In War, Love and Underground, there are no rules: My Dungeon Crawling Project

[Cherno]

Greetings fellow heroes, dungeon masters, warriors, thieves, rogues, mages, tunnellers and imps,

As a sort of continuation of my previous thread I finally decided on a ruleset to use for my future dungeon crawling endeavors.

I bought a PDF copy of Goalsystem: Delves because it promises quick play combined with flexibility and extended campaign play.

No, where do I start? Well, I went to the basement and rummaged through old cardboard boxes filled my my tabletop gaming stuff. I took everything that could be used for dungeon crawling with me and sorted through it all in my living room. What I cam up with thus far:

3 copies of Hero Quest (including one Master edition)
one of each oif the European HQ expansions
2 copies of Advanced Hero Quest
AHQ: Terror in the Dark
2 copies of Warhammer Quest
additional WHQ floor tiles
one of each boxed WHQ expansions
Descent: Journeys in the Dark 1st edition

This gives me, uhm, let's say... A de(s)cent start for my own scenarios. However, uncreative as I am, my plan is to adapt and condense all the HQ adventures into adventures for Goalsystem Delves. HQ has many campaigns, each with lots of adventures (often 12 to 14!), but most only have one or two special features, and often it's just one room that has a different overlay for flavor. Things can get stale pretty fast, so I will try to combine these special elements to make a smaller number of adventures that are filled with interesting things to explore.

The first step is to convert all HQ monsters and mini-bosses to GS stats, that means I will probably have to create some new special abilites too. Then I will try to create adventures that follow the HQ campaign but also fit GS's 3-5 encounter per adventure structure.

I don't plan to paint the miniatures as I like the boardgamey look and also being able to just throw them in the box after playing without worrying about the paintjob getting ruined

So far, so good. Here are some pictures of the miniatures and dungeon decor I will be using.







Heroes, Undead, Ogres, Evil Wizards, Men-at-Arms...


Greenskins, Skaven, Chaos Warriors, Clawed Horrors (Genestealers form Space Crusade )...


Vermin (Spiders, Rats, Bats), Minotaurs, More Greenskins and Skaven...


Beastmen, Skeleton Archers, Warlocks, Razorwings, Hell Hounds, Giant Spiders, Collossal Ogres, Nagas, Manticores...


Giants, Demons, Dragons...


Dungeon Furniture...


To be continued 

[Michka]

I am supremely, outrageously, inconsolably jealous of your collection!!!  I have a number of those items at Casa-Michka as well, but nowhere near the amount you seem to have gathered. The Warhammer Quest stuff alone has me green with envy. I look forward to seeing what you will do with all those goodies. I've seen what you can do with Cyberpunk, and have stolen your ideas in the past, so this can only be a good thing.   

[deathjester25]

Wow that is a crazy collection. Are you going to use the henchmen rules for all the lower tier monster or just make them individuals? While I like that rule for open tabletop play I'm not sure how it would work with dungeon tiles.

[Cherno]

Yeah I was wondering about the henchmen rule as well; I agree that it's probably better for large-scale overworld battles. I just can't imagine having 10 lowly skeletons, each with 1 HP, being represented by a single miniature, in a tiny dungeon room. I don't think I'm gonna use this rule for my underground adventures.

After having taken another look at the vanilla HQ campaign, I noticed that only the last three quests form a single narrative (stealing a crown, thereby awakening the Witch King, then having to retrieve the Spirit Sword, and finally coming back to the WK's fortress to defeat him before he gathers his army. Everything else is a one-off quest. So,  I think I'm gonna use the WK-mini-campaign as the main quest and everything else as optional side-quests if players wish to gain XP or GP. In the coming days, I will convert the heroes and monsters to GSD stats and then just test-play one of the quests to see how balanced they are in the new ruleset.

[Cherno]

I spent the last hours working on some cards for powers and equipment, they are American Board Game Mini-sized cards (Fantasy flight Games use these a lot).

[deathjester25]

Those are really nice. Are you gonna do stat cards for monsters too

[Cherno]

I plan to do cards for everything that would benefit from cards, yes 

[deathjester25]

Sweet! If you are looking for another set of dungeon crawl rules check out caver crawl. It's a play test set of rules by a member of this forum.