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Rescue of Sir Ragnar: The anti-climax ??

Discuss Quests, Cards, Monsters etc, from HeroQuest Game Systems.

How do you fix the ending?

Respawn the Monsters and Force the Heroes to Flee!
4
25%
Just agree to end the quest, everybody is tired anyway.
7
44%
Evil Wizard Cards to make them hate you even more.
0
No votes
Other solution.
5
31%
 
Total votes : 16

Re: Rescue of Sir Ragnar: The anti-climax ??

Postby invidentus » October 22nd, 2022, 9:47 pm

I've run this quest three times and no matter what happens, the players always find it before the horde, so the hallway massacre is inevitable.

In your case, I would stay as it is, but telling them they hear steps and doors creaking in the distance, so they have some pressure after all the fighting.
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Re: Rescue of Sir Ragnar: The anti-climax ??

Postby Zenithfleet » March 9th, 2023, 1:31 pm

I may be odd (in fact I'm definitely odd), but I've never thought that the alarm going off was supposed to be the climax of the quest, or that anything needed fixing with this one.

I saw the alarm more as, um ... fun insurance? ... in case you find Sir Ragnar early. It actually improves replayability.

For the first play, the challenge is to figure out where Sir Ragnar is. And yes, it's likely that you'll wander around the whole place and only find him after killing everything else. If so, that's the natural 'climax' of the quest. You free the prisoner after the fighting and exploring is done. (Note that his guard is the only Fimir, acting as a kind of mini-boss monster for this early quest.) The end!

But if you find Ragnar right at the start by sheer luck--or you're replaying the quest and know where to go--you could run back up the stairs after visiting just 4 rooms and killing just 4 enemies, for a quick reward of 200 gold, with Ragnar in no danger on the way back. Meanwhile, there's only 50g and a healing potion to find in the quest itself, so not really much worth sticking around and exploring for if you already know where to go. So, if you know what's what, it will be over so fast it's barely worth setting up the board.

That's where the alarm comes in. If you do find Ragnar early, then you have to face a mob of Orcs and Goblins coming at you from the rooms on the other side of the board. Since all rooms and furniture are also placed, you also see two tantalising treasure chests appear at opposite ends of the board, to tempt you into hanging around trying to get to them (if you don't know the rewards are meagre) instead of prudently leaving. It ensures that you get more play and enjoyment out of the quest instead of a perfunctory speedrun.

If you find him after killing all the monsters, then the alarm doesn't matter, because you've already had the fun of exploring and combat for a while, and reached a natural endpoint. It's just "haha, nobody's left to answer."

Effectively the alarm is there to make sure that whichever way you play it, you'll have fun. It won't be the same experience each time in the way that a 'scripted' scenario would be. That might be exciting the first time, but it would get dull the next couple of times. It's not railroading you. Instead you have two potentially very different experiences in the same quest (as well as mid-range results where you did some exploring but missed a couple of monsters).

I'm talking about the EU version of the quest, by the way, in case anything major changed for this one in the NA edition.
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Re: Rescue of Sir Ragnar: The anti-climax ??

Postby Bareheaded Warrior » March 10th, 2023, 5:30 am

I posted some comments on a different thread on the topic of Dungeon Design: Creating Your Own Quests that used the Rescue of Sir Ragnar as an example and I think they might be relevant here.

Bareheaded Warrior wrote:To try and illustrate the key points of the Level Design Guide above I’ll run through a HeroQuest example using Rescue of Sir Ragnar.

I’ve picked this quest not because it is a particularly good or bad example of level design, just that with the question marks around the wisdom of using “The Trial” as the opening quest for new heroes, I’ve skipped that one so this is the first “solid” quest.

So, first to the theme of the Quest, the mission/objective and background outlined in the Parchment Text and the Quest Notes, this can be summarised as:

• Objective: Find and free Sir Ragnar, get him out the dungeon alive
So before even looking at the Quest Map from a dungeon/level design point of view I would be expecting a critical path from the quest starting point to Ragnar’s holding cell, maybe with an alternative path to the same destination and/or a dead end path at the start of that critical path – to give the players the feeling of exploration and choice

• Upon freeing his lordship, an alarm will sound releasing a load of monsters held in reserve, which will then force a race to the exit, compounded by Sir Ragnar’s slow movement.

Again before looking at the Quest Map from a dungeon/level design point of view I would be expecting a holding/reserve area of 2-3 rooms containing monsters to be positioned sufficiently far off the critical path so they don’t get cleared before Sir Ragnar is found but sufficiently close to the critical path or at least the part of the critical path leading to the exit so that they have the chance of at least threatening to cut off the Hero’s escape.

Now to the map itself.

Entrance/Exit in the centre, cluster of rooms including Sir Ragnar’s cell to the bottom left, cluster of rooms with reserve monsters to the top right away from the cell but similar distance from the exit as the cell – so far so good.

However, from the start there are 5 possible paths open to the Heroes,1 leads to a dead end (not a problem), 1 is the critical path that we would want the Heroes to take, 3 paths lead to the “reserve cluster”, paths that we don’t want the Heroes to take, so leaving aside the decorative dead end that gives a 75% chance that the Heroes will go the wrong way and potentially spoil the ‘alarm’ mechanism that has the potential to make this a great quest.

Then to make matters worse the end of the path to the cell, is hidden behind a secret door, so even if the Heroes do happen to choose the desired path there is a chance that they could miss the secret door and potentially end up wandering down the “reserve cluster” paths by accident.

And to make things even worse the placement of the Goblins in the corridors, the first one will be spotted by the Heroes and will lead them down the wrong path, having dealt with that Goblin will almost inevitably reveal the next one, drawing them even further down the undesired path, and on route to that one reveals a third goblin who also has the potential to draw them down a different but equally undesirable path.

So, what tweaks (I don’t have time, energy or inclination to do a complete redesign) can we make to try and encourage this quest to flow in the right way.

Note: I’m using a graph co-ordinate system below, with the origin (0,0) as the bottom left square on the map with the x-axis horizontally along the bottom of the board, and the y-axis vertically along the sides of the board so (x,y) co-ordinates mean x squares horizontally along the board from the origin at the bottom left corner and y squares up vertically away from the origin square.

1. Replace the secret door between squares (8,5) and (8,6) with a standard door – removing the possibility of the Heroes missing the secret door and ending up back-tracking and wandering into the “reserve cluster”.

2. Replace the standard door between squares (23,9) and (23,10) with a secret door – to discourage Heroes from uncovering that path (and amend the Quest Note for the alarm to include the words “doors including secret doors will open”)

3. Add a new door in between squares (4,5) and (5,5) which will convert the dead-end path into an alternative path leading to the cell.

4. Move Goblin on square (16,6) to (13,0) and Goblin on square (16,12) to (14,6) so that these Goblins can be used to draw Heroes down the desired path.

5. Replace door between squares (15,12) and (15,13) with a secret door

And for the purposes of difficulty ramping (see level design guide above) you could also replace a couple of Orcs in the reserve cluster with a couple of Fimir (or Trolls under HQ Gold), slow moving hard hitting, as that will layer the reserve group better, increasing the perceived threat, that is Goblins – weak but fast are the most likely to threaten to intercept the Heroes, Orcs – stronger but slower – will act as a second wave, Fimir (or Trolls) – even stronger and even slower – will act as a third wave.
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Re: Rescue of Sir Ragnar: The anti-climax ??

Postby Zenithfleet » March 10th, 2023, 11:59 am

Bareheaded Warrior wrote:I posted some comments on a different thread on the topic of Dungeon Design: Creating Your Own Quests that used the Rescue of Sir Ragnar as an example and I think they might be relevant here.
]


That analysis makes perfect sense if you're thinking of this quest as essentially linear and scripted.

That is, if players are meant to move through the quest in a more or less predetermined order:
1. Look for Ragnar
1b. (maybe take a wrong turn that delays you with the 'feeling of exploration and choice')
2. Find Ragnar
3. Alarm sounds and monsters rush out
4. Fight your way to the exit.

If you assume that the quest is 'meant' to play out in that order each time, then 'The Rescue of Sir Ragnar' is indeed poorly designed.

But if you assume that the quest is meant to play out in totally different ways on repeated playthroughs--from "kill everything and then find Sir Ragnar" at one end, to "find Sir Ragnar right away and then have to fight your way back through everything", and many possible intermediate results, then the quest works fine.

If you come at it from a sandbox or (tiny) open world approach, and leave it up to the players, then the quest is actually a decent piece of design in my opinion.

The quest as published doesn't give you the feeling of exploration and choice. It gives you actual exploration and choice.

It's the difference between a scripted corridor full of set pieces (Half-Life 2) and an open playground of a level in which things can be done in any order (Goldeneye N64). There is no 'wrong way' for the heroes to go. It all still ends up working out in the end.

It also has the advantage that the dungeon feels more like a real place where monsters go about their business, and less like a series of challenge rooms waiting for heroes to walk in.

Again I should note that I'm talking of the EU version, in which going off on your own instead of sticking with the group is encouraged and survivable. The players may well be competing to find Sir Ragnar first, because that's the player who will get the reward (and then decide whether or not to share it). In that case, there need to be multiple directions to go in at the same time (for multiple players running off in all directions), not a mostly linear path with a 'distraction' branch.
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Re: Rescue of Sir Ragnar: The anti-climax ??

Postby Bareheaded Warrior » March 10th, 2023, 1:25 pm

Which, essentially I do.

HeroQuest is not a game it is a game system, you are provided with the material, and actively encouraged to create your own Quests, so the idea that any individual quest needs to have a high replayability value doesn’t make sense to me in that context.

I too, enjoy sandbox, open-world games, but for these to work the world has to have some serious self-generating mechanism, which HQ doesn’t, it relies on someone putting in the graft to make a Quest. I understand your reference was to smaller open-world games where you get a limited set of scenario cards, each of which has enough randomness in the set up or the events, that you can replay it over and over again getting a different experience, or something like Fighting Fantasy, and you could conceivable do that with HeroQuest (and I would be very interested in seeing and playing (and replaying) a Quest like that, "The Day of the Ground Hog") but that isn’t what has been done. The idea is that you play through GS, then buy the next expansion and the next expansion and between all those you create your own quests to bridge the gaps whilst they make a new expansion.

This means that they tend to be fairly linear (not completely linear), the art is disguising that so that from the inside, so for the players it feels less linear than it actually is.

Within the context of the game and the players (excluding the GM obviously), I’m not clear on the difference between creating an illusion or feeling of choice and exploration and presenting actual choice and exploration within the context of a game which is itself an illusion.

As mentioned above, the Quest as written has 5 possible routes of which only one actually leads to the objective so the only variability here is how many other paths the heroes go down before they find the one that leads to the objective, and as the heroes don’t and can’t know in advance which path leads to the objective then it isn't really a choice, it is just random. Roll a red die, 1-5 you have taken the wrong path, roll again, roll a 6 and you have achieved your objective.
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Re: Rescue of Sir Ragnar: The anti-climax ??

Postby Kurgan » March 10th, 2023, 10:31 pm

The Companion App "ends" the quest and gives you reward the instant Sir Ragnar hits the stairs, no matter what else is happening. The "real way" to play the quest was for the other heroes to wandering around the dungeon, looting the remaining rooms and getting the maximum treasure (risking hazards and wandering monsters in the process) even if the alarm went off to fall on deaf ears because all of the original monsters were killed off.

But yeah, if it's boring, remix the quest, add extra reinforcements, etc. Not every quest has to be a life and death struggle, but if that's the only fun way for your group, make changes!


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Re: Rescue of Sir Ragnar: The anti-climax ??

Postby Zenithfleet » March 11th, 2023, 1:54 am

I had a minor epiphany about all this last night that kept me awake, and I blame you for it, Bareheaded! I BLAME YOUUUU! :? :D

Prepare to be smited (smote? smitten?) by a 10-body-point wall of text ...

Bareheaded Warrior wrote:HeroQuest is not a game it is a game system, you are provided with the material, and actively encouraged to create your own Quests, so the idea that any individual quest needs to have a high replayability value doesn’t make sense to me in that context.


Well, it wasn't called a 'game system' outside North America ... ;)

The EU game was presented as a game, written as a game (the rulebook uses terse boardgaming language), and played as a game. It can be much more than that, of course. (More about this below.)

I'm reminded of that apocryphal, unreliable comment attributed to Bryan Ansell about Stephen Baker's early prototype being a 'poor imitation of D&D', and Games Workshop revising it to become an 'actual game'. If that's true, I suspect Jervis Johnson had a hand in it. He knows how to make games that work. Once HQ reached North America it seems to have gone back in the 'imitation D&D' direction again, though I don't know if Baker had anything much to do with that re-interpretation.

Bareheaded Warrior wrote:I too, enjoy sandbox, open-world games, but for these to work the world has to have some serious self-generating mechanism, which HQ doesn’t, it relies on someone putting in the graft to make a Quest.


Maybe 'sandbox/open world' was the wrong choice of words. What I'm thinking of is a pre-built 'level' where there is a limited, confined environment, with various enemies and locations predetermined ... but you have a great deal of freedom in how you move around that environment.

Think of a classic 3D platformer like Super Mario 64 or Banjo-Kazooie, where you have a playfield level with a bunch of different activities in various places: hill to the east, meadow to the north, river to the south, small floating island overhead. You can run in any direction and find something of interest. There might be an ultimate objective to reach (the top of the hill for example), but you can get there by 2 or 3 different routes. And if you go exploring in any random direction you'll probably find some cool bonus like a special item.

I mentioned Goldeneye N64 because although it's a first-person shooter, it took inspiration from Mario 64 in its level design. One person or team built each level as a small but realistic environment, without knowing where the objectives or paths would be. e.g. a bunker complex, or a frigate, or a collection of huts around a radio dish in Siberia. Then someone else came along and decided that the player should do A here, find item B here and flick switch C here in order to finish the level. Because of this the player can take any route they like through the level (more or less) and complete the objectives in any order. The frigate level for example asks you to rescue hostages in various rooms, but you can roam around the ship and tackle it in any way you like--front to back, back to front, randomly running through the maze of interior corridors, etc. To some extent many older FPS had similar levels (Duke Nukem 3D and Doom for instance).

After Half-Life, though, the FPS genre moved more toward a strict corridor you're funnelled down, with various exciting things happening along the way like a Disneyland ride. Great fun the first time ... but repetitive if you play it again because the same things always happen in the same order, like a movie.

Deus Ex on the PC was a famous exception, as was System Shock 2. Come to think of it, a System Shock 2 level is probably the best analogue to a Heroquest map of all these examples. It's like a space dungeon: mostly long corridors and small rooms, all interconnected, in a mazelike environment you can go around and around in and get lost ... complete with actual wandering monsters even after you've cleared out every pre-set enemy.


Bareheaded Warrior wrote:The idea is that you play through GS, then buy the next expansion and the next expansion and between all those you create your own quests to bridge the gaps whilst they make a new expansion.


That might be how the NA edition approached it, but I don't think that was how the original game was designed. One of the great things about the quests in the base game rulebook is that you can treat it either as a campaign to play through in order, or as an assortment of 14 possible scenarios that you can pick and choose from at random.

The EU rulebook says "pick a quest and play it." If you want to play through several in a row, then later in the rulebook it recommends doing it in order, but you don't have to (except the last three). Heck, you can pick a random quest from Kellar's Keep and play that if you want--although it'll be a challenge.

Even the expansions can theoretically be played in any order, because as a kid you might only own one. KK and RotWL were even marketed that way. I managed to get KK as a kid, but not Return of the Witch Lord because it was sold out when my birthday came around. (I ended up with Ogre Horde instead.)

The original intent of HQ (though not necessarily the North American interpretation) was to appeal to the mass market. Mass market family games in those days meant taking it off the shelf, playing one game and putting it back. Ludo, chess, Monopoly, etc. Or you'd reset the game and play it again, over and over. The idea of stringing several games together in a linear sequence was a foreign and bizarre concept to many of us. Heroquest introduced that 'campaign' concept to us ... but we didn't necessarily start out by playing it that way.

Sometimes we picked a favourite quest to play as a one-off. Sometimes we played the same quest over and over because we were playing it with different groups of friends. Often we might not have a chance to properly play through a campaign at all. The game had to work as a typical mass-market boardgame, with replay value, as well as the extra gravy of an ongoing campaign or making your own quests.

Arguably, the difficulty in the EU base game doesn't scale well to the increasing power of the players if you play through it in order. The quests don't get hard enough fast enough to keep up with the players' equipment purchases and Quest Treasure finds. But that's because the quests are also meant to be playable as one-off games. You can just grab the box and play Melar's Maze or Castle of Mystery with fresh heroes, and have a solid chance of succeeding. In fact it's probably more exciting that way because there's more danger and risk. The ones later in the book will be more challenging, but they're not impossible.

As a kid, age 10, I rarely had the opportunity to get a bunch of other kids together on a regular basis and play all the way through HQ. Teenagers might be able to do that, but not a kid like me with no other kids in my immediate neighbourhood. I had to rely on my parents driving me around and organising visits to friend's houses on the other side of town. I might get one day at most, at a birthday party or something, and get through 2-3 quests before we went off to do something else, like swim in the pool or go for a bike ride. Then I'd never see that particular combination of other kids in the same place at the same time again for months or years. Very little chance of a 'campaign'. I could only do that with my brother, and two-player HQ is a bit dull because one person is controlling all the heroes in perfect cooperation. So when I played HQ 'properly', with three or more people, it was in fits and starts--often with new players who would only get to play it just that one time. You betcha I played The Trial and Sir Ragnar and Lair of the Orc Warlord a few times over! Did it work? Absolutely. Was it fun? Absolutely. :)

One of my fondest HQ memories from my childhood was bringing the game to a 'boardgame day' in the last week of school term, in grade 6 or 7. I played it with four other kids who had never played it before. Which quest did we pick? Barak Tor, Barrow of the Witch Lord. Why? No idea. Probably just seemed interesting. They went in with fresh heroes and it was great. Three took the regular path toward the falling block, but the Wizard found the secret doors near the stairway and went off in the opposite direction alone. Then he turned a corner and met a Gargoyle. :lol: :lol: :lol: "RUN AWAY!"

Once again this probably comes back to the fact that the EU game lets players compete or cooperate as they wish, and is survivable enough for one hero to explore on their own. That means that playing the same quest again with just one new/different player can be entertaining. They'll go do something unexpected and ridiculous like open Grak's door before anyone has found the equipment, despite the warnings and pleadings of the other players.

Incidentally, I'm fond of 'The Trial' because it's designed like a kind of one-shot demo scenario. If you only play ONE game of Heroquest, 'The Trial' is a good one, because it showcases all the monsters and all the furniture, and provides a high level of challenge--while not involving anything complicated like traps or secret doors (in the EU version). I don't really treat it as part of a proper campaign myself.

Bareheaded Warrior wrote:This means that they tend to be fairly linear (not completely linear), the art is disguising that so that from the inside, so for the players it feels less linear than it actually is.


Linear? :o

The base game quests are far from linear. (Again, speaking of the EU edition.) Almost all of them have several routes to the objective. Some don't even HAVE an 'objective room' as such, like Bastion of Chaos (where you have to hunt down and kill every last monster on the map). The masterpiece that is Melar's Maze has no fewer than three ways to reach the objective room, plus side branches and tricks and dead ends.

In 'Legacy of the Orc Warlord' you might run into Grak and his mates right at the start before you find your equipment, or find your gear first and him last after a long trek around the edges of the map, or some other thing. You'd think Barak Tor would have to be linear in order to wake the Witch Lord at the right moment, but you can go around it in two directions. Even in 'The Trial' you can wander freely around the place in any direction and thoroughly loot the tombs before you bother with Verag's chamber.

Then there are quests that are semi-linear, with one main route, and a secondary zone to get yourself lost in and maybe find some nifty treasure. Sort of a primary and secondary objective, or a consolation prize for failing to reach the main prize.

There are only a few quests that are genuinely linear. 'Lair of the Orc Warlord' gets away with it because it's so short and cosy. 'Race Against Time' is linear with one distracting side-branch (with a treasure reward), but it's short too. In any case, I get the feeling that quest was meant to have some kind of timer mechanic that was left out for whatever reason.

Again, all this is in service to HQ's original design intent--which was for 10-12 year old kids to compete with each other or cooperate as they saw fit, and split up and go off on their own to explore if they wanted to.


Warning, rant ahead ... :!:

Many of us have an idea that in a dungeon crawl 'the party' should stick together at all times. But the best thing about EU Heroquest (ahem) is that the party DOESN'T have to stick together.

It's probably a lot more practical to let everyone split up in a boardgame, when you can see where everyone is at all times, than it is in a pen and paper RPG, when you'd have to ask half the players to step out of the room or pass them secret notes or whatever because they're at the other end of the dungeon. Yet many dungeon crawlers since then (in my limited experience) seem to rigidly stick to this idea that the party has to advance in a group. If you do that then, really, only one player is doing any actual exploring: the leader, or the toughest guy who takes point. The Barbarian in HQ's case. The other three players are just along for the ride waiting for something to happen. It's kind of dull, really. I love Warhammer Quest (1995) but you're prohibited from going more than one room away from the leader with the lantern, and it's suicidal to do so anyway. (In fact it's suicidal just to go down a WHQ dungeon in the first place, but that's another story.) You don't explore; 'the group' explores. Which ends up feeling like a fairground ride shunting you along a linear sequence of rooms and corridors, waiting for the next event.

In classic EU HQ you don't have to wait. You can just turn left when everyone else turns right and go see what's down that passage instead of this one. Even if cooperating you can all spread out across the board to check all the doors instead of hanging around each other all the time. It means that each player is exploring on their own instead of 'the party' exploring (which really means the leader). And if 'the party' does stick together, at least there are several ways to go and everyone can discuss which one to try first.

I don't think it's a coincidence that arguably the worst quest in the base game, 'Prince Magnus' Gold', is a long linear spiral that barely even has any side branches to investigate. Effectively it means that only one hero is doing the exploring, such as it is, and the other three are just following in his footsteps with nothing much to do for most of the quest, except help fight the occasional monster. And even the leader is barely even exploring because he's funnelled down what amounts to a long, long corridor. (This is another quest that feels like it was meant to have something else in it, like being chased by monsters after you reach the treasure or something, but it was never implemented in the published version.)

People whinge about Kellar's Keep being a boring slog ... and they're right. I used to think it was just the sheer number of enemies to hack through one at a time. But it just occurred to me last night that the linearity might be a big culprit.

Almost all of the quests in KK are basically a line from A to B. Go from this door on the edge of the map to this other door on the other side of the map, with a zigzag line in between and a series of scripted encounters with monsters along the way (ambush rooms, skeletal Dwarf warriors, etc.) Once you notice it you can't un-notice it. There's not much in the way of exploring to be done. Occasional extra rooms and so on, yes, but any side branches tend to be short dead ends. Only a couple of KK quests - The Great Citadel and The East Gate off the top of my head (if I'm remembering the names right) feel like proper Heroquest, with an expansive environment you can roam around in and tackle in different ways. And only one or two are even semi-linear (like the last one, Grin's Crag, with one true path and a couple of fake-out zones).

KK is basically Prince Magnus' Gold plus a double helping of monsters, all the way through. No wonder people give up halfway through the quest pack!

(However, Kellar's Keep also contains a spectacular example of classic HQ exploration. One quest has two different exits--one of which leads to the secret quest Belorn's Mine. The fact that the NA edition forces you to always go through Belorn's Mine so you don't "miss a quest" is a glaring example of the NA designers missing the point. Exploration is in the DNA of HQ and they took out one of the greatest bits of exploration in the whole game!)

Heroquest in its original form wasn't built to be played as a linear game on linear maps. If you play it that way it feels like it's got the brakes on all the time. The occasional linear quest is fine as a change of pace. But usually, you should be unsure where to go next. If you know where to go next (because there's only one obvious route) then it just becomes an exercise in rolling combat dice.

/rant :lol:

Of course, you're not arguing for an obviously linear path of the Prince Magnus' Gold type. You're arguing for what I call 'semi-linear', where there is one true path disguised by side tracks and extras, so players aren't sure if they're going the 'right' way or not. Which works well enough in HQ and I have no real issue with a quest done like that. But it's not the same as true non-linearity, where there are several right ways. Which brings me to ...

Bareheaded Warrior wrote:Within the context of the game and the players (excluding the GM obviously), I’m not clear on the difference between creating an illusion or feeling of choice and exploration and presenting actual choice and exploration within the context of a game which is itself an illusion.


Well, 'creating an illusion or feeling of choice and exploration' might be best defined in the game Super Metroid, which has a single predefined linear path you're meant to take through the game ... but it doesn't feel like it because you roam freely around the underground maze trying to figure out where to go next.

Actual choice and exploration can be seen in something like Melar's Maze in HQ.

Linear: "I know where this game wants me to go next."

Creating the illusion of choice and exploration: "Which way do I go?" There's only one answer. But you don't know what it is.

Actual choice and exploration: "Which way do I go?" There are several possible answers. Plus some tricks and trolling dead ends.

Bareheaded Warrior wrote:As mentioned above, the Quest as written has 5 possible routes of which only one actually leads to the objective so the only variability here is how many other paths the heroes go down before they find the one that leads to the objective, and as the heroes don’t and can’t know in advance which path leads to the objective then it isn't really a choice, it is just random. Roll a red die, 1-5 you have taken the wrong path, roll again, roll a 6 and you have achieved your objective.


'Choice' doesn't necessarily mean 'informed choice where you know the consequences in advance'.

In fact, choice when it comes to exploration is the opposite of a meaningful choice, because if you knew what was there beforehand in order to choose, there wouldn't be any unknowns, so you wouldn't be exploring in the first place. :)

The essence of HQ is that you don't know what's down the next passage or around the next corner. But you get to decide if you'll go investigate by yourself--and reap the rewards if there are any to find--or if it's safer to stay with other players at the cost of letting them have all the fun of finding out what comes next and probably grabbing treasure before you can. "I'm going to go this way and see what happens."

Anyway, the other paths aren't necessarily 'wrong'. You can find gold and a potion in one of the other routes. (And a fake-out empty trap chest in another.) You can also have fun fighting monsters, which is an 'objective' all by itself when you're ten years old. If the player who finds Sir Ragnar keeps all the reward gold for him- or herself, at least you got something out of it too.

In the other non-linear quests, there are several 'right ways' to approach or move around the map and eventually reach the objective.
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Re: Rescue of Sir Ragnar: The anti-climax ??

Postby Kurgan » March 11th, 2023, 3:09 am

Interesting perspective. I was balking at the start of your "wall of text" spell, thinking you didn't know anything, but now I'm thinking about it. |_P The quests I wrote recently were all very linear. Building replayability into the quests (instead of just playing them with new people or moving on to other quests) is a different take on the whole thing. How different are the quest layouts in the NA edition from the EU editions? I'm aware of some different monster placement in a few quests, and a few differences in the notes, but I'm not aware of other significant differences (though the ability to remove fallen block traps would open up new possibilities for certain quests).

When I was a kid, that is often how we played... one kid was Zargon, the other controlled 4 heroes. We had a good time and didn't know any different.

The designer notes for the Elf and Barbarian packs clearly was towards linearity. Several people have commented in various places how they hate it when you can "skip" battles with monsters or win without killing the main bad guy (others see this as smart strategy... while others call it luck for the heroes and just bad luck for Zargon!). In one old interview I think Stephen Baker did admit that the game was easy when the players worked together. I don't know for sure, but I always thought that he was most heavily involved in the European versions of the game and the North American ones were refined by others, but I don't have proof of that or names to drop as to who did what.

So you kill the other heroes and keep the reward for Sir Ragnar for yourself (just watch out on the next quest for a little payback from the other players... even though they have fresh heroes now!). Never played like that, but in the EU edition, in theory, you could...


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Re: Rescue of Sir Ragnar: The anti-climax ??

Postby Bareheaded Warrior » March 12th, 2023, 8:54 am

Well, if I kept you awake then the least I deserve is an essay (and here is one in response).

Illusion is key in a board game, without it you are just pushing pieces of cardboard and plastic around, and not just board games, watching a film about a group of teenagers getting hunted down and killed by a homicidal maniac can be fun, actually being a teenager being hunted down and killed by a homicidal maniac, less so. It is the illusion that creates the fun.

True, it was only referred to as a “game system” in the NA edition, but my point was that from the very first version it was clear then you were provided with the material and actively encourage to use the official quests as inspiration for creating your own, that combined with the large number of quests included in the box, suggests that replayability wasn’t the primary concern in the design of the quests, as you have said yourself the concept of a campaign or linked series of adventures, keeping and developing the same character throughout was built in from the very start of HeroQuest and was something of a USP.

To be clear I’m not suggesting that Quests should not be replayed or not designed for replayability, just that with 50+ official Quests and a ton of home brew material available there is no real need to replay them, unless you want to, so that doesn’t need to be a key consideration when designing a Quest.

I’m also not suggesting that Quests should be linear in design, just that non-linearity in Quest design (for HeroQuest, not for different games as they are different) is rather like salt in a cooking recipe, none of it results in a bland dish, a little goes a long way and too much ruins the dish.

A quest with an alternative route, a short dead end path, a little ‘maze’ like setup for the first 2-3 rooms, a shortcut perhaps hidden behind a secret door, a couple of side room with a bonus, for example is sufficient to make it feel exploratory, open and non-linear without introducing the problems associated with very non-linear quests.

Problems like timing.

For a family game to work it has to be relatively short, probably 60-90 minutes max, towards the lower end for younger players, towards the upper end for the bigger kids (including myself in that, generously), 6 hour marathon games might be great for university students but not so great for family games. There are physiological reasons why films for example are typically around the 90 minute mark and even sport, football (soccer) is probably the most popular game on earth, also lasts 90 minutes and if you design a quest with 6 paths, only 1 being the one that leads to the objective then depending on luck the player may choose the 1 path the first time and result in a much shorter game than intended, maybe 45 minutes plus a little longer wandering around aimless to pad the game out post-objective, or their luck could go the other way and they could try all 5 other paths before they hit the objective room and end up with a 3-hour slog (with parents glancing at watches through and muttering comments about being tired in the morning…). As a kid playing with family, we generally only played the one Quest in a session, but a couple of years later playing with a group of teenagers we generally had 3-hour sessions and covered a couple of Quest back to back. Again, I’m not saying that you can’t make a longer Quest, or a double quest, especially as a grand finale, but that is the exception to the rule and needs to be billed as such, so the time can be planned in.

And problems like back-tracking or retracing your steps

Again a little of this is fine and to be encouraged, but having to sweep the whole dungeon again, search and researching the whole length to find a key that you need to open the final door or a secret door that you missed and can’t achieve the objective without it, makes for a long drawn out session, less punchy, less fun.

I don’t know how you managed to get hold of Against the Ogre Horde as a kid, we just had the trinity GS, KK and ROTWL and never even realised that there was such a thing as Against the Ogre Horde. I’ve never really been massively into video games, maybe too much time playing board games like HeroQuest, but have played a few over the years but I don’t really have the knowledge or experience required to appreciate your comments on that topic, but would point you in the direction of this excellent post about game design in the Legend of Zelda

On the question of advancement, and the pace of it, versus scaling difficulty and getting the balance between the two, I agree with you but won’t comment here as it is something of a pet issue for me and I have discussed and will continue to do so on a dedicated advancement thread.

Incidentally, I'm fond of 'The Trial' because it's designed like a kind of one-shot demo scenario. If you only play ONE game of Heroquest, 'The Trial' is a good one, because it showcases all the monsters and all the furniture, and provides a high level of challenge--while not involving anything complicated like traps or secret doors (in the EU version). I don't really treat it as part of a proper campaign myself.


Interesting I never liked “The Trial” (although “The Maze” that it replaced was even worse, so it that sense only it was an improvement) for some of the same reasons that you like it. True if you only ever play one game of HeroQuest then perhaps the Trial from a showcase point of view (but why would anyone ever only play one game of HeroQuest!), but for me it was another example of the rules and the quests not ‘lining up’ (this issue may have been caused by timing where some Quests were written to earlier draft versions of the rules or even later ones that didn’t make the final cut but weren’t then reviewed and updated properly, perhaps).

On the one hand for the EA Second Edition Rules of Play the decision was made to go with an Introductory version of the rules for the first quest before bringing in the Full rules for the second quest onwards. Now I understand entirely this idea of introducing the new players to the rules gently, although I wouldn’t have chosen to split the rules in this way personally*, but to make that decision and then combine that with a first Quest in which you introduce pretty much every piece of furniture and type of monster really goes against the ‘toe in the water’ approach of the rule book.

*the issue with the way that they did this means that The Trial was designed to be played with the Introductory rules only, so just move and attack, no traps, no searching, no spell casting, so fine for the Barbarian, but the Dwarf was perhaps limited to 80% of his range of abilities, the Elf 50% and the Wizard 20%, being able to only move and fight when your character is crap at fighting, is an off-putting start for a Wizard player.

The most recent time that I ran through the Game System / Gathering Storm quest book, with a fresh batch of players, we played with one of my own ‘introductory quests’ to start and then Quest 2 through to Quest 14 and then ran “The Trial” (modified a little to include traps, a full strength Gargoyle and a few other twists) at the end as a “bonus” quest where the Heroes are personally invited by the Emperor to undertake the Quest and if successful this results in them being granted “Champion” status which unlock “The Temple” as a between quest feature like “The Alchemist’s Shop” or “The Armoury” where they can for a donation of 500GC get a blessing, a fate point, that is a single-use one-off ability (not once per Quest) to get the best possible outcome on any one dice roll.

In terms of the party sticking together, a factor that needs to be considered, is how different and complimentary are the heroes and their abilities, co-dependence if you like. Conan, at least the original book version, would make a great solo hero but a terrible team player, his strength, endurance and physical prowess, combined with intelligence and cunning and by his own admission his skills as a thief far surpass his skills as a swordsman, would mean that there was no real opportunity for partners, when he could do it all himself. In HeroQuest the idea is that the strengths and weaknesses of the different heroes compliment each other to encourage working together as a unit (in practise this wasn’t always done well, but my own version that brings the Mind value into use earlier as well as magical traps makes the Barbarian need for Wizard support as great as the other way around). This doesn’t mean that the heroes can never split up, in fact I have found in my games that a tactical split with a Dwarf/Barbarian paired with Elf/Wizard duo works well, as long as they regroup for the final hurdle, but the ability in the original for characters to wander off on their own, works fine for the Barbarian and the Dwarf, less so for the Elf and not at all for the Wizard, so if the first 3 wander off on their own then the Wizard tends to be short-lived, not a great experience for that player!

I see you’ve posted elsewhere about PMs gold, which I always refer to as “The Long Walk” a classic example of the type of long drawn out Quest that isn’t welcome in a family game session, so I’ll post about that there, but I will just say that if you are after a ‘real’ experience in a Quest then PMs Gold has that in spades, in no other Quest does the characters experience of dragging heavy chests down endless empty passageways, so closely align with the players experience of dragging themselves through the long and uneventful last portion of this Quest.
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Re: Rescue of Sir Ragnar: The anti-climax ??

Postby HispaZargon » March 12th, 2023, 9:43 pm

I would like to say all of you just one thing: congrats for this thread. I think you have gone a bit out of the main topic, but the rest is being discussed at a very high level.


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