4. HQ25 - Story Arc discussion

[Anderas]

I was allowed to

So, use on.

I also would love to see if someone uses some of my rooms. I saved them in my google drive under then name "HQ25 material"

[Anderas]

Let me see if I understand where we are in terms of storyline and Quest construction so far...

Opening arc ("Prelude to Chaos"?)
1. "The Man Undercover"
2. "Chasing Glory"
3. "A Desperate Escape"
In this section we have 4 guys, more farmers than heroes so far, sitting around in Ye Olde Inn having a few beers when the Bad Dudes attack. These guys may be the strongmen of the village, but when they go after the bad guys in quest 2 they get their asses handed to them and have to escape. Presumably Mentor only finds them at this point - it would be interesting if the Heroes only got access to the Armory after Q3, but that may be a little too much gameplay and story integration.
Either way, it looks like TMU and MrBigB have this part pretty well under control.

Swampkin arc (Kobold- and Basilisk-centric)
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Gootchute has the storyline for this one fleshed out pretty good, but so far nobody has taken the reins on this segment of the project, Quest-wise. Nonetheless, it does seem that the first "proper" enemy that the Heroes will face and defeat will be the Kobolds. Revenge for their earlier captivity, perhaps?
As a brief aside, some people in other, older threads were complaining that we didn't account for a Dragon or Great Wyrm figure when choosing the 6 new monsters for this pack. Well, I dunno what we'd do for a dragon, but I bet you could jury-rig a Great Wyrm if you painted one of the Basilisks a different color or something. That way we have something we can use as a proxy for the boss fight at the end of this segment.

Beastman and Chaos Dwarf arc
9. The King of Dawn (A New Found Enemy I)
10. Flee the Darknes (A New Found Enemy II)
11. The Dark Castle Ambush (Thantos I)
12. Fire and Night (Thantos II)
13. The "invincible" Minotaur (Thantos III)
The Chaos Dwarfs and the Beastmen make up the main enemies for this segment. For some reason I remember these two were supposed to have one arc each, instead of sharing one? ah well. Whether that was the case or not, it's very hard to argue with the excellent job Anderas has done with the very innovative Quests he's put together for this arc - with not only a good stealth level, but a Donkey Kong arcade sequence as well!

???
14.
I mention this Quest here because I had previously numbered the next 4 Quests as 15 through 18, which leaves an awkward one-Quest gap between the Chaos Dwarf/Beastman arc and the Cultist arc. So either I need to add a 5th Quest to the Cultist arc or slide these ones back one slot.

Cultist Arc
15. The Ruins of Direburg
16. The Silent Crypts
17. Minos Pass
18. Citadel of the Cult
I wrote these before it was cool.
No, but seriously, this is the Cultist arc. Cultists are weaksauce alone, but in groups they get to do a bunch of cool stuff, most of which relies on heavy application of Quest Notes. 3 is the magic number for a critical mass of Cultist power!

The Finale (a.k.a. "Siege on Morcar's Castle"?)
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
In these 7 Quests everything should come together for a big climactic clash at the end of the Quest Pack! Given the way the current discussions are going (with some Chaos Artifacts to oppose the real ones, I think?), we could also divide this segment into two smaller parts (with a 2-5 or 3-4 split, maybe 3-5 if we move #14 up from behind the Cultist arc).

Also, I put together a Google Sheet we can share to keep track of which Quests should contain what Treasures, and in what order they should be played. I've filled in the skeleton as it currently exists; I'll add more to it later.

Hope this helps!

I edited your great summary and added my latest quest title, and made subtitles for my two mini-arcs. I didn't know the Chaos Dwarves were to be kept separate from Beastmen... I hope someone else introduce the chaos dwarves before I use them so that I don't spoil anything. If not, no problem to change the quest layout and use more Beastmen and/or Chaos Warriors instead.

[Anderas]

I just made the gold coin calculation.
We need a minimum of 450 Gold Coins per Hero to get one hero to 3 dice equipment:
-75 sell Short Sword
125 Helmet
150 Shield
250 Broadsword

And yes I accept 4 defence dice in the 3 dice equipment because helmet and shield are so cheap they are likely bought before the next weapon comes.

With 550 Gold Coins the Long sword is available;
With 675 they can even buy the Broad sword first and then sell it and buy the Long sword.
350 more and we can have a Crossbow in the group
-->

What's my point? My quests are all made for 3-dice-heroes, so we need 3x450 =1350 Gold Coins found before they start my quests.
Afterwards, they will stay on 3 dice for the next roughly 1000 gold coins, to equip themselves with Long swords and one single Crossbow.
The step to 3x Chain mail costs 1500 and is probably next; 3x Battle Axe is 1350.
Finally, we're "out of Armory" after roughly 5200 Gold Crowns (assuming they buy one single Cross Bow)

In Mohawk's spreadsheet I estimate that the heroes are at 3 dice equipment at the end of quest 6, with Broadswords.
Could we introduce a gold sink there? Mercenaries for hire, potion shop, rust spell?

[Daedalus]

A rust spell in the swamp arc is an easy sell with Fimirs about. I also suggested a water trap that works as a money sink in this post.

[Daedalus]

What was the final consensus of using tiles from expansions?

I was allowed to

So, use on.

I also would love to see if someone uses some of my rooms. I saved them in my google drive under then name "HQ25 material"

New stuff like Anderas' rooms is preferable to reused room tiles. Think of the published expansions. You don't see room tiles reused in those, so we should try to do the same. The Design Document said as much, as I recall. This was the consensus, but if others are doing differently, at least work is getting done.

Smaller elements like wooden exit doors or trap door tiles are okay for reuse as you see those across expansions. Stuff from the HeroQuest Marvel Winter Special all should be fine to use. Also, anything from the Tiles section or Agin's Inn Historical Archive linked from our Homepage is fair game.