Open Letter to Hasbro/Avalon Hill Re: Barbarian/Elf Quests

[lestodante]

reading your letter it seems at the beginning you want to ask them to not re-publish the BQP and the EQP because they are so rare!
Only going further you explain what you mean. SO I hope they will read the whole message and will not discard it after the first lines.
For the yeti a solution could be to simply add a proper die roll to escape the hug.
I will support your cause by sending a message to Zargon on Twitter, I will ask to do more playtest and fix bugs.

[Kurgan]

Yeah, imagine a deranged letter saying the person makes a living scalping stuff on ebay and how dare they try to ruin their livelihood, lol.

Appreciate your help lestodante! I think most can agree it at the very least needs an official errata (Avalon Hill expressed openness to such a thing for the Mythic tier material), and those who are perfectly happy with the ancient flaws can just ignore it. If they are willing to listen to problems like solid rock not being shaded gray or traps not being colored orange, surely they'll listen to bigger problems as we all know exist here. And given their reaction to the unmarked chest in the Forsaken Tunnels quest (at first saying it's just a treasure draw, then updating it with an actual gold value), I say there's a good chance they'll react to this too.

I also figure anyone who wants MORE remake heroquest should want them to be informed, since general failure of such an anticipated release could jeopardize future releases. Most corporations are risk-averse profit-making machines, lacking the patience and nostalgia of fans like us, after all.

For all we know the product is already done and sitting around with plenty of time to print up an errata and drop it in the box. Or maybe they'll have to play damage control online after the fact (hopefully the former rather than the latter). If they rely upon word of mouth, imagine the message being spread far and wide, "the new quests are bad, but if you go online some fans have work-arounds for fixing them." Many simply won't bother to buy, or won't buy again after something like that, and those who were going to buy no matter what (small minority) won't be affected.

[Kurgan]

I did get a response, but it was a little generic and I think contained some misunderstanding (I blame myself). Here is their (and my) response:

[Name Withheld] (Hasbro Pulse US)
Jan 5, 2022, 6:34 PM EST
Hi,
Thanks for your email.
I sincerely apologize for the delay in our response, our team has been experiencing higher volume than usual.
We always appreciate all types of feedback, whether it's good or bad, so thank you for taking the time to share your concerns with us. I can certainly understand how this lack of product availability can cause a bit of frustration and disappointment just to say the least. Please be assured that I've already escalated these comments and concerns to my Management and Product Teams so that they're aware of your current experience as well. Although we cannot guarantee that this documentation will result in any direct changes to product availability, we will definitely ensure that your concerns are noted appropriately.
I appreciate your patience and the opportunity to assist you.
Hasbro Pulse

I sent a clarified response:

[Name Withheld],
Thanks for escalating the issue. It's not so much an issue with "availability" as with the idea that the difficulty and errors present in Barbarian Quest Pack leads me to believe that while Hasbro/Avalon Hill will attempt a "faithful re-creation" of this pack for release in future, that this will cause problems for new players, who will find several of the quests unplayable due to the errors and extreme difficulty. If an errata is included WITH the pack this will go a long way to calming those players who might otherwise become frustrated and stop supporting the Franchise. Most players never got a chance to play the 1992 Elf and Barbarian quest packs, and those of us who have tested them over the years have found many problems, requiring homebrew "fixes" that new purchasers would have no idea about and if they don't look to the internet community, might consider "giving up" on HeroQuest entirely which I'm sure you don't want to happen!
Hope that makes sense.
Good luck!

I'm sure they know that fans "want" Frozen Horror to get the remake treatment, but we don't know if they're aware of the problems and how they might address those before release to avoid a possible backlash from the majority of players who have never heard of the pack or are unaware of the gameplay issues within it.

The escalated comments probably made the most to me in the email however. Hopefully the next person on up understands them in the spirit they were intended!

[Anderas]

A good hint is, that after the publishing of BQP and EQP, the sales plummeted and the franchise was stopped.

That should wake them up.

Thanks for the Effort, Kurgan!

[Kurgan]

Thanks for that Anderas.
Perhaps, though it seems like so few players actually played EQP/BQP back in the day. I mean even the guy Lee interviewed on covertnerd, who was lucky enough to have his dad bring it back from a trip, never actually played the quests back in the day. It seems many who had it got it and it stayed on the shelf or they just played with the minis. And many who ordered it got the sad letter back saying it was out of production. So it seems to have died out very quickly with those two packs, but yeah, did EQP/BQP kill the franchise or was it already dying to the point they couldn't spend sufficient time to finish them properly?

All most of us knew was that there were MORE QUESTS Out there and we were curious what they were like, so we dreamed (and forgot) for three decades. But when we open it up, will we like what we find? The veteran community knows, but the average buyer doesn't know about YeOldeInn. They won't go to BGG or some reddit thread to get the homebrew fixes to make it better. Thus Hasbro/Avalon Hill needs to take that into consideration.

I certainly hope the new release is a success, hence the concern!

And maybe I'm overstating things a little... would a new expansion that is "too warty" kill the entire franchise? It wouldn't have to. So you could still easily get GS, KK, ROTWL on store shelves for years to come...

But imagine if Frozen Horror was a huge flop. Wouldn't that make them hesitant to invest the time and money into new releases, especially from the "back catalog" of HeroQuest products? So all of the diehard veterans out there (including myself) who want them to re-release that back-catalog should support an idea like this. If you disagree with the work-arounds, that's fine, but send that information to them on social media, get the discussion going, and hopefully they'll listen. I don't use twitter or instagram...

I would want BQP/EQP/etc to be mainstream as well not a limited edition collector's item that everybody knows sucks but doesn't care because they're just re-selling it in the sealed box on ebay. Many will be playing it for the first time, so it needs a little help so it won't just be quietly retired in record time like it was three decades ago. Even scalpers who would want it to be rare might not want it to flop so that word of mouth makes it less attractive for the curious to buy ("oh that one? I heard it sucked, I'll save my money for the next warhammer quest").

[Kurgan]

Shared some more thoughts on the topic in my recent HeroQuestFans twitch stream here (reposted on Youtube).

We discussed much of the same on covertnerd's latest HeroQuest related podcast here.

[wallydubbs]

I'm surprised you guys think Hasbro would actually consider remaking Frozen Horror and Mage of the Mirror. If you guys looked at the remake, asides from the artwork, you should be able to tell they put very little effort into recreating the original. Those miniscule errors: like the unmarked chest in Quest 3 was never corrected; The questions we've all had on Line of Sight was nowhere near addressed in the rule book; The Trial was not made easier for a 1st Quest; even the wording of the Courage spell and specifications regarding Borin's Armor were ignored. In fact, the whole thing became more convoluted with the new conditions that go along with the new characters.
If they had any intention of remaking the Barbarian and Elf Quest packs, they wouldn't even bother play testing it or correct the marginal errors.
It's wishful thinking and I kinda lost faith in Hasbro.

[Kurgan]

They created a remake style artwork of the Frozen Horror box cover and featured this prominently in several videos on their youtube channel behind the speakers next to the other boxes of real Hasbro Avalon Hill game products. They even had speakers saying that they would be taking legacy products to remake as well as new ones and cheekily telling people to "chill" while they waited for official announcements. This was not a joke by "ZARGON" on twitter, it was posted during their Hasbro convention and subsequently in updates.

That's one heck of a tease effort if they had no actual plans to remake it!

As far as "putting very little effort in" that's precisely the point. These packs are already made. They wouldn't have to correct any errors, just like they didn't the first time.

What you're really saying is that they won't bother to even try to address the errata before or at the time of release anymore than they have for this one (the missing door in SQT was addressed on twitter and Teos come to this forum to post his correction personally). Errors in the two free quests (Forsaken Tunnels and earlier, Rogar's Hall) were addressed and re-posted in response to criticism from fans.

So while I don't dispute their ability to screw it up, I'm letting them know ahead of time, and I encourage others to do the same. If it's really coming out this year, there may be time for them, at the very least, to type up an official errata and post it online, which is the bare minimum I'm asking for.

HispaZargon reported how they even recently corrected the mistranslated cards from the Spanish version, and both posted them online AND promised to mail out copies to verified purchasers of the game with the erroneous cards.

Yes, we all have corrections already in the homebrew community, but let's be real... most retail purchasers of these games will have no clue and will probably never venture to the Inn or BGG forums or reddit to get fans like ourselves giving the corrections before they get upset and give up on the franchise... they're not hardcore diehards like us!

You may be right, hence while I'm saying push hard rather than just give up and leave them (and the franchise) to their fate...

The Barbarian Quest pack WILL be released this year and it will 99% chance be broken. The question is whether they will release an errata. If we say nothing and stay silent, there's a great chance they won't and it will harm the franchise (in terms of releasing new quality material, whether legacy or brand new). I don't expect it will kill the game to the point where they will stop selling the retail version of the GS, KK & ROTWL.

[Nlinindoll]

I'm surprised you guys think Hasbro would actually consider remaking Frozen Horror and Mage of the Mirror. It's wishful thinking and I kinda lost faith in Hasbro.

In addition to teasing it almost weekly, here is the official HeroQuest Zargon account on Twitter confirming The Frozen Horror is coming next: https://twitter.com/heroquest/status/14 ... 55266?s=21

Scroll down to see @Heroquest’s reply to @RegionalBird

[wallydubbs]

I don't have a Twitter account. So I never caught wind of it. I still find it questionable, though, if they'll fix the errors.