HoME General Discussion Thread

[caps]

How does this look for poll questions? I think we need most of these answered before we can start, as they will really define the aesthetic we shoot for.


How powerful should the most powerful medium unique heroes in Middle Earth (Gandalf, Legolas, Glorfindel, Galadriel, Saruman etc.) be compared to other Heroscape figures?

• I will not use HoME figures if the strongest medium heroes are as powerful as Marvel figures like Hulk, Thanos, and Silver Surfer
• I will not use HoME figures if the strongest medium heroes are as powerful as figures like C3V's Heracles, HoSS's Darth Vader, or weaker Marvel figures like Iron Man, Red Skull, and Captain America
• I will not use HoME figures if the strongest medium heroes are as powerful as figures like Sonlen, Sgt. Drake v2, Cyprien Esenwein, and Marvel figures like Venom and Spider-Man
• No preference
• I prefer the strongest medium heroes in HoME to be as powerful Hasbro Marvel figures like Hulk, Thanos, and Silver Surfer
• I prefer the strongest medium heroes in HoME to be as powerful as figures like C3V's Heracles, HoSS's Darth Vader, or medium-level Hasbro Marvel figures like Iron Man, Red Skull, and Captain America
• I prefer the strongest medium heroes in HoME to be as powerful as figures like Sonlen, Sgt. Drake v2, Cyprien Esenwein, and weaker Hasbro Marvel figures like Venom and Spider-Man

What kinds of generals should the project use?

• I will not use HoME figures if the army cards follow custom generals specific to Middle Earth
• I prefer HoME figures to follow Valhalla generals (Utgar, Jandar, Ullar, etc.)
• No preference
• I prefer HoME figures to follow custom generals specific to Middle Earth
• I will not use HoME figures if the army cards follow Valhalla generals (Utgar, Jandar, Ullar, etc.)

Should HoME avoid synergy with classic figures? Or should they have as much synergy as possible? Or neither?

• I will not use HoME figures if they have lots of synergy with classic figures. For example if Gimli bonds with Axegrinders, Boromir bonds with Knights of Weston, Legolas can be saved by Acolarh, orc heroes bond with gruts, etc.
• I prefer HoME figures to NOT have synergy with classic figures. I prefer something like Gimli is a "Hill Dwarf" instead of a dwarf, Boromir is a Gondorian instead of a human, Legolas is a "High Elf" instead of an elf, etc.
• No preference / leave it to HoME designers to use the right synergies
• I prefer HoME figures to have lots of synergy with classic figures (where appropriate). I like Gimlin bonding with Axegrinders, Boromir bonding with Knights of Weston, etc.
• I will not use HoME figures if they DO NOT have lots of synergy with classic figures. For example if Gimli is a "Hill Dwarf" instead of a dwarf, Boromir is a Gondorian instead of a human, Legolas is a "High Elf" instead of an elf, etc.

How complex should the cards be? Should the average words-per-power and average powers-per-card be higher or lower?

• I will not use HoME figures if they are USUALLY as complex and detailed as cards like the classic/D&D Eltahale, HoSS's Darth Vader, C3G's Iron Man Mark IV, or C3V's Deathcommander Mark 3
• I prefer HoME figures to USUALLY be as complex and detailed as cards like Syvarris, Sonlen, Migol Ironwill, Crixus, James Murphy, Alastair MacDirk, Nilfheim, Braxas
• No preference
• I prefer HoME figures to USUALLY be as complex and details as cards like the classic/D&D Eltahale, HoSS's Darth Vader, C3G's Iron Man Mark IV, or C3V's Deathcommander Mark 3
• I will not use HoME figures if they are USUALLY as complex and detailed as cards like Syvarris, Sonlen, Migol Ironwill, Crixus, James Murphy, Alastair MacDirk, Nilfheim, Braxas

[caps]

Originally Posted by White Knight

How many teams can a person be on at once?

There is no hard limit with my proposal. It will depend on the person but I imagine the practical limit for most people is two or three teams.

Originally Posted by White Knight

If we have 5 teams, every person would have to be on 2 or 3 teams. How is that much different than just having a group approach to each design? Do the 4 extra people really make that much of a difference?

The difference is that there is a) always a group and b) that group has an upper bound on how big it can be. The 3/5 people on the team are the ones having the discussion most of the time, not all 7/9/15/21 people on the project.


With a single designer, I think you are also more likely to encounter a single designer being stubborn about their design against the will of the whole, bringing the whole thing to a standstill. That's less likely to happen with a group of designers--either enough of them will be persuaded by the whole and change their mind, or they'll be unified and the whole will respect their vision.

Originally Posted by White Knight

Not only that: with a team, it's going to take days or weeks or months to come to a consensus draft on abilities.

Consensus is the enemy of forward motion and we won't be looking for consensus. So I don't see this as a particular drawback. With that said, these projects do take time to get right.

Originally Posted by White Knight

Now imagine that we have one single lead designer for a card and then anyone who playtests also gets a vote. We could theoretically have 9 designs going at the same time--one for each member. And that member could submit an initial draft from day 1. There will still be discussion on that design, and others can give their suggestions. (A good lead designer should be open to input.) But the lead designer alone gets veto power on that design.

I don't understand why ~9 people all working on 9 designs together simultaneously is a good thing.

[Shiftrex]

I like the poll questions, they seem clear and look like they establish a direction so people can gauge if they want to help out or not based on majority answers.

Also, the sense of forward movement and wanting to start that everyone has is great! Makes things look hopeful, stalling too much at the start of a project makes it look less promising but it looks like everyone is excited to start here.

As for my other comment, it was worded poorly for power levels. I meant more that I want designs to make sense in terms of the characters lore. IE, Gandalf the White is superior to Gandalf the Gray, or the Witch King of Angmar is powerful enough to be set apart from the other Ring wraiths.

[caps]

Originally Posted by Shiftrex

As for my other comment, it was worded poorly for power levels. I meant more that I want designs to make sense in terms of the characters lore. IE, Gandalf the White is superior to Gandalf the Gray, or the Witch King of Angmar is powerful enough to be set apart from the other Ring wraiths.

I think we all agree on this.

[White Knight]

Originally Posted by capsocrates

I don't understand why ~9 people all working on 9 designs together simultaneously is a good thing.

If the Fellowship is to work like a faction (such as the elves, or the dwarves) it will be useful to work them all in parallel.

I think that's one of the drawbacks we had of doing Gandalf by himself. We wanted to make him work with Classic but also work well with the rest of the Fellowship. But we didn't have a Fellowship to test with. We kept talking about points for Gandalf because we wanted to be able to build an army with Gandalf and Gimli and Legolas and Aragorn. Too many points for Gandalf and we have to nerf the rest of the heroes to make them work. But we had no designs for the other heroes.

We also lost a lot of interest as we mostly focused on Gandalf. If we had started concurrent design threads on Gimli, and Legolas we would have had more initial designs into playtesting. I never understood the one-at-a-time in playtesting constraint.

I still don't see the value of teams over a single design owner--especially when a "team" will probably be over half the members of HoME.

----------------------------------------------

Which is why I'm going to suggest a poll on the design structure:

Option A: a single card design owner
Option B: a team of 5 people overseeing a card design

Then we go with what the majority wants, with a re-evaluation in a month or a few months to make sure that the structure is working like we want.

[caps]

Originally Posted by White Knight

If the Fellowship is to work like a faction (such as the elves, or the dwarves) it will be useful to work them all in parallel.

I'm not sure they need to be a "faction" in that sense per se. "The Fellowship" will probably not work as an army in a kill-em-all format like people play at Tournaments. I think "The Fellowship" will mostly only be used all together in scenarios.

Originally Posted by White Knight

I think that's one of the drawbacks we had of doing Gandalf by himself. We wanted to make him work with Classic but also work well with the rest of the Fellowship. But we didn't have a Fellowship to test with. We kept talking about points for Gandalf because we wanted to be able to build an army with Gandalf and Gimli and Legolas and Aragorn. Too many points for Gandalf and we have to nerf the rest of the heroes to make them work. But we had no designs for the other heroes.

We also lost a lot of interest as we mostly focused on Gandalf. If we had started concurrent design threads on Gimli, and Legolas we would have had more initial designs into playtesting. I never understood the one-at-a-time in playtesting constraint.

I can't tell you how much I agree with you on these points now. It all made sense to me at the time, and I acknowledge that I was one of the decision makers in many of those decisions. I/we were wrong.

Originally Posted by White Knight

Which is why I'm going to suggest a poll on the design structure:

Option A: a single card design owner
Option B: a team of 5 people overseeing a card design

Then we go with what the majority wants, with a re-evaluation in a month or a few months to make sure that the structure is working like we want.

I'm on board with this, but to make an important change to Option B and keep the wording of both option in line with each other I would say:


Option A: each design is owned by a single person
Option B: each design is owned by a team of people


The number of people on the team is just a detail we can sort out later.

[caps]

Putting this in its own post to simplify sharing and vote tracking. @infectedsloth @Splash @Shiftrex @boromir96 @Ninja Status please vote!

Originally Posted by capsocrates

Option A: each design is owned by a single person
Option B: each design is owned by a team of people

State your preference below.


Votes so far:
Option A: @White Knight
Option B: @capsocrates @Shiftrex @Ninja Status @Splash @boromir96

[Shiftrex]

I vote for option B
@capsocrates

Question for the group. Regardless of what we decide here. Is there still going to be an overarching group/person/position that ensures a design does stall out? I really dont want that to happen with this project.

[caps]

Originally Posted by Shiftrex

Regardless of what we decide here. Is there still going to be an overarching group/person/position that ensures a design does stall out?

I am hoping so. It may have to come to another vote. It is not clear to me if White Knight came around on this part of my proposal or not.

[Ninja Status]

I vote for option B

Personally I think the brainstorming that’s done in a team setting can be very beneficial to overall design.
Excited to get this going again!

[Splash]

Originally Posted by capsocrates

In line with your idea to just let anyone in; what if, at the very beginning, the Council is formed of literally anyone who wants to be on it? If there are too many (which I know you don't expect) we could vote for a top 7 or top 5 or top 9 or something. That's basically what AotV did to get their "council." It was the 7 or so people that were showing up in the thread at the beginning and cared enough to get it off the ground.


Going forward after that the council could be more selective about replacing members. Or not. Their call.

I would suggest this, and when/if we hit 10 say we can really get into hashing out what people might need to do to get on the high council or what have you.

[Splash]

What if we worked in pairs, with each pair handling two designs. One person can be lead designer for one, the other can be lead designer for the other, with each in turn serving as co-designer to serve as a sort of check, but mostly for collaboration and all the good that comes with that.
If someone wants to be very active they could perhaps work in another pair, as well with either someone who also is more active or someone who does not a hive a pair.