I was reading the book again last night, and I came across a box that said precisely this (can't remember page now, sorry). I find repeatedly that the advice that I and others give here is already in the book - just reciting from memory basically. Most of the notes that we gave on archery are actually in the book, for instance, in the section that predicts the problem and addresses it.
The book is very clear, textually, about the mode of play that it supports. The rules themselves are a tad more confusing (this is typical of almost all games, however). But the point is not to say that this mode is superior to others. It's to say that this mode is what HeroQuest best supports. If you want to employ HeroQuest to play in other modes, then you're going to have to make the sorts of adjustments that have been mentioned - you may well want to decide that archers have no repercussions from ranged attacks and rules like this.
This doesn't mean that HQ has a problem, however. It works perfectly well with respect to these issues without modification. What this means that if you want to play it in another mode you're going to have to modify the game to make it what you want - a time-honored RPG tradition. As long as one approaches it from that angle, I think that a lot of unneccessary conflicts can be avoided. That is, don't say that the HQ rules don't work, tell us how you want them to work differently than they do now. That is, without understanding how they're supposed to work, and what they support as they are, modifying the game is much more difficult.
Now, the problem with this is that it's based on one reading of the rules. Other's might say that this is just my bias coming through, and that HeroQuest actually isn't designed to support the mode that I say it is. The only evidence that I can offer is that it works for me in that mode without modification (well, I modify plenty, but not on these issues). Given that the people who want the other mode see need for change, doesn't it make it patently obvious which mode it was designed for? Even if the text didn't explicitly say that it is?
Again, that doesn't mean that all is lost for those who want the other mode. HeroQuest comes very close to supporting either mode, and all you have to do to get the other mode is make some very minor adjustments. Like have already been proposed in this thread, or like the proposals for fixing magic, etc, etc. There's lots of support here in terms of modifying the game in this direction, and as a "camp" the players who want this mode may be as much as half of the poster here - hard to tell.
So I guess this is just a call for peaceful coexistence. We in the nar mode camp should stay out of the way of those who want to modify to create a more sim game, and those in the sim camp should realize that they're modifying the game, and proceed from that assumption. If we all understand this, then I think we'll all be better off.
If anything that I've said here seems inflamatory, I apollogize, my intention is quite the opposite.
Mike
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