Half the dungeon, post-smite.

Since my Sunday gaming group is waiting for after Christmas to kick off our upcoming campaign, Hardarian Blackleaf, Ale, Mr. Wizard Nickelbane III, and Elfin John continued their Quest (tm) to become Heroes (tm).   The story was thin but the cardstock terrain was thick as... well... cardstock.   And so the smiting commenced!

We ran through a couple more pretty generic quests this week - find a good wizard then go kill the evil one.  Considered we played Are You the Traitor? beforehand (which features a good/evil wizard mechanic) I suppose there was a theme running throughout the evening.

At this point the party is getting pretty well equipped.  The one oddness to the game is that it follows the D&D trope of "the wizard can't use cool equipment."  So while the dwarf, elf, and barbarian all have shields, helms, and armor (the barbarian even has artifact armor) and good weapons, the wizard is stuck with a weak magic cloak he found and a pointy stick (read: quarterstaff).  He's been collecting some interesting magic items, but he's still the weak link of the party and will crumple if the monsters get to him.

The gargoyle smites Elfin John!

Camp is still the name of the game.  Moondog has been the best Zargon of the group hands down.  Among his achievements is composing the soundtrack known as "march of the mummy."  We always know when a mummy is coming at us.

Moondog missed this week, so I tried to add my own twist this weekend with moonwalking, "Thriller"-singing chaos warriors (and completely silent zombies, just 'cause).  Unfortunately I fell short of Moondog's greatness.

There are only five more quests left, but we're taking our time.  Hero Quest is a fun game to play for nostalgic reasons and we don't want to take it too seriously or risk getting burnt out.  But as a occasional diversion it's still two thumbs up.

The Heroes(tm) on a Quest(tm)

While my role-playing group is between campaigns, we're filling our weekly sessions with boardgames and one-shots.  Last week was a blast from the past: Hero Quest by Milton Bradley.  I couldn't find the doors and a few figures were MIA (the elf in particular) and had to be proxied, but the old school charm remained.

Matt took on the role of the vile Zargon for the first two quests, leaving Chad, Wayne, and me to take on the mantles of the Elf (Elfen John), Wizard (Mr. Wizard), and Barbarian (Thud).  The Dwarf (Ale) was thrown in for good measure.  For the third and final game I took over behind the screen and Matt claimed the Dwarf.

We fully embraced the camp of the game, with "Zargon" reading the boxed text before each adventure with as much melodrama as could be mustered.  As casually as we treated the game, our role-playing roots came through and there were a few more descriptions than dictated by the adventure book as we stomped around the dungeon, hacking up orcs, goblins, and other minions of Chaos.

Wayne Nukes the gobbos

The first adventure was a fun re-introduction to combat, but things got interesting at the end of the second quest.  When you enter the prison room of the NPC you have to save, all of the monsters remaining in the dungeon are immediately put on the board and start activating while you try and get him to the exit stairs.

It was actually a lot of fun, but you could tell we were all MMO players of various experience.  Chad immediately blew a spell to walk through the nearby wall and defensive buff himself to block the choke point, while I ran to the other.  Wayne and the Dwarf provided support as we just held up the lines while our escort got the heck out.

Then we slaughtered all the goblins and took their stuff.

Even though as a group we enjoy the role-playing side of our weekly game, it was fun to have a weekend of mindless hack and slash.  We decided to keep the characters around and break the game back out from time to time whenever a role-playing game is canceled at the last minute.  Maybe I'll finally have the chance to see all 14 quests that come with the game.

Maybe I'll even be able to find the doors.