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Hero Legens..........Any comments or additions?

10 replies [Last post]
Wed, 04/20/2005 - 22:05
Anonymous

OK, I'm new so hi to anyone who answers this thread

My idea for a boardgame is a little like that of heroquest but not quite the same. I want to make a game where characters go through different halls, dungeons, whatever.

My board is thus far undecided.
Should I go with an actual board or pieces that fit together like heroscape?

My characters are so much more customizable. (names are undecided) There is the classic barbarian/warrior, wizard/sorcerer, and the elf. When they kill enemies they get a certain amount of xp that the gm keeps up with and characters record on their sheet. Also each character has a certain number of ranks that they can fill with accessories (so they do'nt make uber characters) like bows swords canes and stuff of that nature. They all have health and mp(except barbarian/warrior).

Each of them also have feats. Every character gets one point to spend on feats at every even level. Once all the required space for that feat is filled the hero gains that feat.

There is also a skill tree that each character has. They get to choose a new skill every 5 levels. This really adds to the customization of characters.

The attack is done by dice. There are 2 swords, 2 shields, 1 bow, and one magic wand on each die. For attacks each character(and monster) has a certain number of die they roll and obviously if you get a shield you block one of their attacks. For spells and the bow you get a different amount of dice to roll and you have to roll at least one of the correspondin symbol unless otherwise noted on the spell or bow.

A normal attack round would be:barbarian/warrior attacks sewer rat
Turn is as follows
barbarian/warrior: rolls 5 die gets 3 swords, 1 shield, and 1 magic wand(which does nothing)
Sewer rat: rolls 2 die gets 2 swords
barbarian/warrior: takes one damage and blocks one damage
sewer rat: takes 3 damage
barbarian/warrior: rolls 5 gets 4 swords and 1 bow
sewer rat: rolls 2 gets 1 shield and 1 sword
barbarian/warrior: takes one damage
sewer rat: takes 3 damage blocks 1 damage
sewer rat: 5hp gone, dead

Those are my basics and I hope to have more soon!!

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Thu, 04/21/2005 - 01:49
#1
Johan
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Hero Legens..........Any comments or additions?

Hi

I don't want to kill your idea but I believe that you have several problems with this dice system.
- This can be a dice feast. To kill a simple rat you will threw the dice 4 times (totally 14 dice). What will happen if 3 characters meat 6 rats in a sewer.
- To add some power to a character (or let the character gain a level or two) you will add more dice to the character.
- You have success or not, nothing in between (and no chance to do a blunder).
- How do you handle armor (there are two ways, either you give get more dice for the armor, (but then you get attacks for having armor) or the armor is a fixed value (and the problem will be that the character are protected from some attacks)).
- Range weapon will be less powerful.
- Magic can not misfire (to powerful or no power in magic at all).
- Without special rules will weapon as throwing daggers, skills like doge and surprise attacks, be hard to handle.

One game that has "succeed" with different dice is Doom III, the Board game. That game has a set of different dice (I think it was 4 types). Each side of the dice can have 3 values (range, attack value and if you lose amo). The weapon indicate haw many dice and of what kind you can use. (Some dice has also a greater risk to miss).

// Johan

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Thu, 04/21/2005 - 02:21
#2
Zzzzz
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Hero Legens..........Any comments or additions?

Just to add on to the dice... are their different dice for each class? Right now if all classes used the current dice you states (2 shields, 2 swords, 1 bow, 1 magic), the mages and archers would be at a large percentage disadvantage in my opinion. But of course that is based on my thought of a typical RPG where wizards cast and archer use their bows. Basically magic or bow attacks would only occur 17 percent of the time!!! That means 1 out of every 6 rolls.... not much of a archer or mage at that rate, at least not compared to the warrior.

I would suggest having a set of dice for each class that factors in exactly what you want each class to be able to do... For instance have a warrior die that contains the 3 swords, 2 shield and 1 miss. This will allow them to hit more often then not, but also build in a concept of actually missing which can and should happen.

For a wizard I might consider something like 3 magic wand, 1 sword, 1 block and 1 miss. This would up the potential for this class to hit with magic more often, but also risk getting hit more then a warrior might.

Not sure what you really have planned, but what about healing characters? What about variety of what they can do? If a warrior rolls 1 sword is it always just 1 point sword damage? Or is there other things like a double damage feat or skill then can use in conjunction with the sword hit?

Take what I say with a grain of salt, I am coming at this as I think about a typical RPG, which not exactly where you are coming from, so I may be way off...

:)

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Thu, 04/21/2005 - 08:07
#3
Anonymous
Hero Legens..........Any comments or additions?

Thanks for the help guys and I see what you are saying about the dice
I could make the dice for each class so the mage would hit more often and the archer as well. To add something more from johan's reply I think I will give a different dice to the characters when blocking so it is easier to defend
The characters(like johan said) need more attack dice. I do agree with this .
To answer Zzzzz the characters have skills and feats that they can upgrade as they gain levels. (more on that later) Thank you for the help!!

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Thu, 04/21/2005 - 08:18
#4
Nando
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Hero Legens..........Any comments or additions?

RPGamer wrote:
The characters(like johan said) need more attack dice. I do agree with this.

Hmm...

The way I understood what Johan wrote:
I believe that you have several problems with this dice system ... This can [and will] be a dicefest ... To add some power to a character (or let the character gain a level or two) you will add [even] more dice [!] to the character.

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Thu, 04/21/2005 - 09:06
#5
Johan
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Hero Legens..........Any comments or additions?

Nando wrote:
Hmm...

I agree...

Some more question!
What more elements are you planning to include in the game. Are there more random elements as cards, secret markers or tables? How many variants of each type?
You should try minimize the number of random elements in the game. Otherwise the players will get the feeling that the game is played for them.

I also like to here more about the game. What are you trying to achieve? Is it the fights, the dungeon exploration, a RPG simulation or something else? This information will make it easier for us to help you.

// Johan

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Thu, 04/21/2005 - 16:15
#6
Anonymous
Hero Legens..........Any comments or additions?

OK I'll tell all. This is my first attempt to make an actual boardgame go farther than ideas and I'm really glad that I found this sight.

I really like the aspect of roleplaying yes. So I wanted to incorperate that into my game. The exploration of the dungeon yes but more than that is uncertain.
Part of a true roleplaying game I feel is the fights. An rpg should have wizards who blow the enemies to pieces, barbarians who gauge the crap out of creatures. And a cunning elf who comes along for the treasure.

The random thing pretty much only goes as far as the dice. Every other aspect of game is written down by the gm who makes sure everything is in order.

If you guys could, would you give me the name of a game I might could get my hands on. That might be close to this.(I've already played heroquest)
If you can thanks

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Thu, 04/21/2005 - 16:55
#7
kungfugeek
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Hero Legens..........Any comments or additions?

RPGamer wrote:
If you guys could, would you give me the name of a game I might could get my hands on. That might be close to this.(I've already played heroquest)
If you can thanks

Runebound is one I've played a few times. It's fun for what it is, but it can get a little long. And if you're set back from just one bad turn, you can easily lose all hope of having a chance to win. That's a turn off for just about everybody in my gaming group.

Warhammer Quest is another. Again, it's fun for what it is -- a super-shallow dicefest (and that's with the advanced "roleplaying" rules). As far as a dungeon crawl goes, this sounds closer to what you're going for than Runebound.

Magic Realm is one I've heard about but never played.

Dungeon Twist is a new one I really want to play soon. I guess it's a dungeon crawl with almost no random factor (even combat is completely predictable) but the dungeon itself changes on you. Hard to explain.

Dungeoneer is one that has a collectible aspect to it. I've never played it.

There are many others I can't think of right now.

Check out BoardGameGeek for details of these games.

If I could offer my own (extremely amateur) opinions... I don't mind the occassional dicefest, but a lot of them follow the same pattern of dungeon crawl/kill things/get loot/level up/track hp/track mp or spell cards/roll to move/roll to hit/roll to damage/human/elf/dwarf/wizard/fighter/healer/random traps/goblin/orc/dragon/etc. I think that the reason a lot of dungeon crawls have those aspects is there's something appealing about a fantasy romp treasure quest. But the more a dungeon crawl type game deviates from those aspects I listed above, the more likely I am to try it. Just my two cents.

Good luck on your design.

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Thu, 04/21/2005 - 17:50
#8
larienna
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There is also Dungeon Crawl

HI

There is also dungeon crawl which his a download and build yourself game. I bought it recently and it look very nice. It`s a PDF of 200 pages where 175 are actually the rules, equipment, artifacts, spells, adventures, etc. And the last 25 pages are the board print out. The miniatures are not there yet. ( the game is not officially released yet )

Even if there is a lot of rule pages,, it look much more simple than Dungeon and Dragons. I have not read it yet. Looks really promising.

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Thu, 04/21/2005 - 21:09
#9
Anonymous
Hero Legens..........Any comments or additions?

Thanks for all the links to different games guys
I found warhammer quest the most help
I am new and I really need some help so hey kungfugeek If you have your ideas I will take and add them. I think for my first game I should make it a little more simple so if anyone has ideas on shaving off or adding something to Hero Legends then I want to hear it

Thanks!!!

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Fri, 04/22/2005 - 11:12
#10
kungfugeek
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Hero Legens..........Any comments or additions?

RPGamer wrote:
I am new and I really need some help so hey kungfugeek If you have your ideas I will take and add them.

I'm new too, and I don't get to post here as much as I want, but I'd be happy to help. My biggest advice would be to listen to people like scurra, zzzzz, jwarend, etc. They're on this forum all the time and really know what they're talking about.

What kind of ideas are you looking for? If you're looking for ways to seperate your game from the other dungeon crawls, I can brainstorm a little...

    Maybe have a combat mechanic that relies on cards rather than dice. Each player can have handful of cards that represent different attacks -- overhand swing, jab, counterstrike, for bow & arrow you could have a double shot card, etc. Have a mechanic that limits what a player can play each turn. It's not completely unique by any means, but may stand out a little more than rolling dice (not that rolling dice is bad though).

Instead of going human/elf/dwarf, maybe pick just one other underused fantasy race -- centaurs or minotaurs or goblins or something -- and have the players all be members of that race, yet still allow for the variation you have with the human/elf/dwarf thing. For instance, if you went with centaurs (a human torso with a horse body), you could have the big strong centaurs (human torso with ox body), the fast agile centaurs (human torso with deer body), the wize old centaurs (human torso with wildebeast body) and the "normal" ones - human torso with horse body.

If you focus on a single race, then maybe have the class system reflect that race's society. For instance, maybe you decide that minotaurs come from a kind of tribal/native/spiritual society akin to American Indians. So the classes instead of fighter/wizard/thief would be more along the lines of brave, elder, shaman, scout.

Another idea from the American Indian thing -- my sister married a native american and I noticed that their Indian names are composed of two things -- a color and an animal. My nephew's name, for instance, means "Red Elk". This would make an interesting class system I think. Where the players don't just choose fighter/cleric/rogue, but instead chose a combination of two things -- a color and an object, or a time of year and a type of tree, etc. Like a class and a sub-class, if you will. Maybe one of these two things the player is dealt randomly, and the other they get to choose.

Are those the kinds of ideas you're looking for? I guess most of my suggestions are more thematic than about gameplay. But a nice strong theme can sometimes give you ides for gameplay that you wouldn't have had normally. And again, I've never published anything so you might be best just ignoring everything I say. ;-)

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