---
title: "Running a narrative HeroQuest game"
subtitle: "Rules and violations"
author: Seth
publish_date: 2026-02-12 08:00
date: 2026-02-12 08:00
hero_classes: text-light title-h1h2 overlay-dark-gradient hero-large parallax
hero_image: boardgame.webp
show_sidebar: true
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show_pagination: true
taxonomy:
    category: gaming
    tag: [ gaming, dungeon, meta, rpg ]
---

A few months ago, one of the players in my Sunday night DnD game couldn't make it to the game
Normally we'd play any way, but the characters are all very high level and we were nearing the endgame, so we decided not to play without her.
Instead, we played **HeroQuest** with the intent to see how much role play we could fit into that venerable board game.
The experiment did not go exactly as planned.
The value of experimentation is that you learn something useful regardless of the results, and we've iterated on the experiment since.
This article are my observations of how a board game dungeon delve is different to an RPG dungeon delve, and how we adjusted the way we play **HeroQuest** as a narrative RPG.

Before getting to that, I have a meta observation about the experimentation process itself.
For our initial trial, I didn't play Zargon.
I often do play Zargon in **HeroQuest**, but this time it was another player's idea to try narrative **HeroQuest** so he took on the role as games master.
I was eager to be just a player, but in retrospect I realise how useful it was not to be the games master for my objectivity.
I was able to be critical of how the game ran from a completely new angle.
Had I played Zargon and failed to get the results I wanted, I may well have iterated on the idea but I don't think it would have been as clear to me what needed to change.
The lesson here, I think, is that diversifying your role in a game helps you experience different aspects of the game.

## 1. The story must be active

By design, the "story" of the typical scripted **HeroQuest** adventure is told through the setting.
You tell the story of a necromancer threatening the nearby village by crawling a dungeon filled with undead.
You tell the story of an orc incursion by crawling a dungeon filled with orcs.
The "story", such as it is, serves as an explanation for how the board game was setup.

In a roleplaying game, you tell the story through NPCs interacting with player characters, or by placing player characters into situations that reveal the narrative.
In fact, sometimes encounters have nothing to do with the story, and instead are aspects of the game world that have nothing to do with the plot.

To maximize roleplay in **HeroQuest**, the story must be an active component of the game.
You can't wait for players to open a door for a scene to trigger, or at least you can't make it seem like you were waiting for that.
As with a tabletop RPG, the game master (Zargon) must create the illusion that the plot is happening whether player characters are there to witness it or not, even though in reality there's no reason the story should be happening coincidentally just when the player characters happened to arrive in the dungeon.

According to **HeroQuest** rules, Zargon's not actually allowed to add extra miniatures to the board at will.
There are Dread Spells that allow Zargon to do that, but those are cards Zargon doesn't have access to until late in the scripted campaign.
But if you're running a narrative **HeroQuest** game, then you can either accept that you're off script, or else you can just grant Zargon Dread Spells as narrative encounters.
When a Dread Spell allows Zargon to spawn a group of enemies, those aren't necessarily enemies but NPCs.
Put them on the board, and talk out the encounter.
Maybe they're fellow explorers, or a renegade faction within the dungeon, or prisoners, or anything else.

## 2. The goal must be discovery

For one-shot RPG adventures, I usually declare a very direct goal for the session.
It helps keep players focused, and ensures that they know when the adventure is over.
That's the convention for scripted **HeroQuest** scenarios, too.
Before you go into the dungeon, you're told exactly why you're there.
Kill the gargoyle.
Stop the orc incursion.
Slay the necromancer.
Whatever it is, you know exactly what you're looking for.

Narrative **HeroQuest** seems to be less tolerant to this, however.
We've all played **HeroQuest** before (not literally everyone has, but I'm assuming that if you're playing narrative **HeroQuest** then you've played the game before.)
We all know the dungeon is filled with enemies behind closed doors, and that just one of those rooms contain the enemy we need to kill.
Who's got time for a story with that setup?

For narrative **HeroQuest**, set a goal for players that will reveal the story.
A good goal for narrative **HeroQuest** lacks detail and clarity, and better yet it has a note of ambiguity.

For example, "find the gem" sounds like a perfectly reasonable goal at first, but it loses meaning after a moment of critical thinking.
What gem?
Is the gem definitely in this dungeon?
Has the gem been lost, or has it been stolen?
Players are forced to ask questions, and it's up to the game master whether to answer them through a "flashback" role play scene, or through an NPC who happens by just when the player characters uncover a gem, or through some other narrative mechanism.
Maybe "find the gem" means the player characters are a third faction in an incidental power struggle within the dungeon, as they try to find a gem that nobody cares about but that's hidden within an active war zone.
Or maybe the gem is the centre to a murder mystery.
Or maybe it's just been stolen by goblins.

A goal like "kill or save the enemy's leader" could mean player characters get embroiled in an ongoing plot to overthrow a leader within the dungeon.
Will the player characters side with the loyalists who want to defend the leader, or with the renegades that want to depose the leader?

Even a fairly direct goal like "kill the evil necromancer" could force the player characters to choose between 2 diverging paths.
They could encounter a group of orc adventurers out to kill someone they believe to be a necromancer, and a group of goblin adventurers on their way to kill someone else they believe is a necromancer.
Investigate both claims, make a choice.

Whatever goal you invent, as games master (Zargon) you must leave room for discovery along the way to the goal.
Kicking down doors and killing everything inside isn't enough for a narrative game.

## 3. Roleplay must be an encounter

When you sit down to play **HeroQuest**, you're sitting down to play a wargame.
The game loop is to open a door, kill what's inside, search the room for treasure or health potions, and then move to the next door.

There's no allowance for social encounters, and no character attributes to assist with insight or persuasion or diplomacy.
And anyway, the turn order doesn't provide a social encounter phase.
On your turn, your miniatures move and attack.
There's nothing in the rulebook about talking.

In an RPG, the "normal" mode of play is unstructured social interaction, punctuated with a combat minigame.
In **HeroQuest**, you can implement the inverse of that.
Nothing changes for the normal mode of play in **HeroQuest**: Roll dice, move, and then spend an action to search or attack.
But the moment a player character spots a nonplayer miniature on the board, the game mode comes to an abrupt halt and now you're in narrative mode.
You get free movement, time starts to flow freely, nobody is hostile.
The moment somebody declares combat, however, normal mode resumes where it left off (meaning that miniatures that have already activated this round must wait for the next round to activate.)

## 4. Doors are taps that can be closed

In **HeroQuest** rules, a door that's opened cannot be closed.
I guess the assumption is that player characters literally break the doors down.
However you justify it, it's an important mechanic that prevents players from opening a door, seeing a terrifying monster, and closing the door again to contain the monster.
A door in **HeroQuest** is like floodgate.
Once it's open, the monsters inside pour out and fight to the death.

In narrative play, it can be inconvenient to have doors that can't be closed again.
Closed doors can serve as hiding places, or as signals to players that a monster has lost interest and retreated back to its lair, or can conceal NPC activity.
It can be useful to grant doors the ability to open and close in narrative play, with the single caveat that once a door has been opened by players, monsters can also open it (unless players go to the trouble of barricading it with furniture.)

## 5. Death is a valid end to the story

If your narrative **HeroQuest** is meant to be a one-shot, then you must accept that sometimes the only resolution of the story of an RPG is the sweet serenity of death.
In our initial experiment with narrative **HeroQuest**, we fell into the trap of game master grace.
Sometimes it worked well, other times it felt awkward, and by the end of the evening it felt very much like we were rolling dice only for permission to stop playing.

**HeroQuest** is a deadly game, and it's very much a board game.
Even if you're abusing it for your own narrative purposes, I think it's a stronger experience if you put your trust in the system over your story.
Let death happen.

As with so many tasks assigned to the games master, there's a balance to be stricken.
There's a difference between a Dread Knight leaving player characters alive in the middle of a fight because he's got no relevance to the plot, and a Dread Knight that's guarding the entrance to the boss's lair irrationally losing interest in an imminent threat.

Don't shy away from character death.
When the Body Points fall, let it happen.
Should the whole party fall, then the story is over.
The same old RPG tropes still work: Maybe the player characters aren't actually dead, but they've been captured, or maybe they've just been left for dead in the hallways but the story has progressed without them.
Whatever your excuse for not ripping up your players' character sheets, the next session often writes itself.
Players must escape their captors, or they've continued to the next destination (maybe it's a castle rather than a dungeon?) to face the next challenge.

## Taking advantage of narrative constraints

When devising my own wargame campaigns, my narrative vocabulary is very often limited by the miniature battlefield sets I happen to own.
That means I've got a lot of wargame stories that take place in ruined cities and industrial sites.
Compared to an RPG, **HeroQuest** is similarly limiting.
You've got exactly one board, and it looks like the interiour of a dungeon or castle.
You've got just one set of furnishings.
Whether you like it or not, half of your script is already written before you even start the game.

It might seem like that's a major restriction, but creative constraints can be fun to work with.
When the setting for your stories can only be corridors and rooms, you're forced to stretch your storytelling abilities in ways you've likely never bothered trying before.
I've enjoyed coming up with mini campaigns (3 or 4 game sessions, where one leads to the next) about royal families with secret necromantic tendencies, or an army general who hires the adventurers that deposed him to reinstate him into power, and so on.
The **HeroQuest** board can be a dungeon, a castle, a market place, a town, a guild hall, a home, a temple, a crypt, a kitchen, a steampunk industrial complex, and much more.
Better still, you can repurpose a **Cluedo** or **Kill Dr. Lucky** board to change your set to a mansion.
The constraints aren't as limiting as you might imagine, and it's fun to test the boundaries while simultaneously using and abusing the **HeroQuest** rules to create a narrative wargame.