Avalon Hill HeroQuest

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Yeah, I’m out. Darkest Dungeon looks far more likely to get my money.
 
Well, they got me. I've been using Heroquest stuff for years in my games, and I honestly can't justify to myself NOT getting this.
 
Last day. There's about 10 hours left in the pre-order period as I type this.
 
I've thought about it HARD...but I don't think I can justify it, since running it again is a fairly long shot.
 
I got an update yesterday. Really all it was was a email reminder that I had pre-ordered this. There was a picture of the Barbarian and the Gargoyle miniature. The description said they were just test figures, and not the final colors. The detail looked nice. But I will admit that it felt rather ominous that they were molded in the same tan color as the Robotech RPG Tactics UEDF miniatures.

There were also pictures of the dice. Not much to say about the movement dice. They're regular d6s, so kinda who cares? The damage/defense dice looked good though. There have been some subtle redesigns to the emblems. Everything looks properly etched on instead of just printed on like the old dice. They look pretty good.

Still excited for this.
 
Gabriel said:
I got an update yesterday. Really all it was was a email reminder that I had pre-ordered this. There was a picture of the Barbarian and the Gargoyle miniature. The description said they were just test figures, and not the final colors. The detail looked nice. But I will admit that it felt rather ominous that they were molded in the same tan color as the Robotech RPG Tactics UEDF miniatures.

There were also pictures of the dice. Not much to say about the movement dice. They're regular d6s, so kinda who cares? The damage/defense dice looked good though. There have been some subtle redesigns to the emblems. Everything looks properly etched on instead of just printed on like the old dice. They look pretty good.

Still excited for this.
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I got that email too, and I agree, it's looking nice. I'm excited too.
 
There was an update a few days ago about an app for the game.

Ugh.

I just hope any new content doesn't become dependent on the app.
 
Kickass! I just got an update today that all Mythic Tier orders are going to include the final stretch goal dragon and quest that hadn't been quite reached. There's nothing in the update about an actual ship date, but they're locking addresses in on 9/20, so it should be getting close!
 
Gabriel said:
Kickass! I just got an update today that all Mythic Tier orders are going to include the final stretch goal dragon and quest that hadn't been quite reached. There's nothing in the update about an actual ship date, but they're locking addresses in on 9/20, so it should be getting close!
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Oooo. I have to go find that.

Edit: There's that potential throwaway line about "Shipping in late October"
 
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Just posting because I'm getting anxious to get my Heroquest stuff. If indeed they're shipping in "late October" then here we are. It could be any day now.
 
There's another update on the 27th. Shipping labels printed...
 
Panzerkraken said:
There's another update on the 27th. Shipping labels printed...
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Currently, my order on Hasbro Pulse is still showing "Unfulfilled", so no change there.

I have not received any emails related to shipping my order, but I signed up for FedEx updates and when I check their app I see that I have a shipping label from Hasbro created.

The info about the label says the anticipated ship date is Nov 2nd (today). I've seen some posts that others are having their tickets updated to ship late next week.
 
Gabriel said:
Currently, my order on Hasbro Pulse is still showing "Unfulfilled", so no change there.

I have not received any emails related to shipping my order, but I signed up for FedEx updates and when I check their app I see that I have a shipping label from Hasbro created.

The info about the label says the anticipated ship date is Nov 2nd (today). I've seen some posts that others are having their tickets updated to ship late next week.
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That matches up with that last email, so hopefully we should have them sometime in the next couple weeks at the worst.
 
And sadly, there was no movement at all yesterday. I haven't even seen my delivery date updated to next week as some others have. I'm just sort of in limbo.

I was starting to get my hopes up on having it this weekend. Oh well.
 
D100Homebrew said:
Huh. Cool old game may come back. I read some stuff on board game geek about this.
I searched for the HeroQuest trademark stuff on the USPTO.gov website.

This was the interesting part:
Owner​
(REGISTRANT) Moon Design Publications LLC LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY MICHIGAN
(LAST LISTED OWNER) HASBRO, INC. CORPORATION RHODE ISLAND
Assignment Recorded​
ASSIGNMENT RECORDED

Looks like it got "assigned" to Hasbro in July.
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Chaosium (AKA Moon Design, more-or-less) confirmed this: "The sale and transfer of the HeroQuest trademark from Moon Design Publications to Hasbro was completed in July 2020." But this also wasn't announced until September that year. Presumably talks were already in progress before that point, and I imagine influenced the choice of name of the "Questworlds" SRD, earlier that year.

Given that "HeroQuest" was until that point the name of a Gloranthan RPG, from the same publisher and in the same gameworld as RuneQuest, a previous incarnation of which was published by the (then-independent) Avalon Hill, the phrase "Avalon Hill HeroQuest" gives me all sorts of cognitive false flags and crossed neural signals...
 
The thread title was actually misleading, since the original of the board game was Milton Bradley/GW.
 
Panzerkraken said:
The thread title was actually misleading, since the original of the board game was Milton Bradley/GW.
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It very briefly misled me-- or at least produced a moment of whatnowhatwait? nonplussedness -- but entirely because of the aforementioned Gloranthahead associations. Certainly "MB Hero Quest" -- note the space! -- would tipped me off more efficiently, but after all the key part of the bulletin was the "new imprint, who dis?" angle. So objectively it was pretty apt.
 
I finally got a message that my order was out the door. The tracking info shows... the carrier received it and the package hasn't moved since.
 
Gabriel said:
I finally got a message that my order was out the door. The tracking info shows... the carrier received it and the package hasn't moved since.
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I just checked mine and it's scheduled to arrive tomorrow.. we'll see if it happens, but that's what FEDEX is showing.

I also got a text from fedex earlier today that indicated something should be coming tomorrow as well.
 
The big package finally arrived yesterday. Right after my partner signed for it, I got a text message from FedEx that the package had been delivered. Shortly after that, I got a message from Hasbro telling me my order had shipped.

Gee. Thanks Hasbro.

Hasbro really needs to work on their notifications. It was embarrassing how completely disconnected they seemed to be from the process of shipping this thing. I seriously don't expect much here. I expect a message when my pre-order is available, and I expect a message when it ships. Hasbro fumbled the ball on both of those incredibly basic sorts of notifications that nearly every other business I deal with handles perfectly without visible effort.

Anyway, the set I opened was pristine. The only defects I've been able to detect are one table has a slightly crooked leg and two Abominations have slightly warped spear butts. The other set was given to my partner and he decided to leave it completely sealed until such time as we may need it or possibly want to sell it.

Anyway, hopefully this weekend will see some Heroquesting between sessions of Super Robot Wars 30.
 
Some kind of expansion pack for Heroquest is up on BigBadToyStore. It's "Champion of the Guardian Knights." From the pictures it's a new character class with a miniature for each gender, character cards for each gender, and a set of equipment and ability(?) cards.

BBTS also has the base set up for sale for $125 with a release date of this month (November).

Edit: Also listed on Entertainment Earth
 
Came across some pictures of the HeroQuest reboot box and all the components. I can't deny a certain nostalgia fueled feeling of yearning, but then I remember that it wasn't really that long ago that I got rid of my orginal copy of the game. Had not played it years, didn't seem likely I ever would. It had its moment.

Quick question to those who have got it, is the elf now an actual girl rather than the girl stand-in character, kind of like actor in Shakespeare's times? At least that seemed to happen a lot in our group when we played.
 
HQ03.jpg

The pre-order version features both male and female elf character variants with miniature and card. Both are identical stat and gameplay-wise.

The retail version only includes the female elf figure and card.
 
They look a lot harder to paint than the original figures, but still pretty cool looking figures.
 
As if destiny was calling, I found a ziplock of complete, original Hero Quest cards, furniture and doors. For 5$ CAD. This was meant to be. I dusted off my old game board and pieces (wow did I have lots of stuff) and decided, in the end, not to order this new version.

It looks real nice, but I fell in love with the original pieces and art. Oh well.
 
I still have the original. I had intended to play it with my kids but we pretty much skipped it. For that reason I didn't get a copy, although my older brother has bought it.

Now when I look at it, it is just too simplisitic, and no amount of chrome will remove that feeling.
 
Back in the day, I created a set of rules to automate the GM role for HeroQuest and turning it into a co-op game as the GM role was always a bit dull. At the same time, a friend of mine reversed engineered the game's characters into a point bases system which allowed us to create original characters and extend the rules. We had a lot of fun with that.
 
HeroQuest was one of my favourite board games growing up. I played it to death and still think its an excellent dungeon crawler for young players. However, during the lockdown in 2020, we played through the Return of the Witch Lord on TTS (great app BTW) and though we had fun, I don't think its a game that would hit the table very often these days.

That's the greatest shame about the recent Hasbro release IMO. HQ makes sense if you price it low and get it on shelves in Target. It makes much less sense priced as a premium product for experienced gamers.
 
My family played Hero Quest weekly back when I was a preteen in the 90s. We got about halfway through the Elf Quest pack before giving up due to boredom.

The ogres had so many Body Points (10!!!) and the quests included so god damned many of them that it was a huge chore. And there never was any better gear than what you got in the core game. Not really.

It was like the designers got bored with their own game.

When I run these quests with my family shortly, I’ll be bringing in a few house rules to make up for many hard-earned lessons.

Not to make the game easier, but less dull.
 
So we played our first game tonight.

Ran the old UK edition adventure "The Maze".

Components are fine, but the Fimir replacements are way too large and take up a lot of space. Not a huge fan. Likely gonna bring back the classic Fimirs instead.

Also the wall tiles (square or rectangular) are too pale. They blend into the hallway tiles too much. The old versions were significantly darker. Likely going to reuse the older tiles too.

Otherwise the components are very nice. Was able to fix bent weapons with the old hot water trick.
 
I got to play some new HQ a month ago with 3 friends and my 7-year old. The wall tiles are indeed hard to see on the board, but the simple rules make.it a game that my kid could play well enough as the Barbarian. He was thrilled to be able ro join us. In that respect it was worth every penny.
 
I just pre-ordered the Frozen Horror expansion (aka the Barbarian Quest pack). I never had this one as a kid. Pretty excited to dig into it.
 
Gabriel said:
The big package finally arrived yesterday. Right after my partner signed for it, I got a text message from FedEx that the package had been delivered. Shortly after that, I got a message from Hasbro telling me my order had shipped.

Gee. Thanks Hasbro.

Hasbro really needs to work on their notifications. It was embarrassing how completely disconnected they seemed to be from the process of shipping this thing. I seriously don't expect much here. I expect a message when my pre-order is available, and I expect a message when it ships. Hasbro fumbled the ball on both of those incredibly basic sorts of notifications that nearly every other business I deal with handles perfectly without visible effort.
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I can understand companies being a bit crap about this, it not being their "core activity". OTOH, Hasbro are a $10bn business, so you'd expect a degree of basic competence. Of course the "AH" imprint might just be a two guys in a prefab someplace.

But I've experienced similar nonsense from delivery companies and their tracker systems too! And not only is that their core business, you'll literally paying them directly for the additional service of a tracking number. But same sort of 'won't trouble to update it until after it's delivered' silliness -- when it's utterly pointless.
 
Gabriel said:
And there's also an upcoming hero expansion: Rogue Heir of Elethorn.
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Yep! Pre ordered that too. The owner of Outrun Collectibles texts me directly to let me know. Niiiice
 
The app to replace the « DM » role of Zargon/Morcar is actually pretty good. My son and I are going to start playing the entire Quest set, from the core game, to whichever expansions we get our hands on.

Along with a few house rules that my family developed in the 90s, we’ll have a blast.

Lots of great info about the game and its expansions on Board Game Geek, FYI: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/699/heroquest/forums/0
 
Given the interest in HeroQuest, I going to post some ancient add-on rules me and a friend of mine created back in the day,

1. Run Heroquest as a full coop mode, with no DM (using the floor tiles from Advance HeroQuest or any anything similar).
2. Point Based character generation to create your own heroes.

This is pretty much a straight copy/paste from an very old doc.

The Rules
These rule variants on the basic HeroQuest (HQ) game were designed to remove the need of a wizard player to control the monsters and design the dungeon. The rules are also aimed to enable fast set-up and play. They were developed using some components from Advanced HeroQuest (AHQ) and a few additional models but these are not essential. In particular they use the AHQ floor boards. Alternatively you can download floorboard gifs from /binaries/floors/

Set-up
Take up to eight of the floor plans and arrange them into connecting rooms by placing doors. Keep one of the large floor plans for the quest room. Select a special treasure from the Treasure cards (“Treasure Hoard” or “Nothing” tends to work well). Shuffle the rest of the cards and take 7 random cards. Slip the card partly under the floor plan of the first (likely) three rooms that will be explored (cards reverse side up). Add the special treasure card to the remaining selected treasure cards and shuffle. Allocated one card per room as described above.
Put a piece of furniture next to each treasure card in each room. You can also add further pieces of furniture to make the board look more interesting.

Play
Roll move of first hero.
On entering a new room halt movement, roll on the Room table and set up monsters as required. Monsters are placed on the wall opposite to the entrance door.
Hero completes the move. If there are no monsters in the room, a hero can search. To do so he needs to be adjacent to the associated piece of furniture. If there are live monsters, they attack. Monsters tend to attack the weakest or closest target. Death zone rules movement rules apply as in AHQ.
When all heroes and monsters have moved, roll on Turn table. If a Monster is rolled, it will appear next to a randomly selected character. If a Trap is rolled out of combat, apply trap to a randomly selected character. Dwarves are immune to traps (both rolled and on Treasure Card) . Other character defend from a trap as normal. If in combat, ignore the trap results in an additional random Monster (from the Random Monster Table). The random monster is placed as normal.

The Tables
The Room table determines what creatures are contained in a room. It is rolled once for each room the moment a character enters. The rolled monsters are placed next to the wall opposite to the door the character entered. Once the monsters have been placed, the character can finish his move as normal.

The Turn table is consulted at the end of each turn when all characters and monsters have moved. If the result is 1 or 6 determine randomly which character gets attacked by the random monster or triggers the trap. If the party is in combat, trap results are treated as random monster events.

The Random table is for random encounters. One monster of the type rolled from the table is put into play adjacent to one character and attacks immediately.

Code: 
General Tables
Random              Turn              Room
-------------       --------------    ----------------
1   Skeleton        1 Rnd Monster     2-4   Humanoid
2   Skeleton        2 -               5,6   Humanoid
3   Zombie          3 -               7     Nothing
4   Goblin          4 -               8,9   Undead
5   Goblin          5 -               10-12 Undead
6   Orc             6 Trap            [Doubles = +Boss]

Monster Tables
Undead              Humanoid          Boss Monsters
-----------------   ----------------  -----------------
1   Skeleton        1   Goblin        1  Chaos Champion
2   Zombie          2   Orc           2  Gargoyle
3   Skeleton (2)    3   Goblin (2)    3  Water Wizard 
4   Zombie (2)      4   Orc (2)       4  Fire Wizard
5   Skel (2)+Zom    5   Fimir         5  Earth Wizard
6   Mummy           6   Chaos Warrior 6  Air Wizard
Point Based Hero Creation
A friend of mine came up with these rules. The allow players to create characters other than the usual Barbarians, Dwarves, Elves or Wizards and still being totally compatible with the original.

All attributes cost 1pt each - Minimum 1, Maximum Attack 3, Defend 3 ,Body 8.
'Trained in Arms' cost 3 pts - Allows use of all weapons and armour.
'Perfect Trap Disarming' cost 2pts - this is the basic dwarven ability.
Access to a school of magic cost 3pts per school.
Heroes have 16 pts to spend.
Mind is calculated as 10 - Body.

Example:
The Elf costs (Attack 2 + Defend 2 + Body 6 + Trained in arms + 1 School of magic) = 16 pts
The Barbarian costs (Attack 3 + Defend 2 + Body 8 + Trained in arms ) = 16 pts
The Dwarf PV costs (Attack 2 + Defend 2 + Body 7 + Trained in arms + Trap Disarm ) = 16 pts
The Wizard PV costs (Attack 1 + Defend 2 + Body 4 + 3 Schools of magic) = 16 pts

Additional Abilities and Flaws & Costs
Innate Gift Once per adventure a gift endows the hero with the effects of a specific spell. For example a Beserker ability could be based on the Courage spell. 1 pt
Starting Equipment The Hero starts off with equipment valued at 100 gold coins. 1 pt
Special Enemy The hero gets an extra attack die against a specific type of monster (for example Orcs). 1 pt
Fleet footed Add 2 squares of movement to all movement rolls. 1 pt
Cursed The hero rolls monster dice in defence. -3 pts
Hunted The hero is pursued by an implacable enemy. Substitute the weakest monster in the Random Monster Table with the Hunter. The Hunter will always attack this hero. The Hunter is by default a Chaos Warrior, though his abilities may be altered using this point based system. -2 pts
Phobia The hero loses 1 die attack and defence when facing a specific type of monster (i.e. Skeleton). -1 pt
Greedy The hero must head straight to the chest, always search for the treasure first. -1 pt
Club-footed The hero moves 2 squares less than his move roll. One a roll of ‘2’ he not be able to move at all. -1 pt
Fearless The Hero never retreats. He may never leave a room unitl all the monsters are dead. -1 pt
Coward The hero will never trigger a room. -1 pt
Pious The give away half his earnings to charities after each quest. -2 pts
Code of Honour The hero will never use more attack dice than those available to the monster he is attacking. -2 pts
Henchman The hero begins each quest with a henchman (a monsters equivalent to an orc or zombie) 2 pts

The Quests
Even though the encounters are randomly generated, it is still important that the players have a clear objective in mind. The following quests are based in the Warhammer world, at a time when the Old Empire has been overrun by Chaos.


(1 ) The evacuation of Altdorf was a very hasty affair. As a result a colossal mistake was made and the most holy reliquary which the worldly remains of Sigmar was somehow left behind. It must be retrieved before the forces of Chaos discover it. The reliquary is hidden in the secret crypt of the temple of Sigmar.

(2) An old map maker of Nuln called Jorge Vilny had maps of the tunnels that run below the Grey Mountains in his workshop. These must be found and destroyed.

(3) Next full moon is the festival of Khaine, a minor Chaos god. It is known that the Chaos Champion Lotharius is a follower of Khaine and it is expected he will be present at the rituals in the Chapel of Blood. It would be a good occasion to eliminate one of Chaos’s most dangerous leaders.

(4) The evil Elf Queen Jerazil is conducting experiments distorting nature to create more and more twisted monsters. Taal, god of nature, is most upset by this state of affairs. The druids assure us of his gratitude in the coming days if only we could stop her. Replace any Undead results from the table with Humanoids. Queen Jerazil is the Boss monster, do not roll on the Boss Monster table in the quest room.

(5) The Water Mage Alfugabol is supervising the construction of a fleet in Erengrad. Should he succeed, the fate of Marienburg is sealed. Kill the mage and the project will be set back at least by a year. Alfugabol is the Boss monster. Do not roll on the Boss Monster table in the quest room.

(6) There is a Chaos Fire Mage in Altdorf who has recently expressed his desire to defect. We could learn a lot from him, but be careful as it could be a trap. Roll quest room monsters as normal. At the end of the players turn, flip a coin to see on which side the Fire Mage fights. If the Fire Mage is on the party’s side, they must guard him to the exit.

(7) There is a temple devoted to Shallya up in the Middle Mountains. This temple was built around a magical spring known for its healing properties. A black necromancer going by the name of Lord Grakken has twisted the properties of the spring to create an army of undead. Guglielmini will provide a wand capable of casting one Ball of Flames to blast the spring away and prevent it being misused ever again. Replace the Humanoids with Undead in all the table results. Do not roll on the Boss Monster table in the quest room. Grakken will not be present. However he will have left a Gargoyle to defend the spring.

(8) Horrific reports are coming from a small town on the Aver river. It appears an ogre named Gumphilmash is boasting about his discovery of a pocket of refugees and is proceeding to eat them, one by one. Do not roll on the Boss Monster table in the quest room. Gumphilmash is an Ogre Chieftain with 1d4 Body.

(9) The forces of Chaos are preparing to summon into this world a foul, unnameable demon to launch against Parravon. It is believed Lord Grakken will perform the ceremony. The ritual must be distributed. Flip a coin. On heads use Lord Grakken in the quest room. Else use a Fire Wizard

(10) The Emperor in exile needs funds to continue the war effort. There are a number of treasure hoards in the fallen Empire which if retrieved could pay for the men and weapons necessary. Catch-all quest. No special conditions.
 
PolarBlues said:
Given the interest in HeroQuest, I going to post some ancient add-on rules me and a friend of mine created back in the day
Click to expand...
I've been looking for ways to automate the GM role for this game. This looks great -- many thanks!
 
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