UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

9 thoughts on “558 – Cotton Clad Calamity”

  1. Raznaak

    Yup, he’s a bastard XD

  2. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    Are those pajamas available in XXXL in the gift shop?

  3. Otaku

    It’s been a while, so let me ask: Did we get a reason for him to WANT Susie dead? Not to backseat, but if we didn’t, I’m worried were about to move into “Stupid Evil” territory. Now, stupid happens, don’t get me wrong. It’s not bad storytelling for that to be the case here.

    You’ve just done a good job NOT having that be a driving factor, so the “Kill off the stars of my successful reality TV show.” seems shortsighted, otherwise. Oh, I guess I could be mistaken about the in-story reality TV show’s success. Like, if the company behind them is losing money, or they think a change in management at the ranch would make the whole thing more popular/profitable, then I can see the above scenario happening as well.

    I REALLY think I’m just forgetting something important, but that I don’t have time to deep dive to remind me of, hence the comment. >_<

    1. Deoxy

      It certainly has been stretched out over quite a while, but there have definitely been hints from quite near the beginning that whoever is running the reality TV show definitely wants her dead.

      But I certainly don’t recall any reason why.

      1. Clint

        Yeah it’s fair to not remember since it’s been a hot minute (many, many minutes) but if you feel like a refresher the most relevant bits would be the beginning of Episode 8 and the end of Episode 15. We haven’t explicitly spelled out exactly what The Exec means by his “side hustle” or who was on the other end of that phone call, though.

        I’m hoping that when the whole thing is eventually available it will make sense, or at least enough sense to have hung this narrative on.

        1. Otaku

          Thanks for the replies, Deoxy and Clint. Yeah, I’d totally forgotten about those things. Good to know!

  4. Evervigilant

    Seems about time for the two people who aren’t there to make a surprise entrance as the ace Susie didn’t even know she had.

  5. Scarsdale

    There’s still 3-5 people on her side that might be planning something. This guy is a megalomaniac with a god complex, so letting him think he’s the sharpest tool in the shed sets him up for a fall. Everything depends on those cameras, and I suspect their little stop over by the charging coffins had something to do with her actual plan, not the one the a-hole thinks it is.

  6. lyra

    Really enjoyed the opening of Zombie Ranch. I like the combination of the western setting with the zombie concept, it gives the story a really distinctive atmosphere. I’m a freelance illustrator and animator, and I’d be interested in seeing how some of these scenes could translate into motion, especially as a short animated teaser or character scene.

    If you’re ever interested in something like that, you can reach me here:

    IG: eve_verse_
    Email: [contact.lilaclines@gmail.com](mailto:contact.lilaclines@gmail.com)
    Discord: Lyralilac_

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558 – Cotton Clad Calamity
Posted on August 26, 2026 by Dawn

What would you call this? Armchair assassination? Merk-from-home?

Well, Suzie ain't dead (or undead) quite yet, so we'll just have to see if his gloating is justifiable.

Murder most fun!

Posted on January 27, 2016 by Clint

BaHotH
Won’t you come in?

Nervously, the cherubic little girl inched her way through the darkness of the old house on the hill. Somewhere along the way, she had become separated from the others trapped with her: the old professor, the little boy, the jock, and the bookworm co-ed.  She’d pulled a dusty spirit board out of the cobwebs, though not without something unseen and vicious trying to bite her. Where was everyone?

Then there was a call of triumph from the distance. The bookworm had uncovered one of the two artifacts needed to allow the rightful heir of the Romanescu family to reclaim their heritage. Too bad. It was, after all, a heritage the little girl’s family had usurped centuries before, and would kill to keep. The hired assassins she had already stationed throughout the rooms and corridors would see to that, ending the heir and any of the other fools who presumed to meddle…

The above represents a somewhat dramatized version of the first half of one of the games of Betrayal at House on the Hill that we played this weekend after impulse buying it based on watching this video. Dawn and I clicked on it just by randomly seeing Ashly Burch’s face, since we like the cut of her jib, but then the game began and we were intrigued. B-movie horror theme? Modular game board, built as the players progress so that it’s different every time? A massive twist at some point where one of the players turns out to be a traitor out to get the others?

Sure, plenty of other games have traitor scenarios, but two things intrigued me here. One, that depending on an intersection of how the twist is triggered, one of fifty different horror/suspense scenarios would be played out, with hidden victory conditions for the heroes and the traitor. Two, that the traitor doesn’t know they’re the traitor until it happens. In the game above, I was just an innocent little girl exploring a scary house, and then suddenly I was a schemingly ruthless Master of Assassins bent on killing the rightful heir to my family’s fortune before they could realize their destiny. Meanwhile my wife and the other players now had to try to conceal which of them was the heir while staying alive long enough to help them… well, I had hints and thoughts of what they were trying to do but in some ways I was as in the dark as they were, even though I didn’t share their terror of taking every step as if it might be their last. For the professor and co-ed, it was, and they died to knives in the dark, but the accursed little boy and the jock (the heir) lived just long enough to foil me!

It was probably just as well or the forces of Evil would have had a clean sweep, after the redneck torture zombies and werewolves had their way in our previous games. It meant I was on the losing side each time — *fist shake* — but the game lived up to its potential as a great storytelling exercise, a journey into the unknown as full of wonderment as it was full of terror. We have but barely scratched the surface of those fifty haunt scenarios and I can’t wait to try out more. And I love that unlike most games’ traitor scenarios, you are quite literally on the side of the angels… until you aren’t.

Because of its somewhat random nature on what the house looks like, what items are out and when the haunt begins (and what the haunt is), not every game of BaHotH is going feel balanced — the werewolf, for example, sprouted early and thus made chewtoys of us in short order. But the saving grace is that playing time tends to be manageably short and the mechanics and possibilities have enough lure that a not-so-satisfying game means you just play again and something entirely different happens.

In short, I do not regret a penny of our impulse buy, and if such things intrigue you as well, I’ll just close out by saying that as of this writing Amazon still has it on sale. Happy haunting!