Who plays DDM Skirmish?

[Ghendar]

I voted yes, but I only play sporadically.

 

[blargney the second]

I started to play DDM when my D&D group was on a several-month hiatus. When the RPG picked up again, I stopped skirmishing.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Yes, although either option 3 (used to but don't anymore) or option 4 (would like to but can't) are close to the truth, too. I have a small number of D&D minis and once in a blue moon play the skirmish game, but it's definitely not a regular thing.

However, I play Star Wars minis at least twice a month.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

That's because, among other things, that's not what it is.

Why do you call DDM chess, then?

My point is that miniatures skirmish games are an interaction of figure statistics in preset configurations -- a figure can move X amount, can do Y actions, etc. Dice rolling and the building of bands are the variations I referred to. DDM is more like chess, than either chess or DDM are like D&D.

Depends on what you compare: The D&D combat rules are quite similar to the DDM rules. It's not the same as D&D (combat game vs. roleplaying game), but it's quite far away from chess, too - far enough to say that you can't really compare it to chess at all.

For me, i would rather just set up a battle with D&D rules and let that play out. I don't really see the need for separate DDM rules

D&D isn't made for that kind of game: there's a lot of complex rules there, and it isn't made for two bands of combatants fighting each other competitively.

Once you change the rules so you can play player vs player without a DM, make it simpler to speed up game, add some rules to have command, take away character creation to create balanced units with reasonable point costs, you've arrived at a different game.

Plus, skirmish looks pretty complicated

I'd say easy to learn, difficult to master. Once you find the differences between these rules and D&D, and got your head about the couple of rules that are somewhat complicated, it's really quite easy to know the rules. The complicated part really is knowing what minis are good (and what they're good for) and how you create a decent warband.

 

[painandgreed]

Played it once. Seemed pretty fun. Essencially D&D with all damage and hit points rounded to 5 hit points and rules printed on cards. If they came out with rules so that it could be played as a RPG/Dungeon style game with character advancement (and non-random minis), I might think about playing it.

Played Dreamblade also. That is actually much like a miniature wargame chess combo. Fun. I'd play it again but I'd never buy the minis.

 

[humble minion]

I think a more interesting question would be "who of those who buy D&D miniatures plays DDM skirmish?"

 

[CrimsonWineGlass]

I've been interested in trying my hand, but haven't gotten a chance as of yet.

 

[occam]

I buy plenty of D&D minis, but only for RPG use. I've never played the skirmish rules, and don't have any real interest in them.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

If they came out with rules so that it could be played as a RPG/Dungeon style game with character advancement (and non-random minis), I might think about playing it.

Let's not get into the random/non-random discussion, but it's amazing that they didn't come up with a decent ruleset for HeroQuest style dungeon crawls. They could use the DDM stats for enemies, some leveling scheme for characters, and a way to populate the dungeon.

 

[charlesatan]

Let's not get into the random/non-random discussion, but it's amazing that they didn't come up with a decent ruleset for HeroQuest style dungeon crawls. They could use the DDM stats for enemies, some leveling scheme for characters, and a way to populate the dungeon.

I forgot where I read it but you can "randomly" populate a dungeon by shuffling the monster cards then dealing them. Instant random generator (although some sorting needs to be done unless your 20th-level party suddenly faces CR 3 monsters and vice versa).