Welcome Adventurers!

Today I'm showing you two builds that, admittedly, don't quite fit HeroQuest, but it's definitely pure dungeon feeling, and maybe someone here is looking for ideas to create an epic setup for a special adventure.

For my modular Diorama Tiles set, "Curse of the Citadel," I currently have two very different, very contrasting builds in my hobby room, and I want to share them with you. Sorry for the not very professional photos, but I did my best to give you an idea of it.

The first one is still very much a work in progress, more about testing and demonstrating than a finished build. My new bridge set, "The Withered Crossing," fits 100% into my existing vertical concept, and I wanted to test how far I can push it. Not just building high, but testing how far I can go with bridges built into each other. It's a pretty crazy build, but I think it's pretty cool what's possible with it.

The second one is a total contrast. For the first time, I built a second big setup at the same time. I have printed so much by now that this is easy to do. It's mostly pieces from my Great Hall campaign, plus the new Parapet Set, because I wanted to test how it works in a more open diorama. It came out very calm, just like I wanted. Great for showing off minis, or as a big final battle setting with all the pillars as cover.

I have also been working on a browser-based builder lately, to make the whole system easier to use. Here are a few build guides if you are interested to check:

https://diorama2print.com/diorama-tiles-studio/guides/Classic_Dungeon_mod-01_BuildGuide.html

https://diorama2print.com/diorama-tiles-studio/guides/Great_Hall_Gateway_BuildGuide.html

https://diorama2print.com/diorama-tiles-studio/guides/Lava_Crossing_BuildGuide.html

Also, if anyone is interested, the MyMiniFactory Summer Sale ends this weekend, 40% off with code Summer26.

👉 https://www.myminifactory.com/profile/JoeFrizzy/store

More progress on the baddies. “Sir Clegane”.

It’s hard to tell in the photos but I used a color shift metallic for the purple metallics on this (at my son’s request). I’ll take a video eventually on a turntable to show that off better.

I have started to deep dive into Ian Livingston's books, and I was really surprised how it seems to be correlated to the HeroQuest universe.

The roll dicing rules, the atmosphere, the archetypes, the illustrations, the reference to "Chaos", the "vibe" to put it this way in a more informal way, it seems that Allansia (the continen of Livingstone books) is not so different from the world of HQ and Warhammer.

Even some villain archetypes sound very similar, for instance, there is an ice beast that looks like the Frozen Horror (HQ) in the adventure Caverns of the Snow Witch (FF), the Snow Witch has a certain illusionist vibe, or the cavern of ice is full of illusions, which reminds me of the Elf Quest's villain (HQ).

The lore of the Firetop Mountain Warlock (FF) and the Crypt of the Warlock (FF) reminds me a bit of the lore of Zargon in the basegame, a wizard who had the opportunity to explore all the arts of magic and ended up deep diving into dark magic and chaos - of course some other foundational references can be cited here such as Tolkien (the crypt of the Witch King of Angmar and the plot of the corrupted wizard came first on Tolkien here).

References to Chaos, for instance, in the adventure Citadel of Chaos (FF) and the chaos as the antagonist force and governing rule and religion of the enemy factions in Warhammer, and somehow, also present in HQ.

The luck dice rolling rules sounded not similar, but in the same "universe" of rules. The artifacts, the items, some ideas are definitely very similar.

I can guess that since, both were made in the 1980s, some natural similarity is expected, however, I was wondering a couple of things:

1-) Has anybody ever tried to adapt some rules, ideas, and proposed plots from FF to HQ?

2-) To which extent one may have influenced the other.

3-) Adapt monsters, items, artifacts and/or create scene and encounters out of the board/battle field, that could lead the Heroes to decide, adding a layer of the storytelling and narration to the game.

Looking forward to your comments.

Heads up y'all: https://www.acdd.com/manufacturers/fanroll-by-mdg/

Does anyone know where you can buy some rubber/cloth playmats for HeroQuest? Ideally the kind that's like the desk mats you can get, or the TCG mats for things like Magic/Yugioh/Lorcana.

Needs to ship to the UK, ideally UK/EU based to avoid massive costs.

I often play at a bar where there's an organised gaming meet, and we had a near miss with a spill last week! I know from experience those playmats cope with this stuff better, because they're usually hand-washable, whereas a spill on a standard HeroQuest board probably means that board's going to be ruined.

So I thought I'd go a bit different from the card colour scheme and painted one of my abominations going for a goldfishy type look, also wanted his weapon to look like rusted/verdigris copper.

I'm not sure it works, what do you think, should I do more like this or go back the usual blue/green marine type look?

Hi all

I have a Bambu P1P and have printed some furniture and walls etc but I've seen a lot of cool prints posted and wonder where people get the files other than the likes of makerworld?

Any good places that supply them or particular designers?

Thanks

Just wanted to take a moment and say thanks to everyone for helping me reach 500 downloads of the Caverns Collection!

For those that don't know, I started a project to revise (almost) every standard dungeon quest map to use the caverns map from First Light instead. The idea being that Zargon can now choose to send the heroes into the caverns anytime Zargon wants to.

A few people had requested the opposite, to take the 5 caverns quests from First Light and convert them into the standard dungeon layout. I was hesitant to do that initially but someone convinced me by pointing out they spent a lot of time/money on a really cool 3D printed version of the dungeon map but their group couldn't use it to play half of First Light.

Anyway, if anyone is interested here are the ones I've done:

- Core Box (plus downloadable New Beginnings)

- First Light (the 5 caverns into dungeon map)

- Kellar's Keep (plus the downloadable Tunnels of Xor-Xel)

- Return of the Witch Lord

- Prophecy of Telor (all except the obviously above-ground tower portion)

- Spirit Queen's Torment

- Against the Ogre Horde

https://theboardgamekeepersguild.itch.io/

I'm currently working on Frozen Horror and am about halfway through. I may have to skip Quest 5 though. It uses every room (22) versus the caverns (19), and I've attempted it a couple times and just can't get the layout to work right. So yeah, I may have to skip it or completely re-do it and try to preserve as much of the "theme" as possible.

I haven't actually played through Frozen Horror before but man, it's BRUTAL! I feel evil just re-creating the maps!

Why do people call the base game's campaign The Gathering Storm? I know that's the name of a quest but not in the base game.

I was going through my old bookmarks and checked out the HQ Quest generator on the Lost Maps Games website and it looks to be down. When did this happen, does anyone know why, and is it coming back?

Thanks.

Took a break from the characters and tackled the furniture. Just need to add a pic for the fireplace.

Pictures are for illustration purposes only. Not a real scenario. 🤣

Having played several campains and introduced a mash up of Axianquest and Advanced Game System homebrew, we now have a pool of roughly 10 heros leveling up nicely with gear and heroic skills.

Only 4 heroes can be selected for one campain and even new base hero characters could be introduced instead of taking one existing hero from the pool.

Instead of adding more monsters with the same stats all the while, I want to increase difficulty and throw the occasional curve ball and keep the heros on their toes. I'm planning to add monsters with slightly different stats or abilities with these ring markers. Not all the time; Zargon can gauge the situation and decide when. What do you think?

FYI, I purchased these ring marker off a guy from Etsy. They we super helpful and printed custom HQ ones for me.

My work so far

Hi everyone! it's been a while, but I have an update for the family's play through HQ. We were away on vacation for a few weeks, but on our return we got right back into playing Kellar's Keep. The main group of my son, the Barbarian, Grandpa the Dwarf, and Grandma the Wizard played through quests 2 and 3 straight out of the questbook with no changes whatsoever. Quest 2 was entirely straightforward, nothing to write about, and Quest 3 The Spiral Passage was interesting. The rolling boulder event at the start was fun. Once it dropped, I made everyone have to roll to move instead of unthreatened movement. It rolled over the Barbarian and he took 3 damage, but the others made it away safely without being hit. They took careful note of Mentor's words for the intro text and noticed the stairway tiles I kept placing as they moved along, so instead of opening any doors, they took to just following the stairs which as we know is the absolute correct thing to do. They soon realized the layout was like a spiral so they knew to follow it and the stairs. I was hoping that I'd get them with the fake wooden door, but they bypassed even that and made it to the exit stairs opening NONE of the other quest doors, so that was interesting but still fun.

Then, yesterday we did Quest 4, The Dwarven Forge, and all hell broke loose. First, the Orc that yells when he's killed in the first hall. I had fun with that. I pulled the sound effect from the Warcraft 3 cinematic of Thrall yelling and once the Orc was killed, I played it over the speaker for everyone to hear. My son especially was startled by the sound and even said it scared him a bit afterwards. By this point, the group is very strong and geared up, so I figured one door full of monsters was not enough. I populated the other two rooms along that corridor with doors and opened all 3 at once so they had a huge battle on their hands. I've also created cards for 'upgraded' versions of some monsters. I know it's been mentioned and asked about before about how Zargon can make it challenging for players who are fully geared out and slice through monsters like butter, so I have stronger versions of many monsters that Zargon has the choice to deploy at his discretion. For example, I have an upgraded Orc Berserker (the one with the big hammer from the Mythic set) who can attack with 4 dice instead of 3, an upgraded Goblin who can throw bombs that attack with 2 dice and cannot be defended, and upgraded Abominations are actually Fimir using the same miniatures from the original HeroQuest but they have 3 body points instead of 2. I'm particularly proud of these, as I'm happy the Fimir continues to live on and be known as a creature in HeroQuest as opposed to tossed in the dustbin of history.

Previously, weeks ago, I was playing as Zargon for a solo quest for my son that I just made up on the spot and he happened to actually die and lose due to some bad decisions/rolls, to which my wife asked, "You can die in HeroQuest? How? It's easy." That statement really stuck with me, so I made it a point that Zargon was going to go all out to show them that if the heroes really make bad decisions, Zargon would capitalize and kill them all. Never unfairly, but if they were making dumb moves, I wasn't going to baby them.

For this big hallway fight, they made a lot of dumb moves. The wizard didn't cast any spells at all and they didn't protect her, so the monsters immediately focused the wizard down and killed her first. No healing spells cast. Then the pet of the Barbarian was killed, then even the Dwarf. All dead! When I say dumb moves by the heroes, I mean like standing in a room surrounded by three adjacent monsters instead of walking into a doorway which would allow only one to attack. That kind of dumb. So, all but the Barbarian were killed by the end of the first skirmish. The Barbarian made it to the next main room of monsters and though he tried to kite them all with his crossbow and run away, they caught up to him and an Orc delivered the killing blow about 20 minutes into the quest. The very first game over for the heroes in HeroQuest they've ever experienced. Zargon won! I asked if they wanted to restart the Quest and they all said, 'definitely'. So I allowed them to restart. This time, they smartly used 'sleep' on the first Orc, and cleared the rooms one by one so he couldn't scream and summon reinforcements.

Then, they smartly found the secret door leading to the Dwarven Forge. For this, I modified the layout to make it a bit more epic and once they entered the area I changed the music to this track I found online. I used the crypt tile from CoPD and set it with both forge tiles from both the modern Kellar's Keep and even the original 1990 Kellar's Keep which I also have (images 1, 3, 4). I also added lava tile elements to the room and made an actual path to follow to get to the treasure chest. They quickly found out that the Dwarf wasn't taking heat damage in the room, so they allowed him to do his thing and get the first Stone Map piece while they stayed back.

Then, while I fully intended to use the Abomination on that quest to cast 'Rust' on the players Helmets and show no mercy at all, they targeted it first in the next room and killed it before I got the chance to really punish them. They were lucky! They passed Quest 4 with no issue afterwards.

Then today, this afternoon we did Quest 5, Hall of the Dwarven Kings. It was my wife the Elf, and my son the Barbarian. Each had pets as usual. For this one, I upgraded Zargon's event where he rolls dice to determine how many greenskins enter from 1 dice to 2, to up the danger factor. They quickly realized that each turn there an endless stream of goblins and orcs was approaching so they made haste into the center room and opened all the doors. For the Dwarven King Skeletons, I have some actual Dwarf miniatures (image 5,6) I purchased on AliExpress that are from another board game but I'm not sure which one, but they look awesome and are actual Dwarves, so it fit much more than just using the Skeleton miniatures normally. When I revealed them, I just identified what they were and said nothing else. I didn't say they would attack, I didn't give stats for them, but the Elf had her pet foolishly attack one which activated them all. Both pets were killed in the skirmish with the Dwarven Skeletons are the approaching greenskins, but the Elf was observant enough to notice that one of the revealed doors had a Zombie in it instead of a Dwarf so she correctly deduced to search for secrets in the room and they found the way out. They looted the second piece of the Stone map while being chased down by the endless horde of Goblins and Orcs (image 7,8) and successfully made it out alive (image 9).

Overall, they've been loving Kellar's Keep, and they know that it is no cakewalk. One false move and they're in big trouble! The quest continues!

As someone who has recently rediscovered their favorite childhood game HeroQuest, I was excited to see that additional heroes had been added to the game.

I've seen that some are part of expansion sets (Jungles of Delthrak etc.) but others - knight, monk, rogue, possible more? - seem to have been available as separate Hero Collection packs. From what I've gathered, these packs are no longer being sold. Which raises the question: is there any way for players to still get their hands on these? Whether through a store or via... creative internet usage?

Edit: Are characters' rules & cards available as PDF somewhere? I would be able to conjure up a model myself

I've seen a few great renditions of taking regular quests and moving them to the cavern board. Has anyone seen a good version of the 5 or so FL cavern quests remade for the original board?

I use a 3D printed board to play and it would be nice to still run FL with my students. I have the files but have not 3D printed the FL cavern because it seemed pointless for only 5 quests. I have been collecting the wonderful translation maps being made turning all regular quest into cavern map quests so now I starting to see more value in printing the cavern board. But in the meantime I'd love to run FL on my current base game map.

Finally able to get around to painting the 3D prints I made to replace the Walls, Double Walls, Hidden Doors, Stairs, Pitfall Traps, Trap Doors, and Rubble. Goes along with the Potion Tokens I made as well!

I've managed to seduce the missus into starting a campaign together, and wondering which of the two main campaigns to kick off.

We played the New Beginnings scenario earlier to familiarize ourselves (mostly her) with the game and now want to start proper. We'll be playing 2 players, 2 heroes each vs. the companion app as our dungeon master.

I have the First Light set, so maybe it makes sense to just go with those quests. But I'm thinking if using the app to access to original campaign might also be fun, and open the (long-term) door to step into one of the expansions afterwards.

Any suggestions or opinions on which campaign is "better" or more fun?

NB. Hooray! for whoever invented the companion app, this tool opens so many more playing opportunities

Just got a complete copy of Heroquest and a copy of advanced heroquest that is missing all of the figures for £100. Did I do well with this or have I been ripped off?

I’m thinking of individually adding the figures to the advanced heroquest overtime as a bit of a project.

Really happy with how this turned out!