Heroquest remake by Hasbro - The BIG discussion thread

[Daedalus]

Disappointing, given recent trends in D&D and MTG.

You think you were disappointed before...

More bad news for HQ, and we already can see D&D is dead....

Teos, who admits "working on the HeroQuest Project", doesnt understand either property. It is bad enough for D&D, but he is likely bringing this to HQ also.



Designing or building a world is the job of the DM, if you want to make the world, then you aren't a player, you are a DM. This goes true for HQ as well but you are Zargon/Morcar, not one of the Hero players.

The Youtube link isn't displaying on Android. Perhaps you could edit and add a url link?

[Shadzar]

The Youtube link isn't displaying on Android. Perhaps you could edit and add a url link?

Seems like an Android problem somehow with embeds... I will edit the original, but until there, here is the actual URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=natiiY9eFl0

[Daedalus]

Thanks for the link. I didn't watch everything, but got the idea. I'm not sure how he'd implement collaborative world building in HQ. Maybe it's already baked in, as in his 14-year-old son could have helped come up with the D&D Orcs-were-once-people-too and Orc Bard concepts. Or Abadios figured it all on his own--who knows?

Either way, I expect the new Orc background to be self-contained in the expansion and easily ignored by those who are bothered by the notion.

[iKarith]

Disappointing, given recent trends in D&D and MTG.

You think you were disappointed before...

More bad news for HQ, and we already can see D&D is dead....

Actually, it still only manages to be a bit disappointing for me. HeroQuest's rules literally could be written on a single sheet of paper, front and back, at 12 point type, if you were willing to use jargon that a player of board games would find unambiguous, but might need explanation to n00bs. (I've noted before: You have one movement and one action phase, in either order.) There is nothing AH/WotC/Hasbro can do to the game that can't be immediately undone by leaving the rules in the box and handing a board game player that single sheet of paper.

Ohhh, they have female heroes!!! Yeah, we had some of those in the 90s. Unfortunately the WQP and DQP never got made or we'd have had those too. Ehhh they made the dwarf black!!! Did you look at the Dwarf hero card from the original game? Aggghh they have female monsters too!!! What, afraid of an orc with bewbs? These are mostly fake criticisms of the game, mostly being propped up by people who want to criticize the critics.

Ultimately, the real criticisms people have with the remake boil down to two things:

1. They changed it. They were bound to do that, since any agreement with GW is long since ended and wouldn't be re-negotiated with the properties and talent pool Hasbro outright owns today. ("Talent" perhaps being used loosely in some cases.) And it wouldn't likely happen even if Hasbro would want to just because there seems to be a lot more bad blood and lasting bitterness there than I thought six months ago. To some people though, anything other than a reprint of the 1991 game is simply unacceptable. (Others would complain if they didn't "make it feel new" somehow.)

2. The real criticism: We're afraid HeroQuest is going to go the way of D&D. D&D seems like a completely lost cause at this point, Pathfinder's frankly not much better off, wokeness has taken over even this because nobody wants to take the risk of standing up to the waves of entitled, emotionally-stunted mental infants whose response to damned near any time they don't get their way is to organize a hate mob to set out to absolutely nuke from orbit the target of their infantile rage.

It ain't just D&D. Folks like that are everywhere, and companies are terrified of being the target of one of their tantrums driving them out of business. You can say, "nah, that'd never happen," but I'm from Portland. You wouldn't believe the stuff I've seen done to people over anything—or nothing. I seriously have known someone who was accused of a dirty look which was somehow a subjective hate crime in someone's head. That person went on Twitter, organized a rage mob, and she was doxxed, started getting death threats on her phone, was fired from her job, had her bank close her account suddenly and without explanation, and was threatened with eviction. After she was accused of looking at someone in a way they thought was funny. She got the hell out of Portland, and that was right before covid …

The reason why this impacts D&D so much is that so much of D&D is freeform and subject to interpretation. Plus D&D is synonymous with its campaign setting where normal humans are basically somehow the most common thing you'll find (except they aren't) but anyone can be anything they imagine, with literally no history except the eight pages of overly dramatic Mary Sue trash they bring to session 0 as a "starting point" which is non-negotiable. They WILL have their half-elf half-furry sword-wielding, armor-wearing, spell-casting superhero badass who's all alone in the world but loved and adored wherever they go… Or else.

The reason nothing anyone who works for Hasbro, directly or otherwise, can cause HeroQuest to go down that road is because the former is up to us: Get better players! The folks who actually have fond memories of HeroQuest are older, and frankly most of us do not have the emotional development of a two year old. If we don't choose to play with people who act like that, the game will probably remain mostly something played by older players who still have or once had the game and have fond memories of it.

Yup, I'm gatekeeping. Among the nieces and nephews is a six year old. If she reacts consistently significantly better to not getting what she wants than you do, she's welcome at my table and you aren't. I don't think that's unreasonable.

The second reason Hasbro can't screw up the game is that HQ's rules can be written in 12 point type on a single sheet of paper, front and back. You'd have to use board game jargon to do it, and this jargon might need explanations for people who don't know the jargon used by people who don't make a hobby of board gaming, but still. You can ignore whatever rule book they release and use the single sheet rules, free of any wokeness they somehow manage to cram in.

What about the cards and the quests? They could change those too! And HQ players routinely make their own cards and quests. It's a box, a board, minis that'll serve the purpose even if they're not what we'd pick out ourselves, and the various furniture, doors, and bits needed to play. The rest can be totally up to us and has been for a couple of decades.

I mean, the fact is that a unique character (even the orc bard) … if HQ were about a narrative (and it only very vaguely is), with a reasonable and responsible person, you could find a way to make it fit the overall narrative. Maybe orcs were humans once, but changed somehow and … the bard somehow kept its mind. Of course, I still think it's fair to accept that greenskins are going to despise the orc bard and basically go berserk when they get the chance. Even if this one bard is not unique among orcs, the greenskins who serve Chaos would have instant enmity for any of their kind who didn't. I'd actually go a step further: Other servants of Chaos would presume the bard was just an orc, so they wouldn't aggro, say for one turn, if the bard is the only hero character they've seen.

Whoops, sorry, wrong room…
No worries, fellow Chaos servant! … Heyyyyyy, that was a hero, GET HIM!

I also have no particular problem with people who want to play unique characters in D&D, provided they're going to the DM with a character design they'd like to play and work with the DM to make that make sense for the campaign in question. Again, unique characters are going to draw unique attention. If you see a bear walking upright wearing a sword through the middle of town, that's just not something you see every day. I mean, unless it is! The consequence of a unique character is that every Spider-man has a J. Jonah Jameson who will never be convinced there isn't something evil about them. At least some of the NPCs the character will encounter will be hostile, and the player's gotta accept that. If they can't cope with that because the character represents something about them they can't have even an NPC be hostile to, then maybe that's not something you want to put into a D&D character.

HQ at least has a finite list of characters whose stats are defined. If you want your elf to be female, and instead of a normal elf, you want her to be a real fox …

[Shadzar]

Disappointing, given recent trends in D&D and MTG.

You think you were disappointed before...

More bad news for HQ, and we already can see D&D is dead....

Ultimately, the real criticisms people have with the remake boil down to two things:

1. They changed it. They were bound to do that, since any agreement with GW is long since ended and wouldn't be re-negotiated with the properties and talent pool Hasbro outright owns today. ("Talent" perhaps being used loosely in some cases.) And it wouldn't likely happen even if Hasbro would want to just because there seems to be a lot more bad blood and lasting bitterness there than I thought six months ago. To some people though, anything other than a reprint of the 1991 game is simply unacceptable. (Others would complain if they didn't "make it feel new" somehow.)

2. The real criticism: We're afraid HeroQuest is going to go the way of D&D. D&D seems like a completely lost cause at this point, Pathfinder's frankly not much better off, wokeness has taken over even this because nobody wants to take the risk of standing up to the waves of entitled, emotionally-stunted mental infants whose response to damned near any time they don't get their way is to organize a hate mob to set out to absolutely nuke from orbit the target of their infantile rage.

It ain't just D&D. Folks like that are everywhere, and companies are terrified of being the target of one of their tantrums driving them out of business. You can say, "nah, that'd never happen," but I'm from Portland. You wouldn't believe the stuff I've seen done to people over anything—or nothing. I seriously have known someone who was accused of a dirty look which was somehow a subjective hate crime in someone's head. That person went on Twitter, organized a rage mob, and she was doxxed, started getting death threats on her phone, was fired from her job, had her bank close her account suddenly and without explanation, and was threatened with eviction. After she was accused of looking at someone in a way they thought was funny. She got the hell out of Portland, and that was right before covid …

The reason why this impacts D&D so much is that so much of D&D is freeform and subject to interpretation. Plus D&D is synonymous with its campaign setting where normal humans are basically somehow the most common thing you'll find (except they aren't) but anyone can be anything they imagine, with literally no history except the eight pages of overly dramatic Mary Sue trash they bring to session 0 as a "starting point" which is non-negotiable. They WILL have their half-elf half-furry sword-wielding, armor-wearing, spell-casting superhero badass who's all alone in the world but loved and adored wherever they go… Or else.

The reason nothing anyone who works for Hasbro, directly or otherwise, can cause HeroQuest to go down that road is because the former is up to us: Get better players! The folks who actually have fond memories of HeroQuest are older, and frankly most of us do not have the emotional development of a two year old. If we don't choose to play with people who act like that, the game will probably remain mostly something played by older players who still have or once had the game and have fond memories of it.

The flaw in your argument here is the same one many others have. You forgot to add "for me".

I am not a "consumer". I don't just shut up and consume product like Disney wants me to do with Star Wars, HASBRO wants me to do with modern D&D, or HASBRO may be wanting with their D&D crowd in HeroQuest where I will just consume the product, shut up and keep spending more money.

Its MY damn money. I am a customer. IF you want the customers money, then you need to give them a quality product.

I am sick and damn tired of excuses being mad for products today, be it D&D, or the new Mortal Kombat movie of "The next one will be better, just support this one so the next one can be made". No. I am a customer now, not later. Not a pigeon to be plucked, or someone to be shaken down. It is time more people started telling these companies, with their wallets, that you have to provide a quality product if they want money, and the mindless sheeple that blindly buy anything and everything due to FOMO to disappear.

I don't buy brands, and the new HeroQuest t=shirt they decided to make will not be a purchase I make because I don't do useless "merch". I grew up in the 80s, I know HE-Man and GI-Joe cartoons were just commercials to sell toys. REALLY expensive commercials, but still commercials that were also a product. Oddly enough Demolition Man mocked it while being truthful "You called them commercial, we call them Mini-Tunes".

Yes HASBRO can screw it up, because you have to consider that not everyone has the option to play with a group of friends they have known for 40 years.. people died, move, have different schedules, etc. and if/when stores open again for playing games, then a severe change will be confusing for people, which goes full into your D&D/Pathfinder argument.There is jsut too much crap already, with RPGs like the D&D/PF divide, to CCGs/TCGs... gaming is already too diluted. HQ doesn't need dilution when it was something so damn simple. I mean it was already hard enough for the different country rules when someone moved and didnt realize before Ye Olde Inn existed that there were different rules. You end up in Germany want to paly a game and the rules are different from NA rules...

HASBRO has a chance to make one global ruleset here, it will upset some because it isnt their native ruleset, but it will be made from 1 singular company now that existed in one country. The only globalization required will be language edits for other non-English speaking countries. Do you think Japan, China, India, etc will buy a woke board game? Do you think Saudi Arabia will buy uncovered female minis?

I mean may sound rude to mention, but the world still isnt all the collection of insane leftists in Hollywood and the West Coast of NA. And, HASBRO is a GLOBAL company, world's largest game manufacturer ahead of Asmodee now that it merged with someone.

So while YOU can paly how you want at your table, like D&D/Pathfinder, when you are needing to go play at open spaces where other people are, you get this problem of the woke screwing it up. Sure they could add table rules for stores, but you don't have to have this forced and injected WOKE into everything if it isn't present beforehand. EVERYONE will be able to more freely "gatekeep" by saying, "We don't want that as part of our game", if HASBRO doesn't inject it in the first place.

Now this doesn't have to do with just the female characters because they had them already in the quest packs, or the silly arse orc bard, but also the misconception that the players are designing the quests like Teos thinks that is what makes D&D work. HeroQuest as a storytelling game, rather than a questing game of murder-hobo? Yes I will gatekeep the storytellers like Teos at EVERY minute of the day if I have to to try to save the game from getting destroyed like Van Richten's Guide from WotC just did to D&D saddled with Tasha's Cesspool of Everything, and Candlekeep Wheelchair Mysteries.

I may focus my attention more on D&D in places online where I discuss gaming, but that is because it has the most to "share" than the type of games I prefer, which is board games. and most board games I play, the traditional ones, can't really be wokefied, and really nothing to discuss since don't play things like Go or Shogi or Chess for competitive levels. Fun games like Ur, Parcheesi, Sorry, Monopoly. Even the over competitive types ruined Axis & Allies for me. I will fight to prevent HASBRO from turning HQ into the next woke version of Gloomhaven and D&D mix. They already have that game on HasLabs or Pulse anyway called Dungeons and Dragons: The Adventure Begins.

So as I say to the Woke and non-Woke D&D 5e Critter crowd, but also for HQ in place of D&D, "You can take D&D from me, when you pry it from my cold dead hands", because I don't want to have to put up with that crap in a game that it has no place in when I sit down to play with new people. Just like if I choose not to play with a group using those extra rules found in the subforum here because I have no interest in that direction of the game leaning towards Advanced HeroQuest that makes HQ proper lean more towards D&D. Even if that is what Baker wanted to create as "D&D in a box", what we got was something more and better than that, because D&D in a box came out in 1977 with Holmes Basic. I want a board game, not a tile placing game like Gloomhaven where you try to constantly upgrade levels like a D&D character. That is what I expect out of HQ, is HQ, not D&D.

People can always add wheelchairs to HQ or D&D if they want to, but it is almost impossible to take these things away once it is in the public consciousness. That is why many people here in this thread and others in the Ye Olde Inn forums are trying to send the signal to HASBRO that they paid for HeroQuest and expect HeroQuest, not D&D 5e, not Pathfailure, not "Storytelling the RPG the Board Game" where it is just communal design of the quests by committee from people that don't understand the purpose and point of the game, like Teos.

[cornixt]

[Kurgan]

Well in a sense "you" [Hasbro in this case] CAN pry those thing from MY "cold dead hands" because I don't own the IP. But when they do that, they lose a customer, and I will go and play something else... spend my time and money on some OTHER product, perhaps from a rival company, so they lose potential sale(s).

That's the key thing here. Yes, I can put up with some crap from designers, but at the same time I do want to reward good behavior and support good products. I don't want to feed the machine that just churns out trash. Maybe I did make a mistake in pledging. We'll see. That's why we're doing the unboxing. So maybe I'll be out $150 and feel like a chump (I'll have earned the right to complaint) then I'll sell it on ebay for $1000 ("ultra rare!") just kidding... I won't sell it (would probably give it away, to someone I would trust not to scalp it).

Even those of us who pledged have 90 days to return it UNOPENED. But somebody will "have to" open it to show whether it's worth it, unless they have an attack of conscience and do their own official one ahead of time (I suspect there will be some sponsored unboxing but it will be practically useless to critical fans like us and just be fluff).

I agree that fanboys (those who support the brand without question) and anti-fanboys (those who want all to hate everything as much as they do), whatever their politics, do not help (but in fact hasten the downfall of) commercial franchises. The corporations want to make as much profit for as long as possible, and whatever means they can employ to do that they will. If their customers seem to be dominated by the above groups, quality will suffer, and it will drive discerning customers away, damaging the brand, etc.

I've been criticized on these forums for arguing "well you can fix it in post" (with your homebrew mods) but that was me trying to lower the temperature in the room and trying to make the best of a bad design choice. It didn't mean I was endorsing questionable decisions or trying to silence "dissent" from "the brand." Far from it. We're not going to agree on everything, but we agree on this... if you dislike a product, don't support it. If you want to "send a message" vote with your wallet, send them your grievances. But bashing other fans just because they don't have the same zeal for preferences, won't get more people on your side.

When we post our REVIEWS if the negative parts are the new stuff, some will try to say "oh this is just the old school / new fans divide" but that isn't true. There's high anticipation among many fans over the Stephen Baker material (even though we've only seen one "training quest" that might not even be in the book) and apprehension over the Teos stuff (and negativity towards the New characters, especially the Orc Bard... at least aesthetically, and to a lesser extent the Druid and Warlock).

Fanboys won't be able to defend the product from negative reviews over the new stuff saying "you just hate anything that is new/different." I showed you can keep the mechanics of the new heroes while giving them a better aesthetic that more closely matches the tone and themes of classic Hero Quest (Orc Bard = Cleric or just a generic Bard; Warlock = Ranger; Druid = give them different spells, a la Ethica's Forest Spells). So be honest in your criticism... but tell WHY you don't like it. This takes away the ammo of those who want to dismiss and hand-wave away what we're saying by attributing it to personal politics or some "unreasonably high expectations" or just hating anything that is new/different. We're not "negative" or "toxic" fans, we're protective of something good that we want to maintain a level of quality!

This wasn't addressed to the "eyeroll" (or the post it was responding to) by the way, just to the general sentiment.

Edit: I can't seem to type anymore, sorry.

[Kurgan]

As for me and HeroQuest Lore, I'm not saying everything is perfect always, but if they bring in something new, and it has an echo in a past installment, even if it was just a White Dwarf article or something in the official novels or Legacy of Sorasil, I'm going to be more apt to accept it than if it was something never published (see George Lucas "I always intended..." revisions in Star Wars pre-Disney). And if it outright contradicts something established in the previous game system or quest packs, that's the biggest problem. They can just say it's a reboot and we know about stripping off the explicit Gamesworkshop Branding (which we'll be homebrewing back as fast we can), but that's that.

Unless they make some oddball changes, the real stuff to look out for will be the EU converted content imported in... and the new quest books and new heroes.

For now though there's a lot we still don't know...

[cornixt]

The eyeroll was about the general sentiment too, as well as they way it is expressed. Over and over, based on nothing new.

We get these rants triggered out of nowhere. Giant walls of text that don't really say anything for paragraphs. Constant complaints about "wokeism" without ever defining what they think is meant by it. Assumptions about everything based on elaborate conjecture, that might cause something they don't like. It's a vague mush of anger about possible changes being forced on them. It's like Fox News got bought by nerds and turned into a forum post. And HQ will all go bad because they claim that a guy who did another game has made that game a little less prescriptive (I don't think that's even true, Teos has written one non-mainstream D&D source book and that's it).

[Kurgan]

Yeah I can explain in exhaustive detail what "Wokism" is and why it's a problem in entertainment these days, but I'd rather not post it on the forums since we're trying to keep politics to a minimum.

I think you probably do know what it is, but perhaps like me you're of the opinion that we don't have a lot of solid evidence that this is going to be a problem for Remake Hero Quest. It would actually be a good thing for the higher ups at Hasbro to realize that sort of thing won't be tolerated by most of the fans (the very small number who want their game to conform to their beliefs already have high profile alternatives) and so it would be in their best interest not to cater to that fringe group. So in that sense it's good that they are ranting and being annoying. But I'm not Hasbro. drathe and the rest here aren't Avalon Hill. A strongly worded letter to the company (or perhaps on... ugh... twitter) will do more to "fight that fight" than a rant here. I think it's funny that we had people who were mad we didn't get the dragon and people who are still mad that we almost got the dragon.

Fanboy opinions don't matter, because those are brand loyalists. Whatever the brand decides to do, they will buy and defend.
Anti-fanboy opinions don't matter, because they hate everything and will never be satisfied.

But those are the fringes. I don't think most of us fall into either category, though a common tactic of the above is to cast one into either of those extremes. HeroQuest is being brought back for a reason... because it made money and it will make money again. Most of us are hoping it lives up to the name, otherwise, what's the point? There are plenty of other similar types of games out there would could buy instead.

This fall we'll find out if any of those fears were justified. We don't know if the material is already finished or if it is still being written (I would suspect the former).

I don't know what goes on on Twitter or Facebook (and frankly I don't care). Let someone else worry about it. I'd rather just play some good games. I don't think there's anything wrong with fans saying they want a good game worthy of the legacy of the game that inspired it rather than a faddish political sermon.

And walls of texts are my bread and butter. It's what I do on forums, so if you don't like that, please put me on your ignore list, simple as that, because I'm not stopping for you or anyone else... (not mad, just saying).

But I'd much rather talk about something fun and uplifting than something that makes us all depressed and/or annoyed...