The classic game of dungeon adventure.
Every geek of a certain generation will remember playing Heroquest as a kid; it is still the classic dungeoncrawl game. In a smart business move, Games Workshop partnered with mainstream games giant Milton Bradley to release this hugely successful game in 1989. Several expansion sets followed which all command high prices on Ebay (and there are different versions depending on where the game was published), and people still play, enjoy and collect this classic game. It certainly helped that it came with a spectacular range of plastic figures (even pieces of model furniture) and fantastic artwork for the time, but the game system itself is simple enough to be enjoyed by all ages. It also brought a bit of a roleplaying element back into the mix by having one player act as ‘Morcar’, the evil wizard who controls the dungeon and its monsters—in effect, he is the D&D ‘Dungeon Master’. Heroquest brought a lot of D&D players their first taste of the boardgame hobby—and it’s still a fantastic game to get young players into boardgaming.
It’s the grandaddy of dungeoncrawls, it’s basic, it’s not much more than a toy, but it positively bursts with nostalgia. It’s Heroquest. Hardly needs a summary, but I’m a completist, so here you go. Now go introduce your young nephew or niece to gaming.
Yup, the mother of all dungeon crawlers. I love this game, one of my favourites and certainly most played games. I’ve added some houserules, like most people have, but I’m downloading this anyway. Always good for new players. Great work! This page needs a positive reply, so here you go 😉
Thankyou Sjeng!
Nicely done!
With the new release of the game this makes these references more timely than ever for the classic game!!! Excellent work!
Glad I don’t have to update it! 🙂
Any updates planned for all of the new recently added rules from all of the new quest pack expansions? There are new rules for unthreatened movement, animal companions, the alchemy deck, crafting potions, ranged monsters, defending against more than one attack, multi-stage enemies, different effects of tiles, different trap squares, new gameplay modes, and more. They have added quite a bit with the new updated releases…plus a lot of clarifications.
Of course these are all spread throughout several expansion quest books and I was hoping to find a complete reference here. Back in the day your Descent 1st ed. rules references were a lifesaver for teaching the game.
This is a summary for the original edition of the game. At this stage I don’t have current plans to cover whatever they did with it for the new version. Maybe sometime.