PROPHECY OF TELOR discussion

[wallydubbs]

Thanks! Couldnt remember where I read it but was sure I did!

By the way, POT is a quite good quest pack but I hate that "good goblin" with gargoyle stars who speaks like he has a PHD. I changed it with a swordman mercenary. I know they had to stick to core miniatures but this is just lazy writing...

Yeah, I didn't care for the good guy goblin either with Gargoyle stats.
I think Baker was rushed through this, not given a chance to play test so he wrote it as simple as possible. He did tell me he wrote the pack with beginning heroes in mind (no armor, etc.).
Nor was I a fan of that one quest where the heroes turn into orcs.

There were actually a few things about this quest pack that fell apart once I thought about it long enough. The Arena of Misildia casts Melar out of the bearer because "no magic", yet he was able to find form in an Abomination in the exact same arena.
I was also unsure what I should do regarding the Warlock in the Arena, who is already technically possessed by a Demonic Entity as I gather the Wand's weaponized power comes from said Entity.

[Vorimir]

Yeah, I changed the "turned into orcs" quest, they just had to fave a summon orcs spell two times.
Its a bit strange to think in inexperienced heroes when they should have played at least the core game before it.

Because my players are experienced and heroes are fully equped I tweaked sime quests, add double wandering monsters rule and I'm using archers from Ogre Horde. They are going through it but at least is not just a walk.

[wallydubbs]

Yeah, I changed the "turned into orcs" quest, they just had to fave a summon orcs spell two times.
Its a bit strange to think in inexperienced heroes when they should have played at least the core game before it.

Because my players are experienced and heroes are fully equped I tweaked sime quests, add double wandering monsters rule and I'm using archers from Ogre Horde. They are going through it but at least is not just a walk.

Yeah, the only way I see this quest pack being challenging is if someone other then the Barbarian, Berserker, Dwarf or Knight as the Bearer., but then it's only challenging for that 1 hero.

However, with all these new heroes to go around, I'm willing to to send the Bearer in with rookie heroes.

[Vorimir]

Mine was dwarf so he/they didnt had too many problems, dwarf player didnt cast any dread spell and only faled a quite small amount of rolls. They were only 3 heroes but even that way, with double wandering monsters and archers they are not steamrolling but nor having big issues.
Tomorrow we start quest 10 and maybe can also play 11.
I'm changing Zargon flame for something stronger...

[wallydubbs]

Tomorrow we start quest 10 and maybe can also play 11.
I'm changing Zargon flame for something stronger...

The ones where you draw random monster cards for the guards for each door, maybe you can use some of the newer monsters too, like Ogres, Specters, Polar Warbear, etc

[wallydubbs]

I just finished running through this quest pack again using the Rogue, Knight, Berserker and Wizard; fairly decent team and yet the Knight still doesn't have enough money to buy Plate Mail!

The Zargon's Flame mechanic doesn't make the quest all that difficult, in fact it could make the Dread Warriors to beat with potentially 1 hit. The random monster card draw however could be interesting if you add monsters from other quest packs. The first door seen drew a Ogre from the deck that the heroes led back to the starting room so they could team up against it. The next one revealed a Spawnling, which was easy enough to get by, followed by a Skullblight, Goblin and Elven Archer.

However 2 Wandering Monsters came up, which drew a Mummy and Ogre Commander... The latter was brutal, taking the Knight down for 6BP to 2 in 1 hit, but the heroes got together and took it out.

I'm just curious how everyone handles the final fight with Fellmarak. With 0BP, he's under Zargon's Flame; has attack dice, but casts a different Dread spell each turn until Escape comes up, which kills him. Is this the only way he dies, but then what's the point of defense dice? But then why no Body Points. This is confusing. The rules are very unclear in regards to this. Anyone want to offer how they handle it?

Since he's under Zargon's Flame I allowed the Wizard to cast Water of Healing to take him out.

[Zenithfleet]

I've had a go at converting Prophecy of Telor to the classic UK/EU questbook format, with black and white maps and shorter, terser Quest Notes. Basically, "What if this quest pack had been officially released back in the early 90s?" I'm sure someone else has done this already but it was fun and helped me understand it a bit better given that I haven't played through it. Obviously it needs quite a few tweaks for the EU rules but it's not too hard to do. Still figuring it out though.

Generally the quests seem reasonably well designed, although on the easy side - as others have said, about on par with the base game. There are some creative bits like the tower ascent (no exploration in that one though!) and other gimmicks. It definitely feels more classically Heroquesty than, say, the Spirit Queen's Torment, which is strongly modern D&D flavoured.

My main complaints boil down to three things:

1. Overuse of furniture. Most classic EU maps (at least in the base game) only used two or three pieces of furniture per Quest, not counting treasure chests. That made it special and memorable when you found a room with, say, a fireplace, because you wouldn't have seen one for a while. Prophecy of Telor seems to use most of the furniture in every Quest, which feels like it will get samey after a while. I'm not sure if the other Hasbro quest packs are similar.

2. Railroaded narrative elements. I guess this is a modern D&D thing. There are several parts where the bearer of the Talisman is automatically moved around by the Evil Wizard player (Morcar/Zargon), automatically finds things without having to search, and so on. I've been trying to find ways to gently modify this so that the player has more leeway to act. A couple of the quests are also more linear than I prefer - I'm a big proponent of multiple routes to the objective, a feature of many classic base game maps - so I've snuck a few secret doors into the maps. (There's also a lot of verbose narration that doesn't add much.)

3. The logic of the story starts to break down toward the end, where [censored because the spoiler tag didn't work!]. It may also simply be because 13 quests is a long campaign by classic HQ standards. I'm tempted to pull a Kellar's Keep and have a branching storyline at the end, so that you go to different Quests depending on the result of Quest 10.

I thought the erudite Goblin with super-powerful stats was pretty silly too, but you could easily explain him away as a highly trained human warrior / assassin / scout who has been magically transformed into a Goblin to spy on the enemy. My bigger issue with him is that he's another railroaded moment. He just automatically "does his thing" and leads the players where they need to go before they get to do any exploration or thinking.


Edit:

Having gone through all the quests and converted them over to the EU maps and rules - which took a bit of effort to cram everything into the limited space available for Quest Notes - a few other oddities jumped out at me.

Telor's Tomb really ought to have Undead-themed enemies, but instead it's full of generic Goblins, Chaos Warriors, etc. The whole point is meant to be that nobody knows where the tomb is and you just beat the Archives robbers to the scroll with the map. Even Mentor doesn't know, somehow! So how did these bad guys get here? I couldn't leave that one alone--I had to swap out the enemies for Undead ones. It gives more variety too since there hasn't been a purely Undead quest for a while in this quest pack. Oddly, there were only three enemy types in Telor's Tomb, which made swapping them for Undead equivalents straightforward. I wonder if there was some sort of mix-up and they were meant to be Skellies/Zombies/Mummies originally? (Plus, sheesh, so much gold and treasure in this quest!)

And I don't know what the heck is going on with Zargon's Flame (or even what Zargon's Flame is supposed to be, really) but it's definitely a convoluted rule, as noted above. In some ways putting it into EU rules makes it simpler since all monsters have 1 BP anyway, so they actually just get tougher--they get an extra 'save' roll.

[moktira]

I've had a go at converting Prophecy of Telor to the classic UK/EU questbook format, with black and white maps and shorter, terser Quest Notes.....

Would you be able to share this?

[Kurgan]

I too am curious to see how it plays using the rules Baker was originally working with (1st or 2nd edition).

I'm glad I read your posts as I probably otherwise would have had an experienced party playing them. I'd rather play a pack like this with as little modification as possible (accounting for official errata fixes of course).

It would also be interesting to see how the First Light quests he wrote played using (approximated of course since some new rules are added) EU rules.

[Parzival]

Just finished a Companion App solo play through of this pack. Thoughts, with Spoilers:

The story is convoluted. Not necessarily bad, just complex. The idea that the Talisman of Lore from the original quests is actually a gateway for an evil dead dread sorcerer to possess a party member is an unexpected one. However, the points at which the hero is possessed and acts partially under Zargon’s control feels a little too “railroady” for me. Perhaps there would be a way to let the player of the Talisman bearer “in on” what’s going on, so that he is encouraged to make the risky choices of movement and action that will bring out the ultimate possession? That would give the player a little more sense of agency. In any case, that’s always the risk of an adventure (or “quest”) where the heroes MUST do certain actions for the story to advanced, whether they think to do them or even want to do them. PoT comes close to crossing a line there, but manages not to go too far overboard.

As others have noted, the original Mythic tier set (my copy) has multiple errors— a missing door, letter note keys missing from the map, and an unclear goal. I don’t know if the new retail version corrects these (I would hope so).

A few of the quests are highly linear— there’s only one path to follow, so the heroes can’t maneuver around monsters or room-based events; you’d gonna hit ‘em all, whether you like it or not. Though I always try to hit every room I can anyway. (Twice now I’ve managed to miss out on the Wizard’s Cloak because I didn’t hit the room containing it— not in ToP, but other sets.)

The final Zargon’s Flame quest got a little boring— you can’t get past the monsters until Zargon screws up his roll. That got to be tedious. The Companion App also failed to treat the monsters as playable for Zargon, even if they stayed alive (or undead). So you’d sit there and whack a goblin, he’d come back, not do anything, but have to be whacked again… It got kind of annoying. (Might have been scarier if the App had been smarter.)

I agree with an earlier observation that the furniture was overused. It doesn’t all have to be there. (And why would a tomb have an alchemist’s desk, a torture rack, a fireplace, or a library? Something for the well-read, science-dabbling sadistic mummy?)

So a mixed bag on this one for me. Clever story and background, but a little heavy-handed on the linear, restrictive plot.