D&D Rant

Disclaimer: I have yet to play a single game of 4th edition D&D. I played in less than a dozen sessions of 3.5. I played quite a bit of 2nd edition, a little bit of 1st, and the first RPG I ever had was the "purple box" D&D Basic. I mention this to establish my D&D 'cred' or lack thereof.

Recently someone on another blog interjected this gem into the comments on a post about D&D 4th: "Here's an idea, go back to running old school D&D games that were free form and far less limited by 600 pages of rules!!"

I replied to that post there, but I want to repeat that reply and expand upon it here:

Really? Which version of D&D was this? I must have missed the "free form" edition.

D&D has never been "free form," and every edition has had far more than 600 pages of rules spread out over the different books.

I think it's funny that nearly every argument I've seen against D&D 4th are ones that I've used in the past against any edition of D&D in favor of other systems.

Seriously, if you want a rules light "free form" system don't play D&D! There are, and always have been, far better systems out there if that's your thing.

While we're on this track, let me shoot down another argument that's often made. D&D has never encouraged roleplaying. Your DM may have encouraged roleplaying, but the system never did. Arguing that you play an older version of D&D because you're a "roleplayer" is about the dumbest thing you could ever say.

Again, if a focus on roleplaying is truly your thing, then there are, and always have been, much better systems in terms of encouraging roleplaying out there. In fact, just about any RPG ever made does a better job of encouraging roleplaying than any edition of D&D ever has.

I think part of the reason I like D&D 4th is that I'm not a roleplayer, I'm a gamer. I like games, and I like new games because they are often better than old games because game designers often learn from the mistakes of the past.

D&D 4th looks like a great game. The rules are tight and balanced. A new player is faced with a limited number of options that expand as they play the game and their experience with the system grows. New DMs are given useful guidelines in designing encounters that will challenge the players without overwhelming them.

That's not to say it doesn't have problems. Out of the gate it suffers from fewer options than 3.5, but that's to be expected of a new system that only has a few hundred pages compared to the tens of thousands written for the older ones. I've heard complaints about the 'missing' 'core' classes and races, all of which have been reintroduced with the PHB2.

I suppose the kind of gaming groups that play every week and finish a campaign in two or three months could have run up against the limited options available at launch by now (and evidence indicates that many of them have), but those options are expanding, and will continue to expand as new books come out. In the meantime, maybe some of those groups could try games other than D&D?

While not true in all cases, I've noticed that the majority of complainers either play D&D exclusively, or it at least makes up the majority of their gaming. Gamers that play a variety of RPGs, or just more games in general, seem to see 4th edition as an improvement over the past. Perhaps if some of the naysayers would broaden their minds a bit beyond D&D, or RPGing in general, they too would come to see the good things in 4th edition.

Then again, maybe some of this hate is for the best. Just yesterday I was talking to someone who has become disenchanted with D&D 4th. They were telling me about this new game they'd found that they like a lot better called the Burning Wheel...

Warriors of Minas Tirith: Day Two

Day two was about getting the miniatures primed and painting up a test model to make sure my ideas for how to paint everything are actually going to work.

Priming was pretty straightforward. Three coats from different angles achieved good coverage on all but one of the models which just needed one more touch up coat. I recently saw where GW painters use a stick to prime their models, taping them all to one long stick and holding it with one hand while priming with the other. It does look like it would be easier to achieve quick results this way, but I'll need to find a decent sized stick before I try it, so for now I'm still using my standard method of spraying outside with the miniatures in a box.

After letting the primer dry a few hours it was time to work up a test model. My plan was to block paint as few colors as possible, touch up a little, and then cover it all in a heavy black wash. I was undecided as to whether I'd leave the cloth black and highlight it, or paint it a dark gray and wash it. After realizing how many extra brushstrokes it was going to take to do the former, I settled on the latter. I'm pleased with the results overall, and the only tricky bit is the tree on the shield. That's going to require careful painting and multiple touch-ups on the 16 miniatures that have one.

Now that I'm satisfied with the scheme it's time to start the assembly line and get all the block painting done. I got a start on the faces, but still have a lot to do.

Paints used:
Primer: Krylon Ultra-Flat
Face: Game Color 41 Dwarf Skin
Armor & Weapon: Game Color 53 Chainmail Silver
Weapon hilt & details: Game Color 57 Bright Bronze
Hair: Game Color 45 Charred Brown
Clothes: Citadel Foundation Adeptus Battlegrey
Black Touch-ups: Game Color 51 Chaos Black
Wash: Citadel Wash Badab Black
Fletchings: Game Color 49 Stonewall Grey
Base Wash: Citadel Wash Gryphonne Sepia
Base Edge: Game Color 62 Earth

Warriors of Minas Tirith: Day One

The hype over War of the Ring (thanks Gary), combined with the guys at World's End Radio giving the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game a good deal of coverage on their show, has me seriously looking at GW's Lord of the Rings miniatures. I still managed to hold the line until the latest issue of White Dwarf and the Warriors of the Dead release. I'm looking at those miniatures going "that's a white base coat with a green wash... they make Necrons look like a hard army to paint!"

Not having any of the rules or army lists, I had to do a bit of research using Army Builder, White Dwarf, and the internet to find out that while I can field Warriors of the Dead as a LotRSBG skirmish force by themselves, I'd probably need to field them with forces of Gondor for WotR. That got me looking at the Warriors of Minas Tirith miniatures that look like they're not much harder to paint than the Warriors of the Dead.

With my resolve crumbling I stopped at the FLGS while running some other errands to see if they had a copy of the LotRSBG rules. They didn't, but they did have boxed sets of most of the plastic miniatures, including a couple boxes of Warriors of Minas Tirith. Still, I managed to resist... for about four more hours when I finally broke down and called the store to see if they were still open. I then drove back and picked up a box along with a pack of company bases for WotR.

Once I got home I broke out the two sprues that come in the box, and assembled all 24 miniatures before going to bed. Unlike most Warhammer plastic miniatuers, most of the Warriors of Minas Tirith minis are one piece. All you have to do is trim them from the sprue, clean them up a little, and glue them to the base. A third of them have their spear arm as a separate piece, but that's it. So, in just a couple of hours I had eight swordsmen, eight bowmen and eight spearmen ready to be primed.

I didn't think to take pictures of the assembly process, but will try to take some of the other steps as this project continues.

Eldar Storm Guardians part deux

This picture isn't quite so dark as the other one. This pic is a better representation of what the minis look like in person.

Yme Loc Eldar Storm Guardians

This is just a quick post to show a new pic of my Storm Guardians and to test out the 'blog this' feature on flickr.