Hi folks,

a little doubt in tonight's game: I had Darrell returned to Arkham by an OW encounter directly on a moving gate placed in the Uptown streets while the Mudslides environment was in play. What happens during Mythos? Shall I roll or not? I ruled for no roll required (considering the gate replacing the Street area, in a way similar to many "Gates vs Locations" situation), but I'm curious of how you'd have played this.

Thx

JULIA

Personally, I'd say yes. I'm not sure the "gate replaces the location principle" applies to that extent and, from a thematic perspective, standing next to a gate wouldn't protect you from mudslides.

Hi Julia,

I believe you should have to make that mythos die roll. In my interpretation, when a gate is in either a location or a street area, it only takes up a fraction of the space of that location or street area, not the entire space. Unless I'm mistaken (not sure where I saw this...in a FAQ or somewhere in the rules), an investigator in a location during the Arkham Encounters phase has the option to either enter a gate that's already there or have a regular encounter at that location instead. The reason being that the gate is an entity within the location...not something that completely covers that entire location. So I would extend that same logic to a street area..

Schmiegel said:

This is from a suggested house rule by one of the creators. The actual rules say a gate replaces a location.

A gate replaces a specific location, but it doesn't change the fact that it's a location.

Likewise, you may not have been allowed to have an Exhibit Encounter in this street (if applicable), but it was still a street. You should have rolled.

I like to think of gates as vast, trans-dimensional regions. You could enter the Woods and emerge in the Abyss and not even know that you had changed dimensions, for example.

Schmiegel said:

Yeah, as Krawitham said, official rules say you must enter the gate when a gate is at a location and you're there during AE phase. Not to mention obnoxious conundrums like: you decide to have an encounter instead of entering the gate. The encounter instructs you to open a gate at the very same location. Is this a monster surge during AE phase?

Actually,a amonster surge during AE could be fun... but anyway, I prefer playing according to the official rules

Tibs said:

Hmmm.. not so sure I've got the Exhibit Encounters point, basically because I still have to try the new DP; I take your point, Tibs (and all the others) that I should have rolled, but... I have a related question.

Tibs, you've just said that the gate doesn't change the fact that it's a location. But you don't roll for Martial Law when you're on a gate in Innsmouth. Isn't this a juxtaposition?

I think you mean a "contradiction."

First, my point about Exhibit encounters is that they activate in the street. If you happen to be on a gate in the street, the gate supercedes any Exhibit encounter you might otherwise have.

Second, Martial Law requires an evade modifier, and the modifier is inexorably linked to its location. A gate replaces a location and resultantly replaces its Martial Law modifier, meaning no check is made.

Lastly, I used to house-rule long, long ago that you could take an encounter instead of entering a gate. If your encounter opened a gate on your location, you would be drawn into the gate on your location and there would be a monster surge.

Tibs said:

::mumbling:: it's said you can use it even for (linguistics) contrasts (nope, not trolling, just trying to learn a decent English; both in Italian and in Latin you can use juxtaposition with the meaning I meant)

So, then, the gate supercedes the normal encounter, but the environment supercedes the gate? I'm not so sure of the logic here, in my mind both are equal. Would you mind explaining your reasons?

Juxtaposition might be appropriate here but I thought that the ideas needed to be presented side-by-side to highlight their differences.

Gate supercedes encounter, right. But it's not that the environment supercedes the gate: it affects streets, and you're technically in a street (just not the specifically named street).

It's the same way that gate supercedes location, so you don't have an encounter; but if you got "Manhunt in Arkham," monsters on a gate would still be removed. Similarly, if your gate is open on an aquatic location, it's still an aquatic space , so aquatic monsters can move to you.

I don't know. I thought I made sense.

Tibs said:

And yet...the Gate token covers the "aquatic" icon out of sight, but it persists, while the Martial Law Modifier is never covered, but is ignored.

I still don't understand why the Innsmouth "police" will leave Investigators alone, possibly for multiple turns, just because they're on a Gate...

I seem to learn something new every time I read this forum. I've been playing you can have either an encounter or enter the gate during an Arkham encounter phase for a couple of years. Just as an example.....a gate at The Woods covers the entire woods, i.e. there is nowhere you can go and not have to go through the gate in the entire area of the Woods...?! Tibs has an interesting way of visualizing that, but honestly it seems a bit of a reach to me.

I'm guessing it must have been Richard Launius who suggested this house rule. When I see a house rule suggested by a game's inventor, I take it as more than an "ordinary house rule", and I realize that Kevin Wilson actually designed this version of AH, but still. I mean how big does a gate need to be for extra-dimensional beings to come through? Surely not big enough to take up an entire woods.. Anyway, thanks for enlightening me..I should have known that Julia would know the correct way to play this. While my posts never end up being very helpful to anybody else....at least I always end up learning something after someone corrects my misconceptions...so thank you!

Tibs said:

A lot, indeed. Thank you, Tibs!

Schmiegel said:

I see... maybe playing with this suggested house-rule is the reason why you have so long games in Avi's League?

Anyway... Richard proposed some house-rules a lot of time ago, but IMHO they cheange a lot the strategy of the game. Another one, IIRC, was that you play with gate face down. This can be fun, but it's also a suicide, under a strategical point of view (OW's colours have their particular meaning, and you have different kind of sealer - not everyone's Joe Diamond or Akachi, sadly)

As for your "gates covering a whole wood" issue... I tend to justify it in this way: the gate doesn't cover the whole wood, but its power attracts those who enter the Woods toward the portal. Hence, no encounter in the location is possible, you can only enter the gate (in a similar way, but on smaller scale, the Yuggoth gate forced you to move towards it in Scenario 3)

That reminds me of a conversation I had a while ago...a friend was scoffing at us for being weaklings who play with the RL variant, and one of us said "well, the idea is that a gate doesn't consume the entire science building, it's just on one floor or whatever," and she said "oh and when that tiny gate opens, it somehow sucks up every investigator in the building?"

We didn't have a good answer to this, except for vague mumblings about how interdimensional forces tend to converge on the most Mythos-active people in the area.

To elaborate on an earlier point, imagine that gate is like a fog. It takes up a pretty sizeable space, and its presence is subtle—you only really notice it when you're in the thick of it. In such an interpretation, most—or even all—of the Science Building is within this gate, so as you roam throughout the building you suddenly find yourself in Leng. This would explain why a single gate sucks in all investigators, or why you can't casually explore the location without entering the gate.

Now, how then can a Fight check be responsible for closing a gate? I'll have to get back to you on that.

Not intending to completely shift the focus of the conversation but to respond to Tibs and fight checks vs. gates: Fight checks represent any amount of physical exertion. (for example I like to imagine an character without a weapon improvising with the environment to defeat a monster rather than just beating it to death with his or her bare hands.) As such a fight check vs. a misty or fog-like gate doesn't have to be the character doing enough damage to the area so that it just falls apart, it could mean moving stuff in the area that messes up the arcane energies. So in the Science Building it could represent physically barring a door that doesn't belong.

Just fun ways to imagine what the dice lying on the table and the mechanics in the book might actually look like.

In some attempt at relevance to the original topic: I wouldn't stress about this too much. I mean, the game was made for players to have fun, we players weren't made to follow the rules perfectly. It sucks that this isn't a clear case, but if you had fun playing with the decision you made, then you made the right decision.

Thank you. Originally, when I thought of gates as literally a circular rip in spacetime, I imagined the Fight check to involve physically grabbing either end of the torus and pulling it shut. Clearly, that doesn't work with my modern interpretation. But moving objects around is a good explanation. I only wonder why Fight was actually included as a gate-closing check? It's used to combat monsters, to combat the Ancient One, and even for random encounter skill checks. I suppose it was added so that characters like McGlen could still be gate closers, but... Fight sure is a useful stat, isn't it?

For me, the right decision is the one that's most consistent, most mechanically sound, most thematically sound—in that order.

It's interesting that the point was raised in this thread concerning gates that are opening being placed face down or face up.... Apparently I must have read Richard Launius' suggested house rules and applied them from the outset (and this includes losing a skill or spell when driven insane as opposed to items) when I started playing AH. Because the thing I have learned today on this forum is that the gates, by official rule, are supposed to be placed FACE UP. I have been placing them face down for as long as I've played the game, about 4 years now..

Julia, to answer your point about the encounter/entering gate option extending the length of my games in Avi's league....I don't believe so, because while I considered that to be optional, I would say 95% of the time I chose the "enter gate" option anyway. However it's possible that placing gates face down has made life more difficult. Calling it "suicidal" might be a stretch.....but as per usual, I could be (and probably am) wrong.

Schmiegel said:

Well, generally speaking it's not "suicidal", but considering Avi's scenarios... it kinda is.

Anyway, sending to R'lyeh a character whose max stat for sealing is 4 is very different from sending the same character to the Dreamlands: in the first case, you have to roll only one die, in the other, you're allowed to roll 5 dice. Needless to say, in a Yog-Sothoth game this matters even more. Besides, we know the meaning of the OWs colours:

- red: encounters tend to attack your Stamina
- yellow: encounters tend to attack your Sanity
- blue: encounters tend to attack your possession
- green: encounters tend to be neutral or good

in addition, Another Dimension has no specific encounters (thus you should be prepared, because very often the "Other" entry on the cards requires you to fight a monster), while the Dreamlands have specific encounters in all colours.

This offers the opportunity to work deeply on strategy, choosing the best sealer for each open gate (you can risk a 1 Sanity investigator to enter a blue / green OW, but certainly you won't risk a passage through R'lyeh).

Besides, playing the gates face-up grants you the big chance to know which monsters have to be fought and which can be removed by gate closing. And it's helpful for dealing with corruptions as well.

So, yeah, my point is: you cannot have an effective strategy without knowing what you're diving into!