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Custom Terrain & Obstacles For Custom terrain, buildings, and other misc. obstacles |
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#13
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Re: Welcome to the Engineers of Valhalla
I think the teams on those can definitely be separate. Can you explain the ranking a bit more? I was mentioning using ranked choice voting for the Workshop to select a new design to work on, which would only select one new design, but gives people the ability to vote on multiple. I’d want to emphasize moving one design fully through the process to sort out kinks in the process as opposed to moving all designs along each step together.
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#14
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Re: Welcome to the Engineers of Valhalla
My thought was to have lots of ideas in the first stage of the workshop. If someone wants to move it to the next step, they can request that the evaluators take a look at it. Hopefully there are a few every few months for the evaluators to look at. They rank them, and if one stands out, it moves on. If they are all over the place on rankings, they all stay in the workshop. The evaluators can narrow things down and let people know they are close. Kind of like hall of fame voting. That is what I thought for the first steps before they move up the ladder.
What GenCon taught me was to assume only one skull on three dice! |
#15
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Re: Welcome to the Engineers of Valhalla
I would like to suggest a slight amendment to the following criteria-
Does it visually fit into official HeroScape (ie correct scale, feature quality, theme)? There's nothing I would want to remove from this, but I think that establishing the notion that pieces have to make sense within the lore of the game world. Official terrain pieces and expansions are representative of things found within Valhalla; the trees and bridges of the Forgotten Forest, shrubs and vegetation from the Ticalla Jungle, etc. etc. The only exception being the Marro Hive, which I think I'm right in saying was grown on Valhalla by the Marro themselves. I'm not quite sure what would be the best way to word this, but I feel it's an important step in capturing the feel of a genuine Hasbro/WotC release. In other threads there have been suggestions of WW2 style gunner posts or pillboxes, which to me at least, wouldn't make sense for an official expansion; The Valkyrie summon warriors and heroes, not structures and equipment. |
#16
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Re: Welcome to the Engineers of Valhalla
That point is going to be largely subjective I feel due to the notion that we can make any "new" or unexplored part of valhalla that we want to really. Trex leaving kinda took the momentum out of the project which sucks so I dont know if we are even going forward. If we do, I think tangible and quantifiable reasons that something fits in should be fine. No one should be able to arbitrarily limit creativity if there is a simple and feasible explanation for it.. like with a pillbox that can be built easily.
I'd like to have people give an argument of how something could exist if it seems out of place at first. |
#18
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Re: Welcome to the Engineers of Valhalla
Mark Rosewater, the head designer for MtG often says that restriction breeds creativity, and I'm inclined to agree. If sticking within the realms of what could be found natively in Valhalla proves to be too limiting, then so be it. But I feel that the route to the highest quality, most official-feeling finished pieces is adhering to the patterns established by the games original designers. After all, if people want customs of any conceivable terrain pieces, their is nothing stopping them working on them for their own tables and sharing them with the world. If people want a spiritual successor to the official releases, in the vein of C3V and SOV, it only makes sense to explore that possibility before branching out if it proves to be a smaller pool to draw from than we would hope.
As for bullets, I believe that definitely sits below the abstraction layer. |
#19
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Re: Welcome to the Engineers of Valhalla
Quote:
I also agree with others that these things can be subjective, and there will certainly be disagreements about where the boundaries should be in specific cases. A guidepost in those disagreements should be that Hasbro always tried to protect the integrity of these battles happening on Valhalla. One example is the explanation that the AE's airdrop is implemented by Kyrie warriors flying them up above the battlefield. It's kind of a story cheat and not the most satisfying explanation, but it does tell us that Jandar did not summon a Douglas C-47 from Earth or build one on Valhalla. When subjective situations arise, we need to hold each other back from indulging personal preferences that would erode the integrity of "What Would Hasbro Do?" If a project like this wants to be the closest thing to an official Hasbro continuation of terrain expansions, then it needs to err on the side of self-discipline rather than require absolute freedom of creativity. Within the bounds of WWHD, we have tons of room for creativity. Just no room for blurring the storyline into other things that are not the Heroscape story. Now maybe I should clarify that I'm not at all offended by non-Valhallan customs projects. I started a Star Trek project here back in the day; I've worked on ways to make my own Stargate; I have an Indiana Jones miniature that needs painting; if I ever find a decent mini of Katniss Everdeen then I will make an army card for my daughter and will enjoy playing against that Hero; and so on. But none of these things are appropriate for the quasi-official continuation projects. Katniss doesn't belong in C3V and steel "Czech hedgehogs" don't belong in EoV. From my perspective, this project needs to have some flexible but effective guidelines that say we are not going to produce steampunk toxic waste factories, or crashed WWII bomber wreckage, or vibranium quarries, or burned-out teepee villages and U.S. cavalry forts. If we drift outside the bounds of what Valhalla looks like, then we lose the opportunity to become the quasi-official terrain continuation project and turn into just another gallery of various people's customs. I'm not at all interested in the latter. Good traders: tdemirji, AbsintheAddict, Blubberguy22, Toa Matoro, SuperSamyon, Bl1ndsn1per, Ericth74,
Clipper423, Oh Freek, Nikkomon, DarthBaggins, quizzcode, Astroking112 & more on my trade list |
#20
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Re: Welcome to the Engineers of Valhalla
Whoops, I got ninja'd by Archie's second post.
Quote:
Nicely concise way to put it. Good traders: tdemirji, AbsintheAddict, Blubberguy22, Toa Matoro, SuperSamyon, Bl1ndsn1per, Ericth74,
Clipper423, Oh Freek, Nikkomon, DarthBaggins, quizzcode, Astroking112 & more on my trade list |
#21
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Re: Welcome to the Engineers of Valhalla
I'm not a fan of Mark Rosewater and this isn't MTG. I would rather look at Shigeru Miyamoto whom I would respect far more than Rosewater. He says that you should draw inspiration from everywhere:
One problem a lot of creative people have early in their careers is a single-mindedness about inspiration. When you’re focused so much on a job, you tend to seek out inspiration from within your medium. That creates a cyclical pattern that never allows you to create a truly new thing. Bullets also only sit below the abstraction layer because that's your personal threshold, it's a valid point and shows we all have a different layer of the immersion that we are willing to embrace. Quality is definitely something that should be defined. I'm not sure what it means to you. What it means to me is that we receive a functional, fun, and thematic addition to the game. I'm not advocating that every "conceivable" piece of terrain should be fair game but those that can be explained using simple logic while adding both aesthetic and enjoyable mechanics should be considered. Especially before telling someone to go sit in the corner and play with their terrain because we don't "think" it would appear in an imaginary world. I don't think I'm at all concerned about imitating the official releases of a game that it out of print for 10 years at this point. Especially considering we are wanting to involve terrain that you would print, buy, create, paint and otherwise use that is not readymade out of a box like the official releases. That is just my opinion, I don't speak for the group. |
#22
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Re: Welcome to the Engineers of Valhalla
I understand not being a fan of Rosewater, but I don't think Nintendo is any more relevant to this project than MtG, in fact I think it is likely considerably less relevant.
The problem with your chosen quote is that it speaks to people "early in their careers", and whilst this is a new project, it is one that is seeking to emulate and continue the established body of work that we already have before us. But let's be honest we could throw quotes and maxims about inspiration and design and creativity at one another til we're both blue in the face, so I think drawing a line under that here will save everyone a lot of time. I'm not telling anyone to sit in a corner with their terrain, in fact quite the opposite, I advocated sharing it with the world! I simply don't see the point in this project if it doesn't aim to capture the feel of an official Heroscape expansion. The reason for a group project over working individually is to rely on one another for sharing and refining ideas, for discipline, and for cohesion. Why would we waste our time by outlining structures and procedures to maintain, if we're just going to produce more of what people have been more than capable of producing independently for themselves for over a decade on these forums? |
#24
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Re: Welcome to the Engineers of Valhalla
I think we're all in agreement that we want quality.
There's a range of personal opinions about what would qualify as applicable to official HeroScape, and I think having this as a point of discussion for each design is reasonable. In fact, I think shiftrex's suggestion of making it part of the author's submission criteria is a good one. Let's not forget though that HeroScape brought in Marvel, brought in D&D, and from the CVN interview was seen as compatible with other franchises like Harry Potter and Star Wars. I'm not saying I want to add that content in, but I think it's worth noting that every expansion by nature pushes the envelope of what is acceptable in the game. |
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