Ye Olde Inn

I just wrote out the house rules I tend to use when we get to play.
These are not the only house rules I have been known to use but this covers the most of it.

Hero Quest Cynthia Style
First roll high dice for characters if there is a conflict in player desires of characters to be played.

Second pick spells if applicable.

Third, (now we start to deviate from the norm) issue artifacts from the Emperors Armory. Trust me the Heroes will need them even for low level missions. These artifacts are the possession of the Emperor and are surrendered at the end of the quest. The Evil One will remove any Artifacts from the deck that are the quest object or overpowered for the quest at hand. An amount of Artifact cards equal to the amount of players plus one will be drawn and issued to the players. The players must decide on allocation of artifacts and no one player may have more than 2 artifacts.

Fourth, at the end of the player round if there are no visible monsters on the board the Evil One will roll a D6. On a roll of a 1 the Evil One teleports a D3 of wandering monsters fitting to the quest within 6 squares of the Heroes in explored areas.

Fifth, Wandering monsters pulled from the treasure deck will be determined by a pull from the deck of monsters by the player who pulled the hazard card. (The Evil One should probably remove the most powerful monsters from the monster deck on lower level missions.)

Sixth, Furniture searches are separate from room searches. To search furniture pieces a hero must be in front of the piece of furniture and adjacent. Furniture searches are not determined by a pull off the treasure deck and will be determined by the evil one.

Seventh, Searching for traps may only be done on as many squares as the Hero has in mind points. The Dwarf may search any area that he has line of sight. The player must point out to the Evil One which squares are being searched. Furthermore, a roll of one dice for every point of mind looking for a black shield must be rolled for those traps that are considered very well hidden.

Eighth, those secret doors considered well hidden or deviously intricate will require a roll of dice equal to the heroes mind points looking for a black shield to discover the secret door.

Ninth, Doors may be closed after opened, however once opened, any monster who has seen the Heroes may open the door also.

Tenth, Goblins are smarter than they look. If there is a chance at escape when outnumbered or facing devastating losses, the Goblin will take the opportunity (if possible) and run to the nearest room and alert the monsters in that room to the presence of the Heroes. Orks may run for help if they roll a black shield on a Mind check when they are outnumbered or losing a battle. Undead of course never seek help. Higher powered monsters are out for personal glory and want to be able to tell the Evil One that they personally killed the Heroes, so they will not typically seek help, except in cases where the quest specifically calls for it.

Eleventh, Fimir always cast spells of some form. All of them...sucks to be you.

Twelfth, Undead always attack the nearest target with no care to tactics. Once an undead is on a target it will not change targets and will be relentless until the hero or itself is dead. Sucks to be the first hero seen by the undead….


That’s a basic overview of how I mess with stuff when I do play. So how do you HQ?

I've modded my group's combat rules so that both monster and hero shields count as a block for either side. This makes combat much more difficult.
To offset this I've added an extensive leveling-up system where the heroes can learn new skills like Agility, Poison-Making, Dual-Wielding, and much much more.
We also have used the Warhammer magic dice (shown here: http://www.tactics.net.au/media/wh_magi ... 22x160.jpg) to totally revamp the way the wizard attacks.
Finally we've added a new class, the Thief. He can move through monsters and gains bonuses to attack when attacking from behind.

Really theres a ton more my group uses... including doubling or tripling the ammount of monster types. I really need to post my collection eventually. I think it's impressive, personally..

cynthialee wrote:Third, (now we start to deviate from the norm) issue artifacts from the Emperors Armory. Trust me the Heroes will need them even for low level missions. These artifacts are the possession of the Emperor and are surrendered at the end of the quest. The Evil One will remove any Artifacts from the deck that are the quest object or overpowered for the quest at hand. An amount of Artifact cards equal to the amount of players plus one will be drawn and issued to the players. The players must decide on allocation of artifacts and no one player may have more than 2 artifacts.

Doesn't this subtract from the sense of wonder and accomplishment when a hero actually wins an artifact from it's rightful place?

cynthialee wrote:Fourth, at the end of the player round if there are no visible monsters on the board the Evil One will roll a D6. On a roll of a 1 the Evil One teleports a D3 of wandering monsters fitting to the quest within 6 squares of the Heroes in explored areas.

That's a bit harsh, but probably a good idea to keep things moving.

cynthialee wrote:Sixth, Furniture searches are separate from room searches. To search furniture pieces a hero must be in front of the piece of furniture and adjacent. Furniture searches are not determined by a pull off the treasure deck and will be determined by the evil one.

We play this way too.

cynthialee wrote:Seventh, Searching for traps may only be done on as many squares as the Hero has in mind points. The Dwarf may search any area that he has line of sight. The player must point out to the Evil One which squares are being searched. Furthermore, a roll of one dice for every point of mind looking for a black shield must be rolled for those traps that are considered very well hidden.

Eighth, those secret doors considered well hidden or deviously intricate will require a roll of dice equal to the heroes mind points looking for a black shield to discover the secret door.

Don't like these ones, barbarian only has 2 mind points, don't see why the wizard should be so much better at seeing traps and secret doors than him, or better than an elf for that matter.

This is very interesting so I shall contribute!
We are just starting up after loooooong break, so nothing is carved in stone yet!

We actually randomize who gets to play which character.
My friend HATED the wizard, but now it's his favorite character!
And I actually enjoy playing the dwarf. It's healthy to try something new.

We are 4 regular players and nobody wants to be Morcar all the time, so we take turns to play as Morcar. If I start being Morcar the party is missing the dwarf for that one quest. Next quest the dwarf is with them again but they miss the wizard.
It may not be perfect in a logical sense, but for the sake of gameplay it is perfect.
It also adds some dynamics to how the teamwork must be carried out.
"Aaaw dude! We could really use the barbarian right now!"

In addition the odd fifth player can join for a couple of quests once in a while, even in the middle of a quest book.

Once all the players are Guardians we switch to US bodypoints
No need to kill the players off right away, but Euro rules are definitly too easy once the players get equipped.

The equipment cards are FINITE!
If someone bought the helmet, tough luck on everyone else!

Searching for treasure and searching a chest, weapon rack or cabinet are different searches. Heroes must stand in front of an object to search it.
All rooms and corridors can only be searched once. Period.
I'm however going to lobby that corridors cant be searched!

Morcar is always out to kill the heroes. He don't need to follow any logical behavior. He can do with the monsters as he please.
Might seem obvious, but some like to play with more restricted monster behavior i.e. monsters must try and attack or move as close to the heroes as possible.
It is however frowned upon if Morcar is "nice" to a player. Like not attacking a player with 1 Bp or so on.

Usually dead is dead, but if we play very casually we sometimes let a dead player rejoin with a "naked" character if he can roll a "six" in the beginning of his turn.
Sucks to die at the beginning of a quest and just sit there. Sit there and watch others have fun!

And finally a couple of rules for making custom quests:
1. NO teleport-traps! Everybody hate that lemony goodness!!!
2. NO bookshelf mazes! We can't move our figures without knocking everything down!!!

I like limiting searching for traps to mind points as this makes the wizard more useful and the barbarian an actual liability in some circumstances.
Wizard: Lets search this coridor for traps.
Barbarian: ME SMASH!
Elf: Good Idea.
Dwarf: Sure I will go down the left and you go down the right.
Barbarian: Man this sucks. Lets just go.
Elf: No Thrud, just hold, on let the spook and shorty do their job.

By the typical stereo types in play with the characters, the barbarian is not going to know much about stone masonry and the underground. The Dwarf knows the earth like no other if we accept the typical fantasy role playing archetype of the Dwarf. The Elf has supernatural sences. The Mage is highly educated and very obervant.
Of these 4 the one who should obviously be the most useless in an indoor trap search would be the barbarian.

I give out the artifacts as temporary issue weapons for a few reasons. It puts the artifact cards into play. It gives the Heroes a fighting chance with the way I alter the monsters encounters. When they do win an artifact in game they keep that artifact for all missions from then on (until I destroy it with a spell anyways) and the heroes still get issued weapons from the Emperor to beef them up. As I have an uncanny ability to roll that 1 on a wandering monster check combined with the near mystical ability to generate maximum apearing enemies...the Heroes really need the added ordinance. Also, once the players have had a really cool artifact once, they get anxious when the artifact pull comes up and everyone is chanting 'orks bane, orks bane, orks bane...'fun stuff.
The sence of acomplishment when they recover an artifact from a quest that they get to keep is just as strong. Now they don't have to worry about giving the item back to the royal armory and can have it for good.
Besides, if you mix in all the artifacts from the expansions, (minus the obvious ones that should not be added to the deck) there is a good chance that scroll spells could be pulled and those are one shot deals.

As for death.
If a hero dies from a trap, wandering monster, or incidental damage from bleeding on the heroes turn then they rest of the Heroes have until the end of the player round to save the Hero with a potion or spell. The potion ussed must be in the possesstion of the person administering the potion. The Hero does not have time to rumage through his friends gear to find a potion to save his friend.
If a Hero is killed in combat by a monster durring the Evil Ones turn...dead is dead. However....If there is a heal spell in the party and the caster had LOS on the hero as he died, I will allow the caster to imediatly cast the spell but they forgoe their next action on thier turn. However I will allow them to move on their turn.
In combat I tend to not pull my punches and roll my dice in the open. However, if the game is including players who have never played this game (or other similar RPG's) I will tend to play it more inline with the tradition GM style of gaming and keep my dice behind the screen. This is mearly so I don't kill the newby on thier first go around. The first hit is free as they say. Also I have found it useful to whack one of the veteran players or severly taxing them when including a newbie and make it look like the newbie just made it by the skin of their teeth.
My veteran players know all my GM tricks so I tend to just go for throats and keep it above board when playing against them. There is no need to flub a monster dodge at a critical moment to keep their interest. They are already hooked, so if they get killed it is no big whoop. They will just get a new character.
With a newbie if they die on the first mission it will discourage them. {Well when my sweety first played she died in a matter of 30 minutes as she kept opening doors, finding monsters running away, find a new room, open the door hopeing to find a refuge only to find more monsters. I didn't pull any punches on her that time around. After the last hero was dead I asked her if she had any clue why it went so horribly and she answered, 'yeah I gota kill one group of monsters before I move on to the next room...' She jumped right in and gave it Another go and efficianlty cleared the dungeon one room at a time.}

I also have a habit of turning HQ into a semi roll playing game. I mean come on. It is just laying there ready to tweak and change around. The system is incomplete.

Lately I have been thinking of how I could incorperate an agility/dexterity system into the game.

Ι ΗQ with the rules and spells from all the expansions and
using HQDM module since i dont have any mates who are into RPG
and my children are too young...
And i still manage to have fun! Oh yes te magic is still there!!!

I'm playing through the base set, using the standard rules, plus a few house rules in those unclear cases.

HQDM module

erm - what is that, again? Do you have a link?

I suspect it's the HQGM program. http://heroquest.hjortskov.net/