While it was interesting to play a classic board game, which was originally designed over 20 years ago, much of the design felt outdated. It is a game that very much follows the "Ameritrash" board game design philosophy, which is very thematic, but also very random, and doesn't allow for all that much long-term strategy. These days, even American board game designers do at least a hybrid, and allow for more player agency.

I think it was the lack of player agency more than anything else that made Betrayal at House on the Hill feel so outdated. The choices given to the player felt meaningless; for example you get to choose through which door to go, but then draw a random tile to determine the room behind the door, and quite possibly a random card indicated on that tile. I wasn't so much playing the game as rather experiencing it; stuff happened to me, up to my death happening to me, without giving me much control over what happened or very much I could have done differently. I died because the haunt rolled high on an attack, I rolled low on defence, and the difference was applied as mental damage, being more than what I had in mental stats, in spite of still having my starting stats. The same attack could have ended not damaging me at all, if I had rolled high, and the haunt had rolled low. It was just pure random bad luck.

As this was already near the end of the evening anyway, I was just able to leave. Which was better than still waiting for at least half an hour and watch the others finish the game. Getting eliminated early is a game design element you don't see very much anymore. But the high randomness and low player agency bothered me a lot more than losing the game did. The next time somebody invites me to a game of Betrayal at the House on the Hill, I will politely decline. Having said that, this might be more of a problem for people like me, who play a lot of board games. The lack of planning might actually be a feature for people who either play a lot less, or don't like to think hard when playing.

I have a feeling that today's board game night is going to be a complete opposite experience. I am going to play Aeterna for the first time, and for all I hear this is a game that is very much about advance planning, with very little randomness. There is a random distribution of cards at the start, but then those cards are drafted, which diminishes the effect of randomness; and for the rest of the round there are no other random elements other than the unpredictability of your fellow players. What makes Aeterna special, is an Unrest mechanic, which punishes overextension. Play too risky, and you could end up turning your victory point lead into a total loss due to maxing out Unrest; play too conservatively, and your Unrest will be fine, but you won't make all that many victory points.