Quest One: The Trial – HQ Remix

Quest 1: The Trial

The Heroes have been training for the last few years under the retired general Sir Ragnar. When word began to spread that the Orcs of the Black Mountain had sworn allegiance to the forces of chaos and begun raising an army to destroy the lands of the Empire, you few were selected to be the Empire’s secret weapon in the war efforts.  In the solitude of his private study, you share a rare moment of respite from your arduous training schedule.  The room is simple and Spartan, but the chairs are comfortable and a warm fire burns in the hearth. Sir Ragnar seems restless, his old eyes, hard grey steel, stare intently into the fire. You wait patiently as he gathers his words sensing that whatever he is about to say is of great importance. He runs his hand down the length of the massive scar that lines his face, strokes his well-trimmed beard, and replaces his hand on the arm of his chair. 

In a gravelly voice, but one not in any way weakened by age he begins to speak, “The Empress believes that you are finally ready, that, or the war efforts have become desperate enough to send you out into the field.” He clears his throat, “Let’s hope that you are.  The demon Verag has managed to lead a small contingent of Greenskins past our border patrols and has been staging midnight raids against the borderland communities. Several have already been destroyed.  The Empire’s rangers have tracked the demon back to its makeshift lair, an old catacomb known as Felmar’s Tomb, though they dare not go inside. This is a task for more cunning and powerful heroes,” He pauses, looking at each of you in turn, “You, in other words. Make your way into the Tomb of Felmar, find the demon Verag and end his vile existence. This is no easy task; in fact, this may well be the end for you. This will serve as your final Trial, when this task is complete, your training will be at its end.”

 

Upon Placing Verag he addresses the party:

In a deep voice, a voice that sounds like a boiling roar coming from the depth of some dark abandoned well Verag calmly begins speaking to the party, his words, delivered with a soothing intent, cannot mask the hunger and contempt laying just beneath the surface. “Ah yes… Ragnar’s pets. When I first heard of you, I will admit, I was unimpressed…” He pauses here, cocking his head thoughtfully. Smiling, his mouth rows and rows of dagger sharp fangs and tusks he continues, “But look at you now… off on your own, to bravely vanquish the big bad monster. But I see this story playing out a little differently… I see a few underfed ducklings wandering right onto my plate.”

 

Upon Verag’s Defeat:

Verag begins to burn away from the inside, his mortal form tearing away to ash. As he burns and crumbles before you he whispers in a haunting echo, “No matter, time is a wheel, and it is always turning, the black will overcome the white again as it did in the days of old. Even now the darkness rattles the weakening bars of hell… We will meet again Heroes, have no doubts….”

 

Quest 1 Set Up:

Victory: the defeat of Verag the demon.

Set aside: Mummy card, Healing Potion, Ertu villain card, spider Glyph Tile, Broken Door tile, Throne Room tile.

Shuffle the spider glyph into the first 6 tiles of the tile deck, add 2 more tiles, then shuffle broken door into the next 4 tiles of the tile deck.

Villain: We used Ertu the balor as the villain for this adventure, though I scaled his health down to 8. (Which ended up being a mistake, he got owned in less than 3 rounds.)

When the Spider Glyph is drawn, place a monster as normal, but also place the mummy card. Defeating this Mummy will reward that hero with the Healing Potion item card, in addition to the standard treasure roll.

When the Broken door is revealed, place the Throne Room tile, cap all unexplored edges with chamber tiles, draw three monsters and place them in the Throne Room and Broken Door tile. Place Verag on the throne. Defeating Verag awards a random treasure item.

Monster Deck:

This monster deck contains a sampling on both orc and goblin based foes and minor undead. Most of the monsters are 2xp or less in power with some 3xp monsters tossed in for good measure, but the variety of monsters and abundance of ranged attackers should provide some challenge.

Quest 1 Gameplay:

The party spanked this adventure pretty hard.  Outstanding rolls for the players, bad rolls for monsters, and a strong party roster definitely helped things out. Plenty of 20’s for the heroes resulted in 3 out of 5 characters leveling up by the end of the adventure. The party did break a sweat when the mummy appeared due to its ability to permanently remove hp, but poor rolls and strong offense won the day. The boss, despite having 3 allies and the Magma Walls environment card (hero ending turn next to wall takes 1 damage) working in his favor still failed to deliver any real threat. The party was too beefed up from the lucky leveling, and rolls too good for him to be a threat. Despite the lack of challenge, it was still a great first session.

If I could do it again I would have beefed Verak’s hp up to the normal 12, and added some xp 4 monsters to the deck.

HeroQuest Remix

HeroQuest Remix, a D&D Adventure System Game

Many, many years ago a ten year-old boy wound his way through the labyrinth of Toys’R’Us. Clutched in his hand were the wadded up bills from a recent and very lucrative yard sale: thirty whole dollars!  The money felt hot in his hands, burning with an intense desire to be spent on something, anything. After about 5 laps through the store something caught the boy’s attention, something huge. There on the shelf was a box, a board game box, but this was not monopoly, or clue, no this was different.

The artwork alone on the front of this board game was blowing the boy’s mind. It depicted Conan, decked out in his fur underpants, fighting alongside some magic wielding friends against horrific monsters. The Title read “HeroQuest.” Nervously the boy hefted the massive box from the shelf and flipped it over. What he saw on the back of that box changed his life forever. Tiny plastic army men, made to look like the very heroes and monsters depicted on the box were included inside, along with a dungeon, doors, furniture, and all manner of cards and strange dice. The boy’s heart began to sink, there was no way he could afford such an incredible game, but as he raised his eyes to the shelving he clearly read “$24.95” and a great excited breath was released.

The rest, as they say, is history.  14 quests, 2 expansion packs, and a boatload of custom adventures later the boy grew up to become a dungeon master of fairly adequate renown.  He spent the next 2 decades playing games and building games of all types.  When he had a boy of his own, he dusted off his old copy of HeroQuest and shared the excitement and adventure with the next generation, and it was good.

On a whim I picked up a copy of Legend of Drizzt, and was very quickly blown away by the fast game play, and the complete lack of a dungeon master.  It didn’t take long for my son, now a teenager, and me to start converting the first 14 quests of HeroQuest over to the D&D adventure system.  It wasn’t something we thought about doing, it was something that had to be done.

Inspired heavily by http://www.boardgamegeek.com/user/solomani ‘s Firestorm Peak campaign, I started my own campaign in a revised and slightly remixed HeroQuest.  I’m looking forward to sharing the process and the campaign.

First off, many of the monsters I will be using are snatched right from these forums, a big thank you again to http://www.boardgamegeek.com/user/solomani and to http://www.boardgamegeek.com/user/chromaticdragon as well as anyone else I forget to credit.  I plan to create several monsters myself as well, and in order to scale difficulty with level gain I will create enhanced versions of the lower level monsters to keep pace with the party. I don’t want to speed of play to diminish with level ups as a result of too many monsters on the board at once, preferring smaller groups of more powerful/interesting foes.  It is also a design goal to create unique game play effects for a few of the 14 quests.

The Heroes:

Originally HeroQuest only had 4 heroes: Barbarian, Elf, Dwarf, and Wizard.  But we formed a group of five heroes and selected characters from all three board games and from the forums.  My son loves Aegis, Warforged Paladin, created by Brian Grell http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/813142/dungeons-dragons-castle-ravenloft-board-game . In fact we all love this character because of his insta-tank skill.

Our final party roster looks like this, with some RP conversion notes for HeroQuest (AKA warhammer setting):

Dragonborn Wizard (Heksan), an intelligent Saurus, working for the Empire.

http://warhammeronline.wikia.com/wiki/Saurus

Warforged Paladin (Aegis), the spirit of a dead knight trapped in the body of a dwarven war golem.

Dwarven Fighter (Vistra), female dwarves are discouraged from being warriors or adventurers, she left the dwarven kingdom to serve the Empire.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_(Warhammer)

Human Archer (Catti Brie), reformed thief, turned Imperial Scout, selected for special reconnaissance training

Drow Ranger (Drizzt), an exiled Druchii Ranger, his high ideals and moral code forced him from his homeland, through persistent heroic deeds he hopes to earn the trust and acceptance of the Empire.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Elves_(Warhammer)

Made Some “Blank” character sheets for everyone, that way we can just level them up as we go.

House Rules:

1. Players choose 1 character and use it the entire course of the campaign. Only in death can they pick another character.

2. New characters start at level 1 with no treasure items.

3. When a monster is defeated the character draws 1 “blessing” card from a deck containing the blessings and fortunes, and rolls once for treasure. Only done once per character per turn regardless of how many monsters were defeated.

4. Characters start with 2 Healing Surges per adventure. If they use 2 surges and are still defeated they retreat back to town and permanently lose 1 healing surge for the remainder of the campaign. Loss of the last surge means they have failed in their mission to defeat the forces of chaos.

5. Permanent death occurs when both surges are used and no healing is applied to a downed character.

6. Three items are drawn from the deck in between quests these items can be purchased with party gold in between adventures.

7. Two event cards are drawn in-between adventures to represent inter-adventure activities and events. http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/64402/ninjadorgs-dd-advent…

8. Small creatures, oozes, and serpentine shaped creatures are not affected by cramped passageways and tiles.

9. When disengaging from a monster or villain if the character ends their move not adjacent to the monster, the monster gets a free attack. Engaged means the character is adjacent to any monster on the board.

10. If more than one character is engaging a monster both characters get a +1 flanking bonus to hit. This bonus applies to monsters as well.

11. Using standard level up benefits: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0swR_EZ3AV8/TsEqdNIqWKI/AAAAAAAAA5…

12. Monsters should be played as intelligently and logically as possible. For example fire elementals are not affected by fire attacks but take +1 damage from water attacks. Water elementals ignore environmental effects due to size (like the narrow passageway) etc.

13. Line of Sight is enforced.

14. Each player rolls for their own character whenever a trap, hazard or other event is drawn that affects them. This represents the idea of reflex save and such (which is abstracted in AC).

15. Area of Effect attacks vs. monsters are rolled individually – so one attack role per monster.

16. Trap related abilities work on locked doors and chests.

Let’s see how it goes.