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Saturday 24 December 2016

Fellowship

When I was first asked to write a novella to tie in with Heroquest (no, not HeroQuest, which I would have preferred) I came up with the idea of four round-robin narrators vaguely inspired by Jack Vance, Bret Easton Ellis, the Beowulf poet, and Terry Pratchett respectively. And before you raise a very legitimate objection, I did say vaguely.

I don't recall there being a Heroquest world at the time I wrote the first book, so I created part of one and drew my own map of it. By the time I was asked to write the second book, Games Workshop had designed their own version of the world, which included some of the place names from my novella but with a quite different geography "loosely based on the Warhammer world" as it said in the front. I just mention that because if you refer to the map from the second book while reading the first, you will see that the route the characters take makes no sense. One view at the time was, "Well, it's for ten-year-olds," but I can tell you that when I was ten that sort of thing would've annoyed the hell out of me.

As well as the novella, the book The Fellowship of Four included a mini-gamebook, "In the Night Season", and that's this year's Christmas freebie. Grab it now here while stocks last.

Somebody also created an actual HeroQuest set-up based on the novella, here. And while we're about it, an early Christmas freebie was the second Heroquest book, The Screaming Spectre, and if you missed that 'tis the season to be jolly all over again, here.

12 comments:

  1. I've just started playing Heroquest for a friend and his young (7) son to introduce him to fantasy gaming and (hopefully) RPGs eventually. He's loving it.

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    1. Glad to hear the next generation is getting a good intro to roleplaying. Give him a couple of years and he'll be ready for Dragon Warriors!

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    2. Most definitely! I'll be digging it out come that time. :-)

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  2. Cheers Dave, merry Christmas to you and yours.

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  3. Nice concept Dave ! 'Bret Easton Elvish'. Must have been fun to write. Perhaps we could help GRRM complete his saga by nominating alternating authorial styles he must use to complete his POV chapters...Merry Christmas !

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  4. Thanks for this and the other posts this year, Dave. Seasons greetings. p.s. Schalken. Interesting, though don't think AMC will be rushing in to commission the remake!

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  5. Thanks, guys, and have a great Christmas and New Year.

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  6. You too Dave. I sincerely hope 2017 is less scary; for all of us.

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  7. Best surpirse ever! Thank you for the books (mostly for writing them in the first place of course) I play HQ in Honduras since 1989 so it's really a huge surprise to see the AUTHOR and the books here!!!

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    1. You're welcome, Oscar. Thanks for dropping by!

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  8. With Christmas just around the corner once again, will you be releasing the files to new fans who are excited to find new HeroQuest things, and old things they never saw before?

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    1. Are those links above not working now? I think Google Drive changed security settings so that shared files got locked -- somebody got in touch to tell me they could no longer access my comic strip "A Wrong Turning". If that has happened to the Heroquest files too, let me know and I'll host them elsewhere.

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