Dungeon room card - a solo / coop mod

[Maike05]

Hey guys,

I'm trying to make a solo coop mod for heroquest.

I'd like to generate the dungeon by using a deck of cards.
My challenge is to be able to use the gameboard !

Eventually, the idea would be able to generate for instance :
- an empty room with an encounter
- a furnished room and an encounter
- an empty room but with an event
- a predefined room (eg: the library, the cellar, the prison, etc)

The current WIP concept / design is the following:

Carte Donjon - Porte1 Monstre1 Mobilier1 Secret1 Tresor1 Event1.png

Door Icon : A small description reveal how many doors there are. You may specify the type of door (closed, metal, stone, magical, etc)
Monster Icon : A flavor text will tell you what you encounter or if you need to generate a random encouter (see my Encounter deck topic)
Furniture Icon: A flavor text will tell you how the room is furnished or if you need to generate a random furniture using the dedicated deck
Secret Passage Icon : A flavor text will tell you if any wall look suspicious and whether you can search for secret passage.
Search Icon : A flavor text will tell you the general state of the room and whether you may search for any idem treasures.
Event Icon : A flavor text will tell you if the room contains any special event or whether you need to draw from the dedicated event deck.

NB:
- adding support for traps can be tricky in a solo / coop variant. The most obvious houserule is often when rolling double 1 you step on a trap. I would be interested how houserules have implemented it.
- In my version of HeroQuest, heroes usually search the furnitures present in the room. An empty room would have a small chance of being able to be searched.

I'm debating how to implement support for the generation of corridors.
Should you generate everything that is in line of sight until you reach a wall, or should you generate smaller section (eg : length of 4).

Glad to hear your thoughts and comments !

[QorDaq]

Another interesting piece to your Co-Op/ Solo puzzle.

For corridors, if you intend to stick to the canon board, you do have your work cut out for you, since there really aren't that many of them.

That said, your idea about having a set distance to search, (4" in your example), has merit on several levels. Firstly, this also allows for more potential Traps? And, in the case of branching corridors (Turns), this could lead to dead ends, which in tern allows for additional Secret Door potential.

I think the primary challenge to this idea, is that searching every 4 squares means possibly slowing the game down. At least that's the argument I hear the dissenting voices chanting in my mind's eye. However, any more than 4 squares could reveal the dungeon very quickly--to be fair, it's not that big of a board after all.

I'm curious to see what you decide.

[Oftkilted]

Rather than requiring a “Double 1” why not do “A hero will trigger a trap on any roll of a 1 if the room/passage has not been searched for traps” or do an “unexpected event deck” which could include traps, wandering monsters, surprises, reinforcements? Possibly triggered on a hero roll of double 1s?

[Davane]

I would recommend looking up how AHQ handled the HQ board for random generation of corridors.

For reference, two tables were used - one for features, and another for whether the passageway was open or blocked. The idea is that when you got to a junctions space, you would roll these tables to determine if the corridor was open or not, as well as what's in it.

You could replicate your room cards for passageway features easily enough (simply ignore furniture).

As for whether the corridor is open or blocked, you could use a table, or you could make your cards do double shift by including a corridor ending section that only applies if drawn for a corridor.

Although original HQ used the idea that on a 7+, the corridor was actually blocked (place the block tile on the FIRST square of the corridor), I would consider changing it so that whilst 7+ is a blocked corridor, you use the following value ranges to determine where the blockage is:

1 - 6 : Corridor is Open (No Blocked Tiles)
7 - 9: Blockage is at the End of the Corridor (Place on the space before the next junction)
10 - 11: Blockage is Halfway down the Corridor (Place as desired approximately halfway down the corridor)
12: Blockage is at the Beginning of the Corridor (Place on the first space of the corridor)

It should be easy to apply these ratios to your cards effectively to handle corridor generation.

[Maike05]

Another interesting piece to your Co-Op/ Solo puzzle.

For corridors, if you intend to stick to the canon board, you do have your work cut out for you, since there really aren't that many of them.

That said, your idea about having a set distance to search, (4" in your example), has merit on several levels. Firstly, this also allows for more potential Traps? And, in the case of branching corridors (Turns), this could lead to dead ends, which in tern allows for additional Secret Door potential.

I think the primary challenge to this idea, is that searching every 4 squares means possibly slowing the game down. At least that's the argument I hear the dissenting voices chanting in my mind's eye. However, any more than 4 squares could reveal the dungeon very quickly--to be fair, it's not that big of a board after all.

I'm curious to see what you decide.

Original rules says line of sight if I’m not mistaken. This might however not be suitable for solo game I think. In your reply above, you captured very well the advantage of ‘cutting’ the corridos in smaller sections, it allows for more chances of generating interesting corridors.

I think that I should stick with this design idea and define the concept as any intersection of walls or corridor turn makes one section or unit.

From there, the cards could be designed like this: Based on the number corridors ‘sections’ you are able to see, the card will dictate what you need to generate.

What do you think ?

[Maike05]

@Davane: I’m very familiar with AHQ dungeon generation system thanks for the suggestion ! It is a really good a clever system. I’m definitively taking it in consideration, trying to mix and match to find the best possible solution. I feel I should however reduce to the bare minimum the dice rolling, otherwise it makes no sense to design cards in the first place ^^

[Maike05]

Rather than requiring a “Double 1” why not do “A hero will trigger a trap on any roll of a 1 if the room/passage has not been searched for traps” or do an “unexpected event deck” which could include traps, wandering monsters, surprises, reinforcements? Possibly triggered on a hero roll of double 1s?

That’s probably how it should be dealt with thanks !
The Dwarf and the Thief should of course be immune to springing traps or have a chance to disarm them directly.

What do you guys use to remind yourself of what has been searched in each room / passage?
I remember seeing someone made a modded blank heroquest board to track this. I find it a clever idea.
Alternatively one could use token as well.

[QorDaq]

I think that I should stick with this design idea and define the concept as any intersection of walls or corridor turn makes one section or unit.

From there, the cards could be designed like this: Based on the number corridors ‘sections’ you are able to see, the card will dictate what you need to generate.

What do you think ?

I think your solution keeps things pretty simple, which for HQ is good.

I like Tokens, but the smaller scale blank map idea for tracking is neat and less cluttered.

[torilen]

So, will each card have all of the items shown on them? What is the mechanics for going
from room to room/corridor to room/etc.? What will the card look like if there is, for example,
no monster to fight, or nothing to search for?

Just trying to wrap my head around how all this will work. I'm liking it so far.

[Davane]

@Davane: I’m very familiar with AHQ dungeon generation system thanks for the suggestion ! It is a really good a clever system. I’m definitively taking it in consideration, trying to mix and match to find the best possible solution. I feel I should however reduce to the bare minimum the dice rolling, otherwise it makes no sense to design cards in the first place ^^

I understand that. I think you may have missed my suggestion of putting the corridor ending information on the cards, in a ratio that mimics the table provided. So, for every 12 cards, say, 6 will be open corridors, 3 will be blocked at the end of the corridor, 2 will be blocked in the middle of the corridor, and 1 will be blocked at the start of the corridor.

That way, you can draw the cards to generate the corridors, using the listed features as normal from the card (no furniture).

It's relatively easy to turn any table, even weighted tables, into a deck of cards, and visa versa.