Exploration Turns
Heroes Phase
Secret Doors Dice, Hidden Treasures Dice
Doors, Rooms, Illumination and Dark Zones
Game Table Limit
GM Phase
Dungeon Cards, Special Dungeon Cards
AHQ3.0 is played with the exploration of Dungeons, during Turns. There are two types of turns: Exploration Turns and Combat Turns. In the exploration turns the Heroes explore the Dungeon, enters new areas, open doors, search for treasures and secret doors. More time they spend exploring, more time the GM has to play against them tricks, traps and monster cards. In the typical game flow (GM vs Player/Players) each time an Exploration Turn ends without any enconter, the GM rolls a d6: on a result of 1 the GM picks a Dungeon Card, the main tool for GM to defeat the Heroes. When an Exploration turn leads to an encounter with monsters it ends and starts immediately a Combat Turn. The Combat Turns last till all the monsters encountered are defeated or till the Heroes are defeated or one of the factions involved flee from the Fight.
EXPLORATION TURNS
HEROES PHASE
During the Exploration Turns the Heroes move in the Dungeon: each Hero (and each henchman, follower etc. if there are any) move 12 squares maximum, and he can search for hidden treasures and hidden doors at the end of his movement. If an Hero finishes his movement near a door or a chest he can open or close it. An Hero can use his entire turn to wear or to unequip his armor.
If an Hero reaches a square in which he can see a new section of the Dungeon, the GM places that section or generates it in the case of the usual Rule used for the generation of the Dungeon (some quests have pre-determined maps, the rooms and passages can be drawn completely random or the GM selects wich Room Card place from his hand, see GM Phase for details). The Exploration turn ends immediately for the entire party if the new section contains monsters, or when all the Heroes have completed their movements. Then starts the GM phase.
So, during their Exploration turn, the Heroes and the followers can:
- move up to 12 squares, horizontally and vertically (no diagonal movements). If with his movement the Hero generates a new section without monsters his turn ends, and the other Heroes or henchmen follow. If there are monsters in the new area the Exploration turn ends and the Combat turn starts.
- if he finishes his turn adjacent to a closed door, he can open it. The Hero or the henchman cant open the door and pass through it in the same Exploration turn, so he actually blocks the passage in the next room or passage if the other Heroes can still move.
- if he finishes his turn adjacent to a chest he can open it (with the content determined by a Treasure Card, except if the quest says something different). The content of a Chest can be taken immediately by any Hero, from the nearest to the farest to the Chest, no action is required for this.
- he can finalizes his movement searching for secret doors on the wall on which his miniature stands. The Hero rolls the Search Doors dice that tells if he found a door, if he didnt, or if he didnt and the GM picks a Dungeon Card too. The turn of the Hero finishes when he rolls the dice. The same wall cant be searched twice for Secret Doors, even by different Heroes.
- he can finalizes his movement searching for hidden treasures if he's in a Room where there is no Chest, rolling the Search Treasures dice that tells if he found a treasure, if he didnt, or if he didnt and the GM picks a Dungeon Card too. The turn of the Hero finishes when he rolls the dice. The same room cant be searched twice for Hidden Treasures, even by different Heroes.
- he can wear or unequip his armor. If he unequips it and cant carry it the GM puts on the square a token indicating that there lays the armor unequipped by the Hero: anyone can pick it passing on the square. This action always ends Hero turn.
SECRET DOORS DICE
x2 
x7 
x3
Explanation: GM picks a Dungeon Card, No door, the Hero finds a Secret door and he can place it on the wall where he wants.
HIDDEN TREASURES DICE
x2 x4 
x4 
x2
Explanation: GM picks a Dungeon Card, No treasure, Hero found 4d12 Crowns, Hero picks a Treasure Card.
DOORS
Doors can be found on passages and rooms walls, they are always closed (except if differently indicated by a pre-determined quest). Once opened the content is generated. To open a door alwasy ends the turn of the Hero opening the door itself. In the usual game flow the doors normally generated are placed by the GM while the secret doors are placed by the Hero. The doors cant be placed on explored walls too, except if there is no other option for the GM: in this case it means that the Hero didnt found it as an hidden door. When an Hero finds a secret door and he places it in front of him he can decide to open the secret door immediately or to end his turn; the secret door can be placed in front of any other Hero on the same wall that, if has till not moved, can open it. A door in a passage always lead to a Room, while a door in a Room can lead to a passage or to another room (50% possibility, the dedicated dice is used).
ROOMS
There are three ways to generate AHQ3.0 dungeons rooms: completely random, with the number of rooms indicated by the Objective Card; with the Room Cards shown on GM's hands, in this case the GM selects wich Room Card play; or pre-determined by the quest or the scenario, following a map known only to the GM. The number of doors inside the Room is indicated on the Room Card together with room dimension and features. The GM places the doors present in the room, maximum one door for each wall. Check the Deck Section to see how is composed a classic Standard Room Cards Deck. Specific Addons and Special Quest Packs can add new Room Cards and even a whole different Room Cards Deck. To discover the content of a Room and drawing a Room Card, a member of the Party has to enter the room, crossing the door: no content is disvealed simply opening the door: to open a door the character has to cross it, so he needs at least one movement available: simply opening the door doesnt cost any movement. The way the Game Rooms Deck is generated for a Dungeon is explained in the Dungeon section.
ILLUMINATION AND DARK ZONES
This rule is optional. The Dungeons are scary and dark places: the Party has to try to always stay sticked together and with a source of light. At least one of the Heroes in the Expedition has to bring a Torch or a Lanthern during the expedition: the source of light doesnt count as equipped weapon in one of the hands of the Hero but it does count as object carried in the overall limit allowed to the Hero. Each Hero can bring a source of light individually, while followers and mercenaries never do. Each source of light grants an amount of illumination: the Torch for example enlights just the section of Dungeon in which the carrier is, while Lanthern enlights the adjacent dungeon sections too. When an exploration or a combat turn ends with a player (hero or mercenary) outside of the light zone, this player (or these players) is immediately attacked by a Wandering Monsters Card with a special placement and engaging rule: the Wandering Monsters are placed in all the squares surrounding the player, the monsters automatically win the Surprise Roll and the player WS/RS is lowered by -2 fighting in the darkness.
ROOMS OVERLAP AND GAME TABLE LIMIT
The GM cant place new sections of the Dungeon over existing ones: if a Room is too big, a smaller is used, if the passage cant lead in a specific position because it's occupied, then it is truncated. In the case of the border of the Game Table, only Dungeon sections that can fit in the table are placed, if not the Dungeon ends where the Game Table borders are. It is possible that a Dungeon with no sufficient exits is generated: if all the passages are blind, all the doors have been opened and all the walls searched for hidden doors than all the "searched" tokens over the walls are removed contemporary and the Heroes can search again. This doesnt happen if, for the Quest, or for a special trap activated by the GM, a section leading to the exit of the Dungeon is collapsed: in this case the Heroes can starve to death as there are no way out of the Dungeon.
GM STAGE
At the beginning of the Expedition the GM draws 6 Dungeon Cards from the Deck: this is his starting Dungeon Cards hand. When all the Heroes and the followers have finished their movements and actions and no monster has been encountered, the Exploration Turn of the Heroes ends: the GM rolls a d6, on a result of 1 picks another Dungeon Card. The GM can play a Dungeon Card in the way and in the moment indicated in the Card itself. The Dungeon Cards are the following:
Note that the Ambush card cant be used in combination with the Wandering Monsters card by the GM.
Some Dungeon Cards allow a x4 combination: if the GM has in his hand 4 Dungeon Cards of the same type he can play them together at the same time showing the "poker" to the players and using the relative Special Dungeon Cards given by the x4 combo of the normal Dungeon Cards. The Special Dungeon Cards are the following:
Some special quests and Dungeons feature special Dungeon Cards too that are added to the standard Dungeon Cards Deck. The Standard Dungeon Cards Deck is composed by 4 cards of each type and 8 Nothing cards.
HEROICAL CARDS
This rule is optional. AHQ3.0 is a game in which the Heroes are absolutely not unbeatable, the opposite of invincible Supermen able to wipe dungeons with no difficulty at all, kicking ogres and dividing orcs in equal parts with a single slash: AHQ3.0 Heroes are very mortal characters, almost miserable in their experiences in the Dungeons: the game mechanics allow a single harmless Goblin to kill a multi-experienced Barbarian with a single, lucky, strike. Part of the "appeal" of the game is the mortality itself of the components of a Guild, that has always to be able to renew itself and widen its rosters.
An optional component of the game, to make the mechanics less traumatic during the Heroes expeditions, is the use of the
AHQ3.0 is a game in which the Heroes are absolutely not unbeatable, the opposite of invincible Supermen able to wipe dungeons with no difficulty at all, kicking ogres and dividing in equal parts orcs with a single slash: AHQ3.0 Heroes are very mortal characters, almost miserable in their experiences in the Dungeons: the game mechanics allow a single harmless Goblin to kill a multi-experienced Barbarian with a single, lucky, strike. Part of the "appeal" of the game is the mortality itself of the components of a Guild, that has always to be able to renew itself and widen its rosters.
An optional component of the game, to make the mechanics less traumatic the Heroes expeditions, is the use of the Heroical Cards Deck: a cards deck with specific powers reserved to Heroes in their struggle to leave alive the Dungeon: the composition of this Deck is predetermined by the game (with a greater number of lesser powerful cards, and a smaller number of more powerful ones, up to a total of 45) and at the start of each Expedition the Party receives 4 of these cards, that have to be divided between the players partecipating. These cards are discarded at the end of the Expedition and are shuffled and dealt again at the start of each Expedition.