Moving Furniture

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Kurgan,

Aside from moving treasure chests in that one infamous quest, which I always considered as a quest-specific exception to general rules, and which can easily be rectified by referring to them as "caskets" that is small chests that can be carried, I'm not sure that allowing heroes or monsters to move treasure chest would work out very well, especially if you consider that furniture blocks movement, so monsters would just barricade themselves in and then attack each hero that attempts to pick up a chest!

Furniture that "Slides aside to reveal" a secret door isn't a case of characters moving furniture, it is a case of furniture being rigged to move itself in response to a character's action, stepping on a tile, pulling a lever etc and mimics are monsters disguised as furniture they are not furniture.

burglekutt if it helps clarify...

#3 Action Dice Mechanism
All actions outside of combat, damage and movement are resolved using the new Action Dice Mechanism outlined below.
Roll the number of combat dice shown and succeed if you roll at least one
• Jump Pit - 4 dice [Potion of Dexterity gives an extra die; Rabbit Boots give an extra die]
• Disarm Trap - 3 dice [Toolkit gives an extra die; Dwarf gets 2 extra dice]
• Open Jammed / Stone Door - 2 dice [Barbarian gets an extra die; Potion of Strength gives 2 extra dice]
• Open Lock - 2 dice [Toolkit gives an extra die; Dwarf gets extra die]
• Break Spell - 1 die per starting Mind Point / Mind Dice
• Pass thru Portal - 1 die per starting Mind Point / Mind Dice [Dwarf gets extra 2 dice]

#11 Barbarian’s Attack
The extra attack dice on the Barbarian’s character card represents his especially powerful attacks, which is applied to all close combat attacks, armed and unarmed, but not missile attacks. This ability is intrinsic to the hero type like the Disarm Trap ability of the Dwarf or the spellcasting abilities of the Wizard and Elf. His starting weapons is now a Shortsword.

#25 Unarmed Combat
If unarmed for any reason heroes roll 1AD to attack orthogonally adjacent squares only*.
*Note the #11 Barbarian’s Attack gives him an extra combat dice in attack whether armed or unarmed

#29 Moving Furniture
You cannot move on to or through squares occupied by furniture, neither can you move furniture.

Note: In the Quest “Prince Magnus’s Gold” replace the description of the “chests” with “caskets” that are small enough that they can be carried without penalty.

[Kurgan]

Yeah I'm recalling the recent "argument" made by a fan online that caused Doug Hopkins to admit that the rules never specifically say that furniture blocks movement (though this is clearly always been assumed by most players all along including myself... even assumed by the companion app: with the exception of treasure chests since they expect the user to be able to move a character on top of it to attempt disarm of a detected furniture trap) and admitting that it could be interesting either way or words to that effect (on the AH discord if anyone saved the comment).

I guess when the App introduced the slider for "intangible furniture" some took this as an endorsement of an alternate ruleset mechanic, while many like myself saw it as a simple debugging feature. Most of the time we simply debate about whether furniture blocks LOS for targeting purposes in the NA/remake rules (the App doesn't enforce this, but as always it's good to point out that the App is not the end all be all of rules that lets us resolve controversies, and contains many anomalies even with regard to the intentions of the current design team's interpretation of the official rules... but it is interesting nonetheless).

[Bareheaded Warrior]

"We want interaction with furniture" is a cry I have often heard on the forums over the years and frequently from players of the 1990 remake (and I guess lately also from those of the 2021 reprint as that used the same rules as its starting point) and it is interesting that the classic game (the original 1989, first and second edition and their expansions) actually included interaction with furniture and to a greater extent than many players realise.

Under the classic rules a search of a room excluded chests, and these were handled through an opening mechanism, that we are all familiar with as it is the same one used for doors in all editions.

Opening - A free action that can be carried out as part of your movement, any number of times on your turn, by standing next to (orthogonally adjacent to) the item of furniture and declaring that you are opening it

Whilst many players of the classic game played this way with chests, there is some evidence in the classic quests that it was the intention of some of those working in this space back in the day whether for MB or GW that the intention was for this to be applied to a category of furniture broader than just chests that I have called "containers" including chests, cupboards and tombs, and it potentially be expanded out to cover bookcases, sorcerer's tables and alchemist's benches, although too much and it starts to eat up time and take out the novelty...

The cupboard contains 30 gold coins and a potion of Healing...

The tomb is now empty

If a Hero opens a tomb...

If the Cupboard is opened, it triggers a Spear trap from inside it.

Contents not specified

Obviously if you are creating your own quests you can use the Quest notes to fill your containers as you see fit, but there are many examples in official quests where the contents of the container is not specified, it doesn't tell you what is in the container, nor does it tell you that the container is empty. In these instances I would again draw inspiration from The Eyes of Chaos and suggest that if a Hero opens a container and the Quest notes don't specify the contents or that the container is empty then the EWP draws a Treasure Card from the deck and if it is a "good" card then he gives it to the player, if it is a trap card then the trap takes effect and then the EWP draws a second card if good then hands it to the player, if "bad" then the trapped container was empty, if it is a Wandering Monster card then he states that the container is empty and returns the card to the deck and shuffles.

The Heroes are allowed to draw two Treasure cards when they open the Treasure Chest here.

Tomb

A special case could be made for the Tomb, maybe a Strength test is required to open it (whichever method you use to test such things at your own table, see Strength Tests) failure would cause your turn to end, but in this instance if neither the contents are specified nor does it state that it is empty then the EWP should draw 2 Treasure Cards.

Any "Good" card is given to the opener as the contents
Any "Trap!" card mean that the Tomb is trapped, if both cards are Trap cards then EWP chooses the worst, and the other counts as a nothing.
Any "Wandering Monster" card means that you have disturbed the corpse and a Skeleton is placed as a Wandering Monster and attacks the opener, if both cards are WM cards then place a Zombie instead.

This gives a simple mechanism with an interesting range of options.

[Kurgan]

Indeed many quests simply use furniture for decoration... dressing up the dungeon with 3d pieces is one of HeroQuest's endearing features. Other quests meticulously add notes to each and every room (not always accounting for what the 2nd, 3rd, etc. heroes can do, usually only the first searcher gets the special effect). As a young hero, I was often disappointed when the Weapons Rack didn't have a weapon, or the Treasure Chest was "empty" (maybe only a trap for your trouble), but I accepted it. You want to keep it fresh, interesting, surprising... searching eats up times and turns, but it's part of the fun, the thrill of discovery, right? So it's important.

Interacting with un-noted furniture is great, but perhaps not every piece of furniture should be interactive... then again it depends upon if you decorate every or nearly every room with it? Keep 'em guessing! Making general rules after the fact can dress up otherwise boring or routine quests and replays, I agree.

If the hero is alone, or really, really needs to gather more gold/gear, or you're trying to build up the suspense looking for something, making the furniture more interactive or breaking up the searches could be a tool to build up that feeling...

Back to an older question, the several items/skills that let you pass through furniture in Jungles of Delthrak seems to me to be the explicit intention (if it was ever truly needed) that furniture was intended to impede movement by default. Going back to your doors analogy, that was our clue... doors stop your passage (until they are opened; but the other furniture don't have an "open" mechanism to make them passable). As a kid I could imagine someone saying "can I chop this table up into firewood with my axe?" and rolling attack dice then Zargon saying "sure, you destroy the table" (removes it from the board).

As usual, a group's homebrew rules at their own table trumps official intentions... Zargon can do what he likes!

PS: We played a quest (in the arena) last night where we let heroes (and monsters) roll to pickup furniture to use as improvised weapons (that broke after one or two strikes).

PPS: Bohemyus had a fun quest idea specifically about moving furniture, I believe, maybe he will share it?

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Indeed many quests simply use furniture for decoration... dressing up the dungeon with 3d pieces is one of HeroQuest's endearing features.

Aside from decoration, because furniture blocks movement, a Quest Designer's choice of furniture placement also changes the shape of the room. Without this feature HQ with its fixed board would only have a very limited number of room shapes, essentially all rectangles bar one, the inclusion of furniture and its movement blocking properties enables you to have a very broad selection of room shapes.

I agree that making every piece of furniture interactive would be a bad idea, slowing the game down and increasing the gold yield significantly which would ruin the balance of the advancement system, but the original HQ had 3 chests, my proposal is to include the Tomb and 2 Cupboards, so effectively doubling the amount of interactive furniture pieces that could be included in a quest from 3 to 6. Obviously as a Quest Designer you don't have to include all, or indeed any of these pieces in a given quest if you don't want to, but doubling from 3 to 6 opportunities, I think, increases the fun without stretching the gameplay out for too long.

The other point to note here is the importance of being consistent. If you have a consistent rule and a consistent mechanism for handling that rule that can be applied to all quests, both pre-existing and ones that will be written in the future, such as the "container rule" being discussed here that applies to all chests, cupboards and tombs in all quests, then the player experience is much more rewarding than if you don't.

I was recently reviewing a fan created quest which had the feature of a throne that a character had to sit it to reveal a secret door, cool idea but if the player has played 30 quests already many of them featuring thrones which had no need or ability to be interacted with, then I couldn't think of any reason why a player would suddenly decide to sit his character in that particular throne.

In the same way if in your HQ experience only 1 in 20 cupboards allow you to interact with them, player will either waste a considerable amount of time 19 in 20 occassions trying to interact with furniture pieces that they cannot interact with, or alternatively they just won't interact with them at all, and will therefore miss out on the odd occasion where they could have interacted with the furniture but didn't realise the opportunity existed.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Since my last post it has been pointed out to me that in The Halls of Durrag-Dol (another GW HQ quest) there is a tomb that if characters open it, a Skeleton is placed on an adjacent square, so whilst some may not regard GW HeroQuest quests to be canonical, it is worth considering them as GW appears to have had quite an involvement in the development of HQ and it is likely that some of their ideas were fully incorporated into the published game and others may have influenced the published game even if they were not fully incorporated. Irrespective to what the official intention was in this area, and we’ll probably never know for certain, I have developed and have playtested this "container" concept a little further...

Some furniture types are classified as "containers" in that they can contain treasure, traps and more...when these containers are opened (unless the quest notes detail the contents), you as EWP handle them as follows...

Handling in Unmarked Containers

When a hero opens a container…

Cupboard: EWP draws Treasure card.
• if gold, jewels, potion, holy water then he gives the card to the player.
• if any other card, then EWP states "the container is empty" and returns card to deck and shuffles.

Chest: EWP draws Treasure card.
• if gold, jewels, potion then he gives the card to the player,
• if trap then it is trapped, once trap is resolved then draw a second card and interpret as per the cupboard rules (return the trap card to the deck and shuffle)
• if wandering monster then EWP states "the container is empty" (return trap card to deck and shuffle)

Tomb: EWP draws Treasure card.
• if gold, jewels, potion then he gives the card to the player,
• if trap then it is trapped, once trap is resolved then draw a second card and interpret as per the cupboard rules (remembering to return the trap card to the deck and shuffle)
• if wandering monster then EWP states "You have disturbed the rest of the dead" place a Skeleton on any square next to the tomb and the looter and attack, once attack is resolved then draw a second card and interpret as per the cupboard rules (return wandering monster card to deck and shuffle)

These rules allow you to incorporate these container rules into your own quests without needing to detail the contents, and to back port them into existing official quests, where the contents are not detailed in the Quest notes

[Malcadon]

For a long time, I allow for Heroes to move furniture, within reason. The same is true for moving on them and using them as cover. Heads-up: A lot of backed-in houserules in play!

Mind you, not all furniture can be moved. For example, you can move the lid of a Tomb, but not the Tomb itself -- it is way too heavy.

Small furniture like a chair, stool or candelabra (things I added to my games) can be hold like a handheld item. You can use them as an improvised 2 weapon that can also be thrown as a 1 weapon. Heavier furniture like a barrel, caskets, crate, Throne, Treasure Chest, or Weapons Rack can be held by a single hero with both hands, heavy enough to slow a them down. Bulky furniture like the Alchemist Bench, bed, Bookcase, Cupboard, the Rack, Sorcerer's Table, Table or Tomb lid, require two Heroes to move it, and they cant move them out of rooms. The alter, bar fountain/bathtub, Fireplace, Tomb, and Statues are all immobile fixtures. The Stockpile is a special case, as a Hero can spend an action to move the whole pile anywhere else in a room or otherwise scatter everything across the floor, resulting in the room becoming rough ground.

Picking-up heavy furniture count as an action, and they are so bulky holding it consumes your acts until you put it down (on an adjacent square, of available, but is also a free action). They also slow you down, knocking you down a point on the encumbrance track. That is, if you take a point, you roll 3 Dice, dropping the highest. Should you do this while also wearing Platemail armor, given you two points, you roll 1 Die.

One reason why Heroes would move furniture to to provide full or partial cover for ranged attacks and spells. Low but solid and tall but soft furniture, like the Alchemist Bench, bar, barrel, bed, crate, the Rack, Statues, Sorcerer's Table, Stockpile Table, tapestry or Tomb, provides partial cover, that amounts to +2 vs attacks and nothing against spells. Tall, solid furniture, like the Bookcase, Cupboard or Fireplace, or overturned Tables (one that is propped on its side) and benches, provide full cover from ranged attacks and spells.

Otherwise, a Hero may stand on (costs ) a table (any other table-like furniture) to get a +1 .

Heroes may even overturn a Bookcase, Cupboard or Statue onto a monster to make it miss its next turn -- this now takes up 3-by-2 squares or 1-by-2.

Heroes might use to to block door from oncoming monsters. Although, Heroes and monsters can destroy furniture as if is an enemy with wooden furniture having 2 and 1 per square, and stone furniture having 4 and 2 per square. Destroy furniture becomes debris, treating it as rough ground.

Mind you, destroying, standing on, or overturning furniture, as well as scattering a Stockpile, voids any treasure search made for it, and sets off any trap within it. I treat "rough ground" as Hindering Terrain (cost to move though; see Jungles of Dethrak) and replace scattered or destroy with Falling Black tiles.