4. HQ25 - Story Arc discussion

[Sjeng]

yes that's exactly it. You decide basically. Either just follow one lead, as they all lead to the same conclusion, just in a different way through a different route, but you can also follow all of them if you want to. This could be written in the introduction.

this storyline was more or less a mixture of several arcs that were offered earlier this year.

So there's some great Chaos Boss that has arisen. The chaos dwarves and beastmen are the evil army. The kobolds/dragonkin are recruited, maybe as fodder, maybe to get some sort of dragonkin monster for the Chaos Boss, or some dragonkin item or sorcery whatever. Chaos needs the Dragonkin in some way. Greenskins are just the regular bad guys. Operating on their own, or also for Chaos, or being driven out of their territory by Chaos.

So the greenskin lead may tell the story of how the orcs/goblins got chased away by .... CHAOS! there you have it. the lead. Where did the greenskins flee from = location.
The Dragonkin are searching for the item/dragon egg/special spell only an old dragon shaman can cast for the Chaos Boss, plundering towns along the way or causing disturbances that need to be taken care of... Heroes find out about it.
The Chaos Beastmen rading villages and later on Dwarven cities taken over by chaos dwarves lead directly to the evil castle of chaos. A more direct approach.

Just some ideas really. I'm sure others can come up with more interesting leads.

[Goblin-King]

To be honest I'm not too hooked on this concept...
Not that it is bad in it's own right, but I don't really think this is really in the style of HeroQuest.
HQ is not a choose your own adventure and it's not a detective game.
I'm not too keen on players missing out of content either. I don't think everyone would want to play the same book three times to see all the quests.
A quest book that is ONE BIG web of quest paths could be an incredible cool project, but I don't think this should be in HQ25.
← !!!

One example I thought of was maybe somewhere in each lead there is info that "unlocks" some small hidden room/area in a later mission that's only available if the coorisponding lead was completed. Nothing huge or complex, just a little bonus for those who follow more then one lead

These are good ideas, but can easily be done using the normal linear quest progression. Certain items can be hidden in earlier quest that are required for unlocking areas in later quests.

[GimmeYerGold]

When I design Quests for my friends, I pursue a "choose your own adventure" route, letting them feel as if they are creating the story as they go, although I can see how that style is incongruent with the "core" methods of Heroquest quest progression. There are the 14 original quests, and the expansions, and each expansion might be picked up in any order, however, all the quests in each expansion are played in order.

I think there are merits to both modes of questing, however, if we are creating a quest package meant to be a 25th anniversary tribute to the game, it would be in the spirit of the franchise, and the spirit of the community to create a linear set of 25 quests, and allow the players who later utilize the quests to interpret them in a non-linear /choose your own adventure style if they so wish.

I wonder how much beer we can buy with all the that will go into this discussion!

[Sjeng]

Actually, Kellar's Keep has a quest where you can exit via 2 doors, each leading to a different follow up quest. I played both, but this is not unheard of in HQ.
But if we make it clear that this is the player's choice, then everyone happy, right?

[Bob-Bob]

Japanese HeroQuest gives players an option to choose which of the next 2 quests they'll take on at one point, then at another point it gives them an option to skip a quest if they feel unsafe.

So yeah, I think branching paths can work.

[gootchute]

Limited branching quests, as seen in current incarnations, would be neat as described by others. But for this project I don't think the heroes should be able to simply disregard a set of 5 quests on a whim. I thought the original idea was to give the heroes the choice of what order to follow the leads in, rather than which ones to skip... am I right?

I still stand by my assertion that the separate leads should be sets of shorter quests with no trip to town until the lead is completed. I find it easier to theme a dungeon when the scope is smaller for each individual quest (ie: limit monster types, use less rooms, not every furniture piece etc...).

There needs to by one thing for each chain of quests which sets it apart from the base system. These are by no means my final or only suggestions but for example:

Dragonkin Chain: new monster types, unique enough as it is.

Greenskin chain: The heroes are exhausted from their journey, they must re-roll dice higher than 4 on their move rolls.

Beastmen chain: New monsters, unique enough.

Undead chain (is there an undead chain?): Will sapping Aura - heroes will lose a mind point if they roll doubles on movement, and may recover them all by spending a turn resting.

[MrBigB]

I still stand by my assertion that the separate leads should be sets of shorter quests with no trip to town until the lead is completed.

I 100% agree with this!

As far as the structure of the "Lead" quests, I don't see why it needs to be written in stone one way or another. If we build them as smaller self contained sections laid out in a particular order, but with a brief note explaining the various options, players/DM's can choose how much and what order to do them in.

I say we give players badass content, and let them choose how to play it.

[Goblin-King]

Actually, Kellar's Keep has a quest where you can exit via 2 doors, each leading to a different follow up quest. I played both, but this is not unheard of in HQ.
But if we make it clear that this is the player's choice, then everyone happy, right?

There's a difference between 2 quests and huge chunks of 3x5 quests. I think it's the huge amount of quests affected that is putting me off.

Limited branching quests, as seen in current incarnations, would be neat as described by others. But for this project I don't think the heroes should be able to simply disregard a set of 5 quests on a whim. I thought the original idea was to give the heroes the choice of what order to follow the leads in, rather than which ones to skip... am I right?

If this is the case I can better live with it.

But are the "leads" taking up too much space? 15 quests for "investigating"?
Can we make it a little more tight?

[Sjeng]

the "lead" was just a term used for the three different paths/chains. If you want to make them "stories" or "paths" go for it.
The "investigating" was a suggestion. I could just as well be "go fight the goblinkin / dragonkin / chaos threat over there before taking on the boss, while finding out clues to the boss's hideout/whereabouts".

[Goblin-King]

Okay okay... I know I might be coming off a little negative, but I'm really not - just excited for the project
But I've been thinking about this quite a lot the last few days and reading and re-reading this thread...
I know we've all put a lot of effort into making the current story, and maybe it's just me, but personally I'm having a really hard time taking it on when I begin to think about how to actually turn it into quests.
I don't know... The leads... Gathering four items... It sounds too filler/repetitive for me.
There are just too many big blank pages in the story at this point.

What I'm suggesting is that we "kill our darlings"!

I will make one last plead that we turn it into several smaller independent story arcs.
I think most here can manage to put together 4-6 excellent well thought out quests with a tight story.
Making one big high quality 25-quest story just seems like too big a bite.
And if someone is dreaming of a BIG story it's still possible to make the quest distribution something like 3-5-4-5-8 (a short intro arc and a big finale arc)

Now I've said how I feel... If nobody agrees I'll shut up about it and let it go

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