Hello fellow Lead Adventurers!
I started this project about two years ago after having completed a long campaign of Thr 1989 classic dungeon crawl HeroQuest by Milton Bradley and Games Workshop. My group was looking for a game that combined the great visual style of HeroQuest with a deeper experience and greater modularity. Advanced HeroQuest fit the bill perfectly and is considered by many to be the best of the three "classic" dungeon crawlers (besides HeroQuest and Warhammer Quest).
Of course, just playing the game out of the box would be too easy and straightforward, so I got to work pimping the game, so to speak. I bought two copies of the game on ebay so I'd have enough floor tiles for all but the largest dungeons and combined those with one of the spare copies of HeroQuest I had lying around, specifically the great plastic furniture pieces that came with it. I made a bunch of single and double wide doors so I didn'T have to use the fiddly plastic door that came with AHQ, which were prone to break after a few uses or just outright fall apart.
So the basic components are in place, now let's look at the planned campaign itself. The introductory campaign from the rulebook consists of 5 main quests, each of which has three dungeon levels that need to be explored before getting to the "quest level". These levels are supposed to be randomly created during play which is very time consuming. Luckily, I found a program online that could randomly generate levels and make a printable floorplan for the dungeon master. I modified some maps with additional enemies, items or sub-quests here and there to keep things interesting.
During the game, the heroes can search for hidden items and possibly find a map piece that either corresponds to the next quest location (those are included in the game) or any other level. So I made a bunch of hand-outs for the players from some of the maps I had created with the random map creator. I draw a portion of the dungeon level on a sheet of paper, adding clues (or red herrings) here and there that were supposed to have been made by unfortunate adventurers before who got killed and lost their maps. The maps were put into a jar of black tea for a few days to give them a faded, old look and given burn marks with a lighter here and there.
I also made cards for all the items, weapons, armor types etc., as well as the monsters so I wouldn't have to look into the rulebook for any stats.
The remaining issue were the miniatures. The base game only includes one type of sculpt for the Skaven (the only monster race featured in the campaign), and the dungeon master is supposed to use different colored slotta bases for specialists etc. Very unsatisfactory, especially considering that HeroQuest had loads of different monster miniatures.
Well, out to eBay again to buy all kinds of Skaven models for all the different types that the campaign needed. The plastic Mordheim models were a great source for common Skaven warriors, with citadel metal miniatures for many of the specialists. For some reason, I never got around to work on the Hero or mercenary miniatures, so you won't see pictures of them here
So that's about it, time to look at some photos.
Skaven Warriors
Elite Skaven, Warlord, Champion and another Elite Skaven.
Things that go bump in the night... Night Runner, Assassin, two Gutter Runners.
Poisoned Wind Globadier, Plague Monk, Plague Censer Bearer, Slinger
26 March 2016, 08:28:11 PM
