Strange Variants

[Anderas]

I recently took up playing with a friend here in the city. We are playing his version.

He says, he developed Heroquest until it was perfect.
I somehow don't feel perfect with his game.

* His Wizard has 6 tokens for 3 spells (a total of 18). You gotta roll dice if you succeed to cast or not, and after a certain number of successes, you gain better dice for that roll. The three spells are Fireball for 1-2 damage, healing for 1-2 BP and Stone-skin for 1-2 extra dice. The Game System spells have been sorted and filtered, of these only the (in his view) most useful remain.
* His Elf is forced to use a Bow. That guy got armor restrictions and a bonus reroll for using the bow, plus he gets no spells, only two special selfmade cards. I came to play the Sword Elf with magic and I am missing that one.
* He rolls only 1 move die and adds a fixed number to it. 4 for the dwarf, 5 for the others, 6 for the elf. Idea is to remove the "annoying" 2d roll and save a lot of move die rolls for most of the situations.
* He enlarged the square size to 40 mm but did not make bigger furniture, so now you have many additional free squares in each room.
* He forbids mercenaries.
* Turn order is randomized with a kind of rattle
* The Treasure deck has more than a 100 cards, bad cards are not put back into the deck. The treasure deck is used along several game sessions until it is completely exhausted and only then it is reshuffled. It contains two "Rust" cards and three "Treasure hordes" of different values. Potions are noted on the hero sheet and given back.
* You are not allowed to carry more than 2 artifacts
* There are huge tables with mini writing to roll with a D100 on for each piece of furniture - so if you search the cupboard, you don't get a treasure card, you roll on a table. There is a different table for each kind of furniture.
* He uses Morcar-cards, but those are all instantaneous effects applied to a hero. He rolls with a D10, on 1-4, the matching player is affected, on 5-10 no card is drawn

Most of his changes don't make big differences.
However, all the interdictions make me feel after a while that I don't really have choices to make, so that's uncomfortable. I don't like the idea to pulling the wizard down to three main spells. I love the original with his broad choice of spells. But at least he is participating in the game until the end with his additional fireballs and mini-healings.

Some other of his changes fit internally, but I wouldn't do it that way - giving the heroes extra squares per room, ok, but of course that unbalances mercenaries, so he had to remove them. That fits, but I like mercenaries, I wouldn't remove them. I would rather adapt the game somewhere else to make them fit in.

The movement is annoying. Yes, in theory we could save most of the move die rolls with it, but in practise we all roll the die out of habit. The mummy will never catch us if we don't want, but ok, that's not a danger in Heroquest, as we are all moving toward the monster, not away from it, right? But there is also no danger anymore that a tactical plan doesn't work so, that's a bit sad. I am missing that mechanic. But at least the randomized turn order can mess up your day, so the random he takes away on one end, he stuffs back into it on the other end. That works for me.

The treasure deck is a mess. I like the 24, maximum 30 cards treasure deck.
1. it gets more dangerous over time because you put back evil cards and reshuffle. His doesn't.
2. In the original, if you don't use up your potions, then next quest, the treasure deck will not contain this potion and be more dangereous from the start. That's super-elegant self-balancing I am severely missing.


Well. I had to get rid of that Sermon. I will not take over his system.
But I am playing along after all, because the people I am playing with are really nice. I wouldn't like to miss our evenings.

[Count Mohawk]

* His Wizard has 6 tokens for 3 spells (a total of 18). You gotta roll dice if you succeed to cast or not, and after a certain number of successes, you gain better dice for that roll. The three spells are Fireball for 1-2 damage, healing for 1-2 BP and Stone-skin for 1-2 extra dice. The Game System spells have been sorted and filtered, of these only the (in his view) most useful remain.

Wow! That's a mod I haven't seen in a long time - in part because it was introduced by Flint from the now-defunct Old Scratch Hero Quest forum and can therefore no longer be seen.
Your friend must be a very long-time player; I'm pretty sure that mod was introduced on the forums around 2005-07 or so.

As you note, the difference between your friend's Wizard and the classic Wizard is one of consistency.
Having access to only 9 spells per Quest tends to run a bit short on the magic, which is why so many people have made house rules for the Wizard.
I have noticed, though, that the great majority of the Wizard fixes come in the form of "new spells"; i.e. they get more spells in total, but generally their "hand of magic" tends to be made up of many singleton spells.
So it's interesting to read about a Wizard mod that goes somewhat in the other direction, in that it tries to move the Wizard closer to the playstyle of the other Heroes, rather than farther away. The Barbarian doesn't "run out" of sword swings, for example - and the variance in what he is capable of doing on any given turn is pretty low. So having multiple uses of a smaller number of spells allows the Wizard to play a specific "role" with much greater consistency. In the base game, to contrast, he can do a little healing, a little fire magic, a little of this, a little of that - but not a lot of any single thing.

* Turn order is randomized with a kind of rattle

That was also a Flint invention! Let me guess, there are 4 colored balls for the 4 Heroes, and then a black one for Zargon?
(Is it possible that you've somehow stumbled randomly into the playgroup of the man himself??)

* The Treasure deck has more than a 100 cards, bad cards are not put back into the deck.

I also run a 100-card treasure deck, although I reshuffle it after every Quest.
I do like the idea of the "increasing danger" from picking through the good stuff in the Treasure Deck; it's much harder to effectively accomplish this when the deck size swells up too much because the balance of good vs bad doesn't shift enough with each draw.
But on the other hand, I also like the increase in variety that comes with having more possible cards to come out of the Treasure deck, rather than the same "boot gem" and "Potion of Healing" showing up every time.
I wonder if there's a good way to strike a balance that successfully takes the good from both approaches without watering it down too much? (A topic for another thread, perhaps)

I guess the moral of this story is that one man's "perfect Hero Quest" is not necessarily the same as another man's perfect. (As it should be!)

[Anderas]

Good call, Mohawk, because I am playing with Flint currently.
Yes, it is his variant

He extensively tested his system with his old group, this is why he says his version is perfect. However, we are a new group right now

Two of us (me playing elf and another playing the Wizard), who made up their own Homebrews, are not perfectly happy with what he did, the other two are really into it. So it's not all bad.

Yes the treasure problem. I like the variety that his treasure deck brings, I even used my card generator and artwork from the_maal_ to remake his treasure card deck (while silently introducing some of your and some of Goblin Kings cards and some EWP cards of mine ). Next time we play I will bring the new treasure deck. Then after, I will help him with his EWP cards, too.

For example, I put "no escape" as a treasure card:

"While you search, you hear the door clapping shut
behind you. A Wandering Monster welcomes you.
The door can be opened only after Morcar's next
turn
- Morcar closes all doors to the room with the searching hero
- he places a Wandering Monster next to this hero
- the Wandering Monster immediately takes a full turn
"

Have the variety AND have the balancing is difficult. Effectively it would mean preparing a 25 card treasure deck from scratch, before each quest, by replacing the cards by type - replacing the gold cards with a new gold mix, the trap cards with a new trap mix, the potion cards with a new potion mix... and so on. 20 minutes extra to the preparation. I can understand that this is not the option of choice for most of us.

A treasure card app would be great for that, but then you have screens on the table, and that's a slippery slope, too.

[QorDaq]

...Have the variety AND have the balancing is difficult. Effectively it would mean preparing a 25 card treasure deck from scratch, before each quest, by replacing the cards by type - replacing the gold cards with a new gold mix, the trap cards with a new trap mix, the potion cards with a new potion mix... and so on. 20 minutes extra to the preparation. I can understand that this is not the option of choice for most of us.

Yeah, I feel that rebuilding the deck for variety is a solid solution really, though it does imply that the game's-owner will print new cards--which falls into the context here, so we'll make that assumption.

Specifically, I think that dividing the treasure Deck into 2-3 sub-categories would work. Either "Treasure" and "Hazards" (Hazards would include Wandering Monsters). Or "Treasure", Hazards", and "Wandering Monster".

Whatever the breakdown (Certainly the "Treasure" category could be further broken down if desired, Gold, Potions, Scrolls, Weapons, etc.), the point would be to simply store these 2-3 decks pre-separated.

I don't have my cards to hand, but I believe that the vanilla Treasure deck consists of 24 cards.

- 4 "Hazard" Cards: 2 Copies of 2 different Hazards.
- 14 "Treasure" Cards: Ranging from Coins - Potions.
- 6 Wandering Monster Cards: Identical.

Using the above template, it seems straightforward to make as many cards as one likes in the various categories, then, before a Quest begins, simply randomly draw the number of each card type to match the vanilla card counts.

This would mean that a given Quest's Treasure deck would be unbalanced with the next in terms of total party GP value, but would guarantee as much variety as possible with a relatively quick random deck set-up process, and no "watering Down" of card distribution by type. I'd advise separating the cards into their given categories at the end of a Quest.

...A treasure card app would be great for that, but then you have screens on the table, and that's a slippery slope, too.

For those that like tech at the table, apps are great. Personally I'm not a fan though, for a variety of reasons, including your own cautionary example. But it would be a fine tool for those who enjoy such.

[lestodante]

Welcome back Anderas!!
Interesting post and variants.
For the Wizard I am constantly thinking on different ways to use magic, without discarding the used spells. I recently played the videogame Gauntlet - Slayer Edition with my friends using the wizards and just loved how he can be versatile in action but still being a supportive character for other heroes.

I agree about the treasures, using your friend's deck is risky, it can be extremely positive or negative, depending just by luck when you shuffle the cards the first time. The higher the number of cards, the higher the risks to draw 10 negative events consecutively (for example).

Carrying a max of 2 artifacts can be interesting to avoid players to become extremely strong. In this way you can have more combinations of artifacts and you don't have to rise up the level or the number of the monsters to face the too strong heroes.

Furniture searching with specific tables can also offer a lot of variants and in theme with the kind of furniture too.

Too much Mercenaries are boring for me, they only make the game longer but it is nice to have some ally (or cannon foodder) occasionally.

Dice rolling for movements have been eliminated by many players in the past already. Rolling a 1+1 is very frustrating some times but some people like it. Giving each hero a fixed number for the movement, helps to make a hero faster than another because according to his body style, but now you still have a random variable given by the other red die.

So I don't think you are playing a bad HeroQuest, just it is probably no more HQ!

[Anderas]

So I don't think you are playing a bad HeroQuest, just it is probably no more HQ!

Yes, I agree. It is not a bad game, but it is not HQ. I continue to meet that group, because it feeds my inner Nerd and the evenings are fun.

[cornixt]

Does the elf get anything else to make up for being good with the bow as his only other ability? Good at dodging?

I've never been a fan of the "Vancian" magic systems like HQ and D&D. It never sits right with me that physical skills seemingly have no limits for how many times you can use them in the game, but magic is treated like a bottle of water that can be used up even when the fluff dictates that magic doesn't behave that way. So I made some rules for HQ that mean that magic works the same as combat rolls, and you can buy items that increase the number of combat dice you roll. I kept the same number of spells and the types of things they did, mostly altering how well they worked depending on the number of skulls rolled. I even copied the same system to trap disarming, and you could apply it to any skill you decide to include in the game.

I've made some similar style rules for D&D, but I've not quite worked out the kinks yet for the higher level casting. I always liked the Ars Magica style of magic, made much more sense to me.

[Kurgan]

Many interesting points... agreed about the "perfect" variant game being in the eye of the bolder.

[Anderas]

Does the elf get anything else to make up for being good with the bow as his only other ability? Good at dodging?

I've never been a fan of the "Vancian" magic systems like HQ and D&D. It never sits right with me that physical skills seemingly have no limits for how many times you can use them in the game, but magic is treated like a bottle of water that can be used up even when the fluff dictates that magic doesn't behave that way. So I made some rules for HQ that mean that magic works the same as combat rolls, and you can buy items that increase the number of combat dice you roll. I kept the same number of spells and the types of things they did, mostly altering how well they worked depending on the number of skulls rolled. I even copied the same system to trap disarming, and you could apply it to any skill you decide to include in the game.

I've made some similar style rules for D&D, but I've not quite worked out the kinks yet for the higher level casting. I always liked the Ars Magica style of magic, made much more sense to me.

The Elf got two cards he may use once per Quest:
1. Heal 1d6 BP (That's strong of course!)
2. Have 2 actions this turn (move-action-action or action-move-action or action-action-move) - basically a glorified heroic brew that you can use also for searches, not only for attacks

The Wizard has to roll with 2 green dice on each of his repeatable spells. For each skull, you get 1 effect.
So healing, 2 green: 1 skull, heal 1 Bp, 2 skulls, heal 2 BP.
Stoneskin, 2 green: 1 skull, add 1 defense die, 2 skulls, add 2 defense dice.
Fireball, 2 green: 1 skull, 1 damage - 2 skulls, 2 damages

After 10 successful castings (in that same spell) he can replace 1 die (for that spell) with a white combat die, after 10 more, he can replace another die with a white, after 10 more, he can replace 1 white with a black, after 10 more, he can replace the other white with a black. It's loads of bookkeeping, but it works, somehow. Successful is if you roll at least 1 skull.

I like the idea of having reusable spells. Man, I once made a full deck of original heroquest spells that you could reuse if you "pay" mind points for it and tested it for a while... I just don't like it that the way it is implemented, it more or less automatically restricts the wizard to those three spells. He still has the other spells, the full deck minus Fireball, Fire of Wrath, Stone Skin, Healing and that speed spell. But it can't be denied that those three are the most practical. Plus if you use them, you get experience, which you don't get if you use the cards. So, somewhat automatically, the Wizard shoots and heals and shoots and heals and if he has nothing to do from time to time, he casts a protection spell on this or that hero.

[lestodante]

I also would love the wizard to cast unlimited spells with minor damage.
What kind of Rock Skin does he use? Is the effect limited toa single turn or can it last until the hero is wounded? There is the risk the players will wait and skip turns in an empty room until everyone has Rock Skin cast on.