Ye Olde Inn

Just finished playing a round of mansions of madness which heroes have a variety of stats (strength, agility, lore, observation, influence and will) it was a fun game and got me wondering if anyone has toyed with aditional stat categories for heroquest. I like the simplicity of heroquest, but was just curious if it had been done and if so, how successfully was it used?

A lot of German players saw the need to introduce stats for "tests", like agility and strength a decade ago.
Oh, and"mana". Good old mana... a stat to measure who can cast spells when in what specific circumstance how effectively.
Aaaaand the colored dice for more staggering of effects.
Overall, the German HQ community tends to add and add and add and make the game more "realistic" and thus more RPG-like.

I never got into it and never will because duh.
The very idea makes me cringe.

I haven't tried it but I don't think it's a good idea.
Heroquest was such a great game because it did all the things that we love yet still retain the feel of a boardgame. You could pick it up, take it out of the box and run a quest with newbies almost immediately. Only the Evil Wizard Player had to put prep in to learn the rules and figure out what was going on with a quest prior to playing.
Adding stat categories would ruin the feel in my opinion. You could potentially make a great game, but it wouldn't be Heroquest. I mean I've added a heck of a lot to HQ but there's not a lot of entirely new mechanics; just new cards, spells, monsters, quests I.e variations on what was already there. I'm still amazed at what people here at the Inn have managed to create whilst staying within the original scope of the game.

The best thing about HeroQuest is the lemony goodness simple rules.

It is a trade off. The more you add, the steeper the learning curve, the less players you attract. Computer games are free to add whatever they like because all the rules and stats are managed by the software.
When you give this task to humans, you waste their time on stat management, In turn reducing the percentage of high value time in the game.

We have one stat that is rarely used in the base game, the mind points. Start being creative with that one first. If you still need another one, then add one that is really versatile so that you need only a single stat more

Those were my thoughts as well. As much fun as i had playing the other game, the simplicity of heroquest is great. I will say that i do add in mind defense dice (Wizard 3, elf 2, dwarf and barb both 1.) come into play vs some homebrew traps or storyline things such as a whisper of a unseen voice resonating in the heads of the players causing nightmares, fears, etc and even a few monsters that attack the mind

DullandRusty wrote:Those were my thoughts as well. As much fun as i had playing the other game, the simplicity of heroquest is great. I will say that i do add in mind defense dice (Wizard 3, elf 2, dwarf and barb both 1.) come into play vs some homebrew traps or storyline things such as a whisper of a unseen voice resonating in the heads of the players causing nightmares, fears, etc and even a few monsters that attack the mind

That's not an additional stat but rather making use of the underused stat that game already has, as Anderas suggests.
Almost all of us do that in one way or the other.

It depends of course on your players. If you have players that love stat management, just add some and then some.

Generally, just add to the game what you feel is fun for your group.

My statement from above was probably a little bit too me-centric. I already felt it was too much when playing zombicide. that's a game you play three or four times in total if you have a time budget as limited as mine, and for three or four games only, that list of specials was already annoying.

Of course if you play that same game passionate and often, so maybe a total of 20 or 30 times, or if you play it with a table full of passionate rpg players, then the zombicide list of specials is too small.

I love Heroquest here because all the specials are written out on game cards. You have a huge list of specials if you count. Around 300. But as you see only the few that are currently being used, the learning curve remains relatively flat.

knightkrawler wrote:

DullandRusty wrote:Those were my thoughts as well. As much fun as i had playing the other game, the simplicity of heroquest is great. I will say that i do add in mind defense dice (Wizard 3, elf 2, dwarf and barb both 1.) come into play vs some homebrew traps or storyline things such as a whisper of a unseen voice resonating in the heads of the players causing nightmares, fears, etc and even a few monsters that attack the mind

That's not an additional stat but rather making use of the underused stat that game already has, as Anderas suggests.
Almost all of us do that in one way or the other.

You are correct. I am hesitant to use additional stats. I currently only modify using mind defence dice, but was curious if anyone tried additional stats before.

Anderas wrote:It depends of course on your players. If you have players that love stat management, just add some and then some.

Generally, just add to the game what you feel is fun for your group.

Always solid advice. I'll have to feel out the new group. They are the same group that introduced me to mansions of madness so are used to lots of stat managing/options, but they may enjoy the easier learning curve of heroquest.