Is it Possible to Play with 5-6 Player Characters?

[mitchiemasha]

This is the beauty of the Chaos Tokens from Advanced Heroquest. The 'Character' token enables the EW to add an extra monster to the room. In the mods print out, it is written 'upgrade'. However, that's clearly only for the junior set. We tend to play 'add', how it was written in the 1st edition of the mods. For some groups we felt that might be too hard (and it can have the over crowding issue mentioned earlier) so it was reworded to 'upgrade'. This would be a perfect switch for increased Hero games. It also avoids 'more of the same' as each can bring something new to the game.

A Character is basically what ever monster type of that room is but a Champion or a different weapon, a bow, shield, spear... which come with their own extra mechanics. A magic user, shamen etc. It really depends what extra minis you have of that class.

I can't stress how good the Tokens are, the spice it adds. Even though it made things harder for the Heroes they enjoy that extra kick.

[Pancho]

I can't stress how good the Tokens are, the spice it adds. Even though it made things harder for the Heroes they enjoy that extra kick.

Are these tokens available at the Inn?
I'm thinking that a good deck of evil wizard cards would work just as well, but I'd like to see these chaos tokens.

Hang on, i'll stop being lazy and go look...

[j_dean80]

Where exactly are more monsters added in a 4x5 room with a table and three goblins and six heroes?
I think the issue at hand is being overthought, to be honest.
I would add exactly nothing until, during a quest, I hear complaints or see bored faces. Too easy? Too tedious? Only then it's time to make adjustments accordingly. I wouldn't take the risk to chance things beforehand and then find out it might have been the wrong tweak. THEN, changing back things would look like cheating.

I've never seen the base game maps without room to add just 1 monster. Expansions are another story.

[knightkrawler]

Where exactly are more monsters added in a 4x5 room with a table and three goblins and six heroes?
I think the issue at hand is being overthought, to be honest.
I would add exactly nothing until, during a quest, I hear complaints or see bored faces. Too easy? Too tedious? Only then it's time to make adjustments accordingly. I wouldn't take the risk to chance things beforehand and then find out it might have been the wrong tweak. THEN, changing back things would look like cheating.

I've never seen the base game maps without room to add just 1 monster. Expansions are another story.

I didn't mean literally this and that many squares. Overcrowding the board is a problem with vanilla HQ as it is.
I would hope that a group of 6 heroes would split up, which in most cases would probably make the quest FASTER without a need to fill monsters here and raise body points there. In the beginning. Until it gets maybe too easy.

[DC1346]

I didn't mean literally this and that many squares. Overcrowding the board is a problem with vanilla HQ as it is.
I would hope that a group of 6 heroes would split up, which in most cases would probably make the quest FASTER without a need to fill monsters here and raise body points there. In the beginning. Until it gets maybe too easy.

Six heroes splitting up would require a lot more table space depending upon what module is being played. This wouldn't be a problem with the original Hero Quest board but this could be a problem for customized modules.

It would also bother me if these groups communicated as in, "We're heading south into this hallway, why don't you guys head north across that court yard."

My personal feeling is that if these groups have split and are on opposite sides of a dungeon, they shouldn't be communicating because they don't have radios and they're not supposed to have line of sight to see what the other group is doing. Ideally the best way to do this would be to have a 2nd dungeon master and to have a 2nd table assuming you had the space to do this.

[mitchiemasha]

A good deck would work just as well. The only reason I use the tokens is i like to port the parts from another game (Advanced HeroQuest) it saves on printing the deck. The modular tiles come in handy too, changes things up a bit. I've made a quest pack for HQ using the AHQ modular tiles but we do need more.

DC1346. I wouldn't have a problem with players communicating. Separated people do chat but not so much as in orders, it's not that type of game. Having a 2nd table and 2nd dungeon master might as well be it's own separate game. It wouldn't change or reduce their ability to talk to each other.

[lestodante]

We played in the past with 2 boards and 8 Heroes. We obviously had 2 set of HQ and home made quests. Only one set of Artifacts allowed. The problem is that the game will become very very long.
Morcar had to play after the first 4 heroes has completed their turns or all the monsters will be killed without even moving; then the other 4 heros will play and then Morcar once more.
But if you play the standard game adding just 1 or 2 players more, I also suggest to increas the number of mnster when possible or the game will be really too easy and the last player in the turn will not have any monster to face because the others already killed all.

[Daedalus]

Time for a revision to include some useful input, sans the token. The rule allows for any number of players and takes the place of the standard rule on page 12 of the NA Instruction Booklet.

Order of Play

Play begins with the Hero seated to Morcar/Zargon's left and continues clockwise. After the Hero(es) have completed four turns (skipping M/Z's turn should it come up), it is M/Z's turn. On his turn, M/Z may move all monsters currently on the gameboard. Then the order begins anew, continuing clockwise from the last Hero to have had a turn. This sequence continues until the Quest is achieved or until the Heroes leave the underworld.

With games of just 1 or 2 Heroes, movement should be limited each turn to one red die per Hero. . . .

. . . I especially liked the idea about limiting characters in larger groups to just 1 die. This would offset their strength in numbers (assuming I didn't add additional monster) by reducing their mobility.

My recommendation was only to limit mobility to small groups of one or two Heroes. The reasoning is they will get their second die of movement anyway before the monsters get a turn. A typical turn would look like this: , , , , M7
The Heroes each get an extra extra attack only. Of course, if you like limiting movement to balance more Heroes, go for it!

my only quibble with limiting characters to 1 movment die is that it would really slow the game down, HQ can be a bit slow paced at times as it is (especially when introducing young players to it) 1 die could make it just a bit too slow.

The one-die restriction could be dropped when no monsters are on the board. I think I'll add that in--thanks for the criticism.

[Daedalus]

We played in the past with 2 boards and 8 Heroes. We obviously had 2 set of HQ and home made quests. Only one set of Artifacts allowed. The problem is that the game will become very very long.
Morcar had to play after the first 4 heroes has completed their turns or all the monsters will be killed without even moving; then the other 4 heros will play and then Morcar once more. . . .

That's how my player-turn mod works with 8 players. Did your games take longer because of the overall addition of more monsters to fight 8 players?

Playing the published Quests, I don't see any significant addition in time. Each Hero player will need to wait longer for their next turn, yes. But the games should pretty much be resolved with the same number of combat turns, if not faster should the Heroes resist splitting up.

Am I missing something? If not, I prefer applying a 4-Hero rotation limit as no extra fighting turns are added in for other adjustments.

[Stoner81]

My advice would be to see how they play first...

When I played with the wife and my kids they only had 4 heroes between them and in the first few quests they nearly died because of "Leeroy Jenkins Syndrome". They didn't understand the game mechanics properly or traps or anything! As things went on I tweaked quests on the fly by removing monsters or making them a little weaker (swapping an Orc for a Goblin) until they got a bit more used to everything.



Stoner81.