not as fun as it looks

Getting scared is just the best.  Not really scared, just startled by some jerk friend, or watching a scary movie while some jerk friend makes fun of you for cowering on the couch, or when you’re trying to walk back to your room after turning off all the lights and your roommate’s cat, Calico, goes streaking by, and you think, “HOLY SHIT OMG it’s just the fucking cat. Whew,” so you keep walking down the dark hallway to your room until WHAM!  Calico tackles your left ankle with all the force an 8-pound mammal can muster by digging her claws into the carpet and picking up an unearthly amount of speed and hurtling herself toward your legs with enough momentum to drive a rusty nail into a dead tree.  Then when you finally manage to stop screaming, you think, “Getting scared is the best.”

My buddy lives in an apartment in the Marina where we usually do our hanging out and game-playing (we’re pretty serious about our table-top/dice/card/strategy/board games).  I call his apartment our tree house, so let’s call him Treehouse Friend.  Treehouse Friend introduced us to Betrayal at House on the Hill, wherein the players explore a haunted house until one of them is possessed, and everyone else has to survive the possession.  Super scary!  Sometimes we play creepy music and light candles.

Diminutive Roommate, Teacher Roommate (who teaches ceramics at a local school, can sing opera-style like a pro, and lived with Diminutive Roommate for two years in college) and I are totally obsessed with this game right now for obvious reasons.  IT’S AWESOME.  Every game is different because there is no preset board your characters play on.  As we explore the house (commonly in different directions) we pull from a stack of tiles to reveal each room we’ve discovered, and the various events that happen in this room, or the items we find there.  The more we explore, the more likely the haunt will start and the house will cause one of the players to turn traitor and try to kill us all somehow!  Best of all there are 50 different haunts to play through, each of which is randomly determined by the events in the room we just explored.  It’s a fantastic game.  I’m already considering writing my own haunt.  Nerd!