Fans of HeroQuest are going to be a little saddened by the latest announcement by publisher Chaosium.
In an announcement, the publisher stated they will stop selling books and supplements for their rules-lite TRPG system. The reason for this is simple and outlined in quote by Chaosium's Head of Licensing, Michael O'Brien. Stating, "Last year we announced the transfer of the HeroQuest trademark from Moon Design Publications to Hasbro. As part of that change of ownership we were able to continue selling our HeroQuest RPG products for a time, but that period comes to an end next month. These titles will be officially out-of-print permanently, so if you would like to make a purchase at Chaosium.com or DriveThruRPG please do so while you can!" In short, the trademark was obtained by Hasbro, the same major publisher who owns Wizards of the Coast, the creative minds behind Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering.
Because of this, you have until July 15 to purchase HeroQuest books. As for whether you do this through Chaosium's web store or digitally through DriveThruRPG is up to you. In fact, both outlets have the vast majority of the books on sale, some going for almost 75% off.
While this does mean that books and material bearing the name of HeroQuest will be going away, it doesn't necessarily mean the system itself or its material will completely disappear. Back in April 2020, Moon Design Publication published something called the Questworlds System Reference Document. This is the fundamental system that HeroQuest runs on, now available as an open license for independent TRPG developers to use as a foundation for their own systems and ideas. Furthermore, O'Brien mentions that Chaosium will be eventually rebranding and repackaging everything with the HeroQuest name into a new product line called Questworlds, simply changing the names of the books and keeping everything the same.
Either way, if you want to hold on to a certain piece of TRPG history or don't want to get confused by whatever Hasbro has in mind with the license, the clock is ticking.
