Bases & Spaces

As I've been slowly sowing the seeds of an old-school RPG campaign (probably using White Box, supplemented with things from the Swords & Wizardry Complete Rules and various other sources), my mind has turned to the question of miniatures. I like collecting them (though not painting them), and several of my players find them extremely helpful in play. But the current vogue for RPG minis - 28mm tall, with a 20mm circular base - makes enforcing detailed facing difficult.

I can't use 1" square bases with 1" square spaces on a mat; if someone needs to face diagonally (which will probably happen a lot), they'll be partially blocking all four cardinally adjacent spaces. I thought about hexagonal bases, but the problem of front/flank/rear spaces - or rather, assigning them so they'll be consistent between figures with symmetrical, wide, and long bases - gave me several days of headaches a little over a year ago before I just decided to drop it. So as far as shape goes, I've got two main ones: square (for obvious reasons) or octagonal.

Why octagons? Simple: they fit just as snugly as square bases of the same size, but allow for easy 45-degree rotation. The downside of octagons is that they aren't nearly as common as squares or hexes, but this site has a good selection of them, plus a handy custom-build option that lets you choose your material and size. An option I've been considering (octagons made of clear acrylic) runs under $8 USD for a 25-pack.

Now for the size... 3/4" square bases are a great option for a number of reasons. They don't overlap 1" spaces as much, they're easy to find (I grabbed a big bag of wooden squares from a chain craft store's woodworking section), and they're the size used for a number of games - including Battlesystem, vintage Warhammer, and Daniel Collins' rather excellent Book of War. And something else I realized: if I go with 1 1/2" spaces on the tabletop (to more closely model oD&D's 1"=10' scale), then up to four figures could fit in a single space if packed tightly enough. The downside of 3/4" bases is that some of my minis have a bit too wide of a stance to easily fit on a square that small - hence my consideration of 1" octagons.

Having said all of that, as much as I like Fitz's mat of offset squares, it wouldn't play as nice with octagonal bases. They could still work, but I'd be a bit miffed at two whole sides going unused. And 3/4" octagons would be even harder to fit some figures onto.

I honestly don't care if this meme is dead.

Flakiness (a rant)

The big issue for me isn't getting people to agree on an edition: it's finding people in the first place. Not just anyone, but someone who's willing to read the rules (at least partially) and, y'know, actually show up.

I've had trouble getting reliable people since I first started GMing. My first group had four players, one of whom would follow exactly the same pattern for every session after the first two or three. I'd announce the time of the next session to everyone several days in advance, and he'd say that time worked for him. The day before the session, I would check with him to make sure he was still coming; he would assure me that he was.

The day of the session? Nothing. No phone call or text to say he wasn't coming, and no answer when any of us tried calling him ourselves.

(I hope it doesn't seem like I'm ragging on this guy; he was fun to hang out with, very knowledgeable about D&D - particularly Forgotten Realms, since he read a lot of fantasy fiction - and overall a good person, but this was a pretty annoying habit he had.)

In my slightly nebulous group that started off playing AD&D 2nd Edition, I was able to get the group to meet a total of one time. This session was never finished; one of the players had a call from "work" (of dubious legality), and had to leave immediately. The others soon followed. The next attempted session, the only group member who showed up was the guy whose house we were playing at. Fortunately, he brought one of his friends, and even more fortunately, I had a pre-made character he could use. Unfortunately, that unexpected friend had to leave unexpectedly.

More recently, a B/X D&D game I attempted to run (one session so far...) collapsed in a perfect storm of unplanned delays and last-minute changes of plan. One of the players wasn't feeling well, one was still out of town visiting friends, one was tied up in some kind of legal matter - a disputed ticket, or something of that nature - and one just plain overslept after a late night. The one guy who did show up went with me to grab some video games for what turned out to be (in a kind of baleful synchronicity) a mini LAN party that failed due to a faulty cable. Considering the work I've put into this so far, I'm wondering if I should try to have another session with the same group.

Speaking of video games, that's probably why tabletop games seem to be played so little. In today's world of blogs, PDF stores and print-on-demand, a game can be made and distributed for minimal cost, and reach a far wider audience than one which would be subject to corporate marketing requirements (side note: I saw a gigantic hardcover copy of Dungeon Crawl Classics at one of my local chain bookstores). The problem is, no one wants to put forth the effort to play in one of these games.

I know I'll probably come across as a disgruntled cynic of twice my actual age, but I see no more obvious culprit for this than video games. A person can sit at home on their computer (or in front of their console of choice, etc.) and immerse themselves in a highly addictive, brightly colored fantasy world with thousands of other people from all over the globe... or they can try to get together with half a dozen real-world friends, have to read stuff - read, as in words in a book! - and roll dice for four hours.

A telling sign? The university I attend has a semi-official League of Legends "team", but nothing in the way of tabletop gaming. I'd wager that there was a group of avid (A)D&D players here ten to fifteen years ago, but no more.

At least another FLGS opened up recently that has table space for RPGs; of the other hobby/game stores in town, one caters mostly to R/C and Gunpla (and consequently has no tables, although they do have some Warhammer and The Hobbit wargame stuff), and the other doesn't allow RPGs to be played at their tables (only card/board/wargames). Every so often when I'm doing stuff there, someone walks by and asks what we're doing. Genuinely curious.

...Maybe I should ask around there soon.

Metal and Plastic Miniatures

As I've been getting back into collecting a small number of miniatures to use in (A)D&D, I've noticed my attitudes changing slightly about different types of miniatures.

First, I've basically abandoned the idea of purchasing pre-painted plastic miniatures, of the kind out for both Pathfinder and D&D now. They're too expensive, especially because the only way to acquire multiple miniatures at once from a local store is to buy the blind booster packs. What's preventing my $18 to $20 (USD) from getting me three to four miniatures I'll never have the desire to use? In addition, I find that super-detailed, full-color miniatures - even the cardstock pawns that Paizo sells - tend to distract my players too much. Of course, I might have a skewed sample, considering that three of my original four players (back when we started with the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box) had either ADD or ADHD; but the other reason for not actively seeking these out is due to the fact that they won't mesh well with the single-colored plastic minis I have a lot of. Currently, the only pre-painted minis that I own are the ones from HeroScape (many of which are poorly suited to fantasy games), and the Lizardfolk Champion I bought back when I was bopping around Golarion as Sradan.

Speaking of unpainted plastic minis, I found myself with a large number of them after buying the Temple of Elemental Evil board game. Not only do I have a decent set of PC minis (even if the dark blue coloring makes the details hard to pick out; nobody realized that Barrowin the cleric was a woman until I called her "she"), I also have a few good generic monsters. The hobgoblins are basically indistinguishable from orcs, and the troglodytes would make suitable, if slightly short, lizardfolk. The bigger 'boss' monsters (a salamander, an ettin, some elementals, and a beautifully sculpted dragon) might come in handy for future adventures, too. Honestly, for about $60, I feel like I got my money's worth on minis alone, even if I may never play the board game again. (Plus, I kind of want to do a random dungeon crawl using the jigsaw Dungeon Tiles.)

Reaper also makes some very nice 'plastic' (10% recycled resin) monsters, many of which are available in three- to six-packs. So far, I have only one set of these, but I definitely plan to acquire more in the future from their "Bones" lines.

Now we move on to metal minis. One of the three FLGSs in my city caters mostly to wargamers (Warhammer, Hordes, etc.) and TCG players; they have the standard selection of D&D and Pathfinder books - including the OD&D wood box set! - but I imagine those aren't their biggest sellers. I went to this store in search of some minis to use for D&D. One that I found was excellent on all counts: 1" square base, no assembly required (beyond gluing the base on), and dirt cheap at a current list price of $6. High off of this success, I went looking for another, but I seemed to have bought the one miniature in the entire store that didn't have to have its arms glued into place. The level of detail on some of these is excellent (even if a lot of Warhammer and other minis have too many gears and guns for straight fantasy), but the prices vary widely, and the assembly is not something I'd like to have to do too often. EDIT: One that I bought had its arm knocked off, which was almost impossible to glue back on since it had been attached to its base (causing it to roll). Yeah, no more metal minis for me.

Nor do I have the desire to paint said miniatures; I don't have the money to buy the necessary tools, and even if I had unlimited money that could be spent only on painting minis, I wouldn't have the patience or free time to do more than a couple.

What ever happened to fantasy miniatures that had built-in bases? When I played in the short-lived D&D 3.5 campaign, the DM brought a bunch of relics he apparently borrowed from his dad. Besides the wonderfully thick and durable Chessex mat, he had a bag of old, probably lead-based minis which were in various conditions. Some had little bits of paint left on them (probably also lead-based; it might actually have been a blessing that we didn't spend more time touching these while eating pizza), and some were partly or completely broken... but overall, they were pretty cool. My half-orc bard even got a figure which vaguely resembled some kind of demi-human in light armor! Anyway, these figures had their own bases, and I wonder why more people don't make minis like this these days. Having a built-in base cuts down on the assembly and prep time needed, and means less gluing for the player. (Reaper's "Bones" resin miniatures boast on the package that they're ready-to-play as soon as you open them, which is definitely a selling point for me.)

P. S.  The plastic minis are one reason I would love to get a hold of a good-condition copy of DragonStrike; having a generic group of PCs and a good variety of monsters would be pretty cool. I'm also partial to square bases, too; for some reason, I feel like they're 'cooler' than the small round ones which accompany modern D&D and Pathfinder minis.