The wide range of situations in which the characters can find themselves means that there can be great differentiation among them, and the possibilities for NPC interaction, both at the home base and at locations out in the wilderness, provides good fodder for establishing relationships, which are a key part of HeroQuest characters. The HeroQuest system is ideally suited to this kind of game. And combat may or may not be considered a fail state. Extended campaigns moved from an “adventuring” phase to a “domain management” phase as the characters became movers and shakers in the region.ĭepending on the edition of D&D used (or other OSR games that focus on this kind of play, like the Adventure, Conqueror, King System), there may still be XP for Gold in place. In addition, as the characters grew in power (level), they were expected to build their own strongholds in areas they had “cleared” of threats, so as to extend the reach of civilization. In addition to dungeon and cave complexes, they might find isolated villages, wizards’ towers, primitive tribes, strange ruins, and other interesting locations. Characters would set out from their home base-usually a small settlement on the frontier-and explore the surrounding lands. The focus on this type of campaign was exploration. Hex paper was commonly used to map out this region, which was often some kind of borderland on the edge of more settled areas. The first major “expansion” to many D&D campaigns in those early years was expanding the focus to be on a geographical region, not just a large dungeon complex. Overall, I would say this kind of game gets the least mileage out of using the HeroQuest rules. There tends to be few communities and very simple NPCs in a campaign with this tight of a focus, and the players may find that characters end up being very similar due to the nature of the challenges they are going to be facing. However, it doesn’t really play to the strengths of the system. HeroQuest can, of course, do this kind of game. Encounters locations could be easy or overwhelming, depending on the design of the dungeon and what “made sense” for that area. And there was absolutely no guarantee that any creature found in a dungeon would be “level-appropriate” for the characters.
Low-level characters were extremely fragile, and any fight could result in the death of a character from a single unlucky roll. Those early D&D campaigns were focused on delving into a dungeon, recovering treasure by the most efficient means possible, and getting out alive.
In those early games, combat was considered a fail state-if your characters got into a battle with a monster, it meant they had made a mistake somewhere along the way. Characters received one experience point for each gold piece they recovered from the dungeon. This was a requirement considering the large number of players that participated in the campaign, and the varying availability of any particular individuals on any given day.Įarly editions of D&D also had a reward system that was based not on fighting monsters, but on recovering treasure. In fact, in many cases-including those early campaigns run by Gary Gygax himself, as reported by those who were actually there in the early days-each session would begin with the characters at the entrance to the dungeon and end when the characters emerged back into daylight. The first D&D campaigns were all about the dungeon. Also keep in mind that I make no value judgments on any of these categories – I’ve had fun playing to each one of these, but they do highlight different aspects of a D&D campaign.) The Dungeon Crawl Campaign (Note this is how I personally break down the different types of D&D – which is somewhat separate from edition – and others may have their own opinions, of course. So I’m going to tackle this topic based on the various “types” of D&D games. And while they certainly have many elements in common, the differences can be huge. The important thing to remember about Dungeons & Dragons is that the game, and the most common campaign types, have changed over the years since D&D was first published back in the 1970’s.
This week, I’m going to discuss it in a bit more details. This has already been asked about HeroQuest on various fora out there over the years. Inevitably, any time a generic set of rules is published (and even when the rules aren’t generic), gamers start looking at it with a mind to determine if it would be a good alternate set of rules for running a game of D&D. So this week, I’m going to address how HeroQuest would work as an alternate set of rules for what could be considered the most popular type of RPG gaming out there… Dungeons & Dragons. It’s the most popular post I’ve ever done on this blog, by a good margin. Apparently there was some interest in my post last week about the amazing HeroQuest RPG and its great approach on mechanically resolving conflicts.
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