Hi all,

Playing the Forgotten Age campaign with Ursula Downs and Leo Anderson. After a couple of incredibly destructive attempts we finally got through the first two scenarios! (phew)

We had a really difficult timing issue with the simultaneous nature of the Explore action in a specific location in one of the early scenarios. We made something up on the day but just wanted to find out if it was a sensible rule adjudication.

1) Ursula Downs was performing an Explore action for her first action that turn. She successfully explored and revealed a location. (Note that Ursula has the trigger reaction "After you move to a location: Take an investigate action"

2) The location says "Forced - After you put this location into play by exploring successfully... draw 2 cards from the top of the encounter deck."

Note the Explore action states that if a suitable location is drawn, "it is put into play, and you move to that location"

When reading the explore rules, it seems to suggest that the "putting into play" and "moving to that location" are simultaneous. (which also works thematically: you only reveal the location when you move into this previously undiscovered location). However we felt it wasn't really clear what order you do things... particularly when you draw the extra encounter cards as a result of revealing the location. We read that forced abilities on cards trigger first, but it does say "after" it is put in play, and it didn't seem right to draw the encounter cards before moving to the new location.

The order in which we adjudicated in the end was:

1) Ursula conducts Explore

2a ) Reveal successful location card and place it on the table

2b) Move Ursula to that location (effectively simultaneous to 2a)

3) Draw two encounter cards as a result of revealing the location (We decided the "Forced: After the location is put in play" happens before the optional "After Ursula moves").

4) One of the encounter cards was an Enemy card, so it engaged Ursula.

5) One of the encounter cards "trapped" Ursula in the new location, so she couldn't move (but this did happen in the new location, so she wasn't trapped in the old location)

6) Decided not to trigger Ursula's free Investigate ability , because it would have triggered an attack of opportunity. (if we could have chosen the order, we'd have put this action as number 3 instead)

7) Game continued as normal with Ursula's second action, followed by collective uncertainty over whether we could have chosen to get the free investigate action first!

Does that sound right?

Super good question. I think you played it right. Her card calls it an action, so her opportunity to investigate after moving is a free action, not part of the move. As opposed to moving to the new location when successfully exploring, is part of exploring successfully, not a separate action. That particular location is written in a way that can interrupt a person’s turn. So anyone who would have revealed that location and still had actions left, still would have to resolve the location text before finishing their actions. Jake is her way around that. If he had been with her, she could have still had her investigate action after she drew an enemy from the encounter deck without an attack of opportunity. We played her ability by determining that if for some reason she couldn’t use that investigate action as her first action after moving, for whatever reason, she lost that free action and finished her turn as per usual. To us her ability seems written in a way as to infer that in order for that investigate action to be free, it has to be first. That was our interpretation at least.

Agreed with both of you. Ursula's reaction triggers after the forced trigger on the location.

One of the nice things about Ursula is that the free investigate action can be ANY investigate action (seeking answers, translating archaic glyphs, using a flashlight, even a location specific investigate action), but yes, if you end up engaged you have to choose if the attack of opportunity is worth the free action.

Unless Jake has her back! I never thought about translating archaic glyphs. Brilliant.