HoME General Discussion Thread

[TREX]

Whatever road you guys take I wish you luck. Im no longer insterested in customs projects as I have stated before. Feel free to leave me out of the mentioned list of folks wanting to participate here. Been here and tried to do that back when I actually cared to. Have fun with the project everyone.

[OEAO]

Originally Posted by IAmBatman

Being canon is one of the goals of the group now that Heroscape is exclusively in the hands of the community and, frankly, there are no reasonable contenders for the designation. Not only that, but the group sought the blessing of the official designers as part of its creation and received it. I believe they are also the only customs grouping widely played at Heroscape tournaments.

You may dislike that anointment of being canon, but it's not presumptuous, it's earned.

Other than that, I agree with your post. Compatibility is a two-way street. Trying to accomplish it on your end without the express cooperation of the other end is a fool's errand and an unnecessary barrier/source of frustration for any group.

That said, I wish y'all the best with this one.

Imo, there doesn’t need to be a “reasonable contender”. No customs are canon. Quite frankly, I don’t care if people want to love and play with customs, but canon is Hasbro’s releases.

[OEAO]

I’m in the same boat as Trex: thanks for the offer, but I have way too much on plate right now. I wish you guys all the best!

[IAmBatman]

Originally Posted by OrcElfArmyOne

Imo, there doesn’t need to be a “reasonable contender”. No customs are canon. Quite frankly, I don’t care if people want to love and play with customs, but canon is Hasbro’s releases.

What a boring approach to life! Canon is what the community wants it to be, ultimately. A topic for another thread, but I guess one could fondly remember a dead game or enjoy a thriving, living one. Ultimately everyone's canon is their own, though.

[OEAO]

Originally Posted by IAmBatman

What a boring approach to life! Canon is what the community wants it to be, ultimately. A topic for another thread, but I guess one could fondly remember a dead game or enjoy a thriving, living one. Ultimately everyone's canon is their own, though.

I guess I don’t consider a game where I’ve only mastered maybe 10 units “dead”, but indeed a topic for another time and place. Sorry if that came off a little harsh!

[IAmBatman]

No worries. Just worth noting that "canon" is ultimately subjective. In my humble (biased) opinion, the community "owns" the game at this point, so what's canon or not isn't Hasbro's call anymore.

[caps]

Originally Posted by Porkins

These statements aren't very fair to make together. How can you know that they don't feel right together when you have never played, or really looked at the cards?

I have looked at the cards, pretty extensively. I have commented in a lot of the holocrons as well. It's true that I haven't played them, but it is not hard to see that Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, for instance, are both more complex than some of the most complex cards in classic. And they're not outliers; they're the norm. In general HoSS has more words per power and more powers per card (esp. including force powers) than Classic. I am surprised that you would disagree with me on this.

Originally Posted by Porkins

The issue way back when, was that you objected to the creation and use of the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance factions instead of classic generals. You demanded that we use classic generals or they wouldn't be "100% compatible."

However, having Darth Vader belong to Utgar, who doesn't exist in Star Wars mythos, would have been a theme break. Your objection didn't have to do with Alastair and Luke not "feeling right" together, because at that time nothing was released and you hadn't played it. It was 100% about your personal definition of 100% compatible, and I see echoes of that exchange in this thread.

... HoSS is still the same game we all love with the same rules, with awesome terrain, and with sweet, painted miniatures, AND our own Star Wars galaxy (which is far, far away) is still intact and not Vallhalla-ized.

I think the difference in how we approached this is that what I wanted was the Valkyrie Generals to be summoning characters "from a galaxy far far away" (and Middle Earth) to fight in Valhalla for them. The approach of HoSS seems to be more to use the Heroscape rules to play Star Wars skirmishes. These are both valid approaches. Mine is better! You know, like how pizza is obviously better than hamburgers. But they're both valid. Just like pizza and hamburgers are both fine meals. I had hamburgers for three meals this week! I will not be surprised if I am in the minority on preferring "pizza" in this respect. Even though it's better

Originally Posted by Porkins

With all that said, we will be the first to admit that HoSS has a slightly different meta-game. Most figures are ranged, there are Force Powers that (gasp) can be performed without first passing a d20 check, and no references to Jandar, or Ullar. However, all HoSS figures are playtested with Classic (and VC) as well as with other HoSS figures; all can be played together.

I found another way to say what I wanted to say. To me, the peak of classic-compatible custom design is to be able to close your eyes and randomly pick a card from a collection, and it looks and feels like something that would have been in classic Heroscape (licenses aside, of course). This doesn't have to mean that the card is perfectly balanced in every situation (although I'm proud that VC has managed to not break the game with any of their stuff). Just that if someone didn't tell you that it was a custom... you wouldn't know.

The choice of rebel alliance and empire instead of Valhalla generals is just one of the reasons that HoSS "fails" that test (fails sounds negative--I don't mean this to be negative, it's a matter of preference).

I think VC has missed that with some of their cards (most customs groups and designers do, even when they're trying). Scytale is probably the designer that comes closest. Which is impressive when you consider how many very *different* units he's designed, and even new mechanics he has introduced.


At this point I would not push for HoSS or HoME or any other project to be "compatible" with VC or each other. Not without a willingness to rework stuff after release. Just be compatible with classic. If it passes the "random grab" test above to the same extent as VC, that's good enough for me. This is not a community that in general is going to go out of their way to exploit weird edge cases that come up when units that weren't designed to work together (like HoME and HoSS). I would probably include VC units in HoME playtests. It just makes sense. And I would even try to avoid making stuff that's going to be obviously problematic with VC. But I wouldn't stress about later VC releases messing up the stuff of another project. It's just inevitable.

Originally Posted by Porkins

... This would be my wish for Middle Earthers, not a Sauron card who follows Utgar. Sauron IS Utgar! I'd want Middle Earthers to retain their own universe built inside of the confines of Heroscape rules

Sauron's not Utgar, though. The closest parallel would be Morgoth, whom Sauron was originally just a lieutenant for. I don't think we'd ever have a Sauron card, for the same reason there was never an Utgar card. Maybe when everything else is done...

Originally Posted by Porkins

With VC it's different. You can create things which reference Jandar in power text or belong to Aquila or Einar because you are creating characters, powers, background bios, EVERYTHING from the ground up. You are creating them inside the Heroscape universe, not porting them over from an already existing universe. For example: Hasbro's Marvel does not use Valhalla generals...it's an already existing universe.

I'm curious what Hasbro would have done with the Star Wars license in Heroscape. They probably would have done something similar to what HoSS did when it comes to generals. And maybe the cards would have felt just as... off, as the Marvel cards do.

Originally Posted by Porkins

All this to say, whatever the group's goal is, just make sure everyone agrees to that goal and it is succinctly stated so that newcomers understand it too. And don't force the group to bend to one person's goals via un-ending forum posts and debate...that's the killing blow that almost killed HoSS.

Which is a nice segue into my next post on polls.

Originally Posted by Porkins

This attitude has always bothered me. C3V and VC do great work, and I have some figures and cards that I enjoy using. But it strikes me as presumptuous and quite arrogant that they have anointed themselves as canon, even numbering releases starting at Wave 14.

The stated goal of VC is to extend the canon. That's the whole point. There are people who accept them as canon and there are people who do not. They will never be "officially" canon like Hasbro stuff was. But many in the community (including myself) accept them as canon. Take them or leave them, but I don't see the point in being bothered by it.

[caps]

Originally Posted by Shiftrex

I did some catch up reading, I think I like where this reboot is going. I've been working on my private lotr customs but I'd like to move into a group setting as well.

Welcome!

[caps]

So, polls. I see several issues to resolve.

They boil down to "Design HoME figures as if they were summoned to Valhalla OR as if we are using Herocape rules to play skirmishes in Middle Earth" but that doesn't communicate very well. So let's break it down further:

Generals:
Design with Valhalla generals (with Middle Earth general cards available) OR Design exclusively with Middle Earth generals
Either way we will have cards that use a different style and pallete and have their own general names; the question is whether these will be "alternate" cards or the *only* cards.

Complexity:
Stay within the bounds of classic 'Scape OR make cards and powers that are more complex and detailed (like HoSS or C3G)
A "metric" for this that works as a kind of eye test is average words-per-power and average powers-per-card.

Are there any other points of disagreement on the goals, really? @White Knight @infectedsloth

[Ninja Status]

If you guys need art members I’d be happy to help. I got experience with photoshop and making cards of my own.

[caps]

We definitely will.

[White Knight]

I agree some of the HoSS cards are very complex, especially for beginners. I threw a HoSS Heroscape party and invited some friends at work to come an play. But boss, who has the least patience, choose Han Solo, Chewbacca, Farmboy Luke, C3PO, and R2D2. Those cards are not for beginners.

But other HoSS cards are much easier to understand. And not all classic cards are one or two power cards. Some of them get complex.

I really don't have a preference on cards. I want the figure to be fun to play. Some abilities are very wordy, but in practice they are very simple (such as Stealth Flying).

As for generals, I don't have a preference right now.