After 20+ years I dusted off an old favourite of mine, Warhammer Quest. A co-op dungeon crawler with tiles that make up a variable board, an event-deck for enemy encounters and misfortune, lots of scenarios that can be linked to a campaign... a game that was ahead of its time. Of course also a game that you can lose because of one bad die roll, a trait of the truly great.
I played through the suggested starting scenario Free the Prisoners with the default party of four to refresh the rules in my memory.
Skaven have taken wealthy citizens captive and our heroes have been hired to rescue them. The entrance was a passageway with a T-junction. The first door we tried led to a dungeon room, so we had to draw an event card. We were immediately jumped upon by 10 skaven. Very thematic yes, but really? Just two rounds into combat and the Wizard - the healer of the party - was dead. I thought long and hard, for two seconds, and reset everything. New event card. Seven giant rats. That's more like it. That's how an adventure should start.
This was nice and easy combat practice. After that there was some uneventful exploring, one passageway after another. Until we found another room. I had shuffled the event deck before restarting, and here were those skaven again. Not too many though, this time. Somewhere during the fight the wizard rolled a 1 during the power phase, causing an unexpected event. Six goblin archers joined the fight. But the room was so crowded now, we could kind of slash through those goblins to chop at the skaven.
When all enemies were killed, the barbarian and the dwarf were close to bleeding out. We had reached at a dead end in the dungeon, so while retracing our steps there was time enough for the wizard to do his healing magic. Nice.
Going down the other passageway we only had to brush off some scorpions, no trouble. To reach the prisoners however, we'd have to survive the fighting pit. Two centaurs (disguised as minotaurs as I don't have the right minis) were standing guard.
They never saw us coming.
The rules refresher done, I started reading the roleplay book, to see how linking adventures works - I've forgotten most of it. Travelling to villages and cities, spending your gold and training to reach a higher level, things like that. Because I'd like to send a fresh party of adventurers on a real campaign now.