Rules of the Road

Now that we're finally getting some lead on the table, it's time to decide on a ruleset.  I've been pumping the good guys over at the Lead Adventure Forums for advice and they've pointed me to a lot of nice little free rulesets available on the web.  But I'm having the same problem as everyone else - no miniature wargame ruleset gives me everything I need.  One is incomplete, one works great for solo play but not for play with a GM, one works great for multi-player but sucks for GM play, there's always something missing.

So why not go back to some seriously old school dungeon crawl rules?  I'm talking the original dungeon crawl rules for use with miniatures here.  Something old fashioned like Chainmail (see left).  These are the rules that evolved to become Dungeons and Dragons, after all.

But heck, why stop there?  Might as well go straight to D&D so I can use the wizards and everything.  But the OSR rules really were incomplete, so I might as well skip ahead and use the cleaned up and much more accessible Moldvay version.  But now we're drifting further away from miniatures, so you might as well go all the way up to AD&D, right?  That's the set that I have the most experience with, after all.

Oh but the organization of those rules - second edition would be so much easier to relearn, but now we're basically completely out of miniatures altogether.  That's no good.  I didn't drop all this money not use the little suckers.  That means moving up to 3rd edition which was designed to be easy to use with miniatures.  But oh, then I'll spend more time statting than painting, and they tell me that you can stat so much easier with 4th edition...

I've gone through 30 years of gaming evolution over the last week without opening up a book.  The key to this whole thing is that I'm building a game I can play with my son and his friends - a complex game that isn't too complicated.  So what I really need to do is find the middle ground between story games and miniature games.  And every dollar spent on books is a dollar less on miniatures.  At the same time, every hour spent building encounters in an hour less spent painting.

Right now I've got two complete systems, third edition and the Rules Cyclopedia.  In that case there's really no comparison.  The Rules Cyclopedia has everything I need.  And if I can't fudge the adventures into miniature heavy ones then I might as well turn in my 20-sided die right now.

But that won't stop me from trolling the net for more of those fun little free sets...

A Very Tiny Arbor Day

How's this for a slick little tree?

This creepy old tree was liberated from my son's Lego box. It started out life as a piece from a Lego knock off brand. It came in a giant orc head with a bunch of not-Lego orcs. It's the perfect size for the little mans, though. A quick base and a paint job covers up a few minor flaws. Specifically, the mold left a little circle at about head height. Looks like a good place for an owl den to me.

Three Flavors of Orcs

There's nothing too spectacular about these orcs.  They've got green skins just in case the Warmaster bug ever bites and a fire emblem that fits just about anywhere.  This latest load brings the orc population of my figure case up to a whopping 18,  including three spear-orcs, four bow-orcs (bowrcs?), and eleven swordsmen.  That's a big enough horde for any skirmish.  Now I just need to figure out how to turn that leftover banner-orc into a shaman...

That guy on the left looks like a bit of a gimp - I wanted a different look, so I bent his arm down like Orc #5 in the lineup.  Only Orc #1's arm busted off, and when it was glued back on, it looked like he dislocated his shoulder.  If he can live with it, so can I.

If Ever A Wonderful Wiz There Was...

These wizards I've are them because, because, because, because, because...because of the wonderful paint job I does.

TFAN45

The guy on the right started out his life as a warrior monk, but his spear broke off, so he's now a wizard with a short staff.

TSAM10

Irregular Minis, Now With Added Paint

This first batch was ordered to add a few heavily armored figures to the player character options, but they just didn't have enough personality for it.  Instead I painted them as the local town guard NPCs.  That would be a black tower on a golden field on the shields.

TC27 - Crusader/Feudal Dismounted Knights 

The last dwarf I painted was dressed in blue, and I figured these guys might as well come from the same town.  Hence, the same colors.  Hopefully the beards and shields give them enough individual personality.

TFAN9 on the right, TFAN7 on the left.

About face.

Bonus Post! A One Page Adventure

UPDATED MARCH 29 - SEE BELOW

While trolling the seas of the internet for a fish of rules worthy enough to grace my table, I've been drifting in and out of the role-playing game blog-community.  Today I discovered a little thing called the One Page Dungeon contest.

"I can do this," thinks I.  After dusting off the old records, (by which I mean dusting off a three year old hard drive with my last round of notes on it,) and stripping down the notes from an adventure never run, I have crafted a one page dungeon in which a goblin tribe vexes the countryside, and the only solution is to send in a band of plucky heroes to put a cork in the font of evil spewing forth the hateful little thugs.

Here's a little preview of a one page dungeon titled, Will No One Rid Me of These Troublesome Goblins?

One delicious page of cliched goblin tropes assembled for your use.

UPDATE!
Here is the official entry form for your perusal.
Will No One Rid Me of These Troublesome Goblins?


By the way - that mouthy looking passage between the Foyer and the Main Hall?  Yeah - that's too narrow to squeeze through, but perfect for shooting arrows through.

And if any of you lot out there in internet-land ever run this thing, some feedback would be nice.  Like, a nice thank you, if you catch my drift.

An Irregular Order

First order of Irregular Miniatures came in today, and they look like a lot of fun.  These unpainted lead shots are for other people's reference.  One quirky thing about collecting 10mm figures is that very few manufacturers have their whole line photographed and available on their websites.  Personally, that makes it even more fun for me - I'll gamble a buck or two on figures sight unseen, and every time I get figures like that it feels like Christmas.  It can be frustrating when you're looking for just the right figure, though.  So as a service to others, here are some decent shots of a small portion of Irregular's line-up.

First up are a few selections from the Medieval Range.  I'll be using them as generic western fantasy warrior types of course, but they'll fit right in alongside my other figures.

TC24 - Crusader/Feudal Infantry Spearmen
They'll make fine henchmen and town guard.

TC27 - Crusader/Feudal Dismounted Knights
Heavy armored fighter types for characters.

TC29 - Crusader/Feudal Pilgrim Infantry
One of those sight unseen I'd hoped to turn into torchbearers.
Having seen them? I'm not sure what they'll wind up as.

One lone representative from the Samurai range is next.

TSAM10 - Warrior Monk
The hope was for an unarmed and unarmored shaolin
style monk.  This could be cool, though.

Here are a few from Irregular's fantasy line.  They don't look like any great shakes 'in the raw', but I once built a skeletal army out of Irregular's 6mm line, and they looked great once they were painted up.  No doubt these will follow the example set by their shorter undead forebears.

TFAN7 - Dwarf Axeman

TFAN9 - Dwarf Chieftan
Finally a dwarf with a hammer.  My collection sorely needed one.

TFAN41 - Wolves

TFAN45 - Wizard
Two different styles, one old beardy and one dark and mysterious.
Kinda wish I'd ordered more of these guys now.