The HeroQuest Living Rulebook

[lestodante]

I voted for basing the rules on the US 2021 version. Since it will be now the most known version as it is now released worldwide and not only in the US.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Thanks to everyone who has voted so far, if you haven't already done so it would be much appreciated if you could share your thoughts on the questions in the initial post, particularly the person who voted for 'something else' as the base edition to use, it would be good to know what you had in mind? Personally I blame the person who set up the poll for including an open response option

[HispaZargon]

Hi. It is not an easy poll, and the resulting draw (by now) confirms it.

Despite of obvious nostalgic reasons, I voted for basing it in the US 1st Edition because I think it is a better system. Remake's 2nd Edition is basically the same as 1st Edition... but not the same on important details. 2nd edition includes a clear intention to be more easy to be played in terms of less difficulty, sometimes a bit forced in my opinion. You have there Potions of Healing of 2 BPs to be bought per just 200 gold coins, Potions of Magic per just 400 gold coins that allows a spellcaster regaining 3 spells, etc. You also have Bracers for the Wizard, etc... original 1st edition did not included them. I could agree on including aids, we all know how difficult are the classic Frozen Horror and Mage of the Mirror packs, but I think some of those aids should not had been as forced as they look, at least for me.

But it is true that US 2nd Edition is the one we have now in shops, so... it makes sense to define the living rulebook based in something 'alive' in the market.

Then, as said, it is not an easy decision. In my opinion maybe we should base the rulebook in the old system but adding those addons from the new system adapting them to the old rules system. I guess we could have more control of the project doing it following that philosophy, if not we were always dealing with how to insert the new future addons from Hasbro in a system also looking as the new one so conflicts will arise everytime. If we do it onto the classic system, our system will be more robust at the end. Maybe just feelings, but...

Nevertheless if we only want to define a rulebook and nothing else, both US 1st and 2nd editions could be valid for me.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Once we have reached agreement on whether to go ahead or not by the end of this month, when the poll closes, I expect that we will need an initial 'gathering phase' to get all the relevant original material together and compiling it into a single cohesive document(s). For this to work we'll need access to all the material from the Edition that we choose to use, for me this is one point towards US First Edition, getting my vote, in that all the material is readily available (on this forum) and can be accessed by anyone without any issues around future releases, sharing material that Avalon Hill might reasonably be expecting only people who have bought the 2021 Edition to have access to.

I think there will be a period of applying modularisation (if that is agreed), applying any textual guidelines (like capitalisation, Dread/Chaos references, Zargon/Morcar/GameMaster and similar), resolving any 'internal' consistencies like where we have different versions of the same rule from the gathering phase. Once that piece of work is done and we get on with the fixing stuff that is broken aspect, then whichever edition we go with we will need to do a comparison between that and any newer editions and decide on each point of difference whether we want to incorporate it or not, so I agree with your point there about that be an important, necessary, early step.

In fact, if there isn't already a thread on this then we could start that now, differences between 2021 and US 1st edition (it may already exist I haven't checked), it would be interesting and useful to see how different the two editions are, provided they are fairly close, both in terms of 2nd Edition having a relatively small number of changes (attempts at improvements), and 2nd Edition still having a relatively large number of the same bugs as 1st Edition, then the choice probably becomes less important in terms of the actual content and becomes a practical decision around availability of material and similar.

But I don't agree that it makes sense to use the 'live' US 2nd Edition, one of the reasons for developing and maintaining a 'Living Rulebook', is that it is community effort to maintain a game or game edition that is no longer officially supported, is officially 'dead' (which HQ was for a quarter of a century and may well be again in a couple of years when profit opportunities move on), and therefore needs the community to maintain it as the officials aren't. I think it would be treading on Avalon's Hills toes for us to be forking off from their live material to create a variant that could be seen to compete with their own, but you are right, it isn't an easy decision, I'll be watching the poll progress with interest!

[cornixt]

I think it only makes sense to start with the commonly available rules right now because that is where every new player (or returning player without their old set) is going to be starting from themselves. But that doesn't necessarily mean it is wise to do so with rules that are currently being sold in stores right now. Good job that you can't copyright rules, only the way the rules are expressed, so you'd have to rewrite everything to be phrased differently and probably take HeroQuest off the name completely.

I do wonder if this will just turn into yet another alternative ruleset for HQ like all the others though.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

I do wonder if this will just turn into yet another alternative ruleset for HQ like all the others though.

Let's face it, that is a distinct possibility, so I'm trying to take steps to mitigate that risk as much as it is possible to do so (and would welcome more suggestions).

So far...

Instead of choosing an elite group of 3-6 'editors' to produce their own HQ House Rules which might be better than yet another individuals HQ House Rules but not by much I want a clear distinction between a smaller working party than are 'Custodians' making sure the guidelines for inclusion are kept to, but crucially they won't have the power to decide on topics/contenders, what is included or excluded, or to act as arbiters in any special way (other than in their capacity as contributors, same as anyone else who wishes to contribute)

I'm adopting a 'marathon rather than a sprint' approach, a smaller dedicated group could move faster, but I see this as being a long-lived enterprise, so whilst I want to keep the momentum up, I'm 'fixing' the cadence as monthly (hence the poll duration) as not everyone can or wants to be on here every day - smaller break out groups can do work that doesn't involve decisions (like typing up) but these will be shared at regular intervals to allow feedback and guidance from the wider community

I've also started to, and will continue to, contact as many Quest Creators (those who have made and shared Quests via the Inn) and owners of shared (via the Inn) House Rules Set/Documents with the proposal that once the Living Rulebook stabilises (and they can start before that) they review their own Quests to make them compatible i.e. any exceptions are noted as 'special rules' within the scope of that Quest or Quest Book and their own House Rules that would just state the differences between their house rules and the Living Rulebook (and potentially a lot of their 'House Rules' would be candidates for the Living Rulebook) aiming for wider adoption, sooner rather than later

By using the existing official rules forum for all rules/content discussions (aside from discussion about running the project itself) we can mine the wisdom of the ancients after all if someone put forward a viable solution to a problem 2 decades ago there is no good reason why it can't be included in the living rule book as a solution now.

Aside: for some reason I'm getting a mental image of these 'ancients' as some sort of Vampire Lord in suspended animation for centuries waiting to be woken from their rest by the greatest storm in unliving memory, this project may end up not being big enough to disturb their rest but we can at least make use of their previous utterances! Heed the words of HPL "do not calle up That which you can not put downe"

Finally to ensure that we get some return on our investment, even if the ultimate ambition of this project fails to get enough traction, I'm looking to structure the work in such a way that artefacts of value will be published at regular stages that will be useful to both the project, of course, but also the wider Inn community

Some examples

• Publish the complete rules as soon as they are compiled before any changes have been made for ease of reference

• Publish a Text Conventions Document that can used reused for any other document production, new Quests / Quest Books, House Rules etc for consistency (covering glossary, abbreviations, capitalisation, number format, Zargon/Morcar/Gamemaster, combat dice / attack dice / defend dice, gender neutral terms etc)

• Documented Principles or Constraints that can be used to guide future discussions and documents

• A published Common Modular System - that can be applied to house rules and perhaps even a house rule compendium

• Full List of all Monsters, Bosses, Artefacts, Potions, Spells and so on

• Full List of all Game Components by expansion

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Just a nudge to say that we only have two more weeks left on this poll. If you have already voted and left feedback then thank you. If you haven’t then speak now or forever hold your piece

[Markus Darwath]

I voted "US 1st edition" based on the copyright concerns, but acknowledging that the 1st edition and remake are virtually identical.
I agree that the 'living rulebook' should be kept as rules crunchy as possible, stripped of art and flavor elements. Some illustrations may still be required, such as for the line-of-sight clarification, but they could be done without using artistic icons.
Related to this, we may want to consider changing some of the terms within the rules to apply more generically across all the releases, such as Game Master or GM instead of Zargon, and finding a substitute term for Chaos/Dread.
That also leads to a question as to how to refer to certain of the monsters if this ruleset is going to include a listing of their stats. Given that the remake edition replaced fimir with abominations due to potential conflict with Games Workshop copyrights, should that be a concern for us as well? Personally, I would like to see the bestiary listing include stats for some alternative monsters from other sources or homebrew creatures that have been offered here at the Inn, but within the context of this rulebook can we call a skaven a skaven?
I would also note that if the idea is for the final product to be as edition inclusive as possible, then even future new rules or changes published by Avalon Hill should be fair game to either adopt, reject, or modify in the living rules, provided that they are maintained as generic rules and don't delve into distinctive ip.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Markus Darwath,

Thanks you for your input almost all of which I agree with, which is a bonus (for me at least).

I have suggested the "Game Master" (or GameMaster or Gamemaster) epiphet be used in preference to Zargon or Morcar, partially to keep it Edition neutral as you say, and partly because the Game Master plays a number of roles (Zargon/Morcar but also sometimes Mentor like when reading the Parchment text but that topic is covered under the topic Capitalising Letters)

I've used the term "Dread" instead of "Chaos" in my own house rules, mainly to make the transition easier for any fresh players who have only experienced the 2021 Edition but that would certainly be up for discussion (and I've replaced the "Fimir" with "Trolls" but again to be discussed)

For me I am trying to keep a distinction, and it is a blurred line, between true homebrew and rule modifications to fix issues, for example if someone proposed that we include a new monster or monster group, say "Ghouls" for example, in the HeroQuest Living Rulebook or a new artifact "Widowmaker" I would question the benefit of having them in the HQLRB, if these new things didn't include any new rules then just pop them in your Quest Notes/Book and use them, if there are new rules or rules modifications involved then we would have decide in they had general application (and should be considered for inclusion) if not then keep them in your Quest Book, for me the primary function of the HeroQuest Living RuleBook is a RuleBook

Skaven is an interesting question, that I have mulled over for a while, as they are such a great monster group, "Ratmen" just doesn't cut it for me, I considered "Nezumi" but that kind of forces the whole orientalesque origin, so I thought the best option would be just to refer to the monster group as "Vermin"

[Bareheaded Warrior]

I think that myself and many others were expecting a close result between "Yes - based on US (1st Edition)" and "Yes - based on US (2nd Edition 2021)" turns out we were right!

As cornixt made the valid point above, I'm keen to avoid creating "Yet Another Set of Rules" by promoting a wider, more collaborative approach but unfortunately the quantity* of responses isn't in my opinion sufficient for this purpose so I will put this project on ice for the moment and continue with some other projects, (main ones listed below) please feel free to keep posting comments, questions and suggestions on here and I'll re-open the poll in a few months time and see if the appetite has increased.

*(the quality was great, so I thank you all for that).

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