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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DamionW" data-source="post: 2719813" data-attributes="member: 18649">Well the thing is, it's not just a lack of utility to war-gaming style DnD players with mass battles.  It's a lack of utility to a starting gamer period.  Let's look at the new RPG DM/player, and how they have to face an introduction to DnD.  Let's say they played an RPG once or twice and liked what they saw, but they're still new to it and don't have a regular experienced group to break them in.  A friend game master they know recommends they pick up a Dungeons and Dragons core set of rule books to get a feel for RPGs and play it out with their friends.  So buy a 3.5 set and see all of the illustrations and references to the 1inch/5foot battlespace where combats are fought in.  They think, "Ok, this is like that role-playing stuff I did, but they have little figures so it's part board game.  Cool, this will help me cross the gap from stuff I know."  So they go and pick up a set of DnD minis and what do they find?A box with a whole bunch of obscure monsters/races and maybe one/two figures they could use to make up an average adventuring party.  Also included are a whole bunch of stat cards which have some familiar looking terminology, but some alien terminology too.  He wants to run a basic RPG adventure with his friends vs. some low CR adversaries, but he still confused as to what good the cards serve him as a DM and how to incorporate his Ethereal Filcher and Half-Illithid Lizardfolk figures.  All he wants is to try a battle between the Human cleric, Hafling Rogue, Elf wizard, and Dwarf fighter his players made up vs. some orcs like from the LotR movie he saw, but he's too busy trying to buy some spare boxes of DnD minis and figuring out the skirmishing rules and how they relate to the RPG rules to make up his adventure.  He's not as well versed as us ENWorlders, so he may not be very well aware of the secondary market yet.Now if he could just pick up off the shelf a product made by WotC such as: "DnD RPG 1 inch props:  Adventuring Party 1" which has a non random wizard figure, fighter figure, rogue figure and cleric figure, they might not be the exact image his players have for their characters, but it's a start.  If right next to it he saw: "Orc war party" with 4 standardized orc figures and a orc war chief figure, he could just take the battlemat from the back of the DMG and just start playing the RPG rather than trying to get both into the hobby of DMing a role-playing game AND collecting miniatures.  That could only help DnD RPG sales, I can't imagine a way it could go so horribly wrong as to not be worth it for WotC.  As it stands right now, new role-players have to dump money into two hobbies at once and try and distinguish between two rulesets that are unrelated and without an experienced DM to walk them through the process, it could turn them off from DnD as a whole.</blockquote>

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