Four Horsemen Studios Mythic Legions

This roleplaying game thing is so fucking bizarre to me. Who the fuck is going to a boutique toy company for competently-written, properly playtested tabletop game rules? Probably the same amount of people that go to a boutique toy company for a competently-designed video game.
The 4H never even perfected making action figures in the three or four decades they've been around, and now they've gotta be video game developers and tabletop RPG publishers too?
 
Calling the video game vaporware is actually really perfect. There's no reason for them to waste time and money making an RPG. I mean shit, hire a freelance game designer to skin Mythic Legions onto something with a Creative Commons or Open Gaming License - you could slap a fresh coat of paint onto Pathfinder, D&D 5e, Daggerheart, Shadowdark, and save years of development.

Love their action figures, but sometimes I think they get bamboozled into bad ideas.

(EDIT: I mean, WENDY'S made a pretty decent 5e reskin a few years back. It was dumb as hell but playable and probably took a freelancer a few months to slap it together.)
 
docsilence said:
Love their action figures, but sometimes I think they get bamboozled into bad ideas.
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The 4H are THE fucking poster children for buying into your own hype. I mean, I have railed against them for a lot of things -- like making mediocre toys and charging import prices for them, possibly being design/art thieves, incredibly stupid names for their fantasy nonsense because everyone on earth thinks being a creative in the writing space is just something you can do in your off-minutes on the toilet, and just generally being insufferable. But definitely the worst part about them is they really seem to believe the fandom that's decided they are the greatest people in the entire toy space to ever exist and can do no wrong.

And that translates to them just doing stupid shit like thinking they're writers, video game developers, and TTRPG designers.
 
I really like the black and gold surcoat for that knight. Wish the gauntlets and boots were fully
armored. A lot of combat was half-sword style, and you need metal gauntlets for that to work.


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I don't know their inner workings, but the dragon, Kickstarter RPG, mash up lines, and whatever else rubbed me wrong (yes, even the dragon) simply for the fact they can't even keep a decent pipeline rate on Mythic and Cosmic yet have all these side hustles that sometimes slip out first and exclusively.

Had that been me, I'd tighten things up and exceed expectations with the core line first.
 
Yeah, my excitement for 4H is always tempered by "will I be excited for this when it arrives in three years."

They had a "skip the game, buy the figures" option with the videogame crowdfunder, right? An RPG book just feels like a waste of time at this point. Their buyers want figures. If they want to go all in on RPG stuff, offer a way to order parts and customization options (like how they offered the barbarian limbs and torso) and make your own "build your own D&D character in Mythic Legions" option on the store using all their standard parts. You know people would buy a shit ton of blank bucks to build their own characters with instead of buying and cannibalizing existing named characters.

Damien said:
incredibly stupid names for their fantasy nonsense because everyone on earth thinks being a creative in the writing space is just something you can do in your off-minutes on the toilet
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I really enjoy their figures but I refuse to remember any of the names. They all look like someone had their hands on a keyboard when they were hit with a cattle prod and just banged a bunch of buttons together. (Then again I come from the school of fantasy writing of "make the name memorable and people will remember it, make the name unreadable and they'll pronounce it wrong forever.)
 
I have loved the 4H figures from the beginning of the entire FanEx thing and I still like their figures but for me it eventually got to where there is just too much going up for preorder and such a long wait for them to actually arrive. Those two things eventually changed me from being all in (even multiples of a few) to where I have sold off most and just preorder a couple figures here and there and try to avoid going all in on waves. I still really like their figures and consider myself a big fan of their stuff but it just got to be too much. I have sold off all the Cosmic ones and once the last cosmic wave I still have on order shows up it will be sold off as well.

From the very limited dealings I have had with them personally (well emails and forum messages) back in the FanEx days and when ML was really just starting out they have always seemed like a bunch of great down to earth people.
 
Akatsuki said:
A lot of combat was half-sword style, and you need metal gauntlets for that to work.
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What makes you say that?



docsilence said:
I really enjoy their figures but I refuse to remember any of the names. They all look like someone had their hands on a keyboard when they were hit with a cattle prod and just banged a bunch of buttons together. (Then again I come from the school of fantasy writing of "make the name memorable and people will remember it, make the name unreadable and they'll pronounce it wrong forever.)
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Definitely.
But also the names are just stupid. It absolutely reeks of 'just make it hard to pronounce and that makes it fantasy.' Dragonlance and FR were bad for this with Elf names. I don't know how to describe it except to say it is the pinnacle of a lack of creativity masquerading as creativity. 4H needs to hire an actual writer to do this stuff for them. Because every time they release a wave, I almost die of second-hand embarrassment looking at the naming and story stuff.
 
docsilence said:
(Then again I come from the school of fantasy writing of "make the name memorable and people will remember it, make the name unreadable and they'll pronounce it wrong forever.)
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I'm reading a fantasy book with characters named Clay and Gabriel. It drives me up a fucking wall. While creatively bankrupt, a name like Clay or Rose is forgivable. Gabriel, though? Gabriel is a Hebrew name from the bible. Is the bible canonical in your world?

For my D&D campaigns, I use made-up names that are easy to pronounce. Tolkien had it right with Bilbo and Legolas. Your names can sound unique/world-appropriate without being John or Hlkak'Elknanwivi. Even George RR Martin throws in the odd Jon or Kevan for reasons I can't understand.
 
Damien said:
What makes you say that?




Definitely.
But also the names are just stupid. It absolutely reeks of 'just make it hard to pronounce and that makes it fantasy.' Dragonlance and FR were bad for this with Elf names. I don't know how to describe it except to say it is the pinnacle of a lack of creativity masquerading as creativity. 4H needs to hire an actual writer to do this stuff for them. Because every time they release a wave, I almost die of second-hand embarrassment looking at the naming and story stuff.
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They absolutely fall into that trope that so many fantasy creators do with impossible names. It's funny, Tolkien created wild names but he was a linguist and you can see and parse out WHY his names are the way they are, and that's why they are timeless, but so many people, be they authors, game designers, or LARPers, think slapping a billion letters into a name makes it cool, when really it just makes it silly. You can have complicated names, but you really need to have a mechanical understanding of WHY or they just become a jumble of letters.

(Best advice ever heard for naming a character was when I read the manual for Everquest a billion years ago: "if someone has fun playing with you, they may want to find you later. Make sure you choose a name they can remember.")

This last release description was their best written yet, but over the years their descriptions and marketing copy have always been in DESPERATE need of a writer someone who understands how to craft language in a clear, concise, memorable, and entertaining way. And man, writers work cheap for stuff like fantasy marketing. Hell, I've been a content/marketing writer for decades and I'd rewrite their copy for one free set of the figures the copy goes with, no cash trading hands.

@TSI I just listened to a couple of dark fantasy audiobooks in a row and considering how big audiobooks are now, and I think writers should at least be THINKING about "will a reader ever able to spell this name when they want to talk about my books later." If I can't google the character's name 300 pages into a book...

For some reason, Jon in a fantasy book doesn't bother me because it's so... simple? Like that's a name some random society might blurt out, a million monkeys at a million keyboards, but Kevan in GRRM is nails on a chalkboard for me. Then again he's fully admitted he's put some stupid names in his books on purpose. I forget the specifics but there's some DUMB names in there and his explanations for them have indicated they are intentionally dumb.
 
I also have no interest in a tabletop RPG from 4H, nor the knight figure, but I still love the Horsemen and Mythic and Cosmic Legions. Their customer service, communication, and transparency are all top notch. It might be a negligible distinction, but rather than "believing their own hype", which implies some level of conceit *cough*Brian Flynn*cough*, I think they're naively optimistic. They're too optimistic on their factory's given ship dates, but at least they're quick to communicate delays. They were too optimistic on Megalopolis and nearly got swindled. And they were too optimistic on this untested video game studio. Creating a competent, synergistic video game to promote toy sales takes Hasbro-level investment and they simply aren't at that level.

I met and talked to both Erics when they did a little pop-up event at Megalopolis and they're both really nice, down to earth guys, as @superdoug55 said. Yes, Walter and the Cabal can be obnoxious, but he's a freelance "brand ambassador" and those are just other diehard fans. Hard to blame the company for having an overly devoted following.

Their design philosophy always prioritized popping and swapping over articulation and even so, they're still finding ways to buy as much RoM out of their designs as they can without compromising the strength of the joints needed for repeated swapping. For a company that reuses parts as much as they do, they're smart to invest in quality paint jobs and soft goods that go a long way to make old designs feel new, or so I think.

The character names and story have always been the weak point in their brand. At first, they barely had a story at all; just the bare bones of an outline. I actually kind of liked that. The unremarkable names and lack of a story gave my imagination plenty of room to come up with my own ideas. FMF and Valaverse do a similar thing. Their figures aren't supposed to be these deep characters with rich backstories. They're just trope characters with fun designs. But then the 4H hired Jeremy Girard and his writing is so clunky and stale. You can tell he's well read and does a fair amount of research, but his writing always comes off like a freshman's creative writing assignment. I agree that the current Horror of Einsamall wave probably has the best copywriting yet, but it's still just adequate.
 
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I've never paid much attention to the names or lore. They're great looking fantasy/sci-fi figures that have plenty of personality on their own. I don't know of any figure line that's wowed me with its names and lore, either. I usually end up doing my own thing in my head. (Actually one of the reasons I loved Micronauts way back when was because I had no idea what was going on and just made it up as I went along. It was great.)

I am surprised they haven't hooked up with someone to help them with the names and backstory at this point. But that's my understanding for the game. I'm too lazy to look it up, but isn't it a separate developer that's putting that together? I assume it would be the same situation for the RPG.

I only care about the figures and while I can't blame them for striking when the iron's hot, I will agree it's really starting to feel like too much with all their releases. What I've been reminding myself a lot lately, though, is that there's not the urgency to preorder everything anymore — it will all be available for reasonable prices at the time of release or later. Production seems to have caught up with demand. Outside of the early high prices on convention exclusives — which they eventually make available to everyone — the secondary market has cooled considerably on new releases.

But other than Classified, I don't know of any other line that comes close to what 4H is offering for the price — and they're just getting better and better. A standard figure is $10-$12 more than McFarlane, Marvel Legend or Star Wars Black — and I don't know how anyone could argue the value of what you're getting from 4H. Classified is the only thing that comes close.

The Necronominus wave and newer figures from All-Stars 6 have been outstanding. The two Templars that were released are among the best figures I own. And their $25 skeletons (Legion Builder 2 and Graveyard) are truly great and a crazy value.

Cosmic Legions is hit or miss so far but I've like a lot of what I've seen from the next two waves. ATL-25 is one of my favorite purchases this year. He's a little tall but he fits right in with Classified and Valaverse stuff, especially when you throw the clothed arms on. I wouldn't mind seeing more of that.

One more thing on the 4H members themselves, in the limited dealings I've had with some of them, they've been genuinely good guys that seem to want to make the best product they can. Some of the Cabal, though, can be a bit over the top. But there's a reason they have a fan base like that ...
 
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All my griping about the names, but I'll still get that entire next wave. I'm poking around every few days to see how Rising Sons is doing in terms of production timing. I really do love their figures. And they do keep getting better. I popped some more interesting heads onto the armoury knight figures and they're just a blast. I think their eternal optimism really is their biggest flaw, and, well, there are worse things. I think they could use one cynic on the team to say "do we NEED to make our own video game?" sometimes but, it is what it is.

As for the more unpleasant parts of the fan base--that falls under a territory I think about all the time in the creative space: "fan" is short for fanatic and fanatic is NOT A COMPLIMENT. I never want to be a fanatic about anything that doesn't involve, like, human rights or something. But 4H isn't alone there. Jump into any livestream from Hasbro and you see people foaming at the mouth over stuff they have no control over.
 
While I’m only interested in the toys they produce, I don’t blame 4H for trying other avenues with their Mythic property. They’re a business, and when they see how much people enjoy their products, it’s only natural for them to try other things like video games or rpgs in the hopes of making their business grow. As long as it doesn’t affect their figure production, I’m not bothered by their attempts at other ventures.
 
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