The Legend of Zelda ALTTP in HeroQuest

[Davane]

Here's the third and final Quest for the Rescue of Princess Zelda - Escape to Sanctuary.

“Now that you have freed Princess Zelda from the Castle Dungeons, you must all make your escape from Hyrule Castle. Princess Zelda knows of a secret route from the altar behind the Throne Room of Hyrule Castle, that leads through the Castle Sewers to Sanctuary. She is certain that the Old Priest at Sanctuary will protect her.”

Princess Zelda joins the Heroes in this quest. Use the Elf model, or the Chaos Sorcerer model if the Elf is in play. Princess Zelda has the same abilities as an Elf, but only has 4 BP and no spells. She is unequipped.

Any Potions of Healing found in the Treasure Deck should be consumed immediately, and the card returned to the Treasure Deck.

A: Do not place these Orcs when this room is revealed. Instead, Morcar can place these Orcs on their first turn, after which they can move and attack normally.

B: The secret door cannot be found by searching for Secret Doors. Instead, TWO Heroes must stand to the left of the Altar and push it to the right. Upon doing so, the secret door is automatically revealed.

C: These rooms are filled with magical darkness. The Heroes must roll 1 less die when moving, attacking, or defending.

The pit traps in these rooms should be placed when the room is revealed and represent torches that can be lit by any Hero with a Lantern that stands next to them and uses an action to light them.

Morcar should roll 1 Combat Die at the start of their turn for every lit torch in a room the Heroes are in, and for every Skull rolled, one torch chosen by Morcar goes out. Torches automatically go out if there are no Heroes in a room at the start of Morcar's turn.

Whilst all the torches in a room are lit, the magical darkness in the room is lifted and no longer affects the Heroes.

The Monsters are not affected by the magical darkness.

D: The last Goblin in this room will not leave the room. When it is defeated, it will drop the key needed to open door E.

E: The door marked E is locked and cannot be opened without the key dropped from the last Goblin in Room D.

F: These rooms and the corridor between them all count as one big room. The Goblins will not leave this room, and do not attack Heroes unless at least one Hero is in the room.

G: This treasure chest contains the keey needed to open the door marked H.

H: This door is locked and can only be opened by the key from the chest marked G.

I: These are the Castle Sewers and consist of two large rooms either side of the corridor. The floor of these sewers are knee deep in water, and all Heroes may only roll 1 die for movement, even if the magical darkness is lifted. The monsters are not affected by the water.

J: These two Goblins will not move from their positions and will favour attacking Heroes by the door.

K: These two chests each contain 100 gold coins and a Potion of Healing that will restore up to four Body Points to a Hero.

L: The southern door from this room is locked and cannot be opened normally.

A Hero searching in this room for Secret Doors, Traps, or Treasure will discover that the weapons on the Weapons Rack are false, and the two shields at either end of the weapons rack are actually levers that can be pulled. A Hero may stand at either end of the Weapons Rack and pull one of the shields as an action.

If a Hero pull southern shield, the locked door opens. However, if a Hero pulls the northern shield, Morcar may immediately place six Goblins in the rooms. These Goblins may IMMEDIATELY move and attack the Heroes. The Goblins may attack and move normally during Morcar's turn.

M: When the first Hero enters this space, tell them that they hear a click and the secret door in front of them is revealed. Lay out the contents of room M. The Heroes immediately see the altar slide to the right, unblocking the way to the exit. Immediately move Princess Zelda to the square marked X in the room.

N: This is Sanctuary. The Chaos Sorcerer here represents the Old Priest, who thanks the Heroes for rescuing Princess Zelda, and swears to hide her in this save haven, protecting her with his life.

As a reward, the Old Priest allows the Heroes to take the contents of the treasure chest. Inside the chest is 1000 gold coins.

The Heroes may now leave via the exit doors to complete the quest.

Wandering Monster: Goblin.

[Davane]

The key feature of Escape to Sanctuary is that the Heroes must get Princess Zelda from the Throne Room in Hyrule Castle to Sanctuary.

The dungeon itself is extremely linear, but since this is the prologue to set up the events in Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, it's supposed to be a fairly easy dungeon and serve to demonstrate some of the things that the player will encounter in the game.

There's some sneaky traps here, which I have tried to represent accurately, but also make interesting for the players. Aside the Orc ambush in the Throne Room, the enemy is a multitude of Goblins, representing the Rats, Keese, and Ropes of the dungeon.

Over half the dungeon is covered by darkness, but Braziers can be lit to mitigate the effects of the darkness. ALttP wouldn't even let you progress past the Throne Room if you don't have a Lantern, but here it's merely an optional extra, and the two Lanterns in the previous Quests finally pay off.

The rooms marked F represent a key feature of the route to the Sewers - the Rope Onslaught, in which a lot of Ropes rush Link. Ropes are a surprise at this point, as they take two hits to kill in ALttP, rather than the single hit that other critters take, and it's common for the player to not realise that Ropes continue charging them, so they take some damage. Whilst I haven't increased the Goblin's body points, the key feature of this room is that the Goblins will not attempt to leave the room, nor will they attack if the Heroes simply wait at the doorway, which makes for a change to the usual "meat grinder" tactics used to clear rooms full of monsters.

From the sewers, the secret rooms marked K have been included, although in ALttP, this was actually a secret, and it would take some time before Link would get the ability to return to the area beneath Sanctuary. Since it's just a reward of Rupees, I figured I'd include it here as some fan service instead, although it can easily be ignored.

Room L is a common puzzle in ALttP - you get two levers to pull, and only one is the correct one. This is an opportunity for the game to teach the player how to pull levers (and how to pull in general), but is given away because the instructions on how to pull are only given if Link approaches the correct level. It's a simple puzzle, but an Evil Wizard might want to randomise which lever is the right lever in these cases.

Finally, we have Room N. Like in the Eastern Palace, the reward is 1000 gold pieces. This is probably overkill for HQ, but since gold equates to xp in many games, and this is where Link would gain a Heart container and become tougher, 1000 gp is basically a notation that this is roughly where Link would advance. I would also point out that 1000 gp is the amount that Heroes can gain Fate Points in AHQ, and if you don't like the idea of the Heroes having so much treasure on hand, you could always reward them something similar to a Fate Point - like the ability to reroll any 1 die (or to force the EW to reroll a die) once per dungeon.

[Davane]

I have been thinking about the larger backstory to ALttP, and figured that I could reasonably convert it into THREE separate quest packs, each based around a chunk of the storyline that is easiest to break away from and head elsewhere.

The first is the Rescue of Princess Zelda, which is the prologue to the entire campaign, and the simplest dungeon in the game. The Quests Hyrule Castle, Castle Dungeons, and Escape to Sanctuary make up this pack, and it's probably the easiest to include as a diversion without committing to the campaign to much.

The second quest pack would be the Quest for the Master Sword. In this quest pack, the Heroes seek out the three Pendants required to claim the Master Sword, before confronting Agahnim in his tower. This contains three dungeons (including the Eastern Palace), plus a quest to the Lost Woods, and then the Quest to confront Agahnim himself. Although you confront Agahnim in his tower at Hyrule Castle, the tower could be anywhere. Some of these dungeons might be better off broken up into multiple quests, depending upon their length, so could be between 5 to 8 quests long. It's worth noting that the battle with Agahnim ends with him drawing the Heroes into the Dark World, but this could just as easy be used as a means to take the Heroes to their next Quest Pack instead...

The third and final quest pack would be Into the Dark World. At the end of your battle with Agahnim, the evil wizard is defeated, but not before he draws you into the Dark World, the home of the Triforce and the current domain of Ganon. In ALttP, Link now gets to move freely between the Light and Dark Worlds, as he seeks to free the 7 Maidens, before confronting Ganon in his dark tower. Unfortunately, Ganon escapes the tower, and prepares for a final battle with Link. However, the storyline of the game makes it somewhat clear that Link isn't actually supposed to LEAVE the Dark World for any significant length of time during the first FOUR dungeons. However, the remaining THREE dungeons all require that Link escapes the Dark World, to seek alternate entrances, as well as artefacts, from the Light World. This means this Quest Pack would cover 8 dungeons and the final encounter, with many of the dungeons split up as they can be incredibly long. It's entirely possible that this quest pack could be some 17+ quests long! As such, it may make sense if this quest pack is split into two parts - the four dungeons where the Heroes aren't expected to leave the Dark World, and the the four remaining dungeons which are supposed to be accessed from the Light World and the final fight with Ganon.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

As such, I needed a way to push characters into the pit whilst fighting, as Link can knock Enemies into the pit, but they can also knock Link into the pit as well. Not to mention the possibility of simply walking into the pit. I thought that I could tie the chances to the Defence roll of the target.

Funnily enough, many eons ago, I started (and may one day finish) a project to convert Golden Axe to HeroQuest and pushing/throwing figures into pits was one of the considerations which lead to the house rule below (which also helps mitigate the general HQ issue around door blocking and may be of use/interest to you…

When attacking an enemy on an adjacent square and your attack roll shows 2 or more skulls then the attacker may choose to push the defender back one square onto any square that the defender could validly move to with a single point of movement, if there are no valid squares then the attacker may exchange the squares occupied by the attacking and defending figures. If the attacker chooses to push back, then they must move into the now unoccupied square. If the attack kills the enemy, then the pushback isn’t relevant but the option to follow up into the now unoccupied square remains.

Notes:
• Larger monsters require 3 skulls to be rolled to push them back
• You cannot push back a monster that is in a pit
• You cannot push back a monster if you are in a pit