To Mini ... Or Not to Mini?

Are miniatures a crutch that impedes the growth of a vivid imagination, or a tool that helps kids (who are used to their entertainment and games having potent, interactive visual components) access an otherwise esoteric medium?

When I started role-playing in 1981 we didn't use miniatures, but this illustration from the Tom Moldvay Basic D&D boxed set always itched at the edge of my brain:

Nothing in the picture, and little in the text, really suggested what one was supposed to do with the miniatures ... but they were clearly part of the cool, exotic paraphernalia that marked D&D as fundamentally different from any other leisure activity that we'd ever encountered.

By 1984 I had started GMing games for the kids in the nearby subdivision ... something that I'd continue for about the next decade ... and along with more books and rules (starting with Monster Manual of course) I began acquiring a few lead miniatures from Heritage's Dungeon Dwellers line.

David Campbell has a keen site here that lists much of the line

Honestly, some of those old sculpts were laughable by modern standards -- you couldn't always tell what any given model was ... my paint job did nothing to enhance this ... and being made of soft lead, sometimes simply falling over on the table was enough to break bits off.  Even then, I didn't actually use the miniatures while role-playing.  Instead they remained display pieces.  We tracked marching order and sketched out tactical combat maps (when that was even necessary) the same way we always had ... on notebook or graph paper.

Miniatures looked massively cool, especially in my mind-blowing first issues of Dragon Magazine, the main obstacles to their actual utility at the table were twofold:

1. "That doesn't look like my character." The poorly painted lead blobs just didn't capture the broody-cool heroics of Alain Blademaster, Nameor the Sorcerer, Bluewater, Utusi, Zolan, or Blam!

2. "You are attacked by big, orange, hairy goblins," ... "Those are just bugbears." ... "Okay, you are attacked by a bunch of bugbears.  It looks like, maybe twenty or so, and they have crossbows.  Roll for initiative."

Where, on lawnmower money, was a guy supposed to get 20 bugbear models (let alone with crossbows)?  What about the 30 gnolls for the next encounter?  On the other hand, if the miniatures were intended to merely serve as examples of the creatures encountered, well David Trampier's illustrations could communicate the threat much better than my inch-tall paint-coated blob.

Tramp bugbear puts the smackdown on Fabio the fighter-boy, from Monster Manual of course!

When playing D&D with my own kids, however, miniatures (and dungeon tiles) have always helped them and their friends (mostly in the single-digit age bracket) pay attention to the game.

As I ponder returning to my Bawal Bayan campaign this summer, I've decided to try and use miniatures to represent player characters with the goal of letting each student take their mini home at the end of class (along with a d20 and a copy of the Dagger for Kids rules).  The goal won't be play utility as much as a token reminder of the game ... and perhaps an invitation to pick the hobby back up someday.

Even if I went for the new, cheaper generation of polymer minis (see Bones by Reaper Miniatures), I'd easily exceed my class budget trying to buy enough for the kids to walk away with some kewlness.  Instead, I'm going to try and go cheap with these:

Thirty-six plastic knights, sculpted in reasonable detail, for about seven bucks!  You can find them here if you want to build an army on the cheap.  I'm going to try my hand at painting these and will post the results.

Return to the Forbidden City!

My school district has some pretty amazing and committed people working in it and, thanks to their willingness to do more for kids, we'll be offering several optional Summer Enrichment Camps for students this July.  The course catalog includes classes on animation, dissection, cake decoration and ... you guessed it ... Adventure Games!

That's right, yours truly will be introducing groups of 12 to 20 sixth through eighth graders to some basics in (non electronic) games.

Right now I'm planning to teach them how to play the following:

• Smallworld
• Settlers of Catan
• Castle Panic
• Robo Rally
• Carcassonne

• Risk
• The Adventurers: Pyramid of Horus
• Cadwallon: City of Thieves
• Red November
• Wiz-War
• Citadels (Fantasy Flight cardgame)

... and of course this creates another opportunity to introduce teens to tabletop role-playing.  I plan once more to wield Dagger for Kids, chiefly because of its accessibility, but also because I can afford to send kids home with their own copy of the rules at the end of class along with their very first d20 and maybe a cheap mini or two.
I'll likely use Bawal Bayan and the nearby seas and islands as my default mini-sandbox setting, and hope to have at least a few kids running adventures for each other by the end of the program.

I'm again going with a high fantasy pseudo-Renaissance-European-colonials-explore-darkest-Hepmonaland theme and will use it to create continuity through the various games we play (though some will have to be re-skinned of course).

I've ordered a half-dozen cheap model ships and plan to have a bit of naval action take place in the cafeteria (Plukish pirate / slavers vs the Bhatvian Overmarshal's fleet perhaps?).  I'm thinking three kids per ship: captain gives orders, helmsmen moves the ship, lieutenant fires the guns (thrown marshmallows?).

Are there any games conspicuous because of their absence from my list?

Seizing the Initiative (or Not)

In Dagger for Kids by Brave Halfling Publishing, a rules lite game designed to help introduce the fine art of tabletop role-playing to young people, we adopted a funny little initiative rule that I probably never would have considered otherwise, entrenched as I am in my Moldvay Basic / AD&D mash-up way of thinking:

When there is a combat in Dagger, the player characters always go first.

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Obviously the intent of this rule is to reduce complexity for young players ... die rolls are mainly about answering the questions "Did I hit it?" and "Did I kill it?" ... but how would stripping out party initiative, individual initiative, or weapon speed factors (heh) impact actual game play?
Won't the players take advantage of the knowledge that, "we always go first" to unfair tactical advantage?

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Turns out, not-so-much.  

Consider the actual results of our gameplay: By the end of the third session, out of 23 starting characters, only six remained alive.  This wasn't due so much to hideous tactical blunders (though there were several), or a sadistic "killer dungeon" (there were never more than five attacks per round directed their way, and that from a bunch of 4 hp tasloi), but rather from the mere fact that an AC of 14 and 5 hit points in an environment where are dice rolls aren't fudged won't get you too far unless you quickly learn to mitigate your risks.

In practice, at our table, the "player characters go first" rule was also mitigated by common sense of course.  If monsters have set an ambush and searching fails to reveal them, then naturally the critters will get the first attack.  Certain monsters (like the camouflage, jack-in-the-box that is the giant caddisfly larva) may have first attack as a special ability if anyone blunders too near its protective case.

copyright © 2013, Stephen Belcher Photography Ltd

By the time we had played six or seven sessions, especially when considering the focus of the action, the involvement of the players, and the outcomes of encounters, things at the table were basically indistinguishable from any other session of D&D I've played, Moldvay 81 through 3rd edition.  I'd found that setting aside all the (perfectly reasonable) complexity of Dexterity modifiers and surprise rounds and letting player characters go first as a default doesn't really make that much of a difference and speeds game play considerably.  

I'm thinking that this may become my new default ... at least when gaming with younger players.

Missing Stuff is Boring (and other deep thoughts)

When I was playing Dagger for Kids with my middle school class, during the second session, I noticed that in combats lasting more than three rounds player interest tended to wane, particularly if a player missed with two consecutive attack rolls.

  

I think this may be a side effect of console game play.  In a fine game like Starcraft your units would do a lot of damage, or a little, but at least in terms of the visual display the bullets, acid spray, laser fire or what have you, one always "hit".  The variables were range, attack speed, and "how much damage did my unit hit for?"

How very different from playing tag with the mail-clad minotaur in the Caves of Chaos, where the trick was trying to endure his onslaught for enough turns to land some solid blows.  Maybe we just had a lot more free time back then?  Or perhaps just fewer choices when it came to interactive entertainment.

Erol Otus of course

While I don't think I'll ever be ready to go the way of 4th edition D&D, where I understand that even some "misses" in melee still inflict hit points of damage, this experience with my students caused me to rethink my approach a bit.

By session four with my Bawal Bayan campaign, I began lowering monster armor classes (we used ascending AC).  I found that, in order to sustain student engagement while maintaining the challenge, I was far better off tossing a few more enemies at the kids or giving a big bad an extra die or two of hitpoints while nerfing enemy armor class somewhat so that the students had the sense of accomplishment and progress that came with a well-narrated hit.  Did they still miss stuff?  Sure, but now only about 50-60% of attacks would whiff and, if pacing allowed, I was conscious about trying to narrate parries and glancing blows with whatever skill I could muster.

I'm sure that this is a lesson I'll carry forward as I game with young people -- expectations about entertainment have changed over time and if I hope to win any new fans over to this goofy, niche hobby of ours I'd better be able to move with the times a bit. 

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Answer Me These Questions Three ...

On our last day together I tossed my middle school students a few questions about this "new" tabletop role-playing thing I'd introduced them to.

There are some who call me ...photo accessed here

1. "What are some real world lessons that Dagger for Kids can help you learn?"

"I learned that teamwork makes things easier.  Working alone can be done, but when you have people to help you with things it can be accomplished way faster and it will be easier."

"work together"

"aiding others"

"think things through"

"listening"

"there's strength in numbers"

"critical thinking and planning"

"have more imagination"

"never give up!"

"This was my first time playing the game and I thought it was really fun and the people I played with were funny and helped me sometimes, but I helped them too."

"The key is to be careful and plan your moves."

"Make sure your partners are up to the challenge to help you.  Your partners should always be there no matter what."

"The game taught communication, teamwork, paying attention, and thinking about what you do, because there could be consequences."

public domain with props to http://www.wpclipart.com/

2. "Do you think you'd ever play Dagger for Kids outside of school?"

"I probably wouldn't play out of school because out of school there is more to do, but in school I enjoyed it."

"I don't think I could find people or time."

"Probably not ... most people don't know what it is.  I'd want to though."

"Maybe.  It was interesting to play."

"No, because I'm definitely gonna forget."

"Probably not.  It just feels a little complicated and confusing."

"Maybe.  I have plenty of other stuff to do."

"Probably not.  Not many may be willing to play it."

"Yes, because it's real fun."

"No, because I found it boring."

"Yes, because this game is really fun and suspenseful."

"No, because there are better things to do outside of school, but in school I would play it."

"I probably won't play it outside of school because I don't have anyone who would want to play it."

"I would play outside of school because it's fun & challenging."

"No, because I'm no good with making up things like that."

"Yes, it's an interesting game."

pic from anime vice

3. "Are there any messages you'd like to pass along to the game's designer?"

"This game is fun."

"Good job."

"I think it is a good game already and doesn't need improvements."

"I really like this game & I enjoy playing it."

"It's a really cool game.  I really like it."

"It would be cool if there were more characters to choose from, but I think it's a good game."

"Fun, and lots of it."

"Great game ... it would be better with more character choices."

"Put a dragon in the game (good dragon, not evil) and add some cursed treasure."

"The game is great.  It should become series of video games."

So, taken as a whole, my students really liked tabletop role-playing (the monsters, social aspect, encounter lethality, unique art, and kinesthetic aspect of the dice were all BIG hits) but I doubt that out of 27-odd kids that more than a few will ever go looking to play again.  Maybe they'll run into some gamers in high school or stumble across a game at college and feel confident enough to ask if they can join in.  By and large, however, it's a pretty esoteric activity and, despite the best efforts of Wizards of the Coast, Paizo Publishing, and the smaller guys, one that isn't really that accessible without a welcoming community and individual mentorship (especially compared to the ease of entry offered by online and console gaming).  If the goal of this venture was to groom a new generation of tabletop gamers, then I'd have to say the experiment wasn't that successful ... maybe a few will go on to develop a passion for gaming ... but if the goal was to introduce kids to something new and engaging during their school year then it was certainly a success.

March of the Bullywugs

I fear we're on the very cusp of batrachian domination. Soon now our amphibian overlords will rise to reassert the millennia-old natural order and put an end to our brief mammalian uprising!

My evidence? My yard and the surrounding woods are teeming with frogs ... tiny, tiny little brown frogs in point of fact (spring peepers). At any given moment, if I pause, I can see four or five moving about ... in some patches of yard upwards of fifteen at a glance. My morning run with the dog has taken a comic turn as I jink and dodge in an effort to avoid treading on any of our tiny overlords.

photo by Fungus Guy

I have a soft spot for frogs and toads (along with rabbits, snails, moths and tortoises ... really anything God has seen fit to grant even less of an ability to protect itself than I have) and it's amazing how these little guys (each about the size of a pencil eraser) have made it all the way to my yard. The nearest water is about 400 yards away, downhill through the woods. They must have been picked off by the hundred by birds, bugs, snakes, bigger frogs, cars, and temperatures in the 90s. They remind me a bit of explorers of Bawal Bayan.

I don't know about you, but I was totally stoked when, as a kid, I finally mowed enough grass to get my copy of Monster Manual II. 

photo accessed here

Thumbing through, my first impression as a TSR fanboy was that we were back on track after the weird, eclectic, Euro-departure that was Fiend Folio (in more recent years I've warmed to Russ Nicholson's unsettling art and Fiend Folio remains one of my favorite old school hardcovers). After first impressions began to fade, however, my enthusiasm for Monster Manual II began to subside somewhat. 

"Oh look, more dinosaurs ... I'll never use those ... go T-Rex or don't bother. All the entries are illustrated by TSR workhorse Jim Holloway ... he's great, but where's the variety?  And what's this? A grippli? ... Because if there's one thing D&D desperately needs it's another frog-themed humanoid race ..."

from wikipedia.org

Let's see ... for frog-based monsters we already had:

Bullywugs (D&D cartoon for the win!)
Slaad (carefully color-coded creatures of ... ultimate ... chaos?)
Giant, killer frogs
Blindheim (why?  Just ... why?)
Froghemoth (which was admittedly pretty gonzo-cool)

... Yeah, anyway, the grippli always left me cold (just don't tell our overlords).

The Forbidden City: Postmortem (part III)

The final stage of launching a handful of newbie GMs to spread love, loot, and carnage throughout my middle school class was by far the hardest: I had to get out of their way.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, outside circumstances helped me with this, but it was still tricky to sit and wonder if the wheels were going to come off at any moment.  I really do love this odd-ball hobby and I was keen to see other people give it a shot.

It's a quixotic dream of course ... much of what made tabletop role-playing so magical was not the strangeness of Erol Otus's art, the simple clarity of Tom Moldvay's prose, or even the evocative power of David Trampier's Monster Manual work ... those were all great of course ...

... but no, it was the fact that D&D came like a bolt out of the clear blue sky to invade a world where we had only four and a half TV stations, where Fantasy was not really its own genre yet (but just an awkward subset of Science Fiction), and where fantasy artwork was largely limited to Prince Valiant strips that ran in the comics section of the Sunday paper.  

pic from guttergeek.com

In the post Avatar, post World of Warcraft world inhabited by my students, tabletop just isn't going to go off like an atom bomb as it did for me.  Still, it can have an impact and maybe even work a little old school magic.

Without being present at their tables, I was largely dependent on the written feedback of my neophyte GMs to know how things were progressing.  Here's some of what they had to say:

"I think having a map on the folder and then sketching a map [for the players] was a good idea because the players didn't get to see what was actually going on in the map."

"The tool I used most was the information card telling the stats of each monster."

"As GM I got to make it up as the game went on."

"The hardest part was getting everyone to stay focused and not have side conversations."

"The most important tool for running the game was the map.  The most important skills for running Dagger are being able to do mental math and being creative."

"I was nervous about [whether] they wouldn't be paying attention since I am not a teacher."

"The monster stats helped a lot.  I used that card all the time."

"I had more fun as I GMed, because I was able to create the game ... the game went faster than I expected."

"The game taught communication, teamwork, paying attention, and thinking about what you do, because there could be consequences."

"The best part was watching when someone died and everyone freaks out."

These comments, and the fact that utter chaos didn't swallow my classroom, provided assurance that my methods were having at least some of the impact I was hoping for.

accessed here ... now you must get the tattoo