Some Redesign Notes on Combat, Damage, Healing, and Wounds

[RECIVS]

You keep repeating yourself too much. Are you trying to brainwash me into playing my games your way? Who do you think you are?

Not at all. I’m just explaining my approach to fixing AHQ and practicing my English in the process. I find this to be a very good exercise that keeps me motivated, so please bear with me.

Your write-ups are too long to read; your grammar isn't that good, and in the end, I don’t care because I enjoy AHQ as it is.

I’m glad to hear that! However, what AHQ is, how it came to be, the context, and what the designer intended are fairly objective pieces of information, if you ask me. Being satisfied with the vanilla version doesn’t change that reality in any way. In fact, as posted above, whether we like AHQ or not is irrelevant for the discussion here; that’s the point of an analysis that intends to be objective.

You are too arrogant and think you know it all.

Thank you for the feedback, but I'm afraid whether that's true or not doesn't change the facts at all either. I remind you that this is not my first language, so my writing may come off that way unintentionally.

What you propose is overwhelmingly complicated.

What part, exactly? May I ask what’s so complicated about it? This will help me improve.

Everybody can think differently and have their own opinions, preferences, and tastes, especially when it comes to board games. People can play AHQ the way they want without reading a single one of your posts.

Sure! I totally agree. I’m not saying you have to like my approach, only that, if you’re looking for some specific game feature that AHQ wasn’t intended or designed to offer, then you might have a better time with other titles that were designed for the kind of gameplay experience you’re looking for, probably you just don’t know it yet and are stuck with AHQ for some reason. I hope my posts can give you some context and help you decide.

Why do you even play AHQ in the first place if you’ve been complaining about it for the last 14 years?

I haven’t found another combat-heavy, solo-friendly, rules-light DC like it, with short setup times and very few components; they don’t make them like that anymore.

[RECIVS]

The AI knows things.

For those who don't know where the title came from:

Advanced Heroquest Messiah.jpg

Prominent and colofrul?

[Daedalus]

I wouldn't pay attention to what AI has to say, it's there to flatter and BS. Anyway, I'd add dedicated.

[RECIVS]

I wouldn't pay attention to what AI has to say, it's there to flatter and BS. Anyway, I'd add dedicated.

None at all. It's an obvious, ongoing joke—everything about it, from start to finish.

I appreciate it, though obsessed may be more accurate.

[RECIVS]

Ok, you don’t want to be as annoying as you come off here, and you're learning the language; I get it. What’s this discussion about again?

It’s just an approach to fixing AHQ; I think the vanilla version doesn’t do the spirit of the game justice, which makes it bland, repetitive, and ultimately a sad waste of its potential.

I don’t agree; why should I do AHQ any “justice” at all if I've already told you I enjoy it as it is?

It’s only a method, a recipe that opens a discussion about AHQ's true reality—the one we can’t see or touch—which obviously implies that the released version of the game, the reality we can actually see and touch, doesn’t match it.

You are by no means obliged to participate in such a discussion, of course. However, it’s also meant to expose biases and how they manifest.

Fair enough, but I have to say it all sounds a bit weird.

It’s a simple analysis of the tangible and intangible elements that constitute a board game, AHQ in this case. No fancy terminology, just plain facts, reasons, and common sense.

For the sake of method, I’d say the first logical step to fixing AHQ (or to do anything with it, for that matter) is assessing its nature as objectively as possible, and no assessment about that can be complete without analyzing the duality of its reality.

As mentioned above, this discussion, then, is meant to reveal and channel AHQ's intangible reality through the powers of the mind, beyond mere observation and apprehension, not to project our preferences and biases here.

What’s this “spirit" of AHQ you keep talking about? Is it in the room with us now?

We could say so, at least in the same way the very concept of “spirit” is in the room with us when you evoke it. Are our thoughts in the room with us now at all? What are they to begin with? What are they made of? Where are they, exactly, if anywhere?

Ok, that's enough, what’s the “spirit of AHQ" to you, then?

Well, the idea of this discussion was to search for it together, but if you ask me:

Basically, AHQ is supposed to condense old-school dungeon crawling into a board game, so it’s more about dungeon exploration and monster fighting than storytelling and roleplaying, which are almost irrelevant in the game. It’s about the pure dungeon-crawling aspect of the experience, with emphasis on tactical combat, traps, and hazards, with everything else abstracted, simplified, or randomized.

AHQ is something uniquely different from anything else that came before it; it’s thematically and mechanically between HQ and AD&D, with the purpose of introducing people to the fantasy wargaming hobby.

That’s still too abstract; would you mind elaborating a little more?

My whole point rests on the following assumptions that remain undisputed:

*The premise of pure dungeon crawling is already repetitive in and on itself; boardgame dungeon crawlers, commercial and otherwise, rely on variety to be entertaining and remain engaging. This is even more obvious in a combat-focused game such as AHQ, where overland travel and roleplaying between expeditions are either nonexistent or irrelevant.

*For the same reasons, features such as realism are not supposed to limit the said variety in any way in a game of this type. From a game design perspective, realism and playability should work together to enhance the gameplay experience, not hurt each other. This is a pretty objective game design standard, as far as I know, and it clearly applies here.

*Under the same principles, repetitive doorway fighting (or any repetitive form of fighting for that matter) becoming the rule in the game only to favor some sort of seemingly mishandled realism is clearly a flaw to fix, not a feature to keep and design around. Under this approach, it should be the exception, not the rule. Even if it was intended—I highly doubt it, because of the artwork and how it works differently with DM and solo, which hints at rushed-to-market design rather than methodical intent—I’d advocate changing it anyway if it's poorly implemented, with the same results and based on the same principles.

With that in mind, I’m afraid you’ll have the hardest time convincing me that the spirit that should guide the overhauling of AHQ is to dismiss these principles to make the already repetitive premise of pure dungeon crawling even more so on purpose.

What are the actual facts you're basing your assumptions on?

*Well, Mr. Jervis Johnson himself disclosed in a relatively recent interview, for the first time as far as I know, that the biggest influence on AHQ was Albie Fiore’s games played with the 1st edition Advanced D&D rules by Gary Gygax. He also said that, when he was asked to create AHQ, he tried to channel as much of Albie into the game as possible. He also said the purpose was for GW to have a game of its own, linked to HeroQuest, to act as a bridge for players who bought games in toy stores and introduce them to the GW hobby.

*AD&D 1st Edition belongs to the now old-school tradition of dungeon crawling, so to speak. Roleplaying games were essentially what we know today as skirmish wargames, but in dungeon-crawler settings back then, kind of.

*In the late Albie Fiore’s material, I can’t find evidence that he favored doorway fighting in his games; quite the contrary, actually. See this video, for example.

*The AHQ rulebook and components themselves suggest the game is more of a wargame (with its gridded turn-based combat in dungeons) than what we know today as an adventure game. It's unequivocally more about combat encounters than anything else.

*The artwork, which is supposed to set the theme and tone of the game, doesn’t depict doorway fighting at all. Let's forget the spirit of AHQ for a moment; let's do justice to the tangible, pretty objective depictions shown in its artwork to begin with!

*In the same interview mentioned above, the designer himself said AHQ wasn't well playtested, which is obvious if you ask me.

*Doorway fighting being the rule rather than the exception is an evident, game-breaking problem that makes combat dynamics even more repetitive in this type of game—and it also contributes to the issue of the Heroes becoming overpowered in the long run.

Why is this relevant again?

As I said above, it’s only a method to access the whole reality of AHQ, pretty much a guide that can tell us what to fix and what to keep in the game, fairly objectively, by the way. Again, it's more of an approach than a specific set of rules. It's not entirely abstract, though; it’s also about tangible results.

What tangible results do you propose, then?

These, essentially. From my perspective, the problem with AHQ is not so much that its Heroes become overpowered, but rather that the combat dynamics (and everything else) become inadequate as the Heroes train, acquire new equipment, hire henchmen, and accumulate Fate Points.

Ok, I see your point now, but I still prefer vanilla AHQ, thank you.

That’s fine; however, my approach is also meant to invite you to reflect honestly and ask yourself why, only as a thought exercise. What’s really behind that so-called “preference” that appears to be blind to design principles, intention, tangible results, and even common sense? Is it nostalgia? Is it a certain emotion? Is it a bias? Is it mere posturing? Why favor repetition in a game that, by mere principle alone, is supposed to avoid it? It still beats me after all these years.

[RECIVS]

Another interesting production from the same channel came out a few days ago: Advanced Heroquest - Dangerous Dungeon Crawls | Top 5 Reasons AHQ Adventures are so Deadly.

It’s a high-quality video with professionally painted minis as usual; however, I think it again misses some important information that could help us visualize the whole context better:

To begin with, what general idea or message is the video meant to convey, exactly? To me, the main point seems to be that AHQ’s “brutal realism” is what the video's creator praises most about it, one of his favorite games of all time. By that, he means how dangerous the old world can be and how close the Heroes always are to death. The video says, for example, that every dungeon plunge in AHQ is a deadly ordeal, and that battles are never easily won. I have no problem with that; however, the video doesn't say why that is a good thing, or what it does for the game in the end. As I've said in this and other threads, it’s a paradigm I've been opposing for years!

We've seen in my other post above (about his previous AHQ video) that the listed features mostly belong to the old-school tradition of dungeon crawling; AHQ is supposed to channel and condense all that into a sandboxy, solo-friendly board game, for the first time, by the way.

However, as I also said, the realism the video praises is precisely what keeps AHQ from becoming one of the greatest dungeon crawlers of all time, for the reasons already posted in this thread.

In any case, maybe there’s a version of AHQ I haven’t played yet, but in the one I remember, the Heroes can evade a lot of danger at will simply by exploiting doorways or escaping encounters altogether. In fact, those are usually the only options at their disposal if they expect to survive.

I may be missing something here, but in my experience, what the video says may be true only in the first expedition of the campaign. AHQ is one of those quirky games in which the first expedition may be the hardest, especially if the players rolled low during character creation and are also unlucky with the dice.

Now, the video mentions in-game actions and mechanics such as buying armor pieces, but for some reason it leaves out that a character with unmodified T7, for example, can reach T10 after a single expedition just by acquiring chainmail armor and a shield. They can even reach T11 if they also manage to train T once or get even better armor!

Such a character doesn’t need much mobility or bow skill, since they can stand in a doorway with a healing wizard behind them and clear rooms with relative impunity. They can still move fully in exploitation turns, and they probably never thought of using a ranged weapon anyway. Did your wizard run out of healing spells and fireballs for ambushes? You mean the spell components that cost only 25 GCs? That's where you leave the dungeon, recharge, and repeat, saving some for the way back, though. That’s probably why the GM is given unlimited WMs and Traps in solo mode.

Double doors? Do they really solve the problem? I don’t think so; they may increase the rate at which healing supplies are consumed by the party, yes, but at the same time, they reward players for arming two tanks instead of one so that they can keep exploiting doorways ad nauseam if they don’t feel like winning a room encounter otherwise, or if they don’t want to spend more healing resources than strictly needed. AHQ’s realism, unfortunately, doesn’t leave them many options, as mentioned above, which, again, is a sad waste of the game system’s potential if you ask me.

Hector fighting Achilles? A human warrior and a demigod literally jumping around and fighting alone in bright, open desert terrain? Nah, that’s not the vibe I get at all! It feels more like this to me. No doorway fighting at all in that scene, by the way, even in the tactical situation being depicted. It wouldn’t be as heroic and memorable, would it?