian is clobbered, dropping from unhurt to the minimum value of her Might and one step above the last point of Speed, though fortunately neither of these numbers are reduced. Her last pip of Speed will reduce her from 4 to 3; after that, she can't take any more physical damage until the "Haunt" begins.

Still not sure exactly what had just happened, Vivian staggered back, pulling a tiny spear from the wound in her side; it was so fragile that it broke in her hand, yet somehow it had pierced completely through her body, probably just missing a couple of vital organs. Overcome with agony, she slumped to the floor for a long moment.

Upstairs, Flash turned his back on the drippy bedroom and tried the next door; it led into a Research Laboratory! Ye gads, this place is random, the track star mused, looking about at the banks of beakers and vials, the handsome black marble countertops, the tile floor with a drain in the center and a large puddle of orangish-pink liquid oozing slowly into it, the radio in the corner with a weird electrical device across from it, the cabinet full of extra "dishes" (that was a lousy word for them since they were clearly scientific rather than domestic, but he couldn't think what exactly to call them otherwise)....what a lot of junk. Who on earth LIVES like this? A bedroom right next to a mad scientist lab?

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Darrin draws an Event in this room, but I'm going to go have dinner before I resolve it. If you read this before I get back, please feel free to comment; I'm doing this just to amuse myself, but wouldn't mind a bit if I had a little company.

[willpell]

Alright, continuing on...

Darrin "Flash" Williams
Jenny LeClerc
Vivian Lopez

Curiously twiddling the dials on one of the odd electrical devices in the lab, Flash was surprised to discover that what started out as an oscilloscope suddenly tuned in a picture like an old TV, showing the exterior of the house just as it had looked when they'd arrived, only in broad daylight and with a ghostly couple silently strolling outside it, dressed in their wedding best. Wracking his brain for the rumors that circulated around town about the House on the Hill, he realized that these images matched the description of the former owners of the house....and on a whim, he spoke their names. Suddenly, the transparent figures in the blurry image looked at him, and whispered a phrase he couldn't quite understand.

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Improbably succeeding the roll for his "Night View" event (which strongly implies that the player ought to be outside when they draw it, thusly I had to improvise a bit on the description), Darrin increases his Knowledge from 3 to 4.

Knowing that the Elevator had to be off to her right, Jenny went left out of the Game Room, only to find her way blocked by a sprawling labyrinth filled with bones...the Catacombs! From the darkness ahead, the scent of death, a growl, and something lunged.

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Jenny gets the first Omen card of the game, the only one which mimics an Event rather than an Item: the Bite. And continuing the current game's tradition of absurdly improbable rolls, the four dice of the Bite's attack all turn up double successes. Poor Jenny gets an average roll to defend, and is clobbered, falling to 3 in both Might and Speed; like Vivian, she now can take only 1 more damage before facing death once the Haunt begins. And speaking of which, we now roll for the possibility of a Haunt occurring, as we do whenever an Omen is drawn. However, only a roll as unlikely as Flash's failed Speed roll on turn 1 is capable of starting a haunt on the game's first Omen, and it doesn't happen this time.

Knowing nothing of Jenny's own pain, Vivian finally managed to shrug off hers, get up, and stagger through the door to the right, hopefully leading back toward the front of the house. No such luck; she was now in a Graveyard. A graveyard which was somehow filled with Smoke! One of the small mausolea was open, and apparently doubled as a chimney for the house's furnace or something; the choking black fumes brought tears to Vivian's eyes as she stumbled backward.

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Smoke is exactly like Drip Drip Drip in its effects, except the penalty is twice as great, plus it also blocks line of sight through the room for certain effects; this game is not precisely balanced. The Graveyard is also one of the four rooms in the house which is dangerous to try and leave; when Vivian takes her next turn, unless content simply to sit here (which no self-respecting explorer would be, without some in-game reason for missing a turn), she'll have to succeed a Sanity roll or lose 1 Knowledge, as the Graveyard scares her stupid. Fortunately she's got that nice 5 Sanity, so her chances are pretty good of getting away unscathed. Still, between this and the Coffin, I kind of sense a theme; I hope I can manage to work it into the story.

Disgusted with his lack of progress, Flash was determined not to turn back and go downstairs again empty-handed, nor did he want to find out what was behind Door #4 in this crazy architect's designs, so he continued out the other side of the Laboratory. Whereupon, he found...the other Laboratory! Well, that at least sort of makes sense... the youth mused as he stared bemusedly at the bloodstained operating table surrounded by multiple banks of rusty-looking surgical tools.

Little did he know that at the same moment, mists poured out from the walls of the Catacombs downstairs, taking the shape of faces both human and inhuman. But Jenny saw easily that the faces were only tricks of light and shadow, and she was not afraid. Well, not of mere hallucinations at least; she had a massive bite wound which was of far greater immediate concern.

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Mists from the Walls is a rather lame Event card, with no upside, affecting only explorers in the basement and with no logical reason for being triggered by actions on a different floor. Jenny shrugs off the effect with a good Sanity roll and goes ahead and takes her actual turn.

Having no interest in trying to summon the courage to wade through the Catacombs, Jenny proceeded back through the Game Room (a Game Room next to a Catacombs? The owner of this House must have played for some rather grisly stakes!), out into the Basement Landing, and then across to an unexplored door. She emerged into a Gymnasium, finding that in among all the exercise equipment you'd expect to find, someone had left an authentic-looking Crystal Ball sitting on a stand next to the lockers. Looking into the huge glass marble, she saw hazy images which didn't look like they were of the room beyond, and seemed to be moving; on impulse, she took the hand-sized ball out of its holder and pocketed it. She then went looking through the lockers and managed to find some gauze to bind up the wound on her leg.

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The Crystal Ball is another Omen card, whose effect inexplicably only operates after the Haunt starts...which isn't now, I roll to confirm. So for no visible reason, Jenny carries the thing around for a while and then only starts gazing into it after everyone's life is proven to be in danger; seems like an odd time to take up crystallomancy, but this game is like that a lot, as we've already seen. The Gymnasium is one of four rooms which can be used to increase one of your stats once per player per game; it affects Speed, and in this case helps repair some of the damage Jenny took from the Bite, getting her Speed back up to a 4.

Vivian hastily fled the Smoking Graveyard, crossing the Ballroom to explore the room beyond. It proved to be no room at all, but a path winding through a square of Gardens flanked by impassible cast-iron fences towering on both sides, with the bulk of the House itself looming just beyond to the left.

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The event card "Image in the Mirror" turns up, but nobody has an Item card (the Crystal Ball doesn't count since it's an Omen), and it has no effect. Just as well, given that there probably isn't a mirror in the Gardens; it's not impossible, but we've stretched credulity enough as it is.

I'm going to take another little break before continuing.

[willpell]

Again, I resume.

Darrin "Flash" Williams
Jenny LeClerc
Vivian Lopez

Flash discovered that beyond the Operating Laboratory, there was another bedroom, but this one much larger and fancier - a Master Bedroom. Two large curtained windows looked out over the rolling countryside - the storm was letting up, it seemed, but that was far from the most pressing of problems by now - and the bed was clean, lushly blanketed, and looked rather inviting. But no, this was no time for a nap, not even among silk sheets and an inordinate number of pillows. Although, they did look very soft...maybe just a touch...wait, what's this? Under one of the pillows, there was a somber Mask....

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Still no haunt.

Feeling slightly recovered, though still pretty weak, Jenny exited the Gymnasium and found an Organ Room, with an incongruous 7 pews facing the great pipe organ. Thinking that making a little noise might summon one of the others to help, she went up and pressed a few of the keys at random, but produced no sound; suddenly, however, a section of the wall slid away to reveal a Secret Passage! Crawling into the moldy tunnel, she emerged to find herself in the Gardens.

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While this game is story-like in a number of aspects, it does occasionally fail at versimilitude; you would think that once the players have been mauled a little after separating and then reunited, they wouldn't want to part again, but from a game perspective that would be silly, as it would mean the player who kept ending in occupied rooms would never draw any cards and thus wouldn't be accomplishing anything. Still, I figured that it would at least be somewhat reasonable to have the character take this opportunity to join another character in a room when it didn't cost her anything, even though it might have been slightly more sensible to put the other end of the Secret Passage in the Entrance Hall, so that Jenny could explore off in that direction instead of near Vivian.

Note that when I placed the Organ Room, I deliberately pointed its open door away from the empty space next to the Catacombs, wanting to leave more open spaces to explore since I thought Jenny would still be trapped in the basement. Had I known I was getting a Secret Passage, I might have wanted to keep the basement small.

"Really, dear, if you must go wandering off, you only have yourself to blame for whatever happens...a pipe organ, you say? Well, that does sound interesting, I think I'll just go have a quick look..." Succumbing to the lure of curiosity, Vivian crawled into the Secret Passage and emerged downstairs; before she could investigate the Organ, however, she noticed the far door banging shut, and thinking that somehow Darrin had wound up down here, she hurried to catch him. Instead, she found herself in a cryptlike room whose floor consisted entirely of gray stone blocks, with an immense pentagram painted on the floor in white. As a lifelong reader with an interest in "unusual subjects" Vivian had naturally heard of this occult symbol, but dismissed the tales as the work of overactive imaginations and thought nothing of strolling across the border of the circle and through the lines of the five-pointed star, until she stood at the exact center. There, on the floor, she found a Spirit Board, its logo half-worn off so that only the letters "uij" remained.

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Conversely to the Crystal Ball, the Spirit Board works best before the haunt begins; after that, its use risks attracting monsters. With four Omen cards drawn so far, the haunt roll (always 6 dice) has to produce 3 or fewer successes in order for the haunt to begin; Vivian is lucky and this is averted for now.

Flash left the Master Bedroom, the Mask dangling jauntily from one hand, and found his path blocked by the massive iron door of a Vault. Having no clue what the combination might be, he spun the dial of the lock at random, only to have a section of the floor open up nearby, revealing Secret Stairs. Convenient, that; he'd been worried he'd have to walk all the way back to the Upper Landing before getting out of this cul-de-sac. However he opted not to leave this room until he'd taken another crack at the Vault; thinking back on the words of the ghostly couple he'd glimpsed on that strange scope, he wondered if they might have been trying to give him the numbers which would open the door.

But no such luck, he found. So he decided to head down the Secret Stairs, ignoring the horrible creaking sound all around him. He was disappointed to find himself in the Basement Landing, but just before stepping out, he found a portrait hanging incongruously on the wall just inside the passage, with a Locked Safe behind it. His mind still filled with dreams of kewl lewt, he eagerly grabbed and twisted the dial, only to have blades emerge from it and lacerate his palm!

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Had Flash gotten either the Vault or the Safe open, he'd have gained two Items, but he failed the roll. My rules-fu tells me it was dubious for me to try the Vault and then follow the Stairs, since the card says you can follow the stairs "right now" even if you don't have any movement left, which explicitly breaks the normal rule that you can't move after drawing a card, but doesn't say that you can stop and do other things in the room and then follow the Stairs. Still, none of the other people I'm playing the game with objected, so I decided to just have more stuff happen. When placing the stairs, I was allowed to pick any room on a different floor, and opted for the basement just to be more interesting than to just go back to the first floor a few rooms away from the Grand Staircase. So I put the stairs in the Basement Landing, which naturally makes the Locked Safe sound strange when drawn in that room, since it explicitly mentions a portrait. As usual, I got creative to try and make sense of this weirdness.

Glad to be back aboveground, but eager to get out of what remained of the rain (Vivian had said it was "refreshing" at its diminished intensity, but she didn't agree), Jenny was on the far side of the Gardens and didn't know that the Ballroom from which Vivian had come would lead back to the Entrance Hall, so she tried the nearest door and emerged into a Creaky Hallway. Nothing got in her way, so she turned right and emerged into a Dusty Hallway. Still nothing happened to slow her down (she'd have been out of steam by now if she were still walking on a bleeding leg, but the stop in the Gymnasium had restored her to her usual gait), so she turned right again - and fell through the floor of a Collapsed Room. She fell into a Chasm spanned by a narrow, rickety rope bridge, which she just managed to grab before plummetting into the yawning abyss below; the impact nearly wrenched her arm out of her socket, and for a long and horrifying moment she dangled, before managing to writhe her wounded leg up onto a crumbled concrete ledge. Squirming and wriggling in desperate panic, she finally managed to get her whole body up onto what remained of the floor, where she lay gasping in exhaustion, not sure when she could stand to move again.

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Somehow, about two games out of three I draw both of the game's two Hallways right in a row, but I think this is a new record, having hit four consecutive new room tiles without ever drawing a card. The Collapsed Room and the Chasm are both rooms you can potentially keep going through after entering, if you have enough Speed to spare; despite my high-adventure flavor text, the Chasm isn't actually dangerous, just forcing you to stop moving if you fail to cross. However, just like when the Elevator crashes, you take damage when you fall from the Collapsed Room, and the damage rolled was 2, so I figured I should make it sound like an ordeal. This drops Jenny's speed all the way to 2, so she's not going to be able to reach a new room next round unless Flash or Vivian gets the Mystic Elevator out of her way, or unless she crosses the Chasm (I could have picked for her to fall on the far side of it, but that seems a little too much), which it would be very out-of-flavor for her to do after that last turn.

Vivian consulted her Spirit Board, finding that it spelled out "S-T-A-T-U-A-R-Y-C-O-R-R-I-D-O-R", and was irritated to notice that she was too far away from any open doors to be able to reach this new destination this turn - if she stayed in the basement. So she simply stepped across the pentagram, effortlessly recognizing the need not to step on any of the intersections which might have flayed her Sanity away (all of her occult Knowledge had been entirely trivial, she'd assumed for all of her years, but this rather hyperactive Spirit Board seemed sufficient proof that it was time to start believing), and went back through the Secret Passage to the Gardens, out into the Creaky Hallway, and left rather than right. Lo and behold, it was indeed the Statuary Corridor. Which, for some reason, had a Closet Door in it, open just a crack. "There must be something inside," she mused aloud, having long since lost any great impetus to avoid talking to herself.

She opened the door, and saw that It Is Meant To Be.

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IIMTB is the single most beneficial Event in the game, and in a typical example of BAHOTH's occasional annoying redundancy, it has two separate effects which are each worthy of a card. It can be used to rearrange the top three cards or tiles of any stack, which is potentially amusing but has minimal chances of actually benefitting you, since you can't usually draw cards the same turn so you'd probably just be setting up one of the other players, and pre-haunt you have little incentive to help or hurt them. If you know the game really well, as I used to, you could try to influence the Haunt you'll end up with by stacking the Omen deck or the room tiles, but going just 3 deep has a fairly minimal effect on any deck other than the Omens, and there are not many really strong choices.

So most of the time, if you draw IIMTB, you'll probably choose its second mode, which is the ability to pre-roll 4 dice and use the result on a later roll. That's what I chose here, but unfortunately the roll was only 2, which isn't likely to accomplish a lot since you can only use it for your own rolls and will usually be capable of rolling better. It's good for controlling the Mystic Elevator for a turn; that's probably about it.

As to the Closet, it can theoretically produce an unlimited number of Items - that might be the reason why the designers of the revised edition added more Items, despite the fact that you usually don't draw very many and it would have been much nicer to include a wider variety of Events - but that's only if you're very good at rolling the maximum values on two dice (equivalent to rolling a minimum of 10 on regular d6s; just ask a craps croupier in Vegas how often that happens). Most of the time, the Closet spits out Events, and frequently removes itself in the process. In this case, IIMTB was drawn and the Closet remained, but I doubt I'll be bored enough to come back to it. On the plus side, the Statuary Corridor here was indeed placed directly behind the Grand Staircase.

Having heard the commotion of Jenny's fall and peeked through the door, Flash saw that she was injured and exhausted, but decided against trying to actually help her in any way; as had been previously established, he was kind of a jerk to her sometimes. So instead, he decided to get in the Mystic Elevator, though he didn't know about that first word; when the door closed itself behind him and he found himself with no idea how to steer, he reflected for a moment that perhaps this was Karma at work. He looked upward for a moment, half-expecting to see Ceiling Cat looking down at him disapprovingly (what could he say, the Internet had more impact on his belief system than some old book full of Proverbs and Deuteronomy); instead, the action seemed to serve as an instruction, and the lift rose. It released him back up on the first floor, where he stepped out into the still-annoyingly-drippy Bedroom; he headed through that, across the Upper Landing, and through its remaining unexplored door, this being the limit of his remaining Speed. He now found himself in pretty much what you expect to find on the top floor of old houses, a Room full of Junk. But apparently the owner of that junk, and perhaps of the house itself, didn't want to share, for a raving, frothing Madman now appeared before Flash!

"So, uh...this your house?" Flash asked, feeling like he ought to say something at least.

"Sgraugh, gwigglybgffggah sperauglfmgwah xshuggzyt!" the madman replied, gesticulating furiously but not seeming particularly aggressive.

"Oh. Well, it's...very nice." The madman seemed satisfied with that.

► Show Spoiler

The Madman is one of three Omen cards which represents a living creature which follows you around until you're killed, then waits in that room and joins up with the next player to arrive. In this case, you gain 2 Might from his presence, as he can help you fight, but lose 1 Sanity due to his influence. The Haunt roll prompted by the Madman still does not succeed, so the game continues as it has.

As an interesting rules loophole, the fact that you can't die pre-haunt suggests that right now, with his Sanity at its second-to-last pip, Flash could put on the Mask, losing 2 Sanity but really only losing 1, and gain 2 Knowledge. Whether this would make him instantly die once Haunted, or would allow him to later take the Mask off and gain more Sanity than he lost, is open to interpretation. For now, I gave it a try after confirming we weren't Haunted, but with only 2 Sanity, Darrin needs the aforementioned double-doubles roll to succeed, and didn't get it this time.

Hobbling across the Basement Landing, Jenny opened a new door and discovered the Stairs from Basement leading back up to the Foyer (the same Foyer from which the Mystic Elevator had departed, and the Stairs were now in the place where it had briefly appeared; rather silly, that). She lacked the energy to climb more than halfway up, however.

► Show Spoiler

Unfortunately, unless we're Haunted before then, Jenny's next turn will be completely boring, as she cannot reach a new room from where she now is. She could go back into the Basement Landing and try the Safe, maybe even go up the Secret Stairs to the Vault, but that would just leave her stuck for longer later on, and the Safe might kill her if the Haunt has started by then...though if it hasn't, she loses nothing by trying it.

Wasting no more time on the Closet, Vivan continued past the Statuary Corridor and into a Chapel, with many tall, thin windows behind a pulpit facing eight pews. Here, she saw two boys playing with a wooden top. "Would you like a turn, Jonah?" one asked. "No," said Jonah, "I want ALL the turns." Jonah took the top and hit the other boy in the face. The boy fell, and Jonah continued hitting the boy as they faded from view. The sight was shocking, or at least it should have been, but by now, Vivian had become rather blase about strange happenings, and even found the existence of the supernatural strangely comforting.

► Show Spoiler

Like the Gymnasium, the Chapel lets you gain an Attribute point, in this case Sanity. Jonah's Turn is a very odd Event, whose effect is usually just that you take a die of mental damage; Vivian rolled a blank on that die, hence the flavor text. The only exception is that if a player has the Puzzle Box, an Item card which acts much like the Vault except for one player carrying it around, instead of it being fixed in a room for all the players to try, Jonah's Turn causes that player - if he still has the Box, by virtue of not having managed to open it - to exchange it for a different item, causing the player who drew Jonah's Turn to gain 1 Sanity. Altogether, an utterly bizarre effect for the card, though certainly the scene it describes is one of the more memorable Events in the game.

Attempting to force his way through the clutter of the Junk Room, Flash barked his shins on the corner of something, but didn't let it slow him down any more than he already had been (it really wasn't his evening). With the Madman obediently tagging along behind him like a dog (if dogs were in the habit of babbling incessantly), Darrin continued straight through into the Library, where a thousand bugs spilled out on his skin, under his clothes, and in his hair. (Presumably they were silverfish, who feed on the paste in book bindings, and flourish in damp conditions such as those of a house which has drippy leaks on the top floor during a rainstorm.) Spazzing the f*** out and receiving absolutely no help from his Madman, Darrin finally managed to get himself back under control, and looked in sad helplessness at his now-terrifying Mask, which he knew he would probably never dare try on anymore, lest he end up as loony as his new companion. Having nothing better to do, he sat down in a chair and picked up a book to read, having first checked both extensively to be sure they contained no bugs.

► Show Spoiler

Creepy-Crawlies requires 5 successes on a Sanity roll not to take Sanity damage, which is 2 points if you get 0 successes. Since he had a Sanity value of 2, with 4 being the maximum possible roll, he couldn't conceivably succeed this roll, and since he can only take 1 damage pre-Haunt, there was only one possible outcome regardless; he drops from 2 Sanity to 1, and now isn't capable of putting the Mask on at all, which is a real pity since he has nothing to lose by doing so. But at least he can gain Knowledge by ending his turn in the Library.

Jenny headed back to the Basement Landing to try the Wall Safe (presumably it's sitting out in plain view now). In so much pain from her earlier ordeal that nothing more could affect her through the adrenaline, she ignored the jabbing of blades in her hand as she twisted the dial, but verified that she wasn't accomplishing anything by it either, and finally decided to limp up the Secret Stairs and try the Vault instead, which was even less likely to yield to her but it was better than doing nothing at all. Failing, she slumped against the Vault door in defeat.

Vivian traveled back through Corridor and Hallway, wondering to herself what made one differ from the other in any meaningful sense, and took a left into an Abandoned Room. Here, on a makeshift pedestal in the center of the room, there stood a Book, which she took from its nook so she could look. Enriching her mind, she realized that she had forgotten to check the Spirit Board, but then realized it didn't matter; her acquisition of this Book was pre-ordained, and now its secrets flowed through her mind, boosting her Knowledge to an unprecedented height of acumen among all the attributes of herself or her compatriots. Assuming, in fact, they still were her compatriots, and would not now fear her for the wisdom she had gained...

► Show Spoiler

At last, I get 5 on my Haunt roll with 6 Omens in play, and the real game can begin! The bit about pre-ordaining her is me being meta; I did legitimately forget to use the Spirit Board, but it doesn't matter because the room on the top of the tile stack was Ground or Basement floor, and one of the few factoids about BAHOTH which I still remember, after going almost two years without getting it played, is the fact that only two rooms are specific to those two floors, and both of them are Omen rooms. Had I been designing the game, I'd not have allowed for a spoiler like this, but Avalon Hill (or its parent company Wizards of the Coast, or their parent company Hasbro) did. And it does sort of tie in nicely to the little story I've come up with for Vivian here, how she's gradually turned into a believer in the occult, having precognitive visions and just knowing she was about to get an Omen, which was getting close to average probability of triggering a Haunt.

I don't need to take a break, but this seems like a good time to do so anyway, just for the sake of readability and suspense.

[willpell]

Darrin "Flash" Williams
Jenny LeClerc
Vivian Lopez
A Madman

► Show Spoiler

Well, the Haunt has arrived, exciting. If you haven't played BAHOTH, here's how this works: there are three books which come with the game, one of which is just the rulebook (in a fitting bit of irony, it's by far the thinnest, resulting in unanswerable questions like the thing with the Mask), and the other two are called the Secrets of Survival and the Traitor's Tome. The original edition of the game printed a table in both of these books, while the new version has it only in the Traitor's Tome; looking on the table, you cross-reference the Omen card which triggered the Haunt and the room in which it was found (a total of 13 omens and 13 rooms where they can be found exist, resulting in 169 possible outcomes, so each of the 50 possible haunts is triggered in one of 3-4 rooms by a particular omen, or by one of 3-4 omens in a particular room, or possibly by some combination if there's a Haunt which doesn't care about any particular omen or room, but I doubt there are any such. Anyway, in this case, we have the Book in the Abandoned Room, so I look that up and find that it's Haunt number 7. I then look below the table to where the haunt numbers are listed, along with the player who becomes the traitor in each case.

For #7, Father Rheinhart automatically becomes the Traitor if he's in the game (this is for flavor reasons, as one of his hobbies is gardening, and we're about to learn that this haunt is plant-centric), but since he's not, the traitor is the explorer with the highest Sanity. Right now, that's Vivian. (Which unfortunately means that her It Is Meant to Be is just about completely useless now; the Traitor need not roll for the Mystic Elevator, and can ignore all negative Events, and I can't think of a positive event for which rolling a 2 is useful.) So what would happen now, if I were more than one person, is that the player of Vivian would leave the room and read Haunt #7 in the Traitor's Tome, while the other players would read Haunt #7 in the Secrets of Survival and discuss their strategy for trying to win, while the traitor would come up with a scheme to try and achieve the specific victory condition of this haunt.

Fortunately, this is a haunt I've played once before, so I'm not really spoiling it for myself by doing it in solitaire. It's one of the majority of haunts from the original edition which appears again in the new version of the game, although several of my favorites were cut, presumably because they required too many unique tokens and the company wanted to be a little cheap when reprinting, though at the same time they must have spent some money printing fancier tokens where they didn't need to be unique...well anyway, I'll spare you any further ranting on the topic. Anyway, I could detail the preparations that the Traitor now does in setting up for the haunt, but I think it'd be more fun to just jump right in with flavor text, which I'll continue to tell from an omniscient perspective as I play both sides. To the best of my recollection, this is neither one of the haunts where the players are completely screwed nor one where they have a cakewalk of it; it should scale reasonably well to fit the number of players, IIRC, so we'll see how it goes.

Up on the third floor, Jenny and Flash could hear a dry, rasping sound echoing through the house. At first both idiosyncratically suspected that giant rattlesnakes were coming to get them (later, when they had a quiet moment together...possibly postmortem, let it be quickly said lest I be accused of spoilering...they would reflect on how odd it was that they would both jump to such an outre conclusion at the same time, and share a laugh at how they both thought along the same strange lines when they weren't too busy arguing with each other). But then they could see the tendrils of vines pressing against the windows, cracking and bursting the glass, and they realized that the plants were coming--coming for them.

"I've always liked plants," Vivian informed herself, setting the Book down. "I should have known I was wasting my life collecting books; I just wanted to make living, green, peaceful things grow. Well, it sounds like they're growing now. I wonder why they only just started. Was it me? Did I need to symbolically reject this book, this thing made from dead trees, and now that I have, I'm being blessed by the approach of incredibly powerful vegetation? Surely, this is the supernatural force I felt before...the burgeoning power of the earth, eager to reclaim this rotting hulk of civilized construction. I think I should help it along, shouldn't I? What do plants need to thrive? Light, water, and...oh yes, fertilizer? Ah, and what would make good fertilizer? Why, those two ungrateful brats that I've been chasing around all day. All they do is argue and fight and roughhouse...I'm too old to have to listen to such horseplay all day. They were bound to end up in the earth someday, nourishing the growth of grass and vines...and why put off 'til tomorrow, what they can do today?"

The Creepers emerged from the soil of the Gardens, crept up over the edges of the Tower, and burst in through the windows of both Bedrooms, the Grand Staircase, and the Chapel. At the base of each Creeper was a Root, from which a Tip slowly coiled forth. In the Vault, Jenny shrieked as the vine snaked in through the window of the adjacent room; Flash was further away, but might not remain so for long, what with his legs not being as fast as they used to be.

(And haunt setup has taken me long enough that I'm going to break yet again before continuing with the actual haunt.)

[willpell]

Okay, hopefully this will be the last post for this game; I'm already staying up past my bedtime to finish this, but hey it's the weekend.

Darrin "Flash" Williams
Jenny LeClerc
Vivian Lopez
A Madman

Flash didn't much like having to wade back through the Junk Room, but there was little enough choice; he knew that nothing he could do was going to have much effect on the Creepers he could hear growing up all around the house, but he'd received a sudden premonition that there was a Book in an Abandoned Room downstairs which contained the secret of the plants' absurdly accelerated growth - and how to reverse it. Heading back, he managed to convince the Madman to help him move things out of the way and get through in one piece; heading down the Grand Staircase, he found that a Creeper blocked his path; in order to get out of the room, he'd have to wrestle the Tip into submission, but he had no idea how strong it was and didn't want to risk letting it choke him, so he simply ended his turn, hoping he hadn't made a horrible mistake by coming this way.

Entirely abandoning all thought of opening the Wall Safe, Jenny gave the Vault dial one frantic spin, then gave up and hobbled down the Secret Stairs and back up into the Stairs From Basement, knowing full well there was little hope she could escape the pursuing vines.

Vivian had no particular agenda at the moment, being unable to attack the two youngsters to any real effect; she did still have the Spirit Board, however, and saw no reason not to use it to her advantage. Peeking at a non-ground-floor room she was unlikely to be able to reach, she moved her hands on the board, spelling out "S-T-O-R-E-R-O-O-M", but at the same time communicating to the proto-mind of the hungry vines that she was in the Abandoned Room. From the Chapel and Gardens, two Tips writhed toward her; two others reached into the Upper Landing, and the one in the Grand Staircase she of course ordered to remain where it was.

► Show Spoiler

The one in the Master Bedroom was...arguable; its path to her was 9 spaces by way of the Grand Staircase, and only 8 by way of the Secret Stairs to the Stairs to the Basement, but it seems dubious to say that going down two floors and back up 1 should count as a shortcut, so I decided that I'd go with the rules' suggestion of rolling a die to see whether it could work. 0 it's impossible, 2 it's possible. Rolled 0; okay, it'll stay where it is. Once it's actually moving itself, of course, it can move freely; it's just the definition of "toward" which was wickety here.

Another rules issue, which had an answer in an online FAQ I found easily, was the question of whether a traitor can fall through the Collapsed Room without taking damage. Confirming that this was "yes", I'm able to have Vivian reach the Storeroom; otherwise she'd have had to settle for taking it away from the other players by exploring a new Ground room, causing the non-Ground-allowed Storeroom to be discarded.

Climbing down an inanimate vine which had snaked its way through the Collapsed Room, which could twitch just enough to throw a climber off it, but which she cooed soothingly at using the secrets of the Book she'd read and discarded, Vivian made her way to the far side of the Chasm, whose bridge had also been reinforced by the Creepers so that she could cross it without fear. The Storeroom was there just as she'd expected, and she found an Axe therein, which she felt she ought to keep out of the two children's hands, lest they use it on one of her precious plants.

The Creepers writhed into animation, twitching lazily toward their targets; the one with a root in the Gardens ended up back in the Gardens after having briefly reached toward its mistress, while the one from the Chapel was now two rooms away, guarding the approach to the Book. The two from the Upper Landing wound their way down the Grand Staircase, and the one that was already there simply made a grab for Flash, but was terribly unlucky and wound up getting the worst of the struggle.

► Show Spoiler

About this time I read the note and learned that the Spirit Board doesn't work on Tips anyway, so I had to move the two back up to the Upper Landing, and one a space back toward the Chapel. Nevermind. On the plus side, this means the one from the Gardens didn't need to move back into it, and could instead come back the other way one space, into the Ballroom.

Flash made a dash and got as far as the Gardens, having had to weave around the Tip that was in his way. He was still far from out of the woods....

Jenny hadn't gazed into her crystal ball this entire time; there didn't seem to be much point now, but she had little enough else to try and do besides becoming fertilizer, so after walking up into the Ballroom, she gave it a shot. Summoning the courage to see what she hoped rather than what she feared, she learned that the next item someone would find would be the Healing Salve which she desperately needed.

Vivian spelled out S-E-R-V-A-N-T-S-Q-U-A-R-T-E-R-S on her Spirit Board before moving, then walked across the Chasm, through the Basement Landing, and out the far door of the Game Room into the Servants' Quarters, where she found a Holy Symbol. It all made sense now...the house had belonged to a deranged scientist experimenting on vegetation, but his groundskeeper had been a devotee of the Old Religion, and had used this mystic emblem to call up the power of the Cthonic Goddess to turn his experiment against him. Now she was retracing the path of that brave gardener, and summoning the power of the Green against a new generation of arrogant, destructive humans who cared only about themselves. "But I don'wanna die," she mocked them aloud to herself. "How selfish! The Mother Earth gave you your lives, and she can take them back anytime she pleases."

As if strengthened by their mistress's discovery, the Creepers redoubled their Speed this turn. Two Tips came down as far as the Foyer, and one wound down the Secret Stairs and back up into the Stairs From Basement; the one with a Root in the Chapel moved into the Gardens with Flash, and the one he'd Stunned woke back up rather than moving. The one in the Ballroom with Jenny made a grab for her, and both of them flailed about rather uselessly, but there was so much more vine to do the flailing that inevitably, she was entangled, her Crystal Ball rolling free from nerveless fingers.

Flash managed to tie his attacker in a knot, but then he faced a dilemma. He could run to the Abandoned Room, grab the Book and run back, but that would be leaving Jenny to her fate; not knowing exactly how Creepers work, he couldn't be sure how long she'd last. However he was still weaker than the Creepers, and if his luck ran out and the Creeper beat him, he'd be stuck, further away from the Book than he was now. Ultimately, he decided that he'd better not risk it; as has been previously established, he's something of a jerk. Upon gaining the Book, he came to understand what a coward he'd been (though this was the only thing he learned), and rather than heading back to his starting point, he went into the Statuary Corridor to try the Closet. Out fell a pair of Skeletons..."mother and child, still embracing"...and he was so shocked that he forgot everything the Book had taught him, except for that one fact.

► Show Spoiler

The Creeper rolled 3 successes on 5 dice, but Jenny rolled 1 success on 3. Once again, the attack against Flash had horrendously poor luck, enabling him to get the best of it. The issue with the grabbed Jenny is actually a rules problem; a grabbing creeper can't attack, but it's not clarified whether it can grab a second hero if that hero attacks it and fails, so I ultimately chose not to try due to flavor and to avoid the ambiguity. Going to the Closet made sense because I was hoping to draw an Event which moves your hero, of which there are several even now that the two Secret paths have been found; unfortunately what I got was the Skeletons, which dealt 2 mental damage to Flash and which require a Sanity roll to search, so he wasn't about to try it. The 2 Knowledge that he gained from the Book, then lost to the Skeletons, did not change his Knowledge total, and again I worked that into the narrative.

Jenny heaved and strained mightily, but could not break the Creeper's grasp.

Vivian took a leisurely stroll through the Catacombs, seeing in its carpet of bones only more evidence that individual lives are but specks of dust in the endless ocean of life (hey, she was evil, who was going to tell her not to mix her metaphors?), having not bothered to check the Spirit Board and confirm that the Wine Cellar was coming up. Here she found the Healing Salve that Jenny had hoped to acquire, immediately using it to refresh herself, not that it mattered much since it's not like she was in any danger. Still, it would keep those damn kids from prolonging the inevitable any further. This house was hers now, for however long it still stood; all its secrets were hers to divine, for the Mother's vines reached everywhere within it, even if most of them were ordinary, lazy tendrils rather than the hungry, powerful Creepers.

The Vines were as fast this turn as last; three of them awaited Flash in the Gardens, blocking him from any hope of getting through to the main hall. A fourth one then followed them into the room, while a fifth entered the Ballroom it had just left; this fourth vine, of course, carried a special cargo, whose name had previously been Jenny LeClerc, but was about to become "mud".

Knowing he could do nothing to help Jenny now, Flash raced into the Collapsed Room and threw himself down it; he was lucky enough to land well on the far side of the Chasm, but couldn't quite bring himself to cross it. Fortunately the Creepers would need a minute to follow him here.

Jenny's last, valiant effort to save herself almost succeeded. And, as if the universe itself couldn't bear to see her succumb, her vain effort just managed to slip her free. Knowing she could accomplish nothing other than to provide Flash with a distraction, she tumbled into the Hallway, able to get no further while the creepers lashed at her heels.

► Show Spoiler

The rules of the haunt are again unclear about what happens if you tie when trying to escape a Creeper; logic would suggest you probably don't, but what the hell, I'm allowing it just to heighten the drama of the story, even though letting Jenny die would marginally speed things up.

Having no particular agenda, Vivian wandered back through the Catacombs and across the Chasm, just able to make it that far, and gave the Axe a swing at Flash's face just for something to do. She wasn't much for muscle, but he was only a little better; he managed to bat the blow aside without harm but was unable to lash out at her in the process...but the Madman could! "Blauuughlldeeblarfghlarrrng!" the maniac howled as he tore out a handful of Vivian's hair, slowing her down just a mite.

The Creepers crept at their usual pace, two coiling after Jenny while the others made a train for the Foyer and the Secret Stairs. The Garden-Creeper managed to entangle Jenny again.

Flash wasted no time dealing with Vivian, instead summoning all his Speed to hurl himself across the Chasm without daring to look down. He got as far as the Master Bedroom, where a Root posed no impediment to him.

Jenny failed to escape her Creeper.

Vivian sauntered up after Flash and took another swing at him with the Axe; he and his Madman again bested her and dished out a little damage.

This turn, the creepers were really fast, perhaps drawn to the scent of their mistress's spilled blood; two of them made it as far as Flash's room, and two more were in hot pursuit right behind. Creeper #3's root was right here in the Master Bedroom, so it was the one most interested in grabbing Flash; it would have a delicious dinner the very next turn if it could hold onto him long enough to drag him underground (well, out the window and underground, I guess, unless there's a really big windowbox just inside the Bedroom). His freakish luck had to run out eventually; the Creeper got a really good hold, and he couldn't escape.

Rolling against the Creeper holding him, Flash managed to just barely break away*, and could make it only 1 space. The Research Laboratory where he needed to go was still one more door away. He just hadn't been quite fast enough.

*

► Show Spoiler

Per the same houserule as with Jenni, that is.

Jenni managed to break completely free of the Creeper and then headed through the Secret Passage, getting back into the Gymnasium. Too bad there was nothing more she could do to help herself heal her wounds.

Vivian followed Flash and attacked him again, producing exactly the same result as before - one damage to herself. The difference was that this time, it took the last bit of wind out of her sails; her Speed fell to minimum.

The Creepers were slow when they needed not to be; only two of them managed to keep up with Flash. #3 grabbed at him, got a really good hold, and lost anyway as he and his Madman both exerted maximum possible force. The other Creeper, whose Root was back on the Grand Staircase, made an even more feeble effort, but Flash's luck did not hold and he was Grappled.

Summoning another improbable burst of strength, Flash managed to get away, and finally staggered into the Research Lab. Tossing the Book onto a workbench where it miraculously fell open to the page with a formula for "Plant Spray", he set to work and managed to brew up the lethal herbicide. He unfortunately had no energy left to go back into the Operating Lab and kill one of the plants which still threatened him.

Jenny frantically scampered up the Secret Stairs into the Vault room, where she spun the dial one more time, to no effect.

Vivian followed Darrin between the Labs and again made a chop with her axe; the Madman however got behind her, twisted the Axe in her grip, and pulled it backward, completely severing her head with the force of her own wild swing. Her bouncing cranium's last, fading thought was regret that she never got to write all this down; it would have made a great novel, and she guessed she did still care about books a little.

► Show Spoiler

Holy moley; Flash and the Madman rolled 8 successes for the second time in the last two turns, and with only 3 successes on Vivian's roll, she took 5 damage, more than enough to kill her stone-dead. This is not, however, one of the relative handful of Haunts which ends when the Traitor dies. If there was a player instead of me controlling Vivian, she'd remain in the game and continue operating the Creepers.

All four of the third-floor Creepers could easily reach Flash; one more made it upstairs to attack Jenny. #3, of course, took the first swing at Flash, and got him; he dropped the Plant Spray, though the Creepers couldn't do anything to it after that, and the other three in the room were somewhat useless; it might have been better to send two after Jenny. As it was, the one that was with her managed to lose the battle.

Flash failed to break the Creeper's grip.

Jenni remained slow and could not reach the room with the Spray.

Flash was reeled in back to Creeper #3's base, then three more Creepers dogpiled on Jenny, with the last two in the Vault room (one recovering from stun, the other back up from the third floor). Creeper #1 grappled Jenny with a roll she couldn't possibly oppose.

Jenni struggled free of the Creeper's grip*, stumbling into the next room and getting the Plant Spray. Again, she could move no further, nor do I believe the rules allow you to use an item the turn you pick it up from the ground (though it can generally be used the turn it first comes into existence, whether as a card or through a Haunt, or at least so I believe).

Out of turn, Flash just managed to break free of the Creeper*; having no need to go after the Plant Spray again, he tried for the Vault, not quite getting it open.

*

► Show Spoiler

Per the same houserule again.

Three creepers closed in on each hero. #3 failed miserably against Flash, #8 tied*, and #7 was just pathetic. #1 easily and inexorably captured Jenny.

Having stunned two of the three Creepers attacking him, Flash was actually able to get from the Vault room back to the Laboratory and reclaim the spray, though again I felt sure he couldn't yet use it. I decided that he must have picked up the Axe after Vivian's death, despite not having mentioned it before, so I figured he'd actually attack a Creeper to try and stun it, choosing to target #1 in the hope of freeing Jenny. With the Axe, he was even-up with the vine, but rolled poorly and tied.*

*

► Show Spoiler

It's clear that my ruling a tie sufficient to avoid entanglement has had a huge impact on this scenario, for the heroes' benefit but also for the player's tedium. Maybe next time I should just let them be screwed.

Unable to do anything more to help Flash, Jenni made a doomed attack on Creeper #1, but failed.

Creepers were slow, and only one of those in the Vault room could move anyway, plus #1 was busy dragging Jenni to its root back in the Drippy bedroom. (Her rolls to escape would actually be penalized here; I'm not sure whether or not it's appropriate that an annoying "Drip...Drip...Drip...." sound should make it harder to break free of a killer vine trying to mulch you.) This left only two to try and grapple Flash; could both of them fail? Well, one of them did. The other, however, did not, and the Plant Spray was dropped again (along with the Mask, Book, and Axe, which probably should have been dropped long ago).

Flash failed to break away from creeper #11.

Jenny succumbed to the hypnotic, lulling "Drip" and gave up the struggle, slipping into a dreamless sleep as her strength finally gave out.

The Creepers were slow, but for #1 of them, that didn't matter; it had its meal at long last, and it and Jenny were removed from the board. #11 dragged Flash back to the Grand Staircase.

Flash broke free of Creeper #11, continuing to show his contempt for the laws of statistics. He ran back upstairs, grabbed the Plant Spray, and had enough movement to run back to the Upper Landing again.

Creepers were really, really fast this turn; all four of the still-mobile ones lunged into the Grand Staircase and grabbed at Flash, starting with #3, which easily overpowered him. And at this point, I decided that there was just zero possibility I was ever going to win this fight with either side; Flash couldn't possibly win all four attacks every single turn, and was just going to keep dropping the Plant Spray and picking it up again. The plants long ago would have won this if not for my generous houserule, and it was clear that the narrowest possible chance of the players actually pulling out a victory thanks to that houserule had failed; it was two hours past my intended bedtime and I was just going to call it a day. So all three explorers died, and Mother Nature reclaimed the house. The end.

Well, that was an excellent way to kill six or seven hours and avoid utter mind-numbing boredom. Let me know if you're interested in hearing any more of these accounts.