Hello all, this contains slight spoilers of the Midnight Masks scenario from Night of the Zealot. You have been warned.

When you draw an Acolyte from the encounter deck, it instructs you to spawn it in "any empty location." I have a few questions about this:

• Do the players get to choose where this monster spawns, is it determined randomly, or do you use the Grim Rule to place it in the worst possible location?
• If you use the Grim Rule, how do we know what the worst possible location could be if we draw it very early, like on the first Mythos Phase of the game?
• Can the Acolyte spawn only on a revealed location, or are any of the locations in play fair game?

We chose an empty location for the Acolyte to appear, whether or not that location was revealed. I'm still not sure we did it correctly though.

My group handled this the same way. If there was no clear "grim" location then we just spawned it randomly in an empty location, whether we had revealed that location or not.

Going by the grim rule and the spawn monster rule it would have to be at the worst possible revealed location E.G: SPOILERS!! if Ice Ghoul would be pulled from the mythos deck and the basement hasn't spawned it would be discarded. From this we can infer that the monster needs to be spawned at a revealed location.

From the Rules Reference, page 19, Spawn:

"If an enemy’s spawn instruction has multiple valid locations, the investigator spawning that enemy decides among those locations."

People are way too eager to apply the Grim Rule to cases where it doesn't apply.

As a side note, remember that if an enemy doesn't have a valid spawn location, then it is discarded. This seems like it would come up fairly often in 4 player games with 9 locations and so many cards flipping.

Ardulac is right, the Grim Rule has nothing to do with this. That exists specifically to facilitate game movement when you can't quickly find the right rule to cover something. When you have the option to do something, you don't have to choose the worst possible option for you!

The grim rule would be as if the card said to "Spawn in any empty location" and there is no empty location, so you quick check the rules but don't see anything so you spawn it where someone is as opposed to discarding it. After the game you can really look into the rules and see that you should have discarded it, and now you know for next time.

Ardulac is right, the Grim Rule has nothing to do with this. That exists specifically to facilitate game movement when you can't quickly find the right rule to cover something. When you have the option to do something, you don't have to choose the worst possible option for you!

The grim rule would be as if the card said to "Spawn in any empty location" and there is no empty location, so you quick check the rules but don't see anything so you spawn it where someone is as opposed to discarding it. After the game you can really look into the rules and see that you should have discarded it, and now you know for next time.

Sounds xactly as I would interpret it.

This probably belongs to a separate thread but I thought it was an interesting choice to include the grim rule in the rule book and to call it a rule rather than a guideline or suggestion or something similar. I totally see how it fits in the theme of the game and is a good suggestion - just the choice of calling that a rule is odd imo. What if there are players that like to spend 10min on the internet to clarify a situation before they continue playing? Would that be "cheating"? Also, if I decided to interpret the conflict in the best possible way, and it turns out to be the right way, would that be cheating?

I mean I am totally fine because I can choose to play whatever I want. I just remember feeling odd when reading the rulebook. I know the comparison is a bit of a stretch but it felt a little bit like writing a suggestion to play in candle light and calling that a rule. Anyway - it is not really important - I just thought it was an interesting choice.

Just to take all the thought out of it and to perhaps give myself an unfair advantage if I get to choose, I just randomize it using dice.

Hey, ironically we applied the Grimm rule correctly. We were unsure if the Grimm rule applied so we applied the Grimm rule so we didn't have to look up if it did.

Hey, ironically we applied the Grimm rule correctly. We were unsure if the Grimm rule applied so we applied the Grimm rule so we didn't have to look up if it did.

The "Grimm" rule is that all fairy tales have morals to them, right?

Ardulac is right, the Grim Rule has nothing to do with this. That exists specifically to facilitate game movement when you can't quickly find the right rule to cover something. When you have the option to do something, you don't have to choose the worst possible option for you!

The grim rule would be as if the card said to "Spawn in any empty location" and there is no empty location, so you quick check the rules but don't see anything so you spawn it where someone is as opposed to discarding it. After the game you can really look into the rules and see that you should have discarded it, and now you know for next time.

Sounds xactly as I would interpret it.

This probably belongs to a separate thread but I thought it was an interesting choice to include the grim rule in the rule book and to call it a rule rather than a guideline or suggestion or something similar. I totally see how it fits in the theme of the game and is a good suggestion - just the choice of calling that a rule is odd imo. What if there are players that like to spend 10min on the internet to clarify a situation before they continue playing? Would that be "cheating"? Also, if I decided to interpret the conflict in the best possible way, and it turns out to be the right way, would that be cheating?

I mean I am totally fine because I can choose to play whatever I want. I just remember feeling odd when reading the rulebook. I know the comparison is a bit of a stretch but it felt a little bit like writing a suggestion to play in candle light and calling that a rule. Anyway - it is not really important - I just thought it was an interesting choice.

It's perfectly plausible to imagine with future releases that there may be card interactions that even a thorough and literal reading of the rules might not give a clear single correct resolution. In those situations the Grim Rule will come into effect while we wait for an official site response.

I see the Grim Rule as a third 'difficulty' setting.

The first and second are determined by your chosen difficulty. You pick easy or standard or hard or expert and then you (1) populate the chaos bag with appropriate tokens, then you (2) use the relevant scenario reference card. At that point it is just your own grasp of the rules that determines how easy or difficult the playthrough will be because (3) if you're unsure of a rule, rather than waste time flicking through a hefty rules reference you should just take that nastiest effect and go with that. The more familiar you are with the rules, the less 'nastiest's you'll need to resort to. Which is to say, with the Grim Rule in mind, the more you play the easier the game will become.

Hey, ironically we applied the Grimm rule correctly. We were unsure if the Grimm rule applied so we applied the Grimm rule so we didn't have to look up if it did.

The "Grimm" rule is that all fairy tales have morals to them, right?

That's the Disney rule. The Grimm rule is similar, but it adds "and the moral is these the world is a dark and cruel place that will kill you horribly."

It's perfectly plausible to imagine with future releases that there may be card interactions that even a thorough and literal reading of the rules might not give a clear single correct resolution. In those situations the Grim Rule will come into effect while we wait for an official site response.

Yeah - I can well-imagine that this will happen. In any other coop game, I usually always end up interpreting the rules a harder way if they are unclear.

From the Rules Reference, page 19, Spawn:

"If an enemy’s spawn instruction has multiple valid locations, the investigator spawning that enemy decides among those locations."

Remember too that as a general rule, any time a choice must be made and its not otherwise specified, the Lead Investigator chooses.

as with other Arkham games, i always apply the grim rule to all decisions, even if you're able to make the decision for yourself, the worst possible choice should always be made.

Scenario 2:

My group: "Hey, let's spawn these cultists far away where they can't harm us!"

My group: "Ok!"

My group: "Say, those doom tokens, do they stack with the ones on the agenda card?"

My group: "Oh crap, we better go kill them! Why are they o far away?"