Ye Olde Inn

I intend to do the "Quest for Arcan's Spear" now.

It is part of the last quests. I gave it the number 19 because it was the next available, but if it fits better elsewhere, I will follow any storyline suggestions.

The quest's mechanical concept is one of shifting doors and ways that change, disappear or appear if you don't look. A haunted ghost mansion that leaves the adventurers head scratching how to find their way through.

I want to have few traps, but our beloved Chaos Dwarfs and Cultists may appear once in a while. Also I am open for some Undead, Beastmen and a Minotaur or a Kobold Trickster, whatever fits the storyline. I guess the normal Kobolds have outlived their usefulness by now: After all the quests, the heroes should have something around 3.5 or 4 Dice Equipment now, so the best a Kobold can do is blocking the door to suck in one attack. Like a spear trap, but less dangerous.

Under the assumption that I do something in the Chaos Dwarf Story Arc (19-21), I will use a lot of Chaos Dwarfs here. How many may I use? I have two painted and two on the painting table, that would make four. Shall I rather restrict myself to three?

Ok, I tested that son of a bitch today three times, now I am nearly sure the doors work without bugs.
I still need to align to any good back story.

To play this quest, the group will need at least two heroes equipped with 4-dice-equipment, better three.

Q11 wrote:

Quest 19: Chaos Dwarves Part I
Arkan's Sanctuary
.... unknown background story... you will find the Spear of Arcan the Wizard in his labyrinth of madness. You can trust only what you can see, everything may change behind your backs...

Notes:
Cultists in this quests draw randomly from the Swamp Spell Deck.

A: Doors in this quest work differently. Each time a hero goes through a red door, place only the blue doors that are in line of sight now. Each time a hero goes through a blue door, place only the red doors that are in line of sight. Place them only directly after a hero steps through a door. Don't place doors if no hero stepped through a door yet. Also place no door if a hero goes around a corner in a hallway. Remove each and any door at the beginning of your turn if they are not in line of sight of a hero anymore! Rediscovered doors are closed again, but the monsters in a room stay dead. The only exception is the quest entry, that's the one door that stays on the board. (That means, if a hero moves out of a room and then back, he will probably see other doors than before. Don't tell your players, they have to discover themselves!)
The Trap Doors are connected and use 1 Point of Movement to step through.
B: This Falling Block is triggered when the first hero steps on the square marked with "B".
C: The first hero to search the Treasure Chest in this special room will find Arcan's Spear. Give them the according Artifact card.
D: The Secret door can be found only from the inside.
E: The first hero to search the Cupboard will find two sets of healing equipment. They work like a potion of healing (6BP); but the user has to give away their entire movement phase to use it.
Wandering Monster: two Cultists

Two cultists deal 0.2 damage to a 4 dice group.... however a random swamp spell plus two cultists add up to 1.4 BP damage per wandering monster.
This leads to quest note E: Healing stuff in the cupboard. While I was at it, I added traps for 6 BP and added another Healing stuff on top.

It was difficult enough to make a maze with changing doors.

Now I can populate the dungeon with whatever you like. I thought about at least one basilisk, some Chaos Dwarfs, but I also love my Minotaur. So that's what you'll find here. A and the wandering cultists of course, one of which may draw and the other of those may cast a chaos spell. mua HA HA HAAARRRRR

Having looked at the map, it looks like the Heroes would need to find the secret door near the start of the Quest, pass through it, then let all the other doors reset in order to get into the northern half of the map. Very clever!

Also I feel a little silly for not having used "two Cultists" as a Wandering Monster during the Cultist arc; of course they can team up to try to cast a spell! Duhhhh.

Now THAT'S an original map concept! I love it.

I'm curious to see how easy it will be to tell the two colors of door apart on a printed map. I could barely see the difference on my tiny phone screen.

benvoliothefirst wrote:Now THAT'S an original map concept! I love it.

I'm curious to see how easy it will be to tell the two colors of door apart on a printed map. I could barely see the difference on my tiny phone screen.

I made an alternate layout with a blue door instead of grey. Is that better?
First I changed them to grey because the colors fit better with the us colored quest layout, but if there is a readability issue, I go for the ugly variant every time

Count Mohawk wrote:Having looked at the map, it looks like the Heroes would need to find the secret door near the start of the Quest, pass through it, then let all the other doors reset in order to get into the northern half of the map. Very clever!

Also I feel a little silly for not having used "two Cultists" as a Wandering Monster during the Cultist arc; of course they can team up to try to cast a spell! Duhhhh.

That's one way, yes. The other is to leave someone behind, step through a door and come back. Then no door disappears and the others sort of door appears, free choice, dingding...
It's not overly complicated, but it hopefully leaves a feeling of "learned something new and could apply it right away". That feeling makes addicted, and that was the target.

The two cultist need to be tested. Not that they develop a punch that is too deadly after all. I mean, in average they boost from 0.2 to 1.4 BP damage through their spells, that can be quite...

Changed the number of Monsters a little bit, after a short playtest resulted in a near TPK.

Way much more better-er.

Do you use the questimator for evaluating difficulty? Seems like the kind of tool I should get familiar with if I'm gonna start developing quests.

The chest in the hallway is a bit of a problem for NA rules (cannot search for treasure in hallways).

So I will have to rename it "special room" as they did in "The Dwarven Forge", Quest 4 in Kellar's Keep...

done.

Thanks for the remark.

benvoliothefirst wrote:Way much more better-er.

Do you use the questimator for evaluating difficulty? Seems like the kind of tool I should get familiar with if I'm gonna start developing quests.

Yes I use Mohawk's Questimator. Its kind of slow as it always writes everything into excel cells that it wants to use, but I never got around to write my own version in code.

Room configuration can be a bit tricky, as you need to set some numbers on top of the monsters that are in the room. Also the order of the monsters is important.
So I use my "Best guess HQ experience" to say how many monsters and heroes would fight per round, and how many heroes may fight the first round ("initiative"), and which monster the heroes can and would attack first.

Also, the big room needs a note to say to use the tile for it.