Q9 The King of Dawn: A New Found Enemy (part I)

[Anderas]

According to the "story arc", Q9 should have been the quest where our heroes encounter for the first time the new Beastmen and Minotaurs.

Inspired by Lestodante's Jungle Monkey Playground, I play donkey kong here.
With utterly bad dice luck, you need a max of up to 7 Indiana Stones.

This quest is played best with a group having Equipment.
A "Run" rule is necessary to play this quest: Give up your action and move three squares more.

This posting is best viewed if you have installed the fonts HQModern, Gaze and Heroquest.

A Quest for Heroes with at least 3 dice
The King of Dawn
Zargon is employing a new force! They meet in an abandoned mine deep in the mountains. I can't see inside, as some mighty earth magic is shielding my view. Go, investigate and see what is behind that shield. Every Hero will get 100 Crowns upon returning.

Notes:

Run: In this quest, the heroes may give up their action to move three squares more.

A&B: This is the King of Dawn, an evil Gargoyle who conjurs mighty earth magic. Place him on the board right at the beginning of this quest. He conjures rolling stones that start their journey on the square marked "A". He is then exhausted: He conjures the next rolling bolder when the last one has passed the letter "B". During the set up, place rolling stones also in the lower left and lower right corner. On the squares marked with arrows, they change the direction and continue rolling. The stones move right at the beginning of Morcar's turn. They move with 2d6 movement, with results lower than 5 counting as 5. Start with the one the furthest away from the King of Dawn.
When they hit the blocked square marker at the end of the long corridor, replace them by a rubble marker. Once the Heroes have understood that the way back is blocked, just take the freedom and remove rolling stones that have passed out of the heroes LOS. When you're out of Rolling Stones, use skull markers instead. If a Hero is hit by a rolling stone, roll 4 white dice for damage. They can defend as normal.
A hero inside a pit trap is save from rolling boulders passing overhead.

C: Strong earth magic seems to fill this room, filling the air with vile chaos smell. The Heroes can interrupt the ritual by closing the sorcerer's book. The recoil gives everyone headache, and it is impossible for a time to use earth magic. Also the heroes may not use earth magic in this dungeon from now on. The King of Dawn now accepts the times have changed and escapes through the exit door to the next dungeon.

D: The Fimir knows the chaos spells "Mind Control" and "Rust".

Wandering Monster in this quest: Orc

[Thantos]

That's a really unique quest xD i love it, will be playing this one. And i have the perfect boulder for the stones ^_^

[benvoliothefirst]

Definitely an original idea, and holy moly, a quest where the center room isn't used! You don't see that very often!

I might consider a name change... Not sure about other languages but "Dong" means male genitalia in English.

[lestodante]

Lever on point C will avoid the use of Earth Spell to Heroes too?

[Anderas]

Definitely an original idea, and holy moly, a quest where the center room isn't used! You don't see that very often!

I might consider a name change... Not sure about other languages but "Dong" means male genitalia in English.

Wasn't aware. Thanks, I changed the name to Don King.

Lever on point C will avoid the use of Earth Spell to Heroes too?

yes.

[j_dean80]

Don King is the famous boxing promoter (Mike Tyson for example). Kind of makes it funny.

[Anderas]

I just play tested the quest and found out that the stones come too close to each other. The heroes had to wait turns and turns and turns before there was a gap big enough to move again.
Also it was an awful lot of dicing. I am open for ideas - I don't want the stones to be too calculable, but also I don't want to dice ten times per round for the stones only.

As a result from the play test, I changed the movement rules for the stones, also moved the letter B further out. Finally, the Heroes may use Pass Through Rock now, why not.

Mandatory for this quest: A kind of "Run" rule! In my games, heroes may give up their action and move three squares more than the dice result. This is absolutely needed here!

[benvoliothefirst]

Anderas, let me start by saying how inspirational it is that you were able to make such an interesting quest out of what started as a pile of spam nonsense. (Credit to Lestodante as well!)

You've already changed the name once, so it's entirely up to your authorial intent, but I might recommend a further alteration to make it more "medieval-sounding": "The King of the Dawn." He doesn't REALLY HAVE to be a king, he could just be a looney who calls himself such, but this is one step removed from farcical enough that the people who put together the "barrel dodging" and the Dawn King name will discover a secret reference, and everyone else will just think it's a generic fantasy name. To make it easier, you could even call the quest "The Dawn King's Con" or something.

But I'm a crazy wordplay person, so what do I know?

The lever stopping earth spells is a great mechanic. I question whether it should be a lever, it seems like it should be something more magical in nature, perhaps a dwarven rune? The dwarves hate magic, after all. Ooh! It could be an artifact, called "The Dawn Key"!!! I would want to see it show up later in the quest pack. Are there other enemies that use earth spells? Or is the only time it's beneficial in this particular quest?

EDIT: And as far as spacing the boulders, you could make them less random, by saying they each roll 1d6+6 spaces each turn rather than 2d6, but I gather that isn't your intent. If you really wanted to invoke Donkey Kong, you could say that the heroes can actually JUMP OVER the boulders (maybe they're closer to barrel size than Indiana-Jones'-boulder-size?), the same way they jump a pit. Of course the dwarf would struggle with this... Perhaps he could be tossed?

You could even allow the heroes to attack and destroy the boulders, but that would really be more appropriate if they were barrels.

[lestodante]

I agree with benvoliothefirst about many things!!!
It started for fun but if this quest should be included in the 25th anniversary edition I'd prefer a more serious/medieval name as for the quest itself, as for the boss gargoyle.
I also found "strange" that a lever can stop earth-magic... well, maybe it could activate some kind of "magnetic force" that stops the effect of that spells. But anyway why a villain should put in his lair a lever that can reduce his powers?
But I understand the importance to avoid the "pass through rock spells" in such a situation.

As for suggestions, I have some ideas:
you may place more boulders already placed on the corridors (maybe in the corners); when the first one hit the second one, the first stop and the second starts to move until it reaches the third and so on. In this way you can set a minimum number of boulders to be avoid before reaching the boss. But it must be possible for the Heroes to pass through the boulder tile while it is not rolling down the corridor or they will be always blocked (need a playtesting).

As for the movement the easiest way can be that you roll the dice only 1 time and the result correspond to the strenght used by the boss to launch it. So it will move always at the same speed (speed=number of squares).
Or set a decreasing number : the first launch will be the strongest/faster... after every launch it will be more tired and the boulder will be slower and slower. In this way the second boulder will never reach the first. The first boulders could move of 12, the second of 10, the 3rd of 8 squares and the 4th of 6. I will not allow less than 6 or the game will be too much slow. It is also important that the first 1 or 2 boulders reach the players as fast as possible or they will be able to explore a big part of the dungeon without any fear of the boulder (because it is still far).

About trying to destroy the boulder: it can be possible but only by using big and heavy weapons like a hammer or a battle axe. For sure not with a crossbow, a spear or a sword. It is a risk to take, of course, if you want to face the rolling rock (ability test? and you may lose more BP than ever if you fail)!! Maybe a Genie spell may also work fine for this.

Maybe in the middle corridor on the right you could consider to move one more square on the left the wall till, so 2 players can refugee in that hollow at the same time instead of just one.

Put a stone-door (from ATOH) on the right side of the board to create "panic" because they have to try to open it before the boulder arrive; a fake/locked door too. Imagine a player rolling a 5 and saying... "Ok I can move and enter the room from that door so I will not be flattened by the boulder" but when he is in front of the door he will discover it is closed and he has not enough movement left to come back!!!

Put at least 1 pit trap in 1 corridor. a player that fall inside a pit will lose 1 BP but the boulder will pass over his head with no consequences for him (because he is hidden inside the pit). Or he can vouluntary chose to fall in the pit to avoid the boulder (strategy)

Hope this can be helpful.

[Anderas]

Ok, I re-corrected this quest.

Name: King of Dawn.
All of Lestodantes ideas are in.
The lever is gone, instead you may close the sorcerer's book on the sorcerer's table now.
I slightly changed the positioning of some monsters.
In the notes, I propose to use skull markers instead of rolling stones if you don't have enough of them. That saves us some print out sheet

I think this quest is now good to go.

Thanks you all for your help and remarks, you're the best!