[Quest Pack] [8 Quests] ETERNAL KINGDOM

[knightkrawler]

New Questpack is up, Eternal Kingdom, where I diverged from revisiting the original quest packs.
Instead of rewriting Return of the Witch-Lord I used my own ideas and wrote eight very diverse quests, taking only a few of the creative ideas from RotWL.
It is played on various game boards or a tiles system or a game mat which you can draw things onto.

The "monsters" are Harpies, Witch Elves, Dryads, Giant Spiders, and some undead. Plus two minor demons and an Elf queen.
The environments are forests, swamps, classic dungeons, a city among the trees.
Themes and motifs are feminism, eugenics, "dark" or corrupted elves.
The Cult of Luna album Eternal Kingdomhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Kingdom is godfather to all the quest titles
and the overall mood.

Dropbox-link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9dpeox62ejor91s/AABL_3JGEhvYxVSoyax3mwuKa?dl=0

The villain chart for this is not finished, but you can see the stats.
Refer to the rest of my Dropbox for rules.
Eternal Kingdom is played with the Morcar Compendium and takes more than the standard HQ game system for playing.

[Additional components needed: 1 Alban/Elven Queen, 7 Characters-female, 2 Demons-minor, 5 Dryads, 5 Fenwights, 4 Furies, 1 Ghost Horde, 6 Ghouls, +1 Goblin, 2 Goblin Archers*, 3 Goblin Spearmen*, 2 Harpies, Mercenaries/Companions: 1-4 Apprentices, 2-4 Crossbowman, 1-4 Halberdiers, 2-4 Scouts, 2-4 Swordsmen (from FH or WoM), 1 Mongrel, 1 Ogre (from AtOH or MotM), 8 Queensguard, 1 Reaver, 6 Widows, 3 Wights
* Standard monster figures may be used.
alternate 5x8 room tile* (use 5x8 room tile from Ye Olde Inn), +2 alters, battle room tile (from AtOH or Heroes & Villians), +4 bookcases, carpet room tile (from AtOH or H&V), cavern tile* (from Advanced Heroquest-Terror in the Dark), cave passages tiles*: 11 blocked, 9 corner, 7 cross, 3 tee (from Ye Olde Inn), +1 chest, +6 closed and +3 open doors, 4 closed and 4 open double-doors (from Ye Olde Inn or Champion of the Empire), corner prison and corner ye olde inn tiles* (from Ye Old Inn), +24 double blocked square tiles* (also from MotM), +1 cupboard, great hall tile* (from Ye Olde Inn), +1 fireplace, hall of magic tile* (from CotE), 1 iron exit and 1 wooden entrance door (from FH, KK, MotM, or RotWL), 1 large cupboard, large pool* (from Mage Knight Dungeons, optionally use fountain from Ye Olde Inn), 6 long and 2 short stairway tiles (from KK or H&V), 2 8x4 long room tiles* (from Ye Olde Inn), 20 pillars (from CotE), pool of blood tile* (use center section room w/pit tile from Ye Olde Inn), 9 portcullises (from MotM), quad room tile* (from Ye Olde Inn), revolving room tile (from RotWL or H&V), 12 1x2 rubble markers* (from Descent), secret garden tile* (from ?), +1 stairs tile, 2 1x1 stairs tiles* (from Ye Olde Inn), 1 stone door (from AtOH), +4 tables, +1 throne, tomb room tile* (from AHQ-TitD), + 9 tombs, 2 tomb tiles (from CotE), 2 trap door tiles (from KK or MotM), waterwell tile* (from Ye Olde Inn), +1 weapons rack, well of madness tile* (from Ye Olde Inn)
* Size to 40-mm scale
40-mm gridded game mat, 40 mm gameboard (from H&V), various 40-mm room and corridor tiles (from HQ-Modular)
Artefact Cards: Cloak of Passage, Gehynna's Boots, Potion of Healing, Punisher, Tonic of Recovery (from H&V)
Equipment Cards: Battleaxe, Dagger, x2-4 Enchanted Daggers, Handaxe, 1 Helmet, Longsword, Poison Antidote, Potion of Healing, x1-2 Potions of Resilience, x2 Ropes, 1 Shield, Shortbow, 1 Shortsword, x2 Tonics of Mending (from H&V/H&V)
Scroll Cards (from H&V)
Witchery Cards: x2 Bone Warriors, Domination, Forcefield, Intimidation, Mindfreeze, Mindlock, Negate Spell, Sleep,Sleep, Tempest (from H&V/H&V)

Note: This Quest Pack is intended to be played using the unique Heroes & Villains card decks and rule books linked to in the post signature below. -edit]

[Daedalus]

Wow, your ambitious pack is loaded with a lot of stuff, shaping a new look for the game while mainly using Inn resources. Though Heroes & Villains diverges from vanilla HQ and thus limits the audience somewhat, I hope some Inn members and lurkers give this a try or adapt some ideas for inspiration. Your demon characterizations are so forbidding!

My phone can't open the rules, so I have some questions for ya for the purpose of clarification.

• Don't the assorted tiles available from the Inn need to be enlarged to match a 30 mm grid? If so, why not include a folder of 30 mm ready-to-print files for this pack, as with your Print Materials folder? Blocked Square tiles and other smaller tiles also need resizing, don't they? Ideally, they could be added to you Print Materials folder. The same could go for the HQ-Modular tiles, though I think they are already sized for 30 mm printing.
• As a 30 mm follow-up question, isn't it possible for the pack be played using the standard 22.5 mm square space for the gameboard? A bit of furniture adjustment seems simple enough. Are there any other issues?
• Are Equipment Cards retained after a Quest, or are they recorded on the Hero's Character Sheet before returning them to the deck? I'd like to know if there is a card limit to expendable equipment, such as potions, between Quests.

I also have some questy questions.

• Should Heroes be equipped the same as those ready for RotWL (3-4 AD, 4-5 DD average)?
• In Quest 6.1, where can the well tile be downloaded from?
• In Quest 6.2 (and others), what do you recommend for representing the trees and grass? Just draw on a mat, or is there a workable tile solution? Also, does the Moon Dagger have an Artifact Card, or should it simply be recorded on a Hero's sheet?
• In Quest 6.3, the Spirit Sword is all but necessary to survive against the Ghost Horde. If the Heroes don't possess it, shouldn't it be made optionally available somewhere beforehand or nearby (behind one of the false doors) in this Quest? Also, is the Ghost Horde represented by a figure of a tile? Finally, what should be used for the 2 statues on pedestals at the squares marked with an "I"?
• In Quest 6.5, I like how you made use of the Cave Passages tiles for a very original map. I puzzled out their placement the best I could with 11 blocked, 9 corner, 7 cross, and 3 the tiles. It was necessary to overlap other tiles with four blocked tiles at the lower-left, bottom, cavern entrance, and tomb-room exit locations. I needed to overlap the two corner tiles to the right of the cavern entrance, as well. How'd I do?
• In Quest 6.6, Room S uses the Quad Room tile. It has four interior,
  white walls, yet the double door spans the end of a wall and the Alchemist Bench is placed across a wall separating the two upper quadrants. I'd recommend a different tile, or just drop it. Also, where can the Secret Garden tile download be found? Finally, what figure should be used to represent the Harbinger of Lust?
• In Quest 6.7, the map icon for room E is listed as "Alternate5x8Room" which appears to be a modified AHQ Tile. I could only find the "5x8 room" by Dewayne Agin. Where can the Alternate5x8Room download be found? Similarly, where can the tile download to match the "PoolOfBlood" map icon be found? Judging by the icon, it appears to be a modified version of Ron Shirtz's "Death Pit" and "Center Section Room w/Pit" tiles. Finally, should a figure different from the first Demon be used, seeing as the stats are so different? What do you suggest?

Check out the edit section I added to the OP for downloaders and adjust it where you see fit. I figured monster maximums by including an adjacent room or corridor, as well as line of sight. Alternate tile links were provided where no source could be found.

[knightkrawler]

This is ambitious, yes.
The goals here were mainly to weave a real story and to use a lot of terrain, which comes with somewhat altered rules.

For proxy minis, I made it so there's always the Chaos Sorcerer and the Gargoyle to proxy the hunky characters if you play with your HQ plastics, which is possible.
This quest pack, as you say, limits the audience somewhat by materials used. It's probably not the fun it's intended to be if you have to use Orcs for Witch Elves and Skeletons for Dryads...
On the other hand, I wrote this for my own group with no idea in the back of my head for how advanced they're going to be.
I'll probably just unpack it when I feel they're ready, that's why I've been writing several stand-alone quests recently to fill up in between.

The tiles...
I gotta be honest, I just designed the maps, using icons, boards, rooms and room borders how I saw fit.
One day I'll have to compile the downloadable tiles as a diect source. I didn't even think that far as I'll build all dungeon pieces myself and just assumed all these tiles are downloadable at the inn.

As for trees and swamps and such... just treat them like darkened areas in a normal map,
with some exceptions to line of sight and monster movement. You don't have to put model trees out.

That being said, I guess this quest pack could be played on one-inch squares no problem.
One of these fancy grid maps where you can draw the dungeon with a water-soluble pen would be very nifty
and I don't see how that can't be fun.

Equipment cards are kept the regular way. One card = one item. If the quest notes tell you what you find and that card is not in the deck, you draw a card from the respective treasure deck as you would normally.
The potion limit is imposed by my ruling of how potions actually work. I have two kinds: potions are kept and carried over from quest to quest until drunk.
Tonics, however, go bad and have to be used during the same quest, because after, you have to discard them.

[Gold Bearer]

Wow, your ambitious pack is loaded with a lot of stuff, shaping a new look for the game while mainly using Inn resources. Though Heroes & Villains diverges from vanilla HQ and thus limits the audience somewhat, I hope some Inn members and lurkers give this a try or adapt some ideas for inspiration. Your demon characterizations are so forbidding!

That right there is really holding it back I think. I've read a few systems that change it to the point that it's no longer HQ. Yours doesn't quite go that far but I'm not a fan of leaving the monsters off the quest maps, they look like wips to me. Some of the quests like they could be interesting, I'd really like to see you doing the opposite of what you've been posting lately, adapting your quests to standard HQ with the option of using the standard HQ monsters.

Edit:
I'm not trying to put down your own system, I know that putting a lot of effort into something to make it work in just the right way and then having it disregarded can be very annoying but a standard HQ version of your quest packs to go along with your own system would probably get more interest.

[knightkrawler]

Edit:
I'm not trying to put down your own system, I know that putting a lot of effort into something to make it work in just the right way and then having it disregarded can be very annoying but a standard HQ version of your quest packs to go along with your own system would probably get more interest.

My "system" is merely this: vanilla HQ put into more words that are less ambiguous, where you can add and take modularly as you like, keeping writing in the same linguistic style.
That's it. I didn't change any major things about HQ. I re-worded them.
That comment of yours is what's doing HQ - Heroes & Villains injustice. It will see a MK2 in the nearer future to make it clearer and shorter, but in the end it is HeroQuest.
I can'T claim to have written a game based on HeroQuest like Biff and Torilen can and I certainly haven'T done anything RPG-like like cynthialee and all the German busybodies.

Eternal Kingdom as an expansion is an outrageous deviation from any quest pack you've seen, but the rules are quite close to the original.
That's the intention and the strength of HQHV: you can add whatever you like, widen the scope, add terrain rules without contradicting anything else...
I get that it's probably unplayable for anything but my group because of its material, but, hey, so it's mine.
I post everything I do for inspiration.

If people read your post before reading my stuff... well, of course they'll be put off.
Of course you're very free to adapt things like Eternal Kingdom to standard HQ, but I won't do that.
At the end of the day, I write for my own game group.

I don't deny that the lack of feedback is very offturning, especially because the rule changes are so little.
But I guess people like playing other people's system as much as I do... not at all. Everybody can write it better than the next guy for their own reasons and with their own intentions...
I think the only system that comes close to scope to mine is Slev's,
and that's because most people insert a houserule here and 50,000 pieces of equipment there and forget the repercussions
of badly cobbled-together cardback art and stuff like that.

I did it from front to finish, the only thing really lacking in my eyes is art. (I'm not saying here that HQ-Heroes & Villains is perfect, but I have seen it dozens of times over the years: people react to anything with a cover and don't to anything without a cover, sometimes no matter if the cover even fits the content or not.)
And trust you me, a cover would bring the interest in a-dozen-fold. Everybody likes to be entertained fast and then put their interest in.
Also, you need a few hundred cards for actually playing HQHV. That's a weakness if you're on a budget - of course I understand that - but for anyone who likes an item represented by a card, it's just the nicest thing. I hate giving one shortsword card to hero 1 and have hero 2 note down a shortsword in his annyoing little notepad thingy.

_________________________________________________________
An example: there's not gonna be a discussion on whether the Spiritsword can be affected by Rust.
The answer lies in the icons and texts on the cards. Period. No debate.

[knightkrawler]

I'm not a fan of leaving the monsters off the quest maps, they look like wips to me.

Not to misunderstand you...
It's not that Morcar is completely free to put any monsters anywhere.
Each area is assigned specific amounts and types of monster in its notes.

And I do get that you're not trying to put my work down.
I just have to defend it against casual readers misinterpreting your posts and taking your words for gospel.

I mean... everybody and their mother adds houserules to HeroQuest on the fly and is done with it.
I'm trying to accomplish something else entirely.

I also strongly believe that I were to present every idea and every alteration that are implemented in HQHV
individually in this forum, out of its macrocosmic HQHV system,
then feedback would be much much stronger and also warmer and well received.
It's not that I have no idea of what people probably think of the whole beast,
but if nothing else it stands as a great collection and source of ideas that in my mind improve vanilla HQ without deviating much from it.
Of course when you word stuff that almost everybody intuitively plays the same because it's the right thing to do, it looks like you add needless stuff.

[Gold Bearer]

I wasn't trying to put it down or put casual readers off at all. I get the sense that you've gone into siege mode, and I think I see a few vialed criticisms in there. I'm was just trying to help so don't take this the wrong way, it's just how I see it and it's better to for you to get feedback.

The symbols you use are a handy way to show stuff like in your example that the spirit blade can't be affected by rust but I'd just put the symbols at the bottom of the cards and not in the middle of sentences because you have to know what those symbols mean so instead of simplifying it, it has the opposite effect.

I just think that a version of your quest packs that uses the standard board and standard monsters (or variations of them) with the monsters shown on the map would be a nicer option for some people.

[knightkrawler]

The symbols you use are a handy way to show stuff like in your example that the spirit blade can't be affected by rust but I'd just put the symbols at the bottom of the cards and not in the middle of sentences because you have to know what those symbols mean so instead of simplifying it, it has the opposite effect.

I've been revising cards over the last couple of days to remedy some of that, introducing a Keyword List/Glossary for more text flow. Words like Health that are defined to be the sum of Body and Mind points and such things.
Also, a new system of using Attack Ranges with the symbold provided by Count Mohawk's HQModern font that will be much clearer on Equipment cards and make some icons under the titles redundant.

I just think that a version of your quest packs that uses the standard board and standard monsters (or variations of them) with the monsters shown on the map would be a nicer option for some people.

I dare you to do that with Eternal Kingdom!
It'll be quite the ride to keep your players having fun making them believe these Orc plastics are beautiful lavender-skinned Elven mannequins whirling about.
At some point I'll present all the minis I use, painted, along with the dungeon "tiles", furniture, and self-made markers and all that stuff.
This quest pack is an effort to delve deeper into the background world that is fleshing out in my head.
I don't know if I can or want to deviate further from typical HQ quest writing in the future.

The most recent quests I wrote were four revisions of old published quests that I presented over the last few days,
all of them using either the standard board or the double corridor board with easy adaptation if you wanna play them with my system.
But these were adaptations of existing quest into my system, not the other way around.

[Gold Bearer]

I just think that a version of your quest packs that uses the standard board and standard monsters (or variations of them) with the monsters shown on the map would be a nicer option for some people.

I dare you to do that with Eternal Kingdom!
It'll be quite the ride to keep your players having fun making them believe these Orc plastics are beautiful lavender-skinned Elven mannequins whirling about.
At some point I'll present all the minis I use, painted, along with the dungeon "tiles", furniture, and self-made markers and all that stuff.
This quest pack is an effort to delve deeper into the background world that is fleshing out in my head.
I don't know if I can or want to deviate further from typical HQ quest writing in the future.

I meant rewrite the monsters to something else. Although with that and the standard board there wouldn't be much of the original quests you wrote left so you might not think it's worth it.

I don't deny that the lack of feedback is very offturning, especially because the rule changes are so little.
But I guess people like playing other people's system as much as I do... not at all. Everybody can write it better than the next guy for their own reasons and with their own intentions...

It's like when I was modding for Doom 3, we were all playing each others mods once or twice just to see what they'd done but only really playing our own.
I get the impression that the content creator vs people looking for stuff to use ratio is about 80/20. There seems to be a lot a lurkers who don't post so you never know. We need to attract more people with no creativity who will actually use all our stuff. Write a content review and get a free parker pen.

[knightkrawler]

I am planning on a representation thread for HQHV.
You know, a chart with vanilla HQ EU, HQ US, and HQHV
with all the changes entered, so people have an easy overview.