Thursday we gathered to game. Instead of Shadowrun we needed a different avenue to satisfy our gaming needs. In that time of uncertainty, I pulled from the shelves Hero Quest. It saved the night!
What can I say about this game? It came out back in 1990, I was around ten or eleven years old when I got my copy. How did I end up getting it? Not sure, my parents purchased it for me for Christmas on a whim or because they felt I would enjoy it. I did like board games and I use to really enjoy playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons on our Intellivision. Whatever the reason, I still should thank them today for buying it.
The game is basically Dungeons and Dragons lite. One person keeps in hand the map of the level and all key information and runs Zargon's Forces (the bad guys), and 1 to 4 people play the characters shown above. There are special dice made for the attack rolls, all characters stats are completed and shown on cards. There are magic cards split between the heros. It was a blast. I believe I enjoy it more now than I did when I was young and foolhardy. One thing I had back then that I keep to this day, is my ridiculous, and obsessive, need to account for every piece of my games. I scrutinize the floor to make sure nothing is lost. I panic if someone mishandles my game pieces. I don't panic openly, this might take away from the fun, but if something is happening that borders on breaking or ruining a game piece I'm all over it.
Hero Quest on Thursday saw me as the Dungeon Master and four of my D&D/Shadowrun friends as the heros. The first level specifically talks about teamwork to survive, team work, working together, etc. I was surprised how much it mentioned it. Much to my pleasure the guys/gals threw caution to the wind and started romping around the dungeon solo. Opening all the doors they could! Before I knew it, I had 3 orcs, a chaos warrior, the gargoyle, 2 zombies, and one mummy chasing the heros back to the stairs. At this point the Barbarian, Ulric, was dead and I was debating to allow his twin, Alric, make a showing.
Once the threat was handled sufficiently, the group set off again. Just the barbarian going out on his down, to die again. Olric made his way into the Dungeon next, who knew Ulric was one of triplets? The Elf died, but I allowed Alric to thump him back to life at 2 HP and suffer the loss of one mental point because of the head bashing Alric used to awaken him. There were other rule bendings and eventually they succeeded in making it out of the dungeon.
The second quest saw my monsters bowled over by an efficient team of heros and terrible rolling on my part. Maybe we'll get to do quest three sometime. According to this magic 8-ball, "My signs point to yes".
No comments:
Post a Comment