HeroQuest - Amped Edition (custom rule & quest book)

[Stoner81]

I’m also interested in your approach to making a “combined” ruleset, and why you chose this approach and how you found it, in the sense that I think there are 3 possible approaches.

I am taking all the rules from both versions and making them work together. If I can't for some reason then I make my own.

Preface

1. Whilst I don't oppose the use of the term "Dungeon Master" the original game already has the generic term "Evil Wizard Player" that represents that role which is distinct from any characters that player may play such as “Morcar” or “Zargon” (or indeed “Mentor”, or “The Witch Lord” and many others). This distinction is reasonably clear in the SE version (EWP is used 36 times and Morcar only 4 times, specifically referencing the character), but the NA edition blurred the lines here by using the specific character name "Zargon" instead of the "Evil Wizard Player" generic role label. Changing “Evil Wizard Player” to “Dungeon Master” won’t break anything (apart from possibly D&D IP ) but in my opinion doesn’t add anything either.

2. Referring to the Dungeon Master / Evil Wizard Player and other players as “they, them or theirs” would be equally consistent as referring to them as “he, him or his”

As stated in my book. I hate that the game has such a confrontational feel to it and makes it feel like the Heroes are against the EWP when they are in fact just facing the dungeon. The EWP/DM/whatever is only putting out what is laid out in the quest book. They are just the story teller.

3. Just an observation that in the preface you mention expanding the character sheet use and moving away from cards to reduce clutter and create more space around the table (I have incidentally gone the other way and reduced the role of the character sheet to be almost entirely used solely between quests as a permanent record of your characters development, and in-game use of cards and tokens, but each has advantages and disadvantages) but in a later section you mention that the new character sheet is A4, so roughly four times the size of the original A6ish and recommend the use of a clipboard for each player to save space around the table.

Cards are a nuisance! Plain and simple, so I got rid of them. The end.

Character Creation and Sheet

4. You mention under Body points that being “reduced to 0 or lower Body Points could result in being killed” and refer the reader to the combat section but in that section it states “if a player character is reduced to 0 Body points or lower then he dies!” but also “Important Note – If a character has 1 Body Point left and takes multiple points of damage, they are only reduced to zero Body Points”. This last statement contradicts the two earlier statements around a Body point total being lower than zero.

I will have a look and make it more standardised. This has been changed to be more clear (hopefully).

5. In terms of general layout, having 19 pages – 1 “Schools of Magic” page and 18 pages of spell tables - to get through to arrive at the starting the game feels odd and I think would put off many new players having their first read through of the rules, perhaps all of that could be moved to later in the rulebook, possibly an appendix?

It is there to give easy access to what spells are available to starting Heroes.

When I started my play through with the wife she had never seen HeroQuest let alone played it. During character creation I simply presented her with options to pick from; what race, what class etc. If she wanted further information about something (like spells) then that information was made available to her but not everything was dumped on to her at once which is what you are implying it seems. That is down to the DM in how he treats their players and is something for them to decide, not me.

6. On a similar theme, perhaps for speed of getting players playing their first game you could introduce a new section, giving them the option to get started with a limited number of “pre-generated” characters, such as “Human Barbarian” and so on, and then moving the 2 full pages of Character classes tables to later in the document, to digest once they have played a few games (and died) and are familiar with the basic rules.

Never going to happen. I hate pre-generated characters! I like to make my own decisions. If they want pre-made characters then play the vanilla version of the game and not mine.

Schools Of Magic

7. Last line reads that “adjacent” includes diagonal is that a specific exception to the general meaning of the term adjacent for the purposes of spells or does that mean that “adjacent” cover both orthogonally adjacent and diagonally adjacent squares in general?

I will look for this and see if I can clarify it better.

This is specific to spells hence the whole line which reads "A spell that states “adjacent” includes diagonal squares from the caster (including the square the caster is stood on) or the area in which it was cast unless the spell specifically states otherwise". This was done due because many spells can be cast while being diagonal and saved me typing it for every single one. Generally (from what I can recall right now) only things like healing spells etc is where you must be adjacent (horizontally or vertically). For spells which this is the case they state "must be adjacent (not diagonal)" for clarification.

Starting the Adventure: Order of Rules

8. You state that rules need to be interpreted in the following order:
i. Quest Notes
ii. Monster or special monster rules
iii. Equipment and magic
iv. This rulebook

However this is a little confusing as both “monster or special monster rules” and “equipment and magic” appear in this rulebook so categories ii, iiii and iv are essentially in the same order, this may just be wording. This also doesn’t establish a precedent if one is needed between Equipment rules and Magic rules (which may be intentional)

Equipment and magic rules I will take a look at and fix.

Monster and special monsters are monsters in the Bestiary and those listed in the specific quest notes.

EDIT - I think I see what you mean here. I have now changed this to just "quest notes" and "this rule book". In addition I have also added that multiple spells are dealt with in the order that they are cast which should prevent any major issues but we will see I guess

Starting the Adventure: Order of Play

“Play moves round until it comes back to the Dungeon Master who can then move any and all monsters on the game board that have been discovered by the players. Monsters who have not been found cannot be moved until they are discovered”

9. This piece of text is confusing to me, the use of the word “found” and “discovered” in the same sentence implies that the two terms are different but the difference is not explained. The DM is restricted to moving monsters on the game board, would any monsters that have not been “discovered” or “found” be on the gameboard? Also no restriction around whether the DM can move monster 1, move monster 2, take an action with monster 1 and so on.

10. List of what you can do on your turn includes movement, perform an action (actions are listed out separately), drink a potion, use a fate point. This implies that drinking a potion and using a fate point can be done on your turn but are not actions, but there are no restrictions mentioned around whether these non-actions can be done once or multiple times during your turn and no mention of other non-action like opening doors, opening chests, looking and so on

11. Your optional rule of unthreatened movement, I think is flawed. The general idea is fine and is common to many similar games, but HQ doesn’t have any way of discriminating between turns on which monsters are present and those where they are not, in fact monsters can appear during a characters turn. The great thing about HQ rolling for movement is that it contains an in-built initiative function, you open a door revealing a monster 8 squares away, you roll your movement dice, a high roll indicates you have got the jump on the monster and can reach and attack first, a low roll indicates that you have failed to get the jump and your movement falls short and the monster takes the initiative and moves into attack first. This optional rule allows a player to exploit this by ‘taking the option of a fixed 8 square movement’ (as there are no monsters on the board) then opening the door and revealing the inevitable monster, and ensuring that he gets first strike, which defeats the richness of the HQ movement roll mechanism.

Enough for now my fingers are getting tired…

9. A monster that is not discovered or found is not placed on to the game board. I will have a look though and see what I can do. This has now been changed to be more consistent with wording.

10. Potion drinking and using Fate Points are not actions and can be done at any time as explained in the book. As for the rest I will take a look. The sections on Drink a Potion and Use a Fate Point clearly state how many times they can be done in a single turn. Chests are considered furniture and as such require to be searched which follows the normal searching rules (see the Search section).

11. This is taken directly from one the official quests. Your exploit example is flawed... a Hero starts their turn at the door with it closed and no monsters present anywhere else so they may move 8 squares. They announce they are opening the door which presents a monster. Unthreatened Movement no longer applies, they now MUST roll for their movement since a monster/s is now present. In addition in your example of a Hero is 8 squares away from a monster and rolls low so they can't reach it to engage in melee combat... what about a ranged weapon?

Stoner81.

[Stoner81]

Fixed a map error in "The Stone Hunter" and various typo's in the rule book.



Stoner81.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

5. In terms of general layout, having 19 pages – 1 “Schools of Magic” page and 18 pages of spell tables - to get through to arrive at the starting the game feels odd and I think would put off many new players having their first read through of the rules, perhaps all of that could be moved to later in the rulebook, possibly an appendix?

It is there to give easy access to what spells are available to starting Heroes.

When I started my play through with the wife she had never seen HeroQuest let alone played it. During character creation I simply presented her with options to pick from; what race, what class etc. If she wanted further information about something (like spells) then that information was made available to her but not everything was dumped on to her at once which is what you are implying it seems. That is down to the DM in how he treats their players and is something for them to decide, not me.

Indeed but my feedback was to you as the author of the rulebook and I as the reader and potential "DM" found the layout to be awkward. I'm sure like many people I do a quick read through of the entire rulebook first to get a handle of the flavour and the layout and then later go back and drill into the details and specifics, so I found myself skipping page after page of spell tables to try and get to the core of the rules, so I would have found it easier if these giant tables where put as appendices later in the document, for specific reference when required.

11. Your optional rule of unthreatened movement, I think is flawed. The general idea is fine and is common to many similar games, but HQ doesn’t have any way of discriminating between turns on which monsters are present and those where they are not, in fact monsters can appear during a characters turn. The great thing about HQ rolling for movement is that it contains an in-built initiative function, you open a door revealing a monster 8 squares away, you roll your movement dice, a high roll indicates you have got the jump on the monster and can reach and attack first, a low roll indicates that you have failed to get the jump and your movement falls short and the monster takes the initiative and moves into attack first. This optional rule allows a player to exploit this by ‘taking the option of a fixed 8 square movement’ (as there are no monsters on the board) then opening the door and revealing the inevitable monster, and ensuring that he gets first strike, which defeats the richness of the HQ movement roll mechanism.

Enough for now my fingers are getting tired…

11. This is taken directly from one the official quests. Your exploit example is flawed... a Hero starts their turn at the door with it closed and no monsters present anywhere else so they may move 8 squares. They announce they are opening the door which presents a monster. Unthreatened Movement no longer applies, they now MUST roll for their movement since a monster/s is now present. In addition in your example of a Hero is 8 squares away from a monster and rolls low so they can't reach it to engage in melee combat... what about a ranged weapon?

My example was certainly poorly chosen but the flaw in your implementation (and that in the official quest) remains. HQ doesn't have a separate turn or phase for "exploration" and "combat", monsters can and do appear in the midst of a heroes turn, that started monster free. A better example would be...

Barbarian opts to "take 8" moves 2 squares to a corner (or opens a door) revealing monsters, is he now supposed to switch and roll 2 red dice because monsters are now present? Should he roll 2 dice but deduct the 2 he has already moved or roll only one red die and add the remaining two square he has left from the first 4? What if he had moved 7 squares of his movement before revealing the monster, how does it then work, D6-3?

And does this rule only apply when there are no monsters on the board, if a hero is on one side of the board which is monster-free but another hero is battling a Goblin on the other side of the board why can't the first hero "take 8"?

As I have said elsewhere I think that this issue only arises when you have a number of consecutive turns where heroes can do nothing but roll for movement over and over again, for me that is an issue of poor dungeon layout, not the movement mechanism.

[Stoner81]

5. In terms of general layout, having 19 pages – 1 “Schools of Magic” page and 18 pages of spell tables - to get through to arrive at the starting the game feels odd and I think would put off many new players having their first read through of the rules, perhaps all of that could be moved to later in the rulebook, possibly an appendix?

It is there to give easy access to what spells are available to starting Heroes.

When I started my play through with the wife she had never seen HeroQuest let alone played it. During character creation I simply presented her with options to pick from; what race, what class etc. If she wanted further information about something (like spells) then that information was made available to her but not everything was dumped on to her at once which is what you are implying it seems. That is down to the DM in how he treats their players and is something for them to decide, not me.

Indeed but my feedback was to you as the author of the rulebook and I as the reader and potential "DM" found the layout to be awkward. I'm sure like many people I do a quick read through of the entire rulebook first to get a handle of the flavour and the layout and then later go back and drill into the details and specifics, so I found myself skipping page after page of spell tables to try and get to the core of the rules, so I would have found it easier if these giant tables where put as appendices later in the document, for specific reference when required.

I will see what I can do.

11. Your optional rule of unthreatened movement, I think is flawed. The general idea is fine and is common to many similar games, but HQ doesn’t have any way of discriminating between turns on which monsters are present and those where they are not, in fact monsters can appear during a characters turn. The great thing about HQ rolling for movement is that it contains an in-built initiative function, you open a door revealing a monster 8 squares away, you roll your movement dice, a high roll indicates you have got the jump on the monster and can reach and attack first, a low roll indicates that you have failed to get the jump and your movement falls short and the monster takes the initiative and moves into attack first. This optional rule allows a player to exploit this by ‘taking the option of a fixed 8 square movement’ (as there are no monsters on the board) then opening the door and revealing the inevitable monster, and ensuring that he gets first strike, which defeats the richness of the HQ movement roll mechanism.

Enough for now my fingers are getting tired…

11. This is taken directly from one the official quests. Your exploit example is flawed... a Hero starts their turn at the door with it closed and no monsters present anywhere else so they may move 8 squares. They announce they are opening the door which presents a monster. Unthreatened Movement no longer applies, they now MUST roll for their movement since a monster/s is now present. In addition in your example of a Hero is 8 squares away from a monster and rolls low so they can't reach it to engage in melee combat... what about a ranged weapon?

My example was certainly poorly chosen but the flaw in your implementation (and that in the official quest) remains. HQ doesn't have a separate turn or phase for "exploration" and "combat", monsters can and do appear in the midst of a heroes turn, that started monster free. A better example would be...

Barbarian opts to "take 8" moves 2 squares to a corner (or opens a door) revealing monsters, is he now supposed to switch and roll 2 red dice because monsters are now present? Should he roll 2 dice but deduct the 2 he has already moved or roll only one red die and add the remaining two square he has left from the first 4? What if he had moved 7 squares of his movement before revealing the monster, how does it then work, D6-3?

And does this rule only apply when there are no monsters on the board, if a hero is on one side of the board which is monster-free but another hero is battling a Goblin on the other side of the board why can't the first hero "take 8"?

As I have said elsewhere I think that this issue only arises when you have a number of consecutive turns where heroes can do nothing but roll for movement over and over again, for me that is an issue of poor dungeon layout, not the movement mechanism.

The obvious answer to me would be to not allow unthreatened movement if it would mean entering a previously unexplored section of the dungeon. If ANY monster is on the board regardless of location then unthreatened movement isn't allowed. This is because it could give the Heroes an unfair advantage over the monsters since Heroes can move up to 12 squares normally (15 with a Dash in my game). Goblins get 10 and everything else is slower so it would mean they would have an advantage over the majority of monsters.



Stoner81.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

And avoiding giving them an unfair advantage is, of course, the exact reason for the standard 2D6 movement roll in the first place so why abandon it.

Sometimes when I take issue with a fix, rather than trying to tweak the fix I return to the original issue and explore different fix options. The motivation for introducing "unthreatened movement" was I think to speed up the boring parts of the game, by removing the need to roll the movement dice, when you have a long stretch of passage with nothing happening.

Best fix for me is don't design dungeon with long stretches of passages with nothing happening.

If you introduce the "unthreatened movement" rule but then need to add caveats like only if "no monsters are on the board", "your intended movement won't take you around a corner", "you aren't going to be opening a door" then the evaluation of whether you can save time by "taking 8" ends up taking longer than it would to just roll the movement dice.

"No monsters on the board, I'll save time by taking the 8, oh wait will 8 squares take me round that corner, 1,2,3,4,5,6 oh yes it will so I'll just roll the movement dice, unless what if I go the other way, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 oh I'll have to open a door that way so can't take the 8, I'll just roll, but what if I get a low roll I won't even get to the door, perhaps I should just take the 8 but move 7 to the door and sacrifice the remaining one, then again if I roll I might get 12 and be able to get to the door, open it and explore through it...just roll the *king dice"

Your mention of your Dash rule has reminded me about a conversation on the New Movement Rule Idea topic that I could do with revisiting...

[Stoner81]

To be honest so far there hasn't been an issue with using the Unthreatened Movement rule during my play test. The Dash on the other hand has been used quite a lot and it does speed up movement a good bit and having it use an action to perform keeps it nicely balanced so far.



Stoner81.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Yes I like the "Dash action" and will be incorporating it in my own rule version, although I haven't decided what to call it yet...Dash, Dart, Scoot, Hasten, Hotfoot, Rush, Scamper, Scurry!

In terms of the unthreatened movement, issues like the one I mentioned are subtle and whilst playtesting modifications is essential, unless you have a large and varied team and a lot of time, there are some types of issue that you won't ever catch, because your style of EWPing, your players style of playing, and simply the many possible combinations and situations that could arise means that you may never see some types of drawback. If the issue I mentioned never crops up in your games then you'll have no issue using the house rule (although it may be difficult to determine if it actually achieves the intent of speeding up the game), but I'm trying where possible to develop a common ruleset that is robust enough to survive extensive play in varying styles...at least that is what I'm aiming for, whether I achieve it or not is a whole other matter!

[Stoner81]

Been stuck now with this for a while since missing so many icons for Heroscribe



Stoner81.

[Stoner81]

Hey all! Been working away on this again this past week! I have semi given up with adding Rise of the Dread Moon since icons are missing from HeroScribe so that is on the back burner for now. I have finally recieved my copies of Prophecy of Telor and Spirit Queen's Torment so been working on those.



Stoner81.

[Stoner81]

Now added Prophecy of Telor and Spirit Queens Torment to the quest book. These have been changed slightly since I don't like the fact that they add a 2nd copy of artefacts from the base game. These have been changed to gem instead but overall they are the same.



Stoner81.