HeroQuest canon?

[Goblin-King]

The cartography thread kinda went in a direction of discussing canon.
Just kinda curious... What do you consider HQ canon and why(not)?

QorDaq makes a fine distinction between canon, soft-canon and fanon.

Personally I consider everything in the questbooks hard canon.
To me that means the World of HQ is identical to the Warhammer World.
It also means snotlings are canon because of that one picture.

I also kinda consider AHQ canon as it's an evolution of HQ. Kinda like how Age of Sigmar is canon to Warhammer Fantasy despite being two different games.

Warhammer Quest on the other hand is an entirely different game that didn't evolve from HQ, but rather became it's own thing similar to HQ.

I think one of the hardest to decide is the Amiga game. It sure has a whole lot of content, but it's not very HQ'y. Vampires, Beholders etc etc.

[clmckay]

I've been following the Cartography thread too. I agree pretty much identically with you.

I consider warhammer and HQ to share an identical universe. I've set my custom packs in this world. So yes, I'd consider snotlings canon and any other creature/monster from the warhammer world.

[cynthialee]

Same world.
No doubts to me at all.

[whitebeard]

Cannon = Basic 14 quests + KK + RotWL.

AtOH and MotM were not sold in NA and TFH was not sold anywhere else. They are all suspect!

The introduction of Mercenaries is where I draw the line. There is no way the original designers were on board with that. They do not exist.

More on that point:
There are only three Indiana Jones movies (The Last Crusade was the last crusade).
There is only one Highlander film ("There can be only one!").
There are only three Star Wars Films
There are only three Star Trek Series (Original, TNG, and the new films)


I accept that the HQ universe is derived from WH and using the map is cool if you want to and a neat exercise which I will gladly read and follow. But not my cannon. They could have included a map anywhere in the original game, and they didn't. They didn't bother in KK, and here geography is key to understanding why your mission is so critical. It would appear that "cannon" is to not use a map at all and instead spin tales by the hearth.

[Goblin-King]

Oh boy whitebeard you just went full fanon!
I'm sorry but...

Prometheus is canon
The Matrix Reloaded / Matrix Revolutions are canon
Star Wars Christmas Special is canon

I'm surprised to actually see someone not accepting official quest packs as canon.
IF anything I think it would be FF and MotM that should be excluded as they are stylistically very different from the rest.

Anyways...
I think in this particular discussion it's important to distinguish between the Warhammer geography and the Warhammer setting.
If you accept the map as lore the geography is a dead given. But what about Warhammer specific stuff like the four chaos gods, lizardmen or dark elves?
Snotlings are a special case because one is actually depicted, but what about the rest?
If I were making a custom quest, I'd have no qualms putting in chaos demons or whatever.
But If I was making "the official HeroQuest Wiki" I would be hard pressed to make a page for them, since they appear nowhere at all in any material connected to HQ.
I'd sooner include the beholders from Legacy of Sorasil than the Pink Horrors from Warhammer.

[knightkrawler]

I'm pretty close to whitebeard in terms of HQ canon:
HQ Game system, KK, RotWL, AtOH, WoM, Dark Company, excluding almost all art (or taken with a grain of salt establishing the Old World setting, but not the timeline), the reason explained below.
Warhammer Old World geography & topography are canon, established by the connections between both games sprinkled here and there; because of the many ambiguities, they are alternate realities to each other, which makes the Warhammer lore canon, if only for seperating timelines and setting up the fact that the HQ background world is an alternate timeline to the Warhammer Fantasy world, sharing geography and much of their history.

Also, GK, you should take into account that almost all art up to the release of AtOH has existed before. We can interpret each case (cause it's fun), but we can't ignore that fact of corporate cost-effectiveness.
Most had been released as Warhammer art or generic Gary Chalk art or whatever the case may be.
They re-used art published before in Warhammer books, as in the case of that picture in the back of KK.
From that picture, they took out the Zoat and left in the Snotling.
Probably because it was in the foreground, making it necessary to re-do art, but you could probably argue that it was left in for a reason.
I won't. I'm a glass-half-empty kind of guy when it comes to the creative processes involved in HeroQuest.*
I still say, sloppiness and cost-effectiveness were the order of the day back then.

The "We Are Legion" spread at the back of EU RoTWL was a piece of art published in the Undead army book before.
That doesn't make it non-canon for HQ, but you should consider the methods under which each piece of art was used and why.
Most of it was simply used because it fit thematically, they had it, they looked at it, they owned it, and didn't have to commission a new piece.

______________________________________________________________________________________-
* Here's my way of thinking on the example of the Snotling:
Snotlings are HQ canon, established by Orcs and Goblins being both in HQ and WHF, sharing some art styles, including that KK picture.
Mostly because of the Old World being the geographi background for both HQ and WHF and Snotlings being in the Old World.
They are not canon just because of the picture, but because of cross-referencing.

[Goblin-King]

Much of the art is indeed taken from previous publications.
We can call it cheap or lazy.

I still say, sloppiness and cost-effectiveness were the order of the day back then.

I agree! But the fact of the matter is they did put that art in the official books.
I'm of the opinion that once it's there and it's printed, the reasons and intentions doesn't count for anything.

I also got thinking... I think it's a good way to go to say that the world of HQ and WHF are identical in the period where HQ was in print (1989-1992).
Once HQ went out of print, everything that happened in WHF since 1992 didn't exist. That would implicit make chaos gods etc. part of HQ canon. But Age of Sigmar is not HQ canon.

[whitebeard]

But Age of Sigmar is not HQ canon.

And for many AoS in not even WH cannon!!!

[whitebeard]

Oh boy whitebeard you just went full fanon!
I'm sorry but...

Prometheus is canon
The Matrix Reloaded / Matrix Revolutions are canon
Star Wars Christmas Special is canon

I think you will find yourself in a very lonely place with your opinion on Prometheus.

I agree that the Matrix movies are cannon. This does not mean that the films should have been made or that you have any excuse for having them in your DVD collection.

My StarWars comment on cannon referred only to the movies. You can have your Christmas Special. I do not remember much from this when I watched it at age... 9?
*Edit: no I was 2, and I thought you were talking about the Ewok special. Never heard of this one. Could it be worse than the new stuff?*

And, there is also only one Ghostbusters movie. GB2: Pink slime, really? I guess I'm just getting old... this film did not need a re-boot. And without having watched it, I'm not surprised it tanked.

I'm surprised to actually see someone not accepting official quest packs as canon.
IF anything I think it would be FF and MotM that should be excluded as they are stylistically very different from the rest.

Any quest pack not released universally is suspect in my opinion. And the addition of mercs really points to a huge style change. It breaks the entire group of four adventure based dungeon crawl. "It looks dangerous... so the barbarian sends the mercs in first." Really?!

[SirRick]

Why is the Japanese version of the game listed? Is it vastly differeent from the others versions of the game?