Further (Nicer) Thoughts on D&D Minis

Despite my impassioned rant (and remember, Internet anger equals about a third of real anger) against the new Demonweb set, I did pick up four boxes, just to see what I'd get. There were a few minis I wanted in the set, and I wanted to see if I would wind up with tons of mushrooms, etc.

Well, yes and no. The fact is, having bought four boxes, I got a half dozen minis I thought were pretty cool, and only a few that I thought were ridiculous. Only one Kruthik, two "Scythejaws" (what the hell are these? When will I use them) and two Guard Drakes, which would have been handy for the 1st level adventure I ran a couple months ago, but are almost useless now.

I got four rares in four boxes. One was a Girallon, which was annoying because I already have two, and also because the new Girallon mini is kind of ugly. The others, though, were without exception pretty nice. The red and brown-colored Autumn Ranger is a nice piece, and should make a great mini for one of my players. A Black Dragon is always welcome (even though I've already got about three, of varying sizes, from other sets). But my favorite was the *massive* Brutal Ogre Warhulk. You put that solid piece of plastic down on the table, your PCs are going to know they're in for a fight. It's bigger than the dragon, and has some nice detail as well.

The other standouts were the new Warforged (pretty nice, although not really useful to me until 2009 when Eberron returns) and the Drow Assassin. I've got lots of drow, but this is a really nice mini.

I'm not sure how many I'll buy out of this set. I dodged most of the ones I didn't want (the Slaad, the evil mushroom, the sarcophagus, the kruthik) and there are only a few in the set I'd really like to get (the Rakshasa assassin and the Cyclops, both rare, and the common Hobgoblin Warcaster). I'll probably try a couple more, but the odds of getting something I don't want have gone up, since I had a pretty good early pull.

So I take back a little bit of the venom I slung at this set a few days back. But I still think it's beyond stupid that there are no Uncommon or Common Dragonborn, and even moreso that all the Dragonborn they've presented have been variations on the paladin and fighter.

A Non-Political Aside About Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures

This post is aimed at the extremely niche readership that cares about D&D gaming. A lot. Too much, really. Everybody else should probably just wait for my next post praising Obama or bitching about Prop 8. ;)

Some minor waves went through the gaming community lately, when Wizards of the Coast announced that they were discontinuing the skirmish element of their miniatures line, changing up the packaging and, oh yeah, jacking up the price a bit.

But, judging based on their last random pack set, Demonweb, I say "Bring on the new, ungodly expensive but hopefully more focused set!"

One of the biggest requests we've gotten at my shop, since 4th edition? Dragonborn miniatures. They were the big new race in 4th edition, and there are tons of folks playing Dragonborn. Paladins, Warriors, Wizards, Clerics, everything. Do you know how many Dragonborn miniatures there were in the first 4th edition set, Against the Giants?

Two. And they were rare. Both were fighter types.

OK, so surely they'll rectify that in the next set, right? Well, behold the gallery.

There are two more. One is another frikkin' paladin, the other is a very specific, barely usable epic-looking dude with wings. And they are both rare.

You know what's uncommon, which means you'll get one every couple of packs? Well, there's a warforged, despite the fact that they haven't reintroduced the warforged yet (save in a Dragon article) and Eberron won't even be out until 2009. There's a fucking evil mushroom. Let me tell you, if I'm a consumer, every time I open a pack of expensive plastic miniatures and not only don't get the dragonborn warlock that I've been playing for several months, but I get another fucking evil mushroom? My head's gonna explode.

There are a ton of wildly specific, mostly unusable miniatures in this set. Another Girallon? Seriously? Who at WOTC has a hard-on for four-armed gorillas? Kruthik? Goddamn Kruthik? Who even uses Kruthik, except for those of us running the modules written by folks at WOTC who think people give two shits about the Kruthik? And I'd happily use little red glass beads to represent Kruthik if you'd give me a few options for your brand new showpiece race the Dragonborn instead.

As a last set for the current D&D miniatures model, this looks like an utter failure. Maybe I'm wrong, and after I open a few packs, I'll see the wisdom of having the same number of Slaad as the number of Dragonborn, or I'll want to create an amazing module populated by evil mushrooms, sarcophagi and Kruthik.

But I very much doubt it.

D&D 4th Edition: Early Thoughts

I know, it's almost a whole week since the game came out (and gave my store the best sales day of its existence, not to mention a hugely successful launch event) and I haven't talked about D&D 4th Edition yet.

Others have, though. Smith Michaels over at Blurred Productions is often sympatico with me on comics and politics, but our thought trains diverge a bit on D&D 4th Ed, which he seems a mite displeased with. You can read his thoughts on the Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide. I don't agree with everything, but I don't entirely disagree with his criticisms either. These are well-written think pieces on the game.

Wired has a fascinating article on D&D Insider, the not-yet-launched online component, and correctly nails Wizards on a too-high price tag, although they're softer on the criticism that I think is more important, namely that D&D Insider hasn't launched yet. They've also got a wildly positive review of the system.

I fall somewhere between Smith Michaels and Wired on this one. Overall, I'm very pleased with the new D&D books and system and very excited to start the new campaign on Friday. I love the look of the books, I love the new powers-based system, I love the streamlined feel of the rules, and I cannot stress enough how much I love the new Monster Manual. Easily the best monster book D&D has ever had.

However. Michaels is right that the focus has been put pretty squarely on the combat side of things. The skill system is streamlined, but the cost of that streamlining is to make it more simplistic. Same for spellcasting. Little things make me sad, like anybody can track now instead of just the rangers. Magic items have been depowered so much as to be almost impotent in some respects. No damage reduction means anybody can just hack off a vampire's head, which feels mythologically wrong. While the grab rules are greatly simplified, they also make any kind of wrestling or grabbing more or less pointless unless you've got some kind of specific follow-up power. The relatively small list of classes and powers to start with makes every early character look very similar.

However, those little things are all done for good reasons, namely taking out the frustrating elements of the game (50-50 miss chance, gone. Can't hurt the thing because we don't have magic weapons, gone. Four hours of figuring out the grapple rules, gone.) and reducing the amount of die-rolling to make the whole thing move quicker. As a system, this is a lot more elegant, and while it doesn't encourage role-play as much as a list of skills and a variance in skill levels, or any of the number of other smaller things we've lost, it opens the door for players and DMs who *want* to roleplay to focus on that instead of min/maxing the rules.

I'm quite sure we'll see more races, classes, spells and feats introduced quickly enough. Hell, Warforged have already shown up on the WOTC website, and I'm allowing my players to use them in the first campaign if they want.

Michaels is pretty much dead-on when he talks about the DMG. It's great if you've never run D&D before, it contains a lot of great theory about players, running a game, etc. This is a necessary book... for beginners. But it really should have been combined with an easier-to-read character generation chapter and released as a "Beginner's Guide" or something for $10. The DMG is mostly filler for the experienced DM, and notably thinner than the other books. Though I respect tradition, given how much tradition was thrown out the window in the name of logic and streamlining, it would have seemed better to produce a slightly bigger "Rules Guide" and "Monster Manual" rather than keep the DMG, which reads at this point like something of a vestigial organ. Especially at $34.95 for a much smaller page count than the exact same price for the larger Player's Handbook.

Overall, though, while I have my quibbles, I love the new system. I love that I could pick up on the changes easily, that they fixed any number of minor things (counterspells, identify, grappling, criticals, etc., etc.) and made it much easier and quicker to build a character, plan an adventure and (judging from my quick demos and from reading the books) play the game.

Graphic Novel A Day: The Art of Dragon Magazine

Artists: Larry Elmore, Keith Parkinson, Jeff Easley, Wayne Reynolds, Brom, Todd Lockwood, Tony DiTerlizzi, Tim Hildebrandt, Daniel Horne, Dennis Beauvais, Clyde Caldwell, Kalman Andrasofszky, etc.
Company: Paizo Publishing
Price: $34.95 ($23.07 at Amazon)

OK, technically this isn't a graphic novel, but it is a really nice art book. I read Dragon from probably somewhere in the 70s (issue-wise, not year-wise) to somewhere in the early 120s or so, and then picked it up again for a while when D and D 3.0 came out. I've gotten a lot of use out of the magazine over the years, and seen a lot of great covers too. One of the things that Wizards of the Coast does better than probably any other gaming company is that they use professional artists of the highest caliber and print their work in full color, and you need only look at Art of Dragon to see what a boost that can be to a player's imagination. It was in reading this that I discovered that my favorite Dragon artist, whose images I remembered but name I never knew, was Dennis Beauvais, and they reprint a decent number of his pieces here. There's a variety, from earlier work to the latest stuff, from the classic fantasy paintings to the more comic book and anime-influenced work that we see a lot of in D and D books today from guys like Wayne Reynolds and comics veteran Kalman Andrasofszky. It's loosely organized into themes like dragons, monsters, worlds, etc. but basically the editors get out of the way and let the art do the talking. I would have liked a little more insight, maybe commentary from the artists, but I can't complain about giving the artwork full pages so that you can really appreciate the work. Any fan of fantasy art should definitely pick this one up. I found myself wishing for a DVD-ROM version with the covers of every issue of Dragon and all the interior artwork after reading through it.