The Dark Company Redesign by HispaZargon

[MonsterMotor]

Very impressive piece of work! The design of the dungeon levels is quite basic, yet indeed pretty interesting. You are one of the very few HQ quest creators who know exactly how to place traps in a reasonable manner. I don't know if I'll ever get to play this, but it will get my recommendation.

One question that came into my mind was: how would you explain the high availability of means to replenish spells right in one of the Empire's strongholds. Otherwise, such things are very hard to obtain. Any story suggestions here?

[HispaZargon]

Wow! Thank you so much, HZ!

Thank you a lot of course, but to keep the rest well informed, I would like to say that Kurgan helped me in some key moments of the project. Thanks to the playtest sessions he organized and how he corrected me my English language in the questbook, we have now this final product!

Thanks for all of your hard work you put into this!

Thanks a lot too!

Very impresive. Congratulations and thank you! Looking forward for the Playtest sessions in your channel

Thank you. About the playtest sessions, as you say I will post soon all of the recorded ones on my YouTube account, but I would like to be transparent on this in advance. The recordings are playtest sessions, not too exciting games, even boring for watching from an average spectator standpoint. During the playtests are happening many things which are not shown nor explained on the fly, like things being checked in long term like difficulty, etc., so those recording are not actually so atractive shows. The main goal I wanted with those recordings was being able to analyze the games much later after playing them to check in detail which fixes were needed to be introduced on each tested version of the campaign, and to be able to share them with the rest of the Community. Anyway thanks for your interest!!

Very impressive piece of work! The design of the dungeon levels is quite basic, yet indeed pretty interesting. You are one of the very few HQ quest creators who know exactly how to place traps in a reasonable manner. I don't know if I'll ever get to play this, but it will get my recommendation.

Yeah, the design of the original dungeon is very basic, of course very EU classic style, but I didn't want to alter it too much except where I saw it really needed to be changed, which I tried to explain in the Designer's Notes. If you check how much KK or RotWL dungeons were modified from their EU versions to their NA equivalents, there were not many changes, so I applied a similar philosophy for this project, except in those blatant cases, as said.

About the traps, the original Quest has not actually many traps, but yes, I try to use trap locations to get something from the Heroes or to boost the narrative, so I just tried to check that everywhere I saw it important, especially to avoid bugs during the game. Anyway, thanks for the compliments of course. I hope you will be able to play it and share your experience!

One question that came into my mind was: how would you explain the high availability of means to replenish spells right in one of the Empire's strongholds. Otherwise, such things are very hard to obtain. Any story suggestions here?

Well, very good question. From a thematic standpoint, I tried to believe that this old city is a long ago forsaken place, which has been dominated by darkness. Instead of happening little by little, maybe there was at a time any sudden dramatic event (an invasion? a flood? etc.) which forced to their inhabitants to abandon quickly the underground city and move to other place, which also forced them to leave there many powerful artifacts. Moreover, if we attend to Warhammer lore, the Colleges of Magic were created during Prince Magnus reign, so maybe before that the access to magic was less controlled or organized and magical documents like scrolls were more easily stored in any random place or library, like the ones you find on this old city. Considering that and the former inhabitants there were probably a bit more primitive society, maybe also explains why there are so many Shrines there, maybe they were more mystical people than the later ones. Other option could be thinking that the old city was a kind of catacomb, where their inhabitants lived hidden in the underground from whatever danger living outside, maybe evil creatures? All this is just speculation from my side, of course. We can imagine many ways to put all pieces together.

[batjon]

Beautiful work!

If there's ever a way to buy a printed copy of this I'd love one

[wallydubbs]

I gotta admit, you got me a little excited over Dark Company again, but unfortunately it's not compatible with my phone for whatever reason. So I tried playing the original. It was going very well until the heroes got to the Warm room (Room E) on map 1. I was playing with the Druid, Barbarian, Dwarf & Wizard. The Druid was the first hero to investigate this room at full health under Shapeshift, rolled a 6 immediately, falling asleep. That was the last 6 he'd ever roll.. The Barbarian and Dwarf refused to go in there, but the Wizard was practically immune so searched for Treasure. But for the next 10 turns, even after the Wizard cast a Healing Spell, the Druid would not wake up, rolling 4 red dice each turn, never producing a 6. The Druid died in this room from eternal sleep. This was devastating.

[TCSTigersClaw]

Wow! Thank you so much, HZ!

I see you where one of the playtesters , suggestions and English version contributor. Bravo to you too Kurgan!

What I would love to see from both of you Guys is a complete list of Rules now that all expansions are out , like a final Rules book from fans with all the extra rules from expansions , questbooks and online quests

[TCSTigersClaw]

About this, I understand your approach, there is a trend last years of selling everything in the Community, but with some exceptions, I generally don't support that, and less in projects like this one since it really tries to recreate a 90's official product in all terms, so sorry selling it is absolutely forbidden if you don't have the rights to do it. Other situation would be if lauching this project had needed some previous funding to develope something, in that case a crowdfunding campaign or similar to get the funding may be acceptable in my opinion in exchange of a fanmade product, otherwise some projects could never be made, but that's not clearly the case with this now since everything is already finished!.

I made this project just for fun and to be enjoyed by everyone interested. All material I provided is prepared to be printed at home or local papershops, obtaining rather similar quality as the official 90's products with most of regular laser printers. I honestly don't see any need of selling it if you don't want to make business, something, as said, I totally oppose with fanmde material of this kind

We all know that you dont do it for money , there is a lot of work done here by you and other members free of charge all these years.
I insist that you should make a poll , for a physical release. It should definetely sold out.

[Kurgan]

Wow! Thank you so much, HZ!

I see you where one of the playtesters , suggestions and English version contributor. Bravo to you too Kurgan!

What I would love to see from both of you Guys is a complete list of Rules now that all expansions are out , like a final Rules book from fans with all the extra rules from expansions , questbooks and online quests

You mean for Avalon Hill's HeroQuest? Because no indication has been given that Wizards of Morcar is the final expansion release (or that official online quests are ending for that matter).

Phoenix did kind of what you are asking for in the classic lineup with his "Master Instruction Booklet" that includes rules for all the expansions released in the 90's here. Is that the kind of thing you mean? (I think he only made one mistake, wherein he doesn't differentiate between Swinging Axe Traps and Swinging Blade traps). Obviously SQT, PoT, CoPD, JoD and ROTDM didn't exist when he created this of course.

Today Avalon Hill kind of combines a lot of Expansion rules into two books, spread across the Rulebook and the Questbook (not yet available officially in PDF format) for First Light. But when you think about it nearly EVERY quest has new rules in the form of the quest notes, but these rules are not meant to be universally applicable to other quests. What would be the point of such a booklet? You would just be piling all the booklets that have been released into a single file, I guess like zipping all the PDFs together? Or just trying to compress it into a smaller word doc?

Or is this literally just combining the rules potentially meant to be "universal" as options like Unthreatened movement and sell back items to the Armory, that kind of thing? Because like the rule that all monsters under the Dread Moon have 1 extra attack die, or that on this quest when a character dies they have a chance to come back as a skeleton by rolling a black shield on one combat die, those aren't meant for every single quest, just certain quests within on section of a single expansion booklet.

[HispaZargon]

Beautiful work!

If there's ever a way to buy a printed copy of this I'd love one

No, sorry. This project is not for sale, and please do not buy it if you find somebody selling it since I will never give any authorisation to do that.

I have provided all files ready to be domestically printed and everything cay be handcrafted at home so easily following the steps I also provided in the Zip file.

I gotta admit, you got me a little excited over Dark Company again, but unfortunately it's not compatible with my phone for whatever reason. So I tried playing the original. It was going very well until the heroes got to the Warm room (Room E) on map 1. I was playing with the Druid, Barbarian, Dwarf & Wizard. The Druid was the first hero to investigate this room at full health under Shapeshift, rolled a 6 immediately, falling asleep. That was the last 6 he'd ever roll.. The Barbarian and Dwarf refused to go in there, but the Wizard was practically immune so searched for Treasure. But for the next 10 turns, even after the Wizard cast a Healing Spell, the Druid would not wake up, rolling 4 red dice each turn, never producing a 6. The Druid died in this room from eternal sleep. This was devastating.

Thanks for your comment, really proud to see somebody already trying to play it, wallydubbs!! About the problems you have with your phone, no idea why that happens, sad to read it. Maybe you should try with another PDF reader app?

In the other hand, I want to clarify that although the difficulty of the original EU super-Quest has been nerfed on this redesign, I still wanted to keep it as a difficult Quest to not alter it true fame of challenging Quest, but I tried to polish as much as possible any unbalance that I think the original Quest had. One clear example are the Warehouse rules, which I 100% revised. In my redesign, the damage for being slept is even worse, but your Druid had probably survived because I allowed another Hero to try to help a sleeping one to go out the Warehouse room. There are specific rules for that in my redesign.

We all know that you dont do it for money , there is a lot of work done here by you and other members free of charge all these years.
I insist that you should make a poll , for a physical release. It should definetely sold out.

Thanks, really proud to read your words, but I guess the industry works in a different way. If AH were really interested in something like my work, I guess they would directly contact its creator (something I guess improbable anyway of course since it has never happened with any fanmade creation, as far as I know).

[CWausH]

Hello Hispa Zargon!

Great work! Thank you very much!
After I finish my political work (local elections) in early March, I will translate it into German so I can play it with my group!

I wish you a wonderful Christmas season and all the best for 2026.

CWausH (Carsten)
Söhne Mentors

[HispaZargon]

Thanks CWausH. We will be in contact for such German translation, great to see the project being accesible to more languages in the future!

In the other hand, I would like to inform about I have already uploaded all available playtest reordings in the following playlist:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBML ... pRHuxC31ky

TDC_Project_YouTube_Playlist_Cover_LR.jpg

The very final version of the campaign, which files I shared, is not actually tested on this recordings, but it only include a few differences to the version I tested in the third campaign.

Just one warning for anyone interested in watching the playtests: these recordings are not actually games in theirselves, entertaining or making show was not the goal of these videos. They are just tests of how, the different design versions which I was testing, worked on the table at each moment, with different inputs and looking for any flaw their design could have, and any unbalance in overall difficulty of the campaign, by testing the extremes, that's why they were fully tested, including all dice rolls needed to support the statistics as better as possible.

These recordings were made and used to later support the design decissions performed until having ready the final product.