Random encouter cards

[Goblin-King]

While I fully understand and agree with your choice to make cards instead of tables it is not without problems...

It is impossible to make a "themed" quest. Say only undead enemies bacause you are in a crypt or greenskins because you are questing in the mountains.
It would at least require you to pick the specific cards you'd want before the start of the game.

And in the same vein, you have no control of the difficulty. This is a little worse, especially if this is intended for solo play. Drawing D3 chaos warriors is pretty much a death sentence for the wizard on his first quest (I suppose it can be done, but still).

Only solution I can think of right now would be to make a couple of different decks...

By the way, have you thought about what to do about traps and secret doors in solo-play?

[drathe]

Perhaps some sort of code or symbols in the bottom corner to distinguish different types, or possible "themed" cards? Say, U for undead, G for greens. You'd still have to remove or select specific cards, but it will simplify weeding certain cards from the deck. Could even have a number to indicate more than one play is needed when using cards. Adds a lot more work, but it's possible. The new line of D&D board games has you adding in, or removing certain tiles for different adventures. I always find it a pain because I just want to get to the playing part, but it's do-able.

[cynthialee]

Make a number of copies of each card and tailor the monster deck for each dungeon.

[Patroclus]

About traps, if you play with pre-made maps (as the original maps) try to use my rule (http://www.yeoldeinn.com/hqforum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1107) with the “1d6 and if it is obvious that you could fall in and you score 1, you activate the trap”. If you are playing with random generated maps use the advanced heroquest rules, “1d12 at the start of each GM’s turn and if you score 1 choose randomly one of the heroes to activate a trap from the traps table”. Both works fine but don’t forget, nothing can be compared to the original way of playing with your friends.

About the events cards, I would like to play with them in a random generated dungeon. But I believe you have to create dozens of cards maybe one hundred to have a real interesting experience. But even then, a card with two ogres and two chaos shouldn’t have the same probability with the card with four goblins. And this means that you should have a lot of cards more than once in your deck.

in my opinion, the first thing to do, is to create an excel file with columns like “level” (from 1 to 10), “type” (undead[white], beast[green], evil[gray]), “event” (the text of the card), “symbol” (basic/wom/ogres/barbarian/elfs), “number” (how many cards exist in your deck). After that you could share it here in the forum to find a member that could help and make a program (for windows or other systems) where the player could choose level and type and by pressing a button will peak a card randomly. A nice picture with the encounter symbol (as the scroll which is the same for all scrolls) could be ok.

If anyone want to print them I could help (with vb.net) to automatically convert the excel file to picture files with the same layout ready to print. But the most important and the most difficult is to make the excel file with the data. If you are feeling ready to do it and you have the time, we will help you for sure, don't have any doubt about this.

[nedius]

Lol, well spotted! Once I've got a fair number done I'll post them as a resource.

Insidentally, anyone know any companies who could actually print these cards properly, so they arent just folded paper / cardstock?

Edit:

Just noticed the other posts!

Secret doors / Traps - I've considered altering the search for traps / teasure into a single 'search' action. Traps and secret doors would become a 'treasure' item card. The fixed location secret doors would become a 'Locked door', which could be opened by the dwarf or a character with the toolkit, or attacked. It would have no defence, but two body points. Secret doors from treasure cards would then either open new rooms for additional random encounters, or create a new route through the map. This could cause some rather random outcomes, I know, but that would be part of the solo experience. The location of secret doors would be determined by randomly assigning them to a wall that did not have a door already in it. If all available walls had doors, the card would be discarded. Patroclus - your rules are interesting too. Might try them both and compare. With your idea, I guess the player could always try to position themselves to be away from the traps, whereas with the 'card' system, it makes encountering traps more random. However, I'm not sure how to balance traps vs treasure. Either I'll need a LOT of trap cards, or to randomly preselect a number of treasure cards, then add the trap cards to them. Also, unless I can get professional quality cards, it'll always be obvious when a 'trap' card comes to the top of the pile...

Random cards - I thought there would be two ways of working them. I'll create one card for each room / corridor section used in the main game to begin with. I was considering adding a 'level' stat somewhere, so players could play a mission based on the likely level of difficulty. '1 orc' or 'D3 goblins' would be level 1, 'D3 orcs & D3 fimir' would be level 2 or 3, 'D3 Chaos Warriors' level 4 or more. Also, there will be plenty of 'nothing' cards. this way players can do some selecting before the mission. They could, for example, select 10 'nothing' cards, and 6 '1 orc' cards, and play 'The Maze' mission in such a way as to make the encountering of the orcs in that mission random, but still only be for those 1 at a time orcs. Or, they could select a random mix of 'nothing' and a range of greenskin cards, creating a more challenging mission. Or replace them entirely with undead cards, for a different feel altogether. That's the idea at the moment.

I guess the cards could be coded things like U2 - undead level 2, or C1, Chaos Warriors level 1. That would help, perhaps.

[Goblin-King]

Now that I've had some time to think it over...

I think "themed" decks should just be ignored. Pick the specific cards if you want a specific experience.

As for "levels". Unfortunately a hero doesn't actually have a level. If that were the case you could make some formula to determine amounts or types.
Lvl/2 goblins (rounded up)
or lvl 1-3 = 2 goblins, lvl 4-6 = 2 orcs, lvl 7-10 = 2 fimirs

Instead I suggest that each card has 3 levels. Easy, normal and hard (And NIGHTMARE )
Then you simply decide which difficulty you want to play on.
You might have to sacrifice either the picture or the flavor text.

A card could read something like this:

You are ambushed by a gang of hideous monsters.

Easy: 2 Goblins
Normal: 1 Orc, 2 Goblins
Hard: 3 Fimirs
Nightmare: 2 Orcs, 2 Fimirs, 1 Ogre

(If you make it a little short and compact, you can have both text and picture I think)

[Patroclus]

Insidentally, anyone know any companies who could actually print these cards properly, so they arent just folded paper / cardstock?

printerstudio.com and artscow.com seems to be two very good sites for printing cards. The prices are ok but because I always need too many cards, I prefer to make them by myself with common prints, glued on plastic paper and placed in card sleeves. They need a lot of time but it costs nothing and it’s my hobby anyway...

[nedius]

I'm in the UK, and I found a place 'customstuff.co.uk' or something like that. They will do a single pack of playing card sized cards for about £20. Not too cheap, but cheaper than a good printer and the various stuff I'd otherwise need! So that has set it - 54 cards. That's the number I need to make for my random encounters. Now, I just need to figure out how to do the small number of treasure cards I'll need for the traps and secret doors... I may buy a spare set, and use them along with inserts in plastic card holders.

[Maike05]

I totally agree with goblin king about the level of the encounter. But this method only works if you ONLY play with original heroquest minis! Believe me i've attempted several random system. If you tell the number AND type of monster (fimir, orcs, etc) on the card, what shall you do if you buy extra minis like spider, giant rats? With your system, you'll have to create one special card to include your new monsters.

instead, i suggest that you tell on the card the encounter's level (easy, medium, hard, nightmare) but not telling the type of monsters found, only the number (D3, D4, D6) of monsters found. Then you make a list of the bestiary found on the particular dungeon: weak monsters will include goblin, giant rats, slime. Champion monsters will include fimirs, chaos warrior, orcs bersekers, etc. This way, your system will be always capatible on the future and you can narrow the number of card to create.

In addition, i suggest you make an extra deck that tell what special event occurs in this room: is the room cursed? Does it contains poisonous gas? Does the door close as you enter ? Do you need to make a special action in this room in order to get out of there ? Is the room simply empty ? I strongly recommend you to create special room tricks because if you solo play, you will be soon bored because your dungeon will be door-monsters-treasure-door-monsters-treasure......

[Maike05]

Another suggestion for dealing with traps in solo play: i roll a combat dice in addition to the movement dice. If a black shield is rolled, the hero falls in a pit. The dwarf is immune as usually and don't need to roll the combat dice.

For search for traps i roll a combat dice : if you roll a skull it means there is a trap in this room. Roll to D6 for coordinate and one D6 in a corridor. The first dice tell you the x coordinate, while the seond one tells you the y coordinate ( just restart counting when you hit a wall) If you roll a white shield, it means you have searched for all traps in this room, all of them are either revealed or there simply is no any traps in here. If you roll a black shield, it means the search for traps is now forbidden! But it doesn't mean there no more traps in here ! So if you walk into that room or corridor, you still have to roll 1D6 and a combat dice. Finally the search for traps is done per entire room and for corridors per sections. I consider the corridors near the central room as one section, whereas the outter corridor of the board are 2 sections ( cut by the corridor in cross leading to the central room)