Inside Our HeroQuest: A Look at Our House Rules

A simple guide to our personalized HeroQuest rules. Learn how we’ve tweaked the game for our own fun and enjoyment.

Our small team embarked on the basic HeroQuest campaign with a burst of enthusiasm. We’ve now reached Quest 9. The initial excitement was sky-high, but as we trudged through the quests, things started to tilt off balance. Our heroes were bulking up, amassing more equipment and potions. The games were becoming less challenging and, dare I say, a tad boring, as monsters would crumble after one or two rounds. Clearly, something had to change. So, in our last session, we tinkered with some in-house rules to inject more challenge and fun into the game. Here’s what we cooked up:

Monsters with a Stronger Defense

Monsters now roll defense dice following the same rules as the heroes. They deflect hits with the “white shield” on the dice rolls, not the “black shields”. This tweak makes the monsters tougher and harder to defeat. Battles now last a bit longer, which effectively grinds down the heroes’ body points and potions. We’re still fine-tuning this rule, but so far, it seems to be working. One idea we’re considering is to enable/disable this rule per quest or even per monster group, suggesting that the monsters are magically enhanced by an evil wizard/potion/curse/aura etc.

Corridor Battles

When there’s at least one battle in the corridor, even if one opponent is in a room in front of the door and the other in the corridor, we roll for an extra wandering monster at the end of the round (when monsters finish an attack). We roll one “red” die, and on a “6”, a wandering monster appears. This rule helps to counter the “gate-tactic” where heroes force the monsters to come at the door one at a time.

So far, these rules seem to be working, but we’re continuously testing and tweaking them. We’re also considering adding more rules to make the game even more challenging and fun. Stay tuned for updates!