by Fantasy games & GW history specialist Jordan Sorcery performed during November 2023 an awesome interview with Stephen Baker, designer of HeroQuest and other well known MB board games like Space Crusade and Battle Masters.
Jordan Sorcery made a really good job with this interview, giving lots of unknown details about Stephen Baker and the history of these games, especially about the non-too-studied Battle Masters, which himself described on his great video creation 'Battle Masters: The Younger, BIGGER Sibling of HeroQuest', published the 1st of December of 2023, which I strongly recomend watching, like many other GW historical videos published in Jordan Sorcery's YouTube channel.
The full interview with Stephen Baker was originally published by Jordan Sorcery in his website here, however, Jordan has kindly allowed me to also copy the interview here for better preservation.
On behalf of all Ye Olde Inn members, THANKS a lot Jordan Sorcery for this contribution to the Inn!
----------------------------------------------
INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN BAKER by Jordan Sorcery, published in November 2023 at his website, jordansorcery.com
(trasncribed under permission)
- Stephen Baker is the legendary game designer behind HeroQuest, Heroscape, Space Crusade, and Battle Masters. After leaving his role in Games Workshop retail he worked on MB Games’ range of family games that utilised Citadel miniatures to create dungeon crawls and epic wargames.
Jordan Sorcery (JS): Having worked at Games Workshop and MB Games you’ve seen the game design process from both perspectives: generally speaking, how did making games differ at each company?
Stephen Baker (SB): At Games Workshop I ran their London Dalling Road store. The design team was located in Nottingham. I was not involved with game design. The games design process at MB was less structured than you would find today. A lot of the game design came from the US. The UK team spent around half their time localizing games for the European market.
JS: What was the collaborative development process like for the games that you designed for MB with GW?
SB: For the most part I dealt directly with several members of the GW design team. This included Bob Naismith, Jervis Johnson, John Blanche, Rick Priestley, and Phil Gallagher. The responsibilities for each company had GW managing the miniature sculpting, providing most game artwork (cards, rulebook art), and consulting on the game. MB was responsible for all non-miniature plastic, the box artwork; MB also illustrated the game board and elements on the die-cut cardboard sheets.
In the early development, I would prototype a game and provide a list of the miniatures and artwork needed. GW would then make recommendations on which characters would work best. This often aligned with the recommendations as I was choosing from the most iconic of citadels characters. I do remember GW was keen to have the Fimir in HQ.
For art, GW would commit to a certain amount of new art and also provide some existing art that could be used. Any additional graphic or illustration requirements were managed by me at MB. I worked with an external design company. The design lead was called John Davey, and he helped manage a lot of the graphic design. He also helped coordinate some of the art. I had some other external designers that helped with key elements. Jon Goode illustrated the HQ gameboard, all the furniture, and the logo. He is a meticulous airbrush artist, the gameboard and logo are two iconic elements of the game. Another designer was Don Maxwell. He was an industrial designer and is the person who developed all the HQ terrain constructions.
JS: After HeroQuest was a phenomenal success Space Crusade also went on to be a firm favourite amongst European children of the 90s. Do you know why it was not released and supported in the US in the same way as HQ?
SB: I do not know why Space Crusade was not launched in the US. I do know that the Space Crusade box art had to be changed as US management did not like the original border art when they saw it at Toy Fair in London. The original art was by Jim Burns, the revised box was illustrated by David Sque. Another factor may have been that GW and the Rogue Trader/WH40k world had little presence in the US market at that time.
JS: Space Crusade could be considered an evolution of HeroQuest’s dungeon diving adventure theme and explorative gameplay. Battle Masters marked a considerable divergence from this approach: how did such a different type of ‘board game’ come about?
SB: I wanted to cover all the bases for miniature gaming, fantasy/sci-fi RPG, and fantasy/sci-fi tabletop battles. My goal with Battle Masters was to get 100 figures in the box, so it really felt like you had two armies. I have been a keen wargamer ever since I was young and collected a wide range of armies. I used rules by the likes of Charles Grant and Donald Featherstone. I have always loved playing games that have a great spectacle. Anything with miniatures, dimension, scale, or terrain
One of the hardest things for new players to navigate with tabletop games is movement. Measuring distances and dealing with facing, flanks, and wheeling is a lot to manage. All the games were intended for mass-market appeal. The games had to be playable for a broad audience. The inspiration for the board initially came from a game MB launched in 1986 called Torpedo Run. The massive gameboard would allow for spaces that made movement no different than many family games. However, the box was too big for retail, and the cost of the enormous board took too many miniatures out of the game. That is when I had the idea to print on a Twister mat. The original design for the gameboard had a unique piece of art for the whole mat. Unfortunately, the manufacturing process used rollers with a diameter of 68cm. That is why you see the repeating pattern on the map.
JS: Rick Priestley has mentioned that Bryan Ansell helped steer the development of Battle Masters, what was that working relationship like?
SB: I got on well with Bryan and met with him several times. He would also meet with the senior leadership folks at MB from design and marketing. Bryan was keen for there to be a lot of miniatures. I was also keen to have unit bases and for the unit hits to be managed without having to pull miniatures off. This was faster than moving individual miniatures.
JS: What are your abiding memories of the development process for Battle Masters; were there any major challenges that needed to be overcome or did it come together relatively smoothly?
SB: Well, for one thing, it was a difficult game to present in management line reviews. The presentation room was designed to show regular board games and toys. Battle Masters had to be set up during a break in the regular presentation.
Early prototypes were made with existing GW miniatures and painted. The mats were printed on canvas and looked awesome.
The box size was a challenge. It was the biggest box the factory could make. I am glad we landed where we did as it gave us a huge area for the box front art. Chris Baker (no-relation) did an awesome job capturing all the characters in a classic battle scene. Costing was certainly a challenge. Getting to the goals of 100+ minis and the large play surface left little remaining to cover the costs of the other elements. The play mat certainly took time to prove that we could get the four-color printing on the size of sheet required.
JS: Earlier designs for the game are said to have included plans for even more miniatures, but apparently there was a push at MB to include the impressive tower model which took up some of the budget. Is that the case? If so, do you know what the rationale was at MB behind that choice?
SB: I do not remember that. I was keen to have some dimensional element that could act as a focus for some scenarios, and a small border fort/tower seemed the most cost-effective and would add a tactical benefit. It would also help tell a better story on the box bottom with two armies vying over a central terrain feature.
JS: There were two expansions for Battle Masters, Imperial Lords and Chaos Warband, each expanding the number of miniatures available for their respective forces. Given that the base game already came with a considerable number of miniatures and units, and has a relatively long play time, what was the driver behind the design of these expansion packs?
SB: This was largely a marketing/sales decision. As with the first two HQ expansions, there was no budget for additional tooling of new miniatures. Neither was there any real budget for design. These expansions did not have additional scenarios, and the box was painted miniatures.
The game system had all the core troops baked into the card deck. The only way to add new miniatures was to create additional specialized characters that could have their own card, similar to the ogre and mighty cannon. When I left MB, or Hasbro as it had become, I had two new expansions in design. The first was for a Giant who had a mini deck. He was like a super ogre and drew two cards from his deck every time a giant card was drawn. The player could then choose which one to play and which to discard. He was a little less erratic than the ogre. For the imperial forces, there were plans for a mounted general and wizard. Similar to the giant these characters had their own cards that would go into the deck. The general could activate other units he was adjacent to. The wizard had a bunch of spells for offensive, defensive, and healing. The giant was sculpted, but I had not seen anything on the general or wizard by the time I left.
JS: Space Crusade seems pretty definitely set in the 40K universe, but there’s a little more ambiguity about whether HeroQuest and even Battle Masters are set in the Warhammer Fantasy world with some references making the case for and some inconsistencies arguing against. Did you have a view on that when you were designing the games?
SB: As I remember it, the goal back then was to be loosely in the world but not directly tied to a specific timeline or narrative arc. In Battle Masters, the GW staff helped to edit the scenarios, and this gave them a little more of a Warhammer Fantasy Battle feel.
JS: With HQ, SC, and Battle Masters MB and GW produced a trio of classic children’s games. Why did the relationship between the two companies come to an end?
SB: I cannot say for sure. By the time the partnership ended, I had already left Hasbro. My guess is that sales began to drop off, and it may have been hard to get retailers to buy into new titles when they still had an existing inventory of expansions for the earlier games.
JS: Perhaps connected to the end of that business relationship: Bryan Ansell has spoken of a canceled fourth collaboration between MB Games and Games Workshop, one for which miniature prototypes had even been made. Were you involved in that Battle Wizards game? Do you know how far it got in development before the plug was pulled?
SB: Yes, there was a game and I played it. I had left Hasbro and was running my design company. I was asked to play through the game and share my thoughts. I met with some of the Hasbro design team, and we played through two or three games. This would have been towards the end of 1992 or early 1993. I cannot recall the game exactly, but it was like a chariot race. Each player had a unique vehicle with special rules. The goal was to race around two markers at either end of the table or to be the last person in the race. The movement system used a variety of articulated rulers for movement and to manage turning. We ended up playing on the floor to provide more space. There were early miniatures and vehicle models, the one I remember the most was the Skaven rat wheel contraption.
This game was designed by the GW design staff. I do not know who exactly designed the game. I provided some comments, but the game never reached market, and the partnership between GW and Hasbro came to an end sometime later.
There was, however, one more game that I designed that also never reached market. In the same way Space Crusade was a logical follow-up to HeroQuest I designed a Warhammer 40k Battle Masters. This was an early prototype and was fully playable before I left Hasbro. It was to be in a smaller box, and instead of the plastic map, it had a dozen or so double-sided one-foot card tiles. These could be arranged in multiple ways and provided an easy visual reference for what were to be the scenarios. I never got around to writing all of these. The game was to come with some 3D card and plastic terrain. It also included Rhinos that were also part plastic and part card. The game was more turn-based, and this would have allowed for easier expansions, adding new units and terrain. I am unsure what happened to this concept or if the GW team ever reviewed it.
November 2023
End of interview.
----------------------------------------------
Links to many other relevant interviews about HeroQuest are compiled in this thread.
