From: jeff@maggot.gg.caltech.edu (Jeff Goldsmith)
Newsgroups: rec.games.board
Subject: Re: Wizards
Date: 21 Nov 1992 00:28:52 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Distribution: all
NNTP-Posting-Host: maggot.gg.caltech.edu

In <lgqacaINNfbs@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> woods@colossal.Eng.Sun.COM (Don Woods) writes:

>All well and good to "try" to stay away, but you still have to deal with
>Mandatory Task markers in the Lair, plus the occasional trap or demon who
>sends you there.  I'm wondering if you ever reach a state where a player's
>turn never ends, because he lands on a stack of 3-4 demons, and at least
>one of them transports him to another Lair space where he meets 3-4 more
>demons, etc., and of course most of the time he generates 2-3 more demons
>before being transported to the next stack...

Hasn't happened.  Typically, you either kill the demon or get transported
to another stack.  You only get to "surf" a bunch of stacks if the Lair is
truly overwhelmed by demons, and surfing eventually stops.  If you are concerned,
make a limit of 3 demons per hex.  That's bad enough.

>But who said anything about escaping the Dragon's Lair?  Note that, until 4th
>Rank, the Druid transport into a Stone works only if he's already on the
>Sacred Circle tile.  At 4th Rank he can do it from anywhere, just as in the
>original rules.

That sounds better.  It means that it costs him a turn, too, which is ok
by me.

>Also, in our spell-tweaking, Druids don't get Demon Dispelling until 3rd Rank.
>They get Animal Summoning at 2nd (which feels more Druidic to us), and Wizards
>get Demon Dispelling.

I agree with the "feel," but Demon Dispelling is a better spell than 
Animal Summoning (by a lot, especially with double stacks,) and since
Druids aren't as good as Wizards in general, in my opinion, I think the
classes are more balanced the original way.  Since you've tweaked the 
rest of the spells, that might not be so in your rules, which would be
great if you'd list, by the way.

>| A few sleaze-guards that I remember:
>| 
>| 1) You get a pegasus for n movement periods (turns,) not days.  Flying
>| to Starcrest and getting a bunch of turns spent flying all over the board
>| doesn't work.  

>Yep, we made this ruling too.  Ditto for Winged Horses and Events that do
>similar things.  Also, we ruled that the ABILITY to enter Star Crest does
>not imply PERMISSION.  E.g., a Unicorn can take you there, but they still
>won't let you in unless you have an excuse for entering.  That cuts down the
>Star Crest frolics a bit.

We play that you can use an animal to enter Starcrest, otherwise it is 
very hard to get in there, and Starcrest is fun.  No sleazes from it,
though.

>| 4) If you try to teleport, that's your movement.  You can still get 
>| encounters that turn, either where you started (if TP failed) or where
>| you ended up (if it succeeded.)

>By "encounters" do you mean random encounters?  We rule that if you teleport,
>you don't roll movement dice, so you can't have a random encounter (since
>that's determined by the second movement die).  And since you're not eligible
>for a random encounter, you can't use Animal Summoning either.  That cuts
>a little into the power of teleporting, though it's still plenty nifty.

Yes, I mean random encounters.  We let you do anything else but move 
(consequently, no boat summoning) if a teleport fails.  You get random or
specific encounters if applicable.  If it succeeds, you get them, too.  The
movement die and the encounter die are separate, so I see no reason to not
have random encounters.  Most players dread random encounters near the end
of the game, anyway, so let's force some upon them.

>If you teleport onto a new space, you can certainly encounter that space if
>there's something to do there.  If you fail to teleport, you usually can't
>have an encounter where you are, since you can't encounter the same space
>twice in a row.  The exception is at Hamdrel, since she permits multiple
>encounters; if you fail to transport, you can meet her again (up to the
>limit of three consecutive encounters).

Or dragons.  Or demons.  Or other players.  Or High Wizards (who have just
shown up during someone else's turn.)  Again, to simplify, we just allow
the normal encounter rules, subject to the fact that you've not moved.
Makes sense.  Makes a failed teleport a serious screw, too.  :)

>If you do play that movement via teleporting (or for that matter, winged
>horses or unicorns) still lets you have random encounters, then maybe I
>ought to add the opposite rule to the "rules clarifications" portion of
>my reference sheet!

The rules are not clear, of course, on whether you get encounters when 
riding a pegasus.  Since encounter phase is after movement phase, I see
no reason not to have random encounters after movement that doesn't need
dice.  I picked the encounter rule because I like throwing in a little
randomness to someone's best laid plans.  ...Ok, first I fly there, then
there, then...Oh, no, not a demon!...flap, flap, flap...Hey, where'd
Bessie go?...  One tries, of course, to only land in places where random
encounters cannot happen, but sometimes you have no choice.  Event: you
are stuck until your winged horse flies away.  Heh, heh, heh.  Trap! the
player on your right moves you ten spaces, not across walls or more than
one sea space.  Hey, what am I doing on the Dragon's Lair?  Where'd my
pegasus go?  Uh, oh, feels pretty warm all of a sudden....
				--Jeff
Newsgroups: rec.games.board