Looking on page 4 of the Journeys in the Dark rulebook, under the Map Pieces heading: "Every space that is touching a given space (even at the corners) is adjacent to that given space."

Here is the situation: Given two 4x4 tiles connected as depicted below the question arises, are tiles 7 and B adjacent?

[ ] [ ] [0] [4] [8] [C] [ ] [ ]

[ ] [ ] [1] [5] - [9] [D] [ ] [ ]

[ ] [ ] [2] [6] - [A] [E] [ ] [ ]

[ ] [ ] [3] [7] [F] [ ] [ ]

The dashes indicate where the two tiles are joined.

If we agree that spaces 6 and B are adjacent, there is a corner, 6B, where they meet. We can also agree the same for spaces 7 and A, calling their corner 7A.

My supposition is that the corners 6B and 7A must be the same point. Both 7 and B must, therefore, also have this corner. Since they share this corner, they are adjacent by the rule stated at the beginning of the post. This could then arise with the situation that a token could move from space 7 to space B needing only a single move action, rather than moving from 7 to A, then A to B.

If spaces 7 and B are not adjacent, it must follow that the spaces 6 and B are not adjacent, nor are 7 and A. This is a clear contradiction of the illustration on page 14 of the rulebook for Journeys in the Dark regarding adjacency of spaces near doors (nearly identical to this situation).

If someone could provide a confirmation that the above proof is correct, or point to a flaw in the proof/a previous discussion which addresses this situation specifically (not another similar adjacency issue) I would be greatly appreciative.

Many thanks,

The Cheeze.

I don't know for what purposes one might need to know whether these tiles are considered to be adjacent or not. But concerning LoS and movement the answer is simple: You may neither see nor move through walls.

Thebigcheeze said:

The flaw in your proof is the assumption that all spaces are perfectly square. They are not. They are approximately square for representational purposes, and for most purposes in the game, but they are not definitively 'square' for all purposes. There is a definite gap between 6-7 and A-B. 6 and A touch on the corner only , not along their edges, proving that by definition they are not precisely square.

Thebigcheeze said:

From a mathematical standpoint your argument is perfectly logical . I'm not willing to debate whether or not the squares are perfectly square, that seems a rather anal approach to the whole situation imho (no offense Corbon.) Even if they aren't printed perfectly square, I would consider that a limitation of the printing technology rather than an intentional game mechanic.

However, it is commonly accepted wisdom that a figure cannot move or draw line of sight from 7 to B directly, whether you choose to consider the spaces adjacent or not, the wall is still an obstruction that blocks these actions. Just as a figure cannot move through a closed door, even though the spaces on either side are obviously adjacent, they are blocked as long as the door remains closed. The only difference here is that the wall cannot be opened.

I suppose you could make a case for things like crack shot working across these spaces, although personally I would be inclined to rule against that just to keep my poor brain from exploding. Much as I prefer to avoid making house rules, I also prefer not to get into hair splitting rules-lawyer debates every time I play, so I tend to boil things down to a simple, clean level and just go from there.

Your argument is perfectly logical, unfortunately, Descent is not. Have a nice day! =)

They unfortunately forgot to print the complete rules for walls anywhere in the rulebook, but it is my assumption that walls block everything. So I believe those spaces are adjacent, but that there is a wall between them, so that adjacency doesn't generally matter.

I would even allow that spaces can be adjacent even when they are on tiles that have no direct connection at all, and walls all along the borders of both tiles at the closer edge (for example, two side-by-side corridors)...but the wall prevents the spaces from interacting.

If you really want to squeeze through loopholes, consider that movement between spaces 6 and B (or 7 and A) in your diagram is possible, because walls, etc. don't block you if you only touch them at an outside corner. But that means that movement between them can't be blocked by a closed door in the obvious place, either, because you'd only be touching the door at its outer corner. So that means you should be able to slip diagonally between the closed door and the wall!

I don't know of anyone that would actually allow that, though. My house rule is that closed doors are treated as extensions of the walls.

Corbon said:

While your statement is true, this is not a requirement of adjacency. Two spaces are defined as being adjacent if they are next to each other at all. The two spaces *are* next to each other, but only at the corner. This makes them adjacent.

Antistone said:

A door's position is defined as being the line between two front spaces and two back spaces. If a door is closed, it, by definition, blocks all movement and line of sight which would otherwise be able to occur through that line. A line is defined as being from point X to point Y. Those two points are (in the above example) are 49 (the corner between spaces 4 and 9) and 7A(likewise). The line includes the corners, therefore any movement/line of sight which would normally be able to occur by utilizing that corner is instead blocked.

Steve-O said:

Rules detailing line of sight are defined well enough that even if spaces 7 and B were adjacent, one would not be able to draw line of sight between them, because line of sight is defined as drawing an uninterrupted straight line from the originating square and the target square. The wall interrupts this process, therefore any attempt to draw line of sight between 7 and B, regardless of adjacency, is moot.

kalev said:

One need not move 'through' the wall to move from 7 to B. There are a multitude of ways in which one could physically make that move, but regardless, the rules for movement are quite clear. If two spaces are adjacent, one may move between them. Since a wall is not defined as an obstructing object, it cannot obstruct movement, and the rule for 'always stay on the game board' is satisfied as the piece need not move through the wall gap.

Thebigcheeze said:

You're simply making rules up. There is no basis in the rules to say that the door blocks 7A in the absence of the wall if the wall doesn't block 7A in the absence of the door; doors are given no power to block line-of-sight that isn't also given to walls, nor are they given any more precise positioning rules than walls.

There is exactly as much reason to suppose that a wall includes its terminal points as to suppose that a door does.

And you discovered that there's no rule saying you can't move through walls. Congratulations. You can put two long corridor pieces side-by-side and move between them at will, despite the wall running all the way down the middle! No one will play with you, but there's no rule that says its illegal.

The Descent rules editing sucks. There's no rules for walls, step 4 of the attack sequence depends on the results from step 5, they use many words with two (or more) technical meanings or none at all, they use genuinely ambiguous wording all over the place, and when the wording is unambiguous but confusing, the official "clarifications" contradict a strict reading of the original rules as often as not. I'm sorry, but the game disintegrates almost instantly if you consistently apply the level of rigor you're attempting to use here.

Thebigcheeze said:

1. Sorry, I hadn't looked closely enough at the diagram and was thinking a pair of 6*6 rooms with an extra layer 'out' from the doorway (doorway at 4/5), not 4*4. As an aside the adjacency requirement is 'touching' not 'next to'.

7 and B are adjacent.

As Antistone said, they forgot to print the rules for walls. Between 7 and B is a wall and walls block movement (we assume, and all houserule). Since movement from 7 to B would be through the line that is a wall, that movement is blocked.Note that movement from 7 to A would be through the point 6AB7, which may or may not be 'blocked' by a door.
Another way of looking at it is that between 7 and B there is actually 'space' (the non-board gap). Any movement between 7 and B must travel through this 'space' and since the 'space' is outside the bounds of the game and cannot be 'measured' or 'defined' in any way, you can't do such movement. Similarly, when counting spaces for such things as Command etc, you can't count between 7 and B due to passing through the space - you must count through 7-A-B.

Yes, the rules are badly written. Relax, they are even 'worsely' edited!

2. In every descent 'universe' except the written rulebook, walls are defined as 'obstructing objects'. Even in the written rulebook they clearly are intended to obstruct movement as mentioned under knockback. Unfortunately the exact bit of written text defining walls appears to have gotten lost! Yet another example of inept editing apparently.
So, in every gamers mind there is an extra section on pg13 that says:
Walls
Around the outside of every part of the dungeon there are walls. Walls block everything . Walls block LOS. Walls block attacks. Walls block effects. Walls block adjacency and walls block anything we haven't thought of yet. Walls may not be moved through under any circumstances. Walls may not be measured through for any purpose.

Yes, unfortunately this piece of text does not exist. Walls technically only block LOS, Blast, and knockback movement. However anyone anal enough to argue that walls do not block movement (of the non-knockback variety) will be unable to play Descent anyway, as there are two contradictory methods of moving given on pages 8 (move x spaces) and pg 9 (receive x movement points (MP) and use MP to move from space to space).

Edit: I'll just quote Antistone...
I'm sorry, but the game disintegrates almost instantly if you consistently apply the level of rigor you're attempting to use here.
For all that, it is a brilliant game.

I play Magic the Gathering, and I guess I'm used to their ridiculously in-depth levels rules explanation and lack of un-defined ambiguity. I guess if the wall issue is such a prevalent one, it would be acceptable to "house-rule" that those two spaces are not adjacent.

Thanks for the clarification to you both.

Fun gamin',

Cheeze

Antistone thank you for this post : And you discovered that there's no rule saying you can't move through walls. Congratulations. You can put two long corridor pieces side-by-side and move between them at will, despite the wall running all the way down the middle! No one will play with you, but there's no rule that says its illegal.

I cant stop laughing

Corbon said:

FAQ:
Q: Can abilities with a radius that don't require Line of Sight (Command, Word of Vaal, Spiritwalker, Kirga's hero ability from Altar of Despair, etc.) go through walls and/or doors? When checking the distance for these abilities, must the target space or figure be reachable by moving a number spaces less than or equal to the radius, or do these abilities work like the Breath example (fly to anywhere within a template, in this case a square of edge length 2xradius + 1 centered on the figure)?
A: Abilities, not attacks, with a radius may go through doors, but not through walls. These abilities work like the Breath example. Note that attacks cannot go through closed doors.

mahkra said:

The breath template example to which the FAQ is referring states that a figure covered by the template will be affected if an imaginary single space flying creature could move from the point of origin to the target legally without leaving the template's area of effect. This would still require you to count 7-A-B to determine if Command (or whatever) from a figure in space 7 affects a figure in space B. The only difference is that non-attack effects can pass through a closed door (but not walls.)

I don't even think there's any ineptitude required in leaving out a rule that says "you can't walk through walls." All it takes is the assumption that you're dealing with thinking, reasonable people who know what walls are and how they typically work. Then again, maybe expecting reasonableness from gamers is its own brand of ineptitude?

mahkra said:

You still can't pass through a wall, you have to go around it. So 7-A-B (or 7-6-B). If A and 6 are not inside the radius you can't trace to B even if it is inside the radius.

Steve-O said:

You would actually count directly from 7 to B when determining the spaces covered by your imaginary template. When then drawing a path for your imaginary flying figure, that flying figure would have to move 7-A-B, but it's misleading to say you count 7-A-B, because the imaginary flying figure doesn't have to count spaces. It can move as many spaces as it wants, as long as it always remains within the template.

I feel like we probably are both trying to say the same thing but simply are not communicating very effectively without diagrams.

EDIT: +1 to Corbon's comment right above this one, which I didn't notice before I posted.

James McMurray said:

So you think they deliberately left in rules saying that you can't move through closed doors, can't move off the board, and can't trace line-of-sight through walls, but they figured that the rule stating you can't move through walls was too obvious to justify its wordcount?

"Thinking, reasonable people" can, and do, make wildly divergent assumptions about all sorts of basic things...unless you're attempting a true scotsman gambit. Which is why conventional game design wisdom says that you spell everything out.

It's not like every game has an identical treatment of walls. In Last Night on Earth , zombies move through walls, and you can see/shoot through an entire straight line of wall if you're adjacent to any part of that line. In WarCraft 3 , you can't move or see through walls, but you can attack through them if a friendly unit can see your target (indirect fire, or possibly performance considerations...both of which can occur in a board game, too).

But walking through walls is actually just the tip of the iceberg, because they're missing the entire section on walls, which should also tell you how to recognize them (I'm assuming that those black lines on the edges of map tiles are supposed to be walls, and that nothing else is, but that's never stated anywhere) and how they interact with a bunch of other effects, like radius abilities (Command), adjacency-based effects (Aura, Crack Shot), and non-LOS-based attacks (Breath), all of which had to be FAQ'd.

I think that it probably never crossed their mind that people would try to walk through walls. I doubt there was any conscious choice about the decision at all. Label it what you will.

mahkra said:

I'm not convinced that we're saying the same thing, but I am relatively certain that each of our respective methods would result in the same gameplay for all circumstances I can imagine. I'm willing to call it a draw. =)

James McMurray said:

Again: You think they considered the possibilities that people would try to walk through closed doors, walk off the edge of the board, or trace line-of-sight through walls, but not the possibility of moving through walls?

In a fantasy game, moreover? (Walking through walls is on the short list of classic magic tricks; it's one of only 12 hero spells in HeroQuest, one of the games most often compared to Descent.)

Antistone said: