Ye Olde Inn

Has anyone tried including secret doors in treasure searches as a general rule or in any given quest?
Sotiris http://forum.yeoldeinn.com/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2665 inspired me on this just now.

The effect making this idea worthwhile is when the Heroes start to think twice about whether they should search for treasure because of hazards and wandering monsters, they'll just have to when the quest objective is in danger.

The way to handle it:
If a hero searches for treasure in a room that contains one or more secret doors, all of those are then put on the board but stay shut for now. In addition, the Hero draws a treasure card.

What do you guys think of this? Am I overlooking problems and ambiguities or is this worth playtesting?

Rooms: Traps OR Treasure (+Secret Doors)
Corridors (original rule): Traps OR Secret Doors
Right? Hmm.. interesting. Yeah, give it a playtest!

This sounds pretty interesting. I'd say give it a go.

The downside is that the Wizard can't search for secret doors anymore.

Goblin-King wrote:The downside is that the Wizard can't search for secret doors anymore.

Another option would be you can search for two things at once. You could rule that you can only do this if you don't move, or if you don't move you can search for all three, or move at half rate to search for two and not at all to search for all three.

It doesn't really make sense that searching for treasure is more likely to produce a wandering monster than other searches. An alternative wold be to take all of the wandering monsters out of the treasure deck and roll a combat dice with any search, a black skull triggers a wandering monster.

Searching for secret doors have always been an afterthought with players — the players would search for traps to spot any dangers in a room, then they search for treasure if they think it is worth the effort*, and they would look for secret doors, just in case their might be a hidden passage in some room, but this is so uncommon, that they may skip this step in many cases. I seen a rule in the UK rules where they folded Traps & Secret Doors in a single search action. Regardless of the combo, I really like it as it would speed-up game-play. The Traps & Secret Doors combo is the safest bet, as a routine search for traps might yield a secret door. On the other hand, a Treasure & Secret Doors combo might get players to keep searching for treasure, as more often than not, secret doors tend to lead to a treasure chest full of goodies!**

*After some games go by, the players become smart enough to know when they milked to deck of the good stuff, and would stop searching if they think that their are only Hazard! and Wandering Monster! cards remaining.
**Just look at any published Quest: Secret doors usually lead (indirectly) to the objective, or to some sort of special treasure.

Malcadon wrote:The Traps & Secret Doors combo is the safest bet, as a routine search for traps might yield a secret door.*After some games go by, the players become smart enough to know when they milked to deck of the good stuff, and would stop searching if they think that their are only Hazard! and Wandering Monster! cards remaining.
**Just look at any published Quest: Secret doors usually lead (indirectly) to the objective, or to some sort of special treasure.

That's the thing. I don't think secret doors and routine go well together. More so, secret doors and risk like after the heroes have milked the treasure deck. It's what this mechanic would aim for. They cannot stop searching for treasure when they think they've gotten all the goodies as long as they haven't met the quest objective.

Also, on a side note, it's not as if they folded traps and secret doors into one for the EU rules. The NA version is the revised, newer one. So they seperated them. Might have something to do with extensive playtesting, it definitely fits into the general theme of weakening the heroes and strengthening Zargon.

If I understand this houserule rightly, it's possible for all treasure searches for a room to be exhaused without revealing a present secret door if a secret-door card isn't drawn. This would stop a Quest prematurely if the room's secret door was the only way to the Quest objective. Because of this, Quest notes should specify that such a vital secret door be automatically found on the first, second, third, or fourth treasure draw in a room.

NA rules don't permit treasure searches in corridors, so secret doors accessed only from a corridor couldn't be found with a treasure draw. Quest notes would have to provide some other means of discovery, such as a search for traps.

A longer, optional way to play secret-door Treasure Cards would be to rule that such cards only found easily-discovered doors. Well-concealed doors noted in a Quest could require a regular search for secret doors. Conversely, the same could be applied to difficult secret doors being found with the treasure deck while only less-necessary or simple ones could be found by regular searches for secret doors. Both options add to time, and thus defeat kk's apparent intent of speeding play. I imagine a Zargon Deck or something would be needed to justify the extra actions.

Daedalus wrote:If I understand this houserule rightly, it's possible for all treasure searches for a room to be exhaused without revealing a present secret door if a secret-door card isn't drawn.

You understand wrong. There's no secret door card(s) in this idea. The first treasure search in any given room (or corridor; NA rules have to be accomodated to allow those like EU rules do) will allow the hero to draw a treasure card (no altering of the deck is required) AND reveal all secret doors within the search area.
As I see it, there wouldn't be any other way to do it.

Gold Bearer wrote:It doesn't really make sense that searching for treasure is more likely to produce a wandering monster than other searches. An alternative wold be to take all of the wandering monsters out of the treasure deck and roll a combat dice with any search, a black skull triggers a wandering monster.

I have had this Idea as well.
With my Chaos Counter idea whenever a hero searched the Evil Wizard got one (and could spend them on nasty things later)

Another Idea I had was when searching you always drew a treasure card. If something bad came up, that happened. If something good came up then you searched as normal. All traps and secret doors are revealed regardless of what was drawn. This has not been tested so it may be bad towards the end of the quest if all the treasures have been removed... Maybe replace all the 'found' treasures with 'nothing' cards as they are removed from the deck so that it doesn't become super dangerous to search for traps... who knows.

While I think the idea is surely worth a test, I also think it's a bit too much of a rule change if your only objective is to keep the heroes searching for treasure. You could do this more easily (rule-wise) by changing the treasure deck rules - for example, you could house rule that treasure cards are re-shuffelded into the deck just like hazards and make up for this by adding more hazard cards. Would be less invasive as it doesn't touch the secret doors, in my opinion.