Tuesday Night HeroQuest!

[lucasdp]

Anyway, we got through it, and Belorn's Mine is next. All the falling ceiling tiles look like fun, but I do have one question. Note B, "This group of monsters is looking for the gold." What am I supposed to do with this information? I could have just one or two of the monsters attack and the rest scatter because they were looking for gold, not a fight! That could be interesting, maybe. Anyone else have any thoughts?

Maybe the monsters could use their action to take the next card from the treasure deck showing gold, gems, or jewels, and run away with it. The treasure can be reclaimed if the monster is killed.

I like it, GYG. I think I'm going to use that, along with my idea that the monsters are retreating... and maybe they run through that hallway with all the falling ceiling tiles, and maybe the heroes give chase before they get a chance to search for traps.

Saiya, your rewrite is great! Love it when a little more RPG gets injected into HQ like that!
And yeah, there is nothing that particularly screams "Orcs and Goblins" about Kellar's Keep (as opposed to RotWL, which very much screamed "Undead"), so it could easily be rewritten with Chaos Dwarves, Skaven, etc.

[knightkrawler]

And yeah, there is nothing that particularly screams "Orcs and Goblins" about Kellar's Keep

Actually, there is, I think.
In particular the source of inspiration, the Moria chapter in LotR.
Orcs having overrun a Dwarf settlement, the Gargoyle blocking the way out and stuff.
When I saw Ralph Bakshi's LotR movie at the age of 9, playing HQ by sheer coincidence, I thought it was a HeroQuest movie because of the Balrog scene, I kid you not.
We switched on the TV at that moment and I was blown away.

[Gold Bearer]

...In particular the source of inspiration, the Moria chapter in LotR.
Orcs having overrun a Dwarf settlement, the Gargoyle blocking the way out and stuff.
When I saw Ralph Bakshi's LotR movie at the age of 9, playing HQ by sheer coincidence, I thought it was a HeroQuest movie because of the Balrog scene, I kid you not.
We switched on the TV at that moment and I was blown away.

And how similar are orc's bane and the spirit blade to the two magical LotR swords!

[lucasdp]

And yeah, there is nothing that particularly screams "Orcs and Goblins" about Kellar's Keep

Actually, there is, I think.
In particular the source of inspiration, the Moria chapter in LotR.
Orcs having overrun a Dwarf settlement, the Gargoyle blocking the way out and stuff.
When I saw Ralph Bakshi's LotR movie at the age of 9, playing HQ by sheer coincidence, I thought it was a HeroQuest movie because of the Balrog scene, I kid you not.
We switched on the TV at that moment and I was blown away.

Good point. I'm not a big LotR guy; only ever read The Hobbit, and then the Peter Jackson movies killed any remaining interest I had by the time they were finished. I really do need to go back and rewatch the Bakshi and Rankin/Bass movies, though.

I know, what an anomaly! Someone into fantasy gaming that doesn't like LotR...

[knightkrawler]

I sincerely hope you didn't specifically lose interest in the LotR movies because of The Hobbit movies,
because, well... The Hobbit is to LotR what Star Wars Ep.1-3 are to the original trilogy.

[Figomurphy]

And yeah, there is nothing that particularly screams "Orcs and Goblins" about Kellar's Keep

Actually, there is, I think.
In particular the source of inspiration, the Moria chapter in LotR.
Orcs having overrun a Dwarf settlement, the Gargoyle blocking the way out and stuff.
When I saw Ralph Bakshi's LotR movie at the age of 9, playing HQ by sheer coincidence, I thought it was a HeroQuest movie because of the Balrog scene, I kid you not.
We switched on the TV at that moment and I was blown away.

Good point. I'm not a big LotR guy; only ever read The Hobbit, and then the Peter Jackson movies killed any remaining interest I had by the time they were finished. I really do need to go back and rewatch the Bakshi and Rankin/Bass movies, though.

I know, what an anomaly! Someone into fantasy gaming that doesn't like LotR...

You haven't read them, so you can't say you don't like them. I just won't accept that you don't like them until you've read them. I await your book review next Tuesday

[lucasdp]

I sincerely hope you didn't specifically lose interest in the LotR movies because of The Hobbit movies,
because, well... The Hobbit is to LotR what Star Wars Ep.1-3 are to the original trilogy.

No, it was the third one of Peter Jackson's original trilogy that killed it for me. It was so damn long, with so many unnecessary sweeping shots of NZ. I get it! NZ is beautiful and I should probably visit before I croak, but can we please finish this damn story!

You haven't read them, so you can't say you don't like them. I just won't accept that you don't like them until you've read them. I await your book review next Tuesday

You are absolutely correct. I've basically let one element of this IP sour the whole thing for me, and that really isn't fair to the source material and definitely isn't fair to Tolkien as a writer. It won't happen by next Tuesday but I'll add them to my upcoming reading list and see if I can gain the correct appreciation.

[Anderas]

Reading the books is difficult, trust me. The sweeping shots from the film are in the books too. You read a lot of "the grass is green and the sun is coming up".

I read it when I was young because I wanted to know why these books are so famous. It was good. Not great.

[Figomurphy]

Reading the books is difficult, trust me. The sweeping shots from the film are in the books too. You read a lot of "the grass is green and the sun is coming up".

I read it when I was young because I wanted to know why these books are so famous. It was good. Not great.

No no no. Read it again, as an adult. I've read it 3 times and look forward to reading it again. It's an incredibly written book.

I do remember the first time reading it, at about 10 or 11 and I did skip sections of it as it was beyond my young imagination. But I can confirm when I read it again I drank up the whole lot of its wonderfulnicaty (I just made that word up).

Now I want book reports from both of you, by next month, and no skipping

[lucasdp]

Back to the batreps!

Belorn's Mine was another ho-hum quest. The Falling Block traps weren't as much fun-for-Zargon/trouble-for-the-heroes as I'd hoped they'd be. And they way my heroes explored, they had sprung or disarmed most of the traps in the lower, middle hallway before they found the band of monsters, so that didn't play out exactly as I'd hoped either. But we still had some fun with it.
I like the idea that GYG and I came up with to have the monsters that are "looking for the gold" to take cards out of the treasure deck, but I think giving the heroes a chance to claim those cards after killing the monsters was way too generous (especially for a quest that has 600 GC elsewhere...). It did get a pretty good reaction the first time I picked up the treasure deck and explained that the monsters who weren't attacking were grabbing whatever gold they could find, and I could tell my heroes were getting a little nervous about having to draw from the Treasure deck. BUT, the problem with that is that there just aren't many rooms in this quest, so they're not searching for treasure very much until they get to to the Treasure Chests.
Another thing about this quest is that the exit is revealed pretty early. This could have been one of our shortest quests ever... But I think it's designed that way. The heroes *could* make an easy, early escape, but they'll likely be tempted to keep exploring to find the gold (and the gargoyle).
The heroes were really only in danger a couple times this quest: Lady Darwin the Dwarf found herself in the pit trap in front of the gargoyle, and Miranda the Elf took the trap door passage with low body points and found herself quickly surrounded by Orcs (but, she survived and escaped). I don't think I was the only one a little bored by this quest. "Well, that one was kind of a breeze," Gizzard the Wizard said at the end.

Looking forward to Quest 9, The East Gate. The Shapeshifter! That will be fun. And the Chaos Warlock with the mind attacks!; definitely excited about that. I guess I would like some input on how to handle him, as the quest text isn't super specific... Is the mind attack instead of a physical attack, or do you think he should be able to do both on each turn? I think they probably meant that he will only do the mind attacks, but it doesn't explicitly say that he can't or won't attack physically...