Dark Magic - An Introductory Quest to The Sinister Sorcerers

[lucapaschi]

Hi guys! It's with great pleasure that I introduce you to the intro solo quest to the Wizard Quest Pack - "The Sinisters Sorcerers", Dark Magic.
It will delve into the backstory of the main questline, and will give you a taste of what's to come.
It's also a good way to introduce you to some of the elements you'll find in the final pack.
You can find the files to download the pack in 4 languages, English, Italian, Spanish and German.
If someone is interested in making more... Just drop me a message!

It also contains some info about the development of the pack and the development team.

Be careful: the Hero will have to rack his brain not to succumb to chaos... You have been warned!

Any thoughts? Let us know how was your adventure!

And be careful, for the Sinister Sorcerers are already conspiring in the dark...

https://tinyurl.com/hqdarkmagic

Edited by HispaZargon, 24 July 2026:
You may also find the recordings of the playtest sessions for this project in this video playlist link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-YqK6T ... Xvgs6wLYYC

[Kurgan]

Congrats! Can't wait to see the main pack released... a lot of hard work was done!

Come play it with us live http://www.twitch.tv/heroquestfans Sept 19th starting 2pm Central time

PS: I will be modifying the adventure for our use, so multiple players are possible, and if I think heroes have peeked at the map, I can mix things up a bit too.

[MonsterMotor]

Thank you all for publishing this. It is indeed nice component art and a neat quest, quite tough as well!

I wonder who made the translation into German for you? The translation quality is pretty good overall, generally a better reading than what we get offered by the official producer nowadays. Alas, there are several misprints plus a few other mistakes concerning wording and expressions.

Given the immense effort you have made or will make to create the whole Wizard Quest Pack, I highly recommend that you eventually have at least 2 independent native speakers of the German language with excellent language skills (and profound HQ background) proofread your entire text when you have advanced it to the state of this prelude quest.

Looking forward to seeing the whole quest pack published soon!

[lucapaschi]

Thank you all for publishing this. It is indeed nice component art and a neat quest, quite tough as well!

I wonder who made the translation into German for you? The translation quality is pretty good overall, generally a better reading than what we get offered by the official producer nowadays. Alas, there are several misprints plus a few other mistakes concerning wording and expressions.

Given the immense effort you have made or will make to create the whole Wizard Quest Pack, I highly recommend that you eventually have at least 2 independent native speakers of the German language with excellent language skills (and profound HQ background) proofread your entire text when you have advanced it to the state of this prelude quest.

Looking forward to seeing the whole quest pack published soon!

Thank you! I guess it doesn't take much to have a better translation, right? Seems to be a common issues with localized languages for the 2021 version...

Are you offering to volunteer?

[Kurgan]

Even though we altered some things to preserve surprises (if I were to run this again next year it would be very different) and to accomodate our special format and our many players, I was honored to be able to perform the first public playthrough of luca's quest, even though Cristobal of La Gaurida De Morcar actually recorded his game earlier than us (and will premiere it on youtube tomorrow... saturday). I hope it will inspire others...

We played a modified version of it tonight on HeroQuestFans Twitch... the Wizard had three companions, brave Scout men-at-arms (who, like the mercenaries of ROTDM could use items). We used the normal death-save rules for the NA version. Two of the mercs perished... of course our audience at times added extra monsters mid-game and also extra potions for the good guys as we do on Twitch.

I also added some extra enemies (most rooms got 1 extra monster to balance out the extra companions). The battle was long... over 4 hours, but it was a good time, and suggested many new ideas! I admit I was getting tired by the end and confused some of the notes (so let's just say the locations of some artifacts were switched by mistake making it even more challenging). Still, I think this was a great effort. WQP is not easy (though my impression was it was generally easier than the BQP and EQP in their 1992 forms), but I really look forward to seeing the rest!

I hope Santa can give it to us this year if possible...

Watch the full uncut adventure (the first hour is the informal interview discussion) here until Twitch takes it down in 1 week. The youtube version will edit out some of the gaps and I may post split versions that have only the interview or only the game later. It replays Sunday afternoon~!

[carthoz]

Thank you all for publishing this. It is indeed nice component art and a neat quest, quite tough as well!

I wonder who made the translation into German for you? The translation quality is pretty good overall, generally a better reading than what we get offered by the official producer nowadays. Alas, there are several misprints plus a few other mistakes concerning wording and expressions.

Given the immense effort you have made or will make to create the whole Wizard Quest Pack, I highly recommend that you eventually have at least 2 independent native speakers of the German language with excellent language skills (and profound HQ background) proofread your entire text when you have advanced it to the state of this prelude quest.

Looking forward to seeing the whole quest pack published soon!

Came here to say exactly that, too.

Are you offering to volunteer?

I'd volunteer I checked the file and saw that you are doing the PDFs in Illustrator. I never did text layout in Illustrator, but in Indesign there is an option to change text flow and wrap according to the used languade. Maybe that can be changed in Illustrator, too?

[lucapaschi]

Not sure because I don't use Indesign... but I guess if it's fixes we're talking about, for this time it's an easy one. Might be useful to use the same platform for the final version!
But of course, we're open to make it as good as possible. We had to rush a bit this time, but we don't have time constraints for the final pack.

[StratosVX]

Thanks to everyone that made this and are working on the full pack!

[Kurgan]

Cristobal's playthrough is posted... his is much more concise than ours because he's playing it with only the Wizard (as written). Has some nice paint work on the figures too! Check it out here (translated subtitles available)!

[HispaZargon]

A brief trailer as example of playtesting sessions for this Intro Quest, following the same method as we did in part of WQP tests:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-YqK6THGaM

Full playtest sessions will be published in the future too.