Heroquest remake by Hasbro - The BIG discussion thread

[Kurgan]

Sorry who is "the mage" ? Wizard?

Good feedback, do you have Twitter? Somebody with Twitter or whatever, needs to send them gameplay feedback (I wonder if they're relying on fans to play-test this for them...)?

[nathanielz]

nah, don't have twitter. if anyone does, I'm happy to help though

[Kurgan]

We don't know what they're actually reading, besides Twitter and possibly facebook, that's the thing. So we could be talking up a storm here and Hasbro/Avalon and the dev team may have no idea...

[Cael Darkhollow]

It just said that he crawled out of the dirt, so while it might line up with the 40k fluff it doesn't confirm that greenskins are fungus any more than if they were alligators. If GW wanted it to be clear then they would have put it in one of the army books or rule books, and they must have their reasons for specifically avoiding doing so in the last four or so of those since it was written in the 40k books.

Page 159, Warhammer extended rulebook (in Ancient History: The New Races): "From the wilderness came the greenskinned Orcs and Goblins, their insidious spores perhaps unwittingly introduced to the world upon the star vessels of the Old Ones."

They appear as the forth race to populate the world after Lizardmen, Elves and Dwarfs. Judging by the "spores" comment, they follow 40k and are fungi-based.

FYI not all warhammer lore comes from or is stated in army books/codexes that’s only 1/3 the other 2/3 come from novels and white dwarf magazine articles.

By Jove you are right there, in the Warhammer 8th edition rulebook printed in 2010 you found a single sentence in the history fluff that mentions greenskins and spores. Huh, how about that. Strange how it was never mentioned in the previous 27 years of Warhammer Fantasy as an official orc/goblin origin since its inception in 1983. Looks like a very minor late retcon to me.
Still, that makes fungus orcs official canon for 8th ed. at least I suppose. With the whole starships of the elder race blah blah boring stuff that they really developed late in the product line it feels like they were trying to tie 40k and fantasy into the same universe.

The 2013 Skarsnik novel is interesting in that it goes into more depth on the subject, but lots has been printed in GW novels that was declared noncanon for the game system so a novel reference is not a slam dunk either. Considering they ended the Warhammer fantasy world anyway in 2014, the point is probably moot, but official world canon is strictly from the published game books (rules and army books), secondary ephermal sources such as magazines and novels always get an asterisk explanation that the material might not be canon. Established Lore, on the other hand, you are correct would be from any source including websites or magazines or any other published materials by GW related to the Warhammer world.

now if we apply this logic to HeroQuest only the printed material in the game and expansions would be canon (with acknowledged differences in the N.A. and EUR. versions) and the novels and magazines such as WhiteDwarf articles or Marvel Winter Special that firmly tie HeroQuest to the Warhammer world would be Canon with an asterisk. If we add in Advanced HeroQuest or even Warhammer Quest or the HQ sorisil video game the waters muddy even further. You must either claim all publications from the official source (MB/GW) as canon, or limit it strictly to the official HeroQuest game material.

This is why a stretch goal figure that doesnt "fit" into the HeroQuest world by itself might not matter that much per se, but if that 3 million stretch goal Questbook canonizes that stupid Shrek boyband Orc bard that is a drastic and unwelcome departure from any other orc in HeroQuest history, we've got a major problem on our hands and a serious retcon of the entire HeroQuest setting set in stone. (at least for the new reboot version published by Hasbro...) not sure many old schoolers would accept that canon retcon for the original Milton Bradley/Hasbro/Games Workshop version of HeroQuest.

[Cael Darkhollow]

Looking forward for the 2.6, 2.8 more than anything else.
3.0 quest book will be fun to look at but if it is a Bard Expansion Pack I can see it never getting used as that bard is 100% not how we HQ. (Singing in the dungeon is a bad idea, that is how you let the skelingtons know where you are.)

Here! Here!
I hope that atrocious twerp doesn't get canonized

[Pancho]

Looking forward for the 2.6, 2.8 more than anything else.
3.0 quest book will be fun to look at but if it is a Bard Expansion Pack I can see it never getting used as that bard is 100% not how we HQ. (Singing in the dungeon is a bad idea, that is how you let the skelingtons know where you are.)

Here! Here!
I hope that atrocious twerp doesn't get canonized

The Bards abilities have just been posted. He gets a rapier
Orcs don’t use rapiers. For obvious reasons. What is wrong with these people?

[Kurgan]

To muddy the waters even further... maybe "worlds" can be canon but obviously not characters and their actions within it. When you have a quest and the Heroes all die horribly, is that "canon"? Obviously it doesn't matter. You can scrap it and start over and the world is reset. If Bildar killed the Witch Lord one weekend and Questor and Poopypants did it the following week, who actually killed the Witch Lord? Nobody cares.

But as for whether Orcs are mushroom people, that's never been part of HeroQuest. If Stephen Baker got on the mic right now and said it was canon, I'd be like "okay, that's weird" and while I'd respect his opinion, it wouldn't impact my gaming sessions any, unless somehow its a storyline shoehorned into the new Quest books in this remake set.

[Orc26]

Well... It seems that they decided to look in the D&D book on their shelf instead of in the HeroQuest box...

Fungi or not, HQ orcs were near mindless murder machines and would have used a rapier as a poorly thought out spear.

On to my knee jerk reactions (ignoring poor lore choices);
- give him a short sword to start with (why give him an upgrade for no actual reason?)
- his defense boost is pointless, he will gladly trade the +1 innate bonus for the +3 from chainmail, helmet, and shield.
- I think I like the mini courage song that he regularly gets back, that seems cool.
- healing spell seems way to op... (8 BP for one spell?)
- Sleep looks like sleep.

Final thoughts
- make him 5/5 bp/mp
- make his other two spells weaker and give them a recharge ability as well. Make him mechanically different from the other casters. Right now he is so close to an elf with a custom spell deck that I can't see a difference.

[Cael Darkhollow]

Looking forward for the 2.6, 2.8 more than anything else.
3.0 quest book will be fun to look at but if it is a Bard Expansion Pack I can see it never getting used as that bard is 100% not how we HQ. (Singing in the dungeon is a bad idea, that is how you let the skelingtons know where you are.)

Here! Here!
I hope that atrocious twerp doesn't get canonized

The Bards abilities have just been posted. He gets a rapier
Orcs don’t use rapiers. For obvious reasons. What is wrong with these people?

FACEPALM
We need a HQ game bible so they will know the parameters to design in before we end up with a figure with rollerblades and emoji based spells. They have access to Stephen Baker so it doesn't make any sense that they are straying so far from the original game.

I assume they literally do not have original HeroQuest material at hand to reference beyond the main NA rules book and game system questbook along with KK and ROTWL which they stated the rerelease was based on. Probably explains why no rerelease of Elf Quest Pack, Barbarian Quest Pack, Ogre Horde, Wizards of Morcar, or HQ Advanced Quest, they don't have it to reference and they are hard to come by now. the illustrators and guest designers probably have never read any of the original game at all and have no idea what it is actually like. I personally would want to br extremely familiar with the source material before i tried to design additions to a game. Worrisome considering this version WILL be how the public perceives the HeroQuest product from now on.

[Cael Darkhollow]

To muddy the waters even further... maybe "worlds" can be canon but obviously not characters and their actions within it. When you have a quest and the Heroes all die horribly, is that "canon"? Obviously it doesn't matter. You can scrap it and start over and the world is reset. If Bildar killed the Witch Lord one weekend and Questor and Poopypants did it the following week, who actually killed the Witch Lord? Nobody cares.

But as for whether Orcs are mushroom people, that's never been part of HeroQuest. If Stephen Baker got on the mic right now and said it was canon, I'd be like "okay, that's weird" and while I'd respect his opinion, it wouldn't impact my gaming sessions any, unless somehow its a storyline shoehorned into the new Quest books in this remake set.

Right. The HeroQuest game canon is set around specific events and times so can be reset and played over and over. the ROTWL questbook is set before he is beaten so the outcome is variable, until the ending where you get the reward (but the "you" part is never canonized E.g. the witchLord was defeated by "Segurd the mighty" and only that dude or whatever.) His defeat is canon, thats all.