HeroQuest as a roleplaying game

On New Year’s Eve, we played a few sessions of HeroQuest, the old MB board game that everyone is still in love with because it is the best game ever made. I went in with the intention to morph it into a full-blown tabletop roleplaying game. Success came easily.

1. Grant each adventurer type one or two special abilities or skills.
   These can either be freeform, or you can pick one of several freely available supplements for my minimald6 rpg and use those: Creatures & Classes, Deeds & Doers (not a supplement, but a major, major inspiration for minimald6), or Deeds & Doers Expansion.
2. Keep the HQ combat system.
   It’s quick, simple and fun.
3. But change the order of play.
   In regular HQ, each player, including the Evil Wizard player, gets to move and act in order. In rpg-ified HQ, one player rolls a d6, the Evil Wizard player as well – the side with the higher result gets to act first (ALL characters; players will have to determine who does what), then ALL characters of the other party move and act.
4. Remember how trap doors work in HeroQuest? Use this as saving throw for all non-combat moves.
   When a trap door has been detected, an adventurer can leap across if the player rolls one Combat Die and it doesn’t show a skull symbol. There are three skull symbols, two white shield symbols and one black shield symbol on a Combat  Die. This is how you turn the board game rule into an rpg rule: To be successful, an adventurer rolls TWO combat dice and has to roll a white shield.If in a situation, the adventurer has an advantage of some kind, roll THREE combat dice instead of two. Remember, all you need to roll is one white shield.

   The same in reverse applies to disadvantages: Roll ONE combat die instead of two. Roll a white shield, and you’re golden.

And yes, these few minor twists turn the HeroQuest board game into full-blown minimald6.

Oooooh yeah!