More than four Heroes

[knightkrawler]

Then make it 1d6+5 for all heroes, 1d6+1 for one wearing plate armor.
That's simple.

[bastianbux]

My aim is to avoid any +anything. I feel like having to do any kind of math, even simple math, detracts from the simplicity of HeroQuest. The attacks are never +anything. It's just "You roll two combat dice" and then you upgrade your weapon and now always "You roll three combat dice" and so on. That's one of the things I love about HeroQuest is how pared down to the basics--yet still full of adventure--it is.

[Daedalus]

I'm actually American. I just prefer "Morcar" to "Zargon" because... I always felt "Zargon" sounded like a space alien name or something, whereas "Morcar" sounds like something out of Tolkien. Also I like that there's precidence in Warhammer lore for Morcar.

Yeah, I know what you mean. Morcar doesn't sound so cartoonish. That's why when Stephen Baker pitched the game, he suggested correctly to partner with Games Workshop. GW knew how to world-build. The original Morcar was the Earl of Northumbria back in the 11th century. (Ragnar was also a historical personage.) Milton Bradley changed Morcar to Zargon for licensing reasons, but showed its baser understanding of fantasy names.

That's a great idea about the locked doors. If she does that again in Quest Two (Ragnar) next Friday, I will implement that. But I THINK she learned her lesson when a couple of the other players started heavily hinting that this was the reason almost all of them died.

If for some reason she falls to the tactically-unsound behavior again, another nerfing option is to place a pit trap along the next square in the Ranger's door-opening route. Place a deactivation lever on the other side of the wall in the room with the monsters. That will stop the Ranger's progress, and reward behavior for entering rooms that reveal monsters. Another option is to place a one-turn teleport square in the next square along the door-opening route. It teleports anyone who opened the door but didn't enter the room into the room anyway. If you don't like magic traps, you could just cut off the Ranger's progress by adding a wandering monster or two that are waiting around the corner. Finally, you could use all of the methods (including locked doors) to keep her guessing.

I forgot how brutal that first quest is! It took three hours! Looking over the next few quests, it's clear that the American designers meant to show off how difficult the game could be. I think they purposefully redesigned that first quest to kill off most of the heroes.

From my experience it was redesigned to strongly impress upon the Hero players that it is necessary to stick together to survive a dungeon crawl. The original EU version supports a looser, every-Hero-for-himself mentality that emphasizes exploration and competition for resourses.

About Initiative: I ended up deciding against it because it seemed to just add one more extra complication. Really, I'm surprised that HeroQuest even has them rolling for movement. It seems like it would have further simplified things to give them a set movement for each Hero. Oh well.

I feel the very reason dice rolling is built into Hero movement is to include a simple initiative system, at least at the start of a combat. A high movement roll will allow a Hero to close and attack before a monster. A poor roll will often allow a monster to close and attack a Hero first.

I have no idea where it would be...but there has been at least one thread talking about movement.
A lot of folk here at the inn have decided to use just a base movement for the heroes. Some have given
each hero the same amount - maybe 6 or 7, 9 or 10...some have given each hero a different amount....

Maybe someone else might be able to point you to the actual thread, to give you some more ideas and
the thoughts behind the choices.

Here's the thread: http://www.yeoldeinn.com/hqforum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=832&hilit=red+dice+be+used+for+hero+movement

Then make it 1d6+5 for all heroes, 1d6+1 for one wearing plate armor.
That's simple.

My aim is to avoid any +anything. I feel like having to do any kind of math, even simple math, detracts from the simplicity of HeroQuest. The attacks are never +anything. It's just "You roll two combat dice" and then you upgrade your weapon and now always "You roll three combat dice" and so on. That's one of the things I love about HeroQuest is how pared down to the basics--yet still full of adventure--it is.

Stay with your preference, but I think knightkrawler's method is equally simple as rolling two red dice and adding the result. Both entail adding two numbers together. If you wanna go simpler like you mentioned earlier, why not assume an average roll of 7 and make it the default move value for Heroes? Perhaps you could require red dice if a Hero wanted to enter combat...or not.