More Chainmail?

So, inspired by my recent article on D&D: Chainmail, and by all the single model painting I've gotten done lately, I thought I'd give myself a little project to work on. Every so often I'll take a Chainmail model out of my case (maybe two in the case of double models I have) and work on it. I seem to be able to do single models pretty quickly—and Chainmail warbands are really small—so this should be a cinch!

I'll start with the two warbands from the starter set. That way if I want to have some games with friends, I'll be able to use the two forces intended to show off the mechanics of the basic game. I'm going to leave the descriptions of the figures for when I actually have them finished, but here's the group shot:

The three white-primed figures and the leftmost black-primed
figure are members of the Thalos faction (the "gnome infiltrator"
has a busted crossbow. I'll fix it when I get to him), while the
four black-primed figures on the right are members of the
evil Naresh faction, made up mostly of gnolls!

I also have a ton of models from the Mordengard faction (dwarves), and the Ravilla faction (elves), as well as one figure from Drazen's Horde (hobgoblins, goblins, orcs, etc.). All-in-all I have forty Chainmail figures, all of which will get their time in the sun.

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About a Long-Lost Love

I want to talk about one of my favorite games of all time. It's a game that, if it was still in production, I'd still be playing to this day:

Chainmail (or D&D Chainmail, as it was known to differentiate it from the proto-D&D miniatures game "Chainmail"), was published by Wizards of the Coast in 2001, and contained some notable alumni in its production: Chris Pramas, Skaff Elias, Adrian Smith, Mike McVey, and Jason Soles to name a few—not to mention all the sculptors you'd no doubt recognize.

So what was so cool about Chainmail? It was effectively D&D 3rd edition turned into a miniatures game. You assembled a warband of figures that generally numbered anywhere between three and seven figures, and you maneuvered and spelled the shit out of each other! It had a really innovative command system, where your commanders could issue orders to troops. Your commanders had a number of command points that they could expend to move their basic troops around and maybe even make them fight a little better. 

It had the perfect mix of casual and competitive rules and attitude that I've not seen matched in any miniatures game since. The rules were such that you could assemble a warband of synergistic models and conduct your battles in a strategic manner similar to what you may see at an X-Wing or Warmachine/Hordes tournament. But if you weren't a competitive gamer, then the sheer amount of scenarios they released—combined with the campaign that was contained in their first supplement—meant that you could play thematic games that focussed on a story.

Really, it still amazes me to this day the sheer amount of scenarios that game contained. By my count there were over thirty at the end of its run in 2003. The scenarios weren't like your typical tournament-focussed scenarios which are largely abstract, gamey, set-ups that you may see in an event's "tournament package" (though the game had these too), but they felt like these would be conflicts in a fantasy world. 

These scenarios were contained in the rulebook and over the course of four supplements. These supplements not only contained scenarios and rule updates, but new rules on environments (fighting in the underdark), new spells your models could learn, and the stats for the new wave of models. They also contained more of the ongoing story about these empires and hordes fighting over the sundered essence of the dead god of war Stratis.

Back in 3rd edition D&D, WotC wanted to focus the setting on the world of Greyhawk. In order to make a miniatures game where there were stakes to the storyline and players' victories they set the game in the Sundered Empire in the western part of the main continent on Oerth, and introduced new characters and factions. 

The models were good too. Some of them were pretty typical of the early 2000s, non-Citadel, quality that you saw among the miniatures spectrum, but it had the best range of gnolls I've ever seen. It also had the coolest owlbear. 

Anyway, that's really all I wanted to say on the subject. The game's long dead, having been replaced by the pre-painted figures and simpler miniatures game in 2003. I enjoyed that one too, but it was no Chainmail.

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It's D&D!

Dungeons & Dragons Next! It's happening; you can't stop it. They put it out for a public play-test; you can't stop that, either. So what is it? What's it doing here? And why should you care?

Well, if you're not a fan of D&D, or not a role-player, that last question is pretty simple. Just stop reading this post and pop-back on Monday when I talk more about 6th edition 40K. For those of you that are D&D/RPG fans (or you just like semi-literate ramblings), keep reading.

DISCLAIMER: Even though D&D Next is an open play test, play testers still had to click on some non-disclosure thingy. I don't know what the legality of me posting stuff on here, so I'm going to try and keep it pretty vague. I guess I could wade through the EULA or NDA or whatever it was that I clicked "Agree" to, but as you know, things like those are long. I may hungrily eat-up gaming rulebooks like they're Stephen King novels, but when it comes to legalese, I blank out. Therefore, I'm not going to read it, and just be vague. If the Hasbro/WotC black helicopters land in my front yard, I'll meet them at the door, cigarette dangling from my mouth, and say: "what took ya so long?"

If you can look closely, you can see a top-secret watermark.

It's called D&D Next. Why? I dunno. I think they're like me, and are sick of the edition wars people bother everyone with on the Internet and in game shops. Perhaps they're building it so that editions, themselves, become obsolete. Perhaps they're tapping into a gaming zen that the industry has been dreaming about since Gygax and Arneson emerged from the depths of Castle Greyhawk. Perhaps they're creating a game so perfect, and representative of the geist of role-playing that any product out there is compatible with D&D! Or perhaps it's a placeholder.

So what's changed? A lot, and a little. A lot, in that it's not 4th edition anymore, not even close. It's sad really; I thought 4th edition was an extremely elegant system, and the designers of it should all win awards, but I could see how it wouldn't be the cup of tea that D&Ders pour into vials to simulate potions of clarity. Instead, one could say that little has changed, because of the similarities this game has to BD&D and AD&D. They definitely turned back the clock and made the game very simple: no attacks of opportunity (AoO), no flanking bonuses, and the saving throws are all just ability checks. In fact, abilities play a bigger role in this version than in any version since BD&D. If you want to "use rope" there's no more "use rope" skill, instead you make a Dexterity (DEX) check. If you want to search a room, make a Wisdom (WIS) check, and add any bonuses you have for Perception. Combat had a neat little trick to make up for the lack of flanking: advantage and disadvantage. If you were in a situation where you have an advantage you roll 2d20 and choose the best; if you're in a situation where you might receive a disadvantage you roll 2d20 and select the lowest... Elegant!

I actually like this system for a couple reasons, the first being its simplicity. I've been playing a lot of Basic D&D lately, and I've really come to see the appeal of simple role-playing systems. You roll dice, you add/subtract modifiers, and you compare them to target numbers to work out success/failure. Right now, D&D Next does this very elegantly, and gives you something more to do than just hack and slash, though not to the extent that D&D4 did. There are some at-will type abilities going on here, but the Vancian system is back (Magic Missile is a 0-level spell, which means you can use it as much as you want), which has a love/hate situation with me.

The idea for D&D Next is that it can be expanded upon by adding modules, so that the game gets more complex. You want combat with miniatures on a battle grid? Just add those rules on. You want skills and feats? Go ahead. It's almost as if they're taking a beefed-up BD&D (but with races being separate from classes), and letting you spice it to taste to make it AD&D. For instance there were no skills but there were some skill-like abilities that certain classes possessed. The Clerics could recall lore about religion (Knowledge (Religion)), and the Rogue could find and disarm traps (Disable Device), and that was part of its class, rather than a skill that the character invested in.

This reminds me, actually, of the article I wrote on Dungeon World, where I talked about what makes a role-playing game "old school;" a solid division of class roles. D&D3 and Pathfinder can have characters branch off in different paths, almost making them homogeneous. BD&D, D&D4, and D&D Next have very specific roles for the characters: Rogues open things, and disable them, Fighters bash, Clerics heal, and Wizards blast. Some might think of this as constricting, and it might be, but it's also what the game used to be and where it came from. It appears that it might be going this way again.

Now, of course, the play test was just that: a play test. Who knows where it will go from here, or which parts of this play test we were supposed to play test. Perhaps they're only taking criticism on the characters, or the combat system, or perhaps everything in it. I have to say, one thing I thought was pretty underwhelming was the module they supplied to play test in: The Caves of Chaos. Older gamers may remember this as the main part of B2: Keep on the Borderlands, which I find a very hack-and-slash adventure where you pretty much work your way through the Monster Manual. I do appreciate that it was pretty much B2 word-for-word but with the updated monster stats.*

The aforementioned B2.

Overall, I liked it, and I'd like to see where it's going. I'm really loving Pathfinder right now, but I have to admit that I'm missing the D&D brand. This play test had classic races like Hill and Mountain Dwarfs, and Pelor and Moradin, and all that good D&D IP. I think a definite defining factor on my complete fandom for this edition is if they re-do the Greyhawk setting (I'm also a huge fan of Dark Sun, but Athas had its moment in D&D4).

I should also mention (before signing off) that if you want to contribute to the D&D Next play test, you should go here and sign up!

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* I wanted to just mention that combats are lightning-quick in D&D Next. One complaint I have with D&D4 is that the combats are really long. Pathfinder has quick combats (and thus, so did D&D3) and I like that. I just didn't know where to mention this fact in the review.

Monster Vault Review

I'd like to write a full review of the Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition Essentials line of products soon, but my cup already runneth over. Suffice it to say, for now, that Essentials gets two thumbs up from myself. More glowing would be to say that not only do I love it, but it's my preferred way to play D&D4. Now that's a loaded statement. 

However, today we'll concern ourselves with the D&D Essentials Monster Vault by Wizards of the Coast (or as I like to call it: "The best value for your gaming dollar on the RPG shelf"). 

Let's start off by showing you how many tokens you get in it:

Yes! That is a lot of tokens. And it's just the small ones.

Here are the big ones:

It may not look like a lot, but that's a 21.6cm X 28.6cm X 4.75cm box!

To give you a better idea, here are the frames that the tokens came from:

That's 2cm! (or ¾" for those of you that insist on using the Imperial system)

Now I know what you're thinking: "Pfft! I scoff! Miniature figurines are better than tokens, my good man!" While you are correct, beggars can't be choosers, and I like my non-randomized tokens very much, thank you! Besides, Reaper's Asylum imprint is doing a heck of a job in that department. Double besides, there's 320 tokens in the Monster Vault.

Now on to the material itself: As you'll read in my (glowing) Essentials review later on, the monsters presented in this book (10cm less wide than C5 format; 320 pages; softcover; full-color) are fully-compatible with your hardcover books. In fact, it's worth getting for someone who already has all the Monster Manuals (3 at the time of writing) because most of the monsters in here are new. Of course some are repeated, but you must remember that this is also meant to double as a player's first monster book. Some monsters are too iconic to not be reprinted. 

Let's use a few examples: The oft-used Kobold (we get it, WotC, you like the kobold. D&D players the world over must've exterminated this species by now). In the Monster Manual we have a level 1 minion (Kobold Minion), a level 1 skirmisher (Kobold Skirmisher), a level 1 Artillery (Kobold Slinger), a level 2 soldier (Kobold Dragonshield), and a level 3 artillery (leader) (Kobold Wyrmpriest). In the Monster Vault out of the four Kobold entries there, only the Slinger and Dragonshield are repeated. The book adds two new Kobolds: the Tunneler (level 1 minion skirmisher), and the Quickblade (level 1 skirmisher). Orc-wise we get 7 new orcs that aren't in the Monster Manual!

Finally, one thing that I think Wizards of the Coast also has right is the amount of modules they're producing again (I just wish they kept up the "letter-number" trend). This one comes with a level-4 adventure entitled Cairn of the Winter King™ along with a double-sided, color, poster map of  two of the large encounters in the adventure. I haven't had a chance to look over the adventure (because my DM ran a couple of elements from it, so I was told explicitly not to look at it), but I've played in a couple of the encounters and I can say that they're good. They didn't feel unbalanced, or too easy.

Overall, a good product, and well worth the $34 (Canadian) I paid for it. Like I said earlier, you'd be hard-pressed to find an item on your shop's RPG shelf that's as good a value as this. Outside of the other Essentials stuff, my next pick for value would have to go to any White Wolf product ($30 hardcover books? Yes please!), or Green Ronin's Dragon Age RPG.

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Top 5 Role-playing Games: Dungeons & Dragons

Note: The quality of this article is not up to my usual standard. While I don't like churning out schlock, I did on this occasion for the sake of beginning a regular schedule of posting I've been meaning to do for a long time. Paradoxically, I decided to publish a sub-par article for my own good. At the very least I'll get back on a regimen. 

The reason for this sloppy posting is the heaviness in my heart for a friend who passed away February 1st, 2011. Not at all to turn this tragedy towards myself, but I just couldn't muster up the energy to give 100% on this article. Though we weren't terribly close, I've had nothing but great interactions with this man, and I'll miss his presence in the gaming community. 
Adrian Nelson was not only a fellow Vancouver gamer, but a kind and fun person who succumbed to health problems too soon. A gamer, actor, and Viking enthusiast, he will be missed by everyone in the Lower Mainland who pushes 10mm fantasy and historical soldiers around on the tabletop. My condolences go out to those who knew him better, and to his family. 

Now here’s a classic. If you’ve never played Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) before, then you’ve definitely heard of it. It was the first role-playing game and it’s still as great today as it was 35 years ago. Currently the game is in its 4^th edition, and while it’s drawn a lot of controversy I do believe that it’s the best game to bear the D&D logo.

I began my foray into D&D during the mid-90s during its 2^nd edition. Back then it was called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2^nd Edition (AD&D2E) and it was done by a man named David “Zeb” Cook, who, as far as I know, isn’t doing any games design these days. The game represented mystery to me. I had always heard of this game, but I had never played it, and wanted to see if it was as dangerous and Satanic as the public made it out to be. It wasn’t, of course, but it was very mysterious, and seemed endless in its possibilities.

You see, the D&D books presented no particular world; it was all just generic fantasy art, and concepts. Sure they had settings like Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, and Dark Sun, but the idea behind D&D is that the game is a toolkit that you can use to create your own fantasy world.

Without getting too much into the mechanics of the various editions (they’re all similar in many regards, and I’m not familiar with the earliest editions of D&D), I’ll explain how the game works: It uses all of the basic polyhedral dice (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and the ubiquitous d20). One would roll a d20 to resolve most actions, trying their best to roll as high as you could (though low rolls were sometimes desirable in the earlier editions). In D&D4 you roll a d20 and add any modifiers based on your skills, then compare to a certain defensive number of your target, or to a number set by your Dungeon Master (DM) in the case of skill checks. Then on a successful attack, you’d roll your damage dice (each weapon or attack possessed a different die).

After AD&D2E Tactical Studies Rules (TSR), the owning company of D&D went bankrupt. The reason cited for this is that they overextended their novel publishing arm and during a year of very bad sales, were forced to refund the book chains the money paid for the books. Wizards of the Coast (WotC), the makers of Magic: the Gathering, bought TSR’s stuff for $1,000,000 (all of this info is courtesy of the D&D coffee table book). WotC had the foresight to keep D&D alive, despite dwindling sales of RPGs at this time (mid-to-late-90s), and in doing so save an industry.

In this gamer’s humble opinion, the d20 license saved role-playing. Many have claimed that it created a homogenous industry, but I think that’s ascribing the d20 system to the natural decline of many role-playing games at the time. In 2000, WotC re-did D&D for the 3^rd edition. They dropped the “Advanced” off the title, and made the rules free for any developer to use and create their own games (called the Open Gaming License (OGL). This was the shot in the arm that created many games companies that are around today, gave us some great titles, and gave some older titles a second life. Games like Deadlands, and Cyberpunk saw reprints in d20 form, while games like WarCraft, or Conan: the Barbarian saw pen-and-paper versions for the first time. Now many games companies have sprung back from the days when everything used the D&D3 rules, and the license is not as common as it was ten years ago, but the industry is healthier because of it, and now many other companies aren’t afraid of opening their doors to other publishers to use their mechanics (Savage Worlds, FATE, etc).

In 2008 the D&D3 system had grown too big and unwieldy. What was once a clear and concise game had its boundaries blurred, so that wizards and fighters were little different than each other. What the industry needed was a shot in the arm again, and in order to break away from the homogeneity that it helped create, D&D4 was established. D&D4 is a more dynamic and cinematic game system. It definitely takes some cues from the video gaming industry, which is reaching Hollywood-ish proportions. In a form of true reciprocity, D&D borrowed from the very industry that borrowed from it. As a result D&D4 just has more for you to do! There are more options during character creation, and combats are more dynamic, with more movement, and more description. No longer do you sit there and stab the Gnoll with your sword; instead you’re taunting that Gnoll so that its attacks are directed away from your friends, whose attacks are bolstered by your other companions, all so the rogue in your party can slash at the Gnolls legs, not only causing damage, but hamstringing the poor creature as well.

Now, of course this game is critiqued as being too much like a Massively-Multiplayer Online RPG (MMORPG, or just MMO). But as I stated before, it’s only borrowing from something that it helped create. D&D is growing, and it needs to. Sure RPGs are not in the danger they were in ’97, but that’s not to say that the industry is invincible. Companies like Fantasy Flight Games are creating RPGs that are hybrids with other forms of gaming (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3^rd edition), while the “Indie” role-playing market (which celebrates more esoteric game mechanics) is rather big and desired by many role-players. And if I may be so bold, I believe that D&D4 is more faithful to the original D&D than the previous two editions, which tended to bleed the various player classes into one another. In this edition, a rogue is a rogue, and a wizard is a wizard, and there’s no mistaking a cleric for a druid, or a barbarian for a fighter. Each has their own roles that they play within the party, and help to create these great synergies, which make playing this classic game all the more exciting.

In short, D&D is one of my favorite role-playing games of all time. While the newest edition is my favorite, the previous games each had their charm, and I had fun playing the previous two editions that I had. After all, I wouldn’t have played them for the twelve years before D&D4 that I had if I didn’t like them.

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