Hero Quest Release date?

[Norbert Franz]

This is all highly unofficial, but I gathered this from Greg Stafford and Roderick Robertson speaking about the game in their short "HeroQuest Seminar" at the Tentacles Con in Germany last June:

So, what is going to be different in the HeroQuest book?

1. There will be a new unified terminology for the various enhancements a character can receive to their abilty rating; so no one will be likely to get confused over the question what the difference between an edge, bonus, improvement, increase, enhancement, etc. is. That's one of the main foci of the book: Clear, organized language. Taking out all the bits that could lead to misunderstandings.

2. There will no longer be a Keyword for a "Culture." In its place, they're going to use the expression "Homeland," and there are supposed to be about 20 different Homelands in the core rulebook, including many within the Lunar Empire.

3. Imperial Dara Happan society will be organized into Associations instead of just "Occupations". Your caste determines which Association you may belong to, and several Associations may form what they call a "League".

4. If one participant of a contest has, say 4W3 and the other has 4W,
they are using their abililty ratings as if they were 4W2 to 4, respectively. If the guy with the two-mastery level rolls a result of "3" that would be a critical success, and say, the guy with an effective rating of 4 rolls a "5", which now to him is a failure, the outcome would NOT be a critical success vs. a failure, because the guy with 4W2 still had one additional, non-cancelled level of Mastery left over. For every additional Mastery still left, he gets to bump down his opponent's level of success. So the NEW HeroQuest outcome would be: Critical Success vs. Fumble (instead of just Critical Success vs. Failure).
This rule will make the result Crit vs. Fumble a lot more frequent, and characters with multiple masteries over their opponents even more deadly. You ... just ... cannot ... beat those guys.
According to Greg, any HeroQuest character who has reached 1W3 or higher in _any_ ability is considered someone with magical abilities. He glows, ... he has a theme song.

5. Basic magic usage "on the fly" does no longer require a separate die roll to get the magic working. There'll be a definitive user-friendly way to figure out what your bonus to your target number will be at any given time, and then that bonus will be available to your character as a default, and not change up or down -- unless you want to aim for an even higher than normal magical bonus.
There'll be a way a player can go, "I'm always +4, and she's always +5 to Healing, ..."
One unconfirmed version that I heard was that you devide your current total ability rating in the ability that's supposed to provide the bonus by 10, and use the result as the default bonus.
So, an Orlanthi Warrior with the Combat Affinity at 17 can always add +2 to their swordfighting, brawling, spear throw, etc.  (17/10 = 1.7, rounds up to 2)
An Orlanthi with an Affinity at 5W would get a +3 bonus, without having to roll for it, and so on ... (5W is 25, 25/10 = 2.5, rounds up to 3)

6. There will be three magic systems in the HQ book: Theist Magic, Animist Magic, and Sorcery (like in RuneQuest 3). Mysticism is out, and is being re-worked for a much later supplement. As a fourth way of doing magic, there's going to be something that they call "Basic Magic" which is going to be available to ANYONE, even if they are not an active worshipper of any deity, hero, spirit, or saint. Basic Magic will be very similar to straightforward RQ "Battle Magic" from RuneQuest 2.

[Thalaxis]

Hello,


3) The Hero Wars book takes a lot of criticism for its layout and editing. I think that many existing game books are much worse. That's not to say that the HW book is perfect; it isn't. However, the heat it seems to get for its flaws seems way out of proportion to what other RPG texts do or don't receive.

Best,
Ron

If it had been a crappy system, no one would have cared about the lousy editing and presentation. :)

Seriously, though the main reason that it takes so much flak I think is that it's an excellent system that is rendered very unapproachable by its terrible presentation.

The problem is compouned by the fact that it's tightly tied to an incredibly rich and complex setting, which is marred even more thoroughly by its presentation because it's already so massive.

Still, because it was so badly rendered, the odds that I'll ever use it again are nearly nil, since Godlike and the upcoming Wild Talents gave us a great first experience, unlike our confusing first experience with Hero Wars.

It doesn't matter how good your game is. If it's not approachable for any reason, the first impression people get of it will be the one that they keep, and that's the hardest thing to change.

[Thalaxis]

The real heroes of Hero Wars/HeroQuest are the valiant, diehard legions of Glorantha fans who have overcome the presentational flaws of the original and continue to fervently support the game and its supplements. Issaries has released more super-crunchy Glorantha material in a shorter period of time than we saw even in the halcyon days of RQ at Chaosium.  I'm glad Greg can now take a "it'll be done when it's done" approach to the revised version, so that delving into his incredible world will be not only rewarding but easy.

I'm glad to hear all that.

I hope that HeroQuest is as well done as The Dying Earth.

The choice of renaming the system will probably be for the best, since it will also help disassociate the new edition with the failure of the first.

All I can say about HeroQuest now is that I'm looking forward to it.

Well, that and that I hope it is successful. :D

[Christoffer Lernö]

The latest news I gather from the HeroWars Yahoo group is that HeroQuest will be released at GloranthaCon in Toronto, March 2003.

Ouch. Here I was expecting it would come out pretty soon. Since I heard some bad things about the HeroWars book and the enticing promise of HeroQuest being a whole lot better, it sounded like a much better idea to wait for HeroWars. But March 2003? That's in half a year from now! What's up with that?

[Peter Nordstrand]

Pale Fire wrote:

But March 2003? That's in half a year from now! What's up with that?

I guess it takes time to write a 256-page rulesbook. Greg Stafford has commented on the release date on the Hero Wars mailing list, stating (wisely) that the game will not be published prematurely. He wants to get it right this time.

All the best,

/Peter

[simon_hibbs]

I guess it takes time to write a 256-page rulesbook. Greg Stafford has commented on the release date on the Hero Wars mailing list, stating (wisely) that the game will not be published prematurely. He wants to get it right this time.

I think it's also important that Issaries focus their limited resources on some pretty strict priorities. They have some other projects, such as the Lunar Handbook, much closer to completion and so it makes sense to get them out first. After all, there's already a rulebook out there.


Simon Hibbs

[Christoffer Lernö]

Any more news on this?

[Christoffer Lernö]

I just read on Issaries page that they ran a preview of HQ at RPGnet Game Day in Oakland, California the 26th of October. Does that mean the final release is approaching?

[Ian Cooper]

I just read on Issaries page that they ran a preview of HQ at RPGnet Game Day in Oakland, California the 26th of October. Does that mean the final release is approaching?

AFAIK the target date for release is still next March. Drafts of HQ do exist, and it is being playtested, so I guess that this was an opportunity to test them, but AFAIK the date is still intended to be March, to make sure that what is released is as good as can be.

Imperial Lunar Handbook is slated to be the next release.

[Mike Holmes]

OK, time to bump this one up again.

Updates? Gloranthacon has come and gone. I think I heard something about a delay? Where's it at?

Mike

[Michael Bowman]

Updates? Gloranthacon has come and gone. I think I heard something about a delay? Where's it at?

HQ has been delayed by Issaries' distribution and co-branding deal with Steve Jackson Games. ILH was out at Gloranthacon (and ships from Warehouse 23 on Friday). I believe HQ is now slated for May or June. There was a "preview" for GTA members at Gloranthacon. I don't know what was in it.

I think having SJ Games putting a little external pressure on Issaries to meet deadlines will be helpful. I expect them to meet the new deadline.

Michael

[Mike Holmes]

(and ships from Warehouse 23 on Friday).

That's gotta be fun to cotemplate, having your product coming out of Warehouse 23. :-)

Thanks for the update, Mike.

Hey, does that mean that Greg will still have his own booth at the Cons? Or will HW/HQ get sold at the Atlas booth. Being as they provide the presence for SJG nowadays. Or is that no longer true with the change of Con management?

Just curious as to where to look. :-)

Mike

[simon_hibbs]

Hey, does that mean that Greg will still have his own booth at the Cons? Or will HW/HQ get sold at the Atlas booth. Being as they provide the presence for SJG nowadays. Or is that no longer true with the change of Con management?

No idea about the relationship between Atlas and SJG.

Apparently SJG had a strong presence at GAMA, and and displayed HW products prominently. As a result there seems to have been a lot more trader interest in HW than usual - although my evidence for this is anecdotal. I think SJGs promotion of HW can only benefit Glorantha, it's publishers and fans. There is even talk of HW articles appearing in Pyramid and the MIBs mobilising behind HW at conventions.

Which is nice.

I have seen a physical copy of HeroQuest, but not read any of it. This was in January, when I briefly met the guy who's doing the editing and layout - noite he doen't have any remit to make changes to the meaning of the document, only some wording and presentation. He does this for a living, and seemed to be very much on the ball. This was months ago though, and I'm sure the version at GloranthaCon a few weeks ago was more up to date.

Having got a copy of ILH-1, I have to say II has improved their production values in almost every way. It's outstanding, and I love it to bits. I believe this bodes very well for HeroQuest.


Simon Hibbs

[Mike Holmes]

I was so going to bump up this thread yesterday!

Cool news, Simon. I've started to drool whenever I think about the release of the game. No details on a date, yet, however?

Thanks,
Mike

[sben]

No details on a date, yet, however?

According to the SJ Games site (as of today, April 2, 2003), it's slated for a July release. I don't have any experience with SJ Games's release schedules, i.e. whether they regularly meet or miss announced dates, so I can't speak to how realistic it is, though my gut tells me it's a solid date.