Switch Theme:

[WQ] "You're all going to die down here" - Game reports  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
»
Author Message
Advert


Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:
  • No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
  • Times and dates in your local timezone.
  • Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
  • Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
  • Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.
If you are already a member then feel free to login now.




Made in au
FOW Player




Me and a mate have been playing a fair bit of the original 1995 Warhammer Quest lately. I feel the need to jot down some of the ludicrous misadventures we've had down the dungeon. Most of which involve the hilariously unfair deaths of all concerned. It's got to the point that the Red Queen AI from the first Resident Evil movie is regularly quoted, hence the title of this thread.

No photos of games in progress I'm afraid (my set is unpainted anyway)--just hastily sketched word pictures for your febrile imaginations to do something with. The photos I do use here belong to other people and are just to break up the text a bit.


(Repeat, this is not my paintjob! From CoolMiniOrNot.)

Now the thing about Warhammer Quest, the thing that makes it so beloved, isn't that it's co-op. Neither is it the random dungeon generation. It's certainly not the rather repetitive combat or the relative lack of genuine exploration (at least in the basic game).

No, it that it's unfair. Infamously, absurdly unfair.

This isn't the kind of game where you stroll through a carefully finessed scenario designed to make you feel excitingly endangered without suffering any real losses. Oh no. We're not in theme park territory here. This game means business. This game looks at your heroic party of four foolhardy randos--generally a Barbarian, Elf, Dwarf and Wizard unless you own the expansion character packs--and says: "Oh, you thought walking into a pitch-black underground maze full of monsters was a good career move? We'll see about that."

No hero has yet survived two quests in a row. Ever. And to my recollection we've only ever completed one quest objective--the one where you have to get your stolen memories back. Occasionally we've escaped a botched dungeon and made it to the nearest village, but they never have anything worth buying and we never have much gold anyway. There was that one time a Dwarf got his clothes burned off by a random lightning strike and then the local shops had no clothes in stock, so he had to venture into the next dungeon clad in nothing but his beard--making him weaker than a starting Dwarf ...

I should also mention that our WHQ setup includes the following, painstakingly gleaned over about a decade of scrounging:

- The base game
- Both official expansions (Lair of the Orc Lord and Catacombs of Terror)
- The extra rooms and cards from White Dwarf
- The Skaven mini-expansion from White Dwarf
- Treasure packs 1 and 3 (albeit missing a few cards)
- Custom cards that put many of the Battle-level 1 Monsters from the Roleplay book into the basic game, plus many of the Roleplaying events
- The Dark Secrets cards from White Dwarf (which we only use on occasion)

Generally we just chuck the whole lot into the mix as a great big randomised soup, and see what comes out. Usually what comes out is horrible yet highly entertaining death. For instance, we might randomly meet Skabnoze the Orc Shaman from the expansion while on a generic adventure to find the Fighting Pit objective room. However, we don't include the big bosses (Gorgut, the Dread King, etc.) unless our objective room calls for it. The fact that we have a few Roleplay monsters and events in there probably increases the difficulty a bit, but we haven't actually seen too many of those come out on the cards.

We use the Settlements and travelling stuff from the Roleplay book, and have visited a few ghastly Monty-Pythonesque villages in our time as a result, but we haven't yet used the Fear rules (our Warriors have it tough enough already).

But enough of this--on with the suicidal misadventuring. I won't recount all of our games here, just the ones that stick in my memory.

Spoiler tags are purely to keep the size of this post down. If they're annoying, let me know and I'll edit them out.

------------------------------------------------------

Skaven gonna Skaven

This was one of our first games, which unfortunately we didn't have time to finish. I include it because it provided an early, memorable example of how the randomness of WHQ can throw up great little stories.
Spoiler:

At the time we were only using the base game plus a few custom cards--we didn't have the two expansions yet. It was the bog-standard adventure recommended as a good first play. We had to find the Fighting Pit and rescue the people imprisoned there from the Skaven.

Naturally, the random card draws didn't turn up a single Skaven enemy for the entire game.

Orcs? Yep.

Goblins? Definitely.

Spiders? Heaps.

Rodents of unusual size? You betcha.

Minotaurs? You don't see one for ages and then three come along at once.

But not a single intelligent man-sized Rattus P Rattus in sight.

Unthematic, you say?

On the contrary! It made perfect sense. What self-respecting Skaven would risk his own cowardly hide to kill these intruders when he could send someone else to do his dirty work?

We decided that they were spying on us through holes in the walls.

At one point we passed through a room and found a magical shield. Hmm. How conveniently conspicuous.

In the next room, the roof suddenly fell in. We hastily backtracked to avoid being buried alive. As we re-entered the room where we'd found the shield, no fewer than three massive Minotaurs jumped us from the shadows.

A dastardly trap! Typical Skaven sneakiness!

But with the help of that magical shield and some lucky rolls, the Dwarf managed to survive an absolute pummelling that would otherwise have left him quickly dead, and we were able to take down all three bull-blokes.

It all made sense now. Clearly some scheming Skaven underling had left that shield there for us in order to embarrass his boss when the heroes survived his trap.

Sadly we had to stop and pack up before we reached the objective room. Given what happened to the next few parties, these guys got off lightly ...


We Don't Go to Karak Azgal - Part 1

A fresh batch of heroes were tasked with sealing the 'hell's gate' portal that had opened deep in an abandoned Dwarf city to busily spew out monsters of all kinds from the Dark Lands. So in we went.
Spoiler:

Our priority was to keep the Wizard alive until we reached the final room, because he was the only one who could perform the abracadabra to complete the quest.

We fought some Orcs in the first room. Nothing spesh. The Barbarian got hold of a 'Talon of Death' treasure, which as far as I'm concerned is the Warhammer Quest treasure (it's shown in the rulebook as an example of a Treasure card, y'see). This funky little number is worth 500 G, and once per adventure it can can zap all monsters adjacent to the user. Remember this. It will be important later. There will be a test.

A little further on, a portcullis slammed down behind us and a half-dozen zombies sprang up to ambush us. (This was a custom card of mine because I only had 6 Zombie models instead of the 9 needed for the standard encounter on the Monster table.) Presumably they were former victims of the Orcs. We took 'em out and continued on. So far, so good. The Dwarf got some useful Undead-killing ointment to smear on his axe, which came in handy later on.

One or two challenging but defeatable rooms later (including some tough-as-nails Black Orcs), and much further down a series of corridors (including a collapsed passage where we had to walk in single file), we came to a corner.

Now if you're unfamiliar with classic WHQ, I need to explain a few things.

Under normal circumstances, events (such as enemy ambushes, or cave-ins and traps) only happen when you enter a room for the first time. Corridors are generally empty and involve nothing more exciting than a couple of turns of "move models, stop, nothing happens, move models, stop, put next piece of dungeon on table, fiddle with the chunky plastic doorway that has slightly shrunk due to age and doesn't quite fit onto the cardboard anymore, nothing happens, move models ..."

However, even in the emptiest of empty hallways, you can't ever quite relax. Tension and anxiety hangs over the party at all times.

Why?

The dreaded Power Phase.

At the start of every turn, the Wizard rolls a D6 to see how strong the winds of magic are that turn. The number on the die shows how much magical power he'll have for his spells that turn.

But if the die turns up a 1 , then not only is the Wizard caught short with virtually no magic ... but an unexpected event occurs. Maybe monsters. Maybe a trap. Who knows.

And this can happen anywhere. Including a room you've already been through and cleared. Or a boring old corridor.

It can also happen while you're still in the middle of a fight with the monsters that showed up last time you rolled a 1.

And some events tell you to draw another event after resolving the first event.

See how this can snowball?

So we reach the corner, feeling that we're pretty close to the Hell's Gate portal based on the few dungeon cards left in the deck. Nothing of note usually happens in a corner--it's just a corridor that goes round a bend.

But of course the Wizard rolls a 1 in the Power Phase. And who should show up but a Goblin Shaman, with a bunch of his gobbo mates. He promptly starts blasting us with spells. Who does he randomly target? The Wizard, of course. The guy we're supposed to be keeping safe because without him we can't complete the quest.

So there we are, trapped in the cramped corner passageway. Surrounded by Goblins with spears. Peppered by Gobbo arrows. Continually zapped by Gobbo magic.

Challenging, we think, but we've got this. The Elf gets into a position where he can use his bow and starts shooting at the Shaman while the rest of the team fends off the stabby spears.

At this point WHQ decides to teach us a lesson in hubris.

In the middle of the fight another unexpected event occurs. And then another. And another.

First more gobbos turn up and surround us. Meanwhile the Shaman smacks aside the Elf's arrows with contemptuous ease and continues to blast away at the Wizard, forcing the Elf to heal him with his one-use potion.

Then the Dwarf stubs his toe on a clump of yellow fungus in the corner, spraying spores into the air and causing everyone to choke. (Except the Barbarian, who takes a deep breath and declares himself inveegorated.)

Then it turns out that the thing under the clump of yellow fungus that the Dwarf stubbed his toe on was a mighty Undead Tomb Guardian. A creature of impressive stats and even more impressive hat. A creature sufficiently annoyed by this disturbance to his eternal dreams of deceased ladies that he clambers to his feet and lays into us with his axe. Who does he randomly target? The Wizard, of course.

The Barbarian zaps the Tomb Guardian with his Talon of Death, but the dead bloke is unimpressed. (Tomb Guardians have a nasty ability to regain lost wounds at the end of the turn, and they have a lot of wounds to begin with, so if you can't knock them out quickly you can end up in a stalemate.) The Dwarf anoints his axe and wallops the spooky scary skeleton, to no avail.

But wait, there's more! Half a dozen Skaven scurry in from the unexplored darkness of the next doorway and pile into us.

Yet these were but a foretaste of horrors to come--for in the next turn a huge Rat Ogre charges bellowing into the room and goes straight for the Wizard. Of course. Thanks, White Dwarf freebie card.

The Dwarf dies to a Gobbo arrow in the eye.

The Elf dies to a Skaven blade in the waystones.

The Wizard is thoroughly squashed by the Rat Ogre.

Quest failed!

The Barbarian decides to take his chances with the dreaded Escape table in the back of the Adventure book. He rolls to see if he can at least get out of this deathtrap with his life and his hard-won Talon treasure card. He ends up fighting his way through hordes of Orcs and Gobbos and is knocked all the way down to a single Wound, but he survives to reach daylight.

On the way to the nearest village, alone and near death, he stumbles onto a caravan of his kinfolk. Or rather the charred remnants of said caravan. Everyone he knew was slaughtered by Beastmen while he was down the dungeon. He falls to his knees and lets out an operatic "NOOOOO!"

But he befriends a small dog in the next village, so that's nice.

In the alehouse, he toys moodily with the Talon of Death that he salvaged from the disastrous expedition and decides to try again. (We randomly roll up exactly the same Quest as before.) He gathers three fresh heroes to join him and heads back into Hell's Gate. Which leads to ...


(Not my photo! Just included for flavour.)



We Don't Go to Karak Azgal - Part 2

The Barbarian saunters in for his second attempt at this quest, accompanied by three newbies. This time he'll have his revenge. Right?

Spoiler:

In the first room we meet a Snotling with a rusty key. He will give us the key for 500 gold.

At this point WHQ decides to point and laugh at everyone who claims the game has 'no meaningful decisions'.

The Barbarian's Talon of Death is worth precisely 500 gold. But will the Barbarian (played by me) surrender the precious item after everything he went through to get it? Of course not. He clutches it to his manly chest and swears that no stupid little green thing will ever touch it. Or touch the Talon.

And the only other choice on the event card is to attack the little snot.

So we do.

He drops the key and screams for help.

A boulder falls out of the ceiling and smacks the Barbarian on the head.

Being a Barbarian, this does not overly bother him. But it does shove him into the corner of the room.

Which quickly becomes a problem when half a dozen Skaven crawl out of the hole in the ceiling and down the walls like it's the freaking Mines of Moria and start stabbing us.

Now a mere six Skaven should not, under normal circumstances, be more than a mild speed bump. But of course WHQ has other ideas. Everyone promptly forgets how to hit anything (except the Skaven, who know very well how to hit particular things, namely our nether regions). The Barbarian can't seem to land a hit on the lone ratman blocking his way out of the corner to help the others. We have never seen so many 1s rolled by heroes and 6s rolled by monsters.

In the middle of this supposedly straightfoward fight that is rapidly turning deadly due to absurd dice rolls, we roll another 1 in the Power Phase.

A mob of Orcs turn up to find out what the commotion is.

Guess what happens.

Once the Elf and Wizard are dead, the Dwarf and Barbarian try to wade their way back across the room to reach the entry door and escape. The key word here is 'try'. A mere three squares of movement might as well have been a mile. The Barbarian even uses up his once-per-quest Talon of Death zap to liquefy the lone Skaven who just won't get out of his way. It doesn't help.

Yep, we all die in the first room.

And it could all have been avoided if the Barbarian had just paid the damn Snotling.


(Not my paintjob--far too good for that!)

[Edited because I misremembered fighting Dark Elves--actually they were Black Orcs.]



Da Brolly Korporashun

By this point we were a bit sick of the standard Elf, who is a solid character in theory but in practice has an astonishing ability to a) suck and b) die. Also, the plastic mini for him is my least favourite of the four official WHQ heroes. Instead we brought along the Elf Ranger, an expansion character. (We used the metal Mordheim Aenur figure for him.)
Spoiler:

The random quest started in media res, revealing that we'd already been on an adventure only to be captured by Goblins and chucked in Gobbo jail. They had then decided to let us out for entertainment--but without our weapons or armour. The prospect of exploring a WHQ dungeon armed only with bare fists and underwear felt awfully Ghouls 'n' Ghosts to us, but what choice did we have?

The rules of the quest stated that the first enemies we fought would be carrying our weapons, which we'd get back once we defeated them. The next set of enemies would be carrying our armour. We just had to hope that we'd run into something weak, like bats ...

Yeah. As if.

Several dungeon tiles of cautious exploration failed to turn up a single monster of any kind. Ahead lay a T-junction (presumably with a big helpful sign saying "DIS WAY TO DA EXIT!!!") We turned left and crept down a collapsed passage that ended in, well, a dead end. The Dead End from the White Dwarf bonus rooms, to be precise. This has special rules: you can dig through it if you take the time, but unexpected events are more likely to occur there.

Just as we were debating whether to dig or turn back, though, the game solved our dilemma for us by springing an Ogre on us. Of course--this must be its lair. Just where the Gobbos had wanted us to go.

"Yooz all gonna die down 'ere!" - da boss of da Brolly Korp, probably

Now an Ogre isn't quite as tough as a Minotaur, but it's not exactly the kind of thing you want to meet without a sharp bit of metal handy. When it hits, it hits hard. We also made a mistake here by misreading the Wizard's fire spell and thinking we couldn't blast the Ogre without catching the warriors adjacent to it. We realised afterward that the spell only affects Monsters, not Warriors. Oops.

Long story short, the Barbarian ended up as squishy paste against the wall before we managed to finally punch, kick and noogy the Ogre into oblivion. At least we had our swords back. We retraced our steps and tried the right junction instead ... and ran straight into a wall of Dark Elves. Oh joy. Total party kill, yet again.

The irony of course was that no matter whether we'd turned left or right to begin with, the top event card would always have been that Ogre. Of course it would be the first enemy we ran into in a quest where we were unusually weak until we'd beaten our first enemy. Typical WHQ. Can you hear it smirking? I can hear it smirking.

At this point we reorganised the Event cards a little so that some of the tougher monsters were quarantined in a separate deck that would only be encountered if we went down the spiral stairs (another White Dwarf special room).



Mini-boss Meetup

This was quite frankly one of the weirdest random dungeons we've seen so far.
Spoiler:

As mentioned, we don't include the big bosses from the expansions in the regular randomised deck. We only put them in if we know we're playing a game themed around that boss. That's because each boss dwells in a particular location. For instance, the Dread King lives (unlives?) in the Land of the Dead, and isn't likely to turn up on his dread kingly throne in some random room under a hill in Middenheim.

But we do include the mini-bosses. That's because, fluffwise, each expansion has a mini-boss character who travels all over the land and could reasonably be encountered anywhere, while pursuing some nefarious scheme or other.

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time ...

Our goal in this adventure was to find a mystical fountain and take samples of the water for some wizard's new waterslide, or something. I forget. Anyway, it quickly stopped mattering once we found out what was *really* going on down this particular dungeon.

For this game we put the regular Elf back in, and tried out the Chaos Warrior. Or 'Mr C. Warrior' as he carefully styled himself. He replaced the Barbarian for the game.

One of the funniest conceits of WHQ is that the Chaos Warrior character is incognito. He keeps his armour and helmet on so that the other heroes won't realise his true allegiance. Naturally the miniature fits the fluff perfectly and does not have any prominent giveaway symbols on it anywhere, like, oh, I don't know, horns or eight-pointed stars.


(Not my paintjob!)

Really cool mini, though. He just screams mid-90s Chaos.

The Chaos Warrior is a bit complicated and random (surprise surprise). This particular one turned out to have a special blade that could parry enemy attacks, along with a poisonous bite. How exactly he made use of said poisonous bite attack without the other heroes twigging to his true nature was a matter of some debate at our table. Nonetheless we imagined it functioning rather like the mouth-inside-a-mouth of a xenomorph from the Alien movies. At least at first. We assumed that he had a hinged jaw on his helmet to allow this snapping mouth to snap out.

For this game we also each had a Dark Secret card from White Dwarf. In the Chaos Warrior's case, he was secretly being pursued by monsters because he'd nicked something valuable from them a while back. The monsters would turn up during the game if the Power Phase roll was the same number twice in a row. Remember this. It will be important later. There will be a test.

The very first room of the dungeon turned out to be the Shaman's Den, a new room from the Orc expansion. And the event card for the room--drawn totally at random--was none other than Skabnoze the Orc Shaman from the same expansion. I tell you, sometimes this game acts like it's haunted.


(Believe it or not, this is ... not my paintjob!)

Anyway, we managed to dispatch Skabnoze in fairly short order. Or rather he slipped on his ring of invisibility and originality and vanished, possibly to return later in the dungeon.

We then promptly rolled a 1 in the Power Phase and, drawing another event card totally at random, discovered a series of footprints in the dust leading to a secret door.

While we were contemplating this further evidence for WHQ's sentience, yet another event triggered and a pinata in the ceiling burst to rain Snotlings with clubs. Six of them surrounded the Wizard and completely failed to hit him. The Elf was so busy laughing at this farce that a lone Snot was able to clamber up behind him, bop him on the head and leave a nasty bump. Still, we cleared out the Snots pretty quickly too. The Chaos Warrior was proving to be a powerhouse so far.

Searching the den after dispatching the Snotlings, we each found a Talisman that would help us get through the valley of fi... I mean deflect one attack per adventure. Score!

We decided to ignore the secret door (it led to a silly place) and instead proceeded to the next room. This proved to be a large one with four doors (a custom plaza I was trying out). The event card for this room was ... Skreek Deathstrike, the Skaven Assassin mini-boss from the White Dwarf expansion! How curious.


(Skreek has no official model, so I used this guy for him. Not my paintjob, of course!)

Unfortunately his stats proved quite weak and we lopped off his head in no time. (Think we'll give him an extra ability for next time.)

Picking one of the doors at random, we entered the third room--no corridors at all so far--and things went south fast. That old standby the 'Spore Fungus' card knocked the Wizard out cold for three turns. The perfect time for three Minotaurs to turn up? Don't mind if they do!

By the end of that very long battle, the Dwarf was dead and the survivors weren't in the best of shape. We had also made far too many jokes about the Chaos Warrior's bite attack hitting enemies below the belt, which had led us to revise our opinion of his mutation and decide that he had a hinged codpiece instead. Yes, we are adults.

But before we could leave the room, some kind of invisibility spell must have worn off ... because standing there watching and stroking his goatee and muttering "Curses!" was none other than Gunther Larenschald, the Necromancer mini-boss from Catacombs of Terror.


(NOT MY PAINTJO ... wait never mind)

What was this, some kind of mini-boss convention of evil? What dire plot had we unwittingly stumbled into on our way to the fountain? Clearly something of vital importance to the safety of the Empire was going down here! The Minotaurs had obviously been his private security force.

Gunther was accompanied by his trusty book on a stand (a metal miniature that just screams "we ran out of ideas for another character to include in this expansion") and several of his girlfriends, or at least their animated skeletal remains ("what a lovely bone structure you have, my dear ...") Fortunately he himself didn't take long to deal with. He didn't even get to fire off a spell before we clobbered him. His bony bonny lasses, on the other hand, were annoyingly persistent thanks to their regenerative ability.

At this juncture WHQ decided we were doing far too well and needed taking down a peg.

Yep, the Power Phase roll came up with the same number twice. The vengeful pursuit had caught up with the Chaos Warrior at last. They turned out to be a *fourth* Minotaur and a mob of Orcs, bursting into the room baying for Mr C Warrior's blood.

We then drew a Treasure card to find out what exactly he'd stolen from them. It was unlikely to be helpful, since Mr CW can't use a lot of the stuff he finds, but you never know. It might just save the day.

It turned out to be ...

... wait for it ...

... three gold pieces.

WHQ likes its little jokes.

Naturally we all perished utterly in the ensuing melee. Much dark alluding to cursed Pirates of the Caribbean gold was done. Much crunching of bones and sucking of marrow was enjoyed by the Minotaur.

The moral of the story is: don't trust mysterious armoured men with large and suspicously hinged codpieces.

To add insult to injury, the next quest made it clear that Gunther had survived like the Saturday morning cartoon villain he is. Tune in next time ... etc.



If anyone is insufficiently bored by these stories about the onion on my belt, I might add a few more in future as they happen. Watch this space. Or, um, don't.

(Also, is it just me or is Dakka's image-linking facility totally hopeless? I spent about an hour trying to find images on the web that would actually show up in this post ...)

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2024/01/16 23:05:27


 
   
Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka





Sounds brutal! I shall have to stick to Heroes of the Hinterlands for now...

Casual gaming, mostly solo-coop these days.

 
   
Made in au
FOW Player




SamusDrake wrote:
Sounds brutal! I shall have to stick to Heroes of the Hinterlands for now...


I think one of the reasons for the brutality is that WHQ was designed to be played in three different ways:

a) a one-off co-op boardgame, where you take it off the shelf, play it once and then pack it up again, like a typical 90s boardgame (Monopoly / Risk etc)

b) an ongoing campaign co-op boardgame, where your characters continue from game to game

c) a full-fledged roleplaying game with a dungeonmaster.

Because of this, the difficulty of the basic WHQ game is set quite high, so that it will be very difficult to complete your first quest. If you're playing a one-off game, then that's fine, because your first quest is your ONLY quest. Other co-op games where you only play it once and then pack it up again (like Pandemic) also tend to be set at a high difficulty to keep the players interested in overcoming the challenge. (Classic HeroQuest did a similar thing with its intro quest, 'The Trial'. It was clearly intended as a one-off scenario to showcase the game, so the difficulty is much higher than the rest of the quests.)

However it can be frustrating if you sit down with the intention of playing a WHQ campaign from the get-go. Your starting characters keep dying on their first try and you have to keep restarting the campaign.

Supposedly, once you get over the hump of the first couple of quests and have accrued some items, the game then becomes easier. Once you start improving your stats you can reach a point where the game swings the other way and gets too easy. And also a bit bogged down in special rules.

However there are still plenty of 'you rolled a 1 - you're dead!' moments even at higher levels.

Of course you can houserule all sorts of things if you want (and WHQ's rules can be a bit ... ambiguous ... at the best of times anyway.)


   
Made in nl
Fighter Ace






Never played Quest but that was a good read!

   
Made in au
Owns Whole Set of Skullz Techpriests






Versteckt in den Schatten deines Geistes.

Quest is unfair. One of the most unfair games I have ever played. It punishes the players at every opportunity, and some cases beyond what you would expect (journeys back to town are often more harrowing than the dungeons themselves). Quest makes you suffer.


And I wouldn't have it any other way!


Quest is one of the games my group has played more than almost anything outside of 40k, Necromund and Deathwatch*. Many years ago I put together all the various releases for Quest (bar the Bret Knight), and I've been building my monster Bestiary collection ever since (I have tons of Dark Eldar, Chaos, Tomb Kings, Skaven and other things just for Quest). I've been designing mini-campaigns themed around certain adversaries (like the smattering of Ogres I just got, or the Undead I've been building), and I might have 70-odd blank monster cards still to write!

There are Quest Facebook groups, including one guy who's been doing his own things like the Ultimate Adventure Book and redoing the Treasure packs to clarify and make them more consistent. He's even printing cards - I just got his massive treasure set that includes everything from the Roleplay book in card form, as well as collecting all the various treasure cards from various expansions plus new stuff. He's about to do a new set of cards which includes printing cards for all the spells from the roleplay book, plus loads more dungeon cards and custom dungeon boards and whatnot.

Quest is a great game, far superior to any of GW's more modern attempts at the game, and we will continue to play it long into the the future.

*And that's only because we were a play-test group for that game.

Industrial Insanity - My Terrain Blog
"GW really needs to understand 'Less is more' when it comes to AoS." - Wha-Mu-077

 
   
Made in gb
Esteemed Veteran Space Marine




Sheppey, England

Excellent write-up. Thoroughly enjoyed reading that.

More, please!

Click for a Relictors short story: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/412814.page

And the sequels HERE and HERE

Final part's up HERE

 
   
Made in au
FOW Player




 Necroagogo wrote:
Excellent write-up. Thoroughly enjoyed reading that.

More, please!


There will be more ... as soon as we finish the next quest, which we had to postpone and pack up in the middle of the final boss room battle when we ran out of time. Might be a few weeks away.

Stay tuned for an excitingly corridor-filled adventure in which we bash down the door of necromancer Gunther Larenscheld's summer house in search of some round thing (yep it's a Catacombs of Terror quest) and once again succeed at not rolling a 1 until the worst possible moment. Because Warhammer Quest knows.
   
Made in au
FOW Player




Well I hope nobody stayed tuned, because it's been nearly two years ...

We never did finish the necromancer quest. We somehow contrived to lose or delete the photos showing the layout of the board, so we were unable to set it up again and continue from where we left off. Clearly the necromancer perpetrated some foul Saturday morning cartoon magic upon us in order to unlive for another day. We had him, I tell you. We had him!

The quests thereafter followed the established pattern of quick and horrible death by suspiciously sentient cardboard and dice.

But today ... today was an epic tale worthy of remembrance! At least, remembrance in a quiet corner of a subforum where this topic is still on the front page after two years of neglect. Here we go ...

The party: a bog-standard reckless novice team of Barbarian, Elf, Dwarf and Wizard.

The quest: to get rid of some Orcs who had been bothering a village and, if possible, retrieve their precious golden statue. (Quest 3 in the Lair of the Orc Lord expansion, to be precise.)


After so many failures to complete or survive a single quest, we had come to the following conclusions:

a) Adding in the extra monsters from the Level 1 monster table is probably pushing the difficulty a bit too high for first-time heroes (they're more like Level Zero).

b) The Escape table at the back of the Adventure book is an important thing of importance and should not be forgotten. When the going gets tough, the tough get the hell out of dodge. Actually completing a quest objective is secondary to getting as far as you dare into the suicide zone, sorry, I mean dungeon, and then legging it with the gold and magical items you've managed to loot up to that point in the hope that it will better prepare you for the next suicide zone.

However, we weren't willing to give up on all the added monster variety and restrict ourselves to the limited selection in the basic game. Instead we decided to rebalance things a little.

To this end we tried out a houserule we called "beginner's luck". Each hero started their very first quest with a single Luck token. This let them reroll one die affecting them during the adventure. (As characters advance in level, they can gain Luck points that renew each adventure, but this bonus starting Luck could only be used once per hero.) As well as evening the odds, it should give us a little more in the way of decision-making. Deciding when to use your one-use items or push your luck is a big part of WHQ strategy--without it the game can become a robotic exercise in rolling dice and dying helplessly.

We also decided that when ... er ... if we completed the quest, we wouldn't have to roll for travel events on the way back home, because we could assume that the heroes were taking an entry-level job only a few days' travel from the village. And because by then it was time to pack up.

Finally, in order to theme the quest a little, we built our Event deck half from Orcy-themed monsters and half from random others.

---

Our heroic endeavours opened with the brave party of four idiots, I mean adventurers, sneaking into the Orcs' lair through a collapsed passage in single file. Almost immediately they encountered a mysterious hooded figure sneaking out of the dungeon. He gave them a curt nod, warned them to be on their guard (thanks Sir Obvious) and departed for parts unknown. "What a weirdo," we muttered. Little did we know that we may well have owed our lives to his unsung feats of monster-slaying ...

The first proper room we entered was a dingy cell with a skeleton in the corner. We should have paid attention to that skeleton. Our attention, however, was entirely taken up by the large rock that fell out of the ceiling and completely failed to flatten the Elf. Never spring a trap requiring an Initiative roll on an Elf. Especially one represented by the much niftier Advanced Heroquest plastic mini instead of the slightly silly "power of Greyskull" Warhammer Quest one.

Nonchalantly brushing a speck of dust off his cloak, he was just about to essay an eloquent and droll one-liner about the boulder that had missed him by a whole millimetre when the bones in the corner stood up and brandished a spear. Two more skeletons clicked out of the shadows. Undead? In an Orc's lobby?

The fight didn't take long--the Elf in particular managed to hit a skellie so hard with an arrow that its head must have come clean off--and we found a +1 Strength sword in the miscellaneous junk at the back of the room. Naturally the Elf purloined it. Unfortunately, the noise attracted the notice of several Goblin archers and a single spearman. The Wizard found enough power to unleash a fireball on three Gobbos, but despite having just two wounds each they all survived slightly singed (and the one undercoated white was clearly wearing asbestos as he wasn't bothered at all).

At some point in all this confusion (I forget when exactly), we were also set upon by ... six Skaven. Must have taken a wrong turn on the way to Albequerque. Wait, did I already use that joke? Miracle of miracles, the Barbarian went berserk almost instantly (he rolled a six in the first round of combat) and took off the heads of several Skaven with a single blow.

Everyone took a few wounds before we finally got rid of the motley crew, but we finished the fight in fine form. The paltry numbers of enemies so far suggested that the mysterious stranger we had met at the entrance had already taken a toll on the foe.

In the next room a sudden gust of wind blew out the lantern and we had to spend several nervous turns in the pitch darkness trying to relight it. The Barbarian asked if anyone had invented matches yet. The Wizard asked if he could just use his fireball to relight the damn thing. The Elf made a cutting remark about the usefulness of a melted lantern. The Dwarf thought loud and unprintable thoughts.

Just as we got the light lit again and prepared to move on, somebody kicked a clump of fungus. Half the room filled with toxic spores while the other half filled with healing ones. As everyone stumbled around either choking or frolicking with invisible butterflies, a distant whumwhumwhumWHUM sound was the Barbarian's only warning before a frothing Gobbo on the end of a spinning ball and chain windmilled into the room and smacked him upside the head. The dent in his skull took him to half Wounds in one blow. Meanwhile the Fanatic's mates gathered in the room behind us and started peppering us with arrers. (Arrers are like arrows, only they either do no damage at all or flukily kill people. Our dice are unanimous on this point.)

The Dwarf charged headlong back into the dingy cell to clobber the archers and somehow managed not to trip over his own beard. The enraged Barbarian again hit the berserk button (unsurprising really) and chopped the head off the looney with the ball and chain who had defaced his face. By now we had picked up a fair assortment of gold and special items, including two firebombs for the Wizard and a couple of one-use-only amulets. And nobody had died yet. Inconceivable! But the Wizard had to heal the Barbarian's head back to normal shape (by Barbarian standards), and himself partake of the Elf's generously proffered one-use healing potion after being arrowed down to a single remaining wound.

It was in Room 3 that things got hairy. And by hairy I mean scaly, followed by bony and grisly.

It was a custom room I've mentioned before, the Old Plaza. It has 5 x 5 squares instead of the usual 4 x 4, and three other exits rather than the usual one. What awaited us in this unsettlingly spacious chamber was Indiana Jones's favourite thing. They fell from the ceiling in a hissing and coiling mass and sent the Wizard into screaming convulsions under a pile of danger noodles for three whole turns. The rain of snakes also bestirred an axe-wielding Tomb Guardian, a super-skellie from the Catacombs of Terror expansion with the most Warhammer helmet that has ever existed. Then a pair of Ghouls climbed out of the garderobe to join him. More Undead, here, in an Orc lair? Had the warboss taken over an old tomb or something? Okay, okay, Ghouls aren't technically undead, but you know what I mean.

Sad to say, with the Wizard temporarily down for the count while he tried to extricate all the snakes from inside his robes and thus unable to offer any healing magic, the Elf copped a rusty axe in the neck and died with poignant dignity, or as dignified as you can get with a rusty axe in the neck. He did use his Luck counter but it didn't do him any good. Opinions differed on whether his final gesture--pointing dramatically to the Wizard writhing on the floor--was intended to mean "help him" or "that beardy bastard drank all my potion".

The sight of his cruel fate so incensed the Barbarian that he went berserk again. I've never seen a Barbarian who goes from zero to biting his own shield so reliably. By the time the Wizard recovered enough to gasp something about his lethal one-use Finger of Death scroll, the crazed Norseman and the Dwarf had already scattered the Tomb Guardian's calcium components across the floor. One Ghoul was stabbed until it stopped moving. The other scurried off at warp speed. (Unlike most WHQ enemies, Ghouls have morale and may flee when they take casualties.) Among the remains we found a Bane Scroll of the Undead. Clearly we weren't the first to try our luck against the room's guardian. How does the game know this stuff?

Just as we were catching our breath and wondering what kind of prayers we were supposed to say over the Elf, a Goblin voice from deeper in the dungeon cackled "BOUNCE, MY PRETTY!" and a pair of teeth on legs bounded out of a doorway and leapt straight at the Wizard.

With a scream best described as "AAAAAAAAAAA" he hurled both of his firebombs at the incoming Cave Squig. It ate both fizzling bombs in a single gulp, paused, looked puzzled, and exploded. A gleaming gem flew across the room. The Barbarian caught it absently, then winced and sucked his singed fingers. It turned out to be a one-use healing spell amulet that the Squig had been unable to digest. The Wizard was left blinking at the edge of a soot-stained circle and smelling of roasted mushrooms.

From the dark depths of the doorway came a deep sigh and a muttered comment: "Continue da research."

So far we had seen several Gobbos, but not a single Orc. Their reliance on underhanded tricks and traps were starting to make us suspect that the local villagers had been exaggerating the threat.

Faced with three possible routes to the objective room, we decided to explore the doorway straight ahead first. Our suspicions that the greenskins had taken over an old barrow or catacomb complex were quickly confirmed. What lay beyond was none other than the HALL OF DEATH. (Dun dun dun, etc.) This room is from the Catacombs of Terror expansion and is basically made of skulls. It has three exits of its own, and each time you try to leave by one of those doorways, an event happens in the Hall.

However, by now the remaining dungeon cards had been divided among so many exits that only one room or corridor lay beyond each route in the HALL OF DEATH. The chances of the objective room being one of them were slim. Accordingly we backed off for the time being and tried the right-hand door from the Old Plaza instead. In this direction, we found an empty corridor, a right turn, and a spiral staircase leading down into the dark. Across the stairway was only a dead-end hallway. The objective room might well lie downstairs, but in that case we would have to crack out the Level 2 monster event cards. We were in no mood to run into Chaos Warriors or a Daemonette in our first quest with these heroes, so we carefully retraced our steps to the Old Plaza and tried the last unexplored doorway. (These moments of quiet where nothing happens can be among the most tense in WHQ, because you can only move a few squares each turn, and at the start of every turn you roll to see if an unexpected event occurs.)

In the third direction we had to cross a highly dangerous (because high) bridge. You do not want to fight on that bridge. It is a bad bridge. On the other side lay a guard room with a secret door into a second objective room (a rather pretty fountain we decided to stay the heck away from). Then ... success! The Orc Lord's lair lay beyond. All we had to do was clear the room of monsters and then bring home the golden statue. Piece of cake.

Of course, before we could actually enter the throne room, the Wizard rolled the inevitable 1 in the Power Phase and a bunch of Goblin sentries pounced on us. Guess it really was a guard room.

At first mostly archers turned up, assembling on the far end of the very bad bridge we had just crossed. The Dwarf did another one of his famous charges, bellowing a warcry with his axe raised high ... and promptly rolled a 1 to hit. That sent him careening over the edge of the bridge into the abyss. Or it would have if his trusty rope hadn't stopped his fall. Unfortunately the rope snapped in the process and couldn't be used again, much to the Gobbos' delight. Meanwhile, back in the guard room, six more Goblins turned up--this time with spears. What was it with all these Gobbos? Where were all the alleged Orcs?

Some Barbarian berserkering, at least one fireball and an absolute shellacking dealt out by the Dwarf later (he hit one Gobbo with such force it essentially evaporated), we had cleared the pesky grots out and were finally ready to proceed into the lair. The Barbarian had picked up a Quake Scroll, which lets the user set off a weaponised cave-in. This would prove handy in the battle to come.

The objective room itself (Gorgut's Lair) is fairly complicated: it has three levels of floor connected by stairs, and a gaping pit at the entrance that heroes who flub their 'to hit' rolls can accidentally fall into. Once we were inside, we somehow managed to roll a 6 and get the easiest possible combination of denizens: the Orc Warboss Gorgut, six spear Gobbos and six archer Gobbos on the top platform. Of course, the overconfident Wizard went on to roll a 1 in the Power Phase and eight giant spiders abseiled down from the ceiling to join in the fun. Seemed legit for a Goblin-infested lair.

The Warboss launched himself off the platform and dive-bombed the Barbarian and Wizard with a predictably imposing "WAAAGH!"

In response the Wizard and Barbarian both whipped out their scrolls. Gorgut's brow furrowed at this untimely display of literacy. The Wizard tapped him on the nose and declared, "Finger on nose means death!" Gorgut aged decades in seconds like that bit in The Last Crusade, stripping him of half his wounds. As the now withered and greenish-grey Orc stood blinking and swaying in confusion, the Barbarian read out his own Quake Scroll (or rather the Wizard read it for him and whispered the words in his ear so he could repeat them at the top of his voice). The ceiling collapsed and flattened Gorgut, two Gobbos and a possibly innocent spider under a very large 2 x 2 square of cardboard. I mean rock.

Well, that was a letdown. As it were.

But the remaining Gobbos and their pet spiders (or possibly spiders and their pet Gobbos) weren't about to give up. A spider climbed up the Dwarf's beard and gave him a double spinneret dressing down, pinning him to the wall with web. The Barbarian went berzerk yet again--I don't think he'd had a single combat where he hadn't gone instantly frothing--but he missed his swing and nearly fell into the entrance pit, only saving himself at the last second by grabbing the painfully pointy spikes on the wall. After a long hard fight, involving much expending of Luck tokens and slogging back and forth around the three levels of the room to bump off all the archers up top, only one lone spearman remained to dispatch. Naturally the Wizard chose that moment to roll another Unexpected Event and cause six more Goblin archers to show up. Le sigh.

Fortunately the cave-in blocked part of the objective room from view. Unfortunately this caused the Goblins to concentrate their arrowing on the Wizard until he finally succumbed.

When all the monsters finally lay dead, only the Barbarian and Dwarf were still alive. But we had done it! A whole objective room cleared of monsters for the very first time in our personal WHQ history!

The treasures we found were a little dubious, including a potion that might or might not be lethal poison (clearly stolen from the boardgame Dungeonquest) and the innocuously named Axe of Blood, which I'm sure will definitely not cause the Barbarian to go even more bonkers at a moment's notice in future. A hasty rummage in the chest at the back of the lair revealed the golden statue we had been sent to find. But wait! What's this? A tiny hyperactive Snotling who zooms into the room, snatches the statue and runs off with it? Oh Mork ...

After some worried consulting of the rules, we concluded that it would be impossible to actually catch the little scoundrel with only two heroes. It would be like trying to win a chess game when you only have a king and a knight. After a few halfhearted attempts, the Dwarf and Barbarian exchanged glances and turned their backs on the lair. The statue was only worth a paltry 100 gold anyway. The little speed dial was welcome to it. The Dwarf had over 500G already thanks to the tendency of WHQ enemies to explode in pinatas of money when killed, while the Barbarian's flattening of the Fanatic and Warboss had left him with over 1000G. They trudged all the way back to the entrance, clinging to their last few Wounds, ready to roll on the infamous Escape table should the dungeon pull any last-minute stunts.

Nothing happened.

We made it out.



And there was much rejoicing. Grateful villagers showered us in coin. Well, sprinkled us, at least. (We decided that since we cleared out the objective room, we should get the standard reward, but not the bonus because we didn't return the statue.)

---

All in all, it almost felt ... balanced.

After only trying the 'beginners' luck' rule once, it's too early to say whether it's overpowered. The Barbarian did save himself from dying in the objective room pit at one point, and the Wizard was able to prevent a single Unexpected Event. Without the re-rolls we might still have made it. Or at least the Dwarf might have. Probably more important was our miraculous tendency to roll very small numbers of enemies when they appeared, and the almost complete lack of creatures more powerful than Goblins and Skaven (contrasting with our usual ability to spring three Minotaurs on ourselves). That mystery man we met at the start must have done a fair bit of pruning. The Barbarian's stunning ability to roll sixes and go berzerk at the drop of a bat was also decisive, since it gave him two Attacks each turn in almost every round of every combat. We have quarantined those dice so the luck doesn't get rolled out of them before the next WHQ game. Apparently the mere presence of Luck counters on our character cards convinced the rest of the game that we were lucky and should be treated accordingly.

It was a great little epic of a WHQ game, though. As usual, the randomised events somehow cohered into a setting and story. Here we had a supposed Orc lair that was actually just a bunch of Gobbos squirrelled away at the back of some undead-haunted catacombs, preferring cowardly traps and tricks until their lair was directly threatened, at which time they mobbed us en masse. And their 'Warboss' was probably just some ordinary Orc who wanted to feel important by bossing the runts around. Not a single other Orc to be found anywhere in the place. Just the sort of grandiose-but-actually-petty job for hire that novice heroes might expect. But who was that hooded man?


   
Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka





Fantastic report. Favourite bit is where the Wizard blows up the squig!

Casual gaming, mostly solo-coop these days.

 
   
Made in ca
Powerful Spawning Champion





There is not this idea.

That was thrilling.

I like to think that snotling was at the conclusion of their own epic quest, that they completed triumphantly.
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut



London

I do love the meaness of the game

Saying that I will always hark back fondly to Advanced Heroquest. Yes it had a serious fighting mechanic problem (the doors!), but it was designed by guys who were I think big into the original dungeon crawl D&D game and completely in with the old world background. Only miscreants and societally despised individuals did this adventuring lark - because it was hard and dangerous and miserable. And they keep doing it, which means they don't get rich. So you ended up with an incredibly deadly dungeon game (you would open a door, see a room was full of skaven slaves, figure out their wasn't much loot and simply run instead of fight) with a punishing economy. Ever wondered why those heroes are ragged and dirty and sleeping off a hangover wrapped in a cloak? Because they are broke. There is sod all money in dangerous abandoned places. Wizards would weigh up the cost of a spells ingredients and realise they couldn't afford to replace it. A magic weapon had no trade in cost from memory, as why would you ever sell such a thing. You were incredibly lucky to find anything magical (often a question would culminate in a fairly mundane by WQ standards magic sword). You would hire henchmen and callously push them towards the monsters to be yourself a fighting chance. And so on...

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2024/06/17 14:30:54


 
   
Made in us



Fantastic thread, keep it going!
   
Made in in
[MOD]
Otiose in a Niche






Hyderabad, India

Anonymous wrote:
Fantastic thread, keep it going!


OK, that was weird. That was my post, not sure why it's credited to anonymous.
   
 
Forum Index » Other Games Workshop Fantasy Games
Go to: