by Kurgan » Tuesday March 19th, 2024 10:06am
So in the lead up for speculation to Jungles of Delthrak, I am on this kick that I think it's going to be similar to the previous "original" quest pack Rise of the Dread Moon... based on fan feedback, popular mod ideas, etc. We've gotten hints of this before, but here are some of the things I am thinking of that "fans want" or are perceived to want based on past attempts and such (like alternate color dice, rolling surfaces). This doesn't mean any or all of these will be found in Jungles of Delthrak, but I'm thinking of the sorts of things they would want to put in an "original" quest pack to fill that space.
If you can think of any good ones please add them to the list!
1) Dragon. Rules for dragons exist and every so often you'll get someone make a proxy for a dragon in HeroQuest. Crypt of Perpetual Darkness was "proprietary" for the Haslab campaign so it wasn't in retail and people are still upset about missing out.
2) Skaven. Next to "skeletal archers" this seems to be one of those fantasy requests that keeps getting made. Here I am using the GWS name, but Ratmen were planned for the unreleased Wizard Quest pack, so it could seem like a natural choice. But people want some kind of verminfolk or mouselings in the game.
2B) other fantasy creatures? Giant spiders, minotaur, centaur, sabertooth tiger, carnivorous cave worms, dwarf mercenaries/evil dwarves, magical mercenaries... lots of characters were planned for future expansions or just appear in other board games that players would love to see on HQ tables and have proxied before.
3) Generic Combat Cards or Skill cards for the Dwarf & Barbarian. Despite the value of these characters being in their simplicity as combat guys, the fact that they are the only heroes who don't start with at least three special cards to use (consider all of the many new heroes AH has done like that) has led a lot of fans to try to give them something to make up for it.
4) Upgrades for the BP/MP of the Wizard and Dwarf. This was already done for the Barbarian and Elf in their packs. What about the other heroes? Does everyone get an upgrade eventually?
5) The follow up to the cliffhanger ending of ROTWL. Granted, I think this is one that shouldn't be touched because it was always intended for the players to write this one, not that one was coming. BUT, people wonder what really happened to Skullmar. How many times does the guy get to escape before we finally get him?
6) Sir Ragnar figure. We've been waiting for this since the Haslab campaign ended, some other "version" of the character in plastic form... good, bad, neutral or maybe all three!
7) Sex swaps of the other heroes. They started it back in 1992 with the female Elf and Barbarian. The Haslab campaign gave us a female Elf as the default and a male Elf as the alternate (and an even better sculpt in the MOTM remake). Now we have a male version of the Druid in ATOH (alongside a resculpt of the female). There seems to be demand for this trend to continue. Not every monster or character got the same treatment, but the conspicuous absence of the female Wizard and Dwarf is just begging for them to appear again somewhere.
8) Markers to visually differentiate Mercenary groups. Betrayal at House on the Hill 3rd edition and its expansions have these little rubbery "boots" you put on the round bases of the figures to set them off visually by color. Ribby in our community has done a great service by printing up little plastic rims that easily snap onto the bases of men-at-arms figures to color code them with a hero (you just need many more of the same color than come in a Betrayal box) and he's working on some that are of bendy material. While this doesn't have to be the exact solution, it's a lot easier than asking players to paint their figures (and the numbers won't always even out, what if the Wizard wants to hire 6 mercs, the Barbarian wants to hire 3 and the Elf 2? and the distributions, etc).
9) Rule clarifications. These are too numerous to list. Various questions were answered on social media but never printed officially in any set. Some will still grumble with their explanations and implement their own solutions (thinking of myself here) but others really want those printed someplace. Will the Wizard ever get those "powerful magical items" he was supposed to "save" his gold for? (I guess not, since they deleted that paragraph from the remake Game System rulebook). While many fans want some kind of compendium rule book (that encourages you to buy all expansions?) so far they have slipped rule clarifications into various expansions (see Rogue Heir of Elethorn, Rise of teh Dread Moon, etc).
10) Armory board. Yes this was teased on Black Friday as a joke. Fans still want something like this, so a high quality printable image would be great. Of course they might be leery about releasing digital stuff these days because so many scammers turn around and print it to sell at a high markup (despite "not for resale" being printed clearly on the page!). In a way the Alchemist Deck from ROTDM was an attempt to make a comprehensive kind of Alchemist Shop from across expansions.
11) Reprinted Game System. Some want a revised version released. I guess it would have little tweaks to the rule book, maybe higher build quality on various parts? They kind of already did this in 2022 (a vast improvement over the Haslab version of the GS/KK/ROTWL... we recall that the "big box" version was the first retail edition and there are still many copies out there in stock with the old red & yellow Avalon Hill logo on the front). Here's where some are wishing for the "Advanced Quest" content with the "Dark Company." Many have pointed out you can already do this yourself with scans and fan re-creations of the Dark Company adventure using the Frozen Horror (12 mercs) plus the box. But using non-removable weapons, actually a set like this would have 24 mercenaries (whether in red or some other color, they seem reluctant to use red for bad guys this time and will cast heroes that were formerly in other colors also in red).
12) RPG rules. Lots of fan mods consist of adding complexity to the game. Consider how WarHammer Quest does this, with optional rules to make the game more complex like a role playing adventure rather than just a dungeon crawling combat/exploration board game. These could be an optional enhancement, a new way to play old adventures and create new ones. They tested out some of these things in ROTDM (& its prequel KnightFall).
13) Solo rules, random dungeons. The Companion App already does this, but so far we only know it will be supported until June 14, 2025 [Edit: they recently extended it to Dec 31, 2026]. What happens after that? AH told us they had support planned at least until 2026, if not later as long as it sold. But this "hard limit" was seemingly placed on the Hasbro apps page long ago. How about an official extension? In the past they have delisted their apps once these dates pass. Many fans have come up with their own "solo rules" often with a deck of cards to randomly generate rooms, encounters, etc. The app won't be supported forever (even if fans could use it on emulators and re-host the file long after App stores remove it and new phone hardware no longer supports the old software), and you can't create new adventures in the App. I prefer playing Zargon as a human but others want to do it the other way.
14) Different probability dice. Those German colored dice are very popular and many spinoffs exist. Double faces, different distributions of symbols on combat dice, etc. differentiated by color. Of course AH has now released many translucent dice colors so making these solid colors (with white symbols) would work well.
15) Zargon mini. Yes, it seems silly that Zargon would be fighting people on the board, but then we got a "Mentor" wizard in the Haslab campaign. A kind of quirky one off sure, but then we got Rogar's Hall that featured an official use of the character! I think while there are many faces of Zargon/Morcar out there, maybe this is something to do?
16) Villains Collection(s). While the Witch Lord figure was an exclusive Sculpt for the Haslab mythic set, who says you couldn't have a different sculpt of him in retail? Lots of people out there have made 3d designs of Grak or Ulag or created alternate monsters. Now we have ATOH with official ranged goblins (why no actual archers with bows though?), skeletons and orcs. There are so many alternate sculpts you could have of existing monsters that painters would love. But even having "boss" or specialized monster units with some cards giving suggested abilities would I think make a popular package to sell as a mini-expansion. Here's also where you could have your sex swaps of various monsters that didn't get them before if you wanted.
17) Travel case / storage foam. Lots of people sell these kinds of things. Not everyone wants to re-box everything every time they bring the game over to a friend's house to play. Perhaps something like this would have a limited shelf life as new things get added, but perhaps a box to carry and protect just the essentials for the Game System + 1 big expansion would make a handy container (especially if they are painted and so they want that extra protection)?
I'm sure I'm forgetting some major ones.. anything else you see? Trends?
BUT, maybe they shouldn't do all of these things... what would that leave for the community to do? So maybe not all of it will happen.
Last edited by
Kurgan on Tuesday June 4th, 2024 1:02am, edited 1 time in total.