u/Subject-Brief1161

I know, Gen AI is not for everyone, so if you're anti-AI, this post is not meant for you.

I picked up a couple Doomguard minis from Etsy and painted them up. I really liked how they came out but it sucks that the card I had for them used the generic Dread Warrior art. So I gave a couple images to CoPilot and asked it to make illustrated versions and I'm pretty tickled with how they turned out and thought I'd share.

I also picked up some Elemental minis and did the same for them.

Lastly, my Dungeon Merchant mini, which blew me away!

*UPDATE*: Thanks for all the feedback! I think I'm going to approach this as a 2-part quest instead. The heroes enter his lair in the top left corner (through a door) will first need to seek out Ulag and kill him. His room then leads to the stairs in the central room. Said stairs are where the Rescue of Sir Ragnar begins, so the heroes would immediately begin that quest (they would heal up but would not go to town).

I figured I might as well try doing it! So this is the combination of the two levels. I was 1 door short so the room with Ulag now has a secret door to the treasure room, which works.

The treasure chest in that room isn't marked in the original. What should be in it? I'm thinking 2 Healing potions as this is a lot to deal with for relatively weak adventurers. If they go directly to Ragnar from the stairs, they're in for a nightmare slog.

Maybe I should keep the stairs in the middle? Thoughts?

Here is version 2 of my Race Against Time Expanded Edition.

Thank you everyone for your earlier feedback. I've taken some of it... specifically...

1. The path from the stairs to the trap (D) has less long pointless corridors and more trap filled rooms. The Guide will walk the heroes around and avoid the traps but it should be a kind of fun distraction and hopefully reassure them they can trust the guide.

2. When the ceiling collapses (C) the Guide specifically states they can't go back that way but that there's another way out, so hopefully the heroes will feel just as lost as in Vanilla when the Guide ditches them.

3. Added a "Time" variable in the form of an ever-spawning-undead room. Once the heroes escape the trap room (D), they'll trigger the undead room (F), which will spawn 1D6 of Zargon's choice of undead to keep the heroes moving.

3a. Because I realize the heroes could get trapped behind a ceaseless army of undead if they go for the chests (G & H), I added a secret door that can only be found when chest H is opened.

As always, I'm excited to hear what people think, what they like or don't like or any suggestions.

It's always bugged me that Race Against Time just begins in the middle of the dungeon and you're just told that you followed someone in here and they just left you. Where did they go? How did they escape? Why can't we figure out where we came from? Why did leave you? Does he hold a grudge against the heroes? Was he hired? So many unanswered questions.

So my idea was to set this quest BEFORE Quest 6 (Legacy of the Orc Warlord). See Grak hired the guide to lure you here. You are much weakened by the time you find your way to the exit and his group captures you as you emerge!

But what about the maze that this guide lead you through? That sounds neat right? So I revised the quest map so the guide can actually lead you on a roundabout route, ultimately to leave you in room "D". I didn't want to modify the "normal" quest too much, just add the part where the heroes are being guided through a complex dungeon.

The Quest notes are there for you to read, but essentially:

A: You start in room A. Door B is not there. Only the guide can open the numbered doors (1 - 8). He has a special key. When you round the corner marked C, the ceiling collapses and the guide remarks you will need to find another route to get out. As he leads you through room E, there are no monsters. When you get to room D, he asks the heroes to gather around, then does the trick with the torches and Door 8 closes and the monsters move (secretly) into place.

At this point, the "normal" quest begins. Zargon can opt to remove door 7, or let the heroes go back out that way and confirm the way back is blocked.

So what do you folks think? Any suggestions?

Some ideas I am considering:

1. Add goblins or skeletons, or traps that the guide warns them about at various points/rooms along the route to make it a bit more interesting, but I also like the idea that the heroes can get complacent as they follow the guide. A good Zargon can spice things up with telling of creepy noises they hear or whatever.

2. Have all the doors to room D open when the quest starts (8 would simply remain open). This makes the whole thing feel like an actual trap!

3. It's still not "A Race Against Time". So maybe similar to KK, there is a never ending army spawning in the room above room E, driving the Heroes onward? Maybe the guide poisons one or all of them and they have to reach the exit by nightfall?

Anyway, I'm curious what you all think?

This is about 3 turns in, things escalated quickly due to some bad shuffling I think. I drew Necromancer, Abomination and Zombie Siege like 3 times in the first 3 turns.

I went from having the guards ready and waiting with a pot of oil for the incoming 4 brutes and runners, and moving my hero into position for the Abomination, so suddenly everyone on the wall! It was then I learned you can't dump oil on the wall itself! Yikes!

I made an epic comeback though using "Guard-Push" to get the Abomination off the wall and some lucky crossbow shots and ice storm to clear that mess in the way back. I lost 2 guards, but they died valiantly!

Ultimately won the scenario but the plague cloud thing pretty much wiped out my entire wall!

If you have Amazon Prime, you can (probably) get Jungles of Delthrak for only $18 today. If you don't have JoD already, it's WELL worth $40, so this is a steal!

https://www.amazon.com/Avalon-Hill-HeroQuest-Delthrak-Roleplaying/dp/B0CS7G51Y1

Has anyone ever played Dungeon Drop? I found it cleaning out my gaming closet. I played it years ago when my son was younger, but only a handful of times.

The concept is super simple:

Gray cubes are pillars and help define walls.
Green cubes are monsters that hurt you.
Everything else is loot.

1. Drop a handful of cubes into a small(ish) area.

2. Use the gray cubes as points to draw a triangle.

3. You take everything in that triangle "room", loot being good and monsters hurting you.

There are character cards, abilities, and quests that make up the "Why" of the game. There are also chest cubes that require keys, potion cubes for healing, magic shield cubes to avoid taking damage and so on to add a small bit of complexity.

Anyway, I like the concept and wondering how it might be used in HQ. My first thought was creating custom levels by assigning different cubes to be different things (small green are goblins, large green are orcs, clear are skeletons, etc) and then dropping them onto the board over a room you want to populate and seeing what stays in the room.

Another thought was to port HQ heroes and monsters over to this game and figure out a combat system, rather than just simply taking damage if you scoop up a monster. Like it attacks, you try to defend, then you attack. If you kill it you keep it as a trophy, if not, it returns to the dungeon.

The last few pics are Knights and Rogues I got from Etsy.

I had to strip the male dwarf and will need to redo him.

I have the official Rogues, Frozen Horror Barb, and Druids (and wolf) all primed up and ready, so hopefully will got those done this week.

I got the Raptor and Saberfang done too, just need to decide on a base-ring color. I'm thinking animals get something like bronze and mercenaries get silver. Mentor has gold.

Anyway, comments and suggestions are welcome. Should I touch up the yellow shirts on the wizards for example? They turned out a lot more splotchy in the zoomed in camera lens than they look IRL.

After two games to learn the system, my son really wanted to crack open the Horde Box and go All-In, putting in every single enemy type into the spawn deck!

I played it as safe as I could by only putting 1 spawn card of each type, still figured we'd get slaughtered but we had some pretty nice rolls early on and ended up doing pretty well with it.

For the next game my son wants to put EVERY spawn card into the deck and it's probably going to be ugly but I'll let you know how it goes.

Has anyone else done an all-in game?

So I'm finally going through the family game collection. There are so many games we only played once or never even tried! Time to find them new homes.

There's this game called Meltdown that my son got for a gift some 5 years ago and he opened it but never played it. It looks like it maybe has slime as part of the gameplay?

So I open it to make sure all the parts are in it and I see this pile of green plastic cubes. My first thought was "these would be cool dice" and then I boxed it back up ready for the yard sale. But I can't stop thinking about these stupid cubes and it hits me. They are gelatinous cubes for HQ! Of course they are! Goodluck rescuing Sir Ragnar now heroes!

I just need a fun gimmick. I'm thinking anytime the heroes attack one it becomes 2. Or possibly EVERY cube becomes 2. They wouldn't be able to harm the heroes, just block the heroes, kind of like a fallen-rock-trap but it can chase you. And then some obscure like they can only be removed with magic (Tempest, Ball of Flame, etc), or by leading them to a pit trap. I don't know. Any suggestions?

If anyone is looking for this game, Amazon has it for $15 but check for it used first. I'm sure there's a lot of people getting rid of it once the slime stuff dries out. You get 32 Gelatinous Blobs! Pretty good deal if you hate your heroes and want them to die horribly!

I'm kind of annoyed at myself. I will sometimes steal wall bricks from both sets (1983, 2007) to use as hallway blocks, but never thought about using the minis for anything.

Not that they're perfectly compatible, but I just never thought of it until I saw someone on Facebook mention it.

So if you're interested Pic 1 is the 1983 version (I got it used in the early 2000s after mom sold mine when I was a kid, so *I* was not the one that chewed these ones, but I definitely chewed mine!)

Pic 2 Shows the 3 Knights molds from the 2007 edition (which I got on clearance from Target around 2009)

Pic 3 shows the 3 Orc molds.

What do you think? Could these work in a Homebrew quest?