TRAINING QUEST Rogar's Hall

[Oftkilted]

Assuming that the desk you just backed up against wasn’t a Mimic. Or that it didn’t have a ranged weapon. Or a weapon with reach. And that you managed to protect the appropriate hero, and they actually drew a wandering monster card when the hero had all of their adjacent blocks covered.

In the NA rules deck you shuffle the cards before a hero draws from the treasure deck (p.16) That’s actually explicitly stated. “IMPORTANT! The Treasure Cards must be shuffled before a Hero draws from the deck.”

While you might be able to “search in rooms and passages” there are no rules for being able to draw from the treasure deck for searches in Passages. You can only draw from the treasure deck from room searches. (I mentioned that in the Differences between EU and NA rules thread. Pits, however, are classified as rooms and could contain a secret door or treasure.

In the EU version you also loose all normal treasure pulled from the deck at the end of the quest. Which means your found potions expire.

While you can search from both sides in the EU version, I’d assume that if the door said you can’t find it except from a specific location that would apply.

Also ... Zargon doesn’t put out trap tiles when they search for traps in the NA edition. They just point to the tile with the trap.

[Kurgan]

Thanks Oftkilted... but No Mimics in Hero Quest (unless you're using the "Evil Wizard Deck", which I am)... (very rare) monster with a ranged weapon can't shoot through the other Heroes to reach you anyway unless you left a diagonal opening, but I'm not aware of any Wandering Monsters that would have ranged attacks in any of the Quest packs, much less the game system.

We always read it meaning "be sure you shuffle before you play, dummy!" (as opposed to every time, oops!)

Yeah, I admitted that you can only search corridors for Treasure in the Premiere edition rules, which I freely cribbed into my own house rules.

In the EU version you also loose all normal treasure pulled from the deck at the end of the quest. Which means your found potions expire.

That part I missed. Good catch! Actually I'm not sure I agree with that interpretation. I read it as meaning you write it down, but don't hang onto the card (not that you have to "use it or lose it" by the end of the Quest).

Well yeah, if the Quest notes say something specific, you go with that. There are always exceptions...

Also ... Zargon doesn’t put out trap tiles when they search for traps in the NA edition. They just point to the tile with the trap.

If you don't do it though, wouldn't that be a little weird? I'll have to re-read that section in the different versions.

[j_dean80]

It’s up to the Heroes to remember which squares you pointed to. I’ve had several times where they forgot and either stepped on a trap or had to use another search. It’s a nice bonus for Zargon.

[Orc26]

General rule: You can find secret doors by searching, but not with monsters
Specific rule: Pixie can find secret doors (and traps) that you can see regardless of monsters
Most specific rule: Special secret door can only be found from the hallway.

Following the specific beats general rule of thumb from some other game system (which one eludes me at the moment); the Pixie cannot find the secret door except if the druid can see it from the hallway side of the wall.

[Kurgan]

Off topic, but I see by my status that I'm now officially an Ogre!

Shout to my fellow monsters...

Hire me in your next quest for 200 gold coins.

[bigmiked43]

Hire me in your next quest for 200 gold coins.

Do you have 10 body points?

[Kurgan]

come see me and find out

Pathfinder Ogre

[Davane]

I played through Rogar's Hall, and found it somewhat lacking. I am not sure what the designers had in mind when they created it...

The most obvious way through Rogar's Hall is that the Heroes will find the chest guarded by Abominations or by the Dread Warriors first, and then press onwards to face the Gargoyle. The passage leading to secret door G is largely irrelevant, as most players will conclude that it's a quick way back to the Stairs, and it's likely that the players will backtrack to where they fought the Skeletons and continue exploring to find the final chest. The players will then probably find the secret door from the final chest room and return to the stairs.

Given the choices of direction in the quest, The characters are most likely to encounter the Abominations first, since there's two routes leading to them compared to the one route to the Dread Warriors. You could easily remove the entire route with the Orcs from the left of the middle room (with the Stairway) to even out the chances, and provide minimal changes to the quest. Mathematically, assuming 50/50 chances at decision points, the chance to reach the Abominations first is 75%, and the chance to reach the Dread Warriors first is a mere 25%.

Personally, the biggest fix I would recommend for the quest is to swap the doors leading out of rooms D containing the Abominations and Dread Warriors. If the obvious door is leading to the guards, whilst the secret door is leading to the corridor, there's a greater chance that the party will backtrack to reach the second chest, before realising that they need to search for a secret door to find the third chest and the Gargoyle, making it more likely that the party will continue through corridor G.

[HispaZargon]

Hi. In this new Hasbro promo video you can see I guess an early prototype of Rogar's Hall quest map (minute 1:30).

The map is fully different than the one finally published for this quest by Hasbro. It shows bad sized/placed furniture symbols and it does not include any letter for the notes written below, although notes' texts are mostly the same ones as the notes finally published, it seems to be a mockup or prototype, so no much to say about it... or yes!

I think it is quite interesting to see that lower page includes a note indicating this quest is the first one for the heroes... without any traps or secret doors, mmmm... could it be just something derived from the empty quest map template they were using to edit the quest or could had been Hasbro thinking in a first step to replace The Trial classical intro quest by Rogar's Hall one for the 2021 remake's questbook? We will probably never know it but I think such idea would had been posible during first designing steps of the remake. I know it is just speculation but, what do you think?

[Kurgan]

Stephen Baker did talk about how back in the old days they were working with photocopies and paste. I wonder if maybe it was planned as a first quest from what you say above, but they decided against it with the feedback and went with the classic lineup. His quest book had 13 instead of 14 quests, maybe knowing Rogar's Hall was of lesser quality they made it a freebie instead. Then again the whole focus of Prophecy of Telor is like a return of the veteran champions to questing (much as Baker himself was returning to quest-writing after a long hiatus) rather than brand new heroes who have just learned "the lesson of failure" starting off on their own.

You have an eye for detail... I wasn't paying close attention and missed that he was even using Rogar's Hall much less a beta version of it.

Edit: I AM the Frozen Horror! Also, whipped up a quick classic edition of this "beta" Rogar's Hall. I guess the letters can go where you want them to... it could be any quest though. Interesting that the Wandering Monster is still the natcha Goblins, but the icon shown is the Orc!

Below is the oddball quest map re-created in heroscribe, also the zip archive has it in XML format.