Chests in corridors

[Kurgan]

... the Japanese version (original and HispaZargon's unofficial translation):

This seems to be the version many fans would like to play!

[Kurgan]

Rather than trust me, see for yourself...
NA edition... and the functionally identical remake edition (taken from the Hasbro Customer Care instructions page pdf). Whew!

( Compare to 2nd EU edition, and 1st in the post below it. )

[Bareheaded Warrior]

This will be my last post on this topic as it is getting on my goat!

The "opening" mechanism used for handling closed chests and doors in First edition, Second edition, Japanese edition of HeroQuest* and even in Advanced HeroQuest is independent from and in no way related to the "search for treasure" mechanism, in the same way that the "search for treasure" mechanism is independent from the "attacking a character" mechanism, they are two separate, distinct, different and independent mechanisms

*the North American edition was the exception, as the NA team appear to be the only ones who either misunderstood the rule in the game that they were building on, or chose to significantly rework it.

The "opening" mechanism works like this:

[*] You have to be adjacent to the chest or door that you want to open
[*] You must declare that you want to open the chest or door, and look inside, as it is optional and you can just stand adjacent to them
[*] It is then opened and the EWP reveal what lies inside the chest or the room behind the door
[*] Once opened they cannot be closed
[*] Monsters cannot open chests or doors

Now I'm confused. This is how I've always played it because it made sense, but has that ever actually ever been official in any edition of the EU or NA rules?

What he's describing is homebrew...

It is NOT homebrew it is, always has been and always will be, the official rule under First edition, Second edition, Japanese edition and even Advanced HeroQuest, all versions except for the North American edition

and would help the heroes because a Treasure chest room would get an action-less search of each chest PLUS someone could draw a card in the room (unless they draw a bad card of course).

It is not an action-less search because it is not a search, The "opening" mechanism used for handling chests and doors in First and Second edition* is independent from and in no way related to the "search for treasure" mechanism, in the same way that the "search for treasure" mechanism is independent from the "attacking a character" mechanism, they are two separate, distinct, different and independent mechanisms.

but apparently this is the one off mechanic for this quest

Seriously, stop and think about what text actually gives you that impression? The wording around opening doors and chests is consistent through ALL the quests and the rulebook "look inside the chest", "opens the chest", "opens the door".

The copious text examples that you have provided, with the exception of the first one "A If the character player asks to look inside the treasure chest, he will find" and the quote from the Japanese version which describes the mechanism for opening doors and chests, all the rest relate to the "searching for treasure" mechanism and NOT to the "opening" mechanism which, and I think I may have mentioned this before, are two separate, distinct, different and independent mechanisms, in the same way that the "search for treasure" mechanism is independent from the "attacking a character" mechanism. I could post copious text quotes around the "attacking a character" mechanism here but it wouldn't make any difference to how the "search for treasure" mechanism works.

it says "If the character player asks to look inside the Treasure chest..." which kind of sounds like what you're talking about. Why not just write "if... searches for treasure..."

In HeroQuest opening and looking are synonymous in the context of closed chests and doors, you cannot look into a closed chest without first opening it and you cannot look into a room behind a closed door without first opening the door. Whether you state that you are looking into the chest or looking into the room, or whether you state that you are opening the chest or opening the door, are alternative terms for exactly the same activity, opening and looking.

They could have just written "if... searches for treasure..." IF the "search for treasure" mechanism was used for handling chests and doors, but it isn't which is exactly why they didn't write that. They could have written "if the hero attacks the chest..." if attacking and opening were the same mechanism, but they aren't so they didn't write that either.

[Kurgan]

I know we're arguing about a board game rule interpretation (a tradition of Ye Olde Inn) but I'm not budging on this, and I'd give you the last word but not all of those quotes are mine. While I'm mentioning that I'm summing up my take here which is that I think it's clear that in all but one version, the search itself is what opens the chest, not the invisible action of the hero standing on a square next to the furniture piece. I get that one's imagination can fill in the gaps or one's notion of how to role play something adds little actions to a game like this. Nobody told me I had to balance a treasure chest on top of the barbarian's sword in Prince Magnus' gold, but it worked when we were kids so it was fun and we did it (even though it was never a "rule").

When a hero opens a door, it's actually Zargon doing it and revealing the room, even if we also say the hero is looking into the room and seeing everything and opening the door. It's not a big deal what side you fall on with something like this, practically speaking, except that playing it your way slows the game down a little more and I guess sets up situations where you might want to place trap tiles on all sides of a chest, forcing them to disarm the same number of traps to be able to safely get the treasure.

Making heroes walk up to furniture and possibly getting extra searches in each room was something the designers of the '92 hero packs were considering, it's in their draft notes. Presumably they wanted to make it a little tougher to find the treasure and increase the suspense, but they abandoned it. In practice this would have again made the solo quests a bit longer, and for certain attention spans that would have been fine. I've got three pieces of furniture, the treasure is in one of them, but which one? No monsters on the board, so let's take three turns to figure it out. Oops, one of them was trapped, but since I had no way to disarm the trap anyway, I guess it was bound to happen! Like so many things in those packs we don't know precisely if they abandoned it because it didn't work or because they just ran out of time and space. In later quests it certainly would have bogged down the game, but those who wanted a little extra sprinkle of role playing mechanic probably would have appreciated it as we're seeing from comments like these. A lot of things in HQ are like that. I don't have a problem with people shopping between quests while you're in the midst of an underground siege, but some people do, so they play it that way and take on all the burdens that comes with that... and AH sees that some people want that so they invent the "hideouts".

[j_dean80]

Kellar’s Keep Quest 4 The Dwarven Forge is an easy fix. I just put a door in that hallway to the shaded room beside it, putting the chest in there. No mechanics issues for the players.

[The Admiral]

This will be my last post on this topic as it is getting on my goat!

The "opening" mechanism used for handling closed chests... in First edition, Second edition, Japanese edition of HeroQuest* and even in Advanced HeroQuest is independent from and in no way related to the "search for treasure" mechanism, in the same way that the "search for treasure" mechanism is independent from the "attacking a character" mechanism, they are two separate, distinct, different and independent mechanisms

It is NOT homebrew it is, always has been and always will be, the official rule under First edition, Second edition, Japanese edition and even Advanced HeroQuest, all versions except for the North American edition

Where is that rule please. I have those EU rulebooks and I can't find it, but I'd love it to be there?

[Bareheaded Warrior]

OK, so maybe not my LAST post on this topic but...

Admiral,

The rule isn't explicitly stated in either First or Second Edition rulebooks, however there are frequent references throughout to "opening a chest" so some mechanism to do so must exist whether explicitly stated or not.

The act of "opening" is fully covered in the rulebook and even though there is no explicit reference to these rules applying to chests (or not applying to chests) the inference is that they do, because without that inference you have a frequently described act of "opening a chest" but no mechanism provided to handle that.

Clearly one of the mechanisms described in the rulebook must be the one used for opening chests. The use of the term "opening" for both chests and doors implies the two are the same act, in the same way that the term "looking" covers both rooms and passageways and many such examples.

This inference is confirmed by the way in which some of the quests are designed in that traps are placed on a square adjacent to the chest, in situations in which it would make no sense to do so unless this inference was the intended one.

The designers of the Japanese edition (and AHQ) both worked closely with the designers of the original edition(s) and drew this same inference and made it explicit.

For those who think that opening chests should be handled in First and Second Edition by the Search for Treasure mechanism, there is no explicit instruction in either edition to use that mechanism for handling chests either and neither is it inferred.

[The Admiral]

Yeah, I get the inference, and it's how I play, but I was just wondering if I had missed something specific in all the rule books, or some official ruling. Thanks for your patience!

[dreicunan]

So to put it succinctly, 1st and 2nd EU editions never clarified how chests should get opened and thus there was no official ruling for those editions, just different options for how EWP could decide to rule, some with more support than others.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

And that is a valid point, and I agree that it isn't explicitly stated, but there are frequent references throughout 1st edition rules (and 2nd edition) to opening chests, so you would expect that rules around the act of "opening" exist, the only such rules that are specified in the rulebook refer to opening doors, my assumption is that "opening" works the same whether it is a door or a chest, which I admit is an assumption.

Traps are triggered whenever a character moves onto a trapped square or opens a trapped chest without searching

This establishes that chests are handled through "opening" (and not "searching")

You can open a door by moving onto the square in front of it. You do not have to open a door if you do not want to. Opening a door does not count as a move. Having opened a door, you can keep moving, if you have any movement spaces left to move

This establishes that "opening" is optional, needs to be carried out from an adjacent square, and is a free action.

Zenithfleet made an excellent post on this topic with examples under the How Treasure chests work in the EU rules (LONG) topic.

I think that the OP was in reference to the NA edition of the game as I don't think (and I maybe wrong) that chests were ever placed in passages in the EU edition, but it is interesting to note that had a chest been placed in a dead-end passage under EU rules, then no special rule or exception would have to be made, even if you don't allow treasure searches in passages, you just walk up to it and open it like usual.

This is a good example that shows the flaw in the often repeated statement "if you introduce rules to cover every situation then you'd just end up with a massive rulebook". A well written general rule can handle chests the same way, whether they are being placed in a room or a dead-end passage, without resulting in either a massive rulebook or the need to add additional explanatory text and special rules to more than one quest to enable you to handle the situation.