Chests? How do they work?

[Zenithfleet]

I've edited my original long post to add some images and more examples, as well as revising the text a bit.

I would LOVE to see the "Draft notes" (if they exist anywhere) for the game systems, and the first two expansions, that would be killer (even if it were just the north american designers reacting to the EU notes and seeing their brilliant changes and also missteps).

I'd love to see that too. I'm fascinated by the 'behind the scenes' details of rules development.

The NA designers did some other odd things from my point of view, like the way they rewrote the instruction book to be much wordier and more D&D-ish, compared to the terse boardgame-style writing of the EU Rules of Play.

We find traces of "thought-about-but never quite-implemented" rules in the EQP/BQP, and we see traces of them in the quest design (another classic example is the double jumping mechanic that was abandoned but the double trapped doors remaining in the Elf quests). I can't imagine it's very fair for the designers to presume players will implement rules that are never given, but I certainly don't have any problem with people changing the rules (nor did Milton Bradley!).

We could do a whole separate topic on 'thought about but never quite implemented' rules in both the EU and NA. Wizards of Morcar has an unfinished feeling and some rules make no sense, like the fireburst traps. Return of the Witch Lord EU has some odd things in 'The Forbidden City'. 'Race Against Time' in the base game feels like it was meant to have a timer mechanic. And so on.

For the treasure chest rules, I only realised while revising my original post that the base game quests (Game System) have almost no examples that would cause any issues in either ruleset. It's only in the expansions that you see things like pits beside chests, multiple chests in the same room with one trapped and one not, etc. My guess is that the NA designers looked only at the base game quests when adapting the rules. They would have noticed that you can happily use the search rules for treasure chests in all those quests, and standardised it ... perhaps not realising that it would cause issues with Kellar's Keep, Return of the Witch Lord, and so on. Or they thought they could just tweak those later quests when they got to them.

I don't consider the NA and EU editions to be evolutions of each other, only regional differences, but surely there were people, who, knowing about previous versions, made changes to what they thought would be better, without it necessarily being always better, just different.

Yes, I agree--I see them as regional differences. It annoys me that Hasbro has now declared that the NA edition shall be the One True Worldwide Edition of Heroquest. For NA players it's a nostalgiafest reprint, but for us EU players it can feel a bit like the Special Editions of the original Star Wars movies. "Hey, this isn't how I remember it from childhood!"

It would be pretty cool if Hasbro released an 'EU Conversion Kit' or something, with altered rulebook, questbook and cards, but I doubt they will.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

I too had some notes on this very topic prepared, mine were shorter. When I have a free weekend, I'll stock up on the popcorn and have a read of yours and see if we are at all aligned...

In the main I think we are agreed.

Kurgan, I am disappointed in you, as a veteran HQ player you should have known better than to look for rules in the rule book, when obviously you should have been scanning the Quest Notes for the 'clues, hints and text that could be taken to imply' the rules rather than anything being explicitly stated in the rule book!

Quest Notes for the Trial do state that treasure chests must be 'opened', initially I thought this might be an anomaly, a special exception applicable to the The Trial only as it was designed to be played with only the Introductory ruleset which excludes searching, but Zenithfleet you are quite correct in pointing out that for every subsequent quest the notes are consistent in that chests have to be 'opened' so that is the rule.

I can't find any explicit mention that you have to be next to them to open them but I agree that your small leap of faith that 'opening a chest' and 'opening a door' are intended to be equivalent is a reasonable one, so I will happily go with that interpretation (which like you was the way we played as kids and seemed to be intrinsically built into the Quest map and notes).

See above - in the original EU rules, both 1st and 2nd edition, chests (and cupboards) were treated as things you had to be next to open, like doors. The NA introduced a problem that didn't exist in the original design.

However I'm not sure that I agree about cupboards, plenty of mentions of 'opening chests' but I don't see any mention anywhere about 'opening' other types of furniture, cupboards or otherwise, I had always assumed that, aside from chests, other descriptive text of where in the room you found treasure was purely descriptive text. I agree that the 'contains' phrasing is consistent between the two but I don't take that to imply that the mechanism for finding what is contained has to be consistent, after all a room might contain treasure, but you find that through a treasure search not by opening the room / door.

This removes your perceived discrepancy around treasure on alchemist's bench, under thrones, in bookcases and so on, if it isn't in a chest then it is in the room and found through searching the room.

I also think that the distinction between treasure in a room and treasure in a chest (that is in a room) that is that they are handled differently means that any reference to a search revealing the treasure in a room is a reference to the treasure in the room and not the treasure in a chest (that is in a room) so I have never revealed the contents of a chest before it is opened. Otherwise searching for treasure in a room, might reveal the fact that a chest is empty, so no-one would ever attempt to open and spring a chest trap on an empty chest, as the quest DO contain empty and trapped chest (mean) then I think this suggests that a treasure search does not reveal the contents of a chest within the room.

I always thought that SE pre-dated NA and that the two were worked on independently but I'm not sure what facts actually support this POV.

Or why even bother with gold at all, just give the things the gold would have purchased as regular upgrades!

I've covered this on the advancement thread, but acquisition of gold and then spending it on upgrading equipment that boosts your stats is the HeroQuest flavoured implementation of the more traditional earn XP, spend on stats upgrade.

A treasure search searches every inch of the room and yet another hero can come along and search the whole thing again and find what the first one (or three) heroes didn't find.

Only true in the NA edition

[Bareheaded Warrior]

How Treasure chests work in the SE rules (SHORT)

So, in summary, if I'm not leaping to a conclusion prematurely...

1. Treasure chests are handled through an 'opening' mechanism in the same way as doors, in that you need to be next to (adjacent to) them, declare that you are opening them, and that this is not an action, just something that can be done on your turn as part of movement.

2. Searching for treasure excludes treasure chests and their contents but includes everything else in a room

[Zenithfleet]

However I'm not sure that I agree about cupboards, plenty of mentions of 'opening chests' but I don't see any mention anywhere about 'opening' other types of furniture, cupboards or otherwise, I had always assumed that, aside from chests, other descriptive text of where in the room you found treasure was purely descriptive text. I agree that the 'contains' phrasing is consistent between the two but I don't take that to imply that the mechanism for finding what is contained has to be consistent, after all a room might contain treasure, but you find that through a treasure search not by opening the room / door.

This removes your perceived discrepancy around treasure on alchemist's bench, under thrones, in bookcases and so on, if it isn't in a chest then it is in the room and found through searching the room.

Yes, I concede that cupboards can be handled like other non-chest furniture (alchemist's bench and so on). I'm not sure if they were intended that way, but there's no reason not to.

What throws me off is that you find stuff in a cupboard quite early on, in 'Lair of the Orc Warlord'. Its quest note entry has a similar wording to the chest in that quest--as opposed to 'searching for treasure' in the Armoury to get the spear card.

I think this might be a genuine instance of the rules inadvertently 'teaching' the players the wrong idea about how to find treasure in cupboards (which hardly ever happens anyway).

I also think that the distinction between treasure in a room and treasure in a chest (that is in a room) that is that they are handled differently means that any reference to a search revealing the treasure in a room is a reference to the treasure in the room and not the treasure in a chest (that is in a room) so I have never revealed the contents of a chest before it is opened. Otherwise searching for treasure in a room, might reveal the fact that a chest is empty, so no-one would ever attempt to open and spring a chest trap on an empty chest, as the quest DO contain empty and trapped chest (mean) then I think this suggests that a treasure search does not reveal the contents of a chest within the room.

That's one of the possible ways to interpret it. Revealing what's in a chest with a treasure 'X-ray scan' is of course pretty silly thematically, so saying that the search doesn't include the contents of a locked chest makes more sense in thematic terms too.

On the other hand, if you search for treasure, then you've given up your chance to search for traps that turn. If it turns out the chest does contain something valuable, great, but you'll have to risk a trap if you want to open the chest on this turn--or else let another player grab the loot before you can.

For younger players who can be impatient and competitive and tend to forget to search fairly often, I think it adds another level of simple tactics and/or gaining partial information. "Should I check if there's anything in the chest first?" as well as "Should I check for traps first?" Then feeling clever that they thought to check if opening the chest was worth it before they tried.

I recall playing it both ways back in the day and not really encountering any major problems either way.


That raises a related question: if something doesn't count as an action, can you do it AFTER you've finished all your actions for the turn? For instance, can you move up to a door, attack an enemyy, and then open the door? If you can, then you can move up to a treasure chest, search for treasure or traps, and then open the chest if you want to.


One other thing is that the EU treasure chest rules make rolling to move more of a feature and less of a bug. Because the EU game supports competitive play, rolling high can let a player reach the chest before another, or conversely fail to get all the way across the room. In room with multiple chests, a player who rolls high can move to and open two or three chests on the same turn.

(Rolling to move in general seems better suited to the competitive approach than the cooperative approach, because it allows for impromptu mini-'races' of this kind throughout the game. "I'm gonna nab the Spirit Blade before you, nyer nyer!" It also makes for hilarity when your little brother randomly attacks you just to be annoying and then tries to run off down the passage giggling, only to roll a double 1 for movement ...)

I always thought that SE pre-dated NA and that the two were worked on independently but I'm not sure what facts actually support this POV.

I wasn't sure about my assertion that the NA came before 2nd ed EU, so I deleted that section. It wasn't really relevant to my point anyway. It may well be that 'The Trial' was devised by the EU team (Stephen Baker et al) rather than the NA team.

I got the impression the NA edition came before the 2nd ed EU edition from Jordan Sorcery's recent Youtube video on Heroquest ... but he doesn't really spell it out. It's more sort of implied by the order in which he recounts the game's development. I may be too eager to infer things from hints ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwkLg750dgE
(see 'Regional variations' at 7:47 onward)

A treasure search searches every inch of the room and yet another hero can come along and search the whole thing again and find what the first one (or three) heroes didn't find.

Only true in the NA edition

Not necessarily!

I remain convinced that searches aren't limited in the EU edition at all. Although I can see how it could be abused by searching only in the first room and then leaving the quest to restart it.

How Treasure chests work in the SE rules (SHORT)

So, in summary, if I'm not leaping to a conclusion prematurely...

1. Treasure chests are handled through an 'opening' mechanism in the same way as doors, in that you need to be next to (adjacent to) them, declare that you are opening them, and that this is not an action, just something that can be done on your turn as part of movement.

2. Searching for treasure excludes treasure chests and their contents but includes everything else in a room

Agree with #1.

#2 is a matter of interpretation, I think. But you definitely don't get the treasure in the chest if you search for it.

It occurs to me that interacting with chests in this way allows for more variety in quests and gameplay. You can have different traps on chests in the same room, or a trap on one and nothing on the other, to catch out several players. Your roll to move may limit whether you can get to the chest, or more than one chest, on your turn. You have to move across the room and so pit traps and other tricks can take advantage of that. And so on.

[Zenithfleet]

Oh, forgot to add ...

I have found this split off discussion very interesting and I want to thank you for putting in the time and effort to take a well worn topic and making it interesting again, I've enjoyed this.

I too had some notes on this very topic prepared, mine were shorter. When I have a free weekend, I'll stock up on the popcorn and have a read of yours and see if we are at all aligned...

Heh.

HQ-Marvel_Parody15-RulesEssayTime.png

Thanks to Kurgan for the Marvel comic meme idea.

[Kurgan]

Ha! Glad someone is getting some use out of those...

Jordan Sorcery put out some information tidbits in his HeroQuest youtube video(s) that I hadn't heard anywhere before. Not sure if he just scoured the web more deeply, had an inside source or what. For example the claim that vintage HeroQuest "sold 126,000 copies" (is that globally? just the various game systems?). I'd love to know his sources!

[Bareheaded Warrior]

With reference to Polishing the Second Edition I would suggest adding the text below to the appropriate place in the rulebook, any objections?

Opening chests

Heroes may open a chest by moving onto an adjacent square. Heroes do not have to open a chest if they do not wish to. Opening a chest does not count as a move. Having opened a chest, a hero may keep moving, if they have any squares left to move.

As soon as a chest is opened, the evil wizard player must tell the player what they have found.

Any treasure found should be recorded on their character sheet.

Monster cannot open chests.

[Kurgan]

I'm curious if the FireBurst Traps oddity is because the quest designers had the 1st edition in mind when writing many (or all) of those quests, rather than the 2nd edition. Didn't one edition allow you to backtrack while the other forced you to step inside the room once you opened the door (and didn't let you leave the room the way you came in until your next turn)?

Both the EU expansions wouldn't have been able to tell necessarily which edition of the basic rules players were coming from, so should have taken that into account (meanwhile the NA edition has no such issue because there was only one version of the Game System in that region...).

[HispaZargon]

Thanks Zenithfleet, very good and productive analysis, as always. Like Kurgan, you have again awaken on me the interest in re-opening the old Treasure Search discussion.

Well, this is a BIG & IMPORTANT topic, but yes, I think Zenithfleet is really right. There are enough evidences which sepparate the action of opening a chest from the action of searching treasure in EU rules. Here are another examples which I think also confirm it, extracted from The Dark Company exclusive EU expansion (remember this expansion was released inside a game box with a 2nd Edition EU rulebook):

DC.JPG

There is another important point about this EU rule, which is that opening a chest could be done with monsters inside the room, which I think is a great mechanic, different than searching the room for treasures. Makes sense for me in real life, it is not the same going directly to a chest a look what is inside and take it, which is something that can be rapidly done even with monsters around you, than searching all around a room, looking at every corner, which seems to be a calm task that cannot be done with mosnters around you.

About NA rules, well, its rules are clear, the Hero does not need to go adjacent to the chest to open it, he only needs to make a Searching of Treasure action anywhere in the room to take what is inside it. Extending a bit more the Belorn's Mine example from Game System quest book, we can see that NA designers included several monsters to give sense to the pit traps, which I think confirms that NA designers knew how they had changed the searching mechanics from EU rule. If there were no monsters inside the room in NA quest map, any Hero may open the three chests from the door square and take all the treasures inside them without triggering any pit trap:

Belorns_Mine.JPG

The problem appears with the quest maps. As Zenithfleet pointed it seems that NA designers took care in adapting Game System quest book to the NA searching rule pretty well, however unfortunately they did not do the same job with KK and ROTWL quest books, which kept many of the trap layouts around treasure chests as per EU quest books... but as also pointed in the first post, there is something really intriguing here. I tis trus that NA designers kept in KK and ROTWL same traps layout around chests as per EU quest maps, it could had been just that they missed to solve those points, but it is also true that they voluntarely assumed the Hero should be next to the chest to open it, which goes in the opposite direction of the NA searching rule as defined in the Game System. The changes in Gargoyle statue traps position as pointed above confirms it, and there are other evidences. The Forbidden City/Caverns quest from ROTWL quest book is very good example of it, there we can see two rooms where extra falling rock traps were placed in NA quest map, although probably nobody will trigger them before taking the treasure inside the chest:

The_Forbidden_Xxxxxx.JPG

My first thoughts were that maybe the EU to NA adaptation of KK and ROTWL were not performed by the same people who adapted the Game System quests, but it is quite difficult to beleive for me since they were realeased mostly at the same time in NA as the GS, so seeing this I would go one extra mile further. I see a strong posibility that first version of NA questbooks of GS, KK and ROTWL were written at the same time from EU ones and considering the game was going to be played following the same searching rules as in EU rulebook. However, at some moment somebody in America decided to change the treasure searching rules to the ones finally explained in the NA rulebook, but KK and ROTWL questbooks, for some reason were not updated according to this new rule. Maybe due to production pressures or just they missed to update them, who knows. Just an hypothesis, but fits well with the data we have, I think.

Finally, I think exists another interesting (and funny) point about this topic. If you check Return to Melar's Maze quest map included in 2021's Prophecy of Telor questbook you will find this room:

Return_to_Melar_Maze.JPG

This room shows a chest without any quest note, but "protected" by an adjacent spear trap, which makes no sense in 2021's rules, which are the same as NA ones. Theoretically, this questbook was designed by Mr. Stephen Baker, and seeing this room I fully believe that. This room is placed in the very first quest of the questbook, so I would not be surprised if Mr. Baker started to write this questbook thinking the game was going to be played according to the old EU rules, the ones we are sure were designed by him. The rest of quests of the book I think are all designed according to NA searching rules, so probably he changed his mind later, but he probably missed to change this room in the first quest. It looks weird, I know, but in my opinion, this reinforces the idea about Mr. Baker was not probably involved in the classic NA development, nor their new rules.

[Kurgan]

Walking up to chests and opening them may be more fun, but I don't play it that way, mainly because I never played that way, and because it takes longer. Each to their own of course...

As for Baker's involvement in the NA edition I always kind of assumed it was a different team that adapted it, but I don't have any documentary proof of that. I wouldn't expect him to have designed the rules in each region (I doubt he had a say in the Japanese edition's changes either).