Story-Driven Castle Themes?

[Alexandrina]

10 hours ago, Phyre said:

I am even working on writing a series of novels now that I am basing on those stories I have created

If you ever get to the point of needing proofreaders, I'd love to have a read! 

Something I think would make a really interesting selling point in a series would be to have a female monarch (not the wife of a monarch, but straight up the ruler) in a series aesthetically inspired by the era of the Angevins. A story with multiple factions is the perfect place for this - one faction can have a female leader and one a male leader. As well as being a really empowering thing for little girls everywhere, it would give us the chance at some great unique minifigure pieces. Take, for example, Queen Matilda, England's first Queen - the headdress/crown combination is a unique combination, and could make for a very distinctive minifigure if incorporated into sets.

[MAB]

2 hours ago, Alexandrina said:

It would be easy to just not do loads of vehicles. A merchant's cart, a King's litter, wagons and the like, plenty of boats (which might even draw in some of the Pirates crowd!) 

Have the story take place at locations, and turn those locations into sets. Travel is going to be devoted to either exposition/character development (boring for sets) or ambushes/conflict (exciting for sets - but the conflict would be the set, so no vehicles necessary). 

One of the things often said about LEGO aimed at kids is that vehicles sell. So many sets have vehicles where they are (to AFOLs) unnecessary, whether in-house Ninjago style sets or Superheroes (The Mandarin in a golf cart, and so on). So I don't think it is easy to not do loads of vehicles.

51 minutes ago, Lego David said:

Each faction could have various siege engines and war equipment of their own. So instead of vehicles, you get stuff like War Ships, Siege Machines, Carriages, or you could even go as far as having some of the factions ride on elephants or other large "Tank" creatures. There is a tone of potential. 

I've got the impression that AFOLs don't like siege engines. They often seem to draw complaints.

[Alexandrina]

1 minute ago, MAB said:

One of the things often said about LEGO aimed at kids is that vehicles sell. So many sets have vehicles where they are (to AFOLs) unnecessary, whether in-house Ninjago style sets or Superheroes (The Mandarin in a golf cart, and so on). So I don't think it is easy to not do loads of vehicles.

Then stick horse drawn carts and whatnot in the set. It's easy to find a vehicle to stick in a larger set as an extra, and it's not necessary to have sets solely based on vehicles. 

[DaleDVM]

Alexandrina, that is what I was getting at but didn't elaborate on it.  Two young human leaders one a male and one a female.  The two are the royal leaders of their factions.  They are allies but are also competitive in a fun way with one another in leading their kingdoms.  This could lead to some very playful storylines between the two young royals.  The elf female and dwarf male are older and could have some awesome tension/harassing one another by being forced to ally in this situation.  The wizard would be the powerful old wise one that is holding the alliance together.  I see a great opportunity for an interesting story with the mix of sexes, ages, and races in the group of heroes that I think is lost when all of the heroes are of the same age and race like ninjago.  

[valon]

1 hour ago, Lego David said:

Each faction could have various siege engines and war equipment of their own. So instead of vehicles, you get stuff like War Ships, Siege Machines, Carriages, or you could even go as far as having some of the factions ride on elephants or other large "Tank" creatures. There is a tone of potential. 

that would be very cool !!!!

[MAB]

2 minutes ago, Alexandrina said:

 It's easy to find a vehicle to stick in a larger set as an extra, and it's not necessary to have sets solely based on vehicles. 

It is not necessary for us, but is it necessary for LEGO?

Think about what they did in 2013 - every set has a vehicle, along with AFOL complaints that they wasted parts on vehicles.

Look at what they do with Ninjago. Nearly all sets (aside from spinner type sets) are vehicles or mechs, aside from the occasional (and much more AFOL appreciated) location based sets. Someone at LEGO thinks vehicles are necessary.

 

[Alexandrina]

4 minutes ago, MAB said:

Think about what they did in 2013 - every set has a vehicle, along with AFOL complaints that they wasted parts on vehicles.

That's true, but most of those sets are sets that happen to contain a vehicle - often a small cart. That's far more achievable than making half of the sets primarily vehicles. 

[valon]

47 minutes ago, Alexandrina said:

If you ever get to the point of needing proofreaders, I'd love to have a read! 

Something I think would make a really interesting selling point in a series would be to have a female monarch (not the wife of a monarch, but straight up the ruler) in a series aesthetically inspired by the era of the Angevins. A story with multiple factions is the perfect place for this - one faction can have a female leader and one a male leader. As well as being a really empowering thing for little girls everywhere, it would give us the chance at some great unique minifigure pieces. Take, for example, Queen Matilda, England's first Queen - the headdress/crown combination is a unique combination, and could make for a very distinctive minifigure if incorporated into sets.

meh that would be ok i think it would be cooler to have a elf queen type female character, both me and my sister do not like how all female characters tend to be very girly or people like macy. I am not a girl so it is not a big thing to me though. i would think a norman like theme is cool

[DaleDVM]

Vehicles sell because kids like to fly/drive them around when they play.  However anything kids can push/hold and "zoom around" works for this.  My granddaughter "zooms around" dinosaurs, dragons, horses, in addition to vehicles all of the time.  Chariots, Knights on horseback, some carts, siege equipment, and large creatures flying or not can fill that niche.  

I don't care if AFOLs do not like siege equipment.  One should be included in every set with a castle, tower, gatehouse, or wall.  We do want these sets to sell after all!  I think they should also make more of a mix of siege equipment.  Catapults are a bit overdone.  Spear throwers, siege towers, some simple shields for archers to fire behind, and they have never done a good simple battering ram.  This is where the modularity of the castle comes into play.  If you have a main castle set, a tower set, and a wall piece set, each with a different piece of siege equipment it encourages the collecting of all of those sets not only for the individual buildings but for the different siege equipment as well.  Each of those sets should either have a knight on horseback, vehicle, and/or a creature as well.  Only the small army builder type of sets should be devoid of these.  Granted LEGO mostly knows this... even if they stray from the plan sometimes.

Thanks MAB while I was typing you showed how they make too many catapults...

 

[Alexandrina]

11 minutes ago, valon said:

meh that would be ok i think it would be cooler to have a elf queen type female character, both me and my sister do not like how all female characters tend to be very girly or people like macy. I am not a girl so it is not a big thing to me though. i would think a norman like theme is cool

Why do we have to pick and choose? More to the point, what's wrong with having a character who is powerful but also feminine? Besides, headdresses are an archetypal piece of Medievalry - havijg a version with a crown attached would be very good. 

[valon]

3 minutes ago, Alexandrina said:

Why do we have to pick and choose? More to the point, what's wrong with having a character who is powerful but also feminine? Besides, headdresses are an archetypal piece of Medievalry - havijg a version with a crown attached would be very good. 

i think that a character like artemis would be cool in both historical and fantasy theme

aaron newmans dragon land theme would be very cool 

 

[Alexandrina]

2 minutes ago, valon said:

i think that a character like artemis would be cool in both historical and fantasy theme

Artemis would be cool - but her traditional attire would be out of place in a medieval setting. Not that I'd be averse to an Ancient Greek theme. There are plenty of powerful medieval women, though - Queen Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France... 

[DaleDVM]

I know this is off topic...  Now that I look at 2013 castle and refresh my memory.  I say to myself, I like that line of sets.  But the heraldry!   Ugh!  It is just flat out terrible IMHO.  That lion and dragon belong in a Duplo set and not in castle at all!  And the worst part is.  When it comes to castle, the heraldry is the most important part to many AFOLs.  The rest we can MOC or modify to our liking.  Yet we are stuck with the heraldry and minifigs they give us... TBH, I think the minifigs are pretty cool... Until they hold a shield or a flag.

[MAB]

22 minutes ago, DaleDVM said:

Vehicles sell because kids like to fly/drive them around when they play.  However anything kids can push/hold and "zoom around" works for this.  My granddaughter "zooms around" dinosaurs, dragons, horses, in addition to vehicles all of the time.  Chariots, Knights on horseback, some carts, siege equipment, and large creatures flying or not can fill that niche.  

 

I agree, although LEGO tends to be relatively stingy with animals like horses. I guess the cost is comparatively high per part compared to brick built animals such as dragons (like those in Elves and Ninjago). 

25 minutes ago, DaleDVM said:

I don't care if AFOLs do not like siege equipment.  One should be included in every set with a castle, tower, gatehouse, or wall.  We do want these sets to sell after all!  I think they should also make more of a mix of siege equipment.  Catapults are a bit overdone.  Spear throwers, siege towers, some simple shields for archers to fire behind, and they have never done a good simple battering ram.  This is where the modularity of the castle comes into play.  If you have a main castle set, a tower set, and a wall piece set, each with a different piece of siege equipment it encourages the collecting of all of those sets not only for the individual buildings but for the different siege equipment as well.  Each of those sets should either have a knight on horseback, vehicle, and/or a creature as well.  Only the small army builder type of sets should be devoid of these.  Granted LEGO mostly knows this... even if they stray from the plan sometimes.

Thanks MAB while I was typing you showed how they make too many catapults...

I agree we would want any sets to sell well (to kids) but what helps that happen often means AFOLs complain especially concerning catapults or similar (flick missiles / toilet roll throwers).

A battering ram would be interesting, but it does mean any doors have to fit the gap to enable them to be battered open and presumably do so with out breaking clips. If they cannot be used for battering, then they lose the action part. Whereas a catapult / toilet roll thrower does little damage to parts.

Although none of it really requires a tie-in story, any more than Castle sets of old to define factions.

[valon]

10 minutes ago, DaleDVM said:

I know this is off topic...  Now that I look at 2013 castle and refresh my memory.  I say to myself, I like that line of sets.  But the heraldry!   Ugh!  It is just flat out terrible IMHO.  That lion and dragon belong in a Duplo set and not in castle at all!  And the worst part is.  When it comes to castle, the heraldry is the most important part to many AFOLs.  The rest we can MOC or modify to our liking.  Yet we are stuck with the heraldry and minifigs they give us... TBH, I think the minifigs are pretty cool... Until they hold a shield or a flag.

i think the sheild were good

[MAB]

13 minutes ago, DaleDVM said:

I know this is off topic...  Now that I look at 2013 castle and refresh my memory.  I say to myself, I like that line of sets.  But the heraldry!   Ugh!  It is just flat out terrible IMHO.  That lion and dragon belong in a Duplo set and not in castle at all!  And the worst part is.  When it comes to castle, the heraldry is the most important part to many AFOLs.  The rest we can MOC or modify to our liking.  Yet we are stuck with the heraldry and minifigs they give us... TBH, I think the minifigs are pretty cool... Until they hold a shield or a flag.

I thought the dragons were great. But not the crowns/lions (they couldn't even be consistent there). They were also on shelves just after the Evil Knight (boar) from CMF. Given the similar colour schemes, these could be used as a friendly faction for the dragon knights.

[valon]

Aaron newmans dragon lands would be a cool theme https://www.aaronbrickdesigner.com/dragon-lands

 

also this theme looks cool on worldbuilder https://worldbuilder.tongal.com/world/8d7952f4-efb8-4781-afd3-2737df54ce28 

but some of the characters are gross, it is the only castle theme on world builder that has stuff on it

 

[Alexandrina]

7 minutes ago, valon said:

Aaron newmans dragon lands would be a cool theme https://www.aaronbrickdesigner.com/dragon-lands

Would a Castle theme really need every fantasy species under the sun? I'd much prefer a human-on-human theme, vastly more interesting imo.

[DaleDVM]

I think the Kingdoms dragon and lion look great!  The 2013 dragon looks alright, but that lion, I threw up in my mouth.  However, there is a worse lion but that was in the 1990s...

[Alexandrina]

3 minutes ago, DaleDVM said:

I think the Kingdoms dragon and lion look great!  The 2013 dragon looks alright, but that lion, I threw up in my mouth.  However, there is a worse lion but that was in the 1990s...

I don't want to moan, but it's not easy to tell which image you've embedded is which. I can differentiate the dragons because I had some dragon sets from the Kingdoms range, but I haven't got a clue which is the supposedly terrible lion. For what it's worth, I don't think any of them look too bad - especially given that they're designed for kids first and foremost, and AFOLs second.

[valon]

6 minutes ago, Alexandrina said:

Would a Castle theme really need every fantasy species under the sun? I'd much prefer a human-on-human theme, vastly more interesting imo.

i agree but it is the only castle theme on worldbuilder with stuff

[Alexandrina]

Just now, valon said:

i agree but it is the only castle theme on worldbuilder with stuff

At the same time, this isn't the "You have to pick a Worldbuilder theme which will be 2022's Castle theme", so the absence of better options doesn't mean that a poor choice is required. We're all spitballing here - but I'd argue that too many different races is just going to confuse kids. Maybe I'm boring, and humans alone isn't interesting enough for most children. Okay, I can get behind that idea. Add elves maybe, dwarves, trolls. If you have a dozen different fantasy species, kids are going to get overwhelmed. How many sentient races are there in the Lord of the Rings, for example? And how many of them are just humans with pointy ears, or short humans with hairy faces, or short humans with hairy feet? A theme that wanted to do well would need to pick maybe two or three races to focus on. And perhaps in time, if it got popular, more variety could be introduced.

There's also the practicality of Lego producing sets. Say you have three races - humans, elves and pixies. In Year One, we can have sets focused on humans and elves, including faction bases, with maybe a pixie here and there in the sets. In Year Two, maybe, the pixie can become a big player and get its own base. On the other hand if you have twelve races, they're not all going to get a set to themselves for years - and if they did, it would be at the expense of fleshing out the factions, which would defeat the purpose of having the theme be story based at all.

[MAB]

4 minutes ago, Alexandrina said:

There's also the practicality of Lego producing sets. Say you have three races - humans, elves and pixies. In Year One, we can have sets focused on humans and elves, including faction bases, with maybe a pixie here and there in the sets.

Elves and men tend to be allies in most fiction don't they? As not having an antagonist is also not really practical. Just about all similar LEGO themes have not just conflict but also these days tend to make it clear which faction is good and which is evil. I think humans and elves are unlikely, unless the elves are made to be some sort of dark elf and that might not be great for kids - or indeed for AFOLs wanting more elves.

[Alexandrina]

2 minutes ago, MAB said:

Elves and men tend to be allies in most fiction don't they?

Humans and elves were just an example I used off the top of my head. You can replace elves with any other fantasy race and my core point remains the same. Having said that, I don't necessarily think that Lego have to do something just because other fiction does it. Why can't they have elves who aren't allied with humans? Skyrim did it.

[MAB]

Personally, if they had only dark style elves, then it would probably put me off buying them as elves as the elf heads / hair / torso parts would be less useful than traditional elves. They would have to invest in a good storyline to get people onboard. 

As to numbers of factions, Chima had lions, eagles, gorillas, bears, beavers, rhinos, crocs, ravens and wolves all introduced in the first season. I don't think kids found it difficult to follow, my son was 6-7 at the time he watched it and was able to follow the story perfectly well.