Ye Olde Inn

A one shot quest for the semi beginner level player, uses components from the main game system only.

I wrote this so my nephew and I could play a side game, the heroes have no artifacts but do have a fair amount of gear.

Barbarian is equipped with Battle Axe and a Helmet.
Dwarf is equipped with Broadsword,Shield and a Helmet.

If you don't have two extra heroes for the Bandits then use two Chaos Warriors instead.

[Jump to post 11 for the reworked Quest. -edit]

Nice but where do you start this quest?

It looks like the only option is on the stairs but this means you face the Thieves right at the beginning of the quest. The notes read as though you should face them at the end of the quest.

The Road Warrior wrote:Nice but where do you start this quest?

It looks like the only option is on the stairs but this means you face the Thieves right at the beginning of the quest. The notes read as though you should face them at the end of the quest.

The way I read it is that you start at the stairs, but you don't encounter the Thieves until you return to the stairs.

So you only place them in the room when the Heroes return. That makes sense

The Road Warrior wrote:Nice but where do you start this quest?

It looks like the only option is on the stairs but this means you face the Thieves right at the beginning of the quest. The notes read as though you should face them at the end of the quest.

The problem I ran into when writing this up,is that the text bleed over the wandering monster part on the bottom of the page and stats for the bandits, so I had to edit a lot of the text out. So I had cut out where to start, I shouldn't of assumed that people would know where to start and I will try to add where to start from on my next quest attempt.

I also had to cut the game note about not placing the bandits until the end of the game. but I tried to infer that in the last room text .

My nephew and I played this yesterday and it played out OK.

There was just enough monsters to make this challenging, When I first wrote this up I had more monsters but I decided to trim down the amount in each room,I pretty much dropped one monster from each group.

Now the funny thing is my Nephew's party had more trouble with traps then the monsters,He ended up pulling 5 pit trap hazards when searching for treasure, so the map ended up with a total of 10 pit traps.

The Bandits at the end did pose a greater challenge then I expected,the next time I include Barbarian villains I going to make them 5 body points.

It sounds like a great idea that you wrote a side Quest for your Nephew to play just with you. It's great that you balanced a challenging Quest for just two Heroes. Do you normally play in a full-sized group? Unless the other Heroes are adults, you might find there is an issue with the Dwarf and Barbarian gaining as many as 250 gold coins each plus a longsword ahead of the others. If the other players are kids, you may have to make a special side Quest for them to even things up. As that means more games, that should be a good thing.

If you choose to rewrite this Quest for the benefit of others, I'd offer these suggestions:

• Reduce the Parchment Text in favor of returning your notes about the starting/exit room.
• Label the Barbarian room A. to clarify it as the starting room.
• Mark both Barbarian locations on the map with an X so they can't be placed prematurely. Have the note for the room describe their placement when the Heroes are returning to the exit.
• Winnow down the traps as you did with the monsters.
• Have the Barbarians defend with black shields--they're wolves in sheep skin and should be treated as such for a surer outcome.
• Split room C. into two room descriptions that refer to each other, one for the chests, and one for the rack and key.

A few other things to consider, you often forget to leave spaces after comers, fullstops etc.

I also prefer things to start, You or similar, as in "You are both sat at the inn enjoying a well deserved mug of meed" rather than "Our two heroes" as that is addressing the players out of character. If that makes sense! We want to paint the picture that you are the Heroes.

You could quite easily reword your parchment text to reduce it's size to fit in required notes with out actually taking away from it's story content.

Consider:
You are both at the inn enjoying a well deserved mug of meed when 2 menacing looking barbarians approach you. The larger of the men speaks, "Greetings brothers, let us buy you some meed whilst we join you and discuss our troubles" (from here you could continue with the speech or put) During a long nights drinking the bandit barbarians tell you how their keep is over run with green skins and their farther is held captive. If you help them and clear the keep, freeing their farther, they promise rewards of 500gc each.

My English isn't great but you introduce him speaking with 'the larger of the men speaks' and also after that, 'He said in a deep booming voice'. I'm not sure that's right, the flow of the text, you's use either or, not both. The deep booming voice could be used to introduce the second bit of speech, like 'he continues in a deep booming voice you'd expect from a barbarian. I'd have to look more into it to see what's the best way to word this though.

Thanks for the feed back , I will rewrite this quest with your suggestions in mind.

Daedalus wrote:It sounds like a great idea that you wrote a side Quest for your Nephew to play just with you. It's great that you balanced a challenging Quest for just two Heroes. Do you normally play in a full-sized group? Unless the other Heroes are adults, you might find there is an issue with the Dwarf and Barbarian gaining as many as 250 gold coins each plus a longsword ahead of the others. If the other players are kids, you may have to make a special side Quest for them to even things up. As that means more games, that should be a good thing.

Our group is all adults with my nephew being the youngest at 21, and what is nice is the party combines all the gold found and buys items for the whole party. So any treasure found in the side games will benefit the group.

The main reason for this and more upcoming side quest is my nephew and I cannot get enough of this game. We have the weekly Heroquest game with the full group of four players. But one game of Heroquest a week is not enough.