An Idea for Quest Project

[drathe]

First off, Heir to the Black Banner could fall either before, or after Return of the Witch Queen. Skulmar is the villain of HttBB, but he is also a villain in RotWQ. It's a simple task to just change his name should HttBB be played after RotWQ, it won't hurt the pack at all.

I like the symmetry between the two HeroQuest Worlds. Old sage (Mentor), MythScrolls (Loretome) and I really like providing backstory to the origins of important characters. I'm just a little concerned that the new world is a little too similar.

[torilen]

Well...I could go darker, perhaps? According to one of the original packs, it says the dwarves built fortresses like
karak varn to seal out the chaos from the east side of the mountains. We could go with well-fortified, isolated
settlements in a chaos-torn, ravaged world on the east side of the mountains.
It would be a little harder - maybe not necessarily to come up with the material, but to enage the players in that
sort of world and get across to them that it is that type of world - one has but so much space to write guidance
and notes for each quest, much less try to add atmosphere into it.
Its definitely worth a try, though.

Can I make one thought, though. I understand the desire and need for some continuity and transition into
a new setting, so that new players can easily get into the game without throwing old players totally off base
with a curve ball. But, in my experience, when you have a world set up in such a way, even if you move to
a different part of the world to make a "new" setting, without creating entirely new baddies, and throwing
in quite a few new "species" (i.e. monsters) - its all going to be quite the same.
Take dragonlance, for example. They set the religion system up in such a way, and set up the type of races
and the way that dragons rule over the lands in such a way - the entire planet of Ansalon is going to be mostly
the same sort of thing, whether you're on Krynn or some other continent. (boy - hope you guys have read some
Dragonlance, or this metaphor is useless...hahaha)
That's one of the benefits that forgotten realms offered - faerun was one type of setting, with its own
gods - but then they offered the oriental setting to the east part of the continent, the arabian setting to
the south part of the continent, and the middle american setting across the ocean - and each was able to
have its own set of gods, races, monsters - whatever the designers wanted to do, really.

I guess what I am getting at - we can try real hard to make this "new part of the world" different, but its
going to be very difficult to change it significantly, because of how the original packs set everything up for
us.

That said - I'll see what I can do. Like you, I want a high-quality product - which is why I spend 6+ years
working on one campaign setting for D&D and still tweak it constantly.

So...what do you think? Here are some options:
1 - go darker, with a chaos filled land and people huddling in fear
2 - go brighter - chaos left the lands and they are bright and happy now, and a dark cloud
is now looming in the distance again
3 - go sort of off the wall - maybe chaos simply weakened its grip, and by doing so allowed the land to
twist in a way - maybe went more natural and fairy-like - with this option, we'll have to come up with
some fairy/fey monsters
4 - we could try this, maybe - use a different culture type - instead of middle ages europe (like the original)
we could do native american or oriental or arabian - of course, the problem with this is having to tweak
the characters AND spells AND weapons/armor...big hassle

Anyhow - I'll work on it and see what I can do. Let me know what you think, and I'll come up with some
other stuff to propose. Nothing going on until about 0400 or so tonight - so I've got time.

Matthew

[Phoenix]

Perhaps it isn't about using the same people.

Perhaps it isn't necessarily about "order of events".


I'm thinking of a land "lost to time". Either frozen in place by a powerfully miscast spell (a literal time freeze) OR a mystical plane (alternate dimension) OR (what I was originally thinking) an underground dwarven citadel. Perhaps Mentor can transport the heroes close to a known (or suspected) dwarven settlement to rescue the trapped souls. Upon their arrival, they find that the dwarves are locked into a stand-off with one of Zargon's lieutenants (make one up!) and after the ensuing Quest Pack, that lieutenant escapes to re-appear in another Quest Pack.



Just some thoughts...

and by the way, I was totally kidding about messing up the time line in my Quest Pack. The Witch-Lord, the Witch Queen and Skulmar (as far as I'm concerned) are undead and can die or escape as many times as necessary to make for a good story.

[torilen]

Okay - so, two ideas I've been tossing around:
1 - introduce new power that is in the world - good (or law) - you know, something vs. the chaos in the world - could have
come into the world from some other plane or such - helped the eastern side of the world edge mountains fight back
against the chaos that had taken over - the main goal of this can be the "new group of heroes" training to venture into
the last fortresses of chaos that are left there

2 - chaos has totally taken over the eastern side of the mountains (which is why zargon went after the empire on the
western side of the mountains) - this would be that darker version I was thinking of - the last free peoples of that
portion of the world have created what I would call Castle Cities - huge castle-like buildings that can house the
entire population of a large town - the first few quest packs for this would just be the characters moving around
in the Castle Cities - maybe protecting their "neighborhood" - maybe fighting crime as city guards - something
like that

I am really leaning toward option 2 - it would allow for the introduction of atmosphere and deeper descriptions, I think, and it
would be something quite different from the already published materials.

let me know what you think
matthew

[Phoenix]

From reading your posts, here is what I believe:

If you decide which way you're going to go, put your nose to the grind-stone and come up with something that is going to resemble HeroQuest in story and concept; it's going to be awesome! Follow your gut. It will lead you to the right path. Anxious to see some progress!!

[drathe]

I'm leaning toward the darker idea. Although, as with most stories, they tend to write themselves once you get into them. As a choose-you-own-adventure, one may take the basic plots and principles and take the whole thing into a totally different direction. It may be best to just layout some basic plots, mention some characters that you think should be included (if mentioned, most will include them some where along the line), fill in some backstory and go with the flow. If you have a few end points in mind, add them as suggestions for those who may not have their own directions in mind, so they have a target to aim at.

[DragonHead]

I was looking through this and I think it's a really good idea and should be includded, but I'm slightly confused by the notes at the end with the * I got it up till the end where you said something about different structures and the tower where the witch Lord got married or something what does that mean is there a quest Map? Is the building depending on luck or a decision teh heroes make/made?

[torilen]

There were no quest maps at that point - I was in the planning stages when I wrote that material
I went with a little different direction - I started a quest pack that takes the heroes from the end of
return of the witchlord, and they find a pass that goes THROUGH the mountains, to the western
side of the mountains, and it goes from there

I've kept a few of the ideas seen here - changed some of the stuff

As far as luck - no - the heroes would be sort of led to the buildings and towers and such - much as
did happen with the original quest book - mentor leading them along - it is just sort of assumed that
the heroes will par-take in whatever quests mentor has for them - I like this way of gaming - keeps the
whole "why do we want to do that" issue out of the way - that's one reason I've always really enjoyed
HeroQuest - that, and it is such a simple system.

[DragonHead]

I really thin kit's good but I didn't get the stuff at the end, with the diiferent structures and the place where the witch lord got married, does a decission or just luck depend on what structure apperars before the heroes, or is it just brainstorming?

[DragonHead]

Sorry I didn't see the last message, so the heroes are supposed to go through all the different structures?