What order should the quest packs be played?

[gravaillon]

I'm starting to combine the side quests published in White Dwarf, Marvel, Adventures Unlimited, and the Novels all together into one or two booklets. Would anyone be interested in rating the difficulty level of each according to how easy or hard it would be to beat them with starter characters? How about a scale of 1-10 with one being a cake walk(The Maze) and ten being inevitable doom(Dark Company). What do you think?

This could be great, but not very easy too do. Personnaly, when I work on a personnal quest pack, I decide to give gold to starter character to give them enough to equip their heroes. After the test, I can tell if I have give them too much or not enough.

On the other hand, using a system of notation is harder than giving them gold.
For example, if the quest pack tell to give 1000 gold pieces to each starter heroes in the pack, you can consider that the players must have finished at least one quest pack+ the basic quests (because the basics 14 quests must always have been finished, it is where the heroes find the most important artifacts, especially for the sorcerer)

Of course of note of the difficulty will be a very great thing, but it must become a standard for all the GM who decide to make their own quest pack and share it to the community... Then, anyone could refere to this system and all will become easy. But, I don't know how to evaluate the difficulty of a quest pack without testing it, and even if I test it.

But i'm very interested if you could find a solution to that !

[Nephew of Mentor]

There are few things that I would enjoy more than to play all of these quest packs and rate them. Unfortunately, I won't have as much opportunity to play as I had the last seven years at college. Even then my players never finished the first 14 quests. They usually decided to go to bed around the quest where the Wizard gets his staff and cloak, and then we never picked up where we left off. I had multiple groups do this exact same thing, which I found strange.

Don't get me wrong, none of will convince me to ever give up trying, haha. And in spite of having fewer players at my disposal and less time to play I still suffer under my recent bout of Heroquest addiction where I spend more money than I probably should on improving my collection. Such is life, but what a sweet addiction to have, haha.

[Zenithfleet]

Actually, I have to disagree about Kellar's Keep and Return of the Witch Lord. I think either can be played directly after the Game System, before the other. The story makes more sense if you play KK first, but Milton Bradley does seem to have made a reasonable attempt at making them independent of one another.

Mini-essay coming up!

Evidence:

1. Both the North American and European English Game System questbooks end by describing two future dangers--the trapped Emperor's army and the Witch Lord's return. (Admittedly it does spend more time on the former than the latter.)

2. There's no mention of the Witch Lord in the Kellar's Keep questbook that I can find (NA or EU), and no mention of the trapped Emperor's army in the Witch Lord questbook. Both conclude by congratulating the Heroes and making vague references to 'the forces of Chaos' and other future threats (and Skulmar, because anyone called Skulmar deserves to be mentioned as often as possible). If the two quest packs had a defined chronology, I'd expect to see Mentor telling the Heroes to go beat the Witch Lord at the end of KK, and congratulating them for saving the Emperor's army at the start of RotWL.

3. On the back of the KK and RotWL boxes (at least in the EU edition), both threats are mentioned as if they're happening at the same time, and you can tackle either one first.

The EU KK box says the following (quoting from the Inn's pages): "The adventure continues... Beneath the Black Mountains the Witch Lord broods deeply, rekindling the embers of his malevolent ambitions. Soon he will have recovered enough strength to lead his skeleton army once more. Yet a greater danger looms, for the Emperor and the remnants of his army are still besieged in Karak Varn. Time is running out for them..." (etc)

And the EU RotWL box says the following: "The Emperor and the remnants of his army are besieged in Karak Varn. Time is running out for them, yet a greater evil must be thwarted. The Witch Lord lives. He broods deeply beneath the Black Mountains, rekindling the embers of his malevolent ambitions..." (etc)

To me, this suggests that either quest pack could be played after the Game System.

However... ...there's some evidence that KK comes before RotWL too. For one thing, the Game System questbook spends a lot more time on the Emperor's army than on the Witch Lord threat, emphasising that time is running out for them. Also, RotWL ends with the Emperor honouring you at the Palace, which would be a bit tricky for him to do if he's still holed up in Karak Varn...

So despite what I've said above, I suspect that in the designers' minds, KK came before RotWL in the narrative. But I reckon they decided at some point to make things more ambiguous--they just didn't do a thorough job of it.

Possibly this was for marketing reasons, so that people could buy either quest pack if they could only afford one. That way they'd presumably sell equal numbers of both. Otherwise RotWL might be almost as rare as Ogre Horde...

...you know, I might try this next time I get the chance to play HQ. I've never actually made it through RotWL because KK is so gruelling. Maybe I'll let the players decide which quest pack to tackle first. This will have consequences for the other quest pack, making it harder because they were too busy elsewhere. Hmm...

[Nephew of Mentor]

Wow, this is good information. Thanks a ton.

[drathe]

I agree that KK and WL could be played in either order, but personally, after Barak Tor, I like to wait until after KK for more Witch Lord. Don't want the game's greatest villain to die again so soon.

[Thrawn]

I always looked at it that way too. I liked to make it take a while for the Witch Lord to rebuild, and it just sounds kind of crumby leaving the Emporer's forces to die while you go chasing dead people. I think KK would be anti-climatic after WL as well. WL just seemed a little better written.

[melard-]

Greetings all, from the state of Georgia, in the good ol' (and unperfect) U.S. of A! Im new to the forums, but been a heroquest fan since I got the original north american game as a gift waaaaaaaaay back in 1990! anyway, after 20 years, some buddies and myself pulled out heroquest tonight for some old school gaming, and we had a blast! I believe we are going to keep playing it, and this website should be of great help while doing so! ESPECIALLY if we make it past the original adventures, kellar's keep, and return of the witchlord! ANYWAY- I was wondering if there is a recommended heroquest timeline, one that would be best to follow, in order of the adventures? Can anyone help with this? I found a timeline in the "Tears of Times Past" campaign, but it only gives out a minimal sequence of adventures. Can anyone suggest a COMPLETE sequence to play through the heroquest chronology??

heroquest forever!

[drathe]

Welcome to the Inn!

Check out this post for a good answer to your question. viewtopic.php?f=143&t=1082&hilit=order#p10407

[bastianbux]

It's been a very long time since I've played the expansions (and even then I only played RotWL, KK, BQP, and EQP) so I'm not really sure which order they were released in nor which order is best to play them in. My group is nearing the end of the base game, so I think we might just dive right into a quest pack, but I'm not sure which one to re-acquire first.

[Goblin-King]

This has been discussed before in another thread. Too tired to find it now tho...
Try finding it yourself - I'll give it a shot if all else fails