Fate Points – experimental rules for HeroQuest

[MortiS-the-Lost]

HeroQuest is one of my favorite games, it's a lot of fun and the brilliantly simple combat system makes
it very fast paced and easy to teach to new comers. In the last year I've taught HeroQuest to
Ingrid's group in the Netherlands and to another group of friends from the Czech Republic as a
sort of introduction the hobby. HeroQuest is considered to be one of the 'gateway drug' games that
gets people into the wider world of RPGs and Wargames.

Anyway before I get all nostalgic about it, I'd better get the point...

The one thing that HQ really lacks is an advancement system and this rather limits the scope of the
game and means that a character that has grinded it way through 15 dungeons is not usually much
better off than a rookie character that has only just quit their job farming pumpkins and decided to
start a life of adventuring. Eventually you just run out of luck and/or healing potions and die.

After finding myself GMing HeroQuest a lot recently I'd began thinking about this problem and
after a request from Ingrid I decided to put my thoughts down into some experimental rules for
play testing.

A few weeks back I gave Ingrid a basic outline of how the rules work for her to do a bit of play-
testing with her group and in the mean time I have been play-testing the rules with my own group.
I'm still waiting for feed back from Ingrid, but what follows here is the results of my own play-
testing.

I've avoided the more complicated advancement systems like the Levels and Career Paths you see
in more advanced RPGs and gone for a more simple system inspired by the game
mechanics of the Fighting Fantasy books, Advanced HeroQuest and Talisman among others.

Anyway .... onto the rules ....

Player's Section

Determine Fate:

When starting a new Hero determine your Hero's fate points by rolling 2D6.
Write down the result on your character sheet and mark it as Fate

What do Fate Points do?

Basically Fate Points allow you to re-roll dice in the game, be they Combat Dice, Movement
or any other dice you happen to be using in your games. They also have another use, which will be detailed later.

Using Fate Points in game:

You can re-roll as many dice as you like in a turn, but for each individual dice re-rolled you must deduct 1 fate point

Once a dice has been re-rolled you must except the new result even if it is worse than the original.
Further fate points cannot be spent to re-roll a dice that has already been re-rolled.

Fate points can only be used to re-roll your dice.
They cannot be used to re-roll dice rolled by other Players or the Game Master.

If for some reason you are using a D100 and want to use your Fate Points to re-roll it you must re-roll both the Tens and Units dice together.
For the purposes of spending fate points the entire D100 counts as one dice and costs 1 Fate Point to re-roll.



Earning fate points:

To use these rules you will need to keep track of the number of body points you have taken off enemies.
For every 5 Body Points of damage your character dose to an enemy in game you may re-gain 1 Fate Point.

Damage inflicted on enemies by Henchmen, Pets, Summoned Creatures
or any other model under your control other than your character dose not count toward earning Fate Points.

Damage inflicted on enemies by Traps or other such devices initially triggered by your character
dose not count toward earning Fate Points.

The Game Master may also reward Fate points to Characters for solving puzzles, completing a task or good roleplaying.

Game Master's Section

Using fate points to Advance:

In between adventures characters may also spend Fate Points to increase their Stats this is called an 'Advancing'

Movement: a character's movement may not be increased by spending Fate Points

Attack: the number of dice rolled for one weapon may be increased by +1 at a cost of 12 Fate Points
(This represents the character becoming stronger or learning to be a better aim in the case of ranged weapons)

Defend: the number of dice rolled when defending may not be increased by spending Fate Points

Body: a character's maximum Body Points may be permanently increased by +1 at a cost of 10 Fate Points

Mind: a character's Mind Points may be increased by +1 at a cost of 12 Fate Points

A character may only make 1 advance (increase 1 stat by 1 point) between each adventure



Awarding Extra Fate Points:

here's a few suggestions of situations in which you may want to award your players with extra Fate Points

On completing a dungeon: 1 to 6 points for each player depending on over all difficulty
(if you are unsure you can always just roll D6)

Solving a puzzle: 1 point to player who came up with the solution

Taking on a 'boss' monster or large group encounter single handed: double fate points (if the character survives)

Rescuing another character from certain death: 1 point



Other uses of Fate Points:

as a GM you could also use fate points to make an enemy leader tougher
or give your self a 'pool' of 2D6 fate points to spend through out a dungeon

it might be interesting to give an enemy magic user a 'curse' type spell they can cast on a character
that drains the Hero's fate points or maybe create a 'cursed room' where fate points cannot be used

On the other hand the Heroes could receive a blessing from a powerful NPC Cleric or an ancient shrine
that gives them extra fate points.
Or maybe the Heroes could gain fate points for donating some of their hard earned gold to a temple.

[AxlNose]

From the games that I've played with you dude using these new rules (ie. all of them), they have been enthusiastically recieved all round from what I've seen and I myself have been really enjoying them.

The simplicity of it works so well with the general simplicity of the game mechanics themselves, and they really do add an extra level of gameplay to it all. Usually during a old, regular game of HQ, you never really thought too much about the whole roleplay aspect of it.....you just used to plough through it all, grinding your way through the enemies and it did end up becoming rather tedious by the time you got half-way through the core Quest Book. With the fate point system and the ability to re-gain them in-game, you really do start looking at it in roleplay terms........interacting a lot more with NPC's and generally thinking 'outside the box' in handling trickly or obscure situations.

So far, these additional rules have provided many hours of fun, paced and exciting play (this includes an awesome 7-player marathon of a game that only ended at 3.30 this morning. I haven't been to bed yet. lmao)

I am looking really looking forward to continuing using these additional rules and the many more hours of entertaining gameplay that will follow........(we're finishing off last night's adventure tonight)

[Tarkinsteeth]

Fate points!  what a great idea.  Love the rules, Mortis.  I will certainly be utilizing these.  

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Thank You

I'd almost forgotten I'd posted this - it's been a long time and my group have refined these rules since then

[feral~moon]

I've got something similar in my quests - but they're called Luck Points. (keeping it simple for the little uns) . Basically they also allow you to reroll & they too deduct a luck point. However they're predetermined by rolling just 1d6 at the start of a quest .
They also allow you to reroll but only once. The 2nd roll must be abided by , whether the result is better or worse (bit of bad luck coming in there).
Hope anyone out there finds this useful !
Characters must find certain objects to restore these points . Because they're so few & far between & characters CANNOT restore their characteristics to their full levels between Quests , they must be used wisely.(I play continuous quests , travelling to towns,temples,etc.)
Feral-moon

[chaos-warrior]

OVERKILL
we had in mind to do the same but you could earn overkill actions / points  by killing a monster with  overkill ,
for example you attack with 3 (3sculls trown)  Kobolt defended one (zero shields trown ) with an overkill of two or more points and extra fate point erned  

[feral~moon]

That sounds quite good - have 2 think on that.
Many Thanks

[MortiS-the-Lost]

The problem with a rule like that is that it rewards you more for killing weaker creatures than stronger ones - it's easy to Over Kill a Goblin, it's much harder to Over Kill a Chaos Warrior.

It's a rather old post that started this thread, back when I was first experimenting with Fate and it doesn't really explain how my rules have evolved since  

The current combined Fate and EXP system I use in my games gains players 1 EXP for each Body Point of damage inflicted, for each 5 EXP gained the character gains 1 Fate Point.

Fate Points are gone once used for a re-roll, they are not 'restored', only spent and gained

Initial Fate is determined on a roll of 2D6 during character creation

EXP is also used for an Advancement system which would take took long to explain here at this time of night, but it involves Stat increases and the gaining of special rules  

[MortiS-the-Lost]

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