Morbus Iff

@Sandy, this stuff is great, and very on-par with what I wanted (and have mentioned elsewhere) for a Heroica RPG. Would you mind if a) copied the rules over to a wiki, b) tweaked them a bit to be not as Eurobrick-centric and/or c) expanded them for support of non-fantasy worlds? I've had my eye on turning all the various collectible minifig series into job classes. Naturally, I'd give you full attribution as the source, with a link back to these pages, etc.

If you haven't seen them yet, you might want to take a look at the various HEROICA threads, specifically this one, which discusses taking the simple HEROICA rules and turning them into something slightly more complex (but less complex than BrikWars/BrickQuest., which you've probably seen). It's not LEGO for D&D, it's more HeroQuest in LEGO, but might give some inspiration/ideas.

For me to remain sane, I must treat this reply as a troll ;)

That's exactly correct, yes - the sorting tray is meant to hold a whole year's worth of sets (and they mention this on the site, in the book, etc.).

It was funny because, just a week ago, I was thinking how it'd be neat to see a non-licensed LEGO console game (unlike LEGO Universe). I would have hoped for something more story-y (like ALIEN CONQUEST, WORLD RACERS, PHARAOH'S QUEST, ATLANTIS, etc.), but a generic LEGO City theme would probably allow all those other themes to happen anyways (get on a LEGO City Boat to go to Atlantis! ZOMG, someone is drag racing down LEGO City Main Street! Oh no, the mummy exhibit at the LEGO City Museum is all verklempt! EekekK, aliens!, etc.). I just hope it's as good as that, and not just a bunch of minigames ported from their website ;)

I don't think anyone is "forgetting" those ideas - I certainly think that there's plenty of room for expansion of the existing game, and I definitely do want to make stats for all the other micro-fig stuff from the other LEGO Games. With that said, however, adding new monsters, new heroes, new potions, new game boards, etc. isn't going to make the shipped rules any more enjoyable for me. It'd be like playing Tic-Tac-Toe with triangles instead of circles: it's an expansion, sure, but it's not an improvement. The stuff I'm focusing on now isn't going to stop anyone else from adding new monsters or heroes and, if they do, it'd only help make the world of Heroica larger and more enjoyable for everyone else ("advanced" ruleset or not).

They're used for gold pieces :) They can be placed randomly around the map or won through the result of dice rolls on a treasure chest. They can then be used to purchase weapons from the weapons shop.

Hrm… possible, but I fear the difficulty of getting a hard-pressed 2x2 plate off the 2x2 W 1 Knob floors. And it's not ideal for more-than-3 life (stacked studs?) or ultimate placement (you'd need a 2x2 space instead of just the 1x1 that they fit in now). As for the strength ratings: what do they mean when applied to the existing hero microfigs? Each set has a unique microfig or "extra" rule - the above are for Fortaan and Waldurk (2 of the 4 sets).

I can think of a few reasons Battle wasn't the default: different goals (get the chalice vs. kill the heroes), positiveness (everyone's a Hero! No one's the Villain!), etc. But, yeah, I think for an Advanced sort of format, having the monsters move around and become First Class Citizens is important. What about the "move only one monster per turn" rule? Clearly, the intent of it is to prevent one player from monopolizing the board (1 hero action vs. 6 monster actions), but it's not hugely realistic. What if the Villain (term for "the player controlling the monsters"?) can move as many monsters per turn as there are Heroes? I think that's a quick, easy, and "fair" fix. I'm also +1 for collaborative map creation: given a set of Heroica "rooms", each player takes turns adding/connecting it to the board. Regarding studs on the head: +1 if it means Monsters get their own Monster Pack. Biggest problem I see there is: given five werewolves on the board, how do we know which Monster Pack represents which werewolf? Colored studs on the monster head (eh)? Second problem is the apparent different meaning of "health" when it comes to Heroes and Monsters. With Heroes, "health" correlates to the amount of damage a monster can do (monster strength 2 == 2 health damage). But, with Monsters, the "health" means the amount of times they have to be killed (assuming the previous homebrew rule I mentioned). I wouldn't feel good about representing both types with the red cones - I'd want the Monster Pack to use grey cones instead, maybe.

Actually, the Heroica web site came out last week or so - nothing exciting to see though.

I'd love to collab on such a beast. Here, I think, would be my goals: Keep it inspired first and foremost by the LEGO Games theme. Use the LEGO dice (using multiple Heroica dice would be OK). Continue to use the hero pack concept - all game stats represented in LEGO bricks. Encourage collaborative play - the core instructions have one person winning, but it should be the party who wins. Make "Battle Heroica" the default? There always must be one person who controls the monsters? And rampant fanboyism: I'd love to make a minifig-scaled Heroica, with each of the collectible-series minifigs being a class.

I'd love such a thing too, but would you want walls? How closely to existing dungeon-style builds would you want a minifig-sized Heroica to be?

@pathfinderofdoom: And while I have no qualms about such an approach to gaming (I play everything), I can't help but feel it's… … "not LEGO enough". It's exactly what I didn't like about BrikWars and Brickscape: it borrows _too much_ from the D&D/Warhammer/etc. genre - it's informed by the "before times" when the LEGO Games theme didn't exist. As a rough sorta example, you spend a lot of effort duplicating hit points, by ditching the existing Strength stat and creating OE and then adding a particular rule for reducing OE by recreating THAC0/AC. But, in my head, that's too complex. What if, instead, a monster's hit points are simply their Strength? I've been playtesting using Strength as "number of times they must be defeated", which is represented by studs stacked on the microfig's head. A werewolf with a Strength of 2 has two studs on his head at the beginning of gameplay. When he is defeated once (using the regular Heroica rules), a stud is removed. When all studs are removed, he's removed from play. This extends the monster's time on the board. Now, granted, this doesn't necessarily solve my biggest gripe about Heroica: the utter lack of skill involved. The core Heroica is all about the dice rolls, and nothing about "Strength is the number of times they must be defeated" increases player skill. I still think, however, that it's "more LEGO-like" than what you've come up with. (Again, no disrespect intended: yours is a perfectly valid approach, it's just not where my mindset is). Perhaps THAC0/AC could be represented as "the roll must be greater than the number of studs on their head" (i.e., a werewolf can only be hit if you roll 2 or higher), but then you'd have to roll AGAIN to actually see what happens - not a huge fan of that either.

I've tried peanut butter, but found it to be a little too oily for my tastes (and the thought of mixing food and LEGO bricks is ew). I've been a huge fan of the "re-apply and re-remove re-repeatedly" approach for years - that's always the first weapon in my stable. After that, I tend to do something that has worked for me on book stickers: Vaseline and a desk lamp. Stick some Vaseline on the goo, then stick it under a desk lamp for 10 minutes or so to heat it up. After that, just wipe it off.

I find myself collecting everything. Sigh. I've been wanting to do a brick comic, and they're pre-built characters. They'll probably increase with value, though that's the least of my desires.