by Bareheaded Warrior » July 6th, 2022, 4:31 am
This is a long thread so to save anyone who doesn’t have the time or inclination to read it all I have summarised the discussions to date (if any of the original combatants, sorry participants are still active on here then please feel free to correct my summary)
a. GAME SETUP
b. SEQUENCE OF PLAY – turn-based, turn sequence, Sequence of players in a turn, sequence of actions in a player’s turn, the gamesmaster’s turn
c. HEROES
d. ABILITIES - are attributes of a character (a hero, or perhaps even a monster), and flesh out his profile to more detail. They may be skills he can learn or talents with which he was born. Just look at D&D or some other PnP roleplaying game. They sport elaborated skill systems for a reason. Players like to improve their characters, not only by increasing the basic attributes, but by giving them some "specialities". The Imperial Army, for example, is a house rule of skills. Abilities/Skills could be things like reading/writing, swimming, singing, use a certain kind of equipment, in short: everything that some people can do because they learnt it or have some exceptional talent, but that doesn't come natural to everyone. The original HQ rules have no skill system, but if some author wants to include a house rule to cover it, we should have a Lore ready for him to have his rule compatible to the Tome.
e. MOVEMENT – climbing, falling, swimming, pushing/pulling/lifting, sneaking, hiding, listening
f. (ACTIONS – search, attack, cast, disarm, climbing, falling, swimming, pushing/pulling/lifting, Move Object - Push/Pull an Object, Lift an Object, Carry an Object, Use Ability - Hide, Listen, Sneak (it has been suggested that this could be a sub-section of “SEQUENCE OF PLAY” but I don’t agree for 2 reasons, first if this is a subsection of sequence of play then so logically should movement be, and as ATTACK is an action then COMBAT would also be a sub-section of SEQUENCE OF PLAY. A better option might be to keep “SEQUENCE OF PLAY” possibly with a new name as a section that covers at a high level, the basics of the game, turn sequence, what can you do on your turn ‘attack a monster’, ‘move’, ‘search’ and the order of play and then leave the details of those things to be covered in the appropriate section – movement, combat, searching and so on, so for me I would remove the ACTIONS section and put actions like ATTACK into COMBAT, cast spell into MAGIC, SEARCH into SEARCH and so on, and would rename MOVEMENT to EXPLORATION and have that sub-divided into MOVEMENT, JUMPING, and actions not covered elsewhere). Actions are a part of the sequence of play in a turn and should be put in the Sequence of Play lore. One could use an "Action" to perform a generic task, like pushing and pulling, which everyone could do, to use a special skill, or to cover with an extraordinary situation.
g. SPECIAL / EXTRAORDINARY SITUATIONS - Special (or "extraordinary") Situations
are brought about the heroes by the quest. Even if it is not part of everyday dungeoneering, in some quests a hero may fall into a pit so deep that you must calculate the damage he takes, be forced to cross a body of water, or walk up a slippery slope. Let's say the floor of the room has given way, and the whole party now floats in a deep basin of ice-cold water. Some party members might have the swimming skill from the Abilities Lore, but regardless of if none, some, or all of them can swim, or if the players don't use Ability rules at all, there must be some rule to handle this situation. This example also shows that Abilities and Special Situation rules must be weighted very carefully against each other, because of the overlapping. An author who writes a house rule on how to learn swim and how to use this skill in the quests, would have to consider if there are already any rules that define the effects of being in the water in general. To make this work, we will have a tough time defining "Basic Rules" and "Basic Values" for both Lores, so that an author of one of them would have only to address the Basic values/rules of the other and still affect the single modules/passages correctly.
h. COMBAT (basic values: Attack and Defence)
i. MAGIC - how many spells known, how many spells per quest, spell list available, should the actual list of spells be included in a separate type of Chapter, possibly referred to as a scroll which would be an appendix – like the Equipment Cards / Armoury, Treasure & Artefact Cards, Monster Cards and the relevant corresponding Chapter like Magic would just cover the generic rules around that topic and leave the specific conditions and effects of a particular spell to the card itself?, who can cast, how many spells, known, how many spells per quest, magic energy / mana points, power levels, how the magic mechanism works, or magic without the use of spells, do we want to include magic items, potions and artefacts under Magic or under Treasure (sub-section for potions, other ‘minor’ one-off items like Holy Water, artefacts
j. SEARCHING – covers when and what to search, how to search, search for treasure, search for traps, search for secret doors
k. TRAPS/TRAP DISARMING (part of TRAPS or ACTIONS or SEARCH)
l. VISION/LIGHT
m. EQUIPMENT USE (WEAPON USE, ARMOR USE, EQUIPMENT USE) – use of weapons would surely have been covered in combat as would armour so what equipment is left to cover in this section – artefacts could be covered along with treasure items in a Treasure section, toolkit would be covered under Traps and disarming – empty section?
n. MERCENARIES
o. MONSTERS
p. THE EVIL SORCERER'S TURN
q. MONSTER ACTIONS
r. DEAD HEROES AND MONSTERS
s. BETWEEN QUESTS (the Armory, events)
t. EXPERIENCE/ADVANCEMENT
Last edited by
Daedalus on July 27th, 2022, 3:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: changed title
= white skull, one "hit"
= black skull, one "hit"
= shield, cancels out one "hit"
Editions: 1989 Original First Edition [FE] and Second Edition [SE], 1990 Remake [US], 2021 Remake [21]
HeroQuest Gold new edition based on Original 1989 HeroQuest, holes patched, dents hammered out, buffed to a shiny finish with ~50 common issues fixed for a smoother experience.
HQ Common Notification System to identify squares on the board