Diagonal movement in HeroQuest (and other games)

Posted by MortiS-the-Lost on Jul 28, 2011; 11:45am
URL: http://the-lost-and-the-damned.71.s1.nabble.com/Diagonal-movement-in-HeroQuest-and-other-games-tp6629531.html

As anyone who's read the rules will know in HeroQuest you cannot move diagonally (many other games also share this rule for the sake of simplicity) so when confronted with diagonal corridors like these from Billiam Babble's excellent Dungeon Floorplans what do you do?


One solution of course is to ignore the rules and allow diagonal movement as a house-rule, but you'll quickly find this leads to players using diagonals to skip quickly across rooms, avoid taking their jump-test to clear pit traps and many disagreements about moving diagonally past monsters, walls and so on. So then you have to come up with a bunch of 'diagonal blocking' rules like these from Mighty Warriors

or the equivalent ones from WHQ, CaStLe RaVenLoFt and other games which allow diagonal movement. You might also need to come up with a rule meaning that diagonal movement costs double (which certain players will conveniently forget to gain an advantage in combat). Anyway you'll quickly find that what at first seemed like the simplest solution quickly becomes rather complicated  

 Well here's my alternative solution: allow models to move through but not finish their movement in the 'half squares' created by the diagonal walls. Basically treat the 'half squares' like a square occupied by a friendly model. This means models can zig-zag their way along diagonally corridors.

A: Incorrect Movement! the Dwarf cannot finish his movement in the 'half square' created by the diagonal wall
B: Correct Movement! the Elf has moved through the 'half square' and finished his movement in an empty square

This simple house rule can easily be added to AHQ too and can be used for WHQ and other games to replace the much more complicated rules for diagonal movement

any thoughts, questions or comments?