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Bareheaded Warrior wrote:
The Problems
1. Traps in a row flaw
You can search in a single square width corridor and find (without having to handle) numerous traps, even though it would logically be impossible to get to the subsequent trap squares without having dealt with the first one in some way – this could be resolved by stating that your search ends with the nearest trap found within your search area, this logic is used in certain Quest notes but perhaps should be a standard rule rather than an exception
Bareheaded Warrior wrote:2. Poorly defined/inconsistent search area flaw
Search area isn’t really defined (aside from the searching for traps in a room bit, i.e. you have to be in a room to search for and locate a trap in a room), it isn’t clear whether you can be in a room – in the doorway for example – and perform a trap search and locate a trap on the (adjacent to you) first square in a corridor which is inconsistent but not prohibited expressly as far as I can tell and the search area in a corridor isn’t well defined but I assume it is a single ‘straight stretch of any length’ but there is no information around standing on a corner or other intersection between two corridors and searching both simultaneously
Bareheaded Warrior wrote:3. Assumed movement ignores movement limits flaw
The assumed movement inherent in a trap search can be up to 25 squares long despite your basic maximum movement being 12 this is made even worst by the fact that you could, at a junction, use your action to ‘search for traps' with your assumed movement covering 25 squares in one direction and then roll and move up to 12 squares in another direction, your figure covering a total of 37 squares of movement (assumed and actual) in a single turn.
Bareheaded Warrior wrote:4. Unrevealed Monsters flaw
The assumed movement could cross a T-junction and beyond where there are unrevealed monsters along the other arm of the T. You can discover traps located past the junction without revealing the monsters (as the movement is assumed) but paradox warning - if you then moved down the corridor to disarm a found trap you would discover the presence of the monsters and their presence should have prevented you from searching for the traps that you have already found.
Bareheaded Warrior wrote:5.Inconsistent search conditions flaw
There are discrepancies between the descriptions of the conditions in which you can perform the three different searches in the original which make no sense. Search for treasure can be done when there are no monsters in the room, whereas searching for traps and searching for secret doors can only be done if there are no monsters visible to you, so if you are in a room with no monsters in that room but one stood in the doorway outside the room in the corridor then you would be able to search for treasure in that room but would not be able to search for secret doors or search for traps. In addition, only the “Search for Treasure” has the potential to spawn a Wandering monster outcome but neither of the other two search actions which again is inconsistent.
Bareheaded Warrior wrote:6. Traps behind the door flaw
In the official rules, there is a strange situation that occurs when a trap has been placed on the first square of a room on the Quest Map. As, under the official rules, you cannot search for a trap in a room without being in the room, and stepping into the room, will activate the trap, these become undetectable. For me, the issue with the “Traps on the other side of the door” logic isn’t that it feels unfair (although that is true), it is more that it feels unintended. I don’t get the feeling that the designers of the game set out with the intention of creating this situation, they simply wrote the searching for traps rules, and this surfaced through play as an unintended consequence that they highlighted in the rulebook so that players would have some guidance on how to handle the situation when they inevitably uncovered it.
Bareheaded Warrior wrote:7. Volume of searches flaw
In the US rules a room can be searched for treasure once by every Hero (although in the original UK/EU rules it was search once per room not once per Hero). This results in a volume of treasure found that leads the Heroes to max out on equipment in a brief period, causing advancement to stagnate. It also offers a considerable number of potential searches during the game, four treasure searches per room, plus a secret door search and a trap search – 6 search actions per room plus two additional searches for every corridor with a typical quest featuring maybe 8 rooms and a similar number of corridors that is a potential of over 60 searches, starts to feel like the game should have been named “Hero Search” and you have to keep track of them all!
Bareheaded Warrior wrote:8. Handling Chests and Furniture flaw
In some official quests the layout of traps and chests implies that a Hero needs to be adjacent to a chest to open it, whereas in the official rules chests are a purely decorative indicator that it might be worth searching in this room - Separating chests out of the main search rules and putting them into a separate action resolves this issue.
Bareheaded Warrior wrote:9. Memorizing suspect trap locations
This mechanism is weird, it encourages frustration and conflict. When a hero searches for traps, Zargon only points to the board which squares have a trap. Players may try to disarm or avoid 'suspect' squares only to find out it was not the right square, or may fall into a trap whilst moving to the square they thought was trapped. This is frustrating and often leads to conflict, "but that was the square you pointed at...", "no it wasn't, it was that square", "that one?", "no that one", "so can I climb out of this pit now and reset it so that I can try and disarm the correct square"?
Bareheaded Warrior wrote:10. Searching inside a pit flaw
Again this is inconsistent, you can search for treasure and secret doors “as though it was a distinct room in its own right” but if "it was a distinct room in its own right" then you would be able to search for traps. Why can’t you search for traps – because that makes no sense - how and why would anyone ever build a trap inside a pit, how would you mark it on the board and handle it, but that logic is equally true for secret doors in a pit, how and why would anyone ever locate a secret door inside a pit, fall in and risk death every time they want to use the door, have to avoid the stakes and reset the trap every time they exit the other way. If there is treasure in the pit then put it in the Quest Notes and you find it when you fall in.
In the EU game you don't get treasure from chests by searching. You might arguably be TOLD what's in the chest if you do a search ... but if you actually want the contents, you move over to chests and open them, like doors. It's not actually spelled out in the rules, so I'd have to do a whole post about it to prove this, but it's heavily implied.
One other aspect of gameplay that I don't think has been discussed is competition between players. The original EU ruleset was made with competition in mind. Players could try to get gold before their brother or sister, attack each other, rush off on their own and still stand a fair chance of surviving against the monsters, and so on. Stephen Baker has commented that in practice he found players tended to cooperate and stick together, which led to 'The Maze' being replaced with 'The Trial', and it may well have encouraged the NA edition's rules (which pretty much enforce cooperation and have to increase the difficulty of the monsters as a result). But in the EU 2nd edition, despite adding 'The Trial', the rest of the game was left mostly the same: geared toward competitive each-man-for-himself play, at least in the base game quests.
It's also a good reason for treasure searches to be separate from trap/secret searches. You can only do one or the other on your turn, so you have to weigh up whether to selflessly sacrifice your chance at treasure by doing a trap sweep (helping the players after you) or grab your opportunity to search for treasure instead and get that equipment card off the weapons rack or whatever.
Besides which, most original HQ players were kids, and kids forget to search. The search mechanic itself can be 100% accurate and always find traps because the original game design expects the players to accidentally or deliberately forego searching for traps fairly often.
By 'original' do you mean 'classic NA rather than new Hasbro’?
Hang on--that first sentence isn't correct. In the original EU rules, there is no limit on searches whatsoever (unless I've missed something somewhere). No need to keep track of who's searched what.
Also, the automatically opening secret doors in the EU rules seem like a feature rather than a bug. Not only does it save time, it makes secret doors rather more ambiguous and potentially trap-like. An unwary search could pop open several rooms full of monsters at once.
Bareheaded Warrior wrote:Thank you for a comprehensive response, now I know how other people feel when they are on the receiving end of one of my essays
Bareheaded Warrior wrote:It turns out that whilst I can spew copiously, I’ll have to process and respond in bite-sized chunks (that sentence ended up more gross than anticipated), so first response of many to follow…
Bareheaded Warrior wrote:It isn’t about “realism” it is about not breaking immersion.
Bareheaded Warrior wrote:Yes, another change that occurred during the westward migration and you are right, an interesting one. The EU (or EA) ruleset was described as semi-cooperative, players had the freedom to be as competitive or cooperative as they chose, but as the difficulty of the Quests ramped up (at least in theory, in practise that didn’t work as well as intended) they would presumably learn that they needed to co-operate more in order to achieve their objectives (a good life lesson there). NA edition, enforcing cooperation, “thou shalt cooperate” I found less appealing.
Bareheaded Warrior wrote:Hang on--that first sentence isn't correct. In the original EU rules, there is no limit on searches whatsoever (unless I've missed something somewhere). No need to keep track of who's searched what.
7. In the EU/EA second edition rules searching for treasure in a room (and you can’t search for treasure in a passageway) only returns a result once so there is no reason why you would ever do it more than once. This implies that you need a way to mark off a room as searched (but not be whom) as GM, otherwise how would you know whether a hero’s search for treasure in a room should return a treasure card or nothing (as it has already been searched). Searching for traps and secret doors is not limited, but as all secret doors and traps are revealed by a search in a specific area, again there would be no reason to search the same area again. Effectively this means 1 search per room (for treasure) and 1 per room/passageway (for traps and secret doors) as a maximum.
Bareheaded Warrior wrote:When, a decade ago, I first discovered this site and the NA edition rules I was converted by the big ticket items that the NA rules introduced, multiple BP monsters and Dread spells mainly, so I eagerly switched to using them as my starting position. Much play later I have discovered whilst those big ticket items are definitely an improvement, the rest of the NA rules are less great.
Some issues in the EU/EA have been fixed, in full or in part, others have not been touched. Those that have been ‘fixed’ often the correct issue was identified but the fix was poorly thought out, worded or implemented, sometimes causing more issues than it fixed.
Some of the additional rules introduced I’m not keen on from a principles point of view (like the ones mentioned above to ‘force’ cooperation) and some seem pointless – searching inside a pit (why?), or are so badly worded that it isn’t whether it is even possible to get yourself into a situation when the rule could even apply – saving yourself from death through a healing spell.
Much of the text has been rewritten but in such a way that it is more ambiguous than it was before.
Bareheaded Warrior wrote:To be clear I have no issue with found secret doors defaulting to an open state (I have kept that as is in my own version). The problem is that finding a secret door, automatically opens it AND you can find a secret door whilst you are miles away from it. This combination of results isn’t great, the NA version ‘fixes’ this by making a found secret door stay closed, but I think that is the wrong fix, the problem isn’t with found secret doors being automatically opened, that in my opinion is correct, the problem is that you can find a secret door whilst you are in a galaxy far far away.
Picture this...
Hero wandering through dungeon, “This protruding piece of rock looks conveniently placed and suspiciously shaped, I’ll push it and see what happens, might be nothing”. Grinding of stone on stone, opens/reveals a secret door, with a bunch of monsters on the other side. Finding hero shouts a warning to the other heroes, they tell him to stay in position and try and block the monsters from getting out of the room, whilst they rush to his aid. He points out that he can’t do this as he is actually 100ft away from the secret door that he found, and worse he is actually behind the other heroes, they are closer to the secret door that he found than he is, so blocking whilst tactically sound is mind-bendingly impossible.
I should stress that nothing I've said is meant to be a complaint about your own efforts to fix the problems you see.
In the case of HQ, most of the abstract search stuff doesn't bother me. But the idea that the Dwarf could clear away a pit or a fallen block really annoyed me even as a 10-year-old. That broke the sense of immersion instantly. Clearing fallen blocks was quickly houseruled away, and removing pits followed a while later. Yet for other people, digging through rubble or filling in a pit probably seems much more plausible than finding a trap at the far end of the board.
(I still remain stubbornly convinced that the Dwarf was never meant to be able to remove fallen blocks, and that 'trap tiles' only referred to pits. Otherwise some of the quest effects wouldn't work as intended because he'd just press the undo button. But that's not how it was written, so oh well.)
I wonder too if the NA edition had a more 'heroic' view of the heroes in general. The EU rules seem to take a more lowbrow sword 'n' sorcery attitude where the characters are in it for the gold and the glory, and might not be entirely trustworthy. I like the way they (theoretically at least) learn to work together, naturally through extended play, and eventually become real heroes who save the Empire.
The flipside is that if you play the EU game with players who insist on cooperating from the start, or only one player is controlling all the heroes, the base game is far too easy.
Of course, if you're assuming that placing the room's contents on the board means he must be able to see into the room he just opened, then I can see how it makes no sense to be a long way away. But there are other rooms in the game that open spontaneously and their contents are laid out before the Heroes are close enough to see everything in them, like the ambush at the start of Kellar's Keep. It's necessary because the Morcar/Zargon player can't move a monster that isn't on the board yet.
Okay, you're going to have to explain this one to me ...?
Firstly, I can't find any rule in the EU saying you can't search for treasure in a passageway. It's never going to get you anything but a Treasure card, but you can still do it.
Secondly, why do you say that searching for treasure in a room only returns a result once? Why can't you just search again and get another Treasure card? I see nothing in the rules prohibiting multiple searches.
Let's see ...
In the 2nd ed EU rules, 'Searching' on p11 explains the rules for both kinds of search by talking about both rooms and passages. No distinction saying treasure searches are only allowed in rooms.
p13 under 'Treasure' explains what to do if a specific treasure is hidden in 'the appropriate room'. And I don't think a specific treasure is ever found in a passage. But the text doesn't actually say you can't search passages.
However, on p13 it does say: "If there is no specific treasure listed for that room then the character player must take the top Treasure card." I suppose this could be taken to mean that you only take a card if you search in a room. But I've always read it as just a consequence of the way the paragraph explains things. It starts off talking about what to do about specific noted treasures. Those are always in rooms, so the rest of the paragraph assumes you're in a room.
It also doesn't say that you only return a result once. If you search the same room again, wouldn't you just do the loop again? Check Quest Notes a second time - still no specific treasure listed there - draw another Treasure card.
(Barbarian finds something under the table and stops happily to count his gold. Then Elf finds a potion in an alcove. Then Wizard gets jumped by the wandering monster who's been sneaking up on them the whole time ...)
The counterpoint indicating that you can get Treasure cards by searching in passages is on p14 under 'Wandering monsters':
"If there is no vacant space adjacent to the character who drew the card, the evil wizard player may place the wandering monster in any vacant square in the same room or passage." (Emphasis added.)
That clearly indicates that you can draw a Treasure card in a passage (to get a wandering monster). Ergo, you can search for treasure in passages in the EU game.
Doesn't it? What have I missed?
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