Overview of the Old World

[Cael Darkhollow]

while my HeroQuest, Battlemasters, Advanced HeroQuest, Talisman, Mordheim, Warhammer Quest and my Warhammer Fantasy Battle are all set in the GamesWorkshop Old World setting as written in the source materials without any personal customization, I play them as completely separate games.
Been playing all those games for many years. Board games and tabletop miniatures games played as those game types, with the rules and lore presented by the manufacturer, I don't blend them or attempt to combine them into a larger amalgamation game.

I read my Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay books for fun and to delve deeper into the imaginary world of the Old World setting, I've never actually played it.

I read the Corgi HeroQuest novels and my many Warhammer paperback novels for the same reason, I like stories set in the Old World. I glean a greater understanding and appreciation of each game by any manufacturer by becoming familiar with every aspect of the setting where each game occurs.
I enjoy the Old World setting immensely, the minute they stopped supporting it and killed it off, I stopped buying GW products. I don't own or want a single Age of Sigmar game or book.

Now I do have many customized Warhammer armies still playing by the rules but with miniatures from many different sources: Citadel, Marauder, Games Workshop, Dungeons & Dragons, HeroQuest, Battlemasters, DarkWorld, Dragon Strike, etc. I have converted or painted many a board game miniature including multiple sets of all those games' figures to fit into my many Warhammer armies.

I also have a painted HQ set and an unpainted HQ set that will always just be boardgames to me.

I also collect Dungeons & Dragons. I have decades worth of games books and box sets from every edition of the game, D&D boardgames, hundreds of miniatures, and shelf after shelf of novels set in those campaign worlds. I play, read and enjoy them according to their rules and settings too.

I also collect Sword & Sorcery and Fantasy literature including all of the authors and artists who directly inspired all the games listed above. This is where I start to blend all fantasy themed materials together into a giant combined fantasy personal realm; what fantasy as a whole means to me.
Conan, Frodo, Merlin, Elric, Mentor, Zargon, Willow, Warduke, Strahd, Azalin, Acerak, Vecna, Tiamat, even Cthulhu or Voldemort inhabit my personalized fantasy world of imagination. I love all of it and will be a fantasy fan until I die.

The world that I am reading or gaming in might be Hyboria, Middle Earth, Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft or the Old World, it might be Tolkien's words or Howard's, but all of it is my personal fantasy. I am a Dungeon Master, a role player, a war gamer, a board gamer, a video gamer, and an avid reader and collector.

Gamed Workshop's Old World setting is satisfying and wprth exploring either by playing or simply reading. I am so pleased that the original HeroQuest was in that setting, it added so much to it's charm and deserves a good portion of the credit of why the game is fun to play.

I did buy two of everything in the fundraiser for Hasbro's new HeroQuest, and while I am pleased with the prospect of new HQ to play and own, I already know that it will lack the charm of the original because the Old World setting and art style is gone.

[Davane]

I don't actually hate it, though! Two people cared about my opinion of it, so I wrote the book, I'm done. And I agree, whatever utility can be found for HQ is what I would use it for, it doesn't have to be an all or nothing proposition.

Told you you were going to get a rep, Kurgan!

Seriously here, I think that as valid not using the Warhammer World is as an option for HQ, this is not the thread to be discussing this topic that has already been done to death, and will be coming quickly dogmatic. it would be more suited to another thread, if it's even worth a thread on it's own - simply because it seems more like a place to talk about our individual campaigns, rather than discussing a shared setting that we don't all share. I am sure there's people here who think that a thread on the Warhammer World is boring and pointless. We all have our own experiences, and sharing them with others who want to hear is great.

I don't think you should name it "Why I hate Warhammer..." though, because that would clearly be bait. More likely something like "Why I don't like HQ to Warhammer..." so you can share your ideas.

[Davane]

What a post, Cael. Couldn't agree more, and wanted to touch on issues in this thread before j_dean80 decides to reboot it to get back to actually discussing the Warhammer World.

while my HeroQuest, Battlemasters, Advanced HeroQuest, Talisman, Mordheim, Warhammer Quest and my Warhammer Fantasy Battle are all set in the GamesWorkshop Old World setting as written in the source materials without any personal customization, I play them as completely separate games.
Been playing all those games for many years. Board games and tabletop miniatures games played as those game types, with the rules and lore presented by the manufacturer, I don't blend them or attempt to combine them into a larger amalgamation game.

This is the fun part of shared universes - how you can take these universes and use them in your own way, for your own needs. This means that each game can be tailored to focus on the specifics of relevant aspects of the shared setting, whilst still fitting in with that shared universe. Plus, if you run multiple games with long running groups, it can be fun to merge events from previous games in with new ones as a sort on "in joke" for the game. This aspect of a shared setting is what is most important - everyone is on the same base page with similar experiences that really help.

As part of the Warhammer Shared Setting, I often lump in WH40K et al with the Warhammer World. In my mind, this makes Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000 a shared multiverse, because I do generally enjoy BOTH Fantasy and Sci-Fi, and I find that for the most part, both Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer Sci-Fi are immensely fulfilling. But that's just my head canon - there's no way I would argue that Necrons and Space Marines appear in the next Total War Warhammer game (although, apparently, that's what Age of Sigmar is supposed to be...).

I read my Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay books for fun and to delve deeper into the imaginary world of the Old World setting, I've never actually played it.

You are missing a treat. The most significant factor of WFRP is just how brutal it tends to be, because it aims to be so different from D&D. In WFRP, combat can be best seen as a failure state, as most heroes don't survive many battles unless they happen to be battle trained, and in the Old World, most aren't. The downside is that converting standard fantasy adventures to WFRP is harder than you may think, since the standard dungeon crawl is quite the death trap. You'd struggle to run a HQ adventure using WFRP, to be honest.

It seems weird to many how WFRP, which plays more like a psych-suspense drama game than a dungeon crawler, can gain such appeal - and it's always amusing to see how many players react the having to readjust from standard fantasy tropes from games like HQ and D&D, when they play WFRP. It's similar to the sadistic glee grognards like myself get from seeing n00bs die repeatedly when you switch from any modern RPG to anything truly Old School - regardless of genre or medium...

I read the Corgi HeroQuest novels and my many Warhammer paperback novels for the same reason, I like stories set in the Old World. I glean a greater understanding and appreciation of each game by any manufacturer by becoming familiar with every aspect of the setting where each game occurs.
I enjoy the Old World setting immensely, the minute they stopped supporting it and killed it off, I stopped buying GW products. I don't own or want a single Age of Sigmar game or book.

I am a sucker for a part-work, so I have been enjoying the current Warhammer: Age of Sigmar Mortal Realms collection, mostly for the lore. The quality is still there, but it just doesn't have that "evolved over 30 years" vibe going for it. The setting doesn't feel like it's been developed organically, and you can totally see how they've thrown the Warhammer World under a bus, so they can "redo from start." It's going to take a long time for AoS to get to the point of the Warhammer World, so I hope it's going to be worth it for everyone who's invested in it, but there's plenty of room for it to be a third line for GW, and part of the shared multiverse concept of my head canon.

Now I do have many customized Warhammer armies still playing by the rules but with miniatures from many different sources: Citadel, Marauder, Games Workshop, Dungeons & Dragons, HeroQuest, Battlemasters, DarkWorld, Dragon Strike, etc. I have converted or painted many a board game miniature including multiple sets of all those games' figures to fit into my many Warhammer armies.

I never got into WFB, since the start up costs and space considerations always meant that I could never get the sort of scale needed to play a decent game. This is why I enjoyed the boxed games, and later Mordheim, because you could get the feel of WFB and the Warhammer World without needing so much. That's not to say I have never played (nor owned) WFB - I was tempted with 5th Edition and a Lizardman Army, but never really got them off the ground enough to be commited, compared to, say, HQ, AHQ, and WHQ.

I also have a painted HQ set and an unpainted HQ set that will always just be boardgames to me.

Noice. Just being board games is what makes them a convenience, but you can always crib their resources to use in other situations, and visa versa. I like knowing that I can take a game like HQ, AHQ, and WHQ off my shelf and have a complete game to play.

I also collect Dungeons & Dragons. I have decades worth of games books and box sets from every edition of the game, D&D boardgames, hundreds of miniatures, and shelf after shelf of novels set in those campaign worlds. I play, read and enjoy them according to their rules and settings too.

I have D&D gaming books older than I am! I missed out on many editions of D&D, but the trove gives me access to all the rules I need these days, and it's fund to go back and both reminisce about the editions I have, and the discovery of those editions that I missed out on, for whatever reason.

For me, HQ was like a "gateway game" and I can totally see how this may be how Hasbro sees it, as I migrated to D&D via the Easy to Master "Black Box" release from the early 90's. A bit part of that was the poster map and standees in there, which really helped that feel like a Board Game. I soon learnt D&D wasn't a board game, but that wasn't a disappointment, as I was able to see the beauty in both, and even now, as much as I love roleplaying, I still appreciate a good board game too. To this end, I have most of the D&D Adventure Board Games, which are fun in their own right. I also find that many of the introductory sets for D&D are often quite good as board games in their own right, such as the 3rd edition D&D Adventure Game boxed set, which I also still sometimes play.

I also collect Sword & Sorcery and Fantasy literature including all of the authors and artists who directly inspired all the games listed above. This is where I start to blend all fantasy themed materials together into a giant combined fantasy personal realm; what fantasy as a whole means to me.
Conan, Frodo, Merlin, Elric, Mentor, Zargon, Willow, Warduke, Strahd, Azalin, Acerak, Vecna, Tiamat, even Cthulhu or Voldemort inhabit my personalized fantasy world of imagination. I love all of it and will be a fantasy fan until I die.

The world that I am reading or gaming in might be Hyboria, Middle Earth, Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft or the Old World, it might be Tolkien's words or Howard's, but all of it is my personal fantasy. I am a Dungeon Master, a role player, a war gamer, a board gamer, a video gamer, and an avid reader and collector.

I like fantasy, but it's not the only genre I enjoy. I enjoy all sorts of fiction, even though I don't read as much as I used to. A personal favourite of mine happens to be the pulp genre, characterised more by the style of the story rather than the setting. Thus, I can like Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Modern, Historical, or Classical. I tend to collect fiction more than I get to actually read it, and I love a good anthology too. Plus, my late partner was an avid bookworm, and I used to buy her a lot of books as gifts. I knew I could always read them, but now, I technically own them myself, and my bookshelf is quite the eclectic collection. You find Terry Pratchett (RIP) next to Enid Blyton, and William Shakespeare next to Charles Dickens, H.G. Wells, and Hans Christian Handerson.

One of the greatest set of fictional treasures I am fortunate enough to own, is a full collection of the Classic Adventures series by Fabbri, which means that I have titles like the Railway Children alongside, Black Beauty, Alice in Wonderland, Robin Hood, the Secret Garden, and Hound of the Baskervilles. I collected these as a child, at the same time as I played HQ and learnt D&D, and it seems my love of fiction and storytelling grew alongside my love of gaming, to the point that I would end up dedicating my life to it.

Gamed Workshop's Old World setting is satisfying and wprth exploring either by playing or simply reading. I am so pleased that the original HeroQuest was in that setting, it added so much to it's charm and deserves a good portion of the credit of why the game is fun to play.

The Warhammer World is (was?) a great setting in general, and it was the setting that put the icing on the cake for me for HQ. I don't think HQ would have been as popular if it wasn't set in the Old World. I also think that HeroQuest as a brand wouldn't have lasted anywhere as long if it wasn't for the shared setting of the Old World, and games like AHQ and WHQ to continue that gaming experience, as support for HQ waned in the days before internet.

I did buy two of everything in the fundraiser for Hasbro's new HeroQuest, and while I am pleased with the prospect of new HQ to play and own, I already know that it will lack the charm of the original because the Old World setting and art style is gone.

I have only ordered one copy, and chances are that's going to be cracked open, devoured, and then stored on the shelf. It does seem that HQ was marketed entirely for the collectors, rather than for a new generation of players.

See, we all have our own experiences and preferences, and they are all valid. For many, the Old World will always be a key part of their HeroQuest experience, and looking at just how many GW games are also on these forums, it's not surprising. Just by virtue of a few names, HQ shares a legacy with AHQ and WHQ - a legacy that all three deserve...

You can also see how my experience technically puts me somewhere in between Kurgan and Cael, because as much as I loved the Warhammer World, I never played Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Despite what GW would have you think, you don't HAVE to have played Warhammer Fantasy Battle to enjoy the Warhammer World, just like you don't have to have played WH40K to enjoy the WH40K Universe...

[j_dean80]

I don't actually hate it, though! Two people cared about my opinion of it, so I wrote the book, I'm done. And I agree, whatever utility can be found for HQ is what I would use it for, it doesn't have to be an all or nothing proposition.

Told you you were going to get a rep, Kurgan!

Seriously here, I think that as valid not using the Warhammer World is as an option for HQ, this is not the thread to be discussing this topic that has already been done to death, and will be coming quickly dogmatic. it would be more suited to another thread, if it's even worth a thread on it's own - simply because it seems more like a place to talk about our individual campaigns, rather than discussing a shared setting that we don't all share. I am sure there's people here who think that a thread on the Warhammer World is boring and pointless. We all have our own experiences, and sharing them with others who want to hear is great.

I don't think you should name it "Why I hate Warhammer..." though, because that would clearly be bait. More likely something like "Why I don't like HQ to Warhammer..." so you can share your ideas.

That was clearly a sarcastic joke. In all seriousness though, I respect Kurgan’s opinions, but this is not the thread to discuss them in.

[Davane]

I don't actually hate it, though! Two people cared about my opinion of it, so I wrote the book, I'm done. And I agree, whatever utility can be found for HQ is what I would use it for, it doesn't have to be an all or nothing proposition.

Told you you were going to get a rep, Kurgan!

Seriously here, I think that as valid not using the Warhammer World is as an option for HQ, this is not the thread to be discussing this topic that has already been done to death, and will be coming quickly dogmatic. it would be more suited to another thread, if it's even worth a thread on it's own - simply because it seems more like a place to talk about our individual campaigns, rather than discussing a shared setting that we don't all share. I am sure there's people here who think that a thread on the Warhammer World is boring and pointless. We all have our own experiences, and sharing them with others who want to hear is great.

I don't think you should name it "Why I hate Warhammer..." though, because that would clearly be bait. More likely something like "Why I don't like HQ to Warhammer..." so you can share your ideas.

That was clearly a sarcastic joke. In all seriousness though, I respect Kurgan’s opinions, but this is not the thread to discuss them in.

Hasn't this thread truly gone full circle now?

I know not all people want that (cough cough Kurgan)

My work here is done...

I'm just going to put these links to the Trove here, which is an EXCELLENT resource if you want current or old GW information on Warhammer Fantasy, be it from the games or magazines, as there's simply too much lore covered over the past 40 years for a single thread to do it full justice.

For a very brief overview of the Old World, as part of the Warhammer World, you might want to check out the Wikipedia article here.

More likely this would be best suited as a forum or subforum at Ye Olde Inn in it's own right...

I wouldn't mind seeing this thread rebooted, preferably with a bit more "Old World" and a bit less "Kurgan hates Warhammer", possibly even in a new Warhammer subforum. Whilst Kurgan's position is valid, and it's humourous watching the cognitive dissonance from seeing him both WANT more Warhammer and NOT WANT more Warhammer (sometimes even in the same post), I believe that there is a validity to at least attempting to have an overview of the Old World for HQ fans. Or, failing that, having somewhere where HQ fans can ask questions about the Warhammer World and HeroQuest.

[Kurgan]

I'm relieved! Please keep talking about the Warhammer world and how it could be used to enhance HQ, I promise I won't try to derail it again (didn't really intend to the first time, honest). There's no emoji of an orc with a halo (and I guess that's not canon anyway).

[Davane]

I'm relieved! Please keep talking about the Warhammer world and how it could be used to enhance HQ, I promise I won't try to derail it again (didn't really intend to the first time, honest). There's no emoji of an orc with a halo (and I guess that's not canon anyway).

Not without a Lute anyway...

(I didn't think we were back on the wagon just yet!)

[Pancho]

I own a number of Warhammer fantasy armies. Too many, probably.

I loved Heroquest, so it was only natural that I was attracted to the Games Workshop store like a moth to a flame whenever we went into town. We didn’t really do pocket money in our family, but Mum must have been taking notice; one Christmas after we thought we had already opened all the presents, Dad pretended to see something behind the sofa. One more present, in a big box. Warhammer Fantasy Battle, 4th edition, with the incredible picture of the High Elves in ferocious battle with Grom the Paunch’s orc & goblin army on the front cover. Honestly, my eyes bugged out so far I don’t think they’ve ever gone back in to where they were originally.

I didn’t know it at the time, but 4th edition was the first to have starter armies included in the box, and the authors had just completely fleshed out their world for the first time, ready for us to delve into. It was a very strong combination, a game with a fantastic background story and forces ready to start fighting straight away. I was rolling dice for the High Elves on the living room carpet that same day. Looking back on it now, it’s the same combo that floored me with Heroquest 3 or 4 years earlier, a hint of a huge background story but everything included in the box to play a smaller scale adventure right away.

Of course, Warhammer is a lot more customisable/collectible than Heroquest. I moved on from Elves and Goblins to also collect Bretonnians, Undead, Chaos, Dwarves and Dark Elves. I stopped buying GW stuff after 5th edition, for various reasons. But all this talk of Warhammer here at the Inn started up an old itch and I’ve been busy collecting a nice little Empire army over the last month
Sigh. I’ll probably end up getting some Wood Elves and Skaven, just so I can say I have every race that had an army book in 4th and 5th edition ( which will always be the golden age for me).

[Pancho]

Sorry, that was a nostalgia trip that added nothing to the topic really. I suppose I could post some pics of my figures and explain how they fit in with Heroquest.

[cornixt]

This thread inspired me to take another look at the Warhammer 3rd edition rulebook (it's available online if you are any good at searching and avoiding obvious virus traps). I really think it is the best single place to start to get a good idea about how HQ was placed in the Old World and the many things that weren't included in HQ.

If it was used to write new quests, I don't think your games would be any worse for including the stuff that was dropped/altered in 4th edition. If anything, you might have more depth, since Warhammer was still much more of an "anything goes" game back then rather than the more formal game that it became. A small amount of it is a bit insensitive (I remembered that Half-Orcs weren't well regarded, I hadn't remembered that the writer said that "sensible humans" think they should be enslaved and mistreated simply for having mixed parentage. Jeez, even if they were all evil, and it specifically says that they aren't, that is not something a sensible person should think about any creature.) but there is a little info about a lot of different creatures, and a lot of info about the main ones.

So I'd recommend you seek it out if you want more HQ background.