Ye Olde Inn

sajungzak wrote:"How a Hero^* disarms a Trap with a Tool Kit
(^* Does not apply to the Dwarf)
As a Hero, before you move, you must announce that you are moving onto the trap square to attempt to disarm and remove the trap.

How the Dwarf disarms a Trap
Before you move, you must announce that you are moving onto the trap square to attempt to disarm and remove the trap."

This made me think. I know some of you, after a hero has searched for traps, put out markers for traps, some of you don't and merely point at the applicable squares that contain traps, myself included. In the latter case, heroes have to memorize where these traps are.
Now, what if a hero announces the square he wants to free from traps and errs in where that square actually is? That is to say, he moves into the wrong square (which contains no trap at all and nobody tells him cause either they are pricks or they all haven't memorized correctly). What do you do? Tell him, "Dude, that's not your square" and let him move on, or "Pppprrrrrrzzzzzt, failure!" and end his move, or let him roll and go "Weeelll, you failed anyway, cause, dude, that's not your square"?

He wastes his action. I tell him there is no trap to disarm on that square. At this point he has moved and performed (attempted) his action. Next player should search for traps, but that's their decision.

Exactly. Let him lose his action on a free square, like he searched it.

I must be too nice. I just remind them, if we haven't marked it for some reason. Though I understand a hero getting down on all fours to try and find a trap that doesn't exist would be a reasonable wasted action.

One of my players is the "official quest cartographer," and draws a map as they explore, marking those dangerous tiles on his map. Normally I discourage "meta-gaming" (like when players try to place dice on the dangerous tiles as markers), but drawing a map is a lot of work! and seems like something a Hero might do on a Quest--I reward this kind of extra credit stuff with gold coin bonuses after the quest.

Players sometimes draw scenes from the quest or write backstories to share. These are worth bonus gold too, as they all help get the players deeper into the "shared storytelling" aspects of the game.

Map making is very smart for an advanced party. I would insist that one of the characters have a measuring rod, pen and paper listed on the Character Sheet to make a map.
A map properly made can lead to hints as to the location of secret rooms in TT RPG games. Not so helpful in HQ though.

This topic made me look up the exact rules for traps.
To my big surprise I realized even those are different between UK and NA!

UK: Spear traps are always disarmed when found, so there are no spear trap tiles.

NA: A spear trap is carefully hidden. If found during a search, Zargon will say the square looks suspicious and will point to the square where the trap is located.

Needless to say, I play a ruleset based on NA rules. To answer my own question, I concur with sajungzak and Sotiris all the way.
It's again one of those instances where the EU rule is plain bullshit, and the NA rule basically an improvement, but still poorly (prone to ambiguous interpretation) worded.

I think it's pointless to not mark a trapped square.
If a gamemaster does not allow something to be placed on the board to mark a trap, then any player can exercise his right to go out and buy a camera, photograph the board, move the photo to his computer (in his home), edit the photo on his prefered choice of photo-editing software, mark the square with an appropriate colour (red probably), print out the photo (if he runs out of ink he can go buy some, no rush), come back to wherever the game is played and continue his move, refering to his photo every time he has to move. There is no rule stating how much time you have to complete your move so you have infinite.
That goes both ways of course. If a gamemaster asks the heroes how many bp each one has, they should freakin' reply. I could have taken endless time to note all players body points and items for myself. The fact that they do it for me is purely to save us all gaming time. Any info should be free for anyone at any given point.

Complete transparency. Freedom of information. Nah, I like the ambiguity. I just use tokens for bp. At the beginning they all have a stash, but I collect them. I tried rolling behind the screen. At first They were like, what?! But by the end they were cool with it. I told themthey have to trust me with correct quest map readings and rules interpretation, they should trust me with rolls, too. It worked.
I point to the traps found. I take my time, making eye contact to confirm they see which one I'm pointing to.