We’re digressing a little from horror RPGs here with Black Morn Manor, a board game designed as a tie-in to the Chill horror RPG from Pacesetter. Troy Denning of Dark Sun novels fame designed it.

It’s a pretty concise game (the rules are brief, but that doesn’t really mean they are easy to parse, nor without errors, but whatever) — the players are exploring the mansion and grounds in order to learn the identity of the Master (one of eleven possible monstrous nemeses, including “Ghost” and “Sphinx”) and the means of destroying it (and then, you know, doing so). One player, though, is secretly the Minion, and they work to subvert the exploration. The cool thing about this is that the house and grounds are laid out as the players go, so the playing field is never the same (and laying the tiles is a key part of the game’s strategy). It looks pretty OK! More interesting, the game sure looks like it anticipates a lot of the mechanics that would be incorporated into Betrayal at the House on the Hill, which is kind of a neat bit of possible design history.

Dave Martin’s cover art is fantastic, but the art gracing the components is underwhelming, which is a bummer, but consistent with Pacesetter generally.