In Place of Chainmail?
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Foundry of Decay
First Post
Just as long as they don't *only* go towards cheap plastic figures. I'm one of those odd ones that LOVE dynamic, well painted figures. I enjoy the art of painting them, and doing conversions. If Wizards does utterly lose their collective minds and do nothing but those hideous looking Mage Knight-esque figures, I'm sure that they'd lose every miniature enthusiast in an instant.
Personally, I love the fodder idea as long as they keep producing metal, well crafted figures. They could go the GW route and perhaps produce good, hard cast resin 'sprue' models (Which are insanely easy to put together) for the rank and file fodder, and keep producing metal D&D/Wargame 'leader' types.. Just as long as they stay at least 16 Kilometers away from GW's mad bananna cost hiking for these 'rare' models.
Personally, I love the fodder idea as long as they keep producing metal, well crafted figures. They could go the GW route and perhaps produce good, hard cast resin 'sprue' models (Which are insanely easy to put together) for the rank and file fodder, and keep producing metal D&D/Wargame 'leader' types.. Just as long as they stay at least 16 Kilometers away from GW's mad bananna cost hiking for these 'rare' models.
The problem I had with chainmail was exactly the "PC class" miniatures. I have bought several of the monsters, because I found them to be fun to do. (I love the Otyug)
But the biggest down side to the "branded art" of 3E is that I just don't like it. So I stick to Reaper for my PC class miniatures because they do not have the buckle fetish or the odd spikes.
I was hoping for more D&D style monsters that I could add to my repitoire. A good Chimera or a variant Beholder or something that just screams D&D. I like the Gnolls, but half of them are "fiendish" which I don't need.
It just seems like they went with all the "oddball" PC class and monster groups that would have limited appeal. While it is nice that is out there for folks, it doesn't keep a game from going under...
But the biggest down side to the "branded art" of 3E is that I just don't like it. So I stick to Reaper for my PC class miniatures because they do not have the buckle fetish or the odd spikes.
I was hoping for more D&D style monsters that I could add to my repitoire. A good Chimera or a variant Beholder or something that just screams D&D. I like the Gnolls, but half of them are "fiendish" which I don't need.
It just seems like they went with all the "oddball" PC class and monster groups that would have limited appeal. While it is nice that is out there for folks, it doesn't keep a game from going under...
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For anyone who doesn't have the Lord of the Rings Battle Game, combat is very simple. Each character has just a few stats: a Fight score (actually, one value for melee and one for ranged combat), a Strength score (think Damage), a Defense score (Armor, but also Hit Points), number of Attacks, Wounds (think Hit Points or Hit Dice), etc. In melee, each character rolls one die; higher roll wins; ties go to the character with a higher Fight score. Then damage is a roll and a look-up on the Strength vs. Defense table to see how many Wounds the attack causes. Grunts only have one Wound. Heroes get two. A Cave Troll gets three.
Ds Da Man
First Post
While I like the easy rules, I do want some special rules that reflect the characters strength as he goes up in level, like D&D. I also want to configure a unit of various members, give them special unit feats (things like "Hold the line", or "Hot Shots") thast make a unit special. Ease and accuracy of putting in PCs, cheap mini's, good battle magic rules, and units with special abilities are the real meat of a good tabletop battle.
Crypt King
First Post
They have that in the new Chainmail Campaign book, raising levels and such. With a little effort you could easily make those special factions (with the feats and such).
I truly have no love for Reaper anymore, they are just variants of the same model and the bases are too large, larger then the inch black square, which makes them impossible to use in a scale environment, such as a Master Maze setup or similar.
Now what I would like is a way to pick up the variant sculpts that come from Chainmail league play.
CRG
First Post
This is VoodooGroves - I'm in processing of changing all of my accounts (hotmail, AIM, etc.) over to a new name. We use AIM sometimes to talk to customers as well as hotmail occaisonally on the road and really, I'm getting alot of flak for the "voodoo".
So sad. Anywho.
Here's the basic gist...
Like I said previously we've tried to do miniatures battles using older Warhammer systems on top of our D&D games. Once every few months, etc. where the miniatures battle fought represented some part of a large campaign (game was set in GH after the ashes kinda time period). For a variety of reasons, it didn't work.
So, here's what we decided we wanted / needed
- Characters / creatures should translate across proprotionately. Elves and their dex bonus should come across, as should the dwarven con bonus, etc. It didn't need to be a serious factor at every point but really, the D&D attributes should matter and translate
- Skills and feats of indviduals (whether leaders or not) should also be roughly translated. There should be a feel that things
- Magic system should be D&D / D20. Maybe its a simplified version, but all sorts of funky specialness from the D&D system should exist (magic missile, mordenkainen's sword, etc. should all work as you may expect).
- The ruleset needed to be easily understood and D20 based. We didn't want to have to relearn / reteach another system while playing.
- Some guidelines needed to exist that tranlsated the CR appropriately for the various models onto the battlefield. We wanted to make sure that if we did a skirmish of a few ogres against a bunch of warriors using the normal D&D rules that the overall outcome and balance would be the same if we "scaled it up" to a battlefield.
- It needed to be faster and simpler than ordinary D20 with 500 models - no complex math, etc. We needed to play this in an afternoon or evening
The basic point of these is that we wanted something that scaled up, looked like D&D, smelled lie D&D and that we could play using semi-broken down D20 rules. It needed to have D&D balance. At any point where we "simplified" or sped things up we wanted a person playing for the first to think "oh yeah, makes sense. gave up some granularity for speed. its still basically D&D though".
To that end, I've put something together and asked the Natural 20 press folks to look at it. With their Supers Tookit coming out in a few weeks, I expect they are busy. Hopefully I'll hear something back soon.
Does this help?
So sad. Anywho.
Here's the basic gist...
Like I said previously we've tried to do miniatures battles using older Warhammer systems on top of our D&D games. Once every few months, etc. where the miniatures battle fought represented some part of a large campaign (game was set in GH after the ashes kinda time period). For a variety of reasons, it didn't work.
So, here's what we decided we wanted / needed
- Characters / creatures should translate across proprotionately. Elves and their dex bonus should come across, as should the dwarven con bonus, etc. It didn't need to be a serious factor at every point but really, the D&D attributes should matter and translate
- Skills and feats of indviduals (whether leaders or not) should also be roughly translated. There should be a feel that things
- Magic system should be D&D / D20. Maybe its a simplified version, but all sorts of funky specialness from the D&D system should exist (magic missile, mordenkainen's sword, etc. should all work as you may expect).
- The ruleset needed to be easily understood and D20 based. We didn't want to have to relearn / reteach another system while playing.
- Some guidelines needed to exist that tranlsated the CR appropriately for the various models onto the battlefield. We wanted to make sure that if we did a skirmish of a few ogres against a bunch of warriors using the normal D&D rules that the overall outcome and balance would be the same if we "scaled it up" to a battlefield.
- It needed to be faster and simpler than ordinary D20 with 500 models - no complex math, etc. We needed to play this in an afternoon or evening
The basic point of these is that we wanted something that scaled up, looked like D&D, smelled lie D&D and that we could play using semi-broken down D20 rules. It needed to have D&D balance. At any point where we "simplified" or sped things up we wanted a person playing for the first to think "oh yeah, makes sense. gave up some granularity for speed. its still basically D&D though".
To that end, I've put something together and asked the Natural 20 press folks to look at it. With their Supers Tookit coming out in a few weeks, I expect they are busy. Hopefully I'll hear something back soon.
Does this help?
CRG
First Post
Before we get wierdly off topic
Let me say something else before we get wierdly off topic.
I bought Chainmail thinking it would be a mass combat system. In that sense, I was dissappointed. It certainly is not.
Sure, I can also say the Origins awards aren't known for being completely objective.
Either way, I actually LIKED Chainmail. It was enjoyable. I liked the scenario setups, simplicity of play, etc. It too was a game that I could look at and say "yep, this is D&D" even though I couldn't really scale it up a bunch of spearmen in tight ranks fighting an ogre onslaught.
And personally, I loved the gnolls and socialist-dwarves.
Let me say something else before we get wierdly off topic.
I bought Chainmail thinking it would be a mass combat system. In that sense, I was dissappointed. It certainly is not.
Sure, I can also say the Origins awards aren't known for being completely objective.
Either way, I actually LIKED Chainmail. It was enjoyable. I liked the scenario setups, simplicity of play, etc. It too was a game that I could look at and say "yep, this is D&D" even though I couldn't really scale it up a bunch of spearmen in tight ranks fighting an ogre onslaught.
And personally, I loved the gnolls and socialist-dwarves.
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