Bottlecap Orcs - RPGs, Miniatures, and Terrain

 

Still have these guys today

I've been using miniatures in RPGs almost since I started playing them. We used tokens at first - boardgame pawns, chess pieces, monopoly tokens, bottlecaps, pieces of glass ... whatever we could find around the house. I had army-man type knights and cowboys and revolutionary war soldiers and space people and of course dinosaurs and some of the weirder monsters you'd get in those packages.* The problem was scale - these things were all wildly different sizes. So while these were games of imagination it's tricky when the PC miniatures vary in size from half an inch to 2 inches high and tend to come in bright primary colors.

So while we used whatever we had at hand getting into D&D (in particular) meant one became aware very quickly that there were miniature figures made that could be used with the game. They tended to come in sets so you could share them with your friends. Getting one of those was a big deal. And no, we didn't worry about painting them at all at first. I had been building models for years before this  - cars, planes, tanks, ships - but they were all plastic and larger. All I had were Testor's paints and brushes and anyone else from back then can tell you they were not well-suited for painting 25mm human figures. I mean, I did eventually try it and for the figures I tested them on it is pretty much still there to this day. It doesn't look good, but the paint is still there. The main draw was having some kind of fantasy-looking miniature to represent your guy as we lined up in 10' wide corridor formation. Henchmen and hirelings still got to be tokens and chess pieces. 

My first set of monsters

Monsters were trickier. There were so many different types! You needed multiples, not just one wizard or one fighter! We didn't really try too hard here. If someone had something close enough great! If not we didn't care. I'm pretty sure we fought the ogres of the feared "Eraser" tribe more than once alongside the Bottlecap Orcs and the Bouillon Cube Bandits, the M&M Goblins and Kobolds. Anything edible was iffy as someone not paying attention could seriously disrupt a fight by eating the reinforcements. Chocolate chips were the worst for this as on top of being edible they tended to melt at inconvenient times too. Despite these many challenges we managed to battle on as the point of the game was the scene and the environment and the conflict in your head - not the specific layout of the terrain or the kinds of minis being used. 

I mentioned much of the focus was on miniatures for the PC's. These served as a kind of anchor for your imagination - my guy looks like this, your guy looks like that ... the PCs are the one constant of the game so it helps to have them solidly represented. The rest might look like a storyboard, or nowadays an untextured 3D mesh - we kind of knew what was there but most of the color was added in our heads. Even the terrain - maybe "especially the terrain" - because we didn't have any. There were various dungeon tile sets even then to give some color and style to your 10' passageways but that was a)more money you might not want to spend on that kind of thing and b)often a thing that had to be cut apart by hand and then kept together in a box or bag and not lost between games. Most of the time in the early days we just sketched out a rough map - very rough -  on notebook paper and put our minis in the general area of where we wanted to be - over in that corner of the room, blocking this doorway, etc. We weren't counting squares. We didn't care about that level of precision. We had an idea of roughly how far apart things were and we had the DMG diagrams where 3 characters could fight side by side in a 10' wide space so we had a pretty good idea of who could fit where and it was enough.

At some point in the latter half of the 80's someone introduced us to Chessex Mats and that's when the square-counting began. They were a revelation at the time and the hexgrids were an especially welcome addition as it made playing Champions (and later GURPS) feel much more organized - keep in mind this was still fairly early on on a 50+ year old hobby. Overhead markers and a vinyl mat made us gods ... "see the water in this room is blue! The trees have a brown dot for a trunk and green squiggles around them for leaves! The lava flow is red!" I can't say much negative here - I still do a lot of this today for D&D type games. Even with this method it is just enough structure to trigger the imagination.

...still have this box too

The weird thing is that even as time went on (and many miniature wargames were acquired and many armies built) I never felt much of a call for detailed physical RPG terrain. The sketched out maps or just a good description pretty much handled it for me. Going further, I don't even really like dungeon tile type options. They feel limiting because you're constrained by the available tiles, they take time to assemble - though granted it can take time to draw the map too - and they can make your dungeons or towns or countryside feel all too "samey" because you're using the same pieces over and over. Now sure I can describe it as a rough and rocky unfinished floor but if we're all looking at cobblestones on the piece of cardboard sitting out there it's a disconnect. This isn't theoretical for me - I bought multiple sets of the boxed D&D city/country/dungeon tiles whenever they came out thinking I would up the production value here and the mix of annoyance at set mix limitations and players not really caring  led me to just set them aside.**

I feel the same - but more so - with physical terrain like Dwarven Forge years ago and now the infinite seas of 3D printing options available. It looks cool, sure, no argument there. But how much of it do I need to encompass the things my crew might run into? The answer is "a lot" and I already have another expensive and space-eating hobby called "miniature wargaming" - RPGs are supposed to be my less-expensive hobby. Plus people sitting around the table can't always see over the walls or trees, it takes time to set up and take down unless you're restricting the action to just what's on the table and that feel like volunteering for a straightjacket so no, absolutely not going to happen here. I have a 3D printer so I could do it but I just don't see much of a point. For a special big finale encounter, sure, I could see that. But online I see things like "I'm building a 28mm model of the Keep on the Borderlands for my players" and it just boggles the mind - why? If you're playing out a siege of the keep, ok that could be cool but otherwise how much are you going to use that? How long does it take to set up and take down? How are you going to store it? How is it better than a flat map when it comes to actually playing the game? It's a spectacle, no doubt about it, but what if we're really just trying to play through an adventure? 

I haven't printed it out yet but yes I have the files for this

I know there are die-hard fans of having a table full of terrain out there and if that's your thing then hey, go for it. It's a separate thing for me and more of an obstacle than a feature but I know not everyone feels the same. My latest attempt to be cool and trendy was to jump on the projector bandwagon where you have a computer or a phone hooked up to a small modern projector on a stick - a tripod or a microphone stand - and shine a nice colorful, possibly animated map down onto the table. I did research, bought a couple of projectors and some software packages and was all set up to use it for our Mutants & Masterminds game and ... it lasted about 3 sessions. My players just didn't see it as an improvement. Having the projector and stand up next to the table was kind of a hassle for moving around as it's a little tight around the table with a full crew and this extra equipment. A ceiling mounted rig might have helped but there is still some extra prep to be done, hardware issues to fight though at times, and while I'm sure it would have gotten easier with more experience I'm just not going to disrupt the game - you know, the actual reason we get together in the first place - to keep pushing it. So for now that stuff is in a closet and in the "maybe someday" file. I tried it, don't regret it, but it wasn't right for us.

So yes, after 40+ years of doing this we do play with a lot of miniatures in our RPGs, both PCs and monsters, but we mostly do it on the flat terrain of a tabletop, or a battle mat, or scribbled sketch maps on paper. That's jut what works for us.

Yeah these too, multiples

*Yes I remember having things like the original Rust Monster and Bulette inspirational figures. They were all lost to time and various sandboxes spread across Kansas, Tennessee, and Florida though, before D&D really came along for me. 

** The only dungeon tiles I've ever found really useful are the Star Wars ones WOTC put out back when they had the Star Wars RPG license. Considering most Imperial architecture looks the same everywhere it actually reinforces the setting by having base interiors, star destroyer interiors, and imperial prison interiors all look the same. It just works.

40K Friday: Gathering the Dark Angels

 

So I've spent most of the mini-time over the past week building the Armageddon set minis that I want to use for the new (ish) Dark Angels force. I built the Captain, the Ancient, and half of the Intercessor squad. I also started digging through what I have floating around various marine armies in an unfinished state - which is, fortunately or unfortunately, quite a bit. I added a Lieutenant from Dark Imperium, and the solo-Rambo-dual-blades Lieutenant from Leviathan as a start on a command group. I wanted a foot chaplain for this army too so I grabbed the hooded and robed one from Dark Imperium too (I think) which was still on the sprue. I also pulled in a Primaris Librarian, the existing one with the sword, as I'm going with a theme here. 

Theme-wise I've come up with some rules for the army so far:

• No bare heads or faces - only helmets! This is both practical - as it means I wont get bogged down detailing up eyes and beards and mohawks etc. - and thematic as the Unforgiven are supposed to be mysterious - so let's leave some mystery there as to what they look like. I may have to check some of my existing figures but it shouldn't be difficult to make some updates if I need to.
• Swords! Particularly power swords! They have a knightly theme and a sword is part of their chapter so for melee options I want swords - not fists, not axes, not staves.
• Well there is also the usual "Dark Angels = Plasma" thing too but I'm not going to go plasma exclusive on the specials and heavy weapons. Just enough to keep the theme.

Digging around some more I found the Hellblaster squad I knew I had somewhere -let's see, 10 bodies with guns, 10 backpacks, and ... 8 heads. Well I do have more primaris helmets but I'll have to spray them.  Such are the dangers of leaving units unfinished for years.

I also decided to put my heretofore untouched Reivers into this army as well, along with a Reiver Lieutenant. The Unforgiven have been a somewhat Unloved army here over the years so why not make them a home for wayward-children-type units as well. Reivers are still not thought of as great but there are tricks in some of the DA detachments - mainly with chaplains I believe - that might work well with them. Plus it gives them an infiltration type unit which can be handy even if the squad itself isn't super-powered.

Going back to the intercessors for a minute it is the Armageddon set of ten which would be better as 2 sets of five. There's one possible candidate for a second sergeant, a guy holding an auspex scanner. Then I reviewed the weapon options for a (regular) intercessor sergeant and, well, they can have a power sword. Luckily I do have a spare unbuilt intercessor and some spare power sword arms so ... decision made. 

So the army is shaping up like this at the moment:

• Armageddon Captain
• Armageddon Ancient
• Dark Imperium Chaplain
• Primaris Librarian
• Primaris Apothecary (another unfinished mini) 
• Lieutenant
• Another Lieutenant
• That Other Lieutenant
• 5-man Intercessors
• 5-man Intercessors
• 10-man Hellblasters
• 10-man Reivers (have to think about this one)
• 5-man Armageddon Vanguard Vets (I mean, they all have power swords so ...)
• Armageddon Land Speeder (probably?)

That's pushing around 1000 points so not a bad core. 

I have completely forgotten the armored part of this force. I'm leaning towards a Redemptor, 2 Ballistus Dreads, a Gladiator tank, and I might commit one of my Repulsor hulls to this one - it would give me a way to transport the Hellblasters at least.

I also might add in a jump captain to run with the VVs. Not sure there yet either.

Anyway there's a very loose rambling rundown of how one of these takes shape - for me anyway. Not completely focused in yet, but getting there.

Laying Some Groundwork for Necessary Evil

 

As much as I am enjoying the DCC campaign - and being a player for a change - I did commit to running NE as the next big game so it's time to start digging into it. I have tried to run it twice before - my notes say 2010 and 2014 - though we did not finish it either time. 

The first one we made it maybe halfway through. It was a lot of fun with an interesting mix of characters and encounters. The concept is glorious and everyone was enthusiastically on board with it with the brutes going around bashing objects and aliens and the vampire charming everything in sight. Most of them went into City of Heroes and made character portraits . This was one of our earlier runs with Savage Worlds for a longer term campaign and it worked really well. We eventually had too many schedule interruptions and had to put it on hold.

The second run was shorter and I was distracted trying to adapt it to Paragon City, the City of Heroes MMORPG setting, as we had all played it and had a ton of screenshots and would give us a reason to revisit something we all loved after its shutdown in 2012. Most of the players were the same and we carried over a few of the same characters but generally treated it as a reboot of the campaign. Looking back through my notes had me tempted to try the same thing for this new run but I'm going to hold off, run this one in its original setting, and see how it goes. If I get a chance to run this another time with a different mix of players then I might give that option a try. Plus with the game back online screenshots would be easy to work in as needed.

For this run though I am going to focus mainly on the adventure in the book and in the setting as it is written. Now the core of the campaign is the set of 11 Plot Point adventures that form the links that connect the whole thing together. You need to work them in as they are the spine of the game. Beyond that there are 25 other "Savage Tales" that can be worked in during the campaign to really flesh it out. Then of course there are whatever side adventures or shenanigans you cook up for your players or that they cook up for themselves. I don't feel the need to use all of them so I will pick out 10-12 that I like and start figuring out how to work them in - some might fit better in a certain sequence, others might be useful as a reaction to something else in the campaign. Assuming we're looking at each of these taking around one session then I'd like to start with around 25 sessions worth of material reviewed and ready - a rough outline for how the game might go. If the players are really into it then I can always work in more and if it starts to drag I can drop some side chapters and focus in on the main event. 

Action-wise the PCs start off being "recruited" to join a resistance movement against alien invaders in Star City, an island city with some unusual qualities off the east coast of the U.S. As things progress they get more deeply involved, make some friends and some enemies, and become more and more of a concern to the local alien warlord. There is a lot of freedom in that middle part of the campaign. They are super-villains so things can get pretty ridiculous but trying not to pull down the entire alien invasion force gives an incentive to keep some of it quiet at least. Eventually things come together and a confrontation is inevitable. 

I'm going to be running low on "generic superhero art" before I even start this campaign ...

Now I will say here that I do not like the official finale of the campaign. I never have and part of what I will be noodling on is coming up with some other options for it that I like better - we will just have to see how that goes.

So as I finish up reading back through the material I need to put together an initial outline, get the bad guy stats printed out, look at my cheat-sheet options, review my properly themed Savage Worlds assets*, get the players minds rolling on their characters, and think about how I want to kick things off. Also have to think about doing an online recap or not like Obsidian Poral. 

Anyway, more to come here. 

*I'm not a big "props" guy with my RPGs but Savage Worlds does draw me in a bit with the trappings built into the game system itself just begging to be themed for a campaign. Plus cards and bennie-type trinkets are cheap and widely available. 

The DEATHBRINGER RPG Kickstarter, err, Backerkit is up and running

 

Can't rally argue with that art ...

Sure, I'll hype it because it looks interesting, I've been hearing about it for years, and I like what I see of the guy running it. It feels a little like Spaceballs - it's Deathbringer: The Crowdfunding!

I like a lot of what Professor DM puts out there. He's a YouTube guy but don't hold that against him. He's of a similar vintage as some of us who have been doing this for a while and he's not just there to hype the latest thing for D&D - he may be big on hyping his own thing now, and he's definitely a D&D type game guy, but he's not a big WOTC guy, and he also doesn't push everything OSR as the one true way. 

I know guys who used to draw stuff like this in high school

I was already interested in this one but I will say that playing Dungeon Crawl Classics for a while now has me even more interested. Taking the old school basics and customizing them in some significant ways is far more interesting to me (and rewarding to play) than just re-editing the same damn rules we were all playing 40+ years ago. I have that already - do something new with it! I think we have a great example here.

His whole approach is less rule-mongering and more doing things in the game. I appreciate that. There is a lot of stuff that has built up over the years in D&D type games  - and others too - that is mostly there because it's been there in prior editions and more rules and clutter are hung off of these parts with every update. One great example of clearing a section is the combat zone/"Ultimate Dungeon Terrain" thing he uses:

He typically shows this on a lazy susan in the middle of a table so it can be rotated by players as needed. Notice the change here from modern D&D - we're not counting squares. It's a simple question of "how close are they?" with three possible answers. Now this is not the first game to use abstract distances, range bands, etc. but it's presented here as a concrete physical representation that facilitates play in a big way. To me that's useful. For some games I like counting my squares or hexes and drawing my maps but sometimes this approach would save a lot of time. Mutants & Masterminds, to get away from the dungeon for a minute, uses a similar concept when it comes to ranges and I could definitely see using a diagram or layout like this the next time I run that game. Would I use it for a 4th Edition D&D game? No. Traveller? Maybe. Champions? Not sure. It's a useful concept that's easily ported to other games.

Some other points I liked:

• You get three "death dice" to use during a session to add to rolls. They're d6's, they refresh every session and there's no carrying them over. This is clearly very bennie-like ala Savage Worlds but I like bennies so  I like this.
• Initiative: Straight from the KS page - whoever started the fight goes first, then their side; players declare actions clockwise, then everyone rolls at once. Simultaneous fights resolve as chaotic mass rolls. We've been playing around with ideas on initiative here so I like seeing a set of rules - especially a D&D type game - that doesn't get hung up on individual initiative. It's become a very "set" element in games these days and I'm convinced there is a lot of room to experiment. 
• Death: it can happen a lot in a combat-heavy D&D type game so why not do something fun with it? Here he spells out 3 stages:
• First time dying gets you a scar and something called a Prestige Talent which buffs your character
• Second time means you're "maimed" and get another talent
• Third time, well, you're about to be dead but you get one final action that's an automatic crit success. 
  
  Awesome! I like these a lot!

So I see a lot to like here with multiple concepts that distinguish it from Yet Another B/X Game. I also see a few things some people may not like:

• It's a class and level, armor class and hit point system, d20 based. It's fine by me but I know that's not attractive to some. I see that it goes to level 20 and my feeling is that 10 would probably be enough but the ridiculous over-the-top vibe here probably demands 20 levels.
• The contributing writers for the adventures at least are all YouTubers. Some of them have a track record of published material but some of them ... I don't know.
• The rewards are ... also ridiculously over the top. Shirts, jackets, posters, dice (multiple sets), pins of the class archetypes (?) ... yeah that's a red flag for "Crowdfunding Success" as it's a bunch of crap no one actually needs to play the game but pads out the KS $$$ figures. I get it, I won't begrudge someone making money but these are the kinds of items that tend to get delayed or screwed up in some way that tarnishes the whole effort and to have that many of them ... it's not great. 

Finally there's the timeline: They state Spring 2027 to deliver final PDFs and Summer 2027 to ship the printed material. Well, I'd love that to pan out - but I wouldn't count on it. PDM has been running Deathbringer for people for years but now they're going to be putting it out for playtesting to backers and I suppose we will see how that goes. 

Now I don't want to seem all down on this - one of the things I do like about it that I haven't mentioned is that there is a definite point of view here. From the tone - which you can detect from the art alone I would say - to the philosophy of make it faster and make it more exciting and action-oriented - I like it when a game designer has a well-defined concept of what they want a game to do. I am excited to see this coming out and I will probably back it at some level and I will try running it for my crew with whatever version of the rules I can get ahold of. It looks like a lot of fun and I hope the whole thing goes well and in a year I can say "wow what a great effort  and a great game.

40K Friday: Orks, Grey Knights, and Dark Angels

 

The focus has not been super-strong lately but I've accomplished a little bit. 

The Grey Knights have been one main area and, feeling that I have enough infantry to play something fun for now, I have mainly been working on the Dreadknight situation. This is mostly because I have 3 of them sitting on the table not-finished and 2 more in boxes waiting to be built as shiny new -Grandmaster- Dreadknights with some of the new bits. It's been a fight in trying to figure out how far I want to go with each one versus what is "good enough" to call done and move on - and this army needs a lot of that last part. Hoping to get at least 1-2 of them into the case this weekend and then knock out the rest soon. That will make for a somewhat top-heavy force but I still have some Purifiers, Purgators, and Terminators/Paladins to build so it will even out. The real question is "how much of this can I get to DONE before their codex comes out and changes up a bunch of stuff?" We will see.

These heads are perfect for what I was thinking but once they are on ... man ...

The Orks were getting a fair amount of attention before and now with the Armageddon set having arrived they've been getting a strategic rethink. As I mentioned here I've been contemplating making a new separate Blood Axe force with a mix of older and newer models. I had a pretty solid idea of what I wanted to use in it - most of which I already had - so with a theme and the units it was just a matter of building some of the parts. I started sticking my 3rd-party heads onto my older boyz torsos and ... I do not like the way they look ... at all. It's rough. The alternate heads make the hunched-over ork boyz look even more off-kilter. I'm going to try building some from scratch and see if I can make them look better as I was adapting some already built models. I'm also going to see if I can make the heads work with the older monopose boyz or with the Armageddon monopose boyz as some of them have separate heads. If that doesn't work then the Blood Axe heads may get set aside into the Ork Bits box and used for vehicle riders or drivers or something and they all get rolled into the Goffs. It's disappointing but not every plan works out.

Digging through the Armageddon box also got me to thinking about the Marine half. For the first time in a while I really had few specific plans for that side of a big box. I figured the heavy bolter guys would probably go into the Crimson Fists because that's a thing with them but otherwise it was pretty open. I'll find a home for them eventually but there wasn't really any urgency about it. 

The intercessors in the box are especially ... mundane. My core, modern (meaning primaris-updated) forces are the aforementioned Fists, my Blood Angels, and my largely-unbuilt-but-always-in-the-back-of-my-mind Black Templars. Team Blue and Team Red already have multiple intercessor squads and Team Fanatic doesn't really care about them as I prefer to focus on Crusader squads as a unique Templar thing. So what was I going to do with a squad or two of a unit with no obvious home?

I thought about whether I could convert them to something else but that's more challenging with the monopose stuff. Even making them additional Sternguard could take some work to make them look right.

Then the wandering mind pulled down my Ravenwing box while moving stuff around and a new virus took hold ... 

"At one point you had an active Dark Angels army ... earlier this year you  set up a Ravenwing force and counted up enough terminators and Deathwing Knights to make a Deathwing army ... why not fill in some Greenwing units and just Primais-ize your Dark Angels?"

I mean ... I have the other stuff already - built and basecoated - and I wouldn't be buying anything new since the Armagedodn box was a done deal ... sure, it could actually work ...

I think they will look good in black. I like to use power swords in my DA army anyway so these will fit right in.

So now the latest distraction for 2026 is tweaking the kinda-sorta Dark Angel "wing" elements and bridging them with "regular" space marine pieces. I was also trying to figure out what to do with the Vanguard Vets as I don't really want them in the Fists and my Blood Angels are already well-supplied with jump assault squads of various types - where could I put them that they would make a difference? Well, they would make for a nice flexible element for a reborn Dark Angels force now wouldn't they?

Then of course the next thought is "maybe I should get another squad too while they're cheap - NO!

Regardless I already have a bunch of older characters in the Dark Angel box, plus some modern dreadnoughts, plus these new models, plus some other uncommitted newer units (Hellblasters?) and suddenly that's a pretty solid army. I'll save the potential structure for another post but it feels good to find a way to actually use some of the new units I was undecided on. Fortunately my Dark Angels paint scheme is pretty simple too so I might be able to get them painted up fairly quick - well quick for me anyway.

More next week as I chronicle this poorly-focused journey into hobby madness.

A Quick Anecdote on AD&D 2E and the 1993 Origins Convention

 

Mike Mearls posted an article today referring back to his introduction to AD&D 2nd Edition and it triggered a memory I do not think I have shared here before. 

As far as 2E goes my friends and I at the time thought it was pretty good - yes it changed up some things from what we had before but some of those we knew were going to be changing (thank you satanic panic) and we liked a lot of the rest. The Dragon Magazine preview booklet had given us time to digest some of the new before it officially arrived. We rolled up new characters, translated a few, and made the jump without much angst or drama. We played it a lot through the 90's.

Right, that one

The memory deals with the '93 Origins Game Fair which was held in Fort Worth that year. I had heard of Origins for many years at that point but had never been to one. We had a bunch of smaller local/state cons in Dallas and occasionally one in Ft. Worth but this was going to be a big one. I played in the Star Fleet Battles tournament - briefly. I went with my best friend at the time and I believe we also played in a big Battletech game and a decent sized Warhammer Fantasy fight. The dealer's room was a big draw of course and I spent a fair amount of time at the GDW booth as Traveller: The New Era was a big new thing in our world at the time and I was interested to see what was coming next. 

This one is probably worth another post.

The most relevant part to this memory spark was later in the con when the live auction hit. There was a lot of cool stuff - remember we didn't have eBay available at the tap of an app back then - and I don't think I won any of it. Near the end though the 1st edition AD&D books started to show up - pretty much an avalanche of 1E books I would say. Lot after lot - and no one was buying them! 

Dominating - in 1993 anyway

I saw PHBs, DMGS, MMs, and all of the later hardbacks - in all of the various covers and in everything from "perfect" to "run over by a cement truck in a rainstorm" condition - showing up with opening bids set at 1$ and even lower, stacking up at the auction table as book after book came up with no takers. Every once in a while someone would drop 50 cents on one, but no one was paying significant money for any of them. 

Some were pristine, some were far rougher than this. Ripped, torn, chewed, submerged at some point ... 

I know a lot of the retro crowd likes to make a big deal out of people who never stopped playing AD&D but standing in that room at that con it was very evident that the time of 1E was over. At last as far as the people at the convention were concerned. I assume a lot of people held onto their books - I know I did - either out of nostalgia or sure, maybe thinking they might run it again someday, but 4 years in Second Edition was the version people cared about. It was a shock to see how things had turned around where books that were such a huge part of our lives were now effectively worthless. Edition changes were still somewhat new then. How that has changed!

The Water Gardens, right next door to the convention center.
"You may remember me from such films as "Logan's Run" ...

Postscript: Yes it did occur to me years later that I could have made some money if I had jumped in and bought up some of those books.

Post-postscript: That said, even circa 2010 when I was outfitting the boys with the full set of Basic/Expert/AD&D/AD&D 2E/D&D 3E player books* it was not difficult to find examples of all of those online or in used bookstores nor were they priced like a "collectible". So I would have been waiting for a few more years to make my fortune with the "Origins Haul".

*We were playing 4th at the time after playing a lot of Basic D&D and I wanted them to be able to join any game they ran across with friends or whoever. Hey, they were interested and I had the chance to do it so why not?

"Feel" and Old School RPGs

 

Around here we've had a lot of talk comparing DCC and other old-school rules to D&D 5E and our recent Tales of the Valiant campaign. It has a very different feel from 5E D&D and its variants which tend to rapidly develop into superheroic levels of power. While that's fun, some of the group is very interested in the more bare-bones stuff where the answer to every problem is not "what class ability or feat can I use here?" Some of these old-school games not even having a skill list is a real shift in perspective back to the old days. We've had plenty of fun with the more modern games but this experience had me thinking back to 10-15 years ago when I was introducing the boys to Basic D&D and they were just doing all kinds of improvising and thinking on their feet too. 

I don't hate modern games of course - I've run them quite a bit over the past ten years+ - but I do see the difference in attitude that much more clearly right now. Online discussion is so tied up in "balance" - between classes, party vs. monsters, and encounters in general, that it amazes me. It feels like so much of the talk around the game gets wrapped around its own axles that it misses the point of what the game is for: you're supposed to play it!

Someone in this picture may well be complaining about balance ...

I think there are far more people talking about RPGs than are actually playing them. This is not a new or revolutionary take, I'm just feeling it more after diving in to a different game for a few weeks. People comparing builds, people doing a bunch of math comparing classes to each other, people running the monster numbers in similar ways ... it feels like pointless electron burning to me most of the time because most of it occurs in a featureless clean-room situation with no campaign details of note. Stuff like "this dragon is a poor opponent for a party of 8th level PCs because it's AC and damage output are under-spec for what's expected at that level". OK, sure. Is there a lair involved? Offspring" Worshippers? A mate? A river of bubbling lava flowing through it's rest chamber? Does the party have a sword of dragon-slaying?  Does the dragon have some magical trick or effect that makes it immune to normal weapons? Does it speak? This kind of stuff is mostly ignored in these mathematical exercises which brings me back to wondering  - what's the point? 

If you love the game, maybe it's D&D 5.5, is this all you have to say about it? Is it what you want to focus on? Anyone with the books or PDFs can run the math on these things - it's not hard. What about your campaign? What's the setting? What's going on there? How many people are playing in it? What kinds of characters do you have in your group? Is there something going on you've never seen before? Tell me about the special parts - the math of the game is not the special part!

It just feels like so much energy is expended on stats, product announcements & debates, rules talk, edition talk, and balance yet far less is spent on things coming out of actual play in actual campaigns. You know ... the thing we're all trying to do with this mass of paper & words & possibly electrons.

A wizard, a warlock, and a sorcerer debating who is breaking the game this week

I can say digging into DCC conversations there are no balance debates about a new warlock subclass and whether it's free zap power should be 1d4+1 auto-hitting or 2d4 with a hit roll. There's very little complaining about monster damage or AC or hit points. Questions about encounter balance tend to be coming from people new to the game who are coming over from 5E and similar games, not from people already playing the game. The atmosphere and mechanics of the game help point out that not everything a party encounters is meant to be defeated in combat by using character powers. This leads to some interesting situations and some creative thinking, moreso than I typically see in more modern games. I've seen PCs run away, set up traps and ambushes, use the environment, and generally just engage with the game more, beyond doing some math and burning some metagame resources. 

Now I'm not going off into some one-true-wayism here. I'm just enjoying a refresher course in why these games work for many people. By all means, if a game tells you that balance is tremendously important and gives you an elaborate mathematical framework to ensure it, then it really should should work. If it doesn't then the company should be griped at for it - the later D&D 3E Monster Manuals were notorious for violating their own monster creation rules and there were people whose main claim to fame in the forums was going through and checking the math on every monster as the books came out. If that gives you some joy then hey, that's cool, but hopefully you're also using them in your campaign while you do this. I can read the monster entry myself - if it looks interesting I'll end up using it somewhere. If it looks boring I probably won't - the math doesn't really affect me one way or the other because I don't care that much about theoretical balance in a roleplaying game!

I don't get too caught up in edition debates for say, D&D, because I've run and played every edition and I've had fun in all of them! Balance and edition-warring is not really a thing that comes up at a table during a game in my experience. It mainly shows up in online forums. 

Even newer but say, less "rules-heavy" games tend to fall into that old-school side of things. If you don't have a detailed skill system then tasks tend to be resolved fairly quickly and you don't have endless debates about the utility of various skills.  

Classless games avoid some of this as well - a lot of the Traveller discussion I see is more about the setting, its technology, and interesting situations than it is about "builds" and balance. 

Maybe "were mad" ...

Savage Worlds does this too - discussion tends to be more settings, using tests and tricks in play, and "would you allow this" type questions than rules. I mean there are rules questions but they tend to be from new players trying to figure out initiative, arcane backgrounds, bennies, and shaken vs. wounds ... so many questions about "shaken" ... the single most misunderstood part of the game for the last 20+ years.

The last thing I'll point out here is that games (like a lot of OSR games) where there is a real threat of character death do tend to play differently as well. Aside from all of my other takes up there, Feeling like their pc is vulnerable makes a huge difference with the players I know. Low level D&D in most versions, most OSR games, DCC, GURPS, Traveller, and Savage Worlds all have some of that feel because even an experienced character in those latter games can die with a few bad rolls of the dice.

So hardcore they named a station after it!

Anyway that's enough ranting for today. Crossing the streams by sampling the online discussion around some different games sent me down a rabbit hole so I thought I would share. Tomorrow: 40K talk, where balance is never a topic of debate.

See it's a cloud giant because I'm shouting at ... oh never mind ...

My RPG List Ten years On - 2016 vs. 2026

 

I keep track of my RPG and miniature purchases as I go each year and I have done this for more than a decade. I was updating my list for this year and it occurred to me I ought to go look at what I was buying and what I was playing and compare it to now plus mix in some hindsight.

What I was playing:

• The year started off with some Marvel Heroic
• Most of it was spent running my Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous campaign into the ground
• Lots of talk about the new Savage Worlds Rifts books that were getting Kickstarted back then. Lots of Savage Worlds talk in general from cards to using it with different settings.
• Managed to work in some Deadlands and some d6 Star Wars
• Later we managed to work in some FFG Star Wars
• Holiday time meant it was time for the Time of Crisis in Mutants & Masterminds!

It's funny that it took me ten years to finally finish Time of Crisis - at least it was with a couple of those same players! Otherwise this year it's been playing DCC and then hopefully in a bit it will be back to some Savage Worlds. I do have some consistency I guess even a decade later.

Miniatures-wise it was Eldar ... so much Eldar. This was the year I built what is still the core of my Eldar army.

What I was picking up:

• Perhaps not surprisingly it was a lot of Savage Worlds stuff
• There was also quite a bit of Pathfinder
• A fair amount of d6 Star Wars
• A little FFG Star Wars - they were still putting out new material then
• Some Mutants & Masterminds books
• Some DCC books and dice
• A few 5th edition items

It is good to see that most of what I was adding was being driven by what I was playing or thinking about playing. This year was effectively the end of that Pathfinder campaign as it just ran out of gas after 3 + years. I officially ended it in January 0f 2017.  Both Star Wars games and M&M and Deadlands remained intermittent occasional games for years.

For 2026 so far it's been a few DCC books, catching up on some 5.5 D&D books, and then weirdly picking up some old GURPS books. I don't know exactly what bit me there other than some long talks with Blaster about old school non-D&D grittier systems where I mentioned GURPS as a very different flavor of fantasy campaign compared to modern D&D. I then went to look for it on my shelf and at some point, maybe in a move, I lost half of my old GURPS books - I didn't even have an old 3rd edition core book anymore. So I went on a tear for a bit here recently filling in some of that stuff - you know Magic, The Grimoire, High Tech, Ultra Tech, Supers, a core book or two. They are not particularly pricey especially if you can find several of them in a lot and I wanted them back on the shelf.

Considering how much of what I am doing now is similar to (or the same damn thing) I was doing then I guess I can claim a "consistency" medal. Some might whisper "stuck in a rut"* but I prefer to think of it as being at a point in my life where I know what I like and I prefer to spend my time there. I still do a little exploring now and then. We try new games via one-shots or short limited campaigns, get a consensus on them, and then either put them aside or consider them for a bigger campaign down the road. I see people online struggling to find people and places to play - well, I have time, a place, and a group of friends that are interested so let's spend most of that time playing stuff we like. It makes sense to me, anyway.

* Considering the number of games I've run and played over the last few years it's a pretty wide rut.

Midsummer RPG Action

 

Things have been on hold for a few weeks while I was touring the local hospital but we are finally getting back in the saddle today with more Dungeon Crawl Classics. We're all level 1 and whoever survives will likely make it to level 2 after tonight which will be about as far as any of us have gotten in this game. it is a lot of fun regardless. 

One of the interesting things that has happened is something I wish for anytime I bring up a new (or old) game with the crew. We played it as a one-off that I ran a while back. The group kept talking about it occasionally as we played through Time of Crisis and as we finished that up and started looking at the next round we decided to play some DCC before we started up the next longer campaign with Necessary Evil. Plus we decided to have Variable Dave DM it so I could play for a bit. It has really hit something with our crew as there's a lot of talk about the openness of the old school approach compared to all of the modern versions of D&D and I am happy to hear it. 

One example here being the "Mighty Deeds of Arms" ability of the fighter which lets a character pull off a cool move with a combination of a good die roll and coming up with a relevant stunt. It replaces all of the cruft around Disarm, Bull Rush, Shove, and more - all of those nifty fighting man/swashbuckler type moves that get tangled up in overly specific rules and feats and skills and class abilities in the more recent versions of the game. There is a defined mechanic associated with it, and one does get better at it as one levels up, but it's one mechanic followed by suggestions and examples of what one could do with it rather than a discrete list of all the possibilities. It's a great approach and it does work in play. 

It's been liked enough that we are probably going to run up through 3rd level and then pause to start Savage Worlds with an eye towards dropping the DCC option in here and there over the rest of the year. I'm going to be looking for some obvious break points where we could take a session or two to sidetrek into some weird adventure before going back into supers-land. It may not be viable but it's worth trying out and it would be good to keep some system familiarity alive for a while.

Anyway that's where things stand here at the moment but there is definitely more to come. 

40K Friday: Armageddon Updates

 

I found myself forced to the sidelines here for most of June thanks to some hospital time - there's a first time for everything! - but I am getting back into the swing of things. I'll focus on the miniature stuff today and talk about the rest in another post.

I did manage to order and receive the new big box set while I was entangled. It's good but I do have some comparisons and some thoughts. On the marine side - there is always a marine side with these - it's not as exciting as the past few sets. 

• 8th edition brought us the initial wave of primaris stuff which were all new models and units, even if some of us were not entirely thrilled at this approach to a marine update.
• 9th edition (Indomitus) brought us some cool characters and new units which were pretty well-received:
• 1 Primaris Captain (Sword and shield captain)
• 1 Primaris Lieutenant (Pistol and shield lt.)
• 1 Primaris Chaplain (first primaris version)
• 1 Judiciar (new character type)
• 3 Bladeguard Veterans (new unit)
• 1 Bladeguard Ancient (new character type)
• 3 Outriders (first primaris bikes)
• 3 Eradicators (new unit)
• 10 Assault Intercessors (first primaris assault marines)
  
  Nothing here was a straight-up rehash of an existing model or unit. They all either brought things into the new Primaris Era or added interesting new options, or both. It was a great box.
  
  
• 10th edition (Leviathan) was another great box full of new or newly-primaised units:
• 1x Captain in Terminator Armour: new upsized version of a popular character type
• 1x Librarian in Terminator Armour: ditto
• 1x Lieutenant with Combi-Weapon: yet another primaris lieutenant but with a new ability
• 1x Apothecary Biologis: Not a normal apothecary and with some useful abilities
• 1x Ballistus Dreadnought: New type of dreadnought
• 5x Terminators: Upsized to fit the new scale but otherwise the traditional squad we all know and love
• 5x Sternguard Veterans: upsized version of a popular squad type
• 10x Infernus Marines: a new squad (or two) of flamethrower specialists 
  
  So there was not as much pure new stuff in this one but it was still well received because of the new terminators and dreadnought. This was also the "shooty" batch of marines to balance out the melee-heavy group from 9th. 

Old non-primaris Librarian

• For 11th now though it's a little different. This one is not mainly ranged or melee it has more of a balance of the two but it also has the first duplicates of existing primaris units which is not really anything anyone was crying out for:
• 1x Captain with Relic Shield: It's another sword & board marine captain ... we just had one of those in the 9th edition starter set. I like it but it seems a little soon to do another one.
• 1x Librarian: This is another walking-normal-power-armored libby and while I love the pose - a callback to a prior librarian model - there is an existing primaris librarian that hasn't been out that long. 
• 1x Chaplain with Jump Pack: I've loved the idea of the jump-chaplain since the RT days and one of my first "finished" models was an old metal chaplain with an old metal jump pack. This guy looks good and I'm happy to finally have one officially updated to the newer scale.
• 1x Ancient: We just had an ancient in the 8th edition box - granted that's not new - but there is also one available in a standalone character box and another one available in the "company heroes" box and probably a few others I am forgetting. Did we really need another ground-ponding banner guy in normal power armor? 
• 10x Intercessors: This is where it really feels like filler. Sure every box like this needs some basic shooting marines - though 9th didn't and 10th didn't so much - but these look very much like what we already have and they have no special loadouts or new equipment options. They have a few different pieces here and there like a helmet or a breastplate but we had the first intercessors in the 8th edition box and then we had the multipart kit later in that edition and those intercessors have been packed into many if not most of the combat patrols and battalion boxes and starter sets ever since. No one playing today lacks basic intercessors. I know this unit was expected but it feels dramatically uninspired.
• 5x Vanguard Veterans with Jump Packs: They're fine but the old Vanguard Vets were know for versatility and having options for a bunch of different melee weapons. Now we may lose that in this edition (like we did in 10th on the old kit) but even if we do from a modeling point of view "everyone has a power sword" feels a little dull. I think we are all hoping the inevitable new multi-part kit will have more choices.
• 3x Eradicators with Heavy Bolters: Sure, ok. Eradicators came out with the 8th box with melta weapons and heavy bolters are pretty widely available in a marine army but they might have some utility. Their special rules are kind of ridiculous. The models do look good so I'll give them that.
• 1x Land Speeder: This is the one I like the best. I was always a fan of the Land Speeder going back to my metal RT speeders and I was disappointed to see the basic super-versatile model disappear awhile back. The heavy speeders felt like they were a little much for a fast scout and strike vehicle. This one though is a genius creation coming in a smaller size more like the old versions and packing all of the weapon options onto a single chassis! I think this is a great unit that almost any army can use and I plan to end up with multiples of them.

New Librarian! What a refreshing new design!
(I do love this pose for these guys though)

• The only really new thing here is the speeder with half credit for the eradicators. The chaplain and vanguard vets are a scale update and everything else is a new primaris update of an existing primaris model. There's a reason people were calling this part of the box "boring" and they are not wrong.

The Xenos half of the boxes has usually been interesting at least:

• 8th edition gave us a major Death Guard refresh that gave us updates to old models and a bunch of new types, expanding the army to the point it became its own force with a separate codex for the first time. It was a very cool set. Maybe someday I will finish painting mine ...
• 9th edition gave us a major Necron update with refreshed warriors and scarabs and some characters both new and refreshed, and a new unit type. It was great for them and I did manage to finish painting mine a couple of years ago.
• 10th gave us a major Tyranid refresh with some redesigned models and a bunch of new ones, units and characters alike. It was also a great set and no, I have not even finished building mine. 

Now for 11th the OpForce is Orks and it is a big refresh for them too:

• 1 Warboss: An important unit in an Ork army and as much as I love the previous version it has been a while. This guy looks great and he's a fair bit bigger (on a 50mm base now) plus we know there's a multipart kit coming too so we will have some good options here.
• 1 Bannernob: Orks have had these for quite a while (they were metal before) but they pulled them out of the list in either 9th or 10th. This unit looks good and thankfully means we get our banner unit back in the army list.
• 1 Bigboss: These have been gone for a while too but they were a well-known unit a few editions back. Glad to see him return and fill the "Ork Lieutenant" niche.
• 1 Painboy & 1 Grot Orderly: We do have models for these already but it has been awhile since they came out. Still not sure about the look but at least if you want more than one the old and new should mix together fairly well. 
• 1 Weirdboy: Not a big fan of this mini but at least we do have a new model. 
• 20 Ork Boyz: Well, they had to be in this box and they do look good. Not sure how customizable they will be as I haven't started in on them yet but more boyz is not a bad thing.
• 10 Gretchin: OK, sure. Did they really need to be in the big box though? I know the whole thing is a tribute to the 2nd edition starter set but I feel like these could have been something more interesting and I don't know of any Ork player that lacks for grots.
• 1 Wartrakk: This ... yes! A longtime staple of Kult of Speed lists finally returns after a few editions away, and it looks amazing! I've already ordered a couple more and dug my old ones out of storage.
• 1 Big Mek Dakkarig: The one truly new unit here. I had mixed feelings about it on first sight but it has grown on me. It leans heavily into the dakka side of things with limited melee capability but that may be OK. It looks a lot like a looted and upgunned imperial guard sentinel but I think I'm ok with that too. It's supposed to be driven b a Big Mek but it has no repair or leadership type abilities, just a 5+ inv save to represent a force field of some kind I suppose. It's taken a while for me to warm up to it but now I think I do like it.

Now to build it all. It's going to take a while but hopefully I can get the parts I like built and basecoated and into action soon.