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Customs Creation - July 2020

Posted July 23rd, 2020 at 06:15 PM by HS Codex

Customs Creations Interview
HoME Customs with Capsocrates
Author: Ninja Status

How did Heroes of Middle Earth get started?

The first time was back around 2013. A group of Heroscapers—including White Knight, infectedsloth, and myself, who are all part of the “reboot”—decided that we wanted to have high-quality custom cards for Lord of the Rings characters that the whole community could use. We put together a big process and set to tackling some of the toughest designs right off the bat. Our very first one was Gandalf.

The project died out around 2015 from a lack of momentum stemming from a bunch of self-created problems.

Earlier in 2020 some of us expressed interest in rebooting the project. We've picked up several new contributors and we’re taking a more streamlined approach this time around. We’re saving the Fellowship for after we’ve gotten a few easier cards under our belt, although we have brainstormed ideas for most of the Fellowship already. Anyone is welcome to come and participate.

Are there any designs you’re particularly excited about?

Our design for a Cave Troll just entered playtesting! Come check it out.

I think we have quite a few neat and original ideas. I’m optimistic that each faction will be fun to play alongside other Heroscape figures or by themselves. Right now there’s no one design that I’m most excited about, but I am really looking forward to tackling the Fellowship and trying to make them each fun to play, alone and together, without doing any heavy-handed synergy.

Do you have any experience in managing previous projects?

I was one of the “Executive Review Board” for the first go at HoME back in 2013 – 2015. I’m also one of the Pod Leaders for the Arena of the Valkyrie project. I have been pretty involved in Valhalla Customs for almost 10 years now; first as a playtester, then a C3V Public Access Member, then an SoV judge, and now also a member of the C3V Design team. I’ve seen a lot of what makes high-quality customs projects successful and I’m optimistic about HoME going forward this time around.

What would you say is most crucial to running a customs project?

Consistency. It’s easy to be excited about some ideas for a few days or even a few weeks. For a customs project to have some longevity, you have to have a core of people that are committed to coming back week after week.

Also teamwork and compromise. As we learned in our first go at HoME, it is difficult for a team to make progress if one or more members are completely unyielding about everything. If you’re not ready for some give-and-take, you’re better off just making customs by yourself.

After that I would say community acceptance and engagement. You can do all your own playtesting, I suppose, but if you do all the work and then your group are the only ones to appreciate the fruits, it could feel a bit anticlimactic.

What sort of goals are set when designing a unit?

I can’t speak for the rest of the group, but for myself I like to see thematic powers that represent the unit without getting too complex. Sometimes that means leaving some potential theme on the table, but I’m okay with that when it leads to good gameplay and a clean design.

Top 3 favorite Tolkien characters?
  1. Sam.
  2. Aragorn or Gandalf; it is hard to pick between them.
  3. I’ll go out of left field here a bit and say that I remember being a pretty big fan of Fingolfin when I read the Silmarillion. It has been quite a while, though, so I can’t remember why. In a few years we should have hopefully put out cards for the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit so I’ll have a pretty good excuse to re-read the Silmarillion as we start working our way through the Legendarium!

Finally, what do you have to say to anyone who may have interest in joining HoME?

Come on over to Hobbiton, introduce yourself, and start pitching in! Anyone and everyone is welcome to contribute at whatever level they have the time and means for. We have plenty of work cut out for us in unit design, map design, scenario design, rulebook design, and art and need all the help we can get.
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Taeblewalker's Avatar
You might want to check out @Sherman Davies . He did a lot of LotR customs.
Posted July 23rd, 2020 at 06:52 PM by Taeblewalker Taeblewalker is offline
 
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