HeroQuest World

[b_0]

The Advanced Heroquest rulebook indicates that Heroquest is in the Warhammer world:
(To avoid anachronism, Heroquest refers to classic Heroquest, not the modern remake.)

Notice that, on Page 3, Advanced Heroquest is explicitly in the the Warhammer world:


Notice that, on page 45, the same characters that exist in Heroquest "continue" their existence in the Warhammer world:

Their existence in the Warhammer world is not an alternate reality, but a continuation. They are in fact "the same characters".

Notice that further down on page 45 even their belongings continue to exist in the Warhammer World.


By misunderstanding the following quote from page 3, one might attempt to argue that a doorway was opened between two different worlds which allowed the same Heroquest heros to enter the Warhammer world without the two worlds being the same:

However, that could mean that this doorway merely leads to more facets of the same world; an expansion, an advancement in that world.

Consider on page 46 that you can play the original Heroquest adventures with Advanced Heroquest rules:

One of those Advanced Heroquest rules is that it is within the Warhammer world according to page 3 of the Advanced Heroquest rulebook.
This brings all of the original Heroquest adventures within the Warhammer world, and since those adventures happened temporally prior to any door being opened, their existence in the Warhammer world is temporally prior to any doors being opened. So Heroquest temporally was always Warhammer. That is... unless those adventures were already within the Warhammer world logically prior to any doors being opened. But in that case, it was also always Warhammer.
According to the Advanced Heroquest rulebook, if there were two different worlds at some point, Heroquest with all of its past history of adventure has been absorbed into the Warhammer world and is no longer distinct, that is if it ever was distinct.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

My vote would be that they are parallel worlds...obviously there is a shared heritage, not surprising due to GWs heavy involvement in the early days (and the desire to share miniature sculpts for cost reasons), but even then recollections of some of those involved at the time, made it clear that this wasn't a clean-cut, definitive statement of "HeroQuest is set in the Warhammer World" and the world map referred to in early posts was on the later expansion pack and not in the original game, so it feels like positions may have been varied...

I don't recall there being a Heroquest world at the time I wrote the first book, so I created part of one and drew my own map of it. By the time I was asked to write the second book, Games Workshop had designed their own version of the world, which included some of the place names from my novella but with a quite different geography "loosely based on the Warhammer world" as it said in the front. I just mention that because if you refer to the map from the second book while reading the first, you will see that the route the characters take makes no sense. One view at the time was, "Well, it's for ten-year-olds," but I can tell you that when I was ten that sort of thing would've annoyed the hell out of me.

The full text with links and maps is available on his Fabled Lands website.

By the time I was working on the second book, Games Workshop had dashed in and changed my map of the Heroquest world to something more like their Warhammer map. It wasn't actually the same as the Warhammer one, but it had a lot of place names in common (including the curious "Trullheim" - did they know what a trull actually was?) and also made no sense in relation to the events of the first book, The Fellowship of Four. Go figure. Anyway, if you saw my sketch map of the original Heroquest world, here's the detailed version I did while writing Fellowship:

When I got to the third Heroquest book, The Tyrant's Tomb, which is this year's Xmas freebie, I knew to ladle on the Chaos references, objectionable though it was to have to go along with the lazy Chaos-as-evil theme of the Warquest, or do I mean Herohammer, series when I knew that in Mike Moorcock's original concept it was all so much richer, stranger and genuinely nastier.

The full text with links and maps is available on his Fabled Lands website.

Even from those partially shared beginnings the two worlds didn't evolve in parallel, no updates that were applied to the Warhammer world subsequently were ever back-ported into HeroQuest and no attempt was made to iron out any differences or contradictions, which suggests that the intent wasn't for the two worlds to be one, just to have some common ground.

Obviously we are all free to use and abuse the Warhammer, Morris and current official versions as we see fit, but personally I quite like the draft feel to Morris's maps as I feel that probably feels closer to the vague idea of geography and cartography that were perhaps around in such days and I don't see that the HeroQuest World needs to be rigorously defined, a woolly setting is sufficient as a backdrop to quests so time permitting I might take the one advantage of the HQ2021 reprint of liberating us from Chaos, and try to merge the HQ2021 world changes with Morris's maps and add that World detail into my own HeroQuest Gold rulebook book. Possibly...

[Kurgan]

I'm glad you shared those Morris quotes. Those were revelatory to me at the time! I love getting a glimpse behind the scenes of that creation process. So for the novels it was loosely based on the Warhammer world. Advanced HeroQuest it was explicitly the Warhammer world. And with the Remake it's not the Warhammer world. In headcanon, it's whatever you want it to be...

[HispaZargon]

How I see this:

- All European releases of classic HeroQuest, and Advanced Heroquest are part of the 80's World of Warhammer.

- American classic Game System, KK and ROTWL releases are also part of the 80's World of Warhammer because they are basically the same stories and characters as the ones from their European similar boxes.

- American classic FH and MoM expansions are not necesarily part of the 80's World of Warhammer, but they could be easily inserted into it if you want to.

- HeroQuest is not part of mid-90's World of Warhammer because Games Worshop introduced a lot of changes in their Old World story and races, however with some fixes like asumming the Fimirs exist in the World of Warhammer, and the HeroQuest main story happened during an ancient era of the 'later' Warhammer (Emperor Karl Franz years), maybe HeroQuest could be considered part of such past without many serious problems.

- 2021 Remake's HeroQuest is not part of the World of Warhammer anymore.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

b_0,

Whilst you make some good points, I think you are missing a key aspect.

AHQ is not HQ. It was published later than the GS and exclusively by GW, so the fact that text within AHQ clearly places HQ within the Warhammer world, just demonstrates that was GW desire and position at that point in time.

If you consider the development of HQ itself then you can see that with time the GW influence on the flavour and setting increases with time. The warhammer-HQ map on RotWL is rightly raised as significant in this discussion, but for me the significance is that that map didn't appear in the Game System Rulebook, Quest Book or KK Quest Book. If you consider the Men-at-Arms in WoM for example, their appearance (the regimental plumed helmets) and armament (Halberds and Greatswords) these are obviously more congruent with Warhammer Fantasy Battle than with original HeroQuest which didn't feature Halberds or Greatswords at all and depicts helmets with horns rather than plumes.

HispaZargon,

You are entirely correct in stating that many (but not all) of the inconsistencies between HQ and Warhammer disappear if we consider HQ to be set in an earlier version of the Warhammer World and whilst that maybe a useful work around, I don't think that was deliberate. The reasons why HQ fits better in a hypothetical early Warhammer World is that such a World would presumably be free of much of the GW/Warhammer proprietary changes (their IP in fact) and would instead be a more generic fantasy world and it is that more generic fantasy world that the original concept of HQ was set in.

If you consider particularly the original HQ game system then, as AH discovered and demonstrated, you really don't need to alter very much at all to strip out the Warhammer World propriety changes (GWs IP).

Replace Fimir with Trolls (and we are back in a generic Tolkien inspired world), Chaos with Dread* and change a few place names and you are sorted.

*The GW/Warhammer construct of "Chaos as Evil" doesn't really work as they borrowed the concept of Chaos from Moorcroft, where it wasn't "Chaos as Evil" it was far more intricate and subtle, so replacing this with "Dread as Evil" actually works better.

AH actually went further than needed by replacing the Emperor and Empire references with King and Realm but I'm pretty sure we had Empires and Emperors long before we had GW!

[b_0]

AHQ is not HQ. It was published later than the GS and exclusively by GW, so the fact that text within AHQ clearly places HQ within the Warhammer world, just demonstrates that was GW desire and position at that point in time.

There seem to be different facets to the main question.

The fact that GW, as an authority on Warhammer, has included HQ as part of the Warhammer world should be a good enough reason for TO's at Warhammer events to allow classic Heroquest miniatures in Warhammer competitions. So if a Warhammer TO is presented with the question, they should respond "Yes, those miniatures are allowed since they are part of the Warhammer world according to GW (Provided that the basing rules are followed)." The original HQ characters themselves should probably be allowed as some sort of heros in WFB or the upcoming Old World as well.

But the ambiguity that exists from the MB non-GW side of things is welcome in my opinion, as it allows a freedom from the bondage of GW lore for those who don't recognize GW as authoritative but want to stay true to the HQ lore. If those people wish to expand the lore of their HQ campaign, they should not feel bound to external GW lore. If you want the gargoyle to be a generic gargoyle rather than having the GW daemonic connection, that seems justified from the MB side of things.

[Kurgan]

You could view it the other way, and say that Warhammer Fantasy Battle of 1989 (1991, etc) is a version of the HeroQuest World. Some characters and events introduced in HeroQuest are therefore "canon" in the world of WHF. I wonder what Morcar's battlefield stats should be?

[Chwat]

After watching AshQuest review this thread! it got me thinking about my GW childhood, I had most of their boxed games of that era and Loved playing them all, but MB was also a brand that was part of earlier childhood fun. so the injection of GW into MB along with the greatest TV advertisement was no-brainer to me, I had to have it.

When AHQ came to my attention I had no desire to buy, I couldn't even stomach looking at it in WD magazine let alone go down the never ending road of blister packs again, I was happy with my fold away dungeon of endless possibilities.
I loved the fact it wasn't supported by GW! I was sick of open table top terrain and rule changes/updates, I could home brew HQ was it even called home brew then lol.
"I WAS FREE" of my once beloved GW! Games workshop made a monster of a game and gave it away in my eyes.
So I selected the bellow 2 options and I thank Greed workshop for messing up.
Was HQAQ a tit for tat with GW for making AHQ? I like to think so.

1 No, the guys from Greed Workshop wanted it to be, but this was not the intention of MB, who own the game.
2 No, they are two different worlds, and that's that. Any similarities are due to the fact that the same people created the backgrounds and re-used some ideas.

For me HQ was a snug little hide away from the outside world of woehammer, where 4 friends who excelled at fighting and had a lusted for Gold ,relaxed away from the battlefield never to return.
HQ is its own world

[cornixt]

You could view it the other way, and say that Warhammer Fantasy Battle of 1989 (1991, etc) is a version of the HeroQuest World. Some characters and events introduced in HeroQuest are therefore "canon" in the world of WHF. I wonder what Morcar's battlefield stats should be?

A lot of pre-2000 Warhammer lore was already no longer canon for 6th edition, but I guess that doesn't really matter. I think you'd want the big characters from HQ to be in 5th edition Warhammer, when heroes literally destroyed whole armies by themselves.

[b_0]

After watching AshQuest review this thread! it got me thinking ...
I loved the fact it wasn't supported by GW! I was sick of...
For me HQ was a snug little hide away from the outside world of woehammer...

I detect the possibility of some bias. However justified that bias is, beware of confirmation bias.

I'm glad you mentioned the video. After watching Ashquest, I have some observations.

He states "Nobody has the authority to tell anybody else that they're wrong." Why did he say that people who think they have that authority are wrong? It seems he is saying people are wrong. So his statement seems self refuting.

His position seems based on a subjective relativism, where whatever you prefer is the case(i.e. your Heroquest orcs can be Gommorean Guards from Star Wars in your version of Heroquest) While it's true that there is no obligation to conform your gameplay or imagination to the fictional lore or arbitrary game rules of some game developers imagination, there is a point at which your changes mean you are no longer playing Heroquest. If you change the Heroquest rules to the rules of chess on a section of the Heroquest game board, and later replace the board with a chess board, and later change the pieces to chess pieces, and drop the lore, you end up playing chess and not Heroquest. Even if you think of your chess pieces on a chess board with chess rules as Heroquest, thinking something doesn't make it so. So to discover the reality of a situation we need to look at evidence rather than feelings or preferences. But it is OK to be wrong about something as inconsequential as board games. People can peacefully agree to disagree while thinking of each other as wrong about something but still appreciating other things about each other. To say someone is wrong should not be construed as an insult, as everyone is likely wrong about something. We should all embrace the freedom to disagree.

If Ash's point about Star Wars is accepted (that Rogue 1 is not Star Wars canon, even though it is official and produced by the owner of the franchise(I am not disputing his point)), then it would become invalid to use the argument that MB, because of their ownership and rights, has the final say over whether or not HQ is Warhammer. The fact that the new version of Heroquest made changes to remove GW's IP seems to indicate that there are connections that exist in the classic version of Heroquest.

The claim that only the EU expansions have geographical connections to the Old World is wrong. The North American edition of the classic Heroquest instruction booklet makes geographic connections on page 4:

The Border-lands.

World's Edge Mountains, and Athelorn.

3 of the 4 heros originate in well known Warhammer Locations. There is a difference between an adjacency in a passing reference as a joke(in deadpool?), and the origin stories of most of the main characters in a game with relatively little lore. Any differences in spelling could be attributed to linguistic drift, less emphasis on orthography in antiquity, or transcriptional error. The presence of fimir, chaos warriors, chaos magic, etc. is another point to consider; The connections are throughout the game. How many connections in such a minimal lore world would be sufficient to connect it? If plumes were not depicted at some point, that should not be construed as a statement that there were no plumes. It only indicates that they weren't mentioned at that time.

My initial post mentioned in the video was touching on only one facet of the question. In the Warhammer world of GW, Heroquest is explicitly part of the Warhammer world. So for those playing Warhammer, the answer is definitive that HQ has the same game world as Warhammer. I did not really address the perspective from the MB side of things. I am unaware of MB stating explicitly that classic Heroquest is a separate world from Warhammer. Perhaps the lack of clarity is due to indifference or obliviousness of MB over GW placing the Warhammer fingerprints and foothold in the classic HQ(fingerprints which later needed to be scrubbed for the new version)). When trying to be true to the lore, we do not need to adopt anything from Warhammer into HQ which is unmentioned in HQ, but it seems we must adopt HQ into Warhammer if we are recognizing the Warhammer world as a thing. I feel free within the original HQ lore to not consider the gargoyle to be anything more than a regular gargoyle, since the chaos magic from which it is said to be derived on the last page of the NA core quest book is largely undeveloped in HQ. I also feel free to think of HQ fimir as mere cyclops lizard men who associate with orcs. But if we don't care about being true to the lore, then anything goes, and we might be playing chess.

With regard to Advanced Heroquest, the question is not whether or not it's the same game, but rather if it's the same game world. The difference in rules is moot because there are many different games with different rules within the Warhammer world. It is valid to point out the inconsistencies between different editions of WFB, but they could be attributed to the Warhammer World containing a GW multiverse. The fact that different companies were involved with HQ at different capacities raises more questions than answers.

Which world does this art with those characters represent?:


If one side of the story(GW) is definitive, and the other(MB) is vague, and underdeveloped, would it seem more reasonable to side with the definitive established side than to cling to one take of an ambiguous situation?

Personally I prefer underdeveloped HQ lore over GW lore, as it leaves more room for the imagination and leaves out the parts of GW lore that I don't like. But I'm not sure that would be the most reasonable assessment of the situation for an objective answer.