[Solo Quest] The dwarven city of Khazad-dùm

[Big Bene]

You're right, I've overlooked the quest notes in the pdf
The quest is quite ingenious for a firstie - do you have experience from other fantasy games?

Constructive critics:
- one of the cupboards at G faces the wall.
- You write that only the game system is needed, but you use the dwarven forge tile (I think the straight stairs are also from an expansion, but I'm not quite sure).
- There should be some sort of explantation why Tùrin is still in business in the dead city.
- at I, the players will not recognize that the attack of the statues is the result of their previous actions, unless you somehow tell them. Perhaps you should make up the exact wording of the orc's curse.

All in all, a great quest. Would be well worth of more dungeon levels

As a side note - I wondered why you seem to have had accents graves, but no Umlauts on your keyboard.

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Thanks to everybody for the positive feedback!

Since I also had a lot of fun playing the quest this motivates me to perhaps write another one soon. So far I've not much fantasy boardgame experience aside from HeroQuest (some Descent 1th and 2nd Edition quests and some Space Hulk quests). Essentially I would like to add some elements to the gameplay, that I often missed in the original quests or also when playing rpg-games on console/PC: dialogues with NPCs which influence the story, adventure-style puzzles, unexpected events, good background storytelling etc. As a player I often get bored with games after some time because there is not enough suspense anymore once I can overlook the game mechanics respectively foresee all the possible options that the game is able to produce. Therefore I like HeroQuest a lot since it offers the possibility to expand the game in almost every direction you want.

You write that only the game system is needed, but you use the dwarven forge tile (I think the straight stairs are also from an expansion, but I'm not quite sure).

You're right, the dwarven forge and the stairs are tiles from Karak Varn. It's playable with the game system only since the stairs and the forge are only used to add to the atmosphere. For the complete experience one needs the game system, Karak Varn, 2 dwarf miniatures (one painted in stone colors), a stone fragment with runes and a stone gate with runes.

There should be some sort of explantation why Tùrin is still in business in the dead city.

at I, the players will not recognize that the attack of the statues is the result of their previous actions, unless you somehow tell them. Perhaps you should make up the exact wording of the orc's curse.

Good points! I'll have to extend the storytelling.

I wondered why you seem to have had accents graves, but no Umlauts on your keyboard.

It's not my keyboard it's HeroScribe.. which produces an error when loading a quest that was saved with umlauts. I did the first notes in HeroScribe and moved on to Word afterwards (there's a limit of notes in HeroScribe) keeping the umlauts indicated in full for reasons of uniformity. Next time I'll write all the notes in Word.

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Did some minor update for the QM Notes according to Big Bene's tips.

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Below you can download the artifact cards which are used in the quest.

EU:

Dwarven Axe.pdf

Mithril Chainmail.pdf

US:

Dwarven Axe.png

Mithril Chainmail.png

[Daedalus]

I got to this late, but here are some comments if you are still interested:

A. A secret door that can only be seen from the outside and the enemies of Dwarves seems contrary to the use of a secret door. There's no absolute need to return to the stairway by actually moving there. Alternatively, a final Quest note in the room marked with an "X" can state that the last door leads to another exit or a secret door connecting back to the stairway entrance.

C. Maybe state that the lever is found with a search for treasure or a search for a secret door. I assume the latter, though Notes in published Quests sometimes have attached searches for treasure when special opening mechanisms are employed.

D. I'm reminded of the collapsing stairway in the LotR movie. The block doesn't seem to do any damage. For greater danger, you could ammend "After the last hero has passed a falling block forever blocks the way." > This trap isn't sprung until the last Hero moves onto it.

F. I'd ammend "...(paralyzing poison: -1 red die if no black shield is rolled)." > ...If a Hero drinks the liquid he discovers it is paralyzing poison and must immediately roll a combat die. Unless a black shield is rolled, he rolls one less red die for movement for the remainder of the Quest.) Or just add for the remainder of the Quest to your shortened version.

My computer can't open the rest of the Notes in Word, so I'll stop there. From the map and the comments in this thread, the rest sounds promising. Have you since played through this with your group?