Goodman Games

I plan to. I got in on the reaper kickstarted and will have > 200 minis coming. I'm looking forward to using mini's in the game. I'm interested if anyone thinks the game needs more "house rules" for mini play.

Some shots from our finale of Sailors on the Starless Sea, using Lego minis:


This is just after the party started engaging the stragglers... Dolores the Chaotic Thief is the girl in green w/red hair following the mob, who are following Juan Delgado the Chaotic Warrior wearing the black silk tabard. The guy in the white cloak is the cleric, the red cloaked noble next to him was converted to his religion and he's trying to help him against some beastmen. The three acolytes are attending the shaman in the center and about to throw a maiden into the pit.


Close up of the cleric (w/ holy symbol! and blackened mace!) versus two beastmen. Two mithral shortswords are on the ground... dropped by the halfling who got abducted. Dead beastmen pushed off the side of the ziggurat to the right (backstabbed by Dolores).


Close up of the halfling being mobbed up the ramp. Dolores on the ramp below them, sneaking along and getting stabby. I think that's the guy she finally missed in front of her.

I haven't (yet), but plan to, with 2D and 3D terrain. I wasn't planning on introducing any new rules, though - just to use them for clarity and atmosphere. I wouldn't want DCC to turn into a minis game. Also, in general I prefer to use minis for set pieces, not use them for every corridor explored. (I _have_ done that in the past, and it wasn't great.)

I always use them. It just helps people visualize what's going on, I think. Even for the boring corridors between rooms. I use a white board grid similar to the one in the pictures above, but the squares are only for scale reference - I never liked the way 3E & 4E insisted on turning the playing area into a board with squares. Too much like you are playing a game of Clue, if you ask me.

We've never really needed to have any house rules because of the miniatures. We just play like you would otherwise, but use models to depict where the characters, monsters and environment is.

I haven't used minis since I stopped playing 4e. Back in the day, pre-3e, we used minis purely for reference, it never dictated play. I find that it took away from the narrative and descriptive combat that I prefer as a GM. But I still have tons of minis from 3e/4e days.

I play with mini using a battlemat & pens similar to what you showed in the pictures. Again, jst to help the player's visualize a cavern size & what not, and to give a ...waves hand at battlemat vaguely... sense of positioning and range in combat.

The very tactical nature of 4E made it feel like a much different game. Not necessarily a bad game, but very different and tactical. In the past I've said, "it's like the difference between Risk and Stratego... both great games, but very different..."

Personally, I prefer not to play with minis, but the crowd I run with likes to have 'em on the table. So in the two games I've run so far we have done the battlemap & minis thang.

The first time around we used lego minifigs and for the second session we used the classic old Steve Jackson Games Cardboard Heroes. In general the intent is, as others have said of their own games, pretty much just to give a little help to visualization and maybe some bit of positioning/range stuff.

For me, the game has ALWAYS been about minis, just as much as about funky shaped dice. What I love about legos is the customization that you can do on the fly. Much lighter than metal too.

When I began playing with the blue box and 1E, I just painted the minis without using them for any game mechanics. From 2E onward, I always used minis. Now my group games via VTT and we use tokens. However, at this year's Pacificon I attended one of Joseph Goodman's sessions and we used neither minis nor a map; it totally worked, maintaining a rapid pace to the game. I suggested to some of my players trying some sessions without tokens, but they didn't want to. They like the visual representation and using it to think tactically.

I use Warhammer minis, some Heroquest, DnD board game minis and Steve Jackson's Cardboard Heroes. I glue the cardboard minis to poker chips for extra stability.

We've long used minis for much the same reasons that everyone else is saying: unified mental picture, keeping track of who's in the room/not in the room, etc. Sometimes, things get tactical...

But if you have a group that *always* uses minis, and resists not using them for a session, you could try to sneak in a single, brief encounter where you just narrate what happens. They still might fight it, but it might work.

We have done this for years, generally for the sorts of encounters where it'd take longer to draw things out and place people on the table, than to actually get through the encounter. But I had the "new guy" resist it the first time it happened after he'd joined; he was afraid he wouldn't be able to get his sneak attack set up if there was no map. It probably took me and another player longer to talk him down and assure him it'd be alright, than to play out the encounter, but it was important to get him to try it. It was a small room with a single opponent; basically, a move action would get you anywhere in the room you wanted to be, so 'lining up' a sneak attack wasn't an issue, per se. As GM, if he wanted to make a sneak attack in that fight, I gave it to him, such was the situation; he was basically circling the fighters who were circling the creature, and sniping through the ranks.

I'd like to think his gaming world got a teeny bit larger that day.

He's probably forgotten the encounter ever happened.

I've used minis for pretty much all of my dm life. 1e, 2e, 3e. We are going to be starting a google plus game when I move away from my group and we are going to try and not use minis for that one.

I have yet to break out any minis, but your pics of the LEGO's have me really considering that option. I find I just do not have the time to paint up hordes of figures anymore, and I HATE the randomization of the pre-painted plastics. But the LEGO way! wow, everyone truly can create their own mini. And now with the release of those LEGO lord of the rings sets!

Beermotor, how did you get all those minotaur heads and brown LEGO bodies for the beastmen? Did you recently start to use LEGO, or has this been something you've done even before DCC?

I sold all my metal miniatures, made like $400 ... so I started collecting through eBay. There's a minotaur mini and a Godzilla suit mini, so I mixed them along with some vampire bat minis to simulate the mutated beastmen. The hex bases are essential, and not too expensive. There's a ton of stuff you can get as far as customization. I got a bunch of robes and colored cloaks for people of the pit ... gonna rule.

We've been playing DCC with minis on a table and in MapTool for a few months. We have very few house-rules:

* Attackers get a +2 to hit bonus when flanking an opponent.
* Creatures cannot move diagonally around corners.
* Moving through party members costs one additional movement point per character.
* Diagonal movement cost alternates between 1, 2, 1, 2,... movement points.
* Thieves can try to back-stab when they have flanking, but depending on circumstances, this usually requires a sneak check. After a thief performs one successful back-stab, the monsters become aware of the threat, and the DC for back-stabbing while flanking increases. The base DC is 10 for most monsters, 15 for monsters that might know the thief for what he is, or monsters with superior senses, or 20 for monsters with praeternatural senses.

Players sometimes want to run to increase their combat speed. I usually rule that this requires an agility and/or stamina check and that all running motion must be roughly in a straight line, though players can change directions by risking a higher DC on the skill check.

Everything else is handled with ad hoc rulings. Warriors use MDoA's to do things like maneuver without provoking free-whacks from the monsters, to allow other characters to fall-back safely, to draw the monster forward into a new square, and similar. One player uses MDoA's to distribute his weapon damage between two (or more, with a deed roll >=4) adjacent enemies. This has proven very handy against hoards of flimsier opponents.

When we first started I thought I would end up needing a lot of house-rules to use minis, but it's worked out quite well with just these limited rules.

We did house-rule initiative to a party-initiative system. On the party's turn, all the characters go at the same time. Players declare any spells they want to cast or items to use at the start of the party initiative, but the spells/items can come out at any point on their turn. (Casting the declared spell or using the item is mandatory after it's been declared.) We do all the movement before resolving spells and attacks, but allow missile weapons before movement if players desire. We make a new initiative check every turn, so sometimes either the party or the monsters receive two turns in a row. We have found this system to go much faster than going character by character. I usually have the character who encounters the monsters make the first initiative roll for the party, then the party can designate one character to roll on their behalf after that.

In special circumstances I sometimes require players to declare their actions for the round simultaneously and secretly (little slips of paper in a cup, or by whisper-chat in Map Tool). I sometimes limit all communication between players to a six-second period at the start of each turn. I find it particularly enjoyable when all the players shout for six-seconds, and then at the end, none of them has heard what anyone else was trying to say. This happens often.

When we're not using MapTool we play on a 4' x 8' whiteboard. I used a Dremel to drill tiny holes on the surface of the whiteboard in a 2" grid. It works very well.

I feel your pain -- which is why most of what I have from those lines has been from second-hand sources (or from first-hand sources who opened the pack and sold off the commons and uncommons). Okay, so I have very few rares. But when LOTS of the rest of them were 10¢ to 25¢ each, how could it be wrong?

Same here. I've bought a few common and uncommon sets on ebay when they first released, and managed to scrounge up a few lots of kobolds and gnolls, but now that they're all out of print buying them secondhand costs almost as much as metal minis. I managed to snag a few of the "rares" early on as well since I wanted a few mind flayers and elementals. The new Dungeon Command sets look nice but they basically want you to pay $40 for a set of minis when you might not use all of them. And the new Pathfinder minis might start showing up in cheap sets on ebay.

Y'all are going to absolutely crap your drawers when you see what I'm getting for the Hound of Hirot. (a FENRIS wolf!) I'll get a bunch of pictures. It's going to be epic.

The Vikings line has some great dragons in it, too.. but the sets are expensive. I'm considering picking up some Harry Potter basilisks to use for the basilisks in People of the Put, they're a little more reasonable and I could build some little legs to go on 'em.

My mini use is pretty selective. Most of the time I don't bother with them because I feel like it slows my game down, but when we get to a critical scene I dust off something to make it more visual. Of course, often my battleboard is a sheet of notebook paper and my "minis" are dice or buttons or something similar, but at least it's something so my players can see where things are found in the encounter.

I have the 4E board games and the old HeroQuest board game and some GW Lord of the Rings dudes. Those are the bulk of the minis that I own and use. I don't object to having spiffy miniatures but they tend to be expensive and hard to store, and I dislike painting them.

I use em only for battles -
I think they are essential for visualizing combat correctly.
As one of my first DMs said "figures don't lie"
It clears up any arguing of "I was over there by the door!"
and keeping track of whos attacking who.
Especially with larger numbers.

Only drawback is the cost so I found creative(free) solution.
I save images from the web of painted minis of the creatures I need pre session...
print them all out on one sheet, have it laminated, cut em out with
an xacto knife and slot them into medium size binder clips (from office max)
that have the metal clips taken out (so its just a black triangle stand that they slot into firm.)
I have 12 of them all with numbers 1-12 on them, so they (and I)
know the damage of each individual mob instantly and they can just yell out
"I'm aiming at #4!" or whatever.
I make all my enemy stat sheets the night before that are numbered as well.
(so I know which is the leader without it being obvious to them, etc)

Once you make a certain creature once, you have em in your ever growing mini collection.

I'm a complete "Theatre of the Mind" guy, at most using a roughly sketched map. I actively let Players describe elements of the environment that are appropriate, and don't sweat the details too much as it creates a much more fluid, swashbuckling feel. To quote Feng Shui: "The map is not your friend." Still, with Kickstarters like Reaper's recent one, I have been tempted by minis now and then.

Colin

How do you deal with the occasional player that has said they are by the door, but as soon as things get interesting elsewhere they are 'magically' right there, too? Obviously, if they do this once, not a big issue, but speaking for myself there are occasionally those folks that just do it over and over and over.

I love 'Theatre' as well, but sometimes I find minis, for placement, if not for 'tactical' play, alleviate this issue. Maybe you've been blessed to never have the like at your table...

I deal with such cretins by not playing with them. As you said, once isn't a big deal, but someone who'd basically cheat all the time that way isn't someone I'd want at the table. If they're going to try and pull stunts like that (pun not intended) I'd be wondering what other tricks they'd try and pull. Like I expect my players to trust me, I expect to be able to trust my players.

Colin

Well, you're right of course -- but I used to run at least one game at every convention I went to, and back in the day, I'd attend three each year locally. With no say as to who was at my table for the 'official' games, and to try to insure things didn't get bogged down with needless argument, minis made such challenges avoidable.

Also, I find if someone's attention has wandered, they don't need as much (or any) being brought back up to speed -- they can look at the table and see what's what... Saves re-establishing things, esp. since I tend to lose my voice by the 5th or 6th hour of GMing, if I don't pace myself (and drink water water water!).

I use minis, but not for all encounters.