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Message: <blockquote data-quote="robowieland" data-source="post: 9533300" data-attributes="member: 7026452">[ATTACH=full]390443[/ATTACH]Roleplaying games are an oral tradition. They come from dark evenings where people took turns telling stories around a fire to pass the time. Sometimes these stories entertain and sometimes they thrill. While they might share a general outline of good people going into a cursed place and coming back changed, there are a lot of variations to keep everyone entertained. <a href="https://home-the-haunted-house-map-building-rpg.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders" target="_blank">Home</a>, from Wet Ink Games, offers players a chance to put together one of the classic horror stories with their friends: the strange house that might be haunted. Wet Ink Games sent me home with a review copy of this boxed set along with several of the expansion packs. Did the stories we told make us shiver? Let’s play to find out.<a href="https://home-the-haunted-house-map-building-rpg.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders" target="_blank">Home</a> is a card based storytelling game that’s playable in an hour or two. Players draw cards from a central deck full of story prompts. The deck is built with specific cards and phases in mind with the theme of spending a long, dark night in the house. The game also includes a dry erase sheet and markers  to let players map out the house. Characters are built from archetype cards like the Ardent Seeker or the Perpetual Victim. These cards give some basic guidance for players to start with their characters as well as a choice of needs. Every character also has a secret which they tell to an adjacent player. Not only does this give some conflict to each of the explorers, it gives some juicy details to each player as they describe their next room. Isn’t it weird that there’s a picture of your mom on the fireplace in this creepy old house?Needs are the reason the character is in the spooky place to begin with and drive them deeper into the house. Are they looking for proof of the supernatural? A chance to speak with a dead loved one? The story prompts in the deck offer chances to fulfill these needs, often in the worst possible way. Sometimes that included taking wounds of all different kinds: physical, mental and social. Needs and wounds are something of a scoring mechanic. The final cards in the deck tell people how their story ends based on if they’ve fulfilled their needs and how many wounds they’ve taken. It depends on which house story the table has played. The trick is that you don’t know how getting those elements will affect you until it's too late. Maybe having the most wounds means you toughen up and become a survivor. Maybe it reflects that you are the wickedest soul and Satan carries you to Hell.The game customizes each session with a Haunting Tale. The tales are a small pack of cards that get slipped into the deck and direct things toward a particular type of haunting. There are five in the core box which offer stories on everything from a house unstuck in time to one that’s central to UFO sightings. There are a further dozen tales available in individual booster packs. These cards expand the tales out into other styles of horror such as slasher movies and underground vampire clubs.I think the core five tales are good for a while unless there’s a genre or concept that a player absolutely loves. It was interesting to me how well only a couple of cars and a general idea of what’s coming helped drive players toward the story points. Even when a player made a huge left turn based on a prompt the other players worked hard to bring the story back around to the story everyone else was trying to tell.The newbie friendly card setup reminds me of The Zone though I think it might be a little easier to grasp the premise than something based on a six year old cult classic. One major difference is that many of these cards have a choice of prompts so that if a player isn’t feeling one they can go with the other. Home also reminds me of Betrayal At House On The Hill with its haunted house premise and multiple setups. This feels like a game to play with fans of Betrayal that aren’t quite ready yet for a classical RPG. It’s a good box to slip into a board game night bag that can bring some RPG flavor without scaring people away with huge dicebags and paperwork to fill out.I can also see this used as a campaign kickoff for a modern horror game. It could be set up like an old X-Files episode where regular people encounter the paranormal before the credits and then Mulder and Scully show up to interview the survivors. Exploring the mystery of the house then becomes the first story arc, except now there are experienced m monster hunters on the case who might be able to do something about the evil forces at the center of the house.Bottom Line: <a href="https://home-the-haunted-house-map-building-rpg.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders" target="_blank">Home</a> offers a fun method to tell some spooky haunted house stories with friends without any dice. The expansion packs broaden the premise for fans who want to go back to the haunted house again and again.[ATTACH=full]389124[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

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