Heroquest remake by Hasbro - The BIG discussion thread

[Kurgan]

And its gets even more interesting because there has never been any official comprehensive chronology of the order you have to play the quest packs in... witness the discussions about it. Then there was different content. EU players got Dark Company, Against the Ogre Horde and Wizards of Morcar. Legacy of Sorasil was the sequel to the first PC game (which was in turn based directly on the EU version of the board game). NA players got Mage of the Mirror and the Frozen Horror. Advanced Hero Quest appears to be its own thing. Battlemasters seems loosely connected. "canon" in fictional franchises, especially games can be a big headache.

Personally I don't see why they would need to even try to harmonize or streamline the heroquest canon with this new set. What purpose would it serve? So they can entice more people to play Warhammer Fantasy and/or D&D? If making a canon serves no purpose, then don't bother with it. We create the stories, we create the characters. They just set the parameters of what is basically possible in the world... and we, the players, do the rest. The customization was present from the beginning, as the original questbook included the blanks in the back and the character sheets let you put in whatever names you wanted. And of course people outside the US got their shot at the Adventure Design Kit, which I would have loved to have had back in the day!

If Orcs are made of fungus, or snot, or are aliens from beyond the Outer Rim, I don't care. They're the green guys we fight in the dungeons. I don't care that there are "dread warriors" now, they're still Chaos Warriors to me, daggnabbit!

[Orc26]

I like the orcs being murder mushrooms (anything that makes a race less describable in relationship to humans the better.)
I don't like orcs being green humans from the "north" that got corrupted by dread first. Might as well just have corrupted humans then. Complete waste of a different race, making it as nondifferent as possible.

[Cael Darkhollow]

at some point we are going to need a whole new forum section for the "HasbroQuest"rerelease.

because it is all ready apparently drastically different from the original game it should have its own section. It seems that the game system, KK, and ROTWL still might be a "true to spirit" rerelease of the original with whatever changes were necessary to remove GW content such as fimir, chaos warriors, and warhammer world text references, but the new content surrounding the druid, warlock, bard and Spirit Queens Torment Questbook feel much more like a reboot and departure from the original rather than additions to the HeroQuest game.
Makes me really wonder if the Stephen Baker Questbook will feel like a continuation and addition to the original game or be a departure and distinctly different in line with the other new material presented?

[Kurgan]

I've have to read up on the Spirit Queen's Torment, because the little I saw of Stephen Baker's book gave no indication that it was any kind of departure in terms of lore, more like a (presumably nostalgic) retread of places and things we've experienced before.

Concerning Orcs...

I don't see them being "not so different" as being an issue. I'm actually okay with all the "races" of HeroQuest being closely related, that doesn't mean they can't be good or evil. We have evil humans and good humans, evil elves and good elves, evil dwarves, good dwarves, etc. I just figure by percentage in this world, the evil orcs are going to be the dominant group. Now if you want to say they're all murder machines fine... you want a "dumb army" you don't feel bad about slaughtering in battle, sure (if you remove the Orcs from that group, that just shunts it off onto some other one... undead, skaven, etc).

But the idea that the Orcs were bred for war, to serve the bad guys specifically, I don't think that's the case. It's unclear. But it's never been explicitly defined that way. The Bad guys, in general, seem to have been corruptions... Zargon, we don't know if he was "good" but he started off as some unassuming magic student, right? He wasn't some fallen Elder god. The zombies, mummies and skeletons, those are dead humans re-animated by Chaos magic. The Chaos Warriors are evil men who worship Chaos. Gargoyles were statues brought to life by Chaos magic (again, using magic on something that already existed to change it to a nefarious purpose). Maybe in this lore universe like some others, evil can't create, it can only corrupt?

We know that some goblins are slaves. Maybe some of them don't want to fight for the bad guys? Maybe some of them do (being "cruel" and all). What about Fimirs? Are they "basically good" and "corrupted" or what? In this version we have "Abominations..." fish monsters. What's their story? Were they once a proud and noble civilization that was turned evil? Or did some evil alchemist create them in his laboratory? (from scratch? or did he corrupt some pre-existing matter? I assume the latter)

So were the Orcs all born evil, or were they once "good" and became evil? Either way, they're evil now and that means they're going to need killin'.

Its enough for me to know that the bad guys are doing bad things and they threw their lot in with Zargon. In my homebrew Lore, the Emperor even issues letter of Marques to the Heroes saying they may confiscate the treasure (and take the lives) of Zargon's followers... with the implication that if they were to end their aggression and crimes against his subjects, those bounties would be lifted.

If Zargon hypothetically surrendered himself, the lawful rulers of the Empire would put him on trial. Perhaps you can't kill an evil Wizard like that so easily, perhaps a simple execution would be out of the question. Imprisoned in the deepest dungeon, without any access to his elixirs that kept him alive all these centuries, he would live out the rest of a natural life span (that left to an old man) and that would be the end of him?

The Orcs that survived the death of their former leader, would they continue to worship Chaos, would they remain social pariahs? Or would some of them reform? Whether they were once a "noble race" or not, the point is what they do now.

Who knows, maybe one day after the Heroes had finally triumphed and the war was over, you'd walk through town and see businesses run by Mummys and Gargoyles and Skaven, having received their Imperial pardons and becoming productive citizens... but that doesn't mean adventures can't happen. Or maybe the truce or the triumph will never come.. maybe the evil hordes will just keep coming forever. You get to decide!

[Orc26]

Wonder how many named people are going to get their names "arbitrarily" changed? (Fear of GW's layers isn't really arbitrary but I think we all know what I mean.)

[Kurgan]

I doubt that. The old game still exists. What are they going to do, somehow hunt down and confiscate every old copy? Even George Lucas couldn't do that with his creation...

Now Hasbro can do what they want on their forums. Hopefully they wouldn't be that dumb, though.

[Cael Darkhollow]

I like the orcs being murder mushrooms (anything that makes a race less describable in relationship to humans the better.)
I don't like orcs being green humans from the "north" that got corrupted by dread first. Might as well just have corrupted humans then. Complete waste of a different race, making it as nondifferent as possible.

I like orcs as a standard fantasy race; evil dungeon stock or minions of evil (Chaos, ahem) for heroes to fight, certainly in the case of HeroQuest and Battlemasters, D&D or any other fantasy game for that matter.
I homogenized all related fantasy into a generic interchangeable setting in my imagination such as D&D, Tolkien LoTR, Warhammer, HeroQuest, videogames etc.
I am not a fan of drastic departures from the standard recognizable fantasy tropes (such as fungus spore orcs or swashbuckling bard orcs, or sparkly benevolent vampires instead of dangerous evil bloodsuckers that are destroyed in sunlight vampires.)
an orc is an orc, a troll is a troll no matter what fantasy game you are playing. even though it is make-believe fiction you know when someone got it "right" and it fits the standardized mythology. To change that is stupid in my opinion. I sure as hell dont want to see a troll bard player option either.

[Kurgan]

You can make that decision but even Tolkien didn't abide by those rules. His goblins and his elves aren't the same as the ones in the lore he drew inspiration from when creating his stories. And D&D and Warhammer didn't copy his stuff verbatim. So your head canon may have the all the same and that's a valid opinion, I just disagree. There's nothing that says Heroquest HAS to conform to any other lore, despite having similar things in it. It doesn't have to be in continuity with Star Trek (even though that might be cool).

I agree that suddenly telling us that Orcs are fungus spores would be a weird change out of nowhere. You don't do something like that without a darned good reason.

[Cael Darkhollow]

In this version we have "Abominations..." fish monsters. What's their story? Were they once a proud and noble civilization that was turned evil? Or did some evil alchemist create them in his laboratory? (from scratch? or did he corrupt some pre-existing matter?

it looks like D&D creeping into the game. Im okay with it though.
Kuo-toa are a subterranean anthropoid evil fish race and a major foe in the Underdark of the Forgotten Realms. Alternatively Sahuagin, Reavers, Sea Spawn, and Locathah are other D&D fish humanoids (Creature of the Black Lagoon knock-offs) that are similar.
the word abomination however, (wagging my finger and squinting my eyes) hmmm, that does imply an unnatural creation rather than a "natural" race...

original HeroQuest is clearly tied to the Warhammer world which has all anthropoid animal/human amalgams such as beastmen being Chaos spawn. Even the Skaven are just rat men mutated by Chaos. So fish guy would just be another chaos magic corruption of the natural world.

Also, Lovecraftean influence Deep Ones is apparent with a fish guy in fantasy.

[lestodante]

They have posted the playtest of the new Orc Hero!
You can read the post here: Thoughts on the New Orc Bard Hero?
This is really the worst character ever!!!