Reaping in the Money

Wow... the Kickstarter is over and the grand total is in...

$3,429,236

That includes a huge rush right at the end to unlock Cthulhu.  Rejoice those who pledged money, and get ready to Reap what you sow.

 

Beautiful A Song of Ice & Fire Miniatures

Check out these pictures of these beautifully sculpted and fully painted miniatures.   In order they are Varys, Bron, Benjen Stark and Maester Luwin.  All of these are from Dark Sword Miniatures A Song of Ice and Fire line and are available on their website.

Paizo Picks Up Wizards of the Coast's Slack

A while back Wizards of the Coast decided to discontinue production on their line of pre-painted plastic miniatures.  A lot of people, including me, were disappointed at this.  Though I don't play 4e, their minis were still really cool, durable, and best of all painted (I can't paint a mini to save my life!).  

I just received word that Paizo has teamed with WizKids have teamed up to fill the void.  This is good news, and not just for fans of Pathfinder.  This is good news for everyone who likes to use miniatures in their games but can't paint, likes cheap minis, and doesn't want to worry about damaging a fragile pewter figure.  T

he teamup is also something to be excited about.  Paizo has been offering quality products for a few years now and has built up quite a reputation in the gaming community.  Most people know WizKids for their miniature games like HeroClix and Mage Knight.  With the two working together this line seems destined to be a quality product.

The new miniatures will be available fourth quarter of this year. 

The Spider and Little Finger

Darksword has some new miniatures coming out in their A Song of Ice & Fire line.  The first is for Varys, also known the Spider, and the other is Lord Petyr Baelish, also known as Little Finger.  As usual the sculpts for these miniatures look amazing. 

For those new to the series and were introduced through the HBO show you may notice that there are substantial differences.  That is because these are sculpted based on the books and not the show, because of  the contract Dark Sword has to produce them.  Still, you will notice plenty of similarities.  They are based on the same characters after all. 

Varys

Petyr

New Dark Sword Miniatures for A Song of Ice and Fire

Dark Sword Miniatures are among the best available.  They are intricately detailed, stunning beautiful pieces designed by hand by master craftsmen.  I've seen videos of these sculptors being done and it still boggles my mind  how amazing the finished product is.

My incredulity aside they have released pictures for some of their new minis which were inspired by George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.

Bron the Sellsword

Benjen Stark of the Night's Watch

Robert Baratheon at the Trident

Maester Luwin

Lysa Arryn

Hodor, Bran Stark, Jojen & Meera Reed

Of Wizards, Miniatures, and Robert Downey Jr.

“Never mind, they are intent on running the concept behind a roleplaying game into the ground, then peeing on it, then stomping on it, then running off squealing.” -mxyzplk

Yes, another quote. This particular one comes from mxyzplk the writer of Geek Related.  Like me, he has taken exception to WotC's recent move to introduce a collectible card game element to D&D.   

After reading his article I picked up on another piece of news, D&D miniatures are being discontinued.

From WotC:

D&D RPG Product Release Updates

Despite the best laid plans, sometimes we make changes to the D&D product release schedule. Usually this happens well before we’ve communicated our plans, but sometimes we must make changes to schedules that have already been announced. That happens to be the case we have here.

We have made the decision to depart from prepainted plastic miniatures sets. Lords of Madness stands as the final release under that model. We will continue to release special collector’s sets (such as the Beholder Collector’s Set we released last fall), as well as make use of plastic figures in other product offerings. Check out the Wrath of Ashardalon board game next month for the latest example of this. Moving forward, we will continue to explore more options for players to represent characters and monsters on the tabletop, including Monster Vault and other D&D products that feature monster and character tokens.

The Heroes of Shadow product, originally scheduled for March and presented in digest-sized, paperback format, is moving to April to accommodate a change to hardcover format. Additionally, three D&D RPG products have been removed from the 2011 release schedule—Class Compendium: Heroes of Sword and Spell, Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium, and Hero Builder’s Handbook. While this means fewer books, we plan to deliver just as much great content for players this year through other formats, including board games, accessories, and digital offerings. I’ll keep you up-to-date on the latest releases each month as we go along.

Finally, I wanted to let you know that we’re making a change to the way we handle D&D Insider content. Subscriber data informs us that the vast majority of you consume our articles individually, when they are posted, as opposed to downloading the monthly compilations. So, starting this month, we’re just providing the articles. There won’t be any more monthly downloadable compilations. This is not a reduction in content, just a clarification of presentation and putting the emphasis where the majority of you are using it. Corrections and updates to articles which used to appear only in the compilations will now be made to the individual articles a few weeks after the original posting.

In addition to the end of the miniatures, three books have been canceled and there will be no more monthly compilations of Dragon or Dungeon on D&D Insider.  Personally, I don't care about the books (I wasn't going to buy them) or the monthly compilations (I don't have D&D Insider), but I did love those miniatures.  

Many other people are also bemoaning the loss of these miniatures:

Product changes at WotC: no more Minis
WotC to Discontinue Plastic Minis
R.I.P. D&D Minis 2003-2010
News: Tales of WotC Woe

The bottom line is that many us of don't have the artistic ability to paint our own miniatures, so despite great companies like the late Ral Partha, Reaper, and Dark Sword have made many amazing works of art over the years, the majority of us have never been able to fully enjoy a painted miniature.
That is until 2003 when WotC launched one of their greatest products ever, D&D Miniatures. They were plastic which some disliked, but I was actually a fan of. The plastic, besides being much cheaper, was more likely to bend than break and were easily bent back. If one did break, a cheap replacement could always be found. They were pre-painted and looked great, which meant you could enjoy them right out of the box. There were such a wide variety of them available that you could almost certainly find whatever you were looking for.

It sucks to have WotC launching stupid products like these fortune cards, but discontinuing a quality product like their miniatures. So it seems that mxyzplk's concerns have been validated...

WotC has gone full retard.

More Great Miniatures

Dark Sword Miniatures is back at it with some more great ones.  The detail on these is as staggering as ever, and they continue to capture the feel of Martin's ASIF.

First up is Eddard Stark.  He is carrying his Valyrian steel great sword Ice and looking as somber as ever.  The second picture really shows the amount of details on his face.  My compliments to Tom Meier who sculpted this piece.

Next up is Shea, notice she is wearing the Hand's chain of office. 

The chain of office underwent several revisions.  Here is a view of the final version.  Shea was also sculpted by Tom Meier.

Again by Tom is Samwell Tarly, the portly man of the Night's Watch.  Sam The Slayer is shown carrying his Dragonglass dagger which he used to slay an other and claim in nickname.

Finally a new piece by Jeff Grace, Euron Greyjoy.  Crowseye is depicted with his deadly horn here.

A second version, depicted here, shows Greyjoy with a bag of gold in place of his magic horn.

Again you should check out other angles of these excellent minis as well as some of their past works at Dark Sword's website.

Ending a Long Campaign

Nothing is worse than playing a game for an extended period of time; months, years, decades, only to see it whither and die with no satisfactory conclusion.  When that happens it just leaves everyone who took part feeling very unfulfilled with no sense of closure.  When you have invested so much in a character you don't want to leave him right in the middle of a quest, you want to see him make it through it.  Unfortunately that doesn't always happen.

My group has been together a while now, but up until recently we just couldn't finish a game.  Now a big part of this was the philosophical debate within the group about whether or not a game should have an end and not just be a constantly running thing that ends only when the players have all lost interest.  I have always approached a game I am building as one might view a single season of a television show.  TV seasons have a beginning, middle, and ending, but that isn't to say that the cast won't reunite for another season.  If a game is successful there is almost always room for a sequel campaign. 

That was the approach I took during the last game I ran, Legacy of New Lago.  I wanted the end to provide not only a sense of closure, but a real sense of accomplishment.  I wanted the players to know, if they were victorious, that they had really achieved something special.  In short, I wanted a truly epic ending.  I got some advice from DNAPhil's article on Delivering the Goods over at GnomeStew, but I still felt I was missing something.  I wanted the end of the game to be truly special, to do something no one in our group had ever done.  Then the idea hit me... I would build out the battlefield.

I had a picture in my head of the final battleground.  An ancient ruined temple with weather worn statues and crumbling buildings, I figured I could give it a try.  I did some research online and got some helpful tips and set out to purchase or requisition what I would need.

Here is a picture of my supplies.  Nothing overly expensive here, in fact I was able to salvage a lot of it from my parents garage.  What?!  They weren't using it.  Some things, like the plaster of paris I did buy, but it was dirt cheap at Home Depot. I had to buy a massive board for a base and have them cut it so I had a ton of leftovers there.  My end board was 3 feet by 5 feet, the rest of the twin sized bed plank I never used.

Next is a look at my work area.  I'm not going to lie... it got pretty messy.  That pink you see is the left over  foam board I used.  Everything you see is made out of the foam board, it's really great stuff.  Don't try to use superglue on it though.  It dissolves the foam and releasing some really nasty (and more than likely toxic) fumes.

Here is the best picture I have of the whole terrain piece.  I took it when I put it into storage... also in my parents' garage... What?!  They weren't using that space anyway.  The PCs began the battle on the near side while their opposition began on the far side already "entrenched" in the ruins. 

The water is made of silicon, also very cheap and very smelly.

Here are some close up shots of the ruins.  Made of that pink foam board.

Again I'm going to mention the usual disclaimer... I have no artistic talent to speak of.  But just like with digital mapping you don't need it, sure it helps, but you don't have to be artistically gifted to make something that your group will love and that will create a long lasting memory.

This terrain is crap compared to what some people can make, but it did its job well.  My players realized that this was a serious battle, the fate of the world was at stake, to say nothing of the lives of their own characters.  They had fought battles against their arch enemy over the course of the whole campaign.  Some they won and some they lost, but none of it mattered as they stepped onto that final battlefield with everything on the line.  Even without these pictures to remind me I'll always remember this fight.  How Trogan and Klemdo hid behind the weathered obelisk, how Viola and Kain fought off Voraptis' minions while their allies charged ahead, how Alexis took cover behind some rubble while being blasted with spell after spell, and how Phineas who was hopeless the whole campaign rose the challenge and became a true hero.

That's what it's all about, the stories and memories we take away from the game.  No part of a story is as important as the end, it is the part that leaves a lasting impression in everyone's mind.  Next time you are working on a new campaign spare a thought for how the game will end and find some way to make it truly special and memorable.  Whatever it is your players will appreciate it and the end will be that much sweeter.

New ASIF Miniatures

Dark Sword Miniatures has released some new figures in their ASIF line. Victarion Greyjoy and Aeron "Damphair" Greyjoy both have figures that can be previewed at Dark Sword's website. Go on over and check them out. They aren't in color yet, but the detail is astounding as always.