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Post by champskees on Jan 3, 2014 12:32:54 GMT
Reading through Legend of Zagor atm and started reminiscing over not just my fond memories for the book but also a great boardgame called Hero Quest (can't remember if it was two words or just one). I thought that game was so well designed & accessible, just brilliant. I ended up purchasing two of the expansion packs, the Ogre one & the Wizard one, both absolutely amazing. It was a family boardgame, so eventually all of the pieces went missing and now the game has been lost, but great memories.
If you're into Fighting Fantasy & haven't heard of it before, see if you can pick it up second-hand. You won't regret it.
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Post by The Editor (Alex B) on Jan 3, 2014 19:01:54 GMT
I too had family copy that was lost to the ravages of time.
There was a recent kick starter attempt to bring it back (via some Spanish copyright loop hole) but it was stopped by the copyright holders.
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Post by yvoire on Jan 4, 2014 13:43:53 GMT
Same here. I do still have the board, but the rest of the game elements has been lost in time... But really it was nothing special, a rather rough game. If you remove the nostalgia element, I've heard that Descent is much more valid.
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Post by champskees on Jan 5, 2014 1:00:39 GMT
Same here. I do still have the board, but the rest of the game elements has been lost in time... But really it was nothing special, a rather rough game. If you remove the nostalgia element, I've heard that Descent is much more valid. HeroQuest isn't the best RPG boardgame out there. But it was arguably one of the most successful due to its accessibility. This was a game for families to play. Other competitors i.e. D&D etc. catered to a niche audience, where the players/users had a greater understanding/familiarity with the gameplay & mechanics. You could buy HQ at KMart. Fighting Fantasy is not the best gamebook series out there; it has a fairly basic gameplay system & many of the books have errors & flaws. But it is one of the most accessible. Kids & adults alike can enjoy the books and it is for this reason they have done so well. You could buy FF titles in almost any bookstore and always find some titles in your local library. A similar argument could be made for apple/windows compared to unix/linux; the most successful products are generally the ones that are easy for the LCD to access. I guess I am suggesting that it is not just nostalgia that makes HQ or FF great. There is something very tangible that differentiates these products from their competitors and it surprises me that so many game developers seem to miss this. It could also be argued that this understanding of the market was Games Workshop's greatest strength.
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Post by yvoire on Jan 6, 2014 15:55:13 GMT
Fighting Fantasy is not the best gamebook series out there; it has a fairly basic gameplay system & many of the books have errors & flaws. But it is one of the most accessible. Kids & adults alike can enjoy the books and it is for this reason they have done so well. You could buy FF titles in almost any bookstore and always find some titles in your local library. A similar argument could be made for apple/windows compared to unix/linux; the most successful products are generally the ones that are easy for the LCD to access. I guess I am suggesting that it is not just nostalgia that makes HQ or FF great. There is something very tangible that differentiates these products from their competitors and it surprises me that so many game developers seem to miss this. It could also be argued that this understanding of the market was Games Workshop's greatest strength. On the first point, I have to disagree. The gameplay is far from being basic. Despite the simple combat rules, any FF title requires multiple plays most of the times in order to reach the end. It's the true path philosophy to which every title more or less adhere. Italy was one of world's largest gamebook markets in the eighties, yet FF saw only twelve titles published, and titles like Deathtrap Dungeon and Crypt of the Sorcerer weren't even included in the run exactly because of the high difficulty. Just to show how much gamebooks were popular, this is an example of a collection: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Librogame.jpg and it only includes books from one publisher,E.Elle, the ones who first started publishing these books, and as pioneers, the most successful, but there were others too, so this is by no means a complete collection. On the other hand the entire run of Lone Wolf was translated, and was definitely the most successful series of all because that was indeed a basic gameplay and was much more story-driven than quest-driven. I.e. you read it because you loved the story and setting, not for the challenge of completing it. That doesn't mean there were no dead ends, but very few compared to FF and the difficulty was overall very low. Steve Jackson's Sorcery had a lot more appeal than the rest of the FF because it was less true path and more story driven. No, it is not just nostalgia, of course. It's the fact that they were the first, pioneering into a new genre. Definitely not the best, but definitely the first. In Italy FF wasn't the first, and indeed, was not even one of the more popular series. I don't know about the reception of hero quest elsewhere, but here in italy it was strictly seen as something for kids. No adult would have played it but beware: that does have to do a lot with the italian attitude towards games, which are very often seen as juvenile, to the extent that many people scorn adult players. This is luckily lessening a little in recent times, but not that much... unfortunately.
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Post by CharlesX on Nov 9, 2023 15:39:40 GMT
I played Heroquest a couple of months back with some mates, just the starter level. I'm sorry to say I didn't enjoy it that much, not only because we didn't entirely get the rules and the GM wasn't taking it too seriously. Might be because we were full-grown adults, where I'd enjoyed it a lot as a kid? The game itself came across as slow and dated. It might have been interesting to have more options, different places to go, things to try and maybe some options other than search\fight\cast spell such as talk to, hide or befriend (something Talisman has perhaps done better). I haven't played Advanced Heroquest, but I imagine it wasn't too different from standard Heroquest. Edit: I don't know what Italians think about boardgames and other games as mentioned in the above by yvoire but from a family who emigrated to UK from Poland, they were always slightly into games and jokes. I'd hate to work in a country where I couldn't sometimes enjoy games with other people after a hard day!
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,435
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Nov 9, 2023 15:49:52 GMT
The game itself came across as slow and dated. If you want a more fast and fun game, I would recommend Dungeon Run. A bit like HeroQuest, it has players controlling various heroes and entering a dungeon, but there's no need for a GM, monsters and the dungeons are randomly generated. Each game requires you to kill a boss monster and steal his treasure and then get out of there. Players can work together to find and fight the boss, but once he's down, it becomes an every man-for-himself scramble to be the one who reaches the exit with the treasure.
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Post by scouserob on Nov 9, 2023 16:52:03 GMT
I have very happy memories of playing HeroQuest (and Space Crusade, Space Hulk and the Original Blood Bowl). [At least I'm guessing it was the original Blood Bowl, along with the Star Players and the Companion extra rule books.]
I didn't own HeroQuest, my friend did, but, of the others we played, I did own Blood Bowl.
As for HeroQuest, it was myself and two, or sometimes three, others playing. I was usually the Barbarian. I remember one of the others was a wizard, and I seem to recall that the characters worked well together. I liked the sense of progression as you moved through the quests, fighting more difficult enemies as you went, and picking up gold to spend in the Armoury. He also had the expansions Kellar's Keep and Return of the Witch Lord, which increased the longevity of the game. Though I don't remember much at all about Kellar's Keep beyond the cool name, but we definitely completed Return of the Witch Lord. Yes, it could get a bit stale and repetitive but it was good fun just playing the odd mission or four, now and again.
He also bought Advanced HeroQuest with its tons of Skaven. That didn't seem anywhere near as enjoyable as the original for some reason (lost to the mists of time).
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Post by CharlesX on Nov 9, 2023 18:52:04 GMT
He also bought Advanced HeroQuest with its tons of Skavan. That didn't seem anywhere near as enjoyable as the original for some reason (lost to the mists of time). As the OP pointed out my understanding is Heroquest succeeded partly because of its simplicity and accessibility, which might come across to some as shortcomings. I recall reading somewhere Advanced Heroquest was not quite as commercially successful as Heroquest, perhaps because in adding complexity it also added to some slowness I've alluded to. Whether Advanced Heroquest has a fanbase anyway I don't know and never having owned or seen it never mind played it I wouldn't know.
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Post by pip on Nov 10, 2023 9:08:17 GMT
The material for this game was amazing (and if you're into pen & paper RPGs, it can totally be reused for that as well): tons of figurines, furniture, etc. But IIRC the material was the best thing about it and the game was rather simplistic, so I'm not sure I'd enjoy it as an adult. To be fair, I also remember the starter scenario of the basic box to be the most boring of them all.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,435
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Nov 10, 2023 10:00:30 GMT
To be fair, I also remember the starter scenario of the basic box to be the most boring of them all. The first quest seems to have no goal. I think I used to play it that the heroes had to get to the tomb and back, but it doesn't actually say that anywhere - bit of an oversight there!
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Post by Pete Byrdie on Nov 10, 2023 19:34:19 GMT
It must've been Advanced HeroQuest I played as I remember loads of skaven. It wasn't mine. But we were role-players too, so it was kind of a simple alternative if we didn't have a campaign going on, or not everyone was present, or people were present who weren't part of our campaign.
Shout out to the simple but fun The Sorcerer's Cave.
I suppose, and someone must have done this, a modern innovation to such dungeon crawl games would be to use an app to create random situations and plot points.
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Post by evilwizard on Nov 17, 2023 0:27:52 GMT
I still have very fond memories of HeroQuest, however, this is what stopped me backing the avalon hill reissue - and I'm glad I did so as they went for the US version which has added complications for the sake of it (even though the lack of spells for Chaos Sorcerers in the UK version always seemed strange), and the new quests are unimaginative and badly made, much like the US exclusive expansions that are still inexcusably bad in the reissued form.
It was, and is (ignoring the nonsensical US / reissue rules bloat and fan boy fantasy new quest packs) a good game to play, and gives ample opportunity to build a role play style narrative if desired.
The biggest problem is a small but highly vocal and neurotic element of the fanbase that feels the need to change every single rule and turn a fun childrens game into an excruciatingly painful example of how to change everything so that they not only win, but utterly annihilate their opponents (probably their own children) because having FUN in a game is apparently a taboo...
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Nov 19, 2023 17:55:28 GMT
Heroquest turned out to be a 'gateway drug' for children to get them into tabletop wargaming like Warhammer and whatnot. In the same way that FF was one for D&D and RPGs in general.
I too have got fond memories of the game. We still have it and it is still enjoyable ( i last played it maybe 8 years ago or so) but as evil wizard says it is a fun children's game and doesn't need rules bloat.
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