Overland/wilderness questing

[torilen]

Okay...the topic of adventuring/questing outside the dungeon has come up in several
threads.

But it has just been a side-mention, and aside from a few people coming up with some
cards to simulate this, I don't remember seeing any real suggestions or examples.

So, has anyone done any sort of overland or wilderness quest with HQ rules? If so, how
did you do it and how did it work for you?

I'm not necessarily looking for full role-playing ideas. I'm actually thinking of using some
hex tiles that I made and will print (I'll post these this week, hopefully). I think one hex
per one mile of travel, to give plenty of room for exploration and encounters and such.
Maybe even a chance for getting lost if the heroes move off of the road/trail.

So...any thoughts?

[Pitbullsandaks]

I haven't done it. But I would think just role playing it on d d maps would be the easiest

[clmckay]

I've been playing around with it with hit and miss results. I basically took the huge war hammer map at Gitzman's Gallery and put it onto a tablet in several chunks. I plugged in some markers to represent quest locations in the canon a HQ quests. We started at the first quest in the game system and I just hand held them to the locations for the first 6 quests but showing them the route on the map. After that, I let them choose between quests 7-11 by looking at the quest locations on the map. I made "quest cards" which had a down and dirty synopsis of each quest on it, so they had something to go by when deciding. I just left it at that for a few quests, then added in "random encounters". That worked well, but required a great deal of preplanning. At the end of a gaming session, I made them choose where they wanted to go next and a route on the map. Then I'd roll 3 Combat Dice per segment of the journey - usually what a segment is depends on the terrain and what makes sense to me at the moment. Depending on the result of the roll, they either had and encounter during that segment or not. For the sake of my sanity I kept it at triples. 3 Skulls - easy, fun interlude; 3 White Shields - harder, maybe as long as a normal quest (messes with session times when this happened); 3 Black Shields - a hard, nasty encounter. I killed off a Hero once with this. I let them choose to try and travel anywhere on the map, if it's not a canon quest location, I'll make something up that fits with the location they're going to, often times I'll "open" some locations and give them a quest card to add to their open questing options. I would let them split up and go in different locations if it weren't for the headache of organizing get togethers. I've got bazillions of equipment cards that I've printed off over the years (thanks Inn members!), so I'll put together some unusual equipment cards into a 25 equipment card deck and draw 10 to represent what is available in shops, where they're at. They really seem to love this as it gives them chances for rare one of a kind weapons, potions, etc.

I have them do it at the end of a gaming session so that I have time to make up an encounter before the next time we play. For a sample of an encounter and the types of plots I use, look at the High Elf Quest Pack in the quest section. A couple of those encounters were ones that my Heroes had happen randomly, I just changed the setting to match the plot. Right now they've ended up in the Ogre Stronghold (AtOH) so they're not traveling between quests.

Something that I really, really want to add in, but have not figured out a nice smooth way to do, is taverns. I want them to be able to stop off and have a sort of "home tavern/inn" where they have some minor recurring adventure and characters, but it gets all too RPGish when I try to mentally play it.

[whitebeard]

I have been working on a wilderness setting. I printed my board a while back but it came out too dark, so I have to try again.

I posted a short note here: http://forum.yeoldeinn.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1446&p=47751&hilit=forest+board#p47751

My wilderness objective is to run it as close to a dungeon as possible. So you are limited to a small section of forest. The quests will read like "Prince Magnus has ordered the forest cleared of all Werewolves. You are given two silver short swords and a quiver of silver arrows…", or "While traveling North with a trade caravan you are ambushed on the road by Gnoll brigands (I bought Gnolls but you could use Orcs or Ogres). They have taken… you must track them to their camp and rescue.." or "The forest spirit is sick…" or "The water in the village has fouled…" and so on.

My rooms are mostly "bigger" so we can fit some really big monsters, river trolls (2x2) and dragons (2x3).

For an epic adventure, the wilderness is one setting which involves finding the entrance to the cave, mine, underground fortress, keep ruins, etc. which then continues on the dungeon board. I've also constructed my boards so they fold in half the "wrong way" so you could also do a half and half setup.

I will not worry about the "larger world" in much the same way the original HeroQuest Game System ignores this point. I will simply narrate to the beginning of the adventure. If you do design a larger map, I would recommend that you move the party on the map through a narrative RPG and break out the minis for the encounters, where all the rules are already written for you. The heroes do not know exactly where they are in the world, so why give them a satellite view of it? Perhaps they had planned on going far south of the swamp, but navigation (and their primitive map) was not so perfect. Seeing the map in front of you does not give a real sense of being lost… which is a great place to start an adventure!

I have all new forest furniture which I made out of clay. This includes several fallen logs, stumps (a bunch of 1x1 and one giant 2x2), mushrooms, various rocks, navigating cairns (stacks of rocks), a cut stone marker / obelisk, camp fires, two primitive stone henge arches, a well, and a grave/cairn. I also bought two "tubes" of trees (10 trees each). I will take pictures and post what I have in the coming weeks.

I will change the "door" mechanics, "pass through rock" will need a fix, and travel through "walls" will be possible.

The doors will be dark lit "path" tiles, that flip over to become fully lit (e.g. opening the door and revealing the next room) when a hero steps in front (no opening required). My optimal design for doors would be to actually make special door pieces which are an archway formed by two leafless trees and the ability to slide a black piece of card stock in and out of the center to show open versus closed. I don't have the 3D printer yet… The whole thing would be better served by turning the concept over to Zealot and asking them to run another Kickstarter in a few years.

Traveling through dense wooded areas will be 1 or 2 spaces per turn AND run the risk of a wandering monster attacking. Some monsters (e.g. wolves and spiders) will be able to pass through the trees.

As you can see, I'm having a lot of fun this. I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

[cynthialee]

A neat outdoor adventure came to mind just now:
Somewhere in the corn maze is the criminal mastermind Zorgax the Cheat. He has enchanted the corn maze to become walls of impenetrable mystic vegetation, so cutting down the corn field or burning it is not going to work. The heroes must go into the maze and extract Zorgax and his band of followers. Beware for Zorgax has a number of monsters he controls in addition to his henchmen. To capture Zorgax and his minions Mentor has provided a pair of mystic manacles for each of his minions and the mastermind. Once the heroes have discovered one of the criminals they can attempt to use the manacles on the bad guy. The manacles roll 2 combat dice unopposed and they must roll two skulls to capture a criminal. Of course the mastermind and his men are armed and will not go without fighting. If the criminals are killed then the bounty is cut in half.

[Redav]

Speaking of mazes, friends who play in our first HQ group love visiting mazes. I might have to create a typical maze for them one time for a bit of fun

[torilen]

Cynthia - that's a great idea for a good encounter of sorts. It could maybe be used on a bit larger scale.

Ideally, I'm hoping to do is find a way to make larger scale overland travel interesting and fun. Making
encounter and smaller scale outdoor quests is easy. The heroes are going to be traveling roughly 10+
miles at a time. I didn't know if anyone had attempted that before.

The best I can come up with is similar to old school D&D...describe the surroundings as they move along,
roll for encounters and getting lost and such. Maybe have them roll for searching within a certain perimeter
as they walk.

I didn't know if anyone had a better way of doing this - something a little more hands-on and active.

[MadMickyG]

Here is my Outdoor type stuff.

Only thing I need is some trees to give cover. Maybe a campfire tile or for monsters to gather around while they munch on dead humans.

viewtopic.php?f=58&t=2842

Last quest we started was saving the village that was reported to having all the men being turned in to Chaos Warriors via a Chaos sorcerer.

Had my two boards together to represent the town. Only the main gate in to the town, as the rest was surround by a giant fence.
We had monsters running around, warning monsters and gathering reinforcements. So many posibilities.

[Pitbullsandaks]

Pics of the outdoor furniture please

[Daedalus]

Have you heard of the boardgames Shadows of Brimstone: City of the Ancients and the compatible Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death? They are wierd-west dungeoncrawls with a Chthonian bent that have been described as playing out similar to old-school D&D experiences.

Anyway, a fan made HexCrawl for that system, a popular overland supplement you may be interested in. It was his first go at it. While it is very complete, a second version is planned that cuts out some of the fat.

Another avenue you may wish to explore is the voyage phase of Skull Tales, a kickstarter dungeoncrawl all about pirates.