Hi Charles
When I have introduced people to Heroquest I have explained that it is a storytelling game. I have explained that the feel is that of a film. I suggested the Lord of the Rings trilogy as excellent example of the feel. You have for example Aragorn in LOTR1 fighting Orc after Orc after Orc. He looks pretty beat up at one point in his battle against the big bad orc, then comes back and triumphs showing no ill effects when he Legolas and Gimli sprint off at the end of the film. In AD&D (which is a game I enjoy also, I am not mentioning it to disparage it!) after the battle, no doubt Aragorn would have needed a number of healing potions or spells to get back to full hits. Heroquest dispenses with that in favour of the story.
the principal advantage is that defeat does not mean the end of the game and that the defeat can lead onto other great scenario's/ stories. Mike (Holmes) has made some excellent observations on some earlier threads if you look back a bit.
I like to try other games and hope that they fit the setting. I was talking about this with a friend today. We had a buddy who ran a western game and Traveller. He then started using the Hero System - which is really crunchy - for all his games. And he started a fantasy one when our AD&D DM ran dry of scenarios. It all got a bit 'samey'.
Its all a question of the kind of scenarios your presenting to your players. If you present a dungeon hack using the HQ rules then that may be a little unsatisfying.
What you could do is organise combats into simple contests and let players take the hurt levels. I do that with missile combat.
I don't know if I have helped or hindered but all the best in your games!
Regards
Rob
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