[Group Quest, Double-size] – The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

[Charlie82]

I just registered to share a big group quest. I thought it would be fun to convert the first Fighting Fantasy novel into Hero Quest format.

The quest is very faithful to the book. Just like the book, there are times when the heroes have to make choices, and times where they have to test their luck (by rolling a combat die). There are plenty of dead ends and red herrings. Only official Euro game elements are used, but you will need some spares. I would play with starting heroes, but then I like things to be knife-edge and get a few kills as the evil wizard.

Links now here:
Maps:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8vqblp3lovha5ey/TWOFM%20%281%29.xml.eps?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/p46xn4ny1q3mzmp/TWOFM%20%282%29.xml.eps?dl=0
xmls:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nsw407znb8q3mhm/TWOFM%20%281%29.xml?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rwbhe21b1v3ko12/TWOFM%20%282%29.xml?dl=0
Notes:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/45ruq0nr2be6lms/Twofm%20quest%20notes.pdf?dl=0

Intro:
Before your arrival at the foot of Firetop Mountain, your heroes spent several days with the townsfolk of a local village. They told many stories about the mysterious warlock’s sanctuary, but you could not be sure that any of these were based on fact. The villagers had seen many adventurers pass through on their way to the mountain but few ever returned. There seemed to be some truth in the rumour that the warlock’s treasure was stored in a magnificent locked chest, and that the keys were guarded by creatures within the dungeons. The warlock himself was said to be a sorcerer of immense power. You were told that to reach the inner chambers you would have to cross a swirling river. When it finally came to your day of leaving, the whole village turned out to wish you a safe journey and you noticed that many had tears in their eyes. You couldn’t help wondering if the tears were of sorrow, shed by eyes that would never see you again…
 
[Additional components needed: +1 Barbarian, +1 Dwarf, +1 Elf, 1 Mummy, 1 Ogre Chieftain, 1 Ogre Warrior, +1 Skeleton, +1 Wizard, +2 Zombies,
battle room tile (from AtOH), crystal key tile (from FH), +1 cupboard, +1 fireplace, 1 iron entrance and 1 wooden exit door (from FH, KK, MotM, or RotWL), +7 open doors, 1 portcullis (from MotM), 4 short stairway tiles (from KK), sun-room tile (from AtOH), surface tile (from AtOH), +2 tables, +1 tomb, 2 trap door tiles (from FH, KK, MotM, or RotWL), +1 weapons rack -edit]

[lucasdp]

I love this idea!!!!

[The Admiral]

It looks really interesting. I hope you can get the boards posted soon?

[Charlie82]

I have set up a dropbox. Links to the maps now in original post.

[knightkrawler]

Jesus, the coincidence.
I thought about the possibility to adapt Fighting Fantasy into quests just last week or so.
Go on.
Citadel of Chaos should be an easily-adaptable quest and a lot of fun, too.
Oh, and City of Thieves.
That's my wishlist right there, for now.

[knightkrawler]

As for your problem...
Do you have ghostscript installed and set the right path?
And then exported as (pdf, png)?

[thequester]

This is so awesome!!! I love very faithful conversions!
Brilliant!!!

[Charlie82]

Right, I have now put links to high-res EPS files of the maps, and a PDF of the quest notes. I will look into this ghostscript path issue next.

Glad people are liking the idea, and it would be great to hear how people thought it worked and how balanced it was. I definitely would be happy to do more of these.
I don't have all that many books in the FF canon but I do pick them up from second-hand shops if I see any. Although I like to be as faithful as possible, at the same time I like to stick to using official HQ parts so it is easy for people (ok myself!) to play.

[Anderas]

For the balance, could you share the xml files?

We have an quest estimator around in here that takes the Heroscribe files and calculates the BP a given hero group loses.

[Charlie82]

For the balance, could you share the xml files?

We have an quest estimator around in here that takes the Heroscribe files and calculates the BP a given hero group loses.

I have added the xml files too, although there are lot of other things going on in the quest notes, so I don't know how useful the quest estimator would be. It has been playtested, but feedback would be useful because I reckon each attempt could have a lot of variance.