Who here ACTUALLY plays HeroQuest?

[wolfie907]

im in the boat with torilen id love to play but I really have little time with work and my 22 month old son I haven't played since the nineties I played d&d last about 5 years ago and magic about three I did plat the legend of drizzt once about a year and a half ago

[Blackthorn]

im in the boat with torilen id love to play but I really have little time with work and my 22 month old son I haven't played since the nineties I played d&d last about 5 years ago and magic about three I did plat the legend of drizzt once about a year and a half ago

I'm surprised to hear that wolfie, especially considering the stuff you've purchased from me here.

As for me, my playing has been in phases. When the game first came out, I played it with my wife and brother-in-law (yeah, I'm old now). When my daughter was old enough to play HQ I bought a used copy on eBay (they were still fairly cheap) and we played a few times a year, sometimes with her friends and/or cousins joining us. More recently, my son and I started playing HQ and I began inviting my friend and his kids over to join us in a board gaming group. We've been on hiatus for a while, but plan to get back together soon. We've tried other games like Talisman, Forbidden Island and Settlers of Catan, but we plan to get back into HeroQuest...and maybe even HeroScape or Castle Raven-loft

[Redav]

Well, I wanted the game a lot when it was available from retail and I reckon it took a year to convince my parents to get it. I think I played it a couple of times, and incorrectly at that, and then it just sat there. I finally cracked it out with some friends after church once and I got them interested about two years ago. That has spawned two groups where one couple from the family have moved away so we'll try and get a couple of quests in when we're together (like Christmas, we'll spend a few days at the in-laws) and the other we'll probably play once every 6 weeks? I think there's at least one more couple who would be interested in playing it but as much as the wife is enjoying playing as a part of the first two groups, I can only imagine that she'll want to play as Morcar for once.

[torilen]

whitebeard...your 5 year old played HQ?
I have often wondered about it...I hear a lot of people talking about their kids playing,
I just can't decide if my son (who just turned 5 in September) is quite ready or not.
I guess I could try it, maybe. ??

I was going to wait for a couple more years.

[cynthialee]

whitebeard...your 5 year old played HQ?
I have often wondered about it...I hear a lot of people talking about their kids playing,
I just can't decide if my son (who just turned 5 in September) is quite ready or not.
I guess I could try it, maybe. ??

I was going to wait for a couple more years.

When I was a teenager my brother and I were hardcore AD&D players. We had stacks and stacks of books. Well we often would stay over at a friends house and game into the wee hours and thus our books would be there.

One morning I woke up, dragged my butt into the livingroom on the way to my morning constitutional and what do I discover?
The 12 year old is playing the Dungeon Master and his players were his siblings and cousins, the children were aged 5-12 and there was about 5 or 6 of them involved.
I sat and watched for a few minutes.
They had the rules a little wrong, but they all played by the same rules, thus it was a 'fair' game. They were having a blast. I can not remember the quest, but my thoughts at the time were 'oh what a preciously silly concept'.

Yes kids can play. They want to play!

[Anderas]

I must confess... i don't play Hero Quest at the Moment. Well, not on the table. For me it was already fun enough to simulate all the possible fights in the computer... then, when he was done, i asked him to simulate Monsters with double attacks. Then, when he was done and it was boring, i asked him to simulate Monsters with double attacks and the Heros can't defend the second. This, the computer is still doing... well he's not working on it at night. It's my work laptop. I shut it down the evening.

I miss it so much i downloaded an AMIGA emulator and played HQ on the PC when my wife was looking woman's stuff in TV. The game is so buggy, I will never touch it again.

Well.

My daughter is nearly 2 years old. I just bought a house and i am on the way to renovate it. In two weeks we move. I have no time. And I have no game. I ordered Gamezone's HQ25 for re-entering into the game, with modular tiles, with 2x furniture and game markers, and I added Twisted Catacombs furniture on top.
I've just seen the spanish rules of Gamezones' HQ 25 in the net some days ago. They appear to be very useable. I will see if they are fun or not during the first tests, and if not, I have the great fall back solution of the much-too-simple HQ original, beefed up with House rules, additional artifacts, Spelll Schools and everything else that i gather over time, here in Yeoldeinn and over at HQ-cooperation.
First, i will play the game with my game club of 40k players, then later with my daughter and my wife. By the time she is 5, i will have everything painted, i guess. I hope.

[cornixt]

whitebeard...your 5 year old played HQ?
I have often wondered about it...I hear a lot of people talking about their kids playing,
I just can't decide if my son (who just turned 5 in September) is quite ready or not.
I guess I could try it, maybe. ??

I was going to wait for a couple more years.

If they can play snakes and ladders, Trouble, Ludo, etc, they can play HeroQuest. They might need a little prodding in the right direction every now and then, and they will make lots of mistakes when it comes to strategy, but they can play. I started my son on it this time last year, so he would have been the same age as your son is now. Wasn't long before he was writing his own quests (which all featured Godzilla for some reason). We played it more over xmas than any of the new games we got.

[IvenBach]

Played with friends a while back. They Barbarian-phallus-team lined up and battle ordered every door. Then they claimed the game wasn't much fun and it was repetitive... We're doing descent right now and after that we'll shift back into HQ. I'm going to mod it quite heavily once we get back to discourage them from doing such. I'm open to any PMs from those that have rules on increasing Body and Mind points as level options? After reading this I'll see about having my daughter have a go on easy custom starter quests. Get her hooked then slowly increase the difficulty.

[whitebeard]

whitebeard...your 5 year old played HQ?
I have often wondered about it...I hear a lot of people talking about their kids playing,
I just can't decide if my son (who just turned 5 in September) is quite ready or not.
I guess I could try it, maybe. ??

I was going to wait for a couple more years.

You may still have to wait a couple years. But as I recall, your were going to wait a couple years THEN try to "find" some friends to play with. If your kids are near 5 now, then it won't be long.

When I was growing up, I was always interested in my older brother's toys and games, so I just treat it like that. "Here is a game that Daddy likes, I don't think you'll want to play…" The minis, board, and furniture alone are enough to hook them for a while. Smashing skeletons by rolling skulls is just icing on the cake!

As I said, we started with the TSR Dungeon! board game and he just wanted more. I recommend doing something similar. I don't know what else there is in the way of very simple board games in this genre. Dungeon! is much simpler than HQ. It also gets boring fast for adults.

There are some unspoken rules when my son plays. We do not name the characters. He never tried and I never asked. For him it is 100% board game and 0% RPG.

Needless to say he loves "the barbarian". And as a 7 year old now, I must say, he is the perfect barbarian. He is always running off alone and opening doors, searching for treasure without first checking for traps … They almost lost Sir Ragnar in the second quest. They had cleared the whole dungeon before finding him, so no fun there. But he was right next to him and searched for treasure!! It was a wandering monster then Zargon's turn! So close!!

For whatever reason, when he was 5, he always seemed to have plenty of healing potions (I did not, but maybe you *should* stack the treasure deck when playing with a 5 year old?), so we never can close to killing his guy. I think we lost the wizard once. I played as two of the characters (Dwarf and whoever) and was able to help him out with a more structured approach. I would have considered forcing him to retreat out of the dungeon with the quest incomplete as a victory for Zargon. With my help this never happened either.

Some of the quests are long. With a 5 year old, you will likely need to be able to play a single quest in multiple sittings. In my case, I could just leave the board up.

After the quest he would ask me to leave everything out so he could play with it. Listening to him play was fantastic and it pushed him to start reading more and bigger words.

At one point he wanted to make his own game where he was several of the evil monsters. The gargoyle is the coolest mini in the set, so I understand. But after that I basically put it away for about a year. It was about that time that he wanted "Lego Heroica".

We restarted playing about 6 months ago with one of his friends and his dad. This works really great.

[wolfie907]

my son should be ready in a couple years and ill have my board done and minis all painted