Expanding HeroQuest: My Homebrew!

 In my latest HeroQuest post I wrote I was eager to expand the game. Well, I lied! I've already expanded the game a lot! Thing is, I've expanded it with stuff I already had at home from my board game and ttrpg collection.

So here's the things I've added to the game.

1. Dungeons & Dragons: The Fantasy Adventure Game (2003)

The first, most obvious addition to our HeroQuest adventure has been Dungeons & Dragons: The Fantasy Adventure Game from 2003. It had been sitting it in my garage for more than 10 years: bought, read and never played. The moment we started playing the new HeroQuest I knew it was the perfect expansion. Here's what it has to offer:

5 modular, double.sided cardboard boards. These are 11 x 11 squares big, mostly with dungeon rooms, but also include two outdoor maps, and one cool "bridge on lava river" tile! The squares are slightly smaller than those on the new HeroQuest board (and probably the very same size of the original HQ's), but still perfectly usable. These boards a very handy addition to the game, offering new areas to explore.

40 minis. These are NOT amazing sculpts. The four heroes are not bad at all, but the monsters definitely lack the quality, detail, and pose of their counterparts in the new HeroQuest. If you play with the old HQ, instead, all the minis are just great, matching the scale, sculpting style, and quality of the '90s amazingly well. In my opinion, all of this really matters if you are a perfectionist AND paint (or plan to paint) everything.

4 heroes: cleric, fighter, rogue, wizard (purple plastic)

36 monsters: goblins, trolls, carrion crawlers (green plastic); gnolls, ogres, bugbears (brown); skeletons, wights, wraiths, and a lich (white plastic).

Despite being not-so-great minis, I've happily added all the pieces to my game, creating simple game stats for all the new heroes and monsters, finding great value in the extra variety. I'll post all of that in the future!

Stuff. The box also includes standing cardboard trees and columns, which I don't plan to use because all the HeroQuest scenery is tridimensional plastic, so these look really poorly on the table, and a heap of other flat cardboard markers and tokens. Of these I've immediately decided to use the red circular Hit Points tokens for lost Body Points, and flip them on the white side for lost Mind Points. There's also about a dozen special six-sided dice, item cards, flat markers for doors, chests, traps, and even slimes, which I didn't bother to look or use.

All in all: The D&D adventure board game IS a great addition to HeroQuest, in my opinion. The main problem, if you want to add it to your game, is it is out of production and out of stock almost everywhere. The best chance to find one is ebay or similar sites, or your local shops, secondhand shops, and flea markets.

Alternatives: The world of board games is full of cool big board games with lots of cool, cheap minis. Dungeons & Dragons comes to help again with the more recent series of board games: Wrath of Ashardalon, Castle Ravenloft and Legends of Drizzt. All of these have about 40 minis (monsters and heroes), nicely thematized. Beware: these are fairly old too, and while they are still cheap in the US, they are getting rare and expensive in Europe, so maybe you should hurry and get them while they are still out there. If you want more, the Descent, Dungeon Saga and Sword & Sorcery board games (and expansions) are all seriously interesting to look at for more monsters and heroes to homebrew.

More alternatives: If you're hunting for more minis, 3d printing can be excellent. Etsy is full of awesome models and sets for ttrpgs, such as this gorgeous cultist set, and this yuan ti group I'm about to order.

If you can 3d print, you surely know lots of STL files can be found in lots of places. DriveThruPRG has LOTs of cheap files, as well as dozens of freebies and pay-what-you-want to print new monsters, heroes and pieces of scenery.

2. Toys!

Did I mention I have a 7yo son? That means we have plenty of toy spiders, insects, and other assorted animals that often are the right scale to be featured in our HeroQuest games.

You can find plenty of cheap things on amazon, just be careful with the scale or, even better, support some local business and get a chance to inspect them in person.

Beside the obvious spiders, insects and scorpions, we plan to use a set of sea animals like this for a future underwater adventure: starfish, crabs, octopuses and shark will make for great enemies. And we're going to fight those stupid abominations in their own environment

3. Immersive Battle Map Book and Confrontation Tiles

I backed the Immersive Battle Map book on Kickstarter somewhere around 2018, got it, and stashed it in my library for a loooong time, and when I got the new HeroQuest I immediately grabbed it to check how good this could be. In short, it is GREAT.

https://amzn.to/3GgeCY1 is a HUGE book. When closed, it's about the same size as the new HeroQuest box. and when you open it, you get a full board that's twice that big. In other words, you get a game board that is about half the size of the HeroQuest game board, and there's 32 of them!
You can find a lot of similar products on amazon, but this one I can really vouch for because of the variety of themes and environments, complementing the dungeon of the standard HeroQuest board very well: market squares, harbor docks, temples, a gladiatorial arena, several inns, houses and shops, a farm, a waterfall, a glacier, a ship on the seas, and even a sunken ship on the sea bottom for underwater adventures (we're coming for you, abominations!). Really lots of diverse environments to stir imagination when creating your homebrew quests and, in my opinion, the vivid art style compliments well the HeroQuest graphic style (or, at least, I like it a lot).

The Confrontation tiles I'm using are another relic from my late '90s/early 2000s gaming years. I believe these are near impossible to find now, but I have them and I've enjoyed the sewers sub-set, and plan to use several more.

Alternatives: The world of ttprgs offers an endless amount of tiles, floor, battle maps and battle mats that are just perfect to use with HeroQuest, adding great variety to adventures. Several books with maps: the Giant Book of Battle Mats and its Volume 2 and Volume 3, the Box of Adventure - Valley of Peril set, as well as the double-book sets Wilderness Books of BattleMats and Dungeon Books of Battle Mats are all perfect if you want more environments in the shape of sturdy, ready to use products.

If you don't mind printing your own boards and tiles, DriveThruPRG has an endless amount of items to choose from, including almost 800 free pieces! Printing your own allows for hand-picked maps, but it's definitely not MY thing as I don't have the patience to make good prints and find suitable storing solutions, but I bet there are lots of gamers out there who are better than me at this.

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So that's all I am regarding the stuff I'm using. If you know of more useful resources, let me know in the comments!

For my next HeroQuest post, I'll write about my homebrew rules including random dungeon events and new monsters and heroes!

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Into HeroQuest? Check out my other HeroQuest Posts!

Expanding HeroQuest

Since I received it for my birthday, HeroQuest has become a family favorite, with my 7yo son eager to play any time we can.

It's only obvious, then, that I'm considering expanding the game, even though we haven't played through the whole quest book yet: it's only a matter of time.

So what is around?

The free official PDF adventures

New Beginnings is a free scenario meant to replace the infamous first quest in the quest book. Did I mention it's free? Go grab!

The Forsaken Tunnels of Xor-Xel is another free pdf with a quest meant to introduce the Kellar's Keep expansion.

The Amall Expansion Packs

Hasbro has released two small expansions ("quest packs", as they are called): Kellar's Keep and Return of the Witch Lord.

The first focuses on orcs and goblins (and abominations), while the second is all about the undead. Both sets offer more units of the same miniatures found in the core game, plus two different special doors (which, unfortunately, are the same in both packs), plus a bunch of new equipment and artifact cards, a set of cardboard tiles, and a new quest book.

While these are fairly cheap, frankly I see no reason to buy them since I already have those minis. Two special doors and a bunch of new cards and quests won't cut it for me.

If you are a completionist, go grab them and enjoy the new quest books and doors!

If you are a completionist, you may also look for the new character boxes, like the Rogue Heir of Elethorn. These are definitely not my cup of tea: 15-20 bucks for 2 figures? Not worth it at all for me. I can homebrew a hundred new characters and find cheaper models anywhere (especially in my garage).

The Big One(s)

Heroquest Frozen Horror is a different story. While being slightly more expansive, it offers much more interesting content: 8 new monsters (including the titular Horror which is a big one!), 10 mercenaries (a new mechanic introducing helpers in the game), a new barbarian figure, a new new set of "frozen" dice, two new doors, and the usual bunch of new equipment and artifact cards, a set of cardboard tiles, and a new quest book.

This is, in my view, a much more interesting addition to the game!

Then there's The Mage of the Mirror due to be released in spring 2023. It promises to be another interesting addition with new monsters (ogres!), new furniture, a new set of spells for the elf, and a new elf figure, besides the usual new cards, tiles, and quests.

An Endless Playground

Truth is HeroQuest is such a simple game, anyone can expand it pretty easily. Communities of homebrewers can be found on Reddit (r/heroquest) and facebook (Ye Olde Inn) and offer an endless smorgasbord of ideas to expand the game, with regards to both rules and figures.

This is, actually, what I prefer to do, so my next HeroQuest post will surely be about homebrew expansions.

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Into HeroQuest? Check out my other HeroQuest Posts!

Halloween Mega Sale at DTRPG: My OSE Recommendations

 The Halloween sale is on at DriveThruRPG. For the next 14 days, more than 14.000 horror-themed rpg titles are available at reduced price!

The list of OSR titles currently discounted counts a big 588 items, which is a lot.

The sheer amount of titles available makes it hard to create a list of OSR recommendations, so this time I'll focus on some of the titles listed for Old-School Essentials and for Labyrinth Lord, as BXDnD is my current go-to ruleset.

Pumpkin man courtesy of Nightcafe AI art generator

Adventures

Of the Necrotic Gnome's official adventures for OSE, the only one available during this sale is the Ennie award winning Halls of the Blood King by Diogo Nogueira: exploring the interdimensional castle of a vampire lord sounds like a great scenario for a Halloween game indeed.

Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss - is a very good 10 room dungeon which develops the cliché theme of "crypt with undead" with interesting twists and consequences, and a horror from beyond space and time. I've reviewed it here.

Falkrest Abbey - Ghost, wights, and ravenous zombies in a ruined abbey. Written by Andrea Mollica and me. More about it here.

The Frost Spire - An excellent creepy-fairy-frosty level 3 dungeon adventure with an interesting moral dilemma. Reviewed it here.

The Demon Tower of Valdig Fel - An intriguing scenario for Labyrinth Lord, with a flying citadel shaped like a demon head, for characters level 5-7. Short and sweet.

Witches of Frostwyck - A long, mystery scenario for characters level 1-4, with witches and a cursed village in frozen forest.

The Haunted Hamlet - A best-selling location based scenario by Lazy Litch.

The Stygian Library - A hugely successful and widely acclaimed infinite dungeon-library with lots of random content.

Sourcebooks, Supplements & Zines

Of my very own Lands of Legends zine series, the Grim volume is now on sale, (and the five zines are also currently bundled up in PDF + Print on Demand.

Realms of Crawling Chaos - A classic Labyrinth Lord supplement to introduce the Cthulhu Mythos in your OSE/LL/BX campaign.

Into the Wyrd and Wild - A supplement to make wilderness adventures more interesting, with a strong accent on the weird and terrifying side of things out there.

Don't forget the Trick or Treat specials!

During the Halloween sale, you should check the DTRPG Home page and click on the big orange banner at the top of the page, because you'll find three titles offered for free, on a rotation with new titles every 24 hours!

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Into OSR? Check my other OSR posts and reviews!