LEGO, the brick-building system, has been igniting children's imaginations for decades, so it's only natural that gamers (particularly gamers with children) look at their big multi-colored pile of bricks and wonder: how can I use these in my game?
View attachment 70147
Once you've seen Nathan Stoltenberg’s LEGO brick rendition of Cragmaw Castle you can't see stop thinking about building your own Dungeons & Dragons set. By all accounts, it's the beginning of a trend:
So where why aren't more game designers creating LEGO bricks-compatible D&D dungeons? It's a simple question with a complicated answer.
[h=3]Building the D&D Foundation[/h]
LEGO came to this same conclusion when it launched LEGO HEROICA, which is essentially microfigs in a dungeon. Michael McNally, Brand Relations Director at LEGO Systems, explained in an interview:
If HEROICA isn't your speed for tabletop play, there's always BrickWars:
Steve Jackson, founder of GURPS, is such a LEGO fan that he made his own pirate game using LEGO bricks. But if you're looking for D&D-style adventure crawling, BrickQuest may be more your speed:
If this sounds familiar, it should. The creation of a dungeon in Dungeons & Dragons has a lot in common with LEGO bricks, as the popularity of Minecraft has demonstrated (we'll leave that topic for another article in the near future).
[h=3]Blowing up Tiny Robots, One Brick at a Time[/h]
Perhaps the most successful example of using LEGO as miniatures is Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack. This Kickstarter created a framework to pit giant robots against each other, a sort of Battletech for LEGO. Of course, half the fun is designing the mechs, so much of the game is finding the pieces to build them and then -- if you're a perfectionist like me -- making sure the mech isn't just functional but that it looks good too. This is a lot harder than it sounds.
You see, the biggest stumbling block to using LEGO is finding the right blocks. The LEGO company knows exactly what they're doing and judiciously guards against exactly what gamers would like to do: buy and build their own LEGO terrain and figures. Why is that?
In some ways it's the same dilemma that Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) faces with Dungeons & Dragons. Once you have the core set to help launch your imagination, why would you ever buy another product?
[LQ]Once you have the core set to help launch your imagination, why would you ever buy another product?[/LQ]
The answer is convenience. WOTC publishes adventures, miniatures, dice, and everything else to save you time and make the game run smoother. LEGO creates kits specifically branded to produce a single idea -- a vehicle, a monster, a character -- and it's up to the consumer to create his own variants. Or to put it another way, LEGO does a very good job of telling you to make a specific thing, and the rest is on you.
This marketing tactic seems innocuous until you try to break the pattern of buying kits that LEGO wants you to buy. You can buy individual LEGO blocks, but they can be prohibitively expensive and difficult to find. Pick a Brick is the easiest route, but...well, see for yourself. For an in-depth (and somewhat depressing) discussion about the rising price of LEGO, see Andrew Seilen's article on Reality Prose:
When we are young, we do not know the value of money let alone the toys we play with. Our parents work tirelessly to buy us the newest, most popular toys and we never realize the effort that went into earning that money. Eventually we get our own jobs and have our own kids. The prices of the toys we had as kids comes as a shock. $150 for a toy? $200 for a toy? These prices are outrageous. It is supposed to be a kid’s toy right? Our eyes may be drawn to the large sets but that doesn’t mean that reasonably priced sets are not nearby. In addition, as I stated before, LEGO has started to market some of their sets to an older audience. That $400 Super Star Destroyer is not for your kid; it is for you. This market didn’t exist 20 years ago.
It's perhaps inevitable that two highly creative hobbies converged into one, although not in the way you might expect and not with the results you might hope. Hasbro never got the rights to LEGO but has its own competitive (and LEGO-compatible) brick system, KRE-O.
[h=3]D&D Makes it Official[/h]
Dungeons & Dragons eventually got its own KRE-O line, so if you're looking for orc minifigs you can now get official versions. At $3.50 a figure, you won't be buying a horde of orcs any time soon. LEGO Lord of the Rings figures sell marginally cheaper, but not by much.
Miniature terrain creators noticed that an interchangeable brick system has merit when it comes to imaginative play, and you can see that in recent successful Kickstarters like Dwarven Forge's City Builder Terrain System. It seems terrain designers see the value in an interlocking brick system but don't want to commit to LEGO bricks, perhaps because of their cost.
The one Kickstarter that came closest was Biome Blox. Biome Blox's failure to fund is a heartbreaking lesson in why LEGO bricks haven't replaced miniatures.
[h=3]Biome Blox: The Dream That Collapsed[/h]
Biome Blox combined the interlocking system of LEGO with the smooth surfaces of miniature gaming. In essence, it provided thin, flat pieces to help create any terrain using regular LEGO pieces as a base. It had the potential to change the industry. It failed to reach its goal.
Part of the reason is likely due to cost. Biome Blox only raised $3,374 out of a goal of $109,000. Creator Andrew Valkauskas has since gone on to launch several other successful Kickstarters. Here's what he had to say about why the project didn't fund:
Fortunately, gamers can remedy this with enough LEGO bricks, a lot of dollars, and some hard work.
[h=3]Gamers Pick Up the Slack[/h]There's an Instructables that demonstrates how to make LEGO terrain for Dungeons & Dragons to get you started, and there's an entire Reddit dedicated to the topic, but the best place to start is Lego Digital Designer (LDD) from Lego.com. LDD is essentially a virtual CAD program for LEGO and you can use it to create your models to get an idea of what LEGO bricks you will need.
For inspiration, LUGNET.biz hosts a huge variety of sites filtered by category. Starting with LEGO Castle is a good place to begin to get an idea of what's possible and to inspire your own builds. There's also Brickshelf, which contains massive numbers of pictures of everything that can possibly be created from LEGO. Again, for fantasy games Castle is a good place to start.
And for the truly rare piece that you can't find there's Bricklink. For monsters, there's insects and animals of all types, and a bunch of fantasy critters, including the basilisk, dragons, earth elemental, giant ant, giant lizard, giant spider, gray render, hippogriff, pegasus, phoenix, warg and yeti. Perusing Bricklink makes it clear how many and how costly certain figures are that you might commonly need in a game. A single zombie minifig can average $8 or more!
For terrain, dungeon walls are of course necessary, along with a variety of trees, stumps, and rocks. There's also a huge variety of accessories, including weapons, armor, and miscellaneous equipment. For highly specialized content, check out BrickArms.
You'll also need to consider the playing area, as discussed on Tabletop Terrors:
Minifigures are perhaps the easiest to identify as LEGO has really diversified of late. There's a host of Castle figs that will do nicely, and Zander explains how to line up the minifigures with Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons character classes in this ENWorld thread. If you want premium customized characters, check out BrickWarriors.
[lq]A little research will show that it's actually cheaper to buy prepainted miniatures and terrain than it is to build your own LEGO sets to scale.[/lq]
A little research will show that it's actually cheaper to buy prepainted miniatures and terrain than it is to build your own LEGO sets to scale. The idea of combining miniatures with LEGO bricks has merit -- LEGO certainly thought so with HEROICA -- but the sheer cost of creating something compatible with an interlocking brick system seems prohibitive. Instead, game companies have resorted to making their miniatures interlock without relying on other systems.
If the failure of the Biome Blox Kickstarter was any indication, it seems game companies are not likely to release LEGO-compatible miniature terrain any time soon. But with the rise of 3D-printing, perhaps it's only a matter of time until we all start printing our own bricks.
View attachment 70147
Once you've seen Nathan Stoltenberg’s LEGO brick rendition of Cragmaw Castle you can't see stop thinking about building your own Dungeons & Dragons set. By all accounts, it's the beginning of a trend:
Based on the reception of my PC’s and the positive reception from the Reddit community, I think everyone would be disappointed if I didn’t do at least something each week. We agreed that I would focus on building major set pieces and not waste time with areas the PC’s will just blow through. The next stop is Wave Echo Cave, and since the PC’s have a map, I can build out the whole thing as one piece if I want.
So where why aren't more game designers creating LEGO bricks-compatible D&D dungeons? It's a simple question with a complicated answer.
[h=3]Building the D&D Foundation[/h]
LEGO came to this same conclusion when it launched LEGO HEROICA, which is essentially microfigs in a dungeon. Michael McNally, Brand Relations Director at LEGO Systems, explained in an interview:
HEROICA is a build-and-play adventure. Before you begin gameplay you build the playing field and LEGO Dice using the included LEGO elements. Each of the HEROICA games can be played separately, or combined, to create the ultimate LEGO adventure game experience... What differentiates the entire LEGO Games collection from other more traditional board games, is the idea that it’s customizable and expands players’ imaginations.
If HEROICA isn't your speed for tabletop play, there's always BrickWars:
BRIKWARS is the plastic-brick wargaming system that throws the peaceful worlds of your favorite construction toys into wanton chaos and destruction!
Steve Jackson, founder of GURPS, is such a LEGO fan that he made his own pirate game using LEGO bricks. But if you're looking for D&D-style adventure crawling, BrickQuest may be more your speed:
BrickQuest is a game of small-scale fantasy combat similar to HeroQuest, Warhammer Quest, or MageKnight Dungeons. It requires at least two players to play and can be played easily by four to six players. One player takes on the role of the BrickMaster. His job is to create, using construction blocks, a variety of dungeon rooms in which the game will take place, and creatures to inhabit them. Ideally these rooms will be modular so they can be added to the table one at a time as players enter them or get sight of them. The remaining players will play heroic characters who enter the dungeon in pursuit of gold and glory.
If this sounds familiar, it should. The creation of a dungeon in Dungeons & Dragons has a lot in common with LEGO bricks, as the popularity of Minecraft has demonstrated (we'll leave that topic for another article in the near future).
[h=3]Blowing up Tiny Robots, One Brick at a Time[/h]
Perhaps the most successful example of using LEGO as miniatures is Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack. This Kickstarter created a framework to pit giant robots against each other, a sort of Battletech for LEGO. Of course, half the fun is designing the mechs, so much of the game is finding the pieces to build them and then -- if you're a perfectionist like me -- making sure the mech isn't just functional but that it looks good too. This is a lot harder than it sounds.
You see, the biggest stumbling block to using LEGO is finding the right blocks. The LEGO company knows exactly what they're doing and judiciously guards against exactly what gamers would like to do: buy and build their own LEGO terrain and figures. Why is that?
In some ways it's the same dilemma that Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) faces with Dungeons & Dragons. Once you have the core set to help launch your imagination, why would you ever buy another product?
[LQ]Once you have the core set to help launch your imagination, why would you ever buy another product?[/LQ]
The answer is convenience. WOTC publishes adventures, miniatures, dice, and everything else to save you time and make the game run smoother. LEGO creates kits specifically branded to produce a single idea -- a vehicle, a monster, a character -- and it's up to the consumer to create his own variants. Or to put it another way, LEGO does a very good job of telling you to make a specific thing, and the rest is on you.
This marketing tactic seems innocuous until you try to break the pattern of buying kits that LEGO wants you to buy. You can buy individual LEGO blocks, but they can be prohibitively expensive and difficult to find. Pick a Brick is the easiest route, but...well, see for yourself. For an in-depth (and somewhat depressing) discussion about the rising price of LEGO, see Andrew Seilen's article on Reality Prose:
When we are young, we do not know the value of money let alone the toys we play with. Our parents work tirelessly to buy us the newest, most popular toys and we never realize the effort that went into earning that money. Eventually we get our own jobs and have our own kids. The prices of the toys we had as kids comes as a shock. $150 for a toy? $200 for a toy? These prices are outrageous. It is supposed to be a kid’s toy right? Our eyes may be drawn to the large sets but that doesn’t mean that reasonably priced sets are not nearby. In addition, as I stated before, LEGO has started to market some of their sets to an older audience. That $400 Super Star Destroyer is not for your kid; it is for you. This market didn’t exist 20 years ago.
It's perhaps inevitable that two highly creative hobbies converged into one, although not in the way you might expect and not with the results you might hope. Hasbro never got the rights to LEGO but has its own competitive (and LEGO-compatible) brick system, KRE-O.
[h=3]D&D Makes it Official[/h]
Dungeons & Dragons eventually got its own KRE-O line, so if you're looking for orc minifigs you can now get official versions. At $3.50 a figure, you won't be buying a horde of orcs any time soon. LEGO Lord of the Rings figures sell marginally cheaper, but not by much.
Miniature terrain creators noticed that an interchangeable brick system has merit when it comes to imaginative play, and you can see that in recent successful Kickstarters like Dwarven Forge's City Builder Terrain System. It seems terrain designers see the value in an interlocking brick system but don't want to commit to LEGO bricks, perhaps because of their cost.
The one Kickstarter that came closest was Biome Blox. Biome Blox's failure to fund is a heartbreaking lesson in why LEGO bricks haven't replaced miniatures.
[h=3]Biome Blox: The Dream That Collapsed[/h]
Biome Blox combined the interlocking system of LEGO with the smooth surfaces of miniature gaming. In essence, it provided thin, flat pieces to help create any terrain using regular LEGO pieces as a base. It had the potential to change the industry. It failed to reach its goal.
Part of the reason is likely due to cost. Biome Blox only raised $3,374 out of a goal of $109,000. Creator Andrew Valkauskas has since gone on to launch several other successful Kickstarters. Here's what he had to say about why the project didn't fund:
From the outset, it seemed like a really good idea, but something was definitely a blocker that kept this project from realizing success. The initial response from anyone who loves LEGO or MEGA BLOKS and gaming in general was always super positive. And we factored in all feedback prior to kicking off, knowing full well that the backers will guide the way for biomes and signature blocks. So we structured the KS to allow for such a dynamic funding cycle. The amount of promotion matched and probably exceeded what we did for FOTN:R 20AE so it was definitely something else that caused the blocker. However the limited feedback we received during the KS is inconclusive.
Fortunately, gamers can remedy this with enough LEGO bricks, a lot of dollars, and some hard work.
[h=3]Gamers Pick Up the Slack[/h]There's an Instructables that demonstrates how to make LEGO terrain for Dungeons & Dragons to get you started, and there's an entire Reddit dedicated to the topic, but the best place to start is Lego Digital Designer (LDD) from Lego.com. LDD is essentially a virtual CAD program for LEGO and you can use it to create your models to get an idea of what LEGO bricks you will need.
For inspiration, LUGNET.biz hosts a huge variety of sites filtered by category. Starting with LEGO Castle is a good place to begin to get an idea of what's possible and to inspire your own builds. There's also Brickshelf, which contains massive numbers of pictures of everything that can possibly be created from LEGO. Again, for fantasy games Castle is a good place to start.
And for the truly rare piece that you can't find there's Bricklink. For monsters, there's insects and animals of all types, and a bunch of fantasy critters, including the basilisk, dragons, earth elemental, giant ant, giant lizard, giant spider, gray render, hippogriff, pegasus, phoenix, warg and yeti. Perusing Bricklink makes it clear how many and how costly certain figures are that you might commonly need in a game. A single zombie minifig can average $8 or more!
For terrain, dungeon walls are of course necessary, along with a variety of trees, stumps, and rocks. There's also a huge variety of accessories, including weapons, armor, and miscellaneous equipment. For highly specialized content, check out BrickArms.
You'll also need to consider the playing area, as discussed on Tabletop Terrors:
For best flatness, you need a 3×3 tile space to fit a standard 1″ wide miniature base. (If you’re using LEGO minifigures, you need a 4×4 plate space to have enough space for minifigures to fit.) Since D&D is scaled for 5 feet = 1 map sqaure, that means that a 10′ wide hallway is going to be 6 studs wide. Stairs have to be able to accommodate miniatures, which means those 2×4 bricks the creator uses are not going to be able to be used in play. (He’d be better off using 2 2×3 plates, allowing a miniature to sit halfway between the bottom level and top level.)
Minifigures are perhaps the easiest to identify as LEGO has really diversified of late. There's a host of Castle figs that will do nicely, and Zander explains how to line up the minifigures with Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons character classes in this ENWorld thread. If you want premium customized characters, check out BrickWarriors.
[lq]A little research will show that it's actually cheaper to buy prepainted miniatures and terrain than it is to build your own LEGO sets to scale.[/lq]
A little research will show that it's actually cheaper to buy prepainted miniatures and terrain than it is to build your own LEGO sets to scale. The idea of combining miniatures with LEGO bricks has merit -- LEGO certainly thought so with HEROICA -- but the sheer cost of creating something compatible with an interlocking brick system seems prohibitive. Instead, game companies have resorted to making their miniatures interlock without relying on other systems.
If the failure of the Biome Blox Kickstarter was any indication, it seems game companies are not likely to release LEGO-compatible miniature terrain any time soon. But with the rise of 3D-printing, perhaps it's only a matter of time until we all start printing our own bricks.
