Houses on hills full of creepy horrors that gnaw away at your mind, body and very soul are so out. Why explore a mere house when you could explore Baldur’s Gate itself, one of the most famous cities in the Forgotten Realms?
Image: Avalon Hill/Wizards of the Coast
Avalon Hills and Wizards of the Coast have announced a brand new D&D board game, Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate. It takes the basic framework and mechanics of Betrayal at House on the Hill — players explore a location and face creepy threats until one of their number is inevitably driven mad or evil and becomes a traitor, who must then kill their former allies or complete a secret goal to win the game — and places it in one of the most iconic settings in D&D history: The sprawling, often sinister city of Baldur’s Gate, widely known thanks to the classic computer RPG series of the same name.
Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate is a complete overhaul of House on the Hill, aesthetically speaking — there’s brand new location tiles to form a unique map layout every time you play, new monsters to battle, new items and omens to discover, new D&D races and classes to play as, and suitably themed scenarios for a band of adventurers to go skulking into (and yes, new D&D miniatures depicting six of the 12 playable characters, which you can see in detail in the video below).
House on the Hill has been a classic board game for over a decade at this point, but draping the D&D setting over it makes for a really awesome-sounding experience — especially with the promise for more co-operative scenarios in this version, speaking to the traditions of D&D as a group game rather than a necessarily competitive one.
Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate is set to release on October 6, for a currently undisclosed price. [Avalon Hill]