EU 1st, 2nd editions vs. NA (and remake) Rules revisited...

[Bareheaded Warrior]

The HQ rules of play is a little light on worked examples, at least in comparison with some similar more modern games, which I understand as they seemed to want to keep the rules of play "lite" and more of a pamphlet or leaflet rather than a tome, but I think that the EWP is expected to use some of the material included in the original quest book to supplement the information provided in the rules of play, so that some of the material in the Quest book acts as a form of worked example, supplementing the rules.

One (treasure) search per room

My main reason for assuming that only one search (for treasure, and one search for traps and secret doors, so two searches in total) per room or passage* is as follows:

Under the rules for (treasure) search:

- Treasure Some of the Quests provide details about specific treasures which can be found by searching. If a character searches for treasure in the appropriate room or passage, the evil wizard player follows the instructions in the Quest book. If there is no treasure listed for the room or passage being searched, the character must take the top card from the face-down stack of treasure cards.

- Treasure Some of the Quests provide details about specific treasures which can be found by searching. If a character searches for treasure in the appropriate room the evil wizard player should reveal what treasure is hidden there. If there is no specific treasure listed for that room then the character player must take the top Treasure card.

In both editions it clearly states that you draw a treasure card when no specific treasure is listed in the Quest notes for that room (or passage*). It tells you what to do and in which situation you do it. In both rulebooks this is the only instruction to draw a treasure card, so it seems reasonable to me that this is the only situation in which you draw a treasure card.

Which means that whilst nothing specifically prohibits a second or subsequent treasure search of the same area the result would always be that you find nothing (one of your "valid" interpretations Zenithfleet) so I wouldn't imagine that this was either the expected behaviour or that that behaviour would linger for long.

Note: In the First Edition, gold and jewel treasure cards are returned to the deck, so allowing infinite draws would result in infinite treasure and infinite wandering monsters and the game would never end!

Whilst I agree that providing a marker to indicate an area has been searched would have been an improvement, we all know from previous conversations that providing markers and writing rules appear to have been managed independently, perhaps they were expecting the EWP to note on the Quest Map itself (not that I would ever have scribbled all over my Quest Book, but then they did expect you to do that to track monster BP in Against the Ogre Horde).

*A side note but I think that one of the changes introduced in the later edition was the intention to remove the ability to search for treasure in passages. The reason why I think this is that in the First Edition rules where search for treasure is mentioned it refers to both rooms and passages, in the Second Edition almost all of these have been changed to remove the "passages" part although there are a couple of examples where the text wasn't updated from the First Edition and remains the same in the Second Edition. I take this to mean that their intention was to remove this functionality but they missed a couple of bits of text, as I don't understand why they would have changed what they did, if that wasn't the intention.

[Zenithfleet]

BareheadedWarrior, thanks for following up about treasure searches in the EU rules.

My main reason for assuming that only one search (for treasure, and one search for traps and secret doors, so two searches in total) per room or passage* is as follows:

Quick side note, but I think it's clear that you can search multiple times for traps and secret doors. Usually it's pointless, because you'll find everything with the first search. However, there's at least one quest in Kellar's Keep where the traps are especially well hidden and each search will only find the closest one along the passage, requiring multiple searches to clear out all the spears.

On Youtube, Always Board Never Boring pointed out that this one-off feature of KK may have been an unwise design choice, because it could cause the players to become so paranoid that from then on they obsessively search multiple times in every room and passage in every quest until the end of time...

Under the rules for (treasure) search:

- Treasure Some of the Quests provide details about specific treasures which can be found by searching. If a character searches for treasure in the appropriate room or passage, the evil wizard player follows the instructions in the Quest book. If there is no treasure listed for the room or passage being searched, the character must take the top card from the face-down stack of treasure cards.

- Treasure Some of the Quests provide details about specific treasures which can be found by searching. If a character searches for treasure in the appropriate room the evil wizard player should reveal what treasure is hidden there. If there is no specific treasure listed for that room then the character player must take the top Treasure card.

In both editions it clearly states that you draw a treasure card when no specific treasure is listed in the Quest notes for that room (or passage*). It tells you what to do and in which situation you do it. In both rulebooks this is the only instruction to draw a treasure card, so it seems reasonable to me that this is the only situation in which you draw a treasure card.

Which means that whilst nothing specifically prohibits a second or subsequent treasure search of the same area the result would always be that you find nothing (one of your "valid" interpretations Zenithfleet) so I wouldn't imagine that this was either the expected behaviour or that that behaviour would linger for long.

Hmm and also hmm. That does narrow it down a bit. We can agree that performing the search action more than once per room is permitted. (Just as searching for traps and secret doors more than once is permitted.)

The question is whether you find anything the second and subsequent times, or whether you find nothing. Is there any reason to search a second time?


There are two separate but related questions:

a) What do you do when there's a specific treasure listed in the Quest Notes?

Two possible interpretations come to mind.

1. The first player to search for treasure gets the special treasure (e.g. Borin's Armour). Any other players who search for treasure find nothing, because they can't take the special treasure (it's already been claimed), and there is no instruction in the rulebook to draw a Treasure card in that instance. Effectively, they reach for something that another player has already obtained, and end up empty-handed.

This is a fairly pedantic way of interpreting the text, but I agree it's a valid one.


2. The first player to search for treasure gets the special treasure. Any other players who search draw a Treasure card.

At first glance this one might not seem justified by the raw text. It's more of a spirit-of-the-game / thematic interpretation, based on how you deal with other 'normal' rooms. See (b) below.


b) What do you do in a normal room (or passage), with no specific treasure in the Notes?

The 2nd ed text is clear enough: "If there is no specific treasure listed for that room then the character player must take the top Treasure card." So the first player to search takes a Treasure card.

However, I can't see anything stopping this loop from happening again. A second player searches for treasure (which we agree can happen). The evil wizard player checks the Quest Notes again. Still nothing special in that room. The second player takes a Treasure card. Repeat.

Thematically, this seems reasonable because there's no reason every room would have just one thing in it, good or bad. There could be a bag of gold under the floor that the first hero finds, and a jewel tucked into a boot that the second hero finds while the first hero is still crowing about his discovery. (Of course, theme isn't everything. Limited equipment due to available cards is a well-known case.)

But we then end up in the odd situation that multiple Treasure cards can be drawn from any normal room... but never from a room containing a special Quest Notes treasure. That seems odd. Why would a room with, say, Borin's Armour be utterly devoid of any other loose coinage, potions, traps and so on, whereas you could find several of those in any normal room?

Therefore, circling back to (a), once someone has claimed the special treasure, subsequent searches ought to get a Treasure card.


Now, I can't say definitively that my interpretation above is correct. It relies on a fair bit of guesswork, thematic thinking and, "Well, it doesn't say we can't, so..."

On the other hand, I don't think you can fairly say that one search per room is the official rule either. The text is frankly too sparse to be sure what the intention was.

Your point about looking elsewhere, e.g. at the Quests, for further clues is well taken, but I don't find them all that helpful on this subject. (Incidentally, how do you handle the Star of the West in quest 12 and the Spirit Blade in quest 13? Neither of those say a player needs to search for them to find them. Would you make them search, or just have them find the items when they see/kill the zombie or enter the room with the blade?)


It's frustrating because it would have taken a single sentence to resolve all this. If the designers really intended to limit searches--or at least results--to once per room, I find it puzzling that across two editions, they didn't include something like, "Subsequent searches will find nothing," or, "Each room may only be searched for treasure once." They put in weird things like, "Monsters may not move treasure chests," but they couldn't be bothered clarifying this?


Wait, there's a third question: If treasure chests are opened by moving up to them and asking to open them, what happens if you search multiple times for treasure in a room with an unopened chest? The first time, the evil wizard player might 'reveal' how much gold is in the chest (but not give it to you). On a second search, do you just learn the contents of the chest again? Or do you get to draw a Treasure card?

Note: In the First Edition, gold and jewel treasure cards are returned to the deck, so allowing infinite draws would result in infinite treasure and infinite wandering monsters and the game would never end!

This is a good point that counts against my interpretation. However, they did modify how the deck works in the 2nd edition. That might have been their solution to infinite searches--diminishing returns and increasing danger--without needing to limit them to one per room and impose tracking/memory about which areas have been checked. It's always worked that way for people I've played with, though of course I can't say that experience is universal.

Whilst I agree that providing a marker to indicate an area has been searched would have been an improvement, we all know from previous conversations that providing markers and writing rules appear to have been managed independently, perhaps they were expecting the EWP to note on the Quest Map itself (not that I would ever have scribbled all over my Quest Book, but then they did expect you to do that to track monster BP in Against the Ogre Horde).

I'm not sure they were 'managed independently' (I guess you're referring to falling block markers?) so much as severely limited by available components, cardboard, etc., possibly at a late stage in the development process.

However, if they were expecting you to jot things down on the map, I think they would have said so. For the Kellar's Keep final Gargoyle they tell you to use a spare character sheet to record its three Body points, and in Ogre Horde they provide the monster track and carefully explain how to use it.


Overall, I'm inclined to stick with my own interpretation. But the situation is vague enough that I can understand why you and others might interpret it differently. Because of that, I'll have to be careful in any homebrew quests or adaptations not to assume my own interpretation is the 'real' one.

I would just caution you against declaring it's the definitive, official rule that you can only search once per room. In my view, it's too ambiguous to be sure either way. It's like that optical illusion where you see two faces while I see a vase. Or the Heroquest equivalent of the Phaistos Disk.

*A side note but I think that one of the changes introduced in the later edition was the intention to remove the ability to search for treasure in passages. The reason why I think this is that in the First Edition rules where search for treasure is mentioned it refers to both rooms and passages, in the Second Edition almost all of these have been changed to remove the "passages" part although there are a couple of examples where the text wasn't updated from the First Edition and remains the same in the Second Edition. I take this to mean that their intention was to remove this functionality but they missed a couple of bits of text, as I don't understand why they would have changed what they did, if that wasn't the intention.

I think your thinking might be right about this... but if so, the writers chopped down the tree but didn't dig the stump out. You can still search for treasure in passages according to the letter of the rules.

If they did intend to stop you searching in passages, I wonder what they were going to do about heroes who died in passages. How would you get their gear back? "Don't die in passages or all your stuff will fall through the cracks in the floor!"

The alternative interpretation for the edits is that they reasoned no special 'Notes' Treasure would ever be found in a passage--I don't think one ever is, in the EU edition quests. Therefore they could safely only talk about rooms when discussing Quest Notes. But that seems overly restrictive of them. What if a passage treasure was added later? (It caused issues in the NA edition, when they put treasure chests in corridors and had to call these little areas 'special rooms' just so you could open the things...)


And on a side note to that note, it just dawned on me that the reference to searching and retrieving a dead hero's gear comes on page 10 under the Introductory Game rules, before you play The Trial for the first time. Oops! It shouldn't have been mentioned until afterward. But then again, it needs to be under the 'what to do when you die' section for ease of reference, so maybe they left it there for that reason.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Most people that I have played HQ with and discussed this topic with (including on this forum) tend to describe them as separate actions, "search for treasure" and "search for secret doors and traps" however the way that the rules are laid out in the rulebook suggest that the designers viewed it is a single "search" action (with common rules) but with two options so you can choose whether to search for treasure or traps and secret doors. The layout in the rulebook, both First and Second edition support this interpretation although the Second Edition does confuse this viewpoint by retaining the text layout of the First Edition but then listing the two types of search as separate actions in a different part of the rulebook.

With this in mind, more than one search action within the same area is NOT, and should NOT be prohibited in the rule book, because you can validly carry out a search (for traps and secret doors) and a second search (for treasure) in the same area. However carrying out a subsequent search of the same area, for the same type of stuff, would be pointless as there is nothing left to find. You can't search for treasure that has already been claimed, for traps and secret doors that have already been found, in the same way that you can't cast a spell that has already been cast or attack a monster that has already been eliminated. In the same way that a search (for traps and secret doors) finds all traps and secret doors, a search (for treasure) finds all treasure. Consistent and simple!

Whilst I accept that the limit of one treasure per room, feels "unrealistic" as you point out yourself this is consistent with other areas of the game like a limit of one Spear card per party, and the reason for both of these imitations is the same, HeroQuest's "hidden" advancement system. I know that you understand the "hidden" advancement system, but I will briefly summarise for those who may not.

Essentially you gain experience points by killing monsters, but to minimise book keeping, this is achieved by clearing a room of monsters, which allows you to perform a search (for treasure) gaining you a treasure card that typically has a gold value, you then spend those accumulated experience points between quests on an "upgrade" by spending your accumulated gold on equipment which boosts your stats.

The reason why the number of gold cards (experience) you can earn per quest is limited is so that whilst the gold value of the specific card drawn cannot be predicted (and neither can the hero that is drawing it), over a sufficiently long series of events, such as the complete Quest book, the total amount of gold earned by a party of heroes is predictable, so sufficient upgrades (at the appropriate cost) are provided to cover it. This means that on average the rate of advancement is predictable even though the exact timing and detauls are not, which is essential as you neeed to amp up the pace of the difficulty of the game to match the party's pace of advancement.

Having a Quest-specific rule exception is fine (but they don't change the general rules) but in the case of the closest trap only rule, I agree that was an unwise design choice, for exactly the reason that you have pointed out. Under my own house rules, as you only ever find the closest trap anyway, I just reduced the number of combat dice that were rolled for "detect and disarm rolls" by one for that Quest, so no player bad habits formed!

It was only when I watched a game of HQ, last year (the "new" version) that I was struck by the vast amount of possible searches, and the fact that players get bored of all the search opportunities, so deliberately don't bother with many of them, and if they then get hit by a trap that they could've avoided if they had searched, they tended to shrug and feel that hitting the occasional trap was a more fun outcome then endless preventative searches!

Question 3

Wait, there's a third question: If treasure chests are opened by moving up to them and asking to open them, what happens if you search multiple times for treasure in a room with an unopened chest? The first time, the evil wizard player might 'reveal' how much gold is in the chest (but not give it to you). On a second search, do you just learn the contents of the chest again? Or do you get to draw a Treasure card?

As we have already established the rules for handling chests are entirely independent to the rules for searches (as you are aware in the Second Edition the basic or introductory rules are a self-contained rule set that doesn't include the search action at all), so it doesn't matter whether you search (for treasure) in a room, once, twice or a hundred times or whether that room contains none, one or many treasure chests the outcome of the search is always the same. First search for treasure nets you a treasure card (or a treasure specified in the Quest Notes), subsequent searches (for treasure) find nothing. Independently to that the treasure chest may be opened before or after the search (for treasure) by the same or a different hero who will receive the contents.

That independence between the two distinct activities gives the rule set the flexibility to handle situations that the NA remake struggled with as it moved to an "integrated" way of handling these activities because you always handle treasure chests the same way whether they are located in rooms or passages and this handlings is entirely independent of your search (for treasure rules) - modular design is always my preference!

I suppose at the end of the day you have to ask yourself of all the possible interpretations that you consider valid, which one best expresses the simple elegance of the game that we both admire rather than which is the most "realistic".

[Zenithfleet]

Most people that I have played HQ with and discussed this topic with (including on this forum) tend to describe them as separate actions, "search for treasure" and "search for secret doors and traps" however the way that the rules are laid out in the rulebook suggest that the designers viewed it is a single "search" action (with common rules) but with two options so you can choose whether to search for treasure or traps and secret doors. The layout in the rulebook, both First and Second edition support this interpretation although the Second Edition does confuse this viewpoint by retaining the text layout of the First Edition but then listing the two types of search as separate actions in a different part of the rulebook.

With this in mind, more than one search action within the same area is NOT, and should NOT be prohibited in the rule book, because you can validly carry out a search (for traps and secret doors) and a second search (for treasure) in the same area.

I'm not entirely sure I agree with the part about searching being a single action with two options--probably because I started with the 2nd edition, which, as you say, lists the two types of search separately at the start of the rulebook, on page 4. I feel that they consolidate the two under 'Searching' simply so that they can explain the shared basics all in one go, rather than repeating the same information twice and taking up extra room for no real purpose.

However, it leads us to the same place, which is that the search action itself isn't limited. It's just a question of whether there's anything to find after the first time. Does the first search find all treasure? It would be consistent and simple if it did, yes, but that doesn't necessarily make it true.


Maybe the real problem here is the existence of the Treasure deck.

Everything else is marked on the quest map. And for things marked on the map, the 'all or nothing' concept works fairly smoothly. If you search for secret doors and traps, the evil wizard player knows all, and can reveal everything you've found, all at once. There's nothing left after that. Likewise, if there is special treasure marked in the Quest Notes, the evil wizard player knows all, and can reveal all of it at once (e.g. the gold and the potion of healing in the cupboard in quest 3).

But taking a Treasure card seems to me qualitatively different from 'finding all the treasure marked for that room'. It's more of a random event deck. Some of the things that happen aren't 'treasure' or 'nothing'--they're traps and wandering monsters. And even the evil wizard player has no idea what the next card will be.

- Suppose a wandering monster pops out and it interrupts your search. Maybe there's still treasure in the room that you didn't find because of the interruption.

- Suppose you find a trap, even though you searched for traps earlier and supposedly found all the traps in the room. Yet somehow a tripwire trap is present that your 'find everything' search missed.

Yes, these are thematic arguments again, but I think that's important. The reason searching for treasure throws up question marks (at least in my mind) is because it uses a card deck mechanism some of the time. And the deck contains results at right angles to "You found something!" or "You found nothing!" It also has, "Suddenly you're in trouble, but we haven't resolved the question of whether there's any treasure in this room!" It feels more like you're exploring a three-dimensional possibility space, or some such fancy jargon. Taking one card doesn't feel thorough in the way that clearing all squares in the room on the map does.

Perhaps a card deck of random events is the wrong mechanism to suggest an all-or-nothing, one-and-done result. At least, in the form it's presented in HeroQuest. By itself, it sends the wrong message. I infer from it that, if you get 'interrupted' by a monster or a trap, you can try again and get a different card. And therefore, if you do find treasure, you can also try again and get a new card.

To overcome this intuitive instinct, the game would need to be more emphatic about it and say straight-up that You Only Get One Card Per Room, So There! In its absence I end up going with what feels intuitive (much like opening chests by walking up to them feels intuitive).

I hadn't actually thought about it that way until now, so if nothing else, at least we've narrowed down why 'one search finds all treasure' feels off to me, whereas 'one search finds all traps' doesn't. I wonder if it feels the same way to other people?

EDIT: If the Treasure deck were called the 'Room deck' or something, that would have strongly hinted that a) it was only for rooms and b) you only got one card that told you "what happens in this room".

Whilst I accept that the limit of one treasure per room, feels "unrealistic" as you point out yourself this is consistent with other areas of the game like a limit of one Spear card per party, and the reason for both of these imitations is the same, HeroQuest's "hidden" advancement system. I know that you understand the "hidden" advancement system, but I will briefly summarise for those who may not.

Essentially you gain experience points by killing monsters, but to minimise book keeping, this is achieved by clearing a room of monsters, which allows you to perform a search (for treasure) gaining you a treasure card that typically has a gold value, you then spend those accumulated experience points between quests on an "upgrade" by spending your accumulated gold on equipment which boosts your stats.

Um. I've definitely argued in the past that gold is HQ's equivalent of an XP system, but I wouldn't tie that to treasure searches and room-by-room progress as tightly as you do here. (That better describes the later game Warhammer Quest.)

I would step back and look at it on the larger scale of completing Quests and getting rewards from the parchment text, plus any large gold rewards found in chests, plus Quest Treasures and other special rewards.

For example, there are plenty of empty rooms that you can search 'for free' without needing to clear them of monsters, so the XP comparison falls down there. Unless you think in terms of "I got to the room first," I suppose.

The reason why the number of gold cards (experience) you can earn per quest is limited is so that whilst the gold value of the specific card drawn cannot be predicted (and neither can the hero that is drawing it), over a sufficiently long series of events, such as the complete Quest book, the total amount of gold earned by a party of heroes is predictable, so sufficient upgrades (at the appropriate cost) are provided to cover it. This means that on average the rate of advancement is predictable even though the exact timing and detauls are not, which is essential as you neeed to amp up the pace of the difficulty of the game to match the party's pace of advancement.

Hang on. I do agree with your general point here, but how much difference does it make if you can only get one Treasure card per room, versus unlimited Treasure cards?

The thing is, the 2nd edition deck only contains nine gold cards. Everything else is a potion (which you throw in the bin at the end of the quest), a trap, a wandering monster or the legendary NOTHING! card. A total of 25 cards (not 24 as said on the Inn download page).

Whether you're limiting searches to one per room, or you allow unlimited Treasure searches, you still have only those nine gold cards to find. They're removed from the deck once drawn (in the 2nd edition). The gold ceiling is 390 coins per quest.

I did a quick count of the available rooms to search in the base game EU quests--excluding rooms that have special rewards (that aren't in chests). Oddly enough, there tend to be about nine searchable rooms. Occasionally it's a bit less and often it's a bit more, up to 10 or 11 rooms. You could theoretically gain all nine gold cards just by searching once per room, and exhaust the treasure deck.

Of course, in practice you'll draw a mix of gold, potions, traps and wandering monsters. And the gold cards vary in value. And the chances of drawing one change as you remove cards from the deck. So...

*pause here for about an hour of clumsy, back-of-the-dirty-kitchen-paper calculations, before giving up*

I only have one Mind point when it comes to maths, so figuring out all the ramifications of the treasure deck is beyond me.

Still, I got far enough to estimate that the average amount of 'bonus gold' from one-search-per-room is indeed quite a bit less than the amount from unlimited searches. But the potential amount, the upper ceiling in any one quest, is still generally the same: 390 gold.

Across many quests, the swinginess would even out, so that one-search-per-room gives less bonus gold than unlimited searches. Fair enough. I would have to leave it to someone else to work out all the numbers, though, and compare them to the available equipment in the base game.


However, there is another interesting issue here: the increasing danger of the Treasure deck. The effect is much more pronounced, potentially lethal and (in my view) entertaining if you play unlimited searches.

Suppose you limit searches to one per room, and it's a nine-room Quest. It's a 36% chance of drawing a gold card (at first) and a 32% chance of a bad card (at first). Let's say you draw three gold cards, three bad cards and three potions in a random order. After all of that, having removed the six good cards from the deck and returned the bad ones, the chance of drawing a bad card has risen to about 42%. (But by then you're out of rooms to search.) If you were lucky enough to draw nine good cards instead, the result would be a deck with a 50% chance of drawing a bad card. It's unlikely to get much worse than that, because there aren't usually more than one or two further rooms to search.

By contrast, if you allow unlimited searches, you could theoretically net yourself all nine gold cards and all seven potions, plus the Nothing card. But in the process you would steadily increase the chance of drawing a bad card all the way up to 100%. Because the deck is shuffled each time, trying to dig out those last few good cards becomes not only difficult but positively life-threatening. Trap cards give you an automatic Body point loss. Wandering monsters might not hurt you at all, but could inflict a lot of damage with a lucky roll (or two, if you searched just before the evil wizard player's turn), and under EU rules if you hit zero BP you die, ready or not.

What I mean by this is that the 2nd ed Treasure deck rules impose a soft cap on the amount of bonus gold it's practical to obtain in any one quest. In theory, yes, you could max out the 390 gold. But in practice, you reach a point at which the odds of a bad card outweigh the good and it's simply too dangerous to risk searching any more. Well... unless you happened to get the two Potions of Healing as well, I guess.

In the games I've played, players naturally learn that too many searches leads to pain and death, in that order. If you've always played one search per room you might never have experienced this, because the limited number of available rooms makes it unlikely that the chance of a bad card ever rises much above 50%. But I've seen the deck's true horror. I've seen what happens when a reckless player just keeps digging. That deck scares me.

That's only my experience, though, and I'm curious how other players have found it. There are metagamey ways around it, like everyone crowding around the searcher in the corner to protect them from wandering monsters, or searching in the first room until it becomes too dangerous and then absconding to restart the Quest. But that sort of thing is dubious at the best of times and, in the second example, is so clearly against the spirit of the game that cushions would be thrown and words would be said.

The heroes could also race each other at the beginning by repeatedly searching while the going is good, before the chances of bad cards rise too high, to prevent any one player monopolising the better chances early on. A sort of 'race to the bottom' effect. But if they dig too much into the treasure deck early in the quest, they'll run into problems later when they find important-looking rooms that they need to check. If they've made the deck dangerous by then, and they keep picking the wrong rooms, well, they've made their bed and now they have to lie in it...

None of this means it was the intended rule. However, I do find it interesting that it seems to operate as a limit on searching all by itself, without the need to impose a restriction. The designers may not have needed a hard and fast rule because the Treasure deck is self-policing anyway.


In fairness, there is another advantage to 'one search per room' that I don't think we've mentioned: it encourages players to explore more thoroughly in order to find more rooms to search. It also gives dead-end empty rooms a purpose... although I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing. I like dead-end empty rooms to simply exist, having nothing special about them at all, rather than being viewed as A Further Opportunity for Looting.


Against that I would put:

- the need to track searched rooms (EU HQ avoids this sort of thing when possible, and when it can't, it clearly tells you how and where to note things down)

- the wasted potential of the 'dangerous deck' mechanism as outlined above

- the ability to search in passages and the associated awkwardness of marking overlapping passage squares (if they meant to take this out they flubbed it, and it's needed anyway if someone dies in a passage)

- the glaring lack of a clear rule in the rulebook, leading to all this inferring and theorising.

So *pushes glasses up nose* I remain insufficiently convinced of your interpretation. But I also understand why you and anyone else reading this might be insufficiently convinced of mine. I also understand why it might be something players feel the need to houserule, just as I feel the need to houserule that falling block trap business.

Somebody borrow a TARDIS and go back to ask the designers, please!

I suppose at the end of the day you have to ask yourself of all the possible interpretations that you consider valid, which one best expresses the simple elegance of the game that we both admire rather than which is the most "realistic".

Yep. And to my mind, the way the treasure deck seems to regulate itself does express that simple elegance.

(I'd appreciate some mathematical criticism of my arguments, though!)

[Kurgan]

Good discussion guys (don't let me stop you). I come away thinking the searches are effectively unlimited (under the EU rules), but I can understand why a person might think otherwise. Was it their original intention to make it one or the other? There I think the fact of the Treasure deck never being depleted to me is kind of a way to mitigate any problem with players abusing the system. Eventually they need to move on. Poor gameplay choices can "ruin" the game in other areas too... the heroes could just keep slaughtering each other and retreating to never complete a quest. They could roll (and draw) poorly every time and give up in frustration (hopefully not). With a deck that DOES deplete good cards, the risk increases over time and the perception and fear of a bad draw may put an end to the "endless" searches." Putting a firm limit on searches is fine, and we have that in the NA ruleset and we have that with plenty of EU players (whether that was just their interpretation or intentional homebrew). These and other restrictions limit the game, yes, but they also focus it more. One is more open ended, but could more easily go wrong, while the other pushes on towards an intended conclusion.

All of the various options (one search per room, one search per hero per room, unlimited searches) are easy enough to manage for the heroes. It's Zargon who has the burden.

For realism, how realistic is it that a room has "endless" treasure? Eventually maybe it does destroy suspension of disbelief (even in a world of magic). Is it really more fun to have endless searches? But I think the designers probably figured its a self correcting system unless everyone is obsessively addicted to it or something and can't get past the first room.

Then again when I GM a game (NA rules) it's easy enough to know when a room with a note has been searched, because I read the note. The only difficulty is keeping track of whether all three of the other heroes have searched it, if they don't do it right away. But if I slip up and forget, what's another card here or there? In the long run it doesn't make that big of a difference (whether they get an extra 50 gold, or lose 1 or more BP from a hazard or wandering monster), at least in the early quests. Now when the Wandering Monster is two polar warbears or something crazy like that, it really matters. Zargon should keep track (many practical ways to do that) behind the screen. But the individual heroes will remember whether they searched for treasure or not. While if they forget whether they searched for secret doors or traps or not (easier to forget if you searched and found nothing vs. if you found something) and Zargon forgets too, well you just waste another 1-2 turns, but that's it.

So as to which rule is best, that's up for grabs, based on preferences. Even so, I think it's only a matter of being marginally better for one vs. another, unless we're talking one of the super hard 1992 quests.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Maybe at this point we need to consider less which interpretation is correct but which one leads to a better game experience. Whilst I haven't done any statistical checking (I have to be in the right frame of mind for that heavy lifting!), you may well be correct in that the gold yield is roughly equivalent under either interpretation in the Second Edition, but the difference is that your interpretation allows players the option to front-load, search heavily at the start of the game, maybe even in just the first room and then stop searching once the deck becomes too risky, but for me that "front loading" would result in a poorer experience of the game, so given the option I would choose an interpretation that doesn't allow it*. Imagine discovering this forum after playing as a hero as part of a group through dozens of quests over a period of years only to realise that you never even knew that some of the Quest Treasures that everyone was talking about even existed because you never searched later rooms!

*This kind of reminds me of Monopoly where you see common house rules (or misinterpreted rules) like placing fines in the middle and collecting them when you land on free parking, double salary for landing on Go, not auctioning properties when they are landed on, not collecting rent when in jail and so on, all of which act to make the game longer than was intended, and then those very same people who apply those rules moan about how long the game takes!

I get that as someone who started with the Second Edition that your interpretation would have been initially based on your experience with that edition, same as mine was based initially at least on the First Edition, however if your interpretation makes sense to you when applied to the Second Edition, surely it needs to make sense when applied to the First Edition also, as the text that you are interpreting in both editions is pretty much identical, but I don't think that your interpretation is valid for the First Edition for the reasons that I gave earlier, but how can you interprete a block of text one way for one edition and then a different way for the other edition?

I agree with your point around the self-balancing treasure deck being a cool mechanism (and I have added a house rule tweak and tidied up a vestigial rule in this area which makes it even better!) but this is present under either interpretation, ever time you draw and don't return a "good" card then deck gets worse, and I would imagine that the advancement mechanism and the treasure deck evolved (and we catch a glimpse of the end of that process between the First and Second editions) from an early idea of discover room, kill monsters, gain gold where the gold was just a fixed amount or a fixed amount per monster or a variable like D6x10 gold coins or something similar, but this was replaced by Treasure cards as drawing a Treasure Card is a simpler and cleaner way of minimising book-keeping and then the Treasure Deck became a richer experience by adding some peril but for me the general principle of enter room, slay inhabitants, loot treasure for me isn't undermined by the occasional room without monsters that might yield treasure, nor the occasional room that might be packed with monsters and yield no treasure (or worse) they are just the extreme ends of the range.

That said I do get what you mean about drawing a treasure card feeling more like you're exploring a three-dimensional possibility space (love that phrase) but I think that only really applies if you think that drawing a treasure card is answering the question "what treasure do I find in the room?" but actually it is answering the question "what do I find in the room?" perhaps on reflection "Search Cards" might have been a more accurate name, but then it doesn't have the appeal of "Treasure Cards"..."my precious"

Side Note: The NA remake which does specifically limit the number of searches (for treasure) in a room also doesn't provide a method of tracking which rooms have been searched (and in that version there is even more to track as you have track the room and the hero!)

[Zenithfleet]

Maybe at this point we need to consider less which interpretation is correct but which one leads to a better game experience. Whilst I haven't done any statistical checking (I have to be in the right frame of mind for that heavy lifting!), you may well be correct in that the gold yield is roughly equivalent under either interpretation in the Second Edition, but the difference is that your interpretation allows players the option to front-load, search heavily at the start of the game, maybe even in just the first room and then stop searching once the deck becomes too risky, but for me that "front loading" would result in a poorer experience of the game, so given the option I would choose an interpretation that doesn't allow it*. Imagine discovering this forum after playing as a hero as part of a group through dozens of quests over a period of years only to realise that you never even knew that some of the Quest Treasures that everyone was talking about even existed because you never searched later rooms!

Yes, looking at it from a perspective of "What makes the game more enjoyable?" is probably the best way to go.

For instance, earlier I mentioned that your interpretation (one search per room) ought to encourage exploration to find new rooms, even empty ones, because they provide more opportunities to draw Treasure cards. Since exploration is arguably one of HeroQuest's greatest strengths--something it still does better than many more tactically interesting dungeon crawlers--I'm generally in favour of anything that further encourages exploring the map.

Also, players who are in a competitive mood can race each other to new rooms in order to get there first and 'clean out' the room before anyone else. In the process they may get over-eager and fail to search for traps first...

However, there are some more subtle considerations at play too. As mentioned, I don't really like the way it turns each room into a kind of 'loot objective' that may compel players to hunt down every room to max out their treasure searches and mentally 'clear' the board. When you can search multiple times anywhere you like, you don't feel the same compulsive need to flip every room from Unsearched to Searched.

Meanwhile, the risk of 'front-loading' that you mention is theoretically possible... but in real life I've never played HQ with anyone who tried it. Nobody ever thought of doing it. I don't know why, but it simply never occurred to anyone, either as a kid or as an adult. Maybe that's because I've mostly played it with 'ordinary' people such as family members or random friends, rather than Hardcore Gamers. It might also be because none of us really knew the composition of the Treasure deck and therefore weren't sure how great the risk was. Even now I don't know it by heart and usually have to go check the physical cards or a list on the Inn to remind myself.

My experience has always been that players search occasionally and opportunistically. Sometimes when they think there might be an important item and sometimes because they're feeling brave enough to take the risk. A couple of bad search results tends to deter a player from trying again for a while (once burned, twice shy). And they often forget you can search at all for a while, getting too caught up in exploring and fighting monsters. In my case I think 'one search per room' would actually make people search more often and get more gold than they do now.

I prefer giving the players the freedom to find the right balance themselves (mainly because it seems to have worked up till now with the people I've happened to play HQ with). One of my complaints about the NA edition is that it tried to railroad players into a specific playstyle rather than giving them room to muck around and find a natural equilibrium.

It's a bit like the way the EU edition allows players to attack and kill each other if they like. You can do it, but in practice players generally don't. (Again, in my experience.) At most they do it once or twice, out of cheekiness or anger. Then, after the injured survivors get mobbed by monsters and slaughtered, and the players fail the quest, they decide to be less directly murderous to their brother/sister/cousin in future. Or at least bide their time.

I get that as someone who started with the Second Edition that your interpretation would have been initially based on your experience with that edition, same as mine was based initially at least on the First Edition, however if your interpretation makes sense to you when applied to the Second Edition, surely it needs to make sense when applied to the First Edition also, as the text that you are interpreting in both editions is pretty much identical, but I don't think that your interpretation is valid for the First Edition for the reasons that I gave earlier, but how can you interprete a block of text one way for one edition and then a different way for the other edition?

You can interpret the same block of text differently based on our favourite word... context!

In the case of 1st vs 2nd edition, the text in the rulebook about treasure searches and taking a Treasure card didn't change much. But the rules for what to do with those cards afterward did change, drastically, both in the rules and on the cards themselves.

1st edition:
- Gold cards go back on the bottom of the deck.
- Potion cards go back on the bottom of the deck.
- Traps and wandering monsters apparently get removed (I'm not quite sure about this but the rulebook doesn't say, and their cards don't say to return them, whereas the gold cards and potion cards do).

The situation in 1st is therefore the opposite of 2nd. In 1st the good cards go back in, while the bad ones get chucked. In 2nd, the good cards get chucked while the bad ones go back in.


Oddly, in 1st edition there doesn't seem to be a rule about shuffling the Treasure pile after/before a search. Have I missed it? (My PDF of the 1st edition rules is in booklet format so it's all out of order and it's easy to miss these things.)

It also seems that in 1st edition you return cards to the bottom of the deck. If you don't shuffle, then that can be interpreted two ways. (Oh no, not again...)

The first is that putting the card on the bottom of the deck effectively removes it from that quest, because if you can only search once per room and passage, you're unlikely to get all the way through the deck and see the same card again. There wouldn't be enough rooms and passages in the average Quest. So... why put it on the bottom of the deck at all? Why not just discard it? Was it just to be on the safe side in case some freaky Quest had more than 25 total rooms and passages?

(This mechanism is used in some more recent games. Putting a card on the bottom of a deck that's never shuffled is functionally the same as removing it from the deck--it just means less tidying up after the game. However, it strikes me as a bit high-falutin' and fussy for a mass-market family game. Usually you would just have a discard pile for cards you won't use again.)


The second interpretation is that the intention was to make the deck infinitely deep, without shuffling it, so that you could indeed meet the same card again. That would suggest that 1st edition didn't prohibit searching more than once per room or passage at all--that the number of searches was potentially infinite and so the deck was too. That design frankly doesn't make much sense to me, since once you had cleared the traps and wandering monsters out of the deck you'd be left with a bottomless money pit (in a recurring sequence no less, only varying by when potions were used and returned).


I'm scratching my head over what the intention was in 1st edition. If it was meant to be only one search per room/passage, why put the cards back on the bottom of the deck where they would almost never be seen again? But if it was supposed to be unlimited searches, how do you stop the Scrooge McDuck money pit problem? I can't see how those rules and cards fit with either possible intention. One sort of works, but is unnecessarily fussy. The other really doesn't work. Am I missing something obvious?

If you started with 1st edition, unlimited searches would definitely be a serious problem. You might say, "Well, one search MUST be the intended rule, because otherwise it's a complete disaster that anyone with half a brain could see." Having made that assumption, you might then assume it still holds for 2nd edition as well.

But the trouble is, neither one search nor unlimited searches really fits with the 1st edition as a whole. Deciding to play it as one search per room could be a fix for an incoherent subset of rules, rather than the actual intention of the designers.

It looks to me as if the 1st edition Treasure deck rules were a bit of a mess all around. Whatever they were going for, it didn't work the way they had intended. The various cogwheels didn't mesh. They had to substantially revise it for the 2nd edition.

If that was the case, then the designers would have had to decide how and where to amend the rules. "Hey, what if we swap the way the good and bad cards work? If the good ones are removed, but the bad cards go back in, that will stop the infinite money pit problem. You'll have an infinite deck of horrors instead, which will stop players overdosing on gold."

It's a bit odd that they did this when they could have just inserted a single sentence saying something like, "Only one Treasure card can be drawn for each room or passage that is searched." They could then have left the cards as is. The deck would have more or less worked, even if they didn't add anything about shuffling and kept the bit about putting cards on the bottom. It wouldn't have been brilliant but it would have been the most judicious edit.

Instead they changed some parts of the rulebook and the text on most of the cards. They added the bit about shuffling (so returned cards aren't always on the bottom). They reversed the instructions for gold and potions vs traps and wandering monsters, and said so both in the rulebook and on the individual cards. Why go to all that effort and yet fail to insert a sentence about one-search-per-room?

To me that's further evidence that they did intend multiple searches--at least in 2nd, and maybe in 1st as well. All those amendments weren't necessary if you could only search once per room... but they were vital if you could search multiple times. The deck must eventually be depleted of good cards.

But it was all a long time ago in a dungeon far, far away, so who knows?


tl;dr - unless I've missed something in the 1st ed rules, I think the actual situation was that in 1st ed, the Treasure deck rules were just incoherent and weird. Players saw this and deduced that the only way to fix them was to limit searches to once per room/passage. They therefore reasoned that must have been the intention of the designers. But that doesn't necessarily follow--it could just have been a stuff-up. In any case, the amendments to 2nd ed seem too intensive for one search per room to have been the intention. Instead, they seem to be making it safe for multiple searches to work.

The more I look at all this, the more puzzled I get.

I would imagine that the advancement mechanism and the treasure deck evolved (and we catch a glimpse of the end of that process between the First and Second editions) from an early idea of discover room, kill monsters, gain gold where the gold was just a fixed amount or a fixed amount per monster or a variable like D6x10 gold coins or something similar, but this was replaced by Treasure cards as drawing a Treasure Card is a simpler and cleaner way of minimising book-keeping and then the Treasure Deck became a richer experience by adding some peril

You may well be right about that, and it might explain the relative incoherence of the 1st ed Treasure deck rules (if I've accurately diagnosed them above). It might only be after 1st edition that they took a step back, looked at the current state of the deck/rules, and went "Wait a minute, we didn't think through all the implications... oops!"

Side Note: The NA remake which does specifically limit the number of searches (for treasure) in a room also doesn't provide a method of tracking which rooms have been searched (and in that version there is even more to track as you have track the room and the hero!)

I've seen some players add coloured tokens to help them track this sort of thing. I'll add it to my list of uncharitable complaints about the NA edition overcomplicating things.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

I'm not sure that the failure to specify only one search (for treasure) per room (or passage) should be taken to mean that multiple searches were allowed, because you could equally say that failure to specify that multiple searches were allowed should be taken to mean that only one is allowed.

Which brings us nicely onto another difference between First Edition, Second Edition and NA Remake - handling treasure cards

First Edition

1. As you can only search for treasure once per "area" (my assumption) and there are always more cards available than "areas" the treasure card deck you will never get through the whole deck in a single quest (so you do not need to nor should you shuffle at any point during the game)

2. The card drawn on each occasion is a random card (because you shuffle the deck at the start of each game - "setting up the game") from the possible remaining options

3. You cannot guarantee any individual card being drawn within any individual quest.

4. "Cards limit supply" so if there is only one of a certain card like "Heroic Brew" you don't need to introduce complexity around how it would stack with multiples, the Quest Creator doesn't need to introduce complexity around the effects of the Barbarian slugging 4 potions of Strength before engaging with the "big bad"

5. Having drawn a card you action the effects where they are instant, Wandering Monster, Trap, "Increase Your Treasure", or Potion (that can be used instantly) and then you discard it. For tidiness you discard not to a discard pile but return to the bottom of the deck (functionally within this edition the two things are identical because of point 1, which is why it doesn't specify for traps and WMs as the only 2 options, discard to discard pile or return to bottom of the deck are functionally identical, the only exception is potions)

6. Potions can be kept for use later and can easily track which potion cards are in play without book-keeping as the player retains the card, but are discarded when used or at the end of the quest if unused.

In general this mechanism always worked fine for me, with a couple of minor issues.

(A) As you are instructed to retain potions until used, you might as well have been instructed to keep gold/jewel cards until the end of the game (when you total them up and update your character sheet) as this would have reduced book-keeping a little further.

(B) Discarding unused potions at the end of the game could be a source of frustration, drawing a Holy Water card in a greenskin quest that could never be used, drawing a cool potion on the last search of the game, which could never be used (and then you need it in the first room of the next quest!)

Second Edition

As above except

1. Crucially introduces the concept of returning the bad cards (and discarding the good ones) to the deck AND shuffling after you do so, which makes the deck statistically nastier the further you delve into the depths of the dungeon (assuming one search per area, my assumption)

2. Limit treasure searches to rooms only and not passages (although this seems to have been the intention it was only partially implemented, tut tut)

In general this mechanism always worked fine for me, and was an improvement on the earlier edition because of the two points above, although the same minor issues still existed.

(A) As you are instructed to retain potions until used, you might as well have been instructed to keep gold/jewel cards until the end of the game (when you total them up and update your character sheet) as this would have reduced book-keeping a little further.

(B) Discarding unused potions at the end of the game could be a source of frustration, drawing a Holy Water card in a greenskin quest that could never be used, drawing a cool potion on the last search of the game, which could never be used (and then you typically need it in the first room of the next quest!)

Gold Edition

Sorry this is me being cheeky and shamelessly plugging my own house rules!

As Second Edition but

1. You retain gold/jewel cards until the end of the quest when you total them up and add them to your character sheet, before returning them to the deck for the next quest.

2. You don't discard unused potions at the end of the quest, you keep the cards for the next quest, which means that those cards are not present in the deck for the next quest.

3. You return the "nothing" card to the deck like WMs and Traps

[Zenithfleet]

I'm not sure that the failure to specify only one search (for treasure) per room (or passage) should be taken to mean that multiple searches were allowed, because you could equally say that failure to specify that multiple searches were allowed should be taken to mean that only one is allowed.

Yes, exactly, and this is our "two faces or a vase" problem. It could mean either. Some players will look at the rules as written and immediately assume only one search is allowed, while other players look at exactly the same rules as written and assume multiple searches are allowed.

Then the former meet the latter in real life or the internet and get into an endless argument about it.

Whichever one the designers had in mind, they might not have bothered to outright state it because it was so obvious to them what they meant (a common problem in rules writing).

I'm put in mind of the odd note in 1st edition that "Monsters may not move treasure", slightly revised in 2nd edition to "Monsters may not move treasure chests." Even if that wasn't in the rules, it would never have occurred to me that monsters could move treasure / treasure chests. It would never have crossed my mind. To me that's a pointless addition. I would have assumed they couldn't unless the rules explicitly said they could. But it must have been spelled out for a reason. Somebody during playtesting must have thought, "Well, it doesn't say they CAN'T, so that means they can!"

What I've been trying to do is figure out, from the wider context, what the designers' intention was. (It might have changed from 1st to 2nd edition, which makes it even trickier.) "What's the most practical and sensible way of playing it given the rules and components we have?" is a somewhat different question to, "How did the designers expect you to play it, and did they make their intent clear?"

First Edition

I see you making several assumptions here, which I was questioning in my last post. Which brings me to yet another really long reply...

1. As you can only search for treasure once per "area" (my assumption) and there are always more cards available than "areas" the treasure card deck you will never get through the whole deck in a single quest (so you do not need to nor should you shuffle at any point during the game)

Two things here.

Firstly, you're starting with an assumption: one search per area. What exactly made you assume that it's one search per area? e.g. Is it because the 1st edition Treasure deck rules would be easily abusable for infinite gold if multiple searches were allowed?

I'm just trying to pin down precisely what it is that made you say, way back when, "Oh, that's what they meant."


Secondly, if you won't get through all the cards in a single quest (which I agree with), why do the rules return gold and potion cards to the bottom of the deck?

This is going to take me a while to go through, so bear with me.

5. Having drawn a card you action the effects where they are instant, Wandering Monster, Trap, "Increase Your Treasure", or Potion (that can be used instantly) and then you discard it. For tidiness you discard not to a discard pile but return to the bottom of the deck (functionally within this edition the two things are identical because of point 1, which is why it doesn't specify for traps and WMs as the only 2 options, discard to discard pile or return to bottom of the deck are functionally identical, the only exception is potions)

You're using 'discard' in a broad sense here and I think it's getting in the way a little.

To be more strictly accurate, in the 1st ed rules, after you carry out the effects of a Treasure card, you do the following:

- Gold: write down the gold, then return the card to the bottom of the deck (as per the rulebook and the card)

- Potion: keep it until you use it, then discard it (as stated on the card) and return it to the bottom of the deck (as per the rulebook)

- Trap: Neither the rulebook nor the card tells you what to do.

- Wandering monster: Neither the rulebook nor the card tells you what to do.

In my previous post I was a little fuzzy about this too, because I failed to notice that the potion card says to discard it, whereas the rulebook says to return it to the bottom of the deck.

I suspect that the potion card says to discard it because you can keep potion cards for a while, unlike all the other Treasure cards, and so they put wording on it similar to spells, which you also keep for a while until you use them. The fact that it doesn't quite align with the wording in the rulebook about potions may well be an accident. To be really pedantic, you could say that with a gold card you return it to the bottom of the deck, whereas with a potion card you discard it and then return it to the bottom of the deck (which is the same thing with extra steps).

Still, the potion card text as written introduces a point of ambiguity. Since the potion card says "the card is then discarded", while the rulebook says the potion card goes on the bottom of the Treasure deck, the reader could infer that 'discarding' is the same as 'placing on the bottom of the deck'. They might therefore assume that traps and wandering monsters also go on the bottom of the deck. I think this is the assumption you've made--am I right?

If you're only searching once per area it's not going to matter because you'll never get far enough through the Treasure deck to see the previously drawn cards again anyway. However, if you search multiple times it would make a big difference.


In any case, is this assumption warranted?

Let's leave the potion card text aside for a moment. The rulebook specifically says you return gold cards and potions, but it doesn't say anything about wandering monsters or traps. The cards for gold also say you return them... but the wandering monster and trap cards don't say anything.

Once again (sigh) we're left with an omission that can be read in one of two ways:

a) Wandering monsters and traps are not returned to the Treasure deck. They are discarded to some sort of discard pile (like the one that presumably exists for used spell cards). Otherwise the rules and cards would have told you to return them, like they do for gold and potions... but they conspiciously don't.

b) Wandering monsters and traps are returned to the Treasure deck. After all, potions are 'discarded' by returning them. Therefore discarding must be the same as returning. After applying its effects, the only thing you can do with a WM or trap card is get rid of it somehow--it's not a continuous-effect card or a card you keep. Therefore you discard it. Therefore you return it to the bottom of the deck. The rulebook and cards don't bother to say this simply because it's an oversight, or because it's so obvious it would be unnecessary.

I interpret it as (a), whereas you interpret it as (b), I think.

To me (b) seems like a longer and more fragile chain of reasoning. You have to notice the discrepancy/equivalence between the potion card text and the rulebook text for potions, and then extrapolate from it.


Anyway, let's get back to the whole "putting cards on the bottom of the deck" thing. Why does that instruction exist at all? What's the point of it?

Coming back to your point 5 again, you mention tidiness as the reason:

For tidiness you discard not to a discard pile but return to the bottom of the deck (functionally within this edition the two things are identical because of point 1, which is why it doesn't specify for traps and WMs as the only 2 options, discard to discard pile or return to bottom of the deck are functionally identical, the only exception is potions)

But again I think you've made several assumptions that aren't necessarily justified.

Firstly, how do you know it's 'for tidiness'? That's one possibility, yes. But it's also fussy and time-consuming. What's quicker and easier: lifting up a deck of cards, turning a card you just read face-down and carefully placing it underneath the deck (possibly handing it back to the evil wizard player to do all of this) ... or just chucking the face-up card into a discard pile?

HQ doesn't seem to care about tidiness when it comes to, say, discarding spell cards.

Secondly, did any other mass-market games from that era have a rule about returning a card to the bottom of a deck without shuffling, purely for tidiness? There may well have been some but I can't think of any. Generally when cards were returned to decks it was because they might play a further part in the game.

To my mind, it seems more likely that the designers thought it was important to put these cards back in the deck rather than removing them. For some gameplay reason.


Moving on, you say that discarding to a discard pile and returning to the bottom of the deck are functionally identical if only one search is permitted per area. That's true. But I don't see why it explains the lack of instructions for WM and trap cards. If it did, then why don't gold cards lack instructions too? Why do gold cards tell you what to do with them after you've written down the value?

Both the rulebook and the card text for gold cards say to return them to the Treasure deck. Yet that's pointless if it's functionally identical to discarding them. Why not just say "write down the value" and that's it? Leave out the line about returning them, just as it's left off the WM and trap cards. Or, as you suggest, you could have just hung onto the gold cards until the end of the Quest before totalling them up.

Same with potions: why does the rulebook insist that you return them to the bottom of the deck when it really doesn't matter? What matters is that you, the player, get rid of the card you're holding.

In other words, if discarding and returning to the deck are functionally the same in 1st edition, then all gold / WM / trap cards should say "return to the Treasure pile". Or they should all say nothing about what to do with them. Similarly, the rules should say the same thing for all of them, or say nothing for any of them. Why are they described differently if it amounts to the same thing?


From all of the above, the conclusion I draw is that the designers wanted you to return gold (and potions) to the bottom of the deck, and made very sure you knew about it... but either didn't want you to return traps and WMs, or didn't care either way.

The trouble is, that doesn't make much sense either with one search per area, or with multiple searches.

- With one search per area, there's no reason to return any cards to the deck at all (you'll never get that far down). So there's no reason to include instructions for returning gold but not for traps and WMs.

- With multiple searches, it's really important that you do return traps and WMs to the bottom of the deck to maintain danger in the deck and prevent the infinite money pit problem.

That's why it looks to me like the 1st ed treasure rules don't make sense from a perspective of "What did the designers actually intend?" I can't figure out what they were trying to achieve.

The fact that they revamped the treasure cards in the 2nd edition speaks volumes. Whatever their intention was, either it didn't come across properly in the 1st edition, or they actually reversed course and changed their minds about how searching for treasure should work.

When I look at the 1st ed rules I just see a tangled mess. The only way to make that tangled mess work sensibly is to allow only one search per area, so for the practical purpose of actually playing 1st edition, go for it. But whether that was intended is another story.

It's a bit like the argument I was having with MonsterMotor over on the falling block trap thread. MM feels that the 1st ed falling block trap rules, as written, are incoherent and broken, and players need to 'fix' or 'repair' them by making some sensible assumptions. By contrast, I think they're internally consistent and clear. Silly, but consistent and straightforward in their silliness--no confusion or interpretation needed. It turns out I have the same problem with the 1st ed Treasure deck rules that MM has with the 1st ed falling block trap rules. Oh the irony!


However... as I was typing all of that out, a thought occurred to me. Maybe the writers were specific about "bottom of the deck" because they were worried about the players (kids) discarding used Treasure cards to the TOP of the deck. That seems self-evidently absurd to an adult player or an experienced boardgamer, but it wouldn't necessarily be obvious to a young kid. "What do we do with this now? I guess we put it back where it came from."

Unfortunately that still doesn't explain why wandering monsters and traps don't tell you what to do with them. Putting a WM or trap back on the top of the deck would cause just as much trouble as putting a gold card back on top.

Enlightenment on these issues is requested.

[Kurgan]

Maybe it was meant as a check on what could happen in Prince Magnus' gold. Were they afraid a hero would get killed and then the GM would have the monsters steal the chest to re-hide it?