Creating the Maps

by Dewayne Agin

This is the last in a series of articles on quest designing. While I have said that this is the last of the series, there will be articles in the future covering more specific aspects of quest designing. This last article is going to cover the last step in creating a quest pack - the actual creating of the quest maps.

I call anything that appears on a quest, whether monster, trap, furniture, etc, an item. These are the categories that I have broken items down into:

Rooms
Furniture
Monsters
Traps
Treasure
Magical Items

Smoothly meshing each of these types of items with the others is important to writing a successful quest. Along with this, you need to consider the experience of the Heroes, the type of quest you are wishing to play, and so on.

ROOMS

The Rooms category is just what it says - the rooms that make up the quest. The right room layout can go a long way to making a successful quest. How many rooms you have in a quest depends on several things. One thing you need to do before writing a quest is count the number of open doors you have on hand. The standard HeroQuest game sold in the U.S. came with 16 open doors and 5 closed ones, but you may have more or less than this number. There are 22 rooms on the HQ board so unless you have some extra doors, want to use 6 secret doors, or do some switching back and forth between open and closed doors, you are going to have to limit the number of rooms you use. And that is not considering that you might want to have a room with two doors - an entrance and an exit.

The second thing to consider when deciding how many rooms you want on your quest is time. Most of the Milton Bradley quests used between 8 and 12 rooms, and seem to take about 45 minutes to an hour to play. Use these quests as a guide - the more rooms you use the longer your quest will take to play.

The last thing to consider is how the board is to be played. A quest in a maze will probably use more rooms, with some of them having multiple entrances/exits. A castle plan might be more of a hallway with rooms radiating off of it.

FURNITURE

Furniture can be used in several ways in HQ. It adds atmosphere to the game, can be used as a hindrance to the movement of the Heroes, and as a hiding place for treasure/traps. Be careful when placing furniture in a room; always leave a path for the Heroes to walk through. Be creative when placing furniture. You can build a library by using the bookcases, a dining room with the table and throne, a kitchen with the cupboard and fireplace. Use furniture to block the Heroes' access to certain monsters - place a monster with a missile weapon behind a table, with Chaos Warriors blocking his way. Also don't forget that you can trap any piece of furniture, not just the treasure chests.

MONSTERS

This may be the most important thing to a successful quest design. A quest with too many monsters will be impossible for the Heroes to finish, and if your quests always have too few your players will soon become bored. In ChaosOrc's HeroQuest Newsletter Issue #4, I went through several of the quest packs that Milton Bradley produced and rated them in difficulty. You might want to use that system, or another, to decide how hard to make your quests. A lot depends on how experienced your Heroes are, how many artifacts they have, and how many monster figures you have.

To download the back issues of ChaosOrc's newsletter, click on http://www.yeoldeinn.com/agins-archive/quests/hqnews.ZIP

TRAPS

Traps are the bane of the unwary. Some quest writers like to place many traps in the way of the Heroes, I prefer to use them sparingly to make them more likely to catch the Heroes unawares. Whichever way you prefer, be warned that traps will slow down a game. The Heroes must search for them, which takes a turn. Some traps can be avoided, but others must be disarmed for the Heroes to proceed. Disarming a trap takes another turn. If time is a factor in your games and you don't want them to run over long, you may prefer to place fewer traps.

TREASURE

This is a subject dear to every Hero's heart. Treasure allows them to buy more and better weapons and armor, plus the protection of potions. Treasure can be divided into four separate categories: Gold, Weapons/Armor, Magical Treasure, and Artifacts. Gold is gold coins or anything that is written down as its gold value, such as gems or jewelry. Weapons/Armor are items from the Armory. Magical Treasure is potions and spell scrolls, and Artifacts are the wonderful, magical weapons and armor that every Hero loves to get.

Gold is the basic treasure. This is what the Heroes will find the most of. Sometimes it is given as a reward at the beginning and/or end of adventures, and other times it is found during the quest. If your Heroes are having trouble buying items, you may need to add more gold to your quests. If, on the other hand, they are able to buy many different items after every quest, then you are probably adding too much gold to your quests.

Weapons and Armor should be dispersed in your quest more sparingly. They can be placed here and there as weapon/armor upgrades for your Heroes, or as insurance against Rust/Twist Wood spells. If playing with the rules that the Heroes can pick up weapons and armor from monsters, giving these items as treasure is less of a find.

Even though the quest books list scrolls as artifacts, I separate them out into Magical Treasure along with potions. These are even rarer than Weapons and Armor. If you want to give a group of Heroes an adventure that is beyond their ability, a sprinkling of these items in the quests can help the Heroes get through. Don't over do it, though. A potion of Healing should be a rarity, as opposed to commonplace.

The last treasure category is Artifacts. Artifacts should be a rare reward for the Heroes, not a commonplace item. If every chest contains a wondrous sword or new piece of magical armor, what are you going to reward the Heroes with at the end of a very hard quest? You might also want to consider limited usage Artifacts, such as those that allow a certain number of castings of a spell, or ones that only work in certain conditions. Armor that only gives bonuses against a certain weapon, a wand with six charges of a spell or a sword that is magical against Skeletons is an example of these.

MAGICAL ITEMS

This last category is hard to define. It is 'special' things in a room that don't fit into any other category. An alarm that rings, bringing a monster into the room every certain number of turns is an example of this. Another is found in Castle of Mystery, Quest #10 in the quest book that comes with HeroQuest. In this quest the Heroes and monsters roll two red dice on entering a door, and move to the room with that number. These types of special items are fun and add new twists to quests. They can add complexity and make a quest harder, so be careful when adding monsters to these quests. For instance, fewer than normal monsters should be placed in the 'alarm' quest mentioned above, as there will be more coming in as long as the alarm is ringing.

All of the article above can be summarized in two rules. The first is to use moderation and give thought to your quest creations. Don't put too much of anything or too little in your quests. The second rule is that sometimes you have to throw out rule number one. Give the Heroes a super easy or a super hard quest sometimes. Give them a bunch of treasure or no treasure at all. These twists will enliven the game and make it more enjoyable.

To go along with this article, I have included the finished Necromancer's Lair quest that I have been writing. If you are reading these articles and using them to write your own quest, look over the Necromancer's Lair. See how each of the parts fit into the whole quest pack.

This link will allow you to download the article from Dewayne's site:
http://www.yeoldeinn.com/downloads/fanquests/dewayne/necromancers-lair.zip