Recently my son was telling me about a current Dungeons and Dragons campaign (he has several ongoing) in which a group of adventurers choose their latest challenge from a quest board. Hearing about a quest board immediately took me back to the first proper computer game I played – Hero’s Quest: So You Want to Be a Hero, a late 1980s RPG that I absolutely loved as a kid. It consisted of a large set of floppy disks and I told my son about how you couldn’t travel too far into the forest until a message popped up saying to insert disk X of 10 in order to continue. This was so exciting back then, venturing so far into uncharted territory that we swapped out disks to continue on the journey!
If you want to try out this wonderful pixelated adventure for yourself, you can find an emulator here! There’s even a map and walkthrough available.
This conversation is what prompted me to re-make the Hero’s Quest quest board (which you can find in the Adventurer’s Guild on the far left of the village). I was just too excited at the thought of making this bit of nostalgia come to life for my son’s campaign.
We had all the supplies on hand already to complete this project! I started by taking two 12″ x 12″ pieces of cork and spray painting them black. This became the rectangular shape that I sized everything else from. I used pine 2x4s that I planed down to 1/2″ thickness to make the frame and used a 1/8″ sheet of plywood cut to size as a backing. The quest sign on top was made with a 1×6 planed to 1/2″ thickness as well. I sketched the lettering on the wood and used a Dremel with a router bit to cut the letters out.
And it is done! I used triangle tabs on the back top corners and ran framing wire between them to hang the board. I can’t wait for it to be in use later today!
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