Which effect takes precedence?

Question

I was in an Arkham location when I drew an encounter that stated: 'Go to the Dreamlands, have an encounter there and then immediately return'

The encounter in the Dreamlands required a skill check, which upon failure stated that I had to stay there for my next turn.

I failed the check.

Which of these takes precedence? Do I return immediately, regardless of what the second encounter said or do I stay there?

Cascabel · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-11 15:23:56Z

I doubt there's an official rule to cover this. The possibilities I can think of, with my favorite bolded:

You aren't delayed at all - you just return. Seems too...nice for Arkham, like you're cheating your way out of the bad effects of an encounter.
You are delayed, so you stay in the Dreamlands one more turn then return to your original location. I think this makes the most sense in terms of the ideas of the cards - you fall asleep, end up in the Dreamlands, and you wake back up as soon as you're done with whatever you find yourself doing there. In this case you find yourself stuck there, so you have to wait until you stop being stuck there to be done and wake back up.
You are delayed and also return immediately, so you're stuck in your original location for an extra turn. If you squint at the rules, this seems totally logical: "stay here next turn" = "delayed" = "skip your next movement". It just feels a little weird flavor-wise.
You are delayed so you miss out on your chance to return to Arkham so you're stuck in the Dreamlands. If you really want to go by the spirit of "the worst possible thing always happens to you in Arkham", this is your option, but turning a mostly-benign Arkham encounter into a waste of several turns (delayed, stand up, move, try to return and get lost in time and space...) seems pretty excessive.

Going with the whole arkham is bad kinda thing, we used the 'excessive' ruling in our game — link64, Commented Jul 11, 2014 at 23:10
@link64 Understandable - I just figure, taking someone basically out of commission for likely 1/3 to 1/2 of the turns of the game is a bit much even for Arkham, and makes the game pretty un-fun for that player. — Cascabel, Commented Jul 12, 2014 at 3:22
The player in this case was me and yes, it was pretty un-fun . However, Arkham Horror is a sadistic boardgame anyway so I wasn't too disappointed :p — link64, Commented Jul 14, 2014 at 3:45

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