HQ2021 Missed opportunities

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Assuming the remit of the developers was to (re)produce the game WITHOUT making any rule changes, presumably the logic there was that the game rules were good enough for it to sell in bucket loads back in the 90s so avoid controversy by leaving the rules as is, and assuming that we agree that they could and probably should have addressed errata from the edition that they were reproducing, missing Quest Notes, missing furniture doors and similar, what other major opportunities do you think that the HQ2021 Edition missed?

Edition

Personally I would have preferred HQ2021 to be based on the EA SE ruleset but incorporating the best bits, Chaos Spells and Monster BP, from NA edition. This would have been easily handled without any rule changes

Rule Book

More modular and modern format for the rulebook, incorporate rules that appear in expansion into the core rulebook, produce, maintain and host an online living rulebook, more examples to illustrate the complex areas line - line of sight and seeing - ideally diagrams that clarify rather than confuse (in this case I prefer the layout of the NA edition as I don't like the "introductory game" concept in EA SE)

Abomination

The essential IP changes that the Fimir had to go but to me the obvious replacement would have been the Troll, as generic (and Tolkeinesque) as Orcs and Goblins, already present in HQ (at least in existing supplements) and already broadly similar to the Fimir in terms of stats and appearance

Named Monster Cards
A monster card for each "named monster" like Ulag the Orc Warlord with an icon and their stats and any special rules along with an accompanying figure (a single generic Orc Boss would be sufficient to cover Ulag, Grak, Ograk and others). This would make them feel more special and would reduce text in Quest Notes

Trap Card Deck - Using Monster Cards for quick reference suggests the equivalent concept of having Trap Cards as reference for Traps - Pit Trap, Spear Trap, Falling Block Trap, Dart trap (Chest) and so on (again this would reduce text in the rulebook and in quest notes)

Dice - Incorporate the movement dice into the combat dice by adding a number to each face of the combat dice

Body Point Tokens - to track hero BPs to save having to keep scribbling and crossing out on the character sheet (and even to get rid of the character sheet but that would probably be too controversial!)

Iconography
A standard feature of all "modern" board games (for inspiration see Mice and Mystics - 2012) is the use of visual icons to simplify play, adding even some basic iconography would have made a massive difference, for example:

• icons for attack (sword), defend (shield), move (foot), mind (wand?), body (hearts) with a number on, would have simplified play and reduced text on the cards and simplified and reduced the size of the rulebook (and potentially could have reduced the character boards to card size...and the character abilities, spell caster, trap master could also have been cardified)

• icons for skull, white shield, black shield for use on the cards and rules (and the same for movement dice)

• icons for equipment/quest treasure artefact cards denoting "both hands", "wizard only", "not wizard" (presumably this would be wizard with an X through it), "body armour", "both hands", "weapon", "armour", "diagonal", "missile" (you could also reuse the attack, defence icons here but with a number denoting the bonus), an icon for single-use/use-then-discard items (and you could use the same for limited use but with a number other than 1)

• icons on spell cards that could be used to group spells (and some other magic items like potions could have a "potion" icon) by mechanism - "area effect", "mind attack", "fire attack", "chill attack", again this would save space but also simplify and clarify the rules, for example a Potion of Fire Protection might have a fire defence icon and would be effective against anything with a fire attack icon or a Potion of Warming might have a chill defence icon and would be effective against anything with a chill attack - instead of having to list out the things it is effective against which makes it harder to expand in future. You could also reuse the missile attack icon on spells that follow the same rules as other missile attacks

• icon for gold, perhaps a gold coin, with a number on it, again this would reduce space used in the rulebook, quest books and on equipment and other cards

[Nlinindoll]

Great ideas, and I’d like to see some of them implemented in a possible Second Edition of the game. Actually the prospect of a Second Edition sometime in the future is really exciting, and I’d love to see what Avalon Hill cooks up. BUT, I am VERY happy that they decided to go with pretty much a straight reprint for this revival. I would have been massively disappointed if they had made major changes in this first foray into bringing the game back.

[The Admiral]

The way I play the game is so far removed from any of the editions that any update would have been equally obsolete for me, but players new to the game will certainly be comparing it, probably unfavourably, with more modern board games.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

I can certainly relate to that, which is one reason why I never bought HQ2021, my rule set goes through a continuous cycle of expansion, adding tonnes of cool stuff, playtesting and then when it feels too bloated and/or too far from the "standard", it goes through a contraction phase where every change is weighed up on a "cost" (complexity, distance from standard) versus "benefit" (enhanced game play, increased fun factor) and some serious pruning occurs and then we go round again...

That said many of us have already produced our own rulebooks and these tend to have the improvements that I suggested above, and "Named Monster Cards", "Trap Card Deck" and "Body Point Tokens" seem fairly easy to introduce to the official and unofficial versions without too much extra work.

That said from a "Ye Olde Inn project" point of view I think the "Iconography" idea stands out as a relatively simple way of modernising the game that HQ2021 is sorely missing (as are the earlier versions but I let them off due to their age). Would anyone be interested in supporting me in compiling a list of all the icon ideas, that is the things that could benefit from having an icon, and then separately suggestions for icons for each (it is this latter part that I'd struggle with as my graphical capability and inclination is poor / absent).

I'm particularly interested in including iconography from existing homebrew versions of HQ and tools like hQuestbuilder and we could end up compiling a library that other homebrewers could draw from...although I have no idea how we could store/present/share that library...

When you say new players comparing it, probably unfavourably, with more modern board games, whilst I think I agree, in what ways do you think it compares unfavorably to more modern board games?

[The Admiral]

When you say new players comparing it, probably unfavourably, with more modern board games, whilst I think I agree, in what ways do you think it compares unfavorably to more modern board games?

Visually and physically.

[cornixt]

I think that the straight redo was the best way forward. Most of these changes would have made it not a straight redo, but many of them are good ideas for the next revision.

Having the boss monsters in the quest book adds an extra element of mystery to them - having them on cards makes them more visible to the players and takes away that mystery. Trap cards are good, but I think that the reminder cards of all kinds should be in addition to the rulebook rather than instead of it. I do wonder if the monster cards were originally a way of randomising the wandering monster.

[lestodante]

Named Monster Cards
A monster card for each "named monster" like Ulag the Orc Warlord with an icon and their stats and any special rules along with an accompanying figure (a single generic Orc Boss would be sufficient to cover Ulag, Grak, Ograk and others). This would make them feel more special and would reduce text in Quest Notes

This is something I really consider a waste of paper, resources and space. I see some people having hundreds of cards for named monsters, cards that they will probably use once in a lifetime or even less.
Sometimes you place such monsters and all you have to do is rolling the defence dice a couple of times because they're dead before you can use them.
Also I don't want a card of a special monster if the image on the card doesn't match the mini neither I want different cards featuring the same monster image.

Dice - Incorporate the movement dice into the combat dice by adding a number to each face of the combat dice

I don't see the need of mixing symbols and numbers, neither to have less dice. Consider people is struggling to have more dice instead and buying dice of different colors just because they want every player to have their own dice and color.

Iconography
A standard feature of all "modern" board games (for inspiration see Mice and Mystics - 2012) is the use of visual icons to simplify play, adding even some basic iconography would have made a massive difference, for example:

Iconography requires players to learn the icons too. I can assure that playing BANG! (a western card game), some friends still have to stop the game and have a look at the refence card because they are unable to understand symbols on some cards...

[Kurgan]

I'm glad they stuck to reproducing the 1990 game, with a few EU 2nd edition assets thrown in for the sake of nostalgia. A "modern rules" secondary rulebook might have been interesting, but that's as far as I would have taken it. I would have preferred the rounded corner dice like they gave out to early influencers and showed in the trailers.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Obviously poor use of iconography won't fulfil the function it is intended for (but then that is true of any technique - like adding a diagram to better explain complex rules - but then getting the diagram wrong!) but personally, and I don't feel I'm alone here judging by the way games have travelled in this direction over the years, I find good iconography easier...do I really need to learn that a sword represents hand-to-hand "attack", or shield "defence", a heart "BP", a foot or boot print "movement"...

Whilst I appreciate that my comments won't be for everyone, hence the discussion, but whether you like the idea or not of combining the movement and combat dice, for example, I don't think you can reject it on the basis of it varying from a "standard reprint", they already chose to vary from a "standard reprint" with changes like the size of the board squares, which is purely cosmetic, introducing female version of characters and, whilst I appreciate they probably had no choice with these ones, re-sculpting the miniatures, swapping out the Fimir and editing the GW specific text, so it wasn't just a standard reprint (aside from not changing the rules" aspect), they did introduce cosmetic changes.

[lestodante]

Yes, they had to resculpt the minis but I had preferred if they preserved the original style and same proportions. Figures from latest expansion (FH, MOTM and ROTDM) are looking much better than figures in the base game, having bolder parts which are also easier to paint for non expert painters.
Introducing female Heroes was something Hasbro already did with the BQP and EPQ and they were going o do the same with the two unreleased packs as well. Having female monsters was unnecessary.
They did the board larger, possibly with the purpose to make new tiles not compatible with the old version or maybe just because modern miniatures are bigger, anyway they didn't solve the problem of crowdy rooms (ok to make the squares bigger but if you also make the bases larger you don't solve anything).
We suffered the loss of the cool Elf which was swapped for Shaun of Andromeda (from Saint Seya series), we lost our dice that were rolling with rounded corner, we lost names in some edition (in the Italian edition Mentor is now "the mentor" and the Scale of Elethorn was translated with an equivalent of Libra of Elethorn), we've seen an old hag like Sinestra becoming a young model, we've got a quest pack with Sir Ragnar on the cover but no Sir Ragnar figure was inside (Advanced Heroquest school?), we've got the bug from the previous edition but they added new ones, we've got worldwide releases for hero packs but only in English and much more. I don't want to go longer on saying what I like and what not, I already expressed several times my disappoint about their chosees on the new version, I save only the new plastic furniture, dropping the Ogre BP from 10 to 5 and few cards the but all the rest is way less interesting than the previous one if not even really ugly.
Really, I lost all the interest in collecting HeroQuest stuff since the new version was released. My feeling is they know they can give to people any stuff because people will buy it anyway because it's OFFICIAL.
If you've seen Kurgan's interview to Encarmine, he declared somehing like, we don't waste time fixing bugs that fans can fix on their own.
It is now a game in the hand of people that don't really love the game and don't even know all the variations applied from UK 89's edition, 90's edition and to US Game System, otherwise I don'f find a way to explain all this mess they did.