HeroQuest 25th Anniversary Edition - Crowdfunding Shutdown yet again.

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**hands_miranda**

weeble1000 wrote:

I'm a little confused. Are you agreeing with the sentiment that Moon Design is "really no better than a patent troll" or aren't you?

When it comes to trademark trolling, on the surface Moon Design pretty well fits the pattern: Snap up a once popular mark that has been abandoned, do little with it, assert it against a successful company using the mark. But, there's a lot of subtext. Moon Design may well have not made a board game with the mark, but it was indeed using the mark, and Stafford had long intended to do so, apparently. Even so, one wonders about Moon Design's motivations. At least I still do. GameZone was asking for trouble and acting like an entitled cowboy, in my opinion, but Moon Design was aggressive for reasons I can't really fathom other than Stafford not wanting to see the same thing with the HeroQuest mark happen twice. But then it would have happened both times because he couldn't be arsed to get an actual product out.

It would be explicit trolling if someone had watched the Kickstarter make money, registered the mark, and then asserted it against GameZone.

Dude, they have been doing something with it. Heroquest the RPG has been around nearly a decade. Setting stuff in Glorantha (dual release for RQ & HQ) is being put out currently. There's no wondering about motivations. This is no different than Square-Enix picking up the Dragon Quest trademark in the US after the old P&P RPG name was abandoned. The only difference is that the Dragon Quest video game series is much more high profile, and that isn't a meaningful one. The whole Heroquesting concept by that name has been a part of the Glorantha stuff since early on if not the beginning of published stuff back in the 70s. I liked the HQ boardgame too, but you have Gamezone trying to ninja something through IP issues and then people getting angry that parties that have some legal claims like Moon Designs, GW, and Milton-Bradley object. Unless you're of the opinion that once something popular comes out, that space is now forbidden for anyone else despite any abandonment issues, at which point I might suggest that you rethinking your position to something more in line with reality.

**TheAuldGrump**

I do not consider Moon Design to be an IP troll - but I am irked with them over the way they are holding on to HeroQuest in this instance - the chance of the two IP being confused is nil.

I would have been annoyed with Hasbro or GW - and they have a better claim as to brand confusion. (But thanks to the tangled world of international IP less of a claim to the TM than MD.)

It sounds like MD is not looking to get money out of it - they just don't want another (almost certainly to be better known) game of the same title overshadowing their own title.

But given that the game is already being overshadowed in the RPG ocean by some very small fish... I do not see how having the boardgame leaves Moon Design in a worse position.

Heck, if they had required Gamezone to put in a notice of 'Used by the kind permission of' it would have gotten them more visibility. Instead....

*EDIT Or even required a little advertisement to be tucked into each box.

The Auld Grump

**Azazelx**

Someone earlier had the great idea of them working together by incorporating Glotanthan elements into the game design as a bit of a RQ cross-over. I imagine a few Broo (replacing the Fimir?) wouldn't have looked too out of place in that GW-centric design of the game, after all...

**hands_miranda**

Azazelx wrote:
Someone earlier had the great idea of them working together by incorporating Glotanthan elements into the game design as a bit of a RQ cross-over. I imagine a few Broo (replacing the Fimir?) wouldn't have looked too out of place in that GW-centric design of the game, after all...

Probably better not to include the most problematic monster in Glorantha in HQ. Then again, you could say the exact same thing about Fimir too.

**Azazelx**

Problematic? Broo? They're the basis for the GW Beastman archetype that GW uses.

**DustGod**

Change the name? tweek the rules? if its a good game it could stand on it's own merits vs all this 25th "name brand" issue. if it was me and i had it ready to go and that many fans throwing money... they know what they are buying... move away from the name

**Kroothawk**

Azazelx wrote:
Someone earlier had the great idea of them working together by incorporating Glotanthan elements into the game design as a bit of a RQ cross-over.

That's like making fifty-fifty with the burglar in your house

**Psychman**

Azazelx wrote:
Problematic? Broo? They're the basis for the GW Beastman archetype that GW uses.

He might mean ethically problematic to a family audience. The Broo's means of reproducing and the Gods they worship are not exactly the most "safe for work", shall we say.

Incidentally, may I just remind the discussion that, according to both MD and GZ, what Moon Design asked for initially was a copy of a statement by Hasbro, saying that Gamezone had permission to make a new edition. The absence of that was why they disrupted the campaign. While GZ could make a game similar to the old HeroQuest, avoiding the protections of Copyright, as have others over the years, surely the risk of litigation would reappear once they take their clone and market it under the name of the original, without paying dues?

Moon Design were concerned that if they allowed the usage of their name in the US, they would be complicit in such an IP fraud, and would face the same charges when it was taken to court. That, at least,is my understanding of their reason to require to see the agreement, and to block the campaign when it launched.

**Orlanth**

Broo procreation need not appear in the game. Orc spawning pits don't and we still don't know about how GW orcs come to be, and its not necessarily the same as orks (for the planet would be totally overrun long ago if they were spore based).

**Azazelx**

I've also ...extensively studied human reproduction, including some enlightening video programmes - for science, of course. Pretty sure that never came up in the games I've played before.

By the way, you might also want to look into the background of the Fimir, including their means of reproduction...

**reds8n**

With this being dead -- for now -- this thread is somewhat superfluous so this'll be locked.

Hopefully we can have a new thread as/when/if this project starts up again.