Stephen Baker - Interview with Jordan Sorcery

[Stephen Baker]

Hi everyone!

I wanted to let you know about some interviews I've been conducting with Jordan Sorcery. These will be released on his YouTube channel in June. I like Jordan's material and appreciate the way he tells the story behind how games were developed.

The interviews cover the design and development of HeroQuest, Space Crusade, and Battle Masters. I also share a little of my design process and general approach to game development. During these interviews, I am also sharing some never-before-seen references to my original HeroQuest design materials and game prototype. The prototype includes an early copy of the Quest Book, featuring hand-drawn maps, dot-matrix printed notes, and even some red-lined corrections from the copy editor. I also have one of my original three-panel gameboards with the larger map, which was eventually cost-reduced to the two-panel gameboard. During the interviews, I discussed some of the earlier game concepts and how I refined the game through playtesting with local schools.

I thought this would be of interest and will follow up on this post once I have a firm date for the first interview.

Kindest regards


Stephen

[HispaZargon]

Wow, really excited to watch the interview and check such awesome never released material!!

How HeroQuest was designed has always been of the interest of most of the Inn members. I have been all my life wondering how it actually was. We will surely enjoy those discoveries!

Thanks again Stephen for keeping us in touch about these great news.

[Daedalus]

Definitely looking forward to this one . . .

[Zwerg]

The Jordan Sorcery video on HeroQuest was tremendous. Very much looking forward to this interview!

[DragonsRest]

I can't wait to see the some of these pre-production pieces - especially the original larger map!

Ian

[Stephen Baker]

Hi Everyone, the first of my interviews with Jordan Sorcery has now been posted. Do check them out if you can. I hope you find some of the history and insights interesting. More to come.

[DragonsRest]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6hs6KQvRO4

Watching now! Thanks for doing this Stephen

[HispaZargon]

Absolutely these interviews are a pure gift.

The picture of the 3-panel prototype board is amazing since its configuration looks really close to what was in the final version of the game, however it was 6 squares longer! But it is true that those quests would have made the games longer than 1 hour so making it smaller was for sure a smart decision!

And what about the Giant of Battle Masters... many of us were wondering how it would like since we discovered the existance of such expansion concept, and now we can see its prototype miniature!

The stickers for the cards is also really cool, but yeah, maybe difficult to implement in the production line at the time.

Really good insights, cant wait to watch more!! Thank you so much Stephen & Jordan.

[Kurgan]

Amazing interview (thank you Jordan Sorcery & Stephen Baker!), I can't wait to watch both parts! As far as the prototype board image is concerned, I wonder if we could see a higher res image of it? I can imagine some fans will even want to re-work that into their own homebrew custom adventures...!

[Kurgan]

Hi Everyone, the first of my interviews with Jordan Sorcery has now been posted. Do check them out if you can. I hope you find some of the history and insights interesting. More to come.

So is everything out from behind JS's paywall now? I was going to wait until it was free. I love reading this kind of stuff, but I don't like paying for it.

Then again, if I'm being honest, if there was, say, an official coffee table "Making of HeroQuest" type book out there, I'd be very, very tempted to buy it, especially if you autographed it! Such a thing many fans would want to collect, so I'd be worried if it were some kind of "limited release" thing.

I just want the knowledge of HeroQuest to be out there for all to see. The sooner that happens the better!

I want to know more about Baron, the Dark Lands, and the four tasks on the way to becoming Champions...