Ye Olde Inn

Is having a character sheet plus equipment cards/spells/skills a design flaw?

Other games tend to have either one or the other, yet Heroquest seems to use both to a limited extent and it doesn't sit quite right with me. DND is the extreme example of only using a character sheet, whilst Talisman is a good example of a similar(ish) game that only uses cards. As equipment, stats and followers are amassed, they are collected on a slightly larger character card:





Objects are simply laid along the side of the card, and counters represent coins and stat increases.

Super Dungeon Explore also has a similar system, where equipment is colour coded and laid alongside the character card where appropriate:



Should Heroquest have been designed with such a system, given the limited options and the classic simple nature of the game?

There are inevitably advantages and disadvantages of both. As far as I understand:

Character sheets:

Positives:
Doesn't require cards, so less stuff
Allows for a huge array of monsters and events
Allows for unlimited customisation
Allows for future-proofing, ie any additions or changes to how you play the game going forward simply change what is written down
Allows for lots of granularity and in-game effects
Encourages lots of RPG style creativity

Negatives:
Feels like bookkeeping and requires writing in-game
Sometimes you can't read your own writing
Can look messy
Can make the game feel complicated and create a barrier to entry

Character cards

Positives:
Keeps the feel of a board game
Looks amazing if done well (thanks Showdown35/Lemmeron/DullandRusty!)
Avoids having the same event drawn twice due to a discard pile (eg if using an Evil Wizard deck), or levelling up
Allows for automatic regulation of what can be carried by characters due to the way it fits together with equipement (such as in the SDE system with the colour coding). This can avoid some rules that state "this class can carry X but not Y"

Negatives:
Increases the quantity of "stuff" the game needs: custom cards, gold tokens, life counters etc
Restricts customisation and temporary effects (eg attack with a black die once due to X event)
Restricts creativity and expansion through creating a ton of work to do, ie make lots of cards
Makes it hard for custom rule additions
Can become cumbersome with lots of house rules and take up space
Every new idea needs a new card!

As most of us have gone quite far down the road of customising our own Heroquest, I'd love to hear your thoughts! I'm gravitating towards getting rid of the character sheet all together and making some tokens that represent Gold, but then I'm thinking this might be a huge endeavour. I could just write all my thoughts into a rulebook where the consequences are simply noted on the character sheet.

I think it is mostly a holdover from RPGs, HQ is essentially simplified DnD without the roleplaying. It could all be done with tokens/cards if you really wanted, or you can get rid of nearly all the cards and just use the character sheet.

Imperial Assault looks like it uses only cards and tokens, but you have to keep track of XP and credits on a piece of your own paper after each mission so it falls into the same trap as HQ but without the official sheets.

I think it is a design flaw that we note BP and MP and gold during the game on the character sheet.

The sheet is the good way to go at the end of a game evening, to press the "save" button, to store it for the next time in a few weeks or months.

During the game however... I have red and blue chips for the counting of BP and MP. Gold stays on the game card until after the game.

And yes. I have upgraded the character sheets. They have a pocket on the back to store the equipment cards. As I have self printed versions of them, enough for about six or seven heroes, that's not a problem at all. It also means that every hero exists only one time. I leave them on a graveyard when they die. So the Players have to choose new ones each time they die. I made a dozen or so different ones, so there is choice.

now I want to see your character sheet with pocket!

Anderas wrote:I think it is a design flaw that we note BP and MP and gold during the game on the character sheet.

That's what I'm thinking. Given how the Game System is designed, if they were to do it today without the precedent of RPGs hanging over them, they would have made use of counters for damage/gold etc, and done away with the character sheet.

Given how much we all like to customise Heroquest might the right approach for us fanatics be to have an encompassing character sheet, so it becomes like a simple RPG. That way skills, injuries, damaged equipment, new potions etc can be written down on the character sheet without having to make a new card for every single idea. Customisation can involve huge levels of granularity that simply cannot be captured in cards.

For example, I'm in the process of porting the Warhammer Quest Roleplay Book into Heroquest. (That's basically travelling to settlements between quests, healing 1BP/day, and visiting shops, taverns etc.) Imagine the following roll in the tavern:

Your character has a night of drunken revelry in the tavern and suffer the consequences. If they embark on a Quest the next day, they attack with green . This effect lasts until they have lost 2BP when the adrenaline kicks in and brings back their sharpness.

That kind of information can only be recorded on an RPG style character sheet due to the number of possibilities from several huge tables.

But what about character-specific character sheets instead of character cards, ie blend the character card and sheet together? So the Barbarian has their own character sheet, the Dwarf theirs etc. Their picture could be on the front, their skill choices/special traits could be on the back. We could write in what's happened to them, and there could be spaces to pile up gold/damage counters etc.

I'm really stuck about what's the right balance, but that inevitably depends on the customisation. I love this game.

I can see using counters to keep track of BP MP loss during a Quest, Skull tiles would work for that. You still need the character sheet for tallying everything, gold etc. when your gaming session is complete though. It’s a lot easier storage, all your “saved” information is on 1 piece of paper per Hero.

I have gone with the principle of minimal book-keeping, especially in-quest, so have replaced the BP tracker on the character sheet with counters, you get 8/7/6/5 green plastic counters handed out at the start and have to hand them in as they are lost (and get them back if they are restored). This not only reduces book-keeping but feels more significant, physically discarding the counters and seeing your pile dwindle alarmingly!

For various reasons discussed elsewhere I don't use and therefore need to track Mind Points (the Mind value is a "dice" value like Attack and Defend rather than a Points Pool like Body Points)

And I follow the First Edition principle that Equipment Cards limit availability so you need the card to have the equipment.

Also when you get a "Gold" or similar gold value card from the Treasure deck you just put it with your Character Board until the end of the Quest then total them up.

I as EWP, keep a small pad/notebook for tracking things like how long spell/potion effects last for and the few other minor occurrences (and to document the highlights and lowlights of the session),

I use Gold tokens 50 golds each to track gold found in treasure chests.

And I have some A5 plastic wallets that I use, one per hero, at the end of a quest to place their character board and associated cards, remaining spells, Quest treasure, remaining Treasure Cards, Equipment and so on.

These changes when combined mean that you don't need to use the Character Sheet during play at all, they can still be used as a record of the Heroes progress between quests, so to track which quest they have completed, any specially memorable moments, their personal crest, motto or battle cry, any gold carried over and so on but that is covered by the EWP's notebook.

To me I can see how it started... with the 1st edition of HQ the character sheets don't give you a lot of room to write (yes, you can write on the back), most of the room is taken up with the body and mind points and your name... then there's a huge crest you can doodle on, and a list of names of the quests you're supposed to write down. Why? Because they kind of assumed you'd be gathering cards at your spot (even though there aren't enough cards for everyone to do that after awhile)

The NA version reduces the tasks list to numbers to circle and gives you a lot more organization and room to write about quest stuff that matters.

Even the EU editions kind of implied that cards do limit stock, but later clarified in the Adventure Design Kit (which also provided MUCH larger and better organized character sheets, we're talking nearly full page size) that you write the stuff down on the sheet, don't have to have the card by your spot. This really opens things back up.

The only version of HQ that officially limited supply of cards then was the Japanese edition, but it had a much focused system in which each character had special features (only the Elf could use the bow but was limited in armor though not so much as the Wizard aka the Magician, only the Barbarian aka the Warrior could use the strongest weapon and armor, you could buy healing potions between quests but they were limited in supply).

The remake tries to give you the best of both worlds. Some extra cards of some of the more popular items, but clear instructions that cards don't limit supply and (slightly) larger character sheets.

Kurgan wrote:To me I can see how it started... with the 1st edition of HQ the character sheets don't give you a lot of room to write (yes, you can write on the back), most of the room is taken up with the body and mind points and your name... then there's a huge crest you can doodle on, and a list of names of the quests you're supposed to write down. Why? Because they kind of assumed you'd be gathering cards at your spot (even though there aren't enough cards for everyone to do that after awhile)

The First Edition character sheet format didn't provide enough space on the character sheet to support a North American Armoury style equipment system but then why would it, when the First Edition used a card-based system equipment system, so the space provided is perfectly adequate for the task in hand and incidentally it provided exactly the right number of cards required as the number of cards limited the equipment.

I think that the First Edition and the original Second Edition character sheets were identical, and you are correct it was the later Adventure Design Kit that introduced a new one, along with sort of confirming that number of cards no longer limited equipment (call it edition 2.1)

The Japanese version did explicitly state that cards limit supply, but the fact that the First Edition didn't explicitly state this doesn't mean that it isn't official, just that it is yet another example of rules that are not explicitly stated, such as opening chests like opening doors - adjacent.

The point here is that if the character sheet was originally supposed to be used to record only five pieces of data: Name, Character, Body, Mind and Tasks Completed, of which only two "Body" and "Mind" are actually used in-game, then why not just replace the "Body" and "Mind" tracking function with tokens and get rid of the Character Sheet entirely*

*Or optionally you could keep it but relegate its use to "Between Quest" as a permanent record of the Hero's progress, possibly a "Hero Record", that could be administered by the EWP on behalf of the Hero. This is the way I went originally but these days, I no longer bother with the character sheet at all, now I just use the following:

An EWP A5 Spiral Squared Notebook and Pen that I jot in for each Quest recording any events that need it, how many turns left for the Dwarf until the Purple Potion wears off, who pocketed the 50gc from the Treasure Chest in Room B, how many GC does the Elf have left after purchasing the Equipment and so on. 5xA5 clear plastic document wallets that at the end of a Quest I just grab one of these and put the Character Board for a given Hero into it along with all the associated Equipment/Quest Treasure/Treasure cards that they had at the end.

Simple.

And those Notebooks are great to keep as nostalgia items, I generally start a new one for each gaming group, and keep them as a record of the Quest highlights, do you remember when your Dwarf rolled 6 skulls and took out the Gargoyle in a single blow or your Elf died three quests in a row!

The other option would be to go the whole hog the other way and manage everything on a character sheet like many RPG and scrap the Equipment, Spell and Quest Treasure cards entirely, which would be workable but would, in my opinion, push HQ more down the RPG path than the board game path, and may make it less attractive for younger players (or simpler ones like me), but either way I agree with the OP that having both Equipment/Spell/Quest Treasure card-based system AND a character sheet to record the details of them all on, seems redundant.

The remake version continues this, not the best of both worlds, but redundancy, Equipment Cards are provided that serve no purpose as they are documented on my character sheet, if I have the Equipment then I write on my sheet, if I subsequently use it or lose, then I cross them off, no card required, same with spells except these also have cards so do I manage these in exactly the same way as equipment, or for some reason to a handle these in a completely different way, holding and discarding the cards instead of using my character sheet, what about spell scrolls are these supposed to be treated like Equipment and just recorded on my character sheet or treated like spells and use a card-based system?

But what that does mean is between 3 heroes that can use them, there is only one set of Plate Armour, one Chainmail. So if you all three want to wear armor you have to wait for Borin's Armour to be found. There is only one shield for three heroes, one Battle Axe, etc.

But the EU editions from '89 and 90 differ in other ways too. There are no "starting weapons" for example. So no dagger, no broadsword and shortswords to add to the mix, just starting stats and what you can buy later. So there's never a need for a Barbarian to buy the Broadsword (but an Elf or Dwarf might want to). The shortsword behaves differently so you might want to hang onto it later (it can attack diagonally after all and there's no longsword in this edition), etc.

But the EU HeroQuest isn't just the NA edition with one or two differences, the rules vary in many places, making it almost an entirely different game below the surface. So yes, using the above assumption Equipment is very scarce, but then the monsters are "easier" because most have only one Body Point (even bosses, until the later expansions). But then there are also no death saves... and you can't retain non-gold treasure cards between quests... and there's no Alchemist Shop or Spell Scrolls... etc.

It's true that in the EU version there is also no mechanic to sell back equipment (until Wizards of Morcar where you could destroy one piece of equipment with the Potion of Alchemy to turn it into 100 gold coins, and Treasure cards like this aren't retained from quest to quest so you will only find one of these in the deck per adventure).

The first edition included a second copy each of the Shield and the Helmet to pad out the deck but the second edition replaced these with the Cloak of Protection and the Bracers. I think the negation of the "cards limit supply" thing was a good move. At least the Japanese edition was a little more fair by giving multiple copies of several things, and you'll notice that there are just enough of the equipment since not every character can use every item (it's not only the Wizard who has equipment limitations).

"Cards limit stock" is one of those things that a lot of HQ players online seem to LOVE (not sure if they're all EU players or just NA players who want that "rule" back). I personally don't love it, but my advice to those people is maybe do what the Japanese edition does and make more than one copy of certain cards, unless you really do want there to be more instances of players squabbling over this or that piece. And what do you do if a quest says you can find a piece of Equipment? That's just a complete subverting of this card stock rule.

You didn't actually NEED the ADK to make your own quests in the UK, because the core game already had the blank quest map at the end where you were encouraged to do this. But this is probably the first instance of what we see Avalon Hill is doing now, where they introduce rule clarifications into later products instead of just modifying the original again. The new bigger character sheets are much more inclined towards the "write it down and put the card back" style of play vs. the "continuously growing pile of cards at your spot" style that the original had in mind. Over time it can start to become unwieldy in campaign after campaign and you're gonna need to transpose the info since character sheets will get hard to read after all that erasing.