My son as a game master

As a gift for Easter, I produced a Heroica Fanfiction Audioplay for my older son. Fifty minutes of fantasy-action, just for him, including the bosses and monsters he and I made up. I even gave his favorite characters the best moments. This, after repeated listenings over the holidays, inspired a creative frenzy in my son. While I was doing things like household chores, he was upstairs in his room, labouring away with the boxes of Legos that he inherited from me. Then he presented me with an adventure of his own making. He'd play the bad guys, I'd play the heroes. He was going to be my game master (although he doesn't know the term, this has happened totally organically).

His idea of a great adventure was that the Goblin Kings (The Twins, we usually call them, as we have two of them and they together form a boss encounter) have gathered all the monsters in their keep. Except for the Spitting Snake and the Giant Spider, all bosses are there as well. The goblin fortress is seperated from the human village by the bridge. In it there is the main hall full of horrors and troops, as well as three side wings. In one there is first the Kraken, then the Hydra, its den serving as a treasure chamber full of gold, potions, and a key. One is the throne room with the two Goblin Kings. The last one is another side wing. It features two hidden keys and a secret door that leads to another land.

That other land is the goal of the quest, as my son informed me. The kidnapped king of Heroica, father to Prince Alrik, leader of the heroes, is held there – but the heroes don't know that yet. I was allowed to have four active heroes at the time, the other four waiting as backup at the village tavern.

Mathematically, my team was very unlikely to defeat the massed foes in the main hall. My first strike team consisted of the Prince, the Knight, the Priest and the Thief. I had a plan: The team would head straight for the treasure chamber, where the Knight would hold the monsters from the hall off while the other three dealt with the Kraken and the Hydra. Then everyone would retreat with the loot to the village, where the treasure would allow them to heal and gear up.

The plan went reasonably well. While I lost the Knight and the Thief, the Priest and the Prince got out with the treasures. I filled the ranks with the Archer and the Druid and started back to the Goblin Fortress. That's when things got even more RPGish.

My son had used the turns I had spent buying stuff in the village: He had set an ambush with werewolves on the bridge. That failed to stop my heroes. When a single Level 1 goblin came out of the fortress, I decided to negotiate. I told it/my son that he didn't have a chance as a single goblin against four heavily armed heroes. My son conceided. The goblin decided to become a good citizen and went onto the big ship to take a nap. Later, while my heroes were entering the fortress again, he would go to the village oak to nibble on its big branch. As my son explained, goblins love meat and wood. He was the smartest of the goblins and thus decided to be a good guy.

Inside the fortress, my heroes encountered another wave of enemies in the form of miscelaneous smallish monsters and the Dark Druid. Then the remaining goblin forces surrendered – under the condition that my heroes leave the throne room and their kings alone. I decided that these were acceptable terms for Prince Alrik, after he had learned that the goblins didn't have his dad. The heroes went into the wing with the magic door undisturbed and we decided to call it a night and continue the adventure/campaign in my son's other land another day.

It was only half way through that game of Heroica that I realized that I was in fact playing a roleplaying campaign designed by my son. He is only five and can't read or write but the graspable little character sheets made from Lego combined with the simple tactics of the dice rolls and loot system enabled him to become a game master. I am astonished and proud that he put thought into things.

He even heeded my advice from an earlier game and gave me a good reason to go into a dead end full of boss monsters (all the treasure and a mission-relevant key). During my last assault he even realized that his guys should try to kill my healer (the Priest) but after that failed, he figured the smart thing for the goblins would be to give up. I'm glad he isn't one of the bloodthirsty kids that assume that murder is the only way to play this. And I'm very very curious what the land beyond the magical door has in store for my quartet of heroes.

More Heroica Bosses

My older son and I made some more boss enemies for Heroica. It's basically a continuation of this post. It's easier to make boss enemies than regular foes. The regular beasties require tiny figurines and are, rules-wise, rather boring. So, here's three new bosses and their rules:

The Chained Snake: My son made this boss and its rules. It has 3 HP and can not only fight in close combat, but also attack a specific field in the corridor leading up to it by spitting acid there. If a character ends on that squre, you roll a combat die but cannot harm the snake. Shield: You deal one damage to the snake. Sword or sword/skull: You lose one HP. Skull: You lose three HP. A tough monster to fight.

The Sewer Kraken: This boss has a setpiece. You gotta get past its tentacles before attacking it from a square behind it. On the dark grey squares, it can attempt to grab you with an attack roll. If it hits, you get into the appropriate tentacle. On your next turn it hands you over to the next tentacle and you roll another combat roll. On sword or shield, you get free, on skull, you lose another HP. That way, the Kraken will make you run the parcours again. Once you're behind it, you can actually hurt it. It has 3 HP.

The Hydra: With as much as 6 HP, the Hydra is very hard to kill. For every two HP you take off of it, it loses one of its three heads. Combat rolls function normally, the Hydra deals damage equal to its remaining heads. So it's basically a more defensive version of the Giant Bat.

So our new bosses include our first experiments with bosses that have ranged attacks. Also, the Kraken can, like the Giant Spider, manipulate the heroes and their positioning. This makes for a far more dynamic battle and is balanced out with the low damage output of this boss. The Hydra is, in my opinion, the coolest looking of the trio but also mechanically the most boring one as it is just a straight-up fight.

In the future I will likely design more set-piece-fights like the one against the Kraken. That one is, by the way, ideal to be placed in the sewers, reinfocing the Monsters in the depths.

Heroica: Our Houserules

My son and I have been playing Heroica about every other evening these days. To make it more interesting and fun, I have made some minor rule changes, pretty much all of them regarding characters and boss monsters. Let's delve into them.

Play Report: Heroica with my son

My first-born and I cleaned up his little childreen's desk and assembled all of the Heroica we have into one big land full of danger and adventure. I knew that this campaign against four bosses and their minions spanning several different regions would take a long while (it wasn't our first big campaign, but the first one involving stuff we had designed and built ourselves). It would replace a chunk of goodnight-reading for a couple of evenings. What we have looks like this:

Our Heroica land is ready to be adventured in.

To the left you see the village with the graveyard. It is connected to the grassy lawn which leads into the secret tunnel (both are my son's work), the forest and the catacombs. Beyond the forest there is the goblin fortress. The four bosses are distributed over the lands, each in their own boss room and guarded by patrolling minions. Each of us got two characters, one to play and one spare. The other heroes were hanging out in the inn, with the exceptions of the king and the red mage, who were imprisoned in the cells connecting the catacombs and the goblin fortress. We play with permadeath to characters, by the way.

Expanding Heroica

My older son and I have been playing a round of Heroica every couple of nights now. We have some hous rules, such as bosses having different stats/abilities and the shop being an actual location you have to go to. I've been wanting to make that store part of a small village for a while. This would not only make the world bigger but also give the heroes a home location they need to return to every once in a while to stock up on consumables and equipment. Now I don't have the studded 2x2 plates needed for actual Heroica-style tiles yet (they should be in the mail to me) but I do have build a village:

The store, to the right, is the same one (but I added a window in order to make it more clear that this represents an actual building. The inn is in the background. The place has two tables and a bar, seating up to ten microfigures. A jug from that barrel costs a gold piece and heals one HP – it's for situations where you can't afford a health drink (or they're sold out). The village square has a nice tree in the center and to the left there is a path to the graveyard.

Speaking of the graveyard: That's the new home of the Vampire now. Lacking some parts of the desert temple set that the Golem Lord resides in, that dude needed a new home and now rules over the flooded catacombs that originally belonged to the Vampire. Also, the vampire's minions, zombies and bats, fit well with the graveyard. Naturally, my son wanted in on the construction of the village and added his own stuff. It looked like this:

A grassy area, another store and a long secret tunnel are his additions. I had to swallow my perfectionist pride once again (having sworn never to become the dad from the Lego Movie) and just let him add to the world without any regard on playability or coherent design. Let him do it, it's his Lego now. In that picture you see the bigger crypt (with the cross) that the vampire will reside in. When he dies, he turns into the giant bat, arguably the most powerful of the bosses in our Heroica-world. That means that, despite him sitting right next to the starting village, it is advisable to go after the other bosses first in order to stock up on magical and non-magical gear before facing that monster.

Our fully assembled Heroica-world now has four regions: The village with the graveyard (boss: The Vampire/Giant bat), the forest of Waldurk (boss: The Dark Druid), the catacombs of Ilrion (boss: The Golem Lord) and the Fortress of Fortraan (boss: The Goblin King). The Vampire gets replaced by the vampire bat upon his death, which has 4 HP and deals damage equal to its remaining life. The Dark Druid has no special rules yet. The Golem Lord summons a bat everytime he wounds an enemy. The Goblin King has the helmet and thus an extra HP. Each of them has a magical item that can be looted – and usually some gold stashed by their lair.

I have also made some slight changes to the character rules. As we play cooperatively, you can pass items back and forth when close to one another. The knight no longer has the jump+stab special move but can roll a save die when hit, the shield preventing damage.  The jump+stab is now the domain of the prince. The king has no special move, he is kinda old after all. Also, the archer is female in our games and I intend to buy some microfigs online to add one or two more girls to the mix. Shame that Lego didn't even have a token female among the heroes originally.

Next up: A play report of our first big campaign involving said village.

Thoughts on Heroica

My first-born and I have been playing Heroica every once in a while now. When Lego released this little board game with a dash of fantasy-rpg mixed in there, I was stoked but quickly disappointed when I actually read the rules of the one set I bought. Now, years later and as a father of two sons, I see where its target audience lies. And I know that hacking this is part of the design.

We've been lucky enough to acquire a few additional sets from a friend of mine at an okay price (the full sets have become somewhat expensive since they're out of production). We do not play in competition but in cooperation. That means, the monsters barely stand a chance. We do have permadeath for characters but each of us usually has two characters spare waiting for the first one to die.

Our current landscape. (c) 2020 Me on my Blog.

My son with his five years loves the thing. A usual run through all the lands we have usually takes us around 45 minutes, a good time for a kid his age. He generally spends the next thirty to sixty minutes after that playing with no rules and making his own stories into that world. It's really rather excellent and something I totally didn't account for when I bought the game as a university student with no offspring in sight.

Some things need to be changed about the monsters in order to make them more different from each other. The Goblin King in our game usually has that helmet-thingy and thus an additional HP. The Vampire can, of course, replace himself upon his death with the Giant Bat which has four HP and a damage rating equal to its HP – it is out of the box the most interesting beast in the game. Still trying to figure out how to make the Druid and the Golem Lord more interesting without breaking the game.

I also intend to make the game bigger and perhaps even add come characters. This will cost me some money and I need to scour BrickLink for some items but I think it could work. Perhaps a central village and one or two new landscapes with enemies like spiders and rats can be done without too much trouble. Also some female heroes are totally in order. When I get around to all that. Perhaps, when my second son becomes old enough to join us.