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To many, HeroQuest was their gateway into fantasy adventure gaming. For me, though, the nostalgia I have for it is being left alone in the toy aisle, drooling over the box contents of fantasy heroes and monstrous foes — not to mention those delicious dungeon furniture pieces.
I confess that my acquisition of the new HeroQuest was more for the cool figures than any nostalgia for the game, which at its core I honestly found a bit simplistic compared to modern titles like Descent or the D&D Adventure board games. However, I’ve always had an admiration for the decades of homebrew and fan content for HQ, and this year I found myself absolutely sucked in to one project in particular…
Grown Man Playing with Toys
Available in French and English, this fan made expansion gives you the means to run a party of heroes (alone or with friends) without a designated Zargon player (and no app required). It was designed to work alongside the official quests while changing things up each playthrough. I think of it like the early Diablo games, where you would get randomized content but still hit the same beats in the story. It accomplishes this with a few card decks you print at home:
The Solo Deck is primarily 15 cards, plus 5 additional cards for every expansion. These cards give you all the randomizers for determining what’s in a room, what furniture is there, any monsters or doorways, etc. It even has event cards for the turns where Zargon has nothing to resolve…a good way to keep pressure on the heroes.
The City Deck replaces the normal Armory phase with exploring different shops, random events and many opportunities to get in trouble. There’s even side quests to take, opportunities to get hurt (or healed) and gain (or lose) money.
Treasure Searching Deck which makes looking for loot more dependent of the furniture in the room, offering a variety of events and hazards aside from the boring treasure deck. There’s even chances to find armor, weapons and spell scrolls this way!
Some other mini-expansions that add more to the gameplay — There’s “wear & tear” to your items (requiring a gold sink to repair between quests), magical gems to upgrade weapons and armor, rules for swapping spaces after taking melee damage (big game changer tactics), etc.
The rulebooks contain brief rundowns on how to run the official quests. In short: each quest has three Objectives (which tie in to the encounters and notes in the official quest books). In the solo deck, there are a handful of Objective cards that, when drawn, trigger these events in order.
I’ve managed to play through half of the main questline so far, plus a couple “side quests” I experimented with. I have been very pleased overall — while it doesn’t recreate the quests room for room, it provides a method of procedurally exploring the dungeons and having the key encounters intended for the plot. I got to fight Verag in The Trial and narrowly escape as we rescued Sir Ragnar. Nothing felt forced or out of line, and quests usually took me 1-2 hours while managing a party of four.
The City Phase is a really fun excursion between quests. The “Wear & Tear” rules I like in concept but admit it’s felt a little punishing on my party’s funds. I ended up nerfing it to where the quality only degrades on a black shield, and honestly that’s been taxing enough.
I haven’t bought any gem upgrades yet, but I’m looking forward to it. Right now I’m just concerned with getting my party patched up and keeping everyone alive.
If I had any complaints, it’s the table economy. HQ takes up a bit of room as is. Adding a few more decks and having to track a party of heroes can feel a bit “head heavy”. I’ve ended up making an Obsidian vault to help track stuff:
Improv Delve!
Improv Delve!
I’ve also been collecting the Loke Battlemat books, and have been dying to figure out a way to play a solo HeroQuest game with them. The Solo Deck system works well with them… just requires a little prep before the game, mostly to establish the objectives.
What I did was hit up Giovani Borga’s Hero Quest map generator (in Italian, so I used the browser translator). I essentially refresh until something catches my eye and sounds fun. I ignore the map layout (mostly), and take the quest flavor text and the game notes. I essentially use them in reverse order (C,B,A) to make objectives 1,2,3. I also look at where A,B,C is on the map and glance at what enemies are in the proximity — these also go into the Objective notes.
Map Generator Example
So, using the example above translated for Gravaillon’s Solo Mode, I’d say:
Objective 1: Tomb, Those who seek treasure will awaken an evil spirit who will attack immediately. Roll 5 combat dice; for each skull you come out you will lose one body point.
Objective 2: Cabinet, 2 Skeletons. The cabinet contains a trap. Whoever opens it will have to roll 3 combat dice; for each skull that comes out he will lose one body point.
Objective 3: Chest, 3 Orcs, 2 Mummies.
Inside the chest is Geymev’s treasure: the Phantom Blade. Draw the card from the Artifact deck.
Wandering Monster: Abomination
Friendly reminder that A) It’s translated to English and B) Some stuff from the older HQ is different in the new version, like Firmir are now Abominations.
After that, I just play through as best I can with the solo deck. I do go a little hand-wavey regarding doors — if there’s a door on the map, I’ll place a closed marker on it when I approach it. If a solo card generates a door, I’ll consider putting it in rooms but not corridors.
So, there’s a run down of the madness I’ve been indulging in during my free moments of late. Gravillion’s Solo Mode takes a simple dungeon-crawling boardgame and amps it up into an amazing solo campaign experience. I love how it integrates with the official quest lines, but opens up possibilities for homebrewed excursions as well. Even if I were to run for a group of friends, I would implement the house rules for treasure, the City Phase, and the wear & tear and the item upgrades via the gems for long term play.
