HeroScape is coming back!

[Grungebob]

Originally Posted by Just_a_Bill

This is so foundational to my entire Heroscape experience. I remember drooling over the RotV box in Target those two decades ago, but didn't buy it because I had no idea when I would find time/opponents to play with. To my surprise, my daughters bought it for me for Christmas, played it with me, and liked it. There was an immediate conjunction of quality design, the cool mixture of historical, fantasy, and sci-fi elements, and (most important) an activity I could share with my kids. Half the fun of getting new stuff was revealing it to them.

This is part of the reason the transition to D&Dscape was hard for me. As the focus shifted away from Valhalla and toward the D&D worlds, it became less and less something that my kids were interested in. It probably did a good job of serving those who craved more evil monsters from the ethereal planes of hell, it was just less and less a parent-child gaming experience. Not because it was "too evil" but because the aesthetics just felt less and less like Valhalla. The more the original design paradigms got left behind, the less my kids and I had to hang onto emotionally. Great gameplay is good, but divorced from the original design aesthetic and the attention to detail in important non-gameplay elements, it just wasn't the same experience.

And here we go again with nearly all fantasy elements with names that sound like D&D characters. Plus a Marro in pants who's confused about whether he hates his own general or not. It kinda feels like a brute-force fantasy monster mashup that has Heroscape's name and underlying gameplay, but not much emphasis on Heroscape's roots of charm, accessibility, and good storytelling. I guess the designers find those things boring.

Anyway that's my gut feeling. There's just not much in this initial offering that inspires me in that way. It's not building on the things that made Heroscape great for us. I realize I'm in the minority among those who still even hang out on this site, and I don't expect any of this to change. Just explaining one perspective. And honestly I'm kinda happy that I don't feel the compulsion to relapse into my old plastic crack addiction.

I can’t say I agree with everything you’ve said, but I do understand where you’re coming from.

If anything, Heroscape had a complete lack of theme, relying heavily on a certain toy aesthetic and player imagination. Any time theme is introduced in a more cohesive way, you lose some of that charm, and hem in the player’s imagination.

However, what theme does do, is increase immersion and define certain player goals. Scenarios make more sense, abilities find more relevance, and the meta feels richer. Perhaps those are things that kids don’t care about, but Heroscape casts a wide net.