HASBROQUEST - The good, the Bad and the Ugly

 So, Hasbro has re-released Heroquest, the game, many of us loved as kids, that nostalgia feel of kicking in a door, beating up the monsters, looting the rooms and moving on to the Boss fight.

Hasbro, has decided to crowd fund their game, to 'get a feel' for how the market will respond.. and its not good.

HASBROQUEST - Fail?

I'm not going to go on about how great Heroquest was, Its a little dated, but its target audience was 10+yr olds so I don't expect it to be on par with Darklight momento Mori, Dungeon Universalis or even Descent. It has the main components, equipment, weapons, armour, spells, monsters, rooms, heroes and a boss fight. It even has a plot!

Instead I'm going to focus on the Hasbro fiasco, how, in many ways, they failed, regardless that they've hit $1.6mil as the time of writing. 

The Good:

Price & Availability:

For many, Heroquest was off-limits. They were born too late, the game was out of print, buying one on eBay would set you back $300, when minimum hourly rates are $15 (the original was AU$30, when hourly rates were AU$5 ) Now under this new campaign, the 'all-in' is $150, and the base box is $100, far more affordable. 

Association:

Some players can't get immersive if their character isn't the same gender as them, this perception-locked some women out of games for years. Now HQ has the full first 4 heroes as females too. Awesome.

Additional Components:

There is an argument about the miniatures (see below) yet, the fully modeled furniture is an improvement, the inclusion of extra model for Sir Ragnar, Mentor and the Witch Lord (again see below) Abominations models, Extra door types for the expansions, and as Stretch goals slowly unlock, we see a wider range of some new Heroes, and some extra monsters for some quests to be even harder. There's a lot more than the original game. Bonues, if you own the original and felt there was little to no need to grab the new version. 

Already Existing Fan Base:

Because of that 'blank map' at the end of the quest book, there were all manner of existing quests published by avid players online, before even the internet, I was downloading HQ maps on Bulletin boards. New Players to the genre will have a plethora of material, so the 'extra content' will keep you going at least a year if you're into it. 

The Bad:

Availability:

Well, its ok for Americans ($30 shipping, when most KS give it for $10).. Sorta sucks for Canadians ($130 shipping costs??? WTH?) and Double sucks for the rest of the world, as its not even available. Buying a game, sending it to one of my friends OS and then having it sent to me is in the ballpark of $100+ shipping. No Thanks.

The Models:

HQ1 (as we'll call the original) was a game aimed at the 10+yr olds, so the miniatures were simplified enough to be accessible for painting. I remember spending weeks learning how to paint by painting up my own set of HQ. It set me on the path of 'local painter' as I painted up several hundred miniatures for the kids in my school, and put a decent amount of pocket money into my club and game.

But the New HQ2 models are complex, complex enough even I'm looking at them and thinking.. do I want to justify buying this, then only give them a base coat of colours with some contrasts? No.. its HQ, I'll have to go full layers, drybrushing, NMM, the works.. but that's time I don't yet have. So those models will likely sit on the shelves for years, unpainted, til my kids are old enough to do it for me.

Pulse:

Some of the content, looks like its pulse exclusive, so the FOMO addicts will HAVE to buy it there. Will retail have all eight hero models? will it have the extra skeletons? dice? We know Ragnar is locked behind the pulse exclusive, but what of Mentor or the Witchlord?

The Ugly:

No Talk:

This is on Hasbro. Pulse isn't kickstarter, and what brings a percentage of Kickstarter projects money, is the watercooler talk, in the forums of each projects. Without that, the community doesn't exist, there isn't much going on, other than all these external, often negative views of the Hasbroquest. And its heartbreaking.. why?

The Goal, The Funds and the Potential.

Most KS backers well know, Second time at the plate, Kickstarter projects, hit millions in their first few days, it rockets up so fast, it brings in hype by itself. Kingdom Death Monster, Frost Haven, They hit a few million in the first few days, and topped Twelve million before their ends.. And they are boutique games, KDM is a very niche audience of Heavy Metal (magazine) Style content, set in a brutal world, and Frosthaven is an Expansion for Gloomhaven. Only people who know this product are likely to back it.

Yet Heroquest is so well known, People will back it, just to have a copy, not even to play it. Then another audience of people who always wanted to play it will have a chance to play, lastly at a easy enough price point of $100, anyone even remotely curious about the hype, might have gone in on it.

Instead, as a result of being in its own crowd-funder, No Community, No Chat with developers let alone other backers, and locked into only USA. It barely hit a million by day 3, and now, several days on, struggles to hit the 2nd stretch goal. It should have been $5mil by now, it should be unlocking 10, or even 20 stretch goals, It should have revealed expansions. 

Hasbro, You lost at least $5mil in sales.. so far.. and honestly, this would have been the biggest KS, topping $15mil had you done it right. 

Conclusion

I love Heroquest, and it pains me to see a product that could be getting into the hands and minds of this next generation of shut-ins, giving them an opportunity to "Escape From Reality".

Yet instead.. of the 11k backers, I doubt more than half will make it into the hands of kids to play it. A Third of the Audience will be my gen, buying for nostalgia. A third (some of which will intersect with the first) will be scalpers or owners, the game will sit on shelves, and not played for months or years. Hopefully at least half will be for kids, for adults who bought it for their kids to play together as a family, and young adults who had enough disposable income to get into this hobby with HQ. 

p.s. I would buy it if I could.. but I can't.. so.. If I'm lucky, retail will have it, and those special minis won't be 'too' expensive online later.

CAVEAT...

Kickstarter is not for companies, its not for existing products, Its not for established brands. 

For that reason, I would give Hasbro a pass, and put the blame directly on Kickstarter.

Kickstarter has come a long way, but the gap between a Kickstarter Audience, and the Retail Market exists. There needs to be a place where Established, Existing Companies can put out a 'product' start, and see if there is an audience for it. Some kind of Niche Starter, or Fund Injector, something companies like CMON and Mythic and Hasbro can come along and say, HEY, we have this cool project, the normal retail way of marketing this will likely end up scraping funds at the middle and the product will need to be scaled back to accomodate that.. BUT INSTEAD, if we launch on this Fund Injector Site (owned by Kickstarter, so members of one, can access the other) We get a target audience, who will let us know with their comments and their wallets, IF a project should exist or not.

Also.. Maybe.. All Fund Injector(FI) projects, are required as part of their terms and conditions, to help fund other projects on kickstarter, based on their success.. kind of a pay it forward system. If you raise $1mil on Fund Injector, you're required to spend $100 on 10x other projects, before you can do another future project. (what I think would be better, is that they mentor KS projects, and provide funding for the project creators, to create their projects.. artists, editors, maybe even project mentors to help newer kickstarters to build better KS project pages)

Also, for security and safety concerns, FI projects are not protected like Kickstarter projects, If you raised the funds, your contractually obliged to deliver the product as advertised, to at least some extent.  

This will help the KS community, Will bring in more people.. Will segregate the audience to understand that KS projects are not pre-order, are not guaranteed to deliver, while FI projects are, or at least are legally obliged to prove it if they couldn't. 

  

Combat, Revisited

 There are several 'parts' of combat, that are often not addressed. While they may not be obvious to the roleplayers in general. If a players is interested here's the reasoning and logic to the way the stats are why they are:

Combat Break Down

In All parts of Combat, it comes down to three simple structures to an attack. Anticipation. Contact. Recovery.

Anticipation, is the part when you decide your going to make an attack. Mechanically, you declare an attack, and pick up your dice. BUT, in that part of the game, your character is 'looking' at where they may attack, and preparing the swing. They anticipate hitting the target.

Contact, happens as they expected, or not, or worse, shocking them into how badly the missed, or in some cases, shocking them into how successful they hit.

and Recovery, gets their weapon back out of the Contact and prepared ready for either defence or the next attack.

Initiative takes all three components into account, which is why the absolute minimum of 3 initiative exists. When a player starts basic combat, they only care to 'hit', even Initiative in basic combat is obfuscated out into 'number of attacks'. And if the characters is a non combatant, they may never learn, understand nor care about the parts of combat.

But. Epic Warriors will.

First, Anticipation. 

A Warrior worth their salt, will take a -2 to hit, to 'not look' at the target, why? because the first defencive skill anyone takes is being aware of the attack. Gauge opponent, Gauge Attack, Gauge Swing, all allow the Warrior the ability to 'see it coming' adding massive +3s to defence each. The Simple dead stare skill negates the last two completely. And with some fancy skill changes every round, can negate the first too. 

Also, a Player can feint an attack, they spend 1/3rd of the Initiative (the anticipation part) to trigger the opponent into a defence position (negating their defence for the round) and then follow up with a real attack, which the opponent didn't defend against.

Next Contact. 

Early in a Warriors career, a GM can trigger a whole range of reactions in characters, epic failures and epic successes, can cause a shock attack. the player has to roll under their level on 2d12. If unsuccessful, they can lose their attention, and be open to counter attacks from other opponents.

There is a whole gamut of skills that can be triggered in the contact portion of the blow, from increased damage, twisting weapons for increase wounds, cutting deeper, but also many powers activate on contact with the target. Players should be aware of their skills, failure to activate a skill because the player was not concentrating, means their character was also, lost in the event and the skill/spell or ability was not performed, or in the case of trigger events, some cause of fate, the event didn't trigger. Combat should be fast, and rewinding for lax players will slow things down.

Recovery though can be the most important. 

Some Warriors, knowing the advantages of the round by round, might forgo the recovery phase, and take advantage of the wounded, and winded opponent. flurry of blows, ignores the recovery phase, and allows the character to make a subsequent attack at 2/3rds the initiative, provided they hit. Shivs can perform a larger amount of damage from sequential hit after hit. The opponent loses the recovery phase to prepare to defend, as does the attacker, and the attacker must focus the attack on the same target, location and other factors.

But, Opponents with good combat skills can also take advantage of these three slots of time.

Weapons with a heavy Anticipation Initiative, will find themselves at the mercy of smaller quick weapons. Any weapon with an Initiative under half that of the attacking Initiative, can under basic combat rules make a jab attack, and if successful, will disrupt the attack from taking place, yet the Initiative for the Contact and Recovery is still spent, and the jabbed victim must often wait out the pain Initiative too.

With some skills involved, an Attack, can be parried in the contact phase, and even turned back against the attacker.

And lastly, When the Attacker attempts recovery, a quicker opponent might now take advantage and get in their own strike, or now, retreat to run away. 

Just some thoughts for you, next time you're playing dd12.