Editing Betrayal at House on the Hill (section)

== Omens and the Haunt ==
Each time an Omen card is drawn, the game's Haunt level increases by one like some kind of spooky DEFCON level. The player who drew it must roll six of the game's [[dice]] versus the game's current Haunt level to see if the Haunt starts. If they exceed or equal the Haunt level with their roll than everybody gets to keep mucking around the house in Exploration mode; inevitably somebody will find another Omen! However if one of you clods roll less than the number of Omen cards in play, then the Haunt starts immediately. It is, at this point, when Shit Gets Real. One of the players will betray the other players (usually, though some haunts are co-op only or free-for-all) and the game turns into an "all against one," where the traitor and the heroes have different goals to pursue and it's a battle for victory.

Exactly what the Haunt is, and who is the traitor, depends on which Omen triggered the Haunt and in what room it was found. The players refer to the Scenario Book to see which Haunt they'll be facing and who is the traitorous fiend. In most cases, the player who found the last Omen will become the Traitor, but sometimes it will be chosen based on the person to that player's right/left, or the player who is closest to a particular room, or the player with the highest/lowest score in a certain Trait, or the player who has selected a specific character. Sometimes the traitor's identity may not even be announced, adding an element of [[Paranoia|paranoia]] into the game as well. In couple of Haunts, there's not even Traitor at all!

The player who is the Traitor takes the Traitor's Tome (the Traitor's version of the Scenario Book) and, preferably, leaves the room to read his version of the scenario and to plot his fellow player's demise. The remaining players pick up the Survivor's Manual (the hero version of the Scenario Book), read up on the current Haunt, and start to plan on how to survive and thwart the villain.

The true identity of the Haunt can be almost anything from the Traitor actually being a [[vampire]] lord trying to ensnare the other players, a [[Tomb_Kings|mummy]] who wants to marry his [[Loli|child]] [[waifu|bride]], to the mansion actually being a living super-organism trying to devour the heroes, or even that the house is sinking into Hell itself. After the Haunt has started, the heroes are now far more vulnerable and ''can'' be killed. The conditions for winning are specified in the respective scenario books, but ideally the hero team doesn't quite know exactly what the Traitor is trying to achieve, although they may have some sort of clues. Usually the Traitor's goal is to kill off the heroes, but the means by which he does this varies quite a bit depending on the nature of the Haunt. The heroes, likewise, typically have to jump through hoops to stop the Haunt, performing Trait rolls in certain specified rooms in order to achieve something, such as escape on a toy airplane after being shrunk, or they must acquire specific Items to use in a particular way in an appropriate room. With 50 Haunts in the base game, and even more ideas available online the novelty can last quite awhile, the chances of playing against the same Haunt repeatedly are very unlikely, but even if you do the random nature of the room layouts or item availability often makes playing as/against the same Haunt a little bit different each time.