"campaigns" in HQ

[Bareheaded Warrior]

I like this one, provides a replacement Hero AND a motivation in one hit

You have inherited a small sum of gold from your relatives who perished on a dangerous quest... Take up the quest, and take your vengeance!

Failing that if you can't bring a replacement in from the outside on certain campaigns then I back the 'find a new Hero as a prisoner / dying Hero etc in the dungeon' motif

[Shadzar]

games, and therefore should be fun for the players to play. When a PC dies, the game stops being fun for the player of that character after a while, unless a new PC is introduced quickly. Most players will suspend their disbelief long enough to accept a new party member just being "found" if it means play can return to normal.

This is key.. like in Sorry/Parcheesi/Trouble/etc when a peg is teleported back to the start, it doesnt have a name, it doesnt have feelings, it just runs programs.... it just moves around the board.

Unlike D&D, "Heroes" are disposable pawns. HeroQuest is about the players going through the quests to complete them as a "campaign". Not Harold the Dwarf.

Like someone else said, completing all with the same Hero is something more for achievement hunters, and not part of the game itself. The game is about defeating Zargon/Morcar for Mentor. If you add more than that to it, it is beyond the scope of the game.

Orcs are evil and disposable, they don't have feelings other than anger and kill.
Heroes are good and disposable and don't have feelings other than follow orders and loot everything.

HQ is the quintessential murder hobo game. It needs to only make sense, or suspend disbelief, long enough to get all players back to playing as soon as the rules allow.How they got there, doesnt matter. Where they came from doesnt matter. Why there is only 4 and always the same types, doesnt matter.

Sure they could have made more than 4 heroes to begin with, but then people would have wanted to use all Heroes in a quest instead of choosing a "party", but this is a board game so it only needs the 4 pawns needed so each player can have 1 to play.

[Daedalus]

I was about to call Mentor a lying Bastard, but then realised that this was in AtOH, so maybe the Ogre Stronghold doesn't have the same protections as The Lair of the Witch Lord or Kellar's Keep.. . .

Nothing approaching Kalos escapes the notice of the Witch Lord.

. . . Or, maybe Mentor finally realised the usefulness of life-fuelled ankle tags on wayward heroes after the close shaves in previous adventures?. . .

Stop your squirming, Barbarian! The wax of my seal burns but a moment, you baby.

. . . I have to ask though, is it just a single Hero per quest, or does Mentor do requests? "Hey, Mentor, can we get a Barbarian and a Wizard to go?"

Sure thing--one meatshield and a side of spells! Do you want mercs with that?

[Super Saiyan Musashi]

My intention to use what I might call 'video game rules'. The team's progress is 'Saved' between quests, and in the case of a total wipe, they can re-Load and try it again from the top under the same conditions as before. Some might call it unrealistic, but I think this way is ultimately the most fun for the players. I feel like this a best of all worlds solution, where you can have a challenging hard quest while taking the pressure off to succeed the first time. Knowledge gained from the failure can be used to do better next time. I might even ask 'Would you like some help?' after 2 back to back losses, and if accepted, the heroes get something like an extra item or a temporary guest hero.

[Kurgan]

In my best campaigns I've let them save their "progress" (I can't take away the fact that they have successfully completed other tasks) towards becoming a champion, but I will penalize them in terms of losing valuable gear and gold (most of which can be recovered within the next quest anyway or the equivalent)... at the same time helping them out slightly in terms of either they found an extra healing potion early on, or perhaps I won't modify the dungeon that much depending upon what they've seen already. I've so far only had to do this with the solo quests from EQP/BQP which are absurdly difficult as written.

I learned the hard way that a new player (even with an above average equipped character) had a lot of trouble with the first Elf solo quest. A highly equipped Barbarian, with some extra upgrades was able to complete two solo quests before getting wiped out. I brought him back with only above average gear but the opportunity to release some prisoners (weak mercs) and that was enough to get him through. Thanks for the advice from these forums!

The whole "This quest is meant ONLY for ____" is first presented in "A Growl of Thunder" but oddly enough that quest (which I hadn't looked closely at until long after my own experience with solo quests) presents a similar solution. Of course if you get iced in your attempt, maybe you find TWO badly wounded prisoners next time instead of one!

[whitebeard]

I like this one, provides a replacement Hero AND a motivation in one hit

You have inherited a small sum of gold from your relatives who perished on a dangerous quest... Take up the quest, and take your vengeance!

Failing that if you can't bring a replacement in from the outside on certain campaigns then I back the 'find a new Hero as a prisoner / dying Hero etc in the dungeon' motif

Indeed Kurgan's diverse set of ways to recover a hero are thematically superior to Mentor just teleporting in a new guy, same as the last guy. Mentor having a "waiting list" of Barbarians, Dwarves, Elves, and Wizards is not as cool.

[Daedalus]

Agreed. Individual creativity on the part of Morcar/Zargon should always be an option to make Hero Quest shine. Davane's found prisoner will likely fit a linked story more naturally, as well.

[Davane]

Agreed. Individual creativity on the part of Morcar/Zargon should always be an option to make Hero Quest shine. Davane's found prisoner will likely fit a linked story more naturally, as well.

I can't claim credit for the "found prisoner" - it's a standard GM convention for getting new heroes into any sort of game quickly, with a minimum of fuss.

For me, I grew up playing HQ and AHQ, and from there advanced onto D&D through the Easy to Master "Black Box" Edition - the one with the teaching cards (named Dragon Cards), and the Poster Map of Zanzer's Dungeon. The aim of the product is to teach the owner to GM, and to teach THEM how to run a game of D&D.

The first part of the game was more teaching than anything else, with the adventure being VERY linear, since it was essentially a tutorial, and you won't believe the amount of times they used the "found prisoner" means of replacing characters in that quest. Turns out, you could find replacement PCs in pretty much every room after the Heroes could start to die (which was from the second part of the group adventure as they picked up weapons after Escaping their initial cell in Part One...

[Shadzar]

I can't claim credit for the "found prisoner" - it's a standard GM convention for getting new heroes into any sort of game quickly, with a minimum of fuss.

There is one inherent problem in this that does not exist int he "teleport in the newbie" that MEntor does...

Where are all these prisoners that are in every quest level, and why are they not on the map as prison cells?

Secondly, if the prisoners are able to escape and roam around freely with all the monsters around, they are probably more capable to do so without any weapons or armor, than the Heroes that have arrived form a previous quest, making the players Heroes pointless.

Anyone can make up whatever silly reason there is to bring in a new hero, but at the end of the dfay you have to realize HQ is a board game , and you must approach it form a gamist mentality, not a "storytelling" one.

It takes 4 heroes pert quest as that is the "power" level of each one save for when certain heroes are trapped or captured, so you want to get all players back into the game as quickly as possible. You dont make 1 player sit and watch everyone paly Monopoly next week because they were the first player out last week, you let them begin playing again right away this week. That is the same for HQ.

The ONLY similarity to any RPG is that it is a continuous game, a campaign. You take one pawn and try to carry it over from last game to the next one to see how far you can go.

If the problem is not being able to resupply after a quest, then don't play a quest series that doesnt offer that "Between Quests" segment of play. Then you don't hae to justify where the new pawn comes form to allow someone to continue playing.

People need to look at HQ at the most basic level of board game design, not other things to be able to understand what rules to add to get new pawns into it. Also look at board games since HQ is one, to figure out the best way to facilitate play the next time you play. Where, in the end, it doesn't matter where the next pawn comes from to replace the dead one. HQ isnt about "story", its a dungeon crawler survival game. The "story" only loosely provides context for why there is this same group composition always doing Mentor's bidding....

Anything else is a houserule.

[Kurgan]

It is a board game, at the end of the day, granted, and this is just dusting some sprinkles on top for fun. In the end you don't really need a reason, but coming up with one that will result in an "okay, makes sense..." rather than "duh... reasons!" with a wink and a nod to the RPG fans in the audience just makes it a little bit cooler and more memorable.

If the table wants to allow the Heroes to buy stuff and come back to play again, it will happen, and if they want to make it more challenging and not allow that, same thing.

So just as you don't need to give the Orcs dialog in the battle, if you do so once in awhile, it can add a little spice, but it's probably not going to a finely crafted script. If all else fails you can just say that's the bottom line, because Zargon said so (he needs more heroes to torture!).

But the "trapped Hero" has been used already in official quests, so it's an easy one if you so choose (but here it would be controlled by another player instead of giving two heroes to one).