Heroquest to RQ2

[John Whitehead]

Is there a guide for translating a character stat bloc from HQ to RQ2? Failing that, is there one for translating RQ2 to HQ that I can reverse engineer?

[Baron]

I think you have to fake it, that's what I'd do. Just make up your own stats.

[Baulderstone]

The systems are so different in the way the categorize characters, I can't even begin to think of a standardized conversion method. Just do what Baron says. 

[Rick Meints]

While it's not too difficult to convert the lower skill levels of HeroQuest to RQ (any version), once you get above a single mastery it becomes increasingly difficult. For example, an HQ skill of 10 could be seen as 50%, but what would you convert 2W5 to for RQ?

Also, it is very hard to know what to assign to the beloved STR, CON, SIZ, DEX, characteristics, most, if not all of which may not really be detailed at all in HeroQuest, depending on how the character was written up. Unless "conversion" means "rolling the dice from scratch" those would almost certainly not be convertible.

[hkokko]

Well - of course you could just use RQ Encounter Generator. It is available for RQ6 but the enemies generated should be relatively easy to use in another RQ variant.

There are quite a few ready made enemies and almost everything in Anaxial's roster and annex has been converted to RQ6 - you should be able to find quite a few of the enemies/patrons/antagonists or something comparable in HQ/HW supplements there. 

There is also Magic World variant of it but it does not have so many enemies ready.

https://notesfrompavis.wordpress.com/2014/05/13/rq6-encounter-tool-feature-recap-for-busy-gms/

https://notesfrompavis.wordpress.com/2015/01/25/rq-encounter-tool-101-generating-encounters-guide/

2 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

While it's not too difficult to convert the lower skill levels of HeroQuest to RQ (any version), once you get above a single mastery it becomes increasingly difficult. For example, an HQ skill of 10 could be seen as 50%, but what would you convert 2W5 to for RQ?

Also, it is very hard to know what to assign to the beloved STR, CON, SIZ, DEX, characteristics, most, if not all of which may not really be detailed at all in HeroQuest, depending on how the character was written up. Unless "conversion" means "rolling the dice from scratch" those would almost certainly not be convertible.

Regarding the higher levels - you mostly have to do it per skill type to get sensible result so you get comparable results to already existing RQ enemies and then probably tweak it. That's how I made the conversion for Anaxial stuff.

[Joerg]

IMO the HQ stats give you a guideline to create the RQ character (of whichever edition), and little more. The HQ abilities don't map to the RQ skill list, with the possible exception of combat skills.

If you want to do the scrunchy ability conversion, take into account that the HQ ability is rolled against a difficulty as an opposed roll. An unmodified RQ skill of 30% may map to a HQ ability of 13 for normal difficulty (haven't done the math).

[RosenMcStern]

I have done it once. We converted Mynarith Purple from Orlanth is dead! for use as a PC in a RQ (melange RQ3/unpublished RQ4) campaign. And it was a lot of handwaiving and re-imagining. As Joerg has highlighted, the conversion is not straightforward as the RQ skills are supposed to be used in unopposed rolls, while HQ abilities are always opposed by another score with a default of 14, so we ended up with a lot of skills at 40% or so. I will second Joe's definition: the HQ stats, if you have them, are really only a guideline for generating the RQ stats from scratch.

[John Whitehead]

Thank you all very much for the input and inspiration. And now, to work.