[Quest Pack] [14 Quests] - WAAAGH!!!

[Thrawn]

Looks like I'll get some more playtests in tonight, although I think the plan is to redo quest 1 and 2 after the revisions made. (New hero miniatures will be in play though for 3 of the 4! Only partially painted though.)

I did go ahead and add two quests in for a full set of 14. One goes between the current #5 and #6 (and includes trying to find Rurpik Gorefist before the he is tracked to Rotface's underground caverns.)

The second one comes right after the Fires of Thunder Mountain. The characters will go seeking Orc Bane (at the Bastion of Chaos from the published quests) although the quest is rewritten to fit a chaos warband a bit more (using mercs and chaos warriors.)

On the art, the #1 requirement is that it has to be a piece with no potential lawsuits attached.

[lorddax]

Great stuff! I've got a special place in my heart of greenskins and seeing this quest pack is awesome.

I've also been looking at overhauling the published quest packs as the balance does seem to jump around a bit, currently still analyzing and figuring out how to adjust the base system. I love your wandering monster rule and will probably put this in as its simple enough to meet the design goal of no complicated chart lookups.

I'm really interested in how you handled the balancing of your new monster types and quest design. Were you using any particular formula to create your monsters? Did you design your quests around the possible advancement level of heroes at that stage or did that factor in later? How did you work out the numbers of monsters vs traps compared to heroes?

Sorry if there are a lot of questions, I really enjoy hearing other people's thinking to help enhance my own.

[Thrawn]

Not a problem at all on questions.

Like you've said, I think simplicity is a really big key for HQ, so figuring out ways to expand the game without unduly adding complexity has always been a goal of mine. If I wanted a lot more complex, I'd simply move to Advanced Hero's Quest or Warhammer Quest. Although I own both games, and I enjoy them, they just don't hold a candle to HQ in my opinion.

When I originally created these versions of monsters (over a decade ago), I created them independent of balance. I tried to create creatures that filled niches outside of the basic HQ monsters. So I didn't worry as much about balancing the individual monsters. I was more concerned about making something that would give a new challenge. (Balancing should be done at the quest level, not the monster level.) My general rules were:

1) Does this creature fill a role?
2) Is it interesting and add fun?
3) Does it add more complexity than fun?

Now, with that said, as I was redoing things, I have been adjusting monsters again. The Wyvern is a good example of this. Originally, I had it set as a 10 BP, 8/4 attack killing machine. I made the changes because I don't believe it needs to be that powerful to be interesting. (Those original stats were designed so that it would be more challenging than an ogre or a giant wolf.)

Now, I will admit I've been applying math back against all of these quests as I've been doing redesigns. I've been applying someone else's system to try and judge difficulty (viewtopic.php?f=38&t=954&hilit=difficulty&start=10), but as I've recently posted in that thread, I'm finding a number of shortcomings in the system, so I'm going to try and modify the system to see if I get better comparisons out of it.

[lorddax]

Coming into the custom quest design as a past game designer where an unbalanced aspect can lead to massive flaming, I've been really interested in finding a system to check designs against. I think as quest designers we have to take on both the Design AND Development roles that one sees in major studios like WoTC's Magic the Gathering, design comes up with the ideas, development makes them work without breaking everything.

I jumped on your ruminations in the other thread and posted up some "adjusted" math, which I'll leave there so as to not hijack you

How have you been working on the problem that while a quest of value X would slaughter brand new heroes it will provide a challenge for heroes of value X? I guess in simpler form, how are you dealing with heros growing stronger over the quest pack? Did you set up a linear scale, sliding scale, or provide a framework and leave it to the GM discretion?

[Thrawn]

The original design of this quest pack was to replace the initial set of 14 quests from the quest book. I wrote it when I had experienced players who had played through the published campaigns, but who were starting new characters. Running through the exact same progression of quests again didn't sound that thrilling.

As far as figuring out what the progression of heroes will be, I assume that everything will be searched. So I count up the number of rooms to estimate treasure cards that will be found, and I add up all the treasure that is actually written into the quest. Using this, I can know exactly how much the characters should advance on average. I assume they will pool money for the betterment of the team, so helments and shields will be bought as quickly as possible, followed by weapon upgrades.

I figure the average quest gives 4 gold cards and 3 potions from random searches (this will vary by number of rooms and how many set treasures there are). On average the gold will be about 160 gold. Just take that as a rough estimate, add the quest treasure, and you can figure out likely purchases.

My estimated treasure for the first 5 goes:
Q1: Healing Potion + Helmet + 3 potions + 160 gold
Q2: 2 Daggers + 180 gold + 3 potions + 180 gold (due to extra draws)
Q3: Staff + 160 gold + 3 potions + 160 gold
Q4: Broadsword + BLACK AXE + 160 gold + 3 potions +160 gold
Q5: Magical Throwing Dagger + 125 gold + 3 potions + 160 gold

It's easy to figure that by the end of quest 1, they will have 2 helms (or helm + shield), by the second, 3 helms and a shield. After the third, the wizard will have his staff, and all the other heroes will already have shields and helms.

Quest 4 turns to offense. I'd expect a crossbow, and they find a 2nd broadsword, so all non-wizards will already have 3 attack and 3 defend at that point. (One of the 3 will either have range or diagonal attacks.) After the 5th quest, a 2nd crossbow or longsword is likely, or there is a possibility of a battleaxe.

I actually reduce treasure when compared to the publish adventures, but the 160 average from cards advances people pretty fast. The deck really needs about a half dozen more "nothing" cards to get the deck to 30, and make it so that the treasure curve slows down a bit.

There are chances for setbacks in my quests already though. Quest 3 could have people fall in the river and lose gear, and Quest 4 includes bashing a door which can break a weapon.

[lorddax]

Solid analysis. Going to look at this while working on HQP. Makes me think that to make things interesting skills should be an additional gold sink to make choices more interesting, take an EQ upgrade which provides a flat advancement but has potential for loss (Hurray Rust! ) or possibly look at a more dynamic advancement which will wax and wane greater and less than flat eq depending on the situation but becomes inherent.

With this analysis I would guess that you are redesigning the quest on a linear scale, or are you making some quest deliberately low to give players breathing/complacentency room?

[Thrawn]

I definitely have highs and lows, although there is a general curve up.
In addition to using Daedelus' system to figure out quest difficulties, I also calculated hero values, and then simply divided quest by heros and got a ratio. Here is the curve I got for my starting quests based on my predicted advancment.
Quest 1: 1.76 difficulty ratio
Quest 2: 1.80 difficulty ratio
Quest 3: 2.08 difficulty ratio
Quest 4: 2.24 difficulty ratio
Quest 5: 2.08 difficulty ratio
Quest 6: 2.25 difficulty ratio
Quest 7: 1.66* difficulty ratio
Quest 8: 2.33 difficulty ratio
etc

*special rules in this quest make estimating much harder.

(Note: The standard quest book comes out 2.53 for the first quest, and after that every quest is sub-2.0 except 6 and 8. None even come close to the 2.5 level again.)

[lorddax]

What are you using to figure out hero values? Same system? I've really been eyeing your quest pack as the launch point for a new game with new players as its a lot more balanced than the original. Of course while at lunch, and finding out I still had "Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do to Deserve This?" on my PSP, I did have the thought of what if there was a quest pack called "Meanwhile" which focuses on Greenskins trying to complete their orders that setup the next quest for the heroes, knowing they may be killed either way....

[Thrawn]

For heroes, I used mostly the same formula, except I increased defense since they save on white shields, and I added 3 points per spell card to their "power total. I actually add 3 per spell to enemy characters as well when figuring out value. Diagonal or ranged count as an additional attack die for both heroes and monsters as well. (On monsters I actually used 4 pts instead of 3 for ranged, making it slightly higher than diagonal.)

[lorddax]

Ah good point. I have a feeling my HQP system is gonna by 75% ThrawnSet(tm) and 25% tweaks lol

Are you counting skill cards as spells?