Entry One

UPDATES:

If you are here to look into our Rise of the Midnight Sons set, skip ahead to Entry 3. I just added the preliminary list.
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Well then, so this is new. Will anyone read this? And if they do, will they care? Perhaps they will wish for those minutes of their life back... I've seen some movies where I felt that way. Regardless, I like to write, and this is as good as practice as I'm likely to get for a while, so there you go. Anyhow, I actually do have a specific Heroclix-related topic I'd like to discuss, so on to that.

So, I was talking to my brother last month about an idea regarding Heroclix I had, and I started implementing it, but got kinda side-tracked with all the Fantastic Forces stuff lately. Anyway, here's my idea. There are plenty of creative people in this community, including myself, and we all pretty much have ideas on how this character could have been stated better, this character/feat/whatever will never be made so here's how I think it should be, hey check out my cool mod of this character, etc. Lots of this stuff IS cool (though there are plenty that aren't so much...), but the way I see it, there is a lack of overall direction. So, what's my idea? Here it is: what if we creative folks all get together and design our own Heroclix set? What's more, what if we let (actively encourage even) the whole community to participate?

Okay, okay. I know it sounds simple, but hear me out. See, what I'm thinking is that we creative types get together, build several cabals of 4-6 people to do certain tasks (dial design, dial creation (as in the actual graphic dials that go into and on the click base), feat/BFC design, mod/conversion/repaints design (as in suggestions by experts in this field as to how best to convert/repaint/whatever current Heroclix figures into the new character), graphic/artist people to create art for cards/whatever, maybe some people who could host all the stats/the whole set on a website for all of us to access (such as this site or maybe Boneyard's), etc. So what I'm saying here is that we design an entire set, top to bottom, and put it up on this site or whatever for all of the fans to have access to for free. The dials, the stats, the cards, instructions for converting the models, etc. all up in one place for any of us fans who want them. All one need do is come, do the work to down-load all this stuff, and assemble the pieces and ... whamo you got yourself the entire set, designed for the fans by the fans. Ideally, we creative types could set this up in such a way as to allow it to be as simple for fans to assemble the set as possible, though obviously some work will still need to be done by those who want to assemble the set.

But wait, it gets better. See, what I'm thinking is that we design the set like this: The target is to choose a theme for the set that will be quite unlikely that WizKids will being doing any time soon (if at all). Then the controlling creator type (yes, I'm volenteering for this, but more on that later) will pre-select a few characters to be part of the set (I'm thinking 6-10 characters here). The rest of the set will be roughly selected by the entire creative cabals ... well sorta. See, I see us selecting 4-6 options for each of the remaining character slots and then putting each of these to the community at large to vote on. Once the votes are all in, we inform the community of what the set will consist of, and then we creative cabals get down to the business of actually creating the set. We can even set several of the character slots up so that they are selected by the community without the pre-selection of 4-6 characters by the creative cabals -- basically, for example, we say we need a powerful male villain here, who do you guys think it should be? The community votes, and whoever gets the most votes gets put in that slot.

Okay, so that's kinda the idea. One thing I'd like to stress here, if we do this, I think we should do it right. So, this set needs to be done as professionally as we creative types can possibly do it. So, what's that mean? It means we've not gonna create <insert your favorite character here> that has 7 starting Damage with a 15 Attack and only costs 35 points. It means we the creators will try our best to create the characters that are chosen as they should be, character-wise in the comics first, game-wise second (though I'd like to also stress that this aspect IS still important, and we'd do our best to make this work too). Despite what many say, I think that WizKids does do this pretty well with most sets, and I think we would be well served to try and do as well as they do. Still, we are rabid fans, so I'm pretty certain we will do tons (probably too much) research for every character.

Now we come full circle here. The big question here is, 'am I crazy, a genious or just deluded?' Does anyone think this is a good idea? If so, it will take a massive community-wide effort just to get off the ground. So, if anybody is interested, speak up and let me know. I'm willing to act as the coordinator for all this (and, yes, I do have some experience coordinating groups of creative-types to complete a project, having done so to complete several RPG books. If anyone's interested, I'd happy to point them to which ones.), though I'd like to sit in on the dial design cabal as well, but there would need to be interest. So, is there?

If anybody is interested in this idea, please PM me and we'll see what happens. Also, spread the word. Ask others in this community if they'd be interested in something like this, and if so, point them to this journal or have them contact me. If anything does come of this, we'd need to decide upon the various cabals first. Then see what happens from there. Who knows, you could be looking at the beginnings of a real community-wide event here. Of course, perhaps not too.

Anyway, there you go, my first journal entry. Was it inovative? Perhaps. We'll see. I do have an idea regarding the theme for such a set, but I think I'll leave that for my next entry ... if there is a next entry (my spirit might be too crushed to continue).

Signing off,

Kazzigum