Ok, so some people may remember my post about how some of my friends didn't like the fact that heroes can't carry over items (we only play standard Descent + Altar, we don't have Road to Legend). None of us have the money for Legend either, so that's not an option. I've been muddling around trying to think if there would be a way to change up some of the rules so that the game remains balanced while allowing items and training to transfer. Here are my ideas, feel free to ream them accordingly (and constructively please) and/or add more ideas.

-Treasure chest do not give the listed amount to everyone, just the person who opened it.

-Coin pickups in dungeons do not give 100 coins to everyone, just the person who picked it up.

-Conquest tokens carry over between quests, but heroes do not get the listed tokens for starting the next quest unless they die trying to complete it and have to restart.

-Treasures carry over between quests.

-Money carries over, but heroes do not get the new starting money for a quest unless they fail, at which point money is reset.

-Training dice and skill cards carry over between quests, but can only be purchased between quests; additionally, only one can be learned between any given quest.

-Treasures can only be purchased from the store between quests.

The rules for RtL are available online, so you should be able to house rule stuff inspired by the RtL rules - but I guess if you try to finish standard dungeons with such limited treasure, you'll have a hard time killing the monsters, so you'll have to scale the dungeons (or make custom ones) for it to work...

The fundamental problem here is that the start of the next quest is going to be easier than the end of the current one, so if you're unwilling to have the heroes decrease in power between those two points, then one of them will be unbalanced. Anything that increases or decreases the "overall" power of the heroes is not going to help with that.

The "real" way to do this is probably just to create your own quests. Essentially make it work like a single, really long quest, with a very gradual buildup of treasure.

You could also theoretically give the Overlord some huge advantages at the start of the next quest to counter the heroes' gold treasures, but that probably means that the only real challenge in the quest comes from your house-ruled advantages to the OL, not from the actual quest, which seems like it kind of defeats the purpose.

Really, anything that involves playing the standard quests out of the book but retaining equipment from one to another is a non-starter. Sorry, they're just not designed for anything remotely like that.

I have to agree with Antistone. It just wont work.

If you play it as it is and then carry over to the next quest, the heroes will walk it since they start with cool stuff.

However, if you then remove all the stuff, the heroes wont stand a chance of completing it.

The quests are designed to be played from start to finish as standalone games, anything else just wont work unless you started writing your own dungeons from scratch, but this requires a lot of experience and would be a lot of work.

McRae said:

That's a real shame as RtL solves this issue quite handily and much more.

The problem is that Road to legend doesn't allow for playing with any of the other quest, unless they are for RtL. I play RtL most of the time, but I miss playing the other dungeons and like the idea of prolonged quests with them.

I don't think it’s impossible. There are many ways that I think it would work. You have some great ideas already. Anything is possible with creativity.

There are only limited amounts of chest per normal quest. I think that the limiting of coins and chest to only one person will balance it out. It will probably make it harder for the first couple of dungeons.

Maybe allowing the overlord to start the 3rd game with Brilliant Commander (upgrade 1 normal creature to a master) in play would help balance out the tougher party.

Increasing the Overloads starting hand, threat tokens. use monster cards that are higher than the players if possible and/or cards in play could help balance out a longer campaign.

Maybe reducing the starting skills would help extend the "Normal Campaign". The first quest would be considerably harder though.

I am going to use some of your suggestions and try to come up with a good playable "normal campaign" my next gaming session.

Best of luck,

Darrell

I have been doing this already. I create my own dungeons with a gradual progression, much like the RtL dungeons work.

Why don't we just play RtL, you ask? Because we found all the broken combos in RtL and the "analysis paralysis" became a roadblock. Also the overland map movement, outdoor encounters and LT fights weren't as fun as we thought they should be.

So we've gone back to basic Descent, modified. I have the heroes run through a dungeon that is about the size of two RtL dungeons. They pick up a ton of money and some copper treasure. Once done with that dungeon, they get a "market session" where they can buy RtL upgrades (Hitpoints, fatigue, dice, skills) then they move straight to the next dungeon which is a bit more challenging. Once they get their first silver treasure chest, all monsters upgrade to silver level.

The dungeons themselves are very straightforward - lots of monsters. I also have liberal use of terrain and obstacles from all the expansions (something sorely missing from Descent). But I also pepper the dungeons with "mini-bosses" which are master monsters one tier higher. So if the heroes are fighting silver level monsters, the mini-boss will be gold level. It makes for a more interesting play experience.

My players say that I build better-balanced dungeons than the officially released ones too, and so far it's true - every game has been close for either side.

Two of my favorite activities in Heroquest that are not possible in Descent were searching a room for treasure, and searching a room for hidden passages.

My players say that I build better-balanced dungeons than the officially released ones too, and so far it's true - every game has been close for either side.

Are any of your homemade dungeons availiable for down load? I think my players are looking for a much more Dungeons and Dragons, DM guiding them through a story not a competivite game. It sounds like your games might play much more like that.

Personally as far as checking for treasure goes I would simulate it by rolling a black dice and making each result mean something like surge=treasure boost=150g +potion and blank=nothing... you could easily over lay this on the normal maps by not placing the chests gold and potions and allowing each character to check for treasure in every empty room that would have had a chest, gold or potion in it.

If you want to "campaign" a dungeon I would recommend getting RTL as it has the creature cards for different powers of creatures.

-In the first dungeon use bronze creatures and follow rtl rules for treasure and skills
-The first time in any dungeon that the players open a silver chest allow the over lord to upgrade one creature type untill the end of the dungeon.
-At the end of each dungeon allow the party to upgrade their stats.
-At the beginning of the next dungeon if the party has more than 5 stat upgrades or more than 5 bronze treasures the overlord gets to upgrade a creature type until the end of the campaign (not upgrading to the next level of creature untill all creature types have been upgraded to the current level.)
-if at any time the overlord has more than 2 creatures perminantly upgraded to the next level allow the heroes to get treasures of that level from chests.
-Threat does not carry over between dungeons.
-victory points carry over between adventures by dividing the remaining VP by 2.
-Ignore exp costs of character upgrades.

these are my ideas of how to RTL a regular series of dungeons if anyone can add to this or playtest and tell me what to change tht would be deeply appreciated.

i suppose also that you could use the tamilar city traits (other than the limits on skills available) to limit heroes and allow them to buy upgrades ocasionally (not sure how since I really dont wanna use experience and i dont remember off the top of my head if there were gold costs...)

also the over lord upgrades (lieutenants and avatar upgrades etc) should be useable but as with the tamilar upgrades I dont know how to make them mesh... maybe by keeping track of campaign threat and dungeon threat separatly? in which case the same thing may work for player exp i guess

I'm working on something already actually, but other projects have taken priority.

Here's a sneek-peak:

So the barbarian can wear armour?

(Well, he can in Heroquest, but still...)

I know that the start of the quest book for JitD gives rules on continuing characters from one quest to the next. Until we obtained RTL we used this we a few exceptions. First any treasures could be kept but had to pay 1/2 price of what would cost. Also OL gained 1 extra trechery with every treaursure card kept.

The other thing we did is for if each hero had at least 1 silver treasure card kept then OL got to have Hordes of things in play at begining. If every hero kept at least 1 gold treasure card each then got "Hordes of things" and Brilliant Commander" in play at start of game.

Just what we did as an example.

Slev said:

Nice! Have you more of this? I loved HeroQuest very much

I'd love to see some of the non-combat magic of HQ days in Decent in some ways. The four original sets of spells (Earth, Wind, Fire and Water) are missed very much. Especially the Earth-set with the spell that anable my Elf (called "Alb" in my german version) to walk through walls

Searching for treasures and secret doors and the 3D furniture. And the much nicer introductiory texts into the Quests. Ah...not perfect but such a nice game

As several people have noted, you're likely to run into a situation where the first quest will be harder for the players but later quests will become easier and easier. You then run into a situation where the players die horribly early on or cake-walk the later quests. Before I was able to purchase RTL, I made some rules where the players faced off against monsters with the 2-player stats and gained XP/Gold as they progressed. Even with the OL upgrade to the other monster cards (3-player, 4-player, etc) the game got far too easy by Quest 6 of JITD.

It was also a bit of work to set-up since I hand drew a map for the overland travel and made up my own encounters. Now that the stats for all of the monsters are out, you could probably find a way to make it work, but it would probably be easier and quicker to just buy RTL.

oculona said:

I actually am just looking at incorporating the normal dungeons into RtL (randomly, RtL levels still included). It isn't too bad looking-

The main problem is overabundance of potions and cash. To nix that, we've instituted a conquest value (at time of death- curses increase the cost) * 100 coin poilcy for revival (Meaning cash has to be kept on hand). Additionally, each normal level counts as three levels. The starting conquest is a reward/penalty for finishing or fleeing the dungeon (meaning finishing any JitD dungeon gives the heroes 9+ (glyphs x 3) in conquest (provided they finish) or the OL 5 for them fleeing prior to the resolution).

Several quests are outright not allowed for legendary dungeons or the avatars keep, as they have instant loss conditions.

Relics must remain in the level they are acquired in.

Also, any level where more than 9 treachery is listed give the OL treachery bonuses which must be apllied evenly (example - Well of Darkness gives 18 treachery - the OL applies a +3 bonus to each category).

All chests are replaced with the appropriate campaign age.

All monster bonuses are reworked based on the 5 player cards. (so if monster A has 20 health, and the 5 player version has 10, it's a +10 bonus- pretty straightforward).

That's about as far as we've taken it so far. Won't actually start testing for another week or two.

Cut said:

This is a longer term idea, bases on a discussion on the "Old Scratch" HeroQuest board. I'm working on it when I have the time between my main project ( www.freewebs.com/heroquestrevised ).

Once I have more done, I'll post it up on Curse of the Monkey God (which I need to work on when I've finished moving into my new house).

oculona said:

I haven't tried this myself, but I don't see any reason you can't just substitute the old dungeons for the dungeon cards when the heroes enter a location (By which I mean one old quest dungeon instead of 3 dungeon cards.) With the modification that all chests are considered to be campaign level, of course, and using RtL rules for opening a chest rather than the treasure tables printed on the quest map. It's entirely possible that I'm forgetting something important, but I think it would work. Well, I guess you'd have to figure something out for Relics, since they would probably break the game if they could be carried forward indefinitely.

It would definitely extend the duration of the game, but RtL is designed to be played across multiple sessions anyway.

Steve-O said:

The main issue is as I have stated above; abundance of potions and cash. You definitely need to tweak a thing or two. We've essentially overhauled the RtL campaign to put the old quests in. We ended up putting x in to balance y, then z in to make up for q+y combined, etc. I have about 5 pages of completely rewritten rules, charts, levels schemes etc that we are testing right now, but the old levels are in and it feels pretty solid so far.