ONLINE QUEST 0 New Beginnings

[Pancho1]

As an extended introduction, I'm thinking heroes could play through 'The Maze', 'The Arena' and then this quest before heading into the base game quests. Are there any other quests (official or fan made) that are designed to be played by absolute rookies?

[Jordstag]

I personally played this as the first one with my nephew and niece and they had a lot of fun. If we had done "The Trial" first I'm pretty sure they would have died and lost interest in the game. So I think it's a good and nice first adventure for young first timers.
I'm thinking about playing "Rogar's Hall" next. Do you think it's harder than "The Trial"?

[Kurgan]

Rogar's Hall is VERY tough. I would say it is more along the lines of later expansion pack tough. Stephen Baker (the author) alluded that he did it as a warmup for the new game (since he hadn't written a HQ adventure in many decades... for players to try out who hadn't played in years either) and to show off the "Mentor" miniature from the Mythic tier, but the real point of it was to teach the heroes humility by allowing them to fail. So the point is to make victory nearly impossible. I take it that regardless of the outcome, the Heroes don't really lose their progress and they move on to the next quest, whether they succeeded or (more likely) failed at it.

Just beware that it's designed to be a TPK before you attempt it! It is also going to be a very long quest, having more monsters than most you will play. If length isn't a problem you could even try playing it with more than four heroes to increase the chances that someone will survive till the end.

PS: Some have said you should really try to fudge the quest so victory is assured, by making it so that "Mentor" can revive a dead hero in the quest infinite times, but his stated rules say it only applies to the Healing Potions in the Treasure deck, so that would be three revivals maximum, plus the two from the elemental spells, which is certainly not infinite. But you play how you want to play!


New Beginnings was fine to play with a group of heroes where one player was completely new to the game, and we used the Rogue in place of the Wizard.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Are there any other quests (official or fan made) that are designed to be played by absolute rookies?

Shameless plug alert!

United We Stand

[Kurgan]

Sounds cool!

[Maalicia_Ironhoof]

Also from my point this is a terrible first quest, it literally has EVERYTHING in it, removing a lot of fun and surprise as new monsters, furniture and traps are rolled out for the first time as you get into the first handful of quests.

Avlon hill seem to have the habit of making their quests as busy as possible, cramming the board rather than easing back and allowing the atmosphere to lead the way.

I'd advise not to play this and use the Maze instead, but have the DM scrutinize the notes of this quest and tack the extra rules clarifications to the end of what first quest they choose to do.

just my 2 cents....

So.... having played the Trial and Maze 101 times before I used this as an intro for a new group a few weeks back, and while they had a lot of fun (and took 4 hours to complete as we digressed heavily as they are very RPG experienced and there was a lot of Ad-Hoc conversations, integrations and well. a dwarf thinking a blocked tile was dubious looking and wanted to punch it, resulting in a falling block crumbling onto his head) I still feel my initial criticisms stand, while the quest has a great intuitive flow and gave the players plenty of staggered introduction to rules. There almost too much WOW seeing each new monster type and piece furniture being placed out consecutively, they have now had the surprise ruined for all of the base game components... as we approached the end I ended up cutting out the gargoyle room and creating a few deviations.

I would recommend new players doing similar and doubling up on some monster types, and not placing some furniture pieces and saving a few surprises later on.

[Pancho1]

Just ran through this adventure using the app and I think that any new team of Heroes should run this mission. Being able to provide the wizard (or your weakest Hero) with the Ring of Fortitude (+1 to your BP) and Bracers (+1 defend die) to start the core game quests is too good to pass up.

[The Admiral]

This is a good first quest in my opinion, but it does have its pros and cons for me. It makes the Heroes quite strong from the off with 5 healing potions and the Ring of Fortitude. Maybe doing The Trial straight after would balance this out and is perhaps the reason they made it.

For me it is a great first quest to quickly get a new group of heroes into a position where they can take on a more challenging set of quests than are provided in the Base Game.

I did this recently with a new group that then went straight in Spirit Queen's Torment and without those potions they would have all died, but it just gave them the chance to get themselves established.

[wallydubbs]

The Ring of Fortitude is a really powerful artifact so I'm not certain how I should feel about this appearing for the first quest.
However I'm in total agreement with the available healing potions, as they make The Trial survivable. Though I have yet to play this quest, I've read through it and it's pretty good for a starter group with a nice introduction to most monsters.

I also like where it gives the heroes an opportunity to introduce themselves and maybe even throw in a back-story if they so wish.

[Kurgan]

Oddly, the "introduce yourselves" thing is also plugged into Knightfall. It was kind of goofy for us but some groups might love that opportunity (KnightFall really feels like an introduction to HeroQuest, the way it is written, though it isn't quite a "fill up your equipment" type adventure). And it can be played without Dread Moon assets (you just need to proxy the three Specters... using Fimirs is an easy swap to represent them).