Team vs. team

[Big Bene]

The Evil Quest thread by Cornixt brought back to my mind an idea I had some time ago:

Two teams starting in opposite corners of the board.
One team would be the heroes (the four standard heroes?), the other would be an equally strong team of monsters.
They would explore the board from different directions, fighting each other.

The main "promblem" would be how to set up the rooms, as there is no "evil wizard player" who knows the map beforehands. Well, I don't think of this as a problem, the whole idea circles around how to do this the best way.

There are, in fact, at least three main questions to consider, and I'd like to know your opinions about these:

1-Map
The above-mentioned "problem". As the monsters are exploring the dungeon themselfes, there is no Gamemaster to set up the rooms.
Possible solutions I thought of so far:
- Don't explore the dungeon at all. Just set up the whole board beforehand and assume both parties just know the location. Easy, but takes away half of the fun.
- Have a Gamemaster. He (or she) would not be the "evil wizard", but a true neutral umpire. He would not really take part in the game and could not "win". This would work, too, but it would require one more player, when already more players than normal are needed to fill up the two teams (and this player would have to be willing to take this rather boring role).
- Set up the dungeon randomly (in AHQ style). Better, but time consuming, plus, rnadom chance doesn't produce the best layouts all the time.
- My favorite: have the room descriptions on cards, and place a token in each room. When the room is first opened by either side, take away the token, take the corresponding card and set up the room according to the description. Only problem I can think of is that sombody who doesn't take part in the game has to prepare (print and cut) the cards.

2-Monsters
Monsters have in general weaker stats than heroes. How to balance the forces?
Again, there is more than one possible answer:
- Beef 'em up. This seems to be the standard solution for "Evil Quest", judging from the post in the above-mentioned thread. Just give the monsters higher stats. However, I can't bring myself to like this method. The fun about all this is to play for once the very orcs you know so well.
- Use more monsters, each controlled by it's own player, to match the strenght of the heroes. This is quite obviousely impractical (expecially for European one body point monsters), and I include it here only for completenes.
- Use really strong monsters. A gargoyle can hold it's ground against a beginner barbarian, and the chaos sorcerer has no fixed stats, anyway. The drawback is, there is only one gargoyle in the set. A team of a gargoyle, a chaos sorcerer and two chaos warriors may have a chance, but it is too unbalanced inside. Players want to have equal chances as other players, even players of the same team. Who wants to play a chaos warriors when the gargoyle takes all the glory?
- My favorite: Give them minions. The "evil" characters should be in the mummy - chaos warrior - warlock league, and each have some lesser monsters to control the way heroes control mercenaries.

In any case, some heavy playtesting would be required to find the balance.
Plus, the solution has to be adapted differently to North American and European Monsters.

3-Objecitve
How would the winning team be determined?
Just wiping out the opposing team?
Conquer the dungeon (how would that be determined?)
Capture the flag?
Solve a more complex quest objective?
Sove a different individual objective per team?

What do you think?

[The Road Warrior]

I actually included a quest in Dealing with Death which was set up like this. Take a look at quest 5 - The Vaults and you can see exactly how I handled it.

1-Map
The above-mentioned "problem". As the monsters are exploring the dungeon themselfes, there is no Gamemaster to set up the rooms...

I really like the room cards idea but it is heading into WHQ territory. I'm not sure how setting up the dungeon randomly would work. Surely at some point during the quest the two teams would have to meet and interact, otherwise you may as well be playing two completely different games. I really don't like the idea of adding another GM. As you already pointed out, It sounds like a really boring roll to take in the game.

2-Monsters
- My favorite: Give them minions. The "evil" characters should be in the mummy - chaos warrior - warlock league, and each have some lesser monsters to control the way heroes control mercenaries.

I went with your favourite idea. The evil wizard controlled fanrax, who already has some decent stats, and he had two skeletons which had the beefed up WoM stats. Both sides could also add to their party as they progressed thorugh the quest and encountered monsters and soldiers.

3-Objecitve
How would the winning team be determined?

I'm sure that all of your ideas could work. I went with a capture the flag objective.

The Vaults is one of my favourite quests from Dealing with Death. I really enjoyed the slightly different game mechanic with the evil wizard being a much more active participant in the quest. He even gets the chance to kill plenty of soldiers! Getting the balance right was difficult but well worth it especially when the final few rounds turned into an epic battle.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

[Gold Bearer]

I had an idea like this for a P-b-P. viewtopic.php?f=162&t=2471 Each player picks a team of three monsters and the GM uses men-at-arms as the normal enemies and heroes as their leaders. I wouldn't be able to run it anyway without getting the HeroScribe addon to run but someone else could, I'd like to use a monster team.

[torilen]

I'm going to comment in different posts, so I can be nice and thorough.
Commenting to how to set the board up:
Check out this HQ Card Game I started working on a good while ago

viewtopic.php?f=58&t=1832&p=31740#p31740


This style of card would work perfectly. You could have complete dungeons set up in a deck of cards.
The cards would have a label on the back to correspond with a room or hallway on the board...the rooms
and hallways would need to be numbered or lettered or something along those lines. I already have a picture
of this set up if you would like it.

In fact, I could create some dungeons for you, if you want. I would use whatever sets of monsters and furniture
and tiles you would like (just the base game, or all of the expansions included...just let me know). The dungeons
could be themed - keep under the forest, undermountain delve, goblin caverns, heart of chaos, etc.

[torilen]

To comment to the Objective:
I think that would really depend on what you want to do.
Do you want it to be a campaign-style game, where the heroes are competing against
the monsters to gather up artifacts or keys or maps or something?

Do you want it to be just something fun
- the heroes and monsters have made a truce of sorts, and want to test each other in a few capture the flag type contest.
- the heroes and the monsters are competing adventure groups patronized by competing nobles, and they are sent out to
gather up treasures for their noble. What they don't know is that the nobles are being pitted against one another by someone
else, someone who secretly gives the same information to each noble at the same time...forcing the confrontations.
- you could throw one of these in between quests every so often to further your own campaign...perhaps it just happens
that chaos is trying to find the same thing the heroes are during the regular quest packs, and they happen to run into each other
every so often.

[cornixt]

Isn't this just Dungeonbowl - Blood Bowl played in a dungeon? Two uneven but equally matched teams with the same objective

[mitchiemasha]

Have you looked at Mighty Warriors

[Tomkat364]

My take on this would be a five player game. Two people per team, each controlling two characters. But I would still use a DM. Both teams have the same objective, like find the amulet. There are still monsters as well, so both teams would have to try to find the amulet and escape alive, but would have the extra problem of having to balance fighting the monsters and risk damage, and then be able to defend against other heroes. If you go straight to the center and take on the monsters, you'll be weaker when the other team shows up to try to take the amulet from you.

[mako-heart]

I could see this being a great quest i like the idea of using two teams. I would opt for 2 heros two monster heros and have all the creeps be elves and men-at-arms, and then make the next quest have something to do with the out come of the quest. whichever team got the "amulet" would have the upper hand the next quest. What would be really sweet to do is have two separate game boards and once the two teams cross paths then play one board, sweet concept.

[Jafazo]

I read this before and let it be but I'll go ahead and speak my piece.

I don't 'see' the idea of players competing to complete a quest working out well. The gameplay would get very treacherous to where I imagine players deliberately 'waiting' outside a room to see if a boss monster kills rival heroes or racing in after they've won to search for treasure and otherwise reap the benefits. It isn't an impossible idea, but you'll have your hands full devising ways to make sure the game plays out the way you expect. Here's how I sort of see this idea panning out...

I see the 4 Heroes on one side and 4 Monsters on the opposite side of the board. I imagine the game playing out as a fast paced strategy game with the idea that both sides are competing to conquer the dungeon, castle or other location for either the forces of Good or the forces of Chaos. The idea would be, take over the dungeon before your opponents.

I see both sides of players moving throughout the dungeon slaying neutral type minions who infest the dungeon, minions like giant bats, the undead and other such fiends. Somehow, after both teams have taken their turns, rooms respawn enemies at a slow rate. Teams clear rooms and somehow use their turn to spread Influence into the room and take it over. In this way, I see the room eventually changing in color scheme from neutral gray type rooms to either red room for the heroes or green for the greenskin chaos forces. Influenced rooms are somehow augmented a variety of ways by teams who somehow gain the augmentations by searching for treasure and drawing special cards, discovering hidden artifacts and the likes.

I'd probably include a required third player to play as the dungeon itself and it's his goal to prevent either side from conquering the dungeon. I see teams constantly opposing each other and fighting and constantly dying left and right with each dead player having to wait a small number of turns before respawning within a room his team holds influence within. I see barracks built within the heroes rooms to help protect them from the greenskins and dungeon master, and I see other protective defenses from special spires to boss monsters / knights and magic traps.

I imagine each hero designed as a strategic piece tailored to the strategic elements of the game. The Wizard could be a control type caster who can move about the board easily and helps move other players while maybe the Dwarf excels at destroying an opposing teams influence while spreading his own teams influence. The barbarian I envision as the tank of course who can take a plethora of damage before he goes down and the Elf, I dunno. Being all Elfy.

That's what comes to my head when this idea is said, not some standard Hero Quest game where the quests goal is read and TWO sets of heroes race in against Zargon to get the job done. I see a strategy game. A mess of tactics.