EU vs. NA rule comparison

[The Admiral]

"Eliminated" sounds much more gamey than RPG adventurey. You get used to the terminology and style after awhile. I totally agree about the "Monopoly syndrome" kids learn the rules thing. It was rather difficult for us to understand "roll 1 red die for each of his mind points" thing for Spell use at first. We also tried to bend the rules with Armor usage all the time.

I explain the Treasure searching NA mechanic like this... yes, your character doesn't "move" (he moves right onto the trap square when disarming though!), but this action is him searching the entire room, which would include any bits of furniture. That's why if there's a trapped bit of furniture (including a chest), if you didn't search for (and disarm) any traps first, then you'll end up stumbling upon it and paying the consequences.

The BQP stuffs this up a bit by actually putting a perfectly safe Treasure chest in a room, and then putting a row of Trap TILES around it (which would only make any sense if you were using rules that required you to stand next to the Chest to 'Open' it). Usually the Quest notes indicate "if one searches for Treasure without first disarming the trap..." Or what if you have multiple trapped furniture in the same room? Then with that you'd have to disarm them both before searching for Treasure or your unprotected search is going to spring one or both of them and harm you (do Furniture Traps end your turn? that would answer that question).

And after searching, you quietly return to your original square, with your loot in your hands (and possibly some wounds too if you forgot to disarm the trap first!).

Yes, I require my Heroes to actually go to the front of the chest to open it. If a trap search revealed "The Cupboard/chest is trapped" I would require the Hero to stand in front of the cupboard/chest to disarm the trap. Otherwise a general treasure search of a room will reveal any non chest treasure, and trigger any non chest furniture traps.

[Zenithfleet]

Chests obviously have to be opened. “You search a room” Yep it’s a room and there’s a chest in the middle of it. You can’t stand in a corner and poke at it with a stick from across the room.

And the great debate continues!

I play it your way and always have. But it's equally arguable--as Kurgan says--that you're meant to use the abstract 'search for treasure' mechanic instead.

I explain the Treasure searching NA mechanic like this... yes, your character doesn't "move" (he moves right onto the trap square when disarming though!), but this action is him searching the entire room, which would include any bits of furniture. That's why if there's a trapped bit of furniture (including a chest), if you didn't search for (and disarm) any traps first, then you'll end up stumbling upon it and paying the consequences.

I suspect that's how it was meant to be played in the EU version as well. But it wasn't made clear, so a lot of people play it the intuitive way, which is to move to the chests and open them. Searching is rather abstract in comparison and a lot of us would have been puzzled by it.

Eh, they're both excellent choices. Whatever floats yer boat. - some robot

As kids we used a weird hybrid version of the rules in which you had to physically move up to chests and open them, but searching for treasure would tell you what was in the chest without actually getting it. Like some kind of magical X-ray. It made no sense in story terms, but it worked pretty well in terms of gameplay.

"I search for treasure."
"There's 100gold in that chest."
"Cool!" *moves up to the chest and opens it*
TRAP!
"I fell for it! I should've known!"

The BQP stuffs this up a bit by actually putting a perfectly safe Treasure chest in a room, and then putting a row of Trap TILES around it (which would only make any sense if you were using rules that required you to stand next to the Chest to 'Open' it). Usually the Quest notes indicate "if one searches for Treasure without first disarming the trap..." Or what if you have multiple trapped furniture in the same room? Then with that you'd have to disarm them both before searching for Treasure or your unprotected search is going to spring one or both of them and harm you (do Furniture Traps end your turn? that would answer that question).

And after searching, you quietly return to your original square, with your loot in your hands (and possibly some wounds too if you forgot to disarm the trap first!).

At least some of the EU quest designers disagreed about how treasure chests work too. There are several in Kellar's Keep with pit traps around them--presumably to catch players who move up to the chests.

"Eliminated" sounds much more gamey than RPG adventurey.

Funny you should mention that. The EU rules also tend to use boardgame terms like 'remove his playing piece from the board', as if it's chess.

Having recently read through some 80s Basic D&D rulebooks, I was struck by how strongly the way they're written reminds me of the North American HeroQuest rules. "Zargon, you should do this... Zargon, you should make sure the players enjoy this... Zargon, be careful not to do this..." All very RPG gamesmastery.

The EU rulebook, on the other hand, reads like a boardgame rulebook. There's very little in there about making sure the players enjoy themselves, being some kind of referee / host, or things like that. You roll your dice, you win or you die, you get more gold than your brother and punch the air (and then he punches you), you pack it up and play something else.

The more I look into the history of the game's development--at least, what little we know about it--the more I suspect that the NA and EU editions of HeroQuest were based on fundamentally different philosophies. This might explain some of the acrimony behind the Milton Bradley / Games Workshop split.

NA HeroQuest--and probably Stephen Baker's original prototype--was meant as an introduction to pen-and-paper RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons.

EU HeroQuest on the other hand--which was the first published version, with Games Workshop's help--was meant to be a boardgame first and foremost. Probably from GW's point of view it was meant to introduce kids to more complex wargames, tabletop miniatures games and the like. Competitive games with win conditions. Which just happened to be the kind of games GW sold. (Edit: or was increasingly moving toward selling.)

My hunch is that Baker's more D&D-ish prototype was stripped down by GW for the published release--which made it 'better' from a market boardgame player's point of view. For the NA edition, Baker may well have put a lot of the D&Dism back into it again--which made it 'better' from an RPG player's point of view.

I don't have much evidence for this apart from what Baker said in that Kaos interview, contrasted with the rather cutting comments made by Bryan Ansell on a certain blog post a few years back. But the fact that there's three search types in the NA version, rather than the more streamlined two in the EU version (traps and secret doors are a single search), makes my spidey sense tingle. That feels like something fiddly from the original prototype that was refined for publication by GW and then defiantly put back in again for the NA version because it's more D&Dish, dammit.

All of this has mildly troubling implications for international reception of the new Hasbro remake...

[Oftkilted]

We all play so differently.

I allow all potions found to be kept. The potion is written on the sheet and the card discarded. However, my treasure searches are very restrictive. Only one search per room, so if there is a specific item there, including rusty weapons, then there is no card for that room. This, combined with no shopping or recovery of BP's and spells between sequential quests balances thing out. Discarded cards do go back in the pack though at the end of each individual quest.

This, combined with EW cards, speeds up play immensely.

My EW cards are not drawn as quickly as the rules for them indicate though, and it is directly linked to the size of the party. The more Heroes/henchmen, the faster the cards are drawn, and the more I can have in my hand. For example, a party of 4 Heroes with 0-2 henchmen would get 1 card per 4 turns and allow a max hand of 4.

Do are you playing EU rules? Or NA rules?

NA rules already allow keeping potions between quests. While allowing multiple searches in a room speeds up going through the treasure deck... which leaves more and more bad stuff in the deck.

[Kurgan]

The BQP stuffs this up a bit by actually putting a perfectly safe Treasure chest in a room, and then putting a row of Trap TILES around it (which would only make any sense if you were using rules that required you to stand next to the Chest to 'Open' it). Usually the Quest notes indicate "if one searches for Treasure without first disarming the trap..." Or what if you have multiple trapped furniture in the same room? Then with that you'd have to disarm them both before searching for Treasure or your unprotected search is going to spring one or both of them and harm you (do Furniture Traps end your turn? that would answer that question).

And after searching, you quietly return to your original square, with your loot in your hands (and possibly some wounds too if you forgot to disarm the trap first!).

At least some of the EU quest designers disagreed about how treasure chests work too. There are several in Kellar's Keep with pit traps around them--presumably to catch players who move up to the chests.

"Eliminated" sounds much more gamey than RPG adventurey.

Funny you should mention that. The EU rules also tend to use boardgame terms like 'remove his playing piece from the board', as if it's chess.

Having recently read through some 80s Basic D&D rulebooks, I was struck by how strongly the way they're written reminds me of the North American HeroQuest rules. "Zargon, you should do this... Zargon, you should make sure the players enjoy this... Zargon, be careful not to do this..." All very RPG gamesmastery.

The EU rulebook, on the other hand, reads like a boardgame rulebook. There's very little in there about making sure the players enjoy themselves, being some kind of referee / host, or things like that. You roll your dice, you win or you die, you get more gold than your brother and punch the air (and then he punches you), you pack it up and play something else.

The more I look into the history of the game's development--at least, what little we know about it--the more I suspect that the NA and EU editions of HeroQuest were based on fundamentally different philosophies. This might explain some of the acrimony behind the Milton Bradley / Games Workshop split.

NA HeroQuest--and probably Stephen Baker's original prototype--was meant as an introduction to pen-and-paper RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons.

EU HeroQuest on the other hand--which was the first published version, with Games Workshop's help--was meant to be a boardgame first and foremost. Probably from GW's point of view it was meant to introduce kids to more complex wargames, tabletop miniatures games and the like. Competitive games with win conditions. Which just happened to be the kind of games GW sold. (Edit: or was increasingly moving toward selling.)

My hunch is that Baker's more D&D-ish prototype was stripped down by GW for the published release--which made it 'better' from a market boardgame player's point of view. For the NA edition, Baker may well have put a lot of the D&Dism back into it again--which made it 'better' from an RPG player's point of view.

I don't have much evidence for this apart from what Baker said in that Kaos interview, contrasted with the rather cutting comments made by Bryan Ansell on a certain blog post a few years back. But the fact that there's three search types in the NA version, rather than the more streamlined two in the EU version (traps and secret doors are a single search), makes my spidey sense tingle. That feels like something fiddly from the original prototype that was refined for publication by GW and then defiantly put back in again for the NA version because it's more D&Dish, dammit.

All of this has mildly troubling implications for international reception of the new Hasbro remake...

Very insightful. I grew up with the NA version and I feel very nostalgic about its mix of "RPG" and "Board game." The Japanese version is interesting introducing some more RPG type stuff. But when I see some modders adding lots more RPG type stuff, making the game much more complex, I start to lose interest. Yes, pencil & Paper RPGS and War Games (Battlemasters was the Hero Quest equivalent of that genre) have their place, but this was unique. Easier for casual and younger players to get into, and easily moddable if one so chose. And for the record I never even played D&D until around age 40 (and just because a friend insisted, and I own the Star Wars Saga Edition rulebook but have only used it twice... but each to their own).

I am all for adding MORE Heroes, monsters, etc. but all you need is an extra set of cards or three, maybe a few more tokens, but nothing too fancy. No need for fancy polyhedral dice. While new miniatures are nice, you can use existing ones as stand ins for the newly stated characters I've come up with (and none of my ideas are truly "original" being most often inspired, sometimes loosely, by ideas from others especially on these forums). I give the players an extra opportunity to draw a card, no extra math, no charts or graphs, etc. I like to keep it simple, that's my style/motivation. Others do it differently. You could after all, play full fledged D&D and use the Heroquest assets with that scenario. Nothing stopping you! (just add the extra dice, etc).

[Oftkilted]

Chests obviously have to be opened. “You search a room” Yep it’s a room and there’s a chest in the middle of it. You can’t stand in a corner and poke at it with a stick from across the room.

And the great debate continues!

I play it your way and always have. But it's equally arguable--as Kurgan says--that you're meant to use the abstract 'search for treasure' mechanic instead.

This appears to be a difference between the EU and the NA editions actually. The language used for chests (and trapped chests) appears to be different.

Every place that I’ve seen talking about “opening chests” occurs in the EU version. This is completely different than the verbiage in the NA release, which calls out “searching for treasure” triggering things.

Here’s a couple examples:

The Rescue -
EU: “Any player who opens the chest without searching for traps...”
NA: “if a hero searches for treasure before the trap is disarmed...”

Orc Warlord -
EU: “Anyone who opens the chest without searching for traps...”
NA: no text on chest in room, random trap located there

Bastion of chaos:
EU: Open the chest without searching for traps, trigger trap.
NA: search for treasure before trap is disarmed, trap is triggered

EU Version:
Treasure is found by searching (ie must search in the appropriate location)
However, chests all have verbiage that they “must be opened”

NA: all the rooms with chests that have traps trigger on “searching for treasure before searching for traps”.

Looking at the references to Traps:

Found Traps:
NA: Can be disarmed NEXT turn, are not placed on the board
EU: EU spear traps are always disarmed when found, pits and blocks are located and placed, and “may later be disarmed and removed by the dwarf or any character with the tool kit equipment card” (Which indicates that to have the tool kit you need to have the tool kit equipment card, and equipment would therefore be limited by the number of pieces of equipment cards in the deck.) Note: The “later” isn’t defined.

Traps are Triggered:
EU: Triggered by moving onto a trapped square OR “opening a trapped chest without searching.” (p.13)
- So the trapped chest must be opened to be triggered (implying that if there are multiple chests that are in a room a choice may be made on what to do with them)
NA: Triggered “whenever a character moves onto a trapped square or for furniture/chests searches for treasure without searching for traps.” P.17-18

Traps (NA): “Springing a furniture/chest trap” p.20
If you search for treasure before searching for traps “any chest/furniture traps in the room will be sprung”, ending your turn
- This would indicate that when designing rooms that there is only one piece of trapped furniture
Traps can be disarmed, but to disarm the trap you “declare the attempt to disarm and move onto the square” and then attempt the disarm (p.21) which doesn’t quite work for chests/furniture. So I would gather that you’d move up next to the piece of furniture/chest to attempt the disarm as you can’t stand on chests/furniture.

Traps: (EU) when sprung force the player to immediately stop and they can’t do anything until their next turn. There is no callout that “any furniture traps are triggered when performing the open” so there could potentially be multiple pieces of trapped furniture/chests in a room? Though traps are all pointed out and identified by a search (unless otherwise indicated in the quest book) However the “process to disarm” a chest isn’t defined in the book and is entirely on the cards for the dwarf and toolkit. Where the dwarf can always disarm the traps (unlike the NA version which fails on black shields) and the toolkit disarms on anything but skulls.

Interesting that the dwarf is extremely “OP” in regards to traps in the EU version.

[Orc26]

I remember HeroQuest being one of the only games where I used my consumables. (It drove my Brother nuts when the barbarian would charge into a room drinking everything he had on hand and make two attacks (heroic brew) with extra attack dice (two potions of strength). Was there a boss in the room? All I see is a puddle of red stuff on the floor... wall... ceiling... and my axe...
I'm glad North America didn't have the return the potion card rule because of this. I bet he feels the exact opposite way...

[Zenithfleet]

Chests obviously have to be opened. “You search a room” Yep it’s a room and there’s a chest in the middle of it. You can’t stand in a corner and poke at it with a stick from across the room.

And the great debate continues!

I play it your way and always have. But it's equally arguable--as Kurgan says--that you're meant to use the abstract 'search for treasure' mechanic instead.

This appears to be a difference between the EU and the NA editions actually. The language used for chests (and trapped chests) appears to be different.

Every place that I’ve seen talking about “opening chests” occurs in the EU version. This is completely different than the verbiage in the NA release, which calls out “searching for treasure” triggering things.

Huh, the plot thickens!

Are you referring to the 1st or 2nd edition EU rulebook, by the way?

I sometimes get confused because even though I'm an EU player, I lost my original rulebook long ago and went through a period of using the NA rules, until I eventually bought a replacement EU book off eBay. That plus house rules from childhood (the aforementioned 'X-raying for gold' business) make me remember things that aren't necessarily there, or mix things up between editions.

That bit about the Tool Kit / needing the equipment card is interesting. It seems clear that in the EU 1st edition you had to buy the physical card, and the copies were intentionally limited, what with the duplicates of a few items. But they replaced those duplicates with the Wizard items in the 2nd edition, meaning everything now had one card each. It then became arguable that they were just intended as a handy reference guide for you to copy the info onto your character sheet (like an Armoury but done as a deck rather than a sheet/box insert).

When the Adventure Design Kit came out, it had a new 'expanded' character sheet with more room to write your stuff on. The example in the ADK of a partly filled-in sheet shows things like equipment and potions from the Treasure deck (not just healing). Which suggests that by that point the designers had wholly abandoned the idea of to buying physical cards and returning potions to the deck. Or they just made a mistake.

[Kurgan]

Interesting point about the Adventure Design Kit, which I believe was never released in US. Most of this stuff I only heard about in the 2000s, through the Inn or other fan sites.

[Oftkilted]

Chests obviously have to be opened. “You search a room” Yep it’s a room and there’s a chest in the middle of it. You can’t stand in a corner and poke at it with a stick from across the room.

And the great debate continues!

I play it your way and always have. But it's equally arguable--as Kurgan says--that you're meant to use the abstract 'search for treasure' mechanic instead.

This appears to be a difference between the EU and the NA editions actually. The language used for chests (and trapped chests) appears to be different.

Every place that I’ve seen talking about “opening chests” occurs in the EU version. This is completely different than the verbiage in the NA release, which calls out “searching for treasure” triggering things.

Huh, the plot thickens!

Are you referring to the 1st or 2nd edition EU rulebook, by the way?

I sometimes get confused because even though I'm an EU player, I lost my original rulebook long ago and went through a period of using the NA rules, until I eventually bought a replacement EU book off eBay. That plus house rules from childhood (the aforementioned 'X-raying for gold' business) make me remember things that aren't necessarily there, or mix things up between editions.

That bit about the Tool Kit / needing the equipment card is interesting. It seems clear that in the EU 1st edition you had to buy the physical card, and the copies were intentionally limited, what with the duplicates of a few items. But they replaced those duplicates with the Wizard items in the 2nd edition, meaning everything now had one card each. It then became arguable that they were just intended as a handy reference guide for you to copy the info onto your character sheet (like an Armoury but done as a deck rather than a sheet/box insert).

When the Adventure Design Kit came out, it had a new 'expanded' character sheet with more room to write your stuff on. The example in the ADK of a partly filled-in sheet shows things like equipment and potions from the Treasure deck (not just healing). Which suggests that by that point the designers had wholly abandoned the idea of to buying physical cards and returning potions to the deck. Or they just made a mistake.

I am (apparently) using the 1st edition British version. The wording for requiring the “tool kit card” to disarm traps is identical in both first and second edition. Which implies that even with the change in removing items from the equipment deck heroes still would have to have the card. And you wouldn’t have multiple players with equipment overlap. It’s the dwarf and the one disarm kit.

1st edition It also is interesting that there is a call-out that changes where you have to be to disarm the trap. In the 1st edition rules you have to be on the square with the trap to disarm it. In the second edition you can disarm it when adjacent. So if you fail the disarm in first edition ... you just triggered it. Makes pit traps much more dangerous as you fell in. Though by the card you would still lose a body point.

I do find amusing the fact that the “searching for traps” is called out specifically as auto-magically disarming traps on chests in 2nd edition. With the change to requiring someone being “next to” the item being disarmed it would be perfect to require a chest to actually be disarmed. It’s implied they’re disarmed when you search (for traps) in the 1st edition Rulebook (IE they’re triggered if you open but don’t search first). Even with that, there is no reference for what happens with traps on furniture in second edition BV.

Either way, the the wording describing “opening chests” is in the quest book, and that is consistent between the initial and the later release. (The one with the maze and the one with the trial.)

I don’t get the NA change that blocked wizards from using the Spirit Blade. That means they would be completely useless in fighting any monster that is not affected by spells or anything other than a Spirit Blade. That’s just kinda bonkers. Either that or they need an alternate “spirit blade” type weapon for Wizards.

[Jalapenotrellis]

Wizard can still attack the minions, buff allies with courage or rock skin, heal twice, or buff allies with positioning spells like veil of mist or pass through rock.