Some advice needed for introducing HQ to the next generation

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Thanks Goblin-King I now have all the US material from the inn, turns out you have to click on US version first ...doh! I'm now going to read through it all and compare and contrast.

Movement

Guys, have to agree to disagree on fixed movement (fixed both in the sense of not rolling and the same for each character due to the cautious nature of movement in a dungeon filled with hidden dangers, ambushes and traps (and low ceilings for all except the Dwarf) but in situations like the classic escaping from the rolling boulder trap, then I would introduce a "Sprint" action that would enable you to move, your move value plus D6 but that would be noisy, would trigger traps automatically and so on, emergency use only

Turn Order

I hadn't considered turn order, but I guess as I am playing with younger players 8-12 years old, probably youngest to the left of Morcar (and first to move) and so on round the table.

I was intending to get players to declare their intended actions first, before Morcar reveals the outcome to better approximate the 'simultaneous' action approach. As part of that I suggest a couple of other tweaks;

[*]When an action (free action - peek, look, open door etc) would reveal a new piece of dungeon that action is left until last and ends the players turn.

[*]Where an action doesn't include the movement (see below) then move first then action to follow

[*]Searching is an action that takes a whole turn and includes movement

[*]When you move adjacent (including diagonally adjacent) to a monster then your 'action phase' of the turn ends, once all players have finished their turn and monsters have finished their then combat is resolved

(Each turn consists of; Declaration Phase, Action Phase, Monsters Action Phase, Combat Phase)

knightkrawler, I do like the idea of a egg-timer to put players under pressure, will store that one for later use.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

OK first engagement report, hot off the press / scroll still dripping with the blood of Heroes and Monsters alike...

The Set Up

We used the EU Second Edition rules (mainly as they were the only ones I had in hard copy) and the matching Quest book downloaded from this site as I have temporarily misplaced my own (note to self need to print the quest map prior to play so I can annotate it during play - with notes on rooms searched etc). First quest was 'The Trial', one player didn't turn up so we decided to drop the Wizard (I don't like the idea of one player managing two characters), one less character was going to be a disadvantage but the Wizard seems to be the least loss. The Elf picked the Water spell set.

Only rule modifications / special rules used are below;

[*]Both Heroes and Monsters need to roll White Shields to defend Black Shields have no purpose (yet!) - another boost to the Monsters but then the vanilla version is supposed to be a walk in the park - allegedly
[*]Heroes have fixed movement of 6 squares (Sprint rule to follow when I have worked it out)
[*]Heroes and Monsters must move up to their move value then take an action (not action than move) this seems to make things simpler but I'm not convinced what difference it actually makes, any thoughts?

The Outcome

Players didn't stick together but quickly spread out in order to loot rooms and chests more readily / greedily and the Elf rapidly ran into trouble on her own and died about halfway through the Quest despite healing herself with the 'Water of Healing' spell - the only spell she actually used during the game.

The Barbarian and Dwarf fared a little better, the Barbarian taking out the enhanced Mummy single handedly and both managed to get to the last two rooms through separate routes and looked to have learned their lessons and combined forces to complete the Quest.

The Barbarian dynamically taking the lead, having just restored himself with a healing potion that he found, but sadly he was cut down in the first room as the Dwarf decided against backing him up and opted to go directly into the second room where despite managing to cut the Gargoyle down, ended up dying at the hands of the Mummy leaving only two monsters on the board but no Heroes. Close but no cigar!

Despite initial frustration about failing the Quest they all thoroughly enjoyed it and want another go tomorrow! To mix it up can I use the US version of the same quest with EU rules (especially due to the short comings of the map mentioned below) or does it not work that way?

Learnings and Questions

[*]Print out the Quest book to add notes
[*]Run through the Quest first on your own beforehand
[*]Make own crib sheet for quick reference - too much paper shuffling although that will ease with practice (especially a Monster quick reference)!

A few general questions that cropped up, apologies if these seem obvious...

Q1. When you engage a Monster you exchange a single round of combat, I have a go, then he has a go, assuming we are still standing then what, the exchange ends and next turn you can just wander away?

Q2. When searching in a room the boundaries are clear, but what defines a passage, where does it start and end (and I still am not convinced about the searching for treasure separately from secret doors and traps)

Q3. To compensate for one less character I'm thinking of equipping the Elf with a bow - any thoughts?

Q4. Assuming no Wizard for next time I'm thinking of trying to compensate for the reduced healing available to the group by adding a new piece of equipment 'Healing Salve' for the Barbarian and the Dwarf, exactly how many BP that restores is open to question - research has suggested boosting Healing Potions to restore full BPs - after all why only 4, too many for the Wizard and not enough for the others (assuming taken at 1 wound remaining), but one idea I liked was to roll two dice when you take a healing potion and it restores the higher number of the two, in this case the Healing Salve would be the lower of the two.

Questions about "The Trial" map

Obviously, with hindsight, I should have run through it first but I noticed the following errors / misleading bits from the downloaded Quest Book from this site;

Note (b) appeared to not be marked on the map
Note (c) and (d) also not on the map and no chests visible to guess which one was intended
Where is Verag located? 'WL'?

No wandering monster indicated; I assumed Skeleton

May use the US Trial Map tomorrow for the rematch...

[Count Mohawk]

True Heroes face The Trial... and, unfortunately, often die in the attempt. I probably should have warned you about that, even with Euro rules. Ah well, if your crew wants another attempt at it, then I guess everything went well enough after all!

To answer your specific questions:

1. When a Hero attacks a Monster, he makes one attack, which the Monster defends. Assuming the Monster survives the attack, he has to wait until his turn to attack back. Then on the Hero's turn, he has the option, but is not required, to continue attacking the same Monster, or may wander away and do something else with his turn.
2. If a Hero searches a passage, he search the whole corridor as far as the Hero can see. Some players on this forum prefer to limit these searches to just one direction if the Hero is standing at the intersection of multiple corridors.
3. If you're playing The Trial with just three Heroes, then yeah, a bow might not be such a bad idea... as long as it's a shortbow; IE only uses two Combat Dice to attack. I don't normally advise giving new players ranged weapons until they've 'earned' them, however you choose to interpret that, but if the Heroes are eschewing magic he does need a little extra edge to be relevant over the Barbarian and Dwarf.
4. If you make Healing Potions "roll two dice and choose the higher number", the Salve should just be "roll one die", as otherwise the chances of it restoring just one Body Point are far too high. Setting it to a static 2 or 3 BP would also be within proper balance.

Now, as far as the questions you have about the Quest map, I regret to inform you that you were using the wrong map entirely for your Quest. I can tell because you reference the letters "WL", which stand for "Witch Lord", the final boss of the Quest Pack! (His stats, if you're curious, are Move 10, Attack 5, Defend 6, Body 4, Mind 6... plus a few other perks, the most important of which is outright invincibility except against a weapon found in the Quest immediately before that one.)

The real-world Quest Packs were printed as folded booklets, a format which was faithfully recreated by drathe when he uploaded the scans to the Inn. So if you were to print the entire booklet on normal paper and staple them together in the center of each page, you would be able to read the Quests normally by flipping through the resulting pamphlet, with the map on the top half and the notes on the bottom. Look at the little numbers in the corners of each page - the map for the Quest and the notes for that Quest will have adjacent numbers if you did it correctly. In the EuroQuest booklet including the Trial, "The Trial" is printed on pages 4 and 5, "The Rescue of Sir Ragnar" on pages 6 and 7, etc.

Although this format may be a faithful recreation, it does make it rather annoying to print just one Quest from a Quest Book without getting pieces of the adjacent Quests. I don't think anybody has a completely vanilla repackaging that puts the Quest Map and its Notes on the same page in non-booklet format. The closest things available that I know of are slev's HQR Questbook and Anderas's "Base Quests in four difficulty steps", each of which feature their own house rules (and can be found, more or less, by following the links in their sigs).

The US Quest has the Wandering Monster as an Orc.

And "Where's Verag?" He's the Gargoyle! Although, if you have the right map, Verag will have his name next to the icon for his position.

[clmckay]

Heres a good copy from the inn that isn't in booklet format:

http://heroquestbyphoenix.yeoldeinn.com/quests/Base.pdf

Hope this helps.

[mitchiemasha]

We play the elf with a bow but has no magic. It's the elf from Advanced HeroQuest.

I'm also going to tell you off for making your game fixed movement... This is just boring, if you need to catch a monster or run away, you always know the result. Rolling for moving is more realistic for me as you nearly always average a 6/7 which is standard movement. A high roll represents been able to get good footing as you charge ahead, should you need to use it, not that you often do. A low roll represents bad footing or even double 1's, you tripped.

We play UK mechanics, search etc, with US monster stats, too easy other wise. If the monsters weren't black shields it would be too hard and very unbalanced, death would be likely even if sticking together. We also add a unique ability for each monster, like Goblins have MAW, lil slippery buggers, run up take a stab and run off again. Some EWP tokens too, the tokens from AHQ, a penalty for the Heroes taking too long.

[mitchiemasha]

As for the new equipment, just give them a potion of healing each. I'll attach the current write up of our mods later today once I upload it.

[Goblin-King]

Now, as far as the questions you have about the Quest map, I regret to inform you that you were using the wrong map entirely for your Quest.

I actually LOL!

[Reveal] Spoiler:

Sorry...

[Anderas]

I actually laughed two times: Once when i read that you want to play the TRIAL with less Heroes and more difficult Monsters. Actually, in that setting, a newborn group has no chance in the Trial.

And then i had to laugh a second time when i was reading Count Mohawk's Posting.

In the end, your two failures were equalizing each other: Apart from the Witch Lord himself, the very last quest in the Quest Book is much easier than the Trial, so in the end it was ok.


* Phoenix' Website is featuring the Game Booklets in the closest-to-original known format.
* The Heroscribe Website is offering only the Maps, without Quest Notes, but at the same time you can download the editor and play around with them!

My Quest Book in 4 difficulty steps relies on Monsters that roll walruses only! Don't you trust the difficulty estimation if you roll white shields for everybody!
Apart from that, it is made so that you can play the quests in any order you like, with any Hero Group you like. I counted un-avoidable Traps and Monsters as on the Map, i didn't count findable traps and wandering Monsters.
Yesterday I had a game where a Quest rated 15 generated 26 points of damage because the heroes were just so stupid it hurt. A Barbarian, wandering off alone, stepping in the first pit trap he could find. He was just not looking. Instead being annoyed, he used the opportunity to search the Pit Trap for Treasure; and triggered a Fimir. That Fimir used one of Sjeng's Fimir Spells. The other heroes wanted to help and stepped on a spear trap. The entire action caused a loss of 7 additional Body Points compared to the quest rating; nearly causing the loss of the entire group. In the end, only the Dwarf died.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

To be fair I did chuckle myself also, thanks Count Mohawk for the advice and the delivery!

I have decided to chalk that first one up to experience and we are having another go this evening especially as I now have the proper quest map and notes printed off (and I must say it does look a lot harder than the one we played yesterday!)

To compensate for the lack of Wizard I am allowing the Elf to carry a Bow (as Crossbow but only 2CD) and each Hero to start with a Healing Salve (restores D6 BPs - Healing Potion now restores ALL your BPs)

EU Second Edition rules, with House Rules below;

1]Both Heroes and Monsters need to roll White Shields to defend (I know but I'm sticking with it for now!)
2]Heroes have fixed movement of 6 squares as standard (but see next house rule)
3]'Quick Move' action move 6+D6 spaces but cannot combine this with actions such as casting or using ranged weapons
4]When combining movement with an action, Heroes and Monsters must move first then take an action (no 'action than move' option) - still unsure about this one but will see how it plays.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

That was about as close as I have ever seen a game!

Initially it looked like they hadn't learnt their tactical lesson from the last failed attempt but having split up from the start the Dwarf and Barbarian quickly closed ranks and stayed together for the remainder of the Quest. The Elf made better use of her bow than she did her magic in the last quest so that was definitely the right choice but alas her loner instincts left her face down in the room to the bottom right of the map little more than halfway through the Quest - again.

The muscle bound pair hacked their way through the Undead segment of the map with the Barbarian surviving only through a donated potion of healing from the Dwarf - all three players had used their healing salves already - and the Barbarian finishing off Felmarg's enhanced Mummy in an epic and extended :yawn: duel.

They then tackled the final and main room as a team clearing the room before tackling the Gargoyle Verag together - with the Dwarf getting the final killing blow despite being on his last body point and out of any healing items, and the Barbarian swigging his resilience potion and surviving with only 3 body points. It could have easily gone the other way but some lucky dice rolls at crucial times and they got the win they deserved, just need to leash that Elf!

Post game purchases for the Dwarf included a Shield* and for the Barbarian a Helmet (and he retained his Potion of Speed from the Quest**), they also both wanted to replace their Healing salves but I haven't worked out a price yet?

Great fun and thoroughly enjoyed by all, less so the Elf but they still want to play again next weekend. A few more thoughts and questions from me as always;

#1 Not only does this Quest seem disproportionately hard for a first Quest (partly due my house rule #1 I know) but it also seems to showcase all the different Monsters in one go, far better to introduce them more slowly in my opinion - one day I might design a better opening Quest but no quite yet!

#2 Do you offer the option of buying back equipment from the players between quests and if so at what rate 50%?

#3 **How do you manage potions and similar being retained after the Quest, can they be carried over, can they be sold and if so for how much for and is there any limit to how many can be carried?

#4 No one seems willing to throw any ranged weapons - the hand axe - due to the 'throw it and lose it' rule, perhaps loosening this to 'throw it and miss and you lose it' might work better?

#5 I'm thinking of counting the Black Shield (Walrus!) as a Skull in close combat (not ranged attacks) to speed it up - any thoughts?

#6 *Noticed the US version has a Shield so I added one for 150GC, anyone wielding it gets to count the Black Shield as a Shield in defence as Shields are not Armour contrary to most Dungeon crawlers and RPGs

#7 Finally for now the potions, Speed and Resilience (so far) seem very short lived for their effects, I was thinking of matching them up to the corresponding spells or something similar...

Reworked House Rules for next game are below, there may also be more depending on the response so far;

#1. Both Heroes and Monsters need to roll White Shields to defend.

#2. Heroes have fixed movement of 6 squares as standard but can declare a 'Rapid Move' action move at the start of their turn moving an additional dice worth of space instead of making an action.

#3. If you start your turn adjacent to a Monster you cannot walk away until he has been killed, no strolling out of combat!