Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Stop right there, Matthew, Advanced Hero Quest?
I had that game (Hero Quest) but had no idea they did another version.
That's pretty interesting.

I'll toss in a copper piece on elegance.
I happen to love tables.

Sure, a nifty formula takes up less space in the rulebook, and I may even prefer it that way in the book, but when I want to know an outcome during play, I like to have the formula precalculated if possible and plastered into a table, so that all I have to do is look at the die and then look at the table.

It also makes things more mysterious to the players if they don't roll and then add a bunch of modifiers and such. I can already have their modifiers factored into my table.

Indeed they did (or rather Games Workshop did, Milton Bradley had no hand in it); Hero Quest and Advanced Hero Quest (not to be confused with the RPG). It was undersupported to say the least. The eventual successor was another similar offering called War Hammer Quest.

Wow, I never knew it had that much material for it.

As a kid I saw it (and two expansions) on the clearance aisle at Wal-Mart for $4 each. My mom agreed to buy the game, but not the expansions.
I loved the game. The aisle was empty the next day and I never saw any HeroQuest products ever again!

Fortunately D&D came along.

If you liked HQ and AHQ theres a game out called "Descent" thats very much in the same tradition. It comes with some pretty cool mini-figs. The art for it is pretty awesome IMO. Its a little steep though, 75 bucks I think for the basic set.

HeroQuest kicks ass!!!




Not just the rules simple and easy to learn, it open to a lot of homebrewed rules. The Combat Dice made the game really fun! The miniatures are amazing for a boardgame set, and the 3D furniture gave the game life. The art incredible, as it had more of a dark fantasy feel instead of that happy, colorful candyland fantasy that TSR was doing at the time. All of the art from box covers are done by Les Edwards. The woodcarving-stayed card art was by Gary Chalk (if you have read the Lone Wolf choose-your-own-adventure books, then you might recognize his work).

HQ has a huge following, lots of people still play the game, and you can find lots, and lots of fan materials. You can even download all the rule & quest books, cards, tiles, and overlays (both in US and UK versions). It, like OD&D, feels like a culture into itself.

Here is a link to the game's creators.

I have never played AHQ, but I have read the rule book. The rules are needlessly complicated. I really like the modular dungeon tiles layout, and the plastic doorways with moving doors. To bad the game had no 3D furniture, and you only had rat-men to fight, but at least you had henchmen to help you.

I did buy Warhammer Quest, the Catacomb set, and the Orc Lord set. The game plays better then AHQ, but is still needlessly chunky at times. The game is better with the advanced rules, but the RPG rules (yes, the game has RPG rules) are kind of wonky. The games comes with lots of cool minis (orcs, goblins, minotaurs, and assorted giant vermin - rats, bats, spiders & snotlings), it has a modular dungeon tiles layout like AHQ, and the RPG book has stats for most of the figures used in WHFB. I was disappointed with the doorways, as they feel more like clips to keep the rooms together, and they have no doors. And all the props (furnishing and such) are just 2D tiles. I mostly use the set with my Mordheim game for some underground skirmishing.

Descent, eh?

I could have sworn I heard someone was going to have that at TrollCon, but it never happened.

I'm really thinking of busting out my old HQ game, though.
I could use a few orcs and treasure chests for visual aids, but I dunno if I'd try to play it. Maybe with some kids.

I beleive Descent is more based on a linear campaign/module kind of flow where HQ/AHQ was more random. I'm not 100% sure on that.
The box is very impressive. I'm considering getting it just to learn to paint mini's.

I don't know how paintable the minis in Descent would be. They come in three colors: grey for PCs, white for "normal" monsters, and red for "boss" monsters.

It comes with several suggested modules, and with some of the new expansion packs you can actually construct a whole campaign of dungeon crawls.

A friend of mine, who hates pre3.x D&D, is super-jazzed about it. He keeps saying, "It's the same as the D&D you like, but better!"

Feh!

I bought the main set. You can make up your own dungeon crawls, if you want. But the rules...*shrug* they don't do anything for me.

The DM-equivalent is definitely in an adversarial relationship to the PCs. More than 4 PCs on the board gets to be too crowded.

But the doors, trap tiles, and figures have made a nice addition to my occasional table top game with my wife and our 5 year old son.

He loves it, asks to play with the set all the time, and constantly makes up stories about the adventures his characters are having.

So, I can recommend it if you don't mind the price tag and want the figures. I could even see using at a set of geomorphs, too.

But it takes much longer to set up, and to play, especially if you're new to the rules than The Real Thing.

D&D: Accept no substitutes.

That sounds like an accurate assessment based on my own research into it. I'm still in too much sticker shock to spring for it. I love games with fancy bits but I dont know if I could ever find anyone to play it with. Its easier to find people to play D&D with anyway.

In my experience it's hard to find D&D players because they all want to use their rulebooks (as players) rather than mine (the DM).

But really, if the rules for Descent aren't that great, I wouldn't get it for the minis. You can just buy normal miniatures and not worry about having some big box with a crap game in it.

And oddly enough, as a kid (about 8-9) it never once occured to me to use my HeroQuest figures as visuals for my D&D games.

I've never been a big fan of minis, but everyone is different.

I found that my 5 year old can't "see" what's going on. He as yet lacks the ability to think abstractly. So while I bought it to play the game, and found the game not to my liking, I'm not sorry I bought it.

YMMV, and all that.

Never did get to play HeroQuest. I remember begging for it but, like Crossbows & Catapults, my parents figured I was already too prone to "violence and Satan worship".

Random wrote: And oddly enough, as a kid (about 8-9) it never once occured to me to use my HeroQuest figures as visuals for my D&D games.

I drafted them into my War Hammer Fantasy armies (I say armies, but warband would be way more accurate).

On a similar note, did any of you ever have the Battlemasters game?

It was completely awesome.

I remember it took forever to assemble and put those 50 zillion little stickers on all the shields and horses and such.

Random wrote:On a similar note, did any of you ever have the Battlemasters game?

It was completely awesome.

I remember it took forever to assemble and put those 50 zillion little stickers on all the shields and horses and such.

I remember when they got discounted to $10! Gamers were moping them off the shelves. It took me years before I found a place that sells slit-a-bases for all of them. I even played Battlemasters with Battletech maps (with a single warrior figure counting as a whole combat unit). I play it sometimes, but now I got HeroScape 3d terrain to work with.

I not a fan of HeroScape itself, but I really like interlocking 3d terrain set. I use it for all sorts of games like Batteltech and Heavy Gear. The cards, minis and booklets are mothballed in a box somewhere, but I make good use of the rest of the game. The dice are just like the ones used in HQ, but with a blank in place of the Black Shield (in the early HS sets, attacks and defense as separate dice). That not a surprising thing as HQ and HS was made by the same guy. When I play HQ, the players use the HS dice for fighting, the BM dice are used buy the Evil Wizard player (the DM) when fighting as the monsters, and the HQ dice are for general use.

I tend to buy games and other stuff just to add to my HeroQuest set. I use minis from DragonStrike, DarkWorld, and lots of other games. I use the numbered coin tokens from DarkWorld and the Pirates of the Spanish Main card game (I try to locate the early sets as they use to go higher then 4), so I can pull out coins each time a monster gets killed. I'm always looking for 3D props. One of the best props I use are from Crooked Staff Productions. I'm really good with paper-craft, so the furniture I make with them looks amazing!

Thanks for all the links, Malcadon.

One thing I think would rock is having GIMP image (I think you might can do it with just pdf, not too sure how that works) of dungeon flooring with multiple layers, where one layer is the texture and all the other layers are translucent color layers.

That way you could draw the tiles once and they could be colored very easily however anyone would like for their dungeons.

I've never tried using a lot of props (dungeon tiles, minis), but I think it could fun.