ONLINE QUEST 2 Into the Northlands

[HispaZargon]

Comments about this new and free official quest and optional rules?

https://hasbropulse.com/blogs/avalon-hi ... rney-north

[Kurgan]

I'm bummed there's nothing about blind trap jumping.

Jack Frost joke!

I don't think the Warbear double attack solution is much better than the base, just a little more easy to understand. Better to say the one defense comes AT THE END (defending against the whole thing, otherwise one of the attacks against a single attack is just unblockable) and same for monsters (improves many heroic attacks). Or else just say each conventional character attack against another gets a defense, period.

The free movement is a bit low. I might jump it up to 5 (or just 6) per die.

Appreciate the new artifacts. Great ideas there. Lots of direction for helping Zargon scale the difficulty and be creative. I was not expecting these. Advising Zargon to hide these where he wants is a nice thought. You could say that's lazy or that it's helping guide Zargon to grow as a GM to help fix the issues with this absurdly difficult pack to the degree that he wants to.

I'm really glad the Armband of Ice finally gets found. A great thing to start off with!

While it says any Hero, I think it's really best for the Barbarian to prepare him for the three solo quests, as its assumed the other three heroes are fully equipped to start Group quest 4 in the main Frozen Horror. Of course whatever hero completes the quest can hand over the loot found to the solo Barbarian before he goes into quest 1...

The Yeti fix was kind of lazy, but certainly simple and makes the fights with these monsters MUCH easier. I wish the Hug was escapable though (per the early draft notes).

Finally an official use for the Mystery Tile (I'm sure you appreciate that one HZ).

The animal friend reminds me of something...

Humble of them to call it play-testing. Share your opinions! They want feedback...

[Hogg]

They didn't use an orange highlight for the falling rock trap in the room directly below the room with the note "D."

Note "B" doesn't make any sense. A wolf tries to howl, then what? What does that mean? Is the mummy the wolf? I'm confused.

The new Artifacts, rules adjustments, and Animal Companion all make it a lot easier. I was concerned about the difficulty level and I still want to play through it myself with the app (once they add it) so I can gauge it before I send a group through it.

It's weird they're using wolves before they re-release the Elf quest pack, which has wolves. I'm going to see if the HeroScape Wolves of Badru figures will scale well enough so I don't have to use the cardboard token.

If they do the same thing for each buggy expansion they re-release going forward I think everything would be fine.

[Kurgan]

Note "B" doesn't make any sense. A wolf tries to howl, then what? What does that mean? Is the mummy the wolf? I'm confused.

I suppose the Mummy is the white wolf? That is a bit weird, they should have put the B right next to it, or say it's represented by the Mummy. Otherwise you'd need another token to represent the wolf, or it's just a meaningless flavor event that goes nowhere. Probably the first option.

If they do the same thing for each buggy expansion they re-release going forward I think everything would be fine.

I agree. Makes me wonder what they'd do with the EU releases... or would they do a basic conversion first?

[HispaZargon]

Honestly, I feel quite satisfied with Hasbro/Avalon reaction to the historical errata and defects of classic Frozen Horror questpack. Of course, they have not included those fixes in the released box Frozen Horror and they have just make a clon of classic one, this will surely annoy some purchasers, but I think the solution that Hasbro has published online overally goes in the right direction, so at least for me is enough for the moment, even some of the rules fixes could be vague, but I think giving Zargon player some official tools to reduce difficulty is enough.

The most importan point I think is Hasbro has listened to the fans and the have done something. Not all franchaishes do it, so by now I think we have reasons to be pleased and say thanks.

[Kurgan]

So I hear they unsealed boxes in Italy to correct a typo (for contractual reasons, okay that makes sense) but they couldn't print this and insert it? Darn. Still, spread it far and wide!

[QorDaq]

Most of my thoughts have already been expressed above in one way or another, though I'll go on the record saying that I too appreciate that this even exists, despite "What could have been", this bodes well for the future I think.

Beyond what's come before in this thread, my only comments are to the Animal Allies idea.

First, I think it's a cool concept. I am not, however, entirely sure how I feel about the implementation here. As a means of giving a solo Hero a little back up, I like it.

As a means of allowing for variable player count, I don't really see the point. If a group wants to play with 3 Heroes, then sure an Animal Companion could sort of fill the gap, but not as well as a full Hero in my opinion. And that player will still be effectively playing two characters either way, albeit the Animal will be a little simpler since their Actions are more limited.

Now, I should add here for clarity, that my interpretation of the rules seems to be different than what others have gotten out of it. I did not read the intent to be that each player could take an Animal Ally in the absence of a missing Hero, but rather that any missing Heroes could be replaced with an Animal Ally.

So Party = Barbarian, Elf, Wizard, Animal Ally, as a possible group.

As opposed to,

Party = Barbarian, Elf, Wizard, Animal Ally, Animal Ally, Animal Ally, for example.

But that is semantic as I do not find the playtest rule to be clear on that point, and I tend to fall back on the 'Grim Rule' for such ambiguity.

The verbiage in question reads:

Animal allies are faithful companions who can be recruited at no cost to accompany a Hero on a solo quest, before the quest begins.

That seems quite straightforward. However the following is more vague and open to interpretation (to me),

A Hero may also recruit an animal ally to join them on a group quest, if there are fewer than four Hero characters.

This could read as "Any Hero/ All Heroes" or it could read as "One Hero".

And let me say here also, that I am not looking to be shot down because of a different interpretation, my point here is to open up a discussion about how this could be read in more than one way.

The other thing that puzzles me a bit, is in terms of where AH might go from here with any future Animal Allies. The Wolfe is relatively strong, at least in comparison to the Mercs, which makes sense as wolves are notoriously capable fighters. The snippet from Doug Hopkins, mentions Great cats, Horses, and Hawks, specifically, and implies that the trope within fantasy extends to others as well. Granting that Doug was simply listing examples within fantasy in general and not specifically mentioning the intention of creating these named animals for HQ, it still begs the question of how other Animal Allies might be made unique and still maintain some parity with the Wolfe.

We can all guess at the answer of course, but my point is mostly that it makes me curious to see how this idea could evolve. Which is good, as to me, the article has done well in piquing (at least my own) interest.

[Kurgan]

Yeah the way the original Game System, KK and ROTWL went... there were always to be 4 heroes (barring that one quest where half the party was captured, spoilers!) in play except as they got killed off in the course of the quest. Thus even if you have only two people playing the game, one of those people is controlling multiple heroes.

The Game System (NA edition anyway, upon which the Remake is based) doesn't flat out force you to use 4 heroes per quest, but it does caution that playing with less than four heroes will increase the difficulty (meaning these quests were designed with a full group in mind). The game box clearly says "2-5 players" implying you could play with less than 5. So you could have any mix of players and hero characters (min of 1 vs. Zargon the GM and all his monsters -- the companion app now allows a super basic A.I. to take the place of Zargon).

Only Wizards of Morcar and BQP (Quests 4-10) were built specifically with hired mercenaries in mind.

EQP and BQP gave us solo quests, and turned it into the idea that there is assumed to be 1 human player per hero character. And yet, Zargon always controls all the monsters, and Mercenaries are not counted as heroes (but they pretty much are when it comes down to it) so why the big deal? I see what you mean.

I guess the "Animal Ally" becomes a work around for those purists who don't want to violate the letter of the law of these old quests that says a Solo Quest is for a single hero ("alone" but not so alone?) and no mercenaries can be hired. Some of us have been doing that for awhile where you free a prisoner who helps you... I mean, you didn't hire a mercenary there, did you? Dave Morris' solo quests in his HQ novels did this.

So yeah it's a creative work around option to inspire the players with the goal of blunting the crushing difficulty a bit. And they wanted to playtest something that really had its origin in the lost drafts of the Wizard Quest pack.

Zargon is the ultimate authority in the HQ world. So if he says it's okay to have three players each controlling a hero and an animal ally, he can. Or he could just say no, those animals aren't available, etc. If they don't agree, when it is their turn at the GM role, they can make the call, in my humble opinion.

I can understand if a player doesn't want to control multiple heroes because of the idea that it's too much to manage, but they're accepting an increase in difficulty as the trade-off (unless Zargon retools the quest to make it balanced for fewer heroes by removing traps/monsters, increasing potions, etc). Adding a mercenary or animal ally kind of defeats that purpose for them I would think.

Whatever their future plans, I can imagine some BattleMasters owners chomping at the bit (pun intended) to get the four heroes onto horseback to charge into battle in that outdoor map they've been wanting to use...

[QorDaq]

Good point on the touchstone to the Saber-cat, well worth acknowledging.

And I agree fully that any individual group of players should feel empowered to interpret any of the rules (to any game frankly), in a way that makes the most sense and facilitates the enjoyment of playing the game. That's always going to vary by group to some degree, including those purists that need clarity in RAW.

I should also have mentioned previously, that I can appreciate that AH specifically called out this part of the errata document as being playtesting material. So some potential ambiguity can be present from that alone.

Regardless, while I'd dig seeing an official response as to the intent for group quests, I really like the concept of Animal Companions in general, and I know my son will want to have one in the party.

[j_dean80]

I’ve seen those who questioned the release timing of animal allies with the BQP. This is to counter the solo quest difficulty everyone has complained about for years. They just threw in the part about multi-player quests to stop complaints from others who want to use them also.