As promised. I shall move on now to the Town board. I bought a complete set of DragonStrike off ebay solely for these boards and namely for this one in particular. My current HQ campaign that I was running (and still running by the way
) was coming close to a dramatic end as we got ever so close to the Witch Lord story arc towards the end of the gamesystem quest book. I had thrown in a few quests from yeoldeinn's archive along the way and omitted that crazy magic door mine (quest 10) that in the past has frustrated me. Once we played through the quest 12, where the heros release the Witch Lord and wiggle their way to safety only to find out that the only thing to vanquish this evil was the coveted and unfortunately lost spirit blade...I stopped the adventure.
Ok we all know the story from here... heros quest out to find the blade and then slay the witch lord in the next round ... game over huzzah!
Well I decided to take a different approach with my devout friends/heroes (who were all sucked into this game by this point) and draw out the suspense a little bit more. I wanted the quest for the spirit blade to become this greater achievement, and so finding it would take more time and discovery. Where did it come from? where is it? does anyone know anything about it? And while the Heroes searched for clues and answers to these questions the Witch Lord would grow from his weak state to become a real threat tormenting the land with his undead armies and taking the right hand seat to Zargon himself. So I knew that my heroes journey would have to change from there on out... that the gameplay would have to change and that my friends were ready to take on a more "advanced" HQ experience. I don't own AdvancedHeroquest and I do have copies of ROTWL and KK but I wanted to make this world my own now... keep the core rules and gameplay intact but make adjustments where I felt needed adding in some D&D elements and from there on create the majority of the adventures up myself which would unravel a coherent story line of adventure, reward, deception, and all out fun.
So I wrote, and I drew, and may have become a little obsessed... (but loved and still love ever minute of it) until I was ready.
I wanted to throw out Mentor completely... forget taking quests from some know it all old dude... I wanted a place that the heroes would could return too after completing quests..for actual NPCs... a place that they could immerse themselves in and roleplay their characters more... a place full of NPC plot quests, and story lines, even mini-games... just like some of my favorite RPG video-games. And the key to this for me was the Town board.
I won't bore you with all of my scripted story, but I'll cover the Highlights of course along the way as I take you now through my town, which I named Redbrooke.
I hope you enjoy.
oh and we will need a character to follow for this trip. I chose the elf, his name shall be.... OwlFang