My belated introduction to D&D Miniatures...

Over the weekend, SR and I hosted a houseguest in one of my old college buddies, Boyle. He brought with him this magnificent trio that you see (parts of) above, along with the rest of his collection of D&D Miniatures to show me.

Wow, you're late to the party, Dante.

Why yes, yes I am. I had originally purchased a starter set of miniatures when they first came out because I wanted them to augment my D&D campaigns with. Unfortunately, money was tight and I didn't end up getting too many that were directly applicable to my setting so I threw them quickly back into the starter box where they resided for many years.

Luckily, when Boyle produced his miniatures it was exactly two days after I had recognized that starter box in the top of my closet and made note of it, so down it came and before long we were creating our parties and having some fun.

It was better than I anticipated!

I'm not going to lie... when I first got the miniatures a few people tried to convince me to play the game that goes along with it and I rejected that idea on the premise that I knew the D&D combat rules and anything based on that was probably far too complicated for me to actually ENJOY. Could I play it? Probably, but rules lawyering is a pursuit best left for SR as she enjoys the ancient art of being right.

Boyle is one of my dearest friends, and I could never tell him that I wouldn't at least try it... besides... there were adult beverages involved so it couldn't be that bad, right?

Right! I have to say the simplified rules, coupled with some familiar D&D characteristics made the experience immediately recognizable and fun. It also helps that my starter set happened to include a Medusa, which I understand is somewhat sought after. I'm sure there are a few of you that are kind of sick reading that, sorry!

Regardless, we played several rounds but I stopped short of playing any scenario involving the dragons pictured above, since I was barely having any luck at all with my meager starter set.

From what I can tell, much of the stat blocks that I have seen related to the D&D 4th edition seems to approximate the simplicity of the miniature rules, so I have hopes that all combat will take place in similar fashion as the new edition hits. The only thing that bothered me a little was the rules for routing and running... it seems to me that shouldn't be so much determined by a die roll but I understand that miniature games are based more solidly in concrete rules so I can tolerate that minor annoyance.

It was a really fun evening, special thanks go out to Boyle for bringing his stuff over so we could give miniatures a try!

Pointless Nostalgia...

As many of you recall, a few weeks ago we returned to our video gaming roots over here at StupidRanger Central by purchasing an Xbox 360. As I traversed the different options made available through the Live Marketplace, I was presented with many games from years past.

This made me particularly nostalgic and got me thinking about some of the things that led me into D&D. One such game was the Milton Bradley classic game HeroQuest.

Ah, the good ol' days

This game came out in 1991, and unfortunately it was during the Dark Times when I didn't have many friends that appreciated the nerdish tendencies that I possessed. My sister wasn't really old enough to play the game, however I was able to get a few of my neighborhood chums to play a few times.

I hadn't quite grasped the notion that you could have creativity alongside a board-game, so I stuck to the stock adventures that came along with the system. The game was played with miniatures and cardboard tiles, and the game master led the players through a dungeon and the goal was to escape alive.

The interesting thing about this game was that it had elements that spoke to pretty much all aspects of roleplaying gamers: character creation (you had to pick a class and learn their skills), dungeon creation (or just a storyline if you are a player), miniatures including set pieces (my first exposure to mini's), and my favorite part... the treasure cards.

Basically, they were fancied up "Chance" cards a la Monopoly. I remember that the cool things seemed to outweigh the bad, but there was always a chance of unearthing a monster or trap when you searched an area for treasure. They really tickled the part of me that would later embrace Magic: The Gathering for many, many years (thankfully, I broke that habit midway through college).

Reflecting

It is interesting to consider how this game was a good teaching tool for the budding Dungeon Master. All the elements are there... building interesting traps/encounters, doling out treasure, killing bad guys... and the best thing about it was it was designed to be a classic dungeon crawl.

I don't know what became of my set... I have a feeling it met with either a leaky closet ceiling or the wrath of my mother's Spring Cleaning... I found a link over at BoardGameGeek that indicates that I could replace it for a scant $111.

Unfortunately, I don't see that outlay of cash happening anytime soon... I'd rather have the memories intact anyway.

Zen and the Art of Giving...

As we enter the holiday season, I want to take a minute to discuss the art of giving within your campaign. Many times as DMs, we have the opportunity to structure battles, fudge rolls, and generally massage things in the favor of our players. Occasionally, I like to take the opportunity to actually give my players something within the scope of the game, be it relevant to the plot or simply something they have always wanted.

Learning the appropriate relevance of gifts

If you plan to give your players something, you should do it with certain guidelines in place. If the item they are being given is relevant to the plot, you should take safeguards to ensure that this item doesn't simply pass immediately to the local merchant.

If you don't safeguard these items in some way, or make them relevant enough that the players don't desire to hock them, then you should plan some sort of a side quest to track the item down again or plan what path that item takes once it is out of the players hands. It can be a great opportunity for deep roleplaying, be it haggling with the merchant to get the item back or tracking it across country in order to divine its resting place.

Desire based gifting

If you intend to give your player that "item of affection" that they have always wanted to get hold of, you must be very careful (both in and out of game) to balance this gift against the rest of the party's possessions. If you don't provide either roleplaying opportunities or some other method of engagement for the rest of the party, this gift can appear like overt favoritism which is never a blessing for an adventuring party.

I have found that if you give the entire party a gift, they are quick to ignore the fact that Ceril the Barbarian got a nicer greataxe compared to what they got, they will likely just be happy with their present. This is generally a good opportunity to address level based inequity between different classes and generally even-up your party so everyone can effectively participate in roleplaying or direct conflict.

Narrative Elements

Much to the chagrin of a few of my more traditionalist co-DMs, I have often assumed the guise of an in-game Santa Claus or Easter Bunny in order to dispense with the merriment. Sometimes this has taken the form of a more "realistic" altruist merchant, but I prefer the little dash of whimsy that more familiar icons of gift giving can bring.

In the end, it is really up to what you want... my regular players have taken to expect a gift-giving entity surrounding the Christmas and Easter holidays, and I enjoy the Narnia-esque dash of fun that this interaction often brings.

Honestly, I have no idea if anyone else actually does this within their campaigns. Our college DM started the trend with an Easter Bunny visit one year, and I liked that encounter so much that it was just something that I continued out of the sheer fun of it.

Have a happy holiday season, everyone!

Monstrous Pictures

When I was a little kid, I had lots of little plastic dinosaurs and aliens and monsters. When I was about 7, TSR came out with a line of completely awesome toys featuring creatures from the Monster Manual. I personally had about 2/3 of the creatures on this list, and man they were cool. Sadly, I gave them all to a friend's little brother when I was in high school. I'd found a couple cool ones I still had around and my lovely wife Efreak loaned me the macro lens on her camera so I could take some pictures for show and tell today.

My favorite of these creatures was the Shambling Mound. Mine was called "Shambles". (You may think that was a silly name, but I also had a Tauntaun named "Bryan" at the time.) Recently, I decided that I would like a new shambling mound as my good luck dice totem for D&D, and so it was that I used the magic powers of Ebay to summon one for me, which I named after his predecessor.







The same auction also came with a Fire Elemental figure, which I also had as a kid. My new Fire Elemental and Shambles II now reside above my fireplace and guard the Christmas stockings during the dangerous pirate-infested holiday season.





I was also going through some boxes of stuff I had when I was a kid a few weeks back, and I found a bunch of the little tiny dinosaurs and monsters that I used to play with. One of them I had when I was very young, and didn't know what it was called until my brother called it a "rust monster" when we were both a little older. Well, I was surprised to find out that it wasn't called that for years by anyone until Gary Gygax picked up a the same set of plastic monsters, saw the same figure, and was inspired to create the rust monster as we know it today.





I also had another little monster that we used to just think of as a weird beetle bug, but it didn't occur to me until I found it again recently that I was staring at a little figure of a bulette. Turns out, just like the rust monster, this thing didn't get its name until Gary Gygax went plastic monster shopping either. (Apparently, the owlbear has similar origins, but I didn't have one of those to take pictures of.)





There was one other monster of similar construction to my rust monster and bulette, and we called it a "blue dragon" when I was growing up. That could well be exactly what it is, but I didn't notice any special D&D significance to this one. (Efreak says he looks "way friendlier than that gross rust monster with his sickass tail -- blech!")



I've created a couple of wallpapers from a few of these images in case anyone's interested. (Shambles II now guards my laptop against pirates as well.)

Shambles II: Normal | Widescreen
Rust Monster: Normal | Widescreen

I hope you all enjoyed a little trip to what's left of my former menagerie. Is it sad to say that I really can't wait until I have kids so I can play with their stuff?