Ye Olde Inn

Hi!

What are your house rules about opening doors and death?

1) Opening doors:

Is a hero allowed to open a door and stay outside of the room...or is he forced to enter the room whose door he has just opened? The very first German rules say he must enter the room in order to reveal its contents..and no space must be passed twice so he isn't allowed to go back. How do you handle opening doors and entering rooms?

2) If a hero dies what happens?

I distinguish between losing one's last body point vs. reaching a negative value, e.g. -1. If a hero loses his last body point (e.g. he goes from 1 to 0 or from 2 to 0) he is unconscious and falls to the floor...on his next turn he is allowed to drink a healing potion if available or cure himself with a spell. If he hasn't any spells or potions he dies.

If he has a negative life value, e.g. goes from 1 to -1 he immediately dies and cannot be saved by any potion or spell.
In this case he loses all gold he has found in the current quest so far...but his items (weapons, armor etc.) stays on the square he just died on and another hero is allowed to pick it up.

How are your house rules? A dead hero must be punished for not being careful etc. but it would be too mean if he lost all gold and items...e.g. Orc's Bane...and no other hero is allowed to have it.

A hero can open a door AND see the content of the room (or what's in line of sight if it's a corridor) without actually entering the room.

Zero Bp is zero Bp is dead, end of story. His equipment stays on the floor to be picked up as you said. I think monsters can destroy it though.
As for un-retrieved artifacts... I would replace them over the next couple of quest. Some are essential for completing quests after all.

New idea: The Hero who opens the door may or may not choose to walk in.
In any case, one of the monsters just found in that room may intervene (move and attack) IMMEDIATELY after that hero has finished his turn.
The monster has a turn again in Morcar's/Zargon's/EWP's turn.

Related: A monster may open a door if the room behind has been used by any hero.

A Hero can stealthily open a door and peek in, roll a red die:

6: you see everything in LOS in the room, and the monsters fail to notice you; they are engaged in something else and distracted. You may close the door quietly and they will be none the wiser.
5-2: you see inside the room, but they see you if they roll higher.
1: as you open the door it CREEEAAAKKKKSSS and they all turn to see who the hell is making such a racket. Then they immediately attack.

Once a hero expends a point of their movement to open a door, I reveal the contents of the next room. If it contains monsters, the heroes can act as normal until my turn. On my turn, enemies immediately move out of the range of thrown daggers or the crossbow, and typically line up one of their sides next to any traps. My players worship diagonal attack weapons for this reason.

I also forbid any hero from benefiting from two artifacts simultaneously on their turn. That's their turn, not each round.

My

1) Opening doors

I allow heroes and monsters to either open or close each door once in their turn. So a hero could open a door and see a room full of monsters but they would not be able to close it again in their turn, they could move to another square and the next hero could move and close the door though.

If you are adjacent to a door you can hold it closed to prevent monsters from attacking you, monsters can also do the same forcing heroes to move back so that the quest progresses.

Undiscovered monsters can't open doors unless there's some kind of ambush described in the quest notes. Discovered monsters can open doors to undiscovered areas and in doing so summon reinforcements, but I tend not to do this very often as it's not in the spirit of the game.

2) Death

We play that zero is dead too. That's what the UK rules say and I agree. My one gripe is that because the Wizard only has 4 body points he has to use healing potions and spells when he's at at least 1 body point, thus wasting a potential +1 body point, but short of altering the Wizards BP to 5, there's no way round this, because zero is dead, end of story.

Other heroes can pick up the dead heroes stuff if they want but I have limits on how many weapons each can carry so a weapon of some kind will nearly always get left behind. This prevents returning weaponry to the same player's newly created hero at the start of the next quest, and so gives death some significance.

I have an untested houserule I'd like to try for Hero death, as I don't think the rule for a spellcaster casting a spell works in any significant way other than providing a second chance for traps. My idea is when reduced to 0 or fewer Body Points from damage, a Hero doesn't die but is in shock (per the EQP and BQP). [edit] The Hero now has a chance for healing from a spell or ally's potion [edit], if he can get it fast enough. If the Hero is again damaged while at 0 Body Points from shock, then he is dead.

A hero reduced to 0 BP has to be provided with a spell or potion (by himself included) until the beginning of his next turn.
That's how we play it. It's less drastic than the original rules because we play a free turn order.

As Morcar/Zargon, I'm drastic in other respects. I kill heroes nonetheless.