I know this has been answered before, but my searches have been in vain and I don't know if I'm just over looking it or what the deal is but I'm sure I've read the answer somewhere. Anyways, that's my way of saying sorry for asking a question that's already been answered at some point but here goes:

With House of Dreams, if you're following all the rules, how does revealing house and agenda work with finding a location? I think I read that it is that a randomly determined first player reveals house and agenda, and then if that agenda is HoD has to go fetch a location without ever seeing what his opponent is running. However, people far more experienced than I have said that both players reveal House and Agenda simultaneously (which IMO is a much better way of doing things). Which is correct?

Shadowcatx said:

I'm not entirely sure if there's an official ruling on this. I personally think it depends on your local meta. In my area, we just all reveal at the same time, and when it comes to agendas like HoD, most of our group pick their location prior to game, so this situation hasn't really come up.

From the CS Rules:

3. Declare your House and agenda
Randomly determine which player will be the
first player. This player now announces which
House card and agenda (if any) he or she will
use for this game. Then all opponents, in clockwise
order, do the same. Note that more than one
player may play the same House and agenda.

I'm not quite sure. On the one hand, this looks like a Framework Action, with the announcing of the House and Agenda as the only Framework Event. If that's true, then the choosing of the HoD location should resolve as a passive effect after all players have announced their house/agenda.

Then again, it could also work like bringing a card out of Shadows, like a special kind of Player Action Window with specific limitations. Then each player in turn would resolve the announcing of House and Agenda completely, which would mean that the FP would choose his HoD location without knowing the House/Agenda of the other players.

I seem to have a very faint memory that this second way is how it works. I think it was said sometime that the FP also has to decide which chains he puts on TMP before he knows which house the other guy plays, but I could be mistaken.

In short, I don't know. Ask ktom.

stormwolf27 said:

But if you plan to use Bear Island with HoD, this is very important indeed.

Ratatoskr said:

Maybe that's what I read, the discussion on Maester's Path and not on HoD, which would make sense why I couldn't find it listed in the HoD threads I looked for.

And as for asking ktom, I'm working on it.

There is no "framework" or flowchart for Setup. Setup is outside of the normal timing structure, which doesn't begin until the first plot phase begins. Trying to explain setup as framework actions (or as the extended-pseudo-framework windows that people have created in their minds to explain Shadows) just isn't applicable because of this.

So, you do exactly what the Core Set rules and the cards tell you to do. According to the rules, each player announces his House/Agenda separately. According to the House of Dreams card, you go and get the location "after" you announce your Agenda - which means "immediately after," particularly in the absence of any sort of framework event or timing window in Setup.

Essentially, this means that Player #2 (determined randomly) gets to see Player #1's HoD location before they announce their own House/Agenda (and, subsequently, goes and gets their own HoD location).

This particular sequence was well established in the CCG days thanks to the Agenda " Treaty ," which was much like the LCG's Alliance Agenda, but you announced your "treaty-House" when you announced the agenda, not just before you drew your setup hand. There was a particular deck type that was played out of one House (usually Lannister for the gold) and included the Traitors for all of the other Houses. You wait to see what House your opponent was playing, then named the same House as your "treaty-House" so that you didn't have to pay the OOH penalty for the traitor that would do the most damage to your opponent. Because of this, TOs actually started enforcing the "randomly decide first player, announce house/agenda in order" rule - which most players and TOs usually just blow past because it doesn't make any difference 85% of the time.

This sequence was cited for The Maester's Path and used by some people to justify that you had to decide which chains to attach before seeing the other player's House, but it was a misapplication of the rule. Since Maester's Path says to take the chains out before you shuffle , and the steps for setup in the rules have shuffling your deck after all players have announced their House, the reasoning didn't really apply - although it was an honest mistake to do so and required careful reading of the Agenda card to avoid.

The long-and-short of it is that technically, all players are supposed to announce their House and agenda - as well as do anything included in announcing your agenda as indicated on the card - in random order. The result of that, of course, is that whoever is Player #1 has to finish that before Player #2 starts.

~Aha! So it *does* work like a special kind of Player Action Window! Just like Shadows! I knew it!

Just kidding. Thank you for the explanation. Interesting bit about TMP, I did get that wrong.