Ye Olde Inn

Don't feel bad LordZeke, I've never tried D&D either...

Hold the press, the monster stats look like this:



While not quite HeroQuest Monster Card condensed, you'll get more description of the monsters form the HeroQuest Quest Book, then what you see if above pic is telling of what the Monster Manual might look like.

The art still sucks, but at least its not by that Wayne Reynolds guy!

Obviously it's from some guy going by the name of "Ogre"...

I've also never played D&D, but I've been reading rules and backgrounds for RPGs since I was 13.
D&D was by far the most tedious and convoluted pile of "Everything has to go in there" among them all. Don't wanna bash the game though, cause I never played it. It just feels it's much too much. I mean, like, 57 types of dragons, who everyone of them will do you anyway, and who receive a description on their own for 7 different sizes? That's not an effective Monster Manual. To be fair, it's also the only thing I read from 4e.

knightkrawler wrote:Obviously it's from some guy going by the name of "Ogre"...

Witty blueboy...

Rules, yes, can become very very cumbersome. Grappling formalized rules (http://i795.photobucket.com/albums/yy232/smolder_bucket/GrappleFlowChart-01.jpg & http://i795.photobucket.com/albums/yy232/smolder_bucket/GrappleFlowChart-02.jpg) are very complicated or you can houserule a consensus and go with that. A lot of that stuff is there only if you want it. Quite a few rules can be seen as suggestions and simplified a lot. Just depends on how you want to game and go from there.

Those rules look very much like 3.5 edition.

I'm sure we all know the horrors of trying to condense down rules. I've made a rules system that expands heroquest
as it is, and I've made a rules system based on HQ, but diverges quite a bit. I've tried to keep things simple, but
at some point you just have to say, this HAS to be in there, and you end up writing 50 pages of rules.

Of course, this is to create actual roleplaying games. If heroquest is kept as mostly a board game/dungeon crawl
type game, then a lot of those rules can be cut back and modified, and one could get away with probably about
20 pages of rules. This would include spells, treasures, and all of that. You might need a few more pages for
monsters - I think my heroquest monster set is about 5 pages, but this includes very little description - only the
basic stats needed for play.

torilen wrote:Those rules look very much like 3.5 edition.

Those are 3rd edition/Pathfinder. Just wanted to give an example of rules-bloatedness from trying to regulate every little thing. I used to be a big rules abider 'but the book says...' kind of stuff until I realized I was only trying to metagame every little benefit. I digress, If you want rules use them if they are there for you and if not boil them down and condense to what's good for your group and modify if needed.

That's one thing I really like about making skill cards for use with HQ (thanks again to gimmeyergold for working out
how to make those work - great inspiration there). Skill cards, at last as I design them, and others seem to design them,
simply modify the rules, instead of creating new rules...or they create rules that won't break the game whether they are
used or not.

That's why I stick with basic D&D. They added a lot of rules throughout the life of the game, but they were additions that
could be used, but didn't have to be. As shown in the stats about...when you get to 3rd ed, 3.5, and especially 4th, they made
a whole mess of rules that HAD to be used, there were few optional rules.

torilen wrote:Two things I've noticed:
1 - It seems like everyone/everything is given an automatic + bonus on various actions. Shown on the kobold stats,
it gets a +1 for the spear and a +3 to the javelin. Why? Why does everything have to have an automatic bonus? I do
NOT like that, so far...unless I am just reading it wrong somehow.

Those bonuses are needed to figure the odds of hitting--sorta like the AD&D combat tables progressing the odds with the level of the PC. (I imagine you may already know as much.) Though it has been stated that monsters aren't necessarily created with the same rules as PCs, the spear can be thought of as having a +2 proficiency bonus (from monster level) combined with a -1 strength penalty. The javalin doesn't correlate as precisely, though apparently a +2 dexterity bonus for a thrown weapon makes it more likely to hit. I think they are providing the seperate, prefigured bonuses as an aid to quick play. Roll a d20, add the weapon bonus, and check that number against the opponent's AC to see if a hit is scored.

torilen wrote:2 - They have given damage and hit point creation and such things a die to roll (1d6, 1d8+2, etc), but then they offer
a set base for the die roll. For example, the fighter in the basic rules you can download - they say they fighter gets 1d8
for his hit points. For first level it reads 1d8 (or 5) + CON bonus for hit points. I know most GMs will allow their players to
reroll their hit points if a die roll comes up less than 1/2. Personally, I've never liked that idea.

Yeah, I feel that is too generous. For a Fighter, I'd be happy opting for the average hit points, rounded up. This is part of the Basic D&D pdf, and should provide slightly better hit points than rolling.

torilen wrote:I think I like that they offer the die roll AND the set base number. It could make things easier in the long run, especially for
monsters. Perhaps they have playtested things enough to know that a certain base score for monsters hit points and damage
work best??? We'll see.

That average damage may be needed for the Battlesystem rules. It has been said that those rules will be set up to use the same monster stats as the Monster Manual. I can also see how it would save time for a DM to use average damage for combatants that don't include PCs, even outside of Battlesystem.

Malcadon wrote:While not quite HeroQuest Monster Card condensed, you'll get more description of the monsters form the HeroQuest Quest Book, then what you see if above pic is telling of what the Monster Manual might look like.

Mike Mearls wrote:...We've talked at length about what to do. Could we cut down on the story material for each creature? That would be a mistake, especially since feedback has made it clear that people want a book that's fun to read....
...So in looking at our options, we decided the only sensible response to too many monsters is to get a bigger crate. The Monster Manual is now 32 pages longer than it was originally, to accommodate all the awesome creatures we want to fit into it.

I'm guessing those examples don't have a lot of fluff anyway, or part is missing--particularly possible with the Ogre, the last entry on the page. But we shall see.

I saw the new D&D starter set at the big local comics & games store a couple days ago. I told the lady who worked there that I had no idea it was on the shelves yet. She said they're a 'preferred retailer' or some such, and they get to shelf it a few weeks early. So for all those who are waiting...soon. (Or come to Madness Games & Comics in Dallas and get it now)

Edit: looks like it was officially released recently...so...never mind!