Was Jervis Johnson a Hero Quest developer?

[Pancho]

John Blanche got me through art college. What an absolute Legend.

Alas, I didn't make it through to Art College, but John was heading me towards an A for my art GCSE. My bestie also took Art and chose Wayne England...

My art teachers weren’t particularly impressed with my obsession with fantasy. I remember one of them getting annoyed because I kept adding muscles to my life drawings that weren’t necessarily there (“look at the muscularityyyyy”). But Blanche and others provided endless inspiration for the kind of art I wanted to do. It wasn’t appreciated, but I did scrape through!

[Daedalus]

Is this artwork that appeared in the 1st/Premiere Edition (UK) rules book and not in the later editions?

Check page 6, 9 and 11 from the European rules book. The Chaos Warrior fighting the Paladin is by John Blanche:
http://english.yeoldeinn.com/downloads/ ... dition.pdf

Indeed, the p.6 art is is John Blanche's--thanks for pointing that out, lestodante!

John Blanche was the GW art director in '89, so I could see him choosing the Chaos Warrior vs. paladin piece to merge with the p.9 and p.11 Gary Chalk art of the EU first edition Rules of Play. That conveniently allowed for GW to trumpet "the talents of . . . artist John Blanche" to its market in the WD 115 preview for Hero Quest. A savvy cross-marketing maneuver, though misleading.

Jervis Johnson's involvement seems more reasonable in this light, but his actual contribution remains a matter of conjecture.

[Kurgan]

Great, now I feel even more justified having a Paladin hero, knowing it was already present way back in the original version's art (not just Legacy of Sorasil at the tail end of HeroQuest's original run).

[HispaZargon]

Old topic... but we have compiled in the Inn much more info about this since the last post of this thread. Here I will try to summarize a bit the last info we got, chronologically:

- Stephen Baker confirmed in Nov/2023 in this interview that the following Games Workshop members were involved in the development of HeroQuest: Bob Naismith, Jervis Johnson, John Blanche, Rick Priestley, and Phil Gallagher. He especially talked about the art, miniatures, etc. however he left the door opened to any kind of collaboration about the game by saying they were also "consulted on the game".

- Jervis Johnson himself said in Nov/2023 in this interview the following: "I did help out a tiny bit with Heroquest, mainly by doing some playtesting I think, but really the game was at Stephen Baker’s work and I had very little to do with it."

- Stephen Baker confirmed in Jan/2024 in this interview that his main contacts in Games Workshop during the development of HeroQuest were Bob Naismith for miniatures, Rick Priestly and Jervis Johnson for gameplay, John Blanche for art, and Phil Gallagher for rules and editing. He also confirms that developing Advanced Heroquest was always part of the plan that GW during HeroQuest was being developed.

- Jervis Johnson himself confirmed in May/2024 in this interview that GW supported some of the development of Hero Quest, by making the Citadel miniatures for the game and just some playtesting, but at the same time he use to talk assuming that HeroQuest was an entire creation of Milton Bradley. Jervis also admited to work with Stephen Baker, however he did not remembered his name (surprisingly since he named him in Nov/2023 interview...).


The involvement of Games Workshop people seems to be rather clear, even knowing that their efforts were focused in the aesthetical and lore topics to fit as much closer as posible with the Warhammer Old World for commercial purposes, according to Jervis Johnson words. Therefore, in my humble opinion seems that Stephen Baker as main creator of HeroQuest game is something that cannot be discussed nowadays, especially because Jervis himself has recognized it in a explicit way.

However, once Jervis Johnson small contribution in the design of HeroQuest has been clarified, for me the point is how much Phill Gallagher was involved in the game design, since according to Stephen Bake's words, apparently he was the only GW guy to be involved in the rules of the game. Phil Gallagher was in the 80s one of the creators of Warhammer Fantasy Role-playing Game, some lakes some sense to me imagining him involved in the HeroQuest game since Baker wanted to become it a "RPG inside a box". Phil Gallagher himself confimed in Jun/1993 in this interview that he was aware about how was developed HeroQuest. He even suggested that Games Workshop designers were involved in the design of HeroQuest, however Space Crusade was entirely designed by Milton Bradley, except its "scenaries". Probably the guy who really collaborate with Stephen Baker in the non-aesthetic topics of HeroQuest was Phil Gallagher, but maybe is assuming too much, who knows.

In the other hand, another disrupting data we have today about the HeroQuest development was apparently provided (as explained by lestodante in this post) by Bryan Ansell, founder of Citadel Miniatures and one of the legensary leaders of Games Workshop company, who unfortunatelly passed recently away. He literally said that "Stephen Baker, Roger Ford, and Ben Rathbone had damn all to do with HQ's developement. SB had produced a poor derivative of D&D. GW had to be called in to perform a rescue mission and deliver an actual game. We did that: we were paid for delivering an actual game that actually worked. We used nothing from the SB version. Stephen Baker managed one of our shops. I have no idea who Ford and Rathbone are." (Ansell's original post can be checked here).

I am pretty convinced about Stephen Baker's main role in the game design, and that's also what I want to believe, but if I said you that these Ansell's words do not intrigue me, I would be lying you...

[Kurgan]

It is worth studying this puzzle, because otherwise we feed into those inaccurate stories of this idea of Milton Bradley and GamesWorkshop as these companies that "broke up" and went to war over a game. This false theory seems to be fed by little crumbs of clues like this, and yet, the real information is more interesting. So much is left to the past though and we may just never know.

I can't blame these guys for not remembering every single detail of what happened all those years ago (and modern people with the company probably have to be very diplomatic in what they say, for fear of upsetting the alliances and agreements they have now), or riffing on stuff people are saying anonymously online. The Eldritch Epistles page was speculation, trying to figure out the motives and plans of these designers from long ago. If it were my page and I saw the real Bryan Ansell commenting, I would try my best to get him to do an interview to clear up those gaps (since he was the direct subject of the article) and give his perspective. After all, "he was there!" I don't know if the author tried to do that or what, but it's certainly more the pity that he took those thoughts with him to the grave. R.I.P.

I re-read the comments that the alleged Brian Ansell was responding to and you can easily see an angry or peeved tone there, like he's taking personally the comment lestodante (not to pick on him) made about the sword thickness (you could take that comment as rather critical of those designs, which he may have taken great pride in once upon a time). I'm sure plenty of times I've dashed off a comment to something without really deeply considering what I should write with the idea that people were going to read it years from now and try to reconstruct my whole worldview from it. I remember doing art criticism when I was in school and there was nothing worse than having to get up there with the thing you worked so hard on and have people pick it apart (when most of them couldn't do any better). Constructive criticism is an art form in itself. Of course being in the industry a person has to set their pride on the shelf every day, but when you've been out of the game for years, there isn't much need. Maybe from his perspective here are some people who were not only not there, but don't have experience in the industry and are taking potshots at your pride and joy, and that could sting a bit and lead to dashing off a comment that was more harsh than it needed to be.

Let's say it was really Mr. Ansell making that post. It's certain plausible. And the way he remembers it, that's what it was. But I've learned over time to accept that many old notions I had about HeroQuest were mistaken. It was neither all original artwork, nor was it a case of just taking a bunch of art off the shelf from Warhammer and cramming it into something else. It wasn't that Stephen Baker was a lone genius who created a game out of nothing... he drew inspiration from many other sources, used other resources to develop it, and had lots of help. He seems like a humble guy (and that's what Encarmine always says about him too) and I don't just think that's PR. Ansell on the other hand, has a small reputation of being kind of a hot head sometimes (of course that's hard to judge from a single online post, having never met the man... and judging any of us harshly by a single post online would be vastly unfair to a person). The "curmudgeonly old designer" is a cliche by now, so I don't begrudge it to anyone who has been there, done that, and maybe is tired of keeping up polite appearances when they think people are getting it wrong right in front of them while dropping their name. Perhaps there was some "old wound" there or maybe just a pet peeve. Maybe he was tired of seeing people posting effusive praise towards Stephen Baker as the "inventor of HeroQuest" as if nobody else had anything to do with it... but his post comes across as really sticking it to him, as if it was ALL GWS that made HeroQuest possible.

Even so, while giving both Baker and Ansell the benefit of charity here, I would say it's certainly a good point that without the involvement of GamesWorkShop, HeroQuest would not have been the success was, and we would not be remembering it so fondly without that collaboration. To whatever extent, the artwork was a big deal. The game mechanics many of us remember (those who didn't grow up with the European originals) is due in large part to the activity of Mike Gray and his team. Even so, you could say that's a refinement of the rules developed by Baker (or, if we take Ansell's comment literally, the work of GWS who revised the thing after the supposed failure).

In the world of board games a lot of people go unsung. At best people know the name of the original "inventor" of a game, or it's just a company name. And most of the time when you dig deeper that "inventor" didn't do all the work by themselves, there were many others who contributed, and sometimes the game changes so much that really you could say it's the work of others, but out of gratitude and honor to the original designer, their name still appears at the top of the list.

So I'm going to say we should give much credit to GWS for HeroQuest, but also not give them the sole credit. If they had made HQ all by themselves, it may have been popular, sure, but it may also have ended up like Advanced HeroQuest... a rather obscure game that vanished quickly to become a rare collectors item rather than a nostalgic hit that had enough momentum to return and conquer the world a second time. And no offense to the creators of AHQ either... for all we know, that one might have a rebirth in the future as well (Encarmine aka Chris Nadeau was very familiar with it and spoke positively of it when he was still with Hasbro).

So if Jervis Johnson was "only" a playtester but got much credit and people used his name to promote it more, I mean that's fine I guess. I am pleased to learn more about who did what back in the day. I feel like to European players those names might mean something back in the day, but to people on our side of the pond, we had no idea who any of those folks were. If you had said the name "Stephen Baker" to me in 1991, I would have had no frame of reference. I am not sure I even had heard of Warhammer, much less knew what it was until several years after putting HeroQuest back on the shelf, and I imagine I wasn't the only kid who was like that in the US. Had I had access to any of those fanzines or European gaming stores, I could have learned about it though, but I just didn't. HeroQuest was a great game, but one among many those days, that caught our attention for a time. I'm just glad it's back!

[HispaZargon]

I forgot to mention in my last post that Stephen Baker said in this interview that he created HeroQuest working with Roger Ford, the VP of Design in Milton Bradley UK at the time, and he also said that he learnt a lot from him. Roger Ford was years later the main creator of 1993's board game Die Schlacht der Dinosaurier, a game which Stephen Baker also participated in its design after leaving Milton Bradley, as he explained in this other interview, so 'suposed' Ansell words mentioning Ford fits with these data.

However, it seems really rare that Ansell, as a reknown business man of their time, at the time 'he' wrote his unbelievable post he did not remember who was Roger Ford, considering the position of Mr. Ford in Milton Bradley. The same about Ben Rathbone, so rare that Ansell did not knew who was either, considering that he also occuped for years a relevant position in Milton Bradley too (see this recent interview to Mr. Rathbone for more info).

Then... was everyone in Milton Bradley lying about who created HeroQuest and we should give more trust to such suposed Ansell post? Baker, Ford, Rathbone... even GW's Jervis Johnson himself in recent interviews... are all mistaken or have memmory problems? I start to see rather clear they are not mistaken and such suposed Ansell post was a who knows which kind of reaction about HeroQuest origins.

[Kurgan]

The plot thickens! I guess there are good reasons to doubt some or all of the "Bryan Ansell" post.

I appreciate your detective work trying to get as close as we can to the true history. I'm really curious about the John Blanche, I wasn't familiar with him before reading these posts. Which art did he do specifically, if we know?

[HispaZargon]

John Blanche is and absolute legend in making the art of many Games Workshop products. Stephen Baker refered to Blanche as his contact in GW about the art of HeroQuest, but it does not necessarily mean that Blanche did the artworks... Maybe he was the one who cordinated the art activities and who commisioned Les Edwards and Gary Chalk to make it, instead of contacting Milton Bradley enployees, who knows.

[Daedalus]

Is this artwork that appeared in the 1st/Premiere Edition (UK) rules book and not in the later editions?

Check page 6, 9 and 11 from the European rules book. The Chaos Warrior fighting the Paladin is by John Blanche:
http://english.yeoldeinn.com/downloads/ ... dition.pdf

Indeed, the p.6 art is is John Blanche's--thanks for pointing that out, lestodante!

John Blanche was the GW art director in '89, so I could see him choosing the Chaos Warrior vs. paladin piece to merge with the p.9 and p.11 Gary Chalk art of the EU first edition Rules of Play. That conveniently allowed for GW to trumpet "the talents of . . . artist John Blanche" to its market in the WD 115 preview for Hero Quest. A savvy cross-marketing maneuver, though misleading.

Jervis Johnson's involvement seems more reasonable in this light, but his actual contribution remains a matter of conjecture.

[Daedalus]

The plot thickens! I guess there are good reasons to doubt some or all of the "Bryan Ansell" post.

I appreciate your detective work trying to get as close as we can to the true history. I'm really curious about the John Blanche, I wasn't familiar with him before reading these posts. Which art did he do specifically, if we know?

John Blanche works were featured in several questbook. For example the back of Wizards of Morcar (tower), Kellar's Keep (minions) and Witch Lord (army of undeads).
Also inside the rulebook you can find several of his artworks in black and white.

Is this artwork that appeared in the 1st/Premiere Edition (UK) rules book and not in the later editions?

Check page 6, 9 and 11 from the European rules book. The Chaos Warrior fighting the Paladin is by John Blanche:
http://english.yeoldeinn.com/downloads/ ... dition.pdf

Indeed, the p.6 art is is John Blanche's--thanks for pointing that out, lestodante!

John Blanche was the GW art director in '89, so I could see him choosing the Chaos Warrior vs. paladin piece to merge with the p.9 and p.11 Gary Chalk art of the EU first edition Rules of Play. That conveniently allowed for GW to trumpet "the talents of . . . artist John Blanche" to its market in the WD 115 preview for Hero Quest. A savvy cross-marketing maneuver, though misleading.

Jervis Johnson's involvement seems more reasonable in this light, but his actual contribution remains a matter of conjecture.