Heoquest 40K

[polymathis]

My group loves almost everything about HQ - the combat, the focus on quests, the emotional attachment to a single long term character.
My group also adores Warhammer 40K (Except me - the rules bore me). They want to play HQ in the 40K universe.
Space Crusade is not the answer - we like the random events and the miniatures, but the board is dull, the combat is weighted too heavily towards the bad guys, and the focus on squad tactics puts too many miniatures on too small a board. Space Hulk isnt the answer either, as our group tends to have six-ten players on a normal Tuesday night.

After searching the net, I can't see that anyone has ever attempted a Heroquest 40K version, so it looks like we'll be creating one for ourselves. I'm thinking single heroes forming a small band answering directly to the Emperor, taking on missions against Horus that are too complex for a normal squad of space marines. We can steal the room by room exploration and combat mechanics from HQ, use the boards from both Space Crusade and Space Hulk to give more interest to the possible layouts, and convert various missions from both of those games to form the storyline.

We're calling our HQ 40K version Starquest (in honour of the European name for Space Crusade).

Anyone out there interested in seeing what we come up with?

[Von Necron]

I love it. Ive wanted to do the same in the past with HQ but didn't have the 40k or sci if miniatures. I'm looking forward to what you come up with. I would keep most the same but come up with a good weapons and armor rules. Like adding a percentage die to add to the attack roll. To see if it was a hit or not to gauge characters accuracy. And maybe armor like body points.

[sadkitchen]

This sounds freaking sweet.
Count me in as someone interested.

Side note: I own nothing WH40K and do not plan on owning anything WH40K but this still sounds cool.

-SadKitchen

[Patroclus]

A very good idea, but you can try the use of HQ board if you like the dungeon crawling of HQ (enter the room to find what’s inside). The space crusade’s board is very static and the entrances are fixed (painted on the board). Space Hulk’s tiles are having long corridors. So, in my opinion use HQ board and you can use the HQGM program (skeletons for androids, mummies for genestealers… you will say) to share some quests with us and have more opinions and feedback.

[Von Necron]

How is this coming? I want to know more. I've got sci fi friends that wont play a fantasy game but would play a sci fi rpg.

[Patroclus]

I don’t know much about 40k, but the battle mechanics of space crusade are very similar to HQ. The 99% of the aliens have 1 body, and the marines have 1 body except the commander who has 6. You roll the attack dices, you count the score and if it is greater than the enemy’s defense you do that amount of damage (the defender does not roll dices for defense). The greater differences are the event cards of space crusade you draw each turn, the total lack of searching, traps, secret doors of HQ and that the aliens can open doors and hunt you in space crusade.

Off course the space crusade is more like skirmish than adventure. For example, there is no need to search for treasures because there is no store to buy items. But I think it is possible to mix them together and have a space crusade with searching for secret doors.

If you have sci-fi miniatures I don’t find a reason to not give a try. But first you need some quests and I don’t know anyone who has made some. If someone tries to make some, it is very recommended to use HQGM so everyone who has minis can give a try as solo.

If you ask me? I could say… Remove all the equipment of space crusade, remove all the events, remove everything and keep only the stats of the characters and battle. Use your sci-fi warhammer miniatures and check what weapons they have and write down the attack dices for each. Forget the search for treasure and when you fall in a trap just loose 1 turn. Keep the search for secret doors and the aliens cannot open doors. Put some treasures in some rooms in your quests as bonuses, for example attack +1 for the next turn, and that’s all.

[polymathis]

Thanks to all for the ideas. We're playtesting some ideas at the moment and I'll post some crunchy bits once we have a rough idea that they work. The story so far:

We are using the Space Crusade and Space Hulk boards to make quests/missions - using a HQ board was too 'fantasy' for us and lost the sci-fi feel that we are going for. By having the heroes explore room by room and meeting set encounters on the sci-fi boards we get some of the HQ exploration feel and move away from the tactical 'blip swarm' that bogs SC down. Rather than develop our own missions from scratch we are converting the existing SC and SH missions to a 'predefined' quest format a la HQ.
We are using the HQ combat dice rather than the SC ones - we want the combat to feel like pure old-school HQ even for ranged combat. As a consequence both heroes and aliens gain a number of defense dice rather than a fixed armour score. In terms of balance this shifts the odds slightly more towards the hero players, which is also one of our aims - SC more often than not results in a space marine bloodbath through no fault of the players, and we want to play a game (like HQ) where the heroes have a fair chance at succeeding!
We are using single heroes - the SC captains are almost fine as is, but other types of space marine need beefing up somewhat - we are working on various hero types, as well as orders (functionally the same as spells in HQ), equipment etc.
We are keeping the SC events cards - no searching for treasure rules in SC, so these put back the random element back into the game, and also give a sense of urgency - when the cards are gone, the mision is failed.
We are implementing a Mission Points system for successful completion of objectives, which can then be spent on equipment or character upgrades such as additional Body points or additional orders etc.

Hopefully I'll be able to post some 'beta' test documents late next week...

[sadkitchen]

I was thinking of this after it was posted earlier and though that if you came up with a useable ruleset it could easily be transfered over to a X-COM type setting. And since I know nothing about 40K would relate much more to me. (I would still need to find minis though

Keep us posted on what works and what doesn't.
(I like to know what doesn't work so I can avoid trying it myself, though I will probably try it myself anyway just to make sure it doesn't work.)

-SadKitchen

[Patroclus]

Thanks to all for the ideas. We're playtesting some ideas at the moment and I'll post some crunchy bits once we have a rough idea that they work. The story so far:

We are using the Space Crusade and Space Hulk boards to make quests/missions - using a HQ board was too 'fantasy' for us and lost the sci-fi feel that we are going for. By having the heroes explore room by room and meeting set encounters on the sci-fi boards we get some of the HQ exploration feel and move away from the tactical 'blip swarm' that bogs SC down. Rather than develop our own missions from scratch we are converting the existing SC and SH missions to a 'predefined' quest format a la HQ.
We are using the HQ combat dice rather than the SC ones - we want the combat to feel like pure old-school HQ even for ranged combat. As a consequence both heroes and aliens gain a number of defense dice rather than a fixed armour score. In terms of balance this shifts the odds slightly more towards the hero players, which is also one of our aims - SC more often than not results in a space marine bloodbath through no fault of the players, and we want to play a game (like HQ) where the heroes have a fair chance at succeeding!
We are using single heroes - the SC captains are almost fine as is, but other types of space marine need beefing up somewhat - we are working on various hero types, as well as orders (functionally the same as spells in HQ), equipment etc.
We are keeping the SC events cards - no searching for treasure rules in SC, so these put back the random element back into the game, and also give a sense of urgency - when the cards are gone, the mision is failed.
We are implementing a Mission Points system for successful completion of objectives, which can then be spent on equipment or character upgrades such as additional Body points or additional orders etc.

Hopefully I'll be able to post some 'beta' test documents late next week...

I am not sure that you will find peoples in this forum who have both SC + SH to test your gameplay, but the truth is that HQ’s board is better for adventuring but it’s not designed for long distance combat. And if anyone tries to use HQ’s board, should remove for sure the ability of aliens to have both close and ranged attacks (only genestealers should have hand-to-hand attack) or else every battle will be turned to close combat on the second turn. And always put two doors side-by-side and not only one in one square (so to have better area for line of sight when it is opened)

I don’t believe that HQ’s dices will add something to your gameplay. In my opinion the only changes you’ll have is the duration of the combat which will be increased slightly. But all the people here have HQ dices, so I think they will like this idea.

The marines in SC were many and disposable. If you want to have only 4, you can increase their Life Points or by adding some healing potions as fixed treasures in scenarios.

in my opinion, the “sense of urgency” is good for a skirmish game but does not fit well in an adventure.

I am looking forward to see your work.

[polymathis]

@ Patroclus - Thanks for your comments. Good shout on the ranged combat; thats another reason we are sticking with the SC / SH boards - they give more opportunity for tactical firing solutions, which is definitely part of keeping the sci-fi feel - its all about big guns going boom!

I disagree with you on the use of dice though. A monte carlo simulation on both rule sets shows that the advantage is with the defender in Space Crusade (due to the high fixed defence score and low chance of rolling a hit on the white dice) and the attacker in HQ (given the random defence with worse odds for the bad guys). Given that the bad guys in SC get to choose their position, are normally defending an objective, and control the rate at which the heroes encounter them, the odds are massively in favour of the alien player to the point where the typical game becomes: Rds 1-3 Marines get bottled up near their starting point, caught in a cross fire and massacred; Rds 4-20 Marine Captains (the only survivors due to their multiple Bp) engage in war of attrition with alien snipers; Rd21+ Surviving Captains engage Dreadnought and have 50/50 chance of winning. The HQ feel of heroes agressively exploring at their own pace is facilitated as much by the combat mechanics as by the board/quest structure, and thats one of the things we want to bring to our mashup...

We may try a game or two without the event cards as you suggest, but I think (as the bad guy) that i will miss the random factor too much, given that there is no searching for treasure in SC - looting doesnt really fit with the framework of disciplined space marines on military missions!

I appreciate that not many people will have both/all three games available - since I don't add much content to thus fantastic forum I thought I'd just offer our mashed up rules as a HQ curiosity if nothing else. I'll try to get our draft material up in the next few days!