Ye Olde Inn

My buddies and I just finished all 66 "vanilla" quests last week, playing about every other Thursday since last January.

Now that we've finished, we're about to embark on my first completely original quest pack (The Skaven Quest Pack: The Labyrinths of Muroidea); I thought it about time to try to get started on the forums here, as well.

Depending on the response, I'd like to share it all as we go along.

First, however, I thought some of you might want to take a stroll through my twitter, where I've been posting some of the more epic moments in our gaming since about last summer. You'll see my account is almost exclusively HQ related: https://twitter.com/FGONeill

I hope to hear from many of you soon, and to become a contributing member in the near future.

,
Ryan

Welcome to the Inn, Ryan!

I just took a peek at your twitter and this is all amazing! I am definitely interested in following along on the new quests, thanks for offering to share

66 Quests
Wow.

I think I have played about 40 quests and most of them were homebrew.
The Quest books...yeah there are a large number I took one look at and went 'nope'.....

Greetings Ryan, and welcome to the forums.

Sounds like you have a solid group of folks to have made it through the entirety of the HQ base game and expansions... Nicely done and success to you as you begin to branch out.

Let me ask, have you been playing each quest as a standalone game or have the players been playing the same characters and progressing them in some way?

I played all 14 Quests "vanilla" as a child, but--let's face it--these quests are for children. However, when our group began this task of tackling all 66 quests, I was the only one of us who had ever played before, so we probably did the first three or four quests straight out of the book. Then I began adding traps and abilities to monsters to spice up the rest. Once we got to Kellar's Keep, though, the book had become just a guide. Chaos Dwarves and a Halfling Hero were added to Kellar's Keep, for instance, and Skavens and a Skaven Necromancer Hero to Return of the Witch Lord. We also didn't want to sit through the solo quests in Frozen Horror and Mage of the Mirror, so I added subplot quests featuring new Heroes (Barbarian children, Lesser Elf Heroes) as a kind of prequel to the main storylines (which I also altered). Along the way, I've been creating my own monster cards, equipment cards, artifacts, spells, and we've added all the colored dice we can (black and blue, then green, then orange and purple).

I have faithful records of all of this thanks to HeroScribe, but I'll stop short of posting unless people would like to see specific quests or items. I will pass along, however, the sole video our Wizard created of one of the last quests in the Frozen Horror quest pack: http://youtu.be/hSHEZZDBPHg It gives a pretty good look at the game nights themselves, complete with original scripts and sound effects.

I look forward to more conversations!

As for the Heroes themselves, they have been leveling up as we play. In fact, our Wizard is the only one to have made it through all 66 quests. For the sake of comparison with the Wizard as he starts quests one, our Wizard (a Master Geomancer) hand selects four Earth Spells to start (he usually goes with three Heal Body and a Pass Through Rock), then chooses at Random two Fire and two Air. From defeating the Wizards of Zargon, he gets one Necromancer, Stormaster, Master Wizard, and one Orc Mage spell. And he has learned Warmth and Treasure without Doom (thanks to an original artifact called "Spell Book"). He still has his original four body points, but now has 8 mind points. He wears the Spell Ring and an Artifact called the "Healer's Blind" which allows his to roll green dice in defense. He just last quest acquired "Sinestra's Staff," which will allow him to attack with two ranged orange and cast "Summon Wolves" once per quest. Oh, and being a Master Geomancer, he can cast his Earth spells at instant speed, meaning it need not be his turn for him to save a fellow hero with a Healing Spell.

Right now, the cast of Heroes is such: Wizard, Barbarian (a ranger who can craft armor and arrows), Elf (also long tenured, specializing in stealth and water magic), Skaven (a trap disarmer in the vein of the Dwarf), and an Ogre (a slow tank who cannot be healed).

This cast evolves when someone dies. For instance, awhile ago when the Elf died from some very stupid decisions, I replaced him with a Halfling to punish him. When the Dwarf died last, a Skaven from the land where the next expansion is going to take place replaced him. I can post their Hero cards, but I'm not sure what the best vehicle to do so is.

I see why "Vanilla" is in quotation marks

What stats did you use for the Ogres in the Elf Quest Pack? I'm guessing you used them as written, when we played that years ago it seemed they were too hearty, attack and defense were good, but damn, over the top on the BP.

If my players wander to that QP someday, ill play them as written, but only because I've allowed a certain amount of power creep on their heroes.

We used the Ogres' vanilla stats; they did roll blue dice, however, making their defense as good as the Heroes still using white dice.

They certainly made for tough kills, but the Elf used "Hypnotic Blaze" pretty often to nullify them in numbers, and the Skaven Necromancer had a bevvy of Mind Point spells (the tokens from Against the Ogre Horde) to put one or two down fairly quickly.

I have thoroughly enjoyed this post, and your Twitter adventures, as well as the YouTube video of one of your games! Just saying thanks for an entertaining and exciting HQ post.

If you had time, I'd be interested in what house rules you use, as well as where I can find some of those cool dice you use.