Problems with this Quest as written

[Bareheaded Warrior]

I have to echo The Admiral's viewpoint here, I also played this way back when and whilst it was a long time ago I don't remember it being filled with loads of issues, that said, I don't remember it being perfect either...perhaps taking a few steps back and looking at the context may help distinguish the wood from the trees.

Looking through the list of problems on this topic, and time permitting I will try and cover them point by point later, I get the feeling that many, possibly most of them, result from misunderstandings around the ruleset that the Quest was created under (or problems when attempting to convert the Quest to the North American rules, which is always a valid and useful thing to do, but problems with conversion are not the same thing as problems with this Quest as written)

The Eyes of Chaos by Carl Sargent (who as Daedalus correctly noted was an experienced professional in fantasy gaming but may not have been entirely familiar with HeroQuest) was published in White Dwarf #145 with a cover date of January 1992. Bearing in mind this is a “stand date” so the quest must have been written earlier than that and the fact that the Quest references Against the Ogre Horde which was released late in 1990, I think December, seems to confirm that the quest was created at some point in 1991 so it seems reasonable to assume that it was written, or at least should have been written, with the Second Edition of the European & Australasian rules in mind

Note: I’ll use the term “Classic Edition”, and where necessary specifically the “First Edition” or “Second Edition”, throughout the rest of this topic to refer to the European & Australasian editions of the game to avoid having to keep typing the word Australasian and misspelling it every time!

[Zenithfleet]

I have to echo The Admiral's viewpoint here, I also played this way back when and whilst it was a long time ago I don't remember it being filled with loads of issues, that said, I don't remember it being perfect either...perhaps taking a few steps back and looking at the context may help distinguish the wood from the trees.

Looking through the list of problems on this topic, and time permitting I will try and cover them point by point later, I get the feeling that many, possibly most of them, result from misunderstandings around the ruleset that the Quest was created under (or problems when attempting to convert the Quest to the North American rules, which is always a valid and useful thing to do, but problems with conversion are not the same thing as problems with this Quest as written)

It's been a couple of years since my original post, but you're right about one rules mix-up I made.

I said that the falling block trap in Quest 2 can trap the heroes and make the adventure impossible to complete. What I forgot, as usual, is that under classic UK/EU rules, you can disarm / remove a fallen block after it's fallen. The Dwarf can always do this. Therefore falling block traps are highly unlikely to make anyone get stuck.

Even though I play by UK rules, I often get tripped up by this because I house-ruled it long ago. Recently in an Ogre Horde quest two of the party got trapped by a fallen block and couldn't reach the exit. I cursed the fiendish original designers... only for me to realise hours later that my house rule was to blame.

The reason I house-ruled it is that it's the one thing I've never liked about the UK/EU rules (other than 1 BP for named boss monsters). For one thing, it doesn't make sense to me that finding a falling block makes the block fall or finding a pit trap makes the pit open. It also strikes me as dubious that the Dwarf can casually clear away a cave-in (although I guess he would know a thing or two about digging).

But most importantly, a lot of the original quests in the official game seem to assume that falling block traps are permanent and do split up the party or trap heroes once they fall. They're often deliberately placed to split up the party, or to force them along a one-way path. They seem to be used by the designers as tools to block off routes and nudge the players down certain routes. Yet the rules as written make the falling blocks ineffectual minor nuisances.

I started house-ruling that the Dwarf couldn't remove already-fallen blocks when I was very young. It's the one thing in the original UK/EU rules that I still adamantly refuse to play rules-as-written, even though I'm a pretty RAW sort of HQ player, and even though otherwise I find that ruleset surprisingly clean and elegant, and indeed superior to the NA ruleset in many ways.

Hmm, this is going on a bit of a tangent so I should probably post it as a separate topic somewhere...