by YouTube channel Logan Guinn performed during Gen Con 2023 a live interview with William Mort, better known as "Avalon Bill". At the time of interview, William was the Public Relations Leader of HeroQuest remake's products.
The interview with Avalon Bill can be found in Logan Guinn's channel here, however, I took the licence of transcripting it on this post for eternity... nevertheless of course I encourage you to watch the full video if you are interested in listening to William.
Thanks to Logan Guinn for performing this great interview.
----------------------------------------------
INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM MORT "AVALON BILL" by Logan Guinn, published the 9th of August 2023 at his YouTube channel, @LoganGuinn
- William Mort "Avalon Bill" (AB): Hi my name is Bill Mort I am on the marketing team at Avalon Hill. If you're on the Avalon Hill Discord you might know me as "Avalon Bill".
Logan Guinn (LG): So Bill tell us a little bit about Gen Con's experience in 2023 this is Avalon's most exciting release of one of the new epic Hero Quest companion kids. Tell us a little bit about it.
AB: That's right, so at GenCon this year we brought our latest release Hero Quest Rise of the Dread Moon. This is the first original Hero Quest expansion in 30 years. Previously we've been bringing back a lot of the old expansions that fans loved in the 90s, but this now we've been able to create our own expansion and include some things that fans have been asking for wanting to see in the game for years and years and then also we've announced the next Hero Quest Hero Collection which is The Path of the Wandering Monk. This is a character that has traveled all over the world and studied with different Masters so they've mastered the four Elements of Fire, Air, Earth and Water.
LG: What are the new exciting elements of the expansion. We've seen some wonderful characters come out. We met the Rogue, the Warlock, the Kight, so in comparison, the wandering Monk tell us a little bit about the benefits of this particular character brings to the adventure
AB: Yeah, the Monk is a hand-to-hand combat master, so you'll see them wanting to get into combat really quickly, kind of like the Barbarian, and they have a couple special abilities based on Fire, or Earth, or Air, or Water that give them different advantages that will kind of like be an ace up their sleeve, but the one difference is they aren't going to be as well armed. as you mentioned the Knight. who comes with a shield right away. The Monk is an unarmed combatant so they don't wear as much armor.
LG: So out of the entire expansion packs of everything going on, tell us a little bit about this new expansion that has something to do with the online app? Is this the secret key to the next level of role play games?
AB: That's right, so we have a Hero Quest Companion App. One of the things that we hear from fans a lot is that they love Hero Quest, but they can't always get a group together to play or can't get enough people, so that one person can play a Zargon and they still have four Heroes. The Companion App takes care of that, it acts as a digital Zargon, so that you can either play it cooperatively with your friends or family, or even play the game solo, and we're adding all of the expansions in as soon as we can, so right now we have every expansion up to Mage of the Mirror and Rise of the Dread Moon should be added to the Companion App very soon.
LG: Now for a quick little reference, down on the screen you're going to see the link that he's about to tell you about, but is there a particular link where they can find this app.
AB: Yes, so you can find it in the iTunes app store, or sorry iPhone app store, or the Google Play app store.
LG: All right, now then any other new secrets that you can divulge upon us of what Avalon Hill's next awesome is going to be?
AB: I don't know how much I can say but I can tell fans that there have been some leaks out there, so if you're a big fan of Hero Quest, you might know some news about what's coming down the pipeline. I do also want to share that on our blog which is at hasbropulse.com, slash blogs, slash Avalon Hill you'll be able to find the Online Quests that we've been publishing free to download for our fans. The latest one is called Knightfall and it acts as a prequel story to introduce the story of Rise of the Dread Moon.
LG: Now as Avalon Hill expected to go to another convention where some fans could find you again other than just simply Gen Con?
AB: Yeah, so we will have a presence at Spiele in Germany in October. We're also working with our partner to hopefully have some gameplay sessions at Pax Unplugged and maybe a couple other conventions over the next year, but Gen Con has been such a hit that hopefully in the coming years Avalon Hill will keep growing and keep reaching out to fans at different conventions.
LG: Well they all want to thank you very much for taking a few minutes out of this very busy weekend here at Gen Con 2023. Is there anything else you feel like you want to say to the fans?
AB: Just thanks so much for being great great passionate fans about our products. We know Hero Quest is a big popular one, but Betrayal at House on the Hill is also big and our latest Dungeons and Dragons The Yawning Portal. We hope fans check that out, because we've seen that when people play the game, they love it, and I should call out as well our latest uh Risk Strike. If you love the game Risk but you don't have you know a couple hours to play, Risk Strike is that Risk experience in 15 to 30 minutes.
LG: Very very cool. All right thank you Bill, it's been an absolute blast. What do you think of the weekend turnout? Was it what you expected?
AB: It was incredible, this is maybe the biggest Gen Con I've ever been to. I think bigger even than Gen Con 50, so it was so great to see so many people here, and the fans coming up to us and being so excited about our games is just it's heartwarming.
LG: Well thank you sir for taking the time out and we look very forward to what Hasbro and Avalon Hill has in store for us in the future.
AB: Yeah thanks for having me.
End of interview.
----------------------------------------------
Links to many other relevant interviews about HeroQuest are compiled in this thread.
