Melars Maze - great quest

[Pancho]

Hello there

A quick report from a surprise game I played a few months back. No pictures I'm afraid.

I say surprise as the game wasn't planned at all; I came home from work to see my Wife's sisters three children sat at the table playing Talisman. My Wife asked if it was ok that they were playing one of my games and I said of course, I was actually really pleased that the game was getting played. The kids explained that they had Talisman at home and played it a lot, even going to the point of inventing new playable characters. Rather than joining in a game that was well in progress, I asked them if they had ever played Heroquest (they hadn't even heard of it), and whether they would rather play something new instead.

Heroquest was duely set up, the concept quickly explained and characters chosen. They choose really inventive authentic sounding names for their characters (I can't remember them now) and right away I knew that they were getting into the spirit of Heroquest and were going to love the game. The eldest (16) took the Wizard, the 13 year old took the Barbarian and the youngest (10) took the elf (I think she had the Air spells, with the Wizard taking the other 3 decks). I took on the role of Morcar.

We blitzed through the Maze intro Quest, with the Heroes looking at me as if that was "soooooo easy", but I wanted them to get a feel for the game mechanics and also get some gold to power up for the real Quest (the Elf, who was first out of the Maze and bagged the reward money, bought a Helmet). Then it was straight into Melars Maze.

I had played all of the quests prior to Melars Maze with some friends very recently so I wasn't keen on GM'ing them again, hence the decision to let the kids attempt Melars Maze as their first proper Quest. I was taking a risk as this is quite an advanced Quest for brand new players, but these are very smart children and I felt that they could handle it. I could always take a few monsters off if it got too difficult for them.

After playing through, I have to say the Melars Maze is a really great quest, perhaps my favourite in the entire quest book. There are so many novel and "magical" elements to it, which the players love. The key that moves the throne to uncover the secret door, the Gargoyle that comes to life, the falling block trap that splits the group up, and the very first Quest treasure.

They all survived the Quest and recovered the Talisman of Lore. All three of them were down to a handful of body points and it was touch and go whether they would make it. I think I only removed one monster from the final room (a Mummy).
Highlights from the game included the youngest player (the Elf) slaughtering the Gargoyle all on her own, promptly gaining the epitaph of "the Gargoyle slayer", then the same character getting blocked off by a falling block trap and having to face the Mummy in the top corridor without aid from the others. She cast Veil of mist to escape and rejoin her companions after a group huddle and a bit of advice from the wizard. I was really impressed with the way they were working together, even though there was a lot of competition to plunder the best treasure. Meanwhile the Barbarian was having a tough time of it, rolling very badly and taking lots of damage. When he activated the three Skeletons in the southwest corner, he asked if he could jump down into the pit to escape them. I laughed and said that it wasn't very Barbarian-like behaviour, but I allowed it as a fudge considering that I was already asking a lot of the Heroes to start on such a difficult Quest.

To conclude, they loved their first experience of Heroquest and asked to play again straight away. We went straight into 'The Fire Mage', which we didn't quite have time to finish, but they were closing in on Balur in the centre room and would probably have destroyed him with their new-found confidence, weapons and teamwork ability. Hopefully we can play again over the Xmas hols!

[Spookyhappyfun]

That sounds great! Melar's Maze is one of the next ones for us to play through. I didn't know how interesting the quest was and I'm really looking forward to it now.

Glad you all had such a great time!

[Pancho]

Cheers Spooky.

It's a cool quest because up til now the Heroed have mostly come up against Orcs and Goblins. Now it's time for some undead monstrosities, and a Gargoyle!

[Spookyhappyfun]

I just ran this the other day and it really was a lot of fun. One of the players chose a paladin instead of a barbarian which was a lucky choice as he got to use a Turn Undead spell and happened to have acquired some Holy Water as a treasure in one room that also came in handy. They decided on another path and didn't encounter the falling rock trap until near the end of the quest, but the Gargoyle was still a lot of fun. The Wizard was the first one to open the room and find it and he backed away in a panic. It took the others a while to build up the courage to finally go in there and they thought they might be safe when nothing happened until they finally opened the door to the next room.

This really is a great quest!