Howdy -

I am sure this has all been asked before, but can someone give me a release date on the new HeroQuest book thats due out? I'd love to get into Glorantha, but have heard absolutely horrible things about the Hero Wars system and layout. I am hoping Hero Quest will be much better as Robin Laws is writing it.

FYI, Robin Laws wrote the first one. I have the Hero Wars book and think it's just fine, though its editing and layout weren't the cleanest. Most folks who have quibbles seem to have problems with precisely that: the organization and editing. I think HeroQuest will be more refined and (hopefully) much cleaner in terms of layout, indexing, etc.

Best,

Blake

Hi Bryan,

I emailed Greg Stafford about this a few months ago. Here's the deal:

1) Editing will be clean.

2) The system is fine, and will remain so -- but the text will be smoother to read and understand.

(Though really, it's not that tricky as it stands. This morning, on another board, someone's post that said, "D&D is real rolepalying, and the people who play other games are just leaving the hobby, not expanding it." Now, between that view and my own there are a lot of shades of grey... and a lot of those grays still line up with the idea that if a set of rules is too different from what we're used to, it doesn't work. What can I say? Hero Wars, as written, works fine. But it's very different than what we're used to. To a lot of people this means they don't work.)

3) The release date is open ended. Basically -- "When the book is ready -- and not before."

Take care,
Christopher

I'm actually kind of glad that they're taking their time. The Hero Wars book looks like it suffered from deadline rush... as if a lot of stuff got slapped in w/o propper editing in order to get it to press on time.

Lon

Hello,

The news from Origins is that Hero Quest will not be released for a substantial period of time, perhaps as late as the end of the year.

I thought I'd address an implication of Bluekabuto's, which I really hope both he and anyone else will consider carefully.

There is a widespread notion that Robin Laws wrote some kind of brilliant system for Hero Wars that Greg Stafford then "messed up" somehow. This seems to have become entrenched enough that now, we see even more odd versions appearing, as implied by Bluekabuto, that Hero Quest is some kind of Laws "correction" to Hero Wars.

I'm not an Issaries employee and I was not involved with the people at the time. I have, however, discussed the matter with Robin, Greg, and others, and I asked them a lot of hard questions. Here is my unofficial "word" about these issues. Basically, what we have is a lot of stupid rumors about nothing.

1) Robin Laws, working as a freelancer, submitted system design material and a hell of a lot of great game text to Greg Stafford as a freelancer. This system design and text were indeed altered as all initial designs are through playtesting and further customization. There is no huge "Robin vs. Greg" crisis about the system.

2) The existing system design of Hero Wars is astoundingly powerful and effective, arguably one of the most revolutionary and fascinating systems in all of role-playing.

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.

I welcome any corrections from anyone who was involved in the development of Hero Wars. Again, I don't profess to be 100% right about any of this (except #3), as it's only my reading of the situation. I would very much like to stop the ongoing negative buzz about Hero Wars, which is completely undeserved, in its tracks.

Best,
Ron

Issaries is still publishing material before they will present HeroQuest.

"Orlanth is Dead," a scenario collection, is at the printers now (according to the Hero Wars chat group on egroups).

The support material now available will be fully compatible with HeroQuest.

So if you are interested in exploring Glorantha, don't wait!

(I have seen Hero Wars available heavily discounted in my FLGS, so you could pick up the rules now and start thinking of campaign/character ideas now)

I'll echo Ron and say Hero Wars is a damned exciting system. I can't wait to play it. Can't. Wait. The layout, while not the best, is by no means insurmountable -- and it's not really that bad. I've had no problem with it, for instance, and Issaries has excellent support and FAQ material on its website.

I'm floored about "horrible things" being said about Hero Wars. It's one of the most revolutionary systems I've ever read, and it was a hell of a lot easier to figure out than d20 (not to flog anyone's horse). I recommend it heartily to everyone I talk gaming with.

It fuckin' ROCKS.

Best,

Blake

Just to clarify where I am regarding Hero Wars:

The system is excellent. HW and Sorcerer are, IMHO, the two best implementations of narativism via mechanics I've ever seen. It has limits (what system doesn't?), but those limits tend to be at the edges of the kind of story the game was meant to run, so that's OK with me. Better, it could be applied to any non-Glorantha setting as well, with little or no modification.

I had no idea that there was any sort of Stafford vs. Laws conflict, real or imagined. I'd be surprisd to find out that a real one existed. The impression I got from everything that Issiaries puts out is that Laws built the bones of the system and Stafford adapted it for Glorantha. As it should be.

The Hero Wars book is badly laid out, riddled with typos, and terribly confusing for someone not already familiar with Glorantha. If I hadn't been able to get some idea of the system's potential(and been able to get clarification here and at the Issiareis site), I'd have abandoned it after the second attempt. IMHO, saying that a book is no worse than many other badly done books is not a point in that book's favor. I would have liked the game's text to be as above and beyond most everything else as its system is.

In the end, I love the game, and I'm going to run it when I get players and time to do so. But I won't inflict that rulebook on them, especially since all the basics they need are more clearly presented in the system brief download.

To sum up: The game rocks. The main rule book leaves much to be desired. Hence my eager anticipation of HeroQuest -- I want to see this glorious system clearly, without being obscured by the text meant to clarify it.


Baring of personal bias:
I really, really don't like it when companies break up the information needed to run a game over several books. I thought it was a particularly cheap marketing gimmck when I first encountered it (with TSR and D&D's Basic/Intermediate/Master box sets *and* the PHB/DMG/MM holy trinity of AD&D), and I like it no better now. Bad editing on top of this was too much.

Also, I guess I took it a wee bit too personally when I read Ron's post about stopping the ongoing negative buzz. Sorry if I rubbed anyone's fur the wrong way.

Lon

I can certainly confirm for you all that there is, and never has been, any Robin vs. Greg conflict regarding Hero Wars, HeroQuest, or anything else, for that matter.

Greg tells me that HeroQuest will be closer to my original submission draft than Hero Wars ended up being. He's the one doing the revisions; I greatly look forward to the finished result.

Both of us would tell you that Hero Wars' presentation wasn't nearly as user-friendly as it ought to have been. It could have done a better job both in introducing Glorantha to the newbie, as well as in helping folks to make the conceptual leaps its non-standard design demands. However, the alternative to publishing Hero Wars in its in-then current state would have been much worse: Issaries would have gone out of business before it published anything at all, taking with it the membership fees of everyone who contributed to the Gloranthan Trading Association. As a perfectionist, it doesn't give me much cheer to think, "well, other games have even worse presentation." As a realist, I know that sometimes, in the hand-to-mouth world of hobby gaming, there comes a time when you just have to get the frickin' thing out the door, and hope for the best.

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.

Hi Robin,

Welcome to the Forge, and thanks for posting here. There's a lot of crazed pro-Hero Wars (soon-to-be Quest) folks around, myself included. If you haven't checked out my review of the game, please consider yourself invited to do so.

Best,
Ron

Hi, Robin.

I love the game, and I'm glad it's doing so well. Thanks for helping bring it to the community, and especially thanks for putting up with those of us who can be overly crotchety at times.

Lon

Mr. Laws,

If you might indulge us a bit further, can you perhaps comment on the subject of the thread? Namely, if it's OK for you to speak on the subject (and I'd understand if it might not be), would you be able to tell us anything you happen to know about when the product might be released? Also, your comment about the new design being closer to you original submission is tantalizing. Anything you can reveal there on just what might be changing? If only in general terms?

I have to admit to a gnawing curiosity.

Mike

Would you be able to tell us anything you happen to know about when the product might be released?

If only in general terms?

rdl wrote: Sorry if I unduly inflamed your desire for actual news...

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

Hmmm. That's just too far away.

Mike

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.

Ron Edwards wrote: 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

rdl wrote:
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.

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

Pale Fire wrote:

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

Peter Nordstrand wrote:
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.

Any more news on this?

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?

Pale Fire wrote: 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?

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

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

Michael Bowman wrote: (and ships from Warehouse 23 on Friday).

Mike Holmes wrote: 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?

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

Mike Holmes wrote: No details on a date, yet, however?

Thanks Ben.

Given that this date represents a substantial puch back from the original, I'll bet that it's going to be pretty solid. My guess is that the date is meant to give plenty of time, and to coincide with GenCon.

Mike

The Steve Jackson Games release schedule is quite solid. They rarely slip anymore.

A friend of mine went to GloranthaCon and got a copy of the HeroQuest preview. His version contains slightly over half of the book. I was quite impressed. Small tweaks to the rules with significantly better organization and explanation.

I'll be starting up a new HeroQuest game in a couple of weeks.

Michael

As things stand, HeroQuest is on schedule: it is in layout, the art has all been finalised (which is always one of the bugbears on the production process) and, although there is always the risk of some catastrophic mishap, it will be out in June.

All the best

Mark