Ye Olde Inn

So after much debate, I decided that i would share the work I have been doing on my own set of house rules, mods and a stand alone hex crawling adventure that fits between the dungeon crawling of the main quests. The name for the project comes from my love of all things Super Nintendo and is a shameless reference to games such as Super Metroid and Super Castlevania

I have posted several times over the last few weeks and after spending nearly every night pouring over the EAH and OG rulebooks along with skimming Reforged and other larger projects which are essentially complete rewrites of the game, I began compiling my own set of house rules in a very disorderly manner.

I finally decided I would organise all my work to date and compile in a separate google drive as to keep it in order and as a result I figured I may as well post the link here for all to enjoy (or hate). I would advise reading the readme files first as they cast some light on my thought process and general approach I am taking.

This project for me is not about reqriting EAH or AH but rather create a set of rules that can plug in to these existing rulesets and enhance them and try to improve of key things that aren't working for me.

I have also made a very basic hexcrawl system which is based on the incredible work of XenoKraft. Upon finding the Dawn Cracked Wilds map, I was inspired to try and adapt a system that I think works well to give the feel that classic JRPG's such as Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy evoke when travelling between key locations. This is the link to the reddit post that alerted me to the incredible map: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/ ... x_fantasy/ , and here is the link to the full version which I highly recommend https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/42 ... -world-map.

Please comment if any of the ideas I present have already been outlined in other documents in the exact same way so I can at least put references in as required. I know that these rules won't appeal to all people, but I hope the rules around Magic and Mana Stats along with my version of enemy placement and surprise, are at least entertaining, and hopefully some of you find some enjoyment from them.

Link to the Super Advanced Heroquest Public Releases: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... share_link

I look forward to any feedback in the future.

Happy Questing!

Nice work! It's good to see the game is still alive and kicking!

*I like the concept of random placement of monsters, and I've tested some different ideas over the years. However, I've come to realize that they all end up translating to even more dice rolling and longer downtimes while their results are not much different than those of the method I currently use, which tends to be more agile. I assume you're playing with small groups of enemies? I'm afraid your system would be a real drag, and it would make even less of a difference otherwise. As I said in your other thread, if the adventurers get into a lair or quest room, they will end up being surrounded regardless of its size and the initial placement of the monsters (the bottleneck will also be the same either way if they remain outside the room), so I don't think it's worth the additional time and effort required.

*As far as I understand, the original rules already bar the Heroes from closing doors if they decide to flee.

*I'm not quite sure how enemy reinforcements are placed. I think you could clarify those rules a bit.

*Why limiting reinforcements to small groups?

*I like the idea of "heavily obscured" ranged shots (through friendly models). I think it may work. Have you personally tested it?

*May I ask what's wrong with the original magic system?

*I've never been a fan of overland maps in AHQ, as I feel they shift the focus of the game from exploring dungeons and fighting monsters, which is what the game is all about. Besides, overland maps require work that may be better invested in designing quests and dungeons. Personally, I'd play something else if I wanted that kind of
game experience. Your map looks very cool, though.

Thanks for the feedback, it's definitely appreciated! I have a lot of respect for the amount of time and effort you've put into your own variation along with many information and interesting posts across this forum and BGG. Part of the reason I made this available so early was to encourage myself to reflect on things and try and be more objective when continuing to improve and expand these house rule.

You are correct in saying that heroes can't close doors when running (the exact quote is 'A model that runs cannot open or close any doors.'). I only left the statement in my document as clarification as I specifically state that if the Heroes roll a 12 or enemies roll a 1, the can both run and close the door as a major advantage. It's redundant as it's already referenced in the main rules however I will probably continue to have a small number of clarifications of exiting rules refernced in my house rules if I feel it might make it clearer for newer players.

As for the random placement of monsters and heroes, I think the decision to have randomised position based on dice rolls solved many of the issues I had struggled with in my own mind. Any time I have to make a decision on behalf of the GM (Playing solo of course), I find it very difficult to decide and end up agonising over minor things that are completely removed from my control when they are totally decided at random.

The dynamic for random enemy placement I feel is more signifigant as it's less likely that the heroes can actually take on each enemy straight away as often the death zones of the enemies prevent this from occuring. On the flip side, if the heroes are surprised, they are likely to be surrounded but more often then not are not huddled in a group. For instance last night in a lair, my wizard and elf who are the weakest physically were both isolated and the dwarf and barbarian were huddled together. Being able to adjust 1 square allows for some minor tactical tweaking before being attacked but ultimately each and every encounter is very different.

Personally I havent found there to be an issue with the extra few dice rolls as I use 2 x D10 dice with different colours. I always assign the same axes (Left to right, bottom to top). When an axis is only 5 long, i simply cycle the numbers of a d10 (6=1, 7=2, 8=3, 9=4, 10=5) and If im using any custom maps they are generally all 12x12 which is easy with 2 x D12. Your comment in regards to dragging out with many enemies again hasn't bothered me as of yet and generally most lairs and wandering monster encounters average between 3 and 5 enemies when using the standard tables offered in the EAH and official rulebook. This has never taken me more than a minute to setup a room which personally isn't much when most encounters take much longer than this to complete. I can tell that this is something however that bothers you and I can understand that additional dice rolling isnt for everyone but so far I've yet to feel this way and it has increased my enjoyment of encounters signifigantly. I can however appreciate that you have spent many years playtesting your own rules and I personally think your doorway exploit fix is very clever and think its what I would fall back to using if I decided against randomly placing figures during combat.

As for whats 'wrong' with the original magic system, I dont think that its broken, bad or needing to be fixed, I just personally found it to be too cost prohibitive when first start playing and needing to have the exact component is quite punishing as often your not sure you want to use an exact spell until the opportunity arises. My initial response to wizards when reading the original rules was that I wouldn't bother using one and would just stock up on potions instead. On the other hand, the 'tremors in the warp' system created for EAH I think is really cool but overall i found myself spamming spells in easy encounters with weak enemies and having to really ration during difficult and long encounters. These reasons coupled with the fact you can basically heal your entire party after every encounter seemed a bit too unbalanced. The alternative I created simply makes spellcasting slightly cheaper and far more flexible as it combines all components into a simple mana stat. Having the stat increase after learning a new spell seemed like a logical upgrade and the ability to recharge all mana between quests means that at a minimum, even a new wizard would have 4 spells to use every quest. Overall I think its a nice middle ground without changing the actual gameplay from the original. You can still spam spells in 1 encounter if you feel its worth it and the prospect of recharging your spells after the final quest room definitley incentivises spellcasting in the final battle. By changing just the cost of a mana potion however, it can drastically change the way the system works. I felt that 50GPs for 4 spells was fairly reasonable as its not an insignifigant amount of gold however this is the part of the system I had the most trouble deciding on and would defintiely appreciate any feedback on this particular point.

The set of experimental rules are definitley not rules I have put much playtesting in to and to be honest are mainly there as a short list of ideas as they pop up. The idea of only rolling for reinforcements when numbers are equal or less was more if a player is finding the base difficulty of the game too hard. By opening up combat signifigantly by using the combat rules I have outlined, its more likely that players will be surrounded that if one was playing the vanilla rules.

"If the GM rolls successfully for reinforcements, these additional monsters will enter from the doorway to the room and engage in combat abiding by death zones and the One-on-One rule. Place monsters at the beginning of the passageway leading to the room if 1 or more heroes are situated there." . I'm guessing this is what you wanted to be clearer? I probaly could have written it more like "If the GM rolls successfully for reinforcements have these enemies begin their turn at the doorway and enter the room while still adhering to their speed stat and not ignoring death zones or the one on one rule if possible. Alternatively, if there are heroes still in the passageway leading to the room, or blocking the door, place monsters at the beginning of this passageway/s and begin their turn from here". To me this just makes sense themeatically as to when the reinforcements are encountered, either in the passageway or at the entrance to the room. I hope this is a bit clearer?

The heavily obscured rule I'm not sold on as it both improves the viability of ranged attacks while altering the tactics. After experimenting with much larger maps that are between 12x12 and larger, the standard rules for line of sight I think are more interesting, however in close quarters with many enemies in 1 small room, ranged fighters become awkward to use and the heavily obscured rules assists with this.

Lastly, overland maps in AHQ. I 100% agree that it changes the game completely. I think if the idea on paper doesn't appeal to you then you probably wouldn't enjoy playtesting but i'll share my thoughts:

-If using well designed battle maps such as those I'm using (Loke Books), you have so many unique maps to choose from that its no effort to open a random page and begin an encounter.
-the gameplay is very different in a large, wildnerness type map and becomes more like a skermish game. It actually reminds me of playing something like final fantasy tactics.
-Ultimately my end goal is to have the overworld mainly as a way to break up dungeon crawling while still feeling like its own thing. Having a single, stand alone encounter is actually quite enjoyable and I think that having matrices with more archers and enemies with high speed could make for some very dynamic combat.

This is a great review of one of the sets I have https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/18/18885.phtml . The baked in scenery works really well as line of sight obstacles and allowing enemies and heroes to move behind walls etc to mix up tactics. So far its been a really enjoyable experience playing around with different types of scenery. Even using elevation to gain an advantage as an aracher is fun too.

This portion of the project is definitely not for everyone, however I think that if you enjoy the combat system of AHQ and want to try something a bit different, its definitely worth checking out. Ill continue to add to it and I think that custom matrices using more appropraite enemies will help to improve it further.

Again, thanks for your feedback and I hope I've provided you with some of the answers you were looking for!

Cheers

Also I just wanted to add that after remembering that you don't use matrices and instead randomly generate your encounters I can see how rolling dozens of enemy locations for every encounter might get tedious. The randomly placed enemies in my alternative system is based on matrices and therefore a much more limited number of enemies. The more I play the game however, I'm finding smaller groups of tougher enemies more appealing to my playstyle.

Cool stuff you are working on there! As you might have noticed by now, I do like the storytelling & the world building in these kind of games.
So adding an overland map is a big yes for me! But it's important that it doesn't slow down the game too much.

If you are using the "Terror in the Dark" Room generating tables, you could maybe add the number of outdoor encounters as rooms explored in the first level of your dungeon?
That way there's a bigger chance on finding the stairs down.

I'm also a big fan of the AHQ setting. This game is pretty much the original Warhammer Quest. I suppose they just kept Heroquest in the title because it was such a great success.
So I would stick with the Warhammer Old World map. But that's just a personal preference. I love The Old World lore

Thanks for checking it out, I think that a good idea to incorporate the number of outdoor Encounters as rooms entered on the way to the quest, gives more incentive to travel a bit further too which I like.

I agree about the setting too. The example I used was a proof of concept and because of how well made it was and that it ticked all the boxes I was looking for, I've been using it for the time being. Eventually creating a hex map of the warhammer old world would be much more themeatically appropriate and more suitable for the game.

Cheers!

I found this map just now that looks perfect. Would just need to be overlaid with hexes and broken up into smaller, printable sections. Huge file by the way but crazy high detail http://www.gitzmansgallery.com/shdmotwow.html

Yes, Its pretty awesome. You can use it as a "google map" version aswel.
In my campaign I use my tablet to consult my quests, rulebooks and matrices (AHQ Explorer) to save some precious table space and speed things up.
When we start a Quest I always use that map to show where we are located within the world.
Too bad the official missions always use a nearby village. So overland travel isn't much of a thing then.

Anyway, I haven't really responded on your other ideas. Here we go:

Mana system
I do like this system, I suppose you no longer use the Tremors in the Warp then? Or do you combine both? I'm using something somewhat similar:
In our current campaign I'm giving my wizard free components per expedition. Been tinkering with it and I think 8 per expedition seems fair.
I don't bother with the component types either, I tell him it's more of a roleplay thing, so he can use the 8 components for any spell.
But he still needs to use the Tremors in the Warp test. He's also allowed to buy more components for 25g each between expeditions.
Good results so far. No longer spamming game breaking spells during Exploration phase

Ranged attacks
I'm already using your ranged attack rule to shoot through friendlies. Quite happy with the results. I felt my ranger had a good time.
Before that, most of the time he was spending more turns on positioning then actually shooting.
Heaviliy obscured is the way to go. Good fix!

Character & enemy placement
I feel the bottleneck tactic is something that requires more attention when playing solo. As I mentioned before, when I feel that the heroes are using the same tactic over and over,
then I just make use of my GM powers and try to mix things up to keep things fresh. So I'm not planning on changing anything there yet.
And I never play my board games solo. We meet every month, and in the meantime I spend my time painting mini's and making tiles, ...

Pinned hero & Moving diagonally
I just allow then cutting corners without any penalties. Same for the monsters. Like the image I posted in the previous post.
This also makes it a bit harder for the heroes to create a bottleneck.

Keep up the good work with that Overland map. I can help you make some overland tiles with the different biomes if you like

Thanks for the feedback, I'm really glad you found some of it useful in your own games, I'd love to hear how your sessions going forward go if you happen to include any more of the rules I plan on adding to the drive.

I still haven't fully decided on which magic system I plan on using long term. I tried using the default tremors system last night and again just found that I spammed spells in exploration and easy combat and was incredibly restricted when I faced a very difficult and long combat encounter. I'm considering using a combination of my mana system and the tremor system. If you are completely without mana potions and all your mana is drained, you have to use the tremor test from then on. I think this requires some testing and my gut tells me its probably better to just stick to the mana system and adjust costs and effects rather than trying to shoehorn an existing system alongside it.

I have been working on a fully expanded ranged attacks system which I think is just about ready along with an expanded ruleset for premade map terrain to adjust for variables such as staircases, ladders and elevated attacks. Both of these will play nicely into the expanded encounter area size I'm using for wilderness exploration. I really appreciate the offer to help with some biomes too, between full time work and family commitments, its been difficult to balance playtesting, rulemaking and just simply playing the game too lol.

by the way AHQ explorer looks amazing, can't wait for the dev to finish working on it. I also discovered chartopia recently and might use it for any tables I plan on making in future so they can be easily used and shared online.

I have just uploaded the second iteration of my Mana System V.0.2 to include an additional option for recovering mana points in exchange for fate points on a scaling level of risk.

I'm still editing and tweaking the ranged combat expansion but hope to have this finalised within the week.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Happy gaming!