Wizards of the Coast and Miniatures aka Bad Marketing 101

This is a screenshot of Wizkids site I took the other day.

The very first thing? Pathfinder Battles Iconic Miniatures.

The third thing? Not the second mind you. D&D with two brands, Attack Wing and Icons of the Realms. And those icons look way too crowded and way too busy. You can't see anything that's happening there except maybe you might think, is that Godzillia by the D&D brand?

I went to Wizkids because I was just at my FLSG, Games Plus.

While there, they had the NEW random collectable miniatures.

Usually WizKids is real good about providing a poster or some other means of, you know, KNOWING what the buyer can at least potentially get.

No such poster here.

So when I got home, I checked out Wizards of the Coast site. I knew that was probably going to be futile. For some reason, WoTC doesn't want people on their D&D section of the site as they didn't have a gallery of their previous release either.

And nope, at the time at least, no gallery. A few previews which is nice mind you but no actual gallery.

So I wandered over to Wizkids site.

Bam, Pathfinder at top.

That's gotta hurt.

I don't know if that's because Pathfinder is paying more, allowing Wizkids a bigger share of the cut, or just random weirdness but if I was WoTC, with a brand new set out, I'd want my brand on top.

I'd also want a gallery of what the miniatures people can buy look like.

But you aint' going to get that from Wizkids son. Last time I looked around the site, you could see some of the Attack Wing figures and the figures from the first set, Tyranny of Dragons.

That's not good marketing on WoTC site. It's not good marking on Wizkids site.

I've heard some people say, "Well, if you go to site X, you can see the full release."

And that's okay but it's certainly not what either of these companies should want to happen. If I have to rely on 3rd party sources to get information that should be gushing from your sites? You're doing it wrong.

But that's just me.

Anyone buy any of the new figures? I like some of the previews we've seen, but I'm also a miniature painter and I buy these things to either fill out gaps in my collection or because the miniatures are inexpensive. As the cost of the blind randoms have gone up, I've cut waaayy back. Part of that is my ownership of miniatures like Reaper's Bones or say, Mantic's Kickstarters. Other parts are that WoTC made D&D itself less reliant on miniatures.

I also can't help but notice that there are still no Dragonborn. Maybe I'm missing it. So WoTC makes Dragonborn a core race in two editions now, and we've got, including all the old ones, less than five I want to say? That's terrible. I assure you WoTC, we don't need elves, dwarves, or adventuring humans these days. But dragonborn and other IP that you own and few other people have touched? Might want to look at hitting that eh?

But some of them do look nice. I'd buy a few packs to take a chance on getting say a firesnake or an ettin.

In terms of what WoTC long term miniature plans are? Anyone have any guesses? I can't see the Gale Force 9 miniatures being a priority or long term way of handling things. It's not that the miniatures aren't solid. I've bought many of them myself.

At clearance prices.

From a "limited run".

Nice figures. Resin makes them brittle mind you but nice.

Nice and expensive.

I think WoTC needs to get Reaper on board with their miniature program. Put the well established brand of Reaper at work on their miniatures that are non-random and non-collectible.

Some may say that Pazio and Pathfinder are already established at Reaper.

Yeah, take a look at that Wizkids screenshot again. If Wizkids can't make a new set their priority on the web and have a gallery for it, and WoTC isn't on them like white on rice? WoTC can swallow whatever may pass for pride there and acknowledge that Reaper can do them justice without limited edition runs, without being made of brittle resin, and can capture the spirit of D&D.

But that's just me. I can't see either the Gale Force 9 miniatures lasting too much longer (which is a shame because they have a Red Dragon coming up that looks fantastic) nor can I see the random miniatures sticking around much longer when they can't even get top billing for a new release.

Others? Am I out of the water here? Is WizKids pushing WoTC IP into all new directions and all new fanbases? Let me know. I'm old and senile and keep telling these damn kids to get off my lawn!

Kingmaker: An End To The Stag King

The fourth session of Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition finds a heavy focus on finishing off the first book, Stolen Land. This is the first part of the Kingmaker Adventure Path by Paizo. I've done very little actual conversion work, mainly flipping some hit points to a higher total and cutting way back on the experience points that the villains are worth.

For the most part, it's worked out and the players are relatively happy so that's the good news.

There will be some specific spoilers for this volume so if you'd rather not hear those, read no further but know that this adventure took four sessions to finish. There were numerous random encounters thanks to the chart included with the adventure.

Outside of the adventure proper, it includes several new monsters. Two of them, the elk and thylacine, a strange dog-rat animal, were great for background and flavor of the region but others were not encountered yet.

There are also details on the country of Brevoy, a kingdom to the north of the Stolen Lands and some fiction by James L. Sutter. I've read the whole section of fiction that follows the adventurers of Ollix Kaddar through all six volumes and their entertaining but not a lot of depth to them. Good stuff to give you some flavor for the River Kingdoms and to show how chaotic a region it is.

In terms of the group, all six players were in presence tonight. In order to try and get the Inspiration in use, I borrowed the idea of Initiative Cards that I'd seen the Game Mechanics use in the past. I had players fill out index cards with name, armor class, hit points, perception, trait, ideal, bond, and flaw with the hope that having it right in front of me would provide some reminders to give up the goods on those. Worked a little better as two players earned some inspiration but it actually happened at the tail end outside of combat.

Players in presence today:

Erdan: A monk elf. I remembered to bring the Stonehaven miniature this time. Huzzah!

Damai: A tielfling warlock.

Amun Ramas: Druid from the Egypt style portion of the setting.

Gerak: His halfling manservant (rogue)

Naronel: Elf wizard.

Kontos: Dragonborn fighter.

The players wanted to finish off one of the side quests, that of finding the taztzlwyrms. It was an interesting bit as I actually converted those over earlier. Many more hit dice and changing the poison con damage to 10 points damage on a failed constitution save. On the way to find them though, they did have a random encounter of six bandits that were no match for the group, despite the fact I threw in a bandit leader.

Afterwards they made their plans to snake into the Stag Lords fortress. In one of their earlier encounters, they discovered the secret password to get into the fortress as well as captured the special delivery of alcohol that the stag lord is fond of.

They had some good planning and it paid off. One of the lieutenants, Auchs, was quickly befriended by the halfling who played with the brute and earned his trust. Another lieutenant, Donovan, who I took to calling 'Bowie' because his miniature and illustration seems very 'glam' despite you know, being a bandit in a place where you have your own pots, was caught in a distraction that involved freeing 'beaky', an enraged owlbear.

There weren't necessarily any do or die moments for the party in the encounter as their careful preperation paid off. The Stag Lord, noted as an alcoholic in the book, was completely out as the players waited to see if the camp broke out in celebration at the bringing in of the good liquor and goods.

For the adventure, I bought numerous bandits. Some of these were from the Reaper line, some from Games Workshop (Empire Freebooters), and a few I had from various years of playing. I bought Donovan and the Stag Lord. Ugh on both of them. There are so many tiny little details and bits that it's maddening. I did Donovan up super quick with a few different shades of brown to try and match the illustration and a few washes and layers. That may sound like a lot but by keeping the colors to one tone it went much faster than it otherwise would have.

In addition I finally painted up my Pathfinder Bones Goblins that I had from the Kickstarter as well as some Kobolds. I also wound up buying some prepainted Pathfinder miniatures to try and get some mites as well as buying some Reaper mites. All in all I think I've painted over twenty miniatures for this adventure alone. Many of which will never see use again.

Who knows, maybe one day 3-D printers will allow you to print and recycle the material into another figure. That day however, was not involved in the last few weeks.

I did manage to find my old Savage Worlds blank Game Master screen. I've seen the one that Gale Force 9 has come out with and it is very nice looking and very sturdy. However is it massively reliant on you running the two official hardcover adventurers as opposed to being a general all purpose Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition screen.

So if you know of any landscape rules for 5th edition that would make for good reference, pass 'em on down!

We touched on what the players can do next in Rivers Run Red. They've decided to build the kingdom and have started the process of filling out positions, making kingdom alignment decisions, etc... I then checked out Pathfinder's Ultimate Campaign which has an updated version of that system so I might just swap into that system since we haven't delved too much into it yet.

I also have Adventurer Conqueror King but never dove too deep into those rules, instead getting it more as a nod to fond memories of OSR play.

If anyone's done any extensive kingdom building in the game with any of those rules, please leave a comment and let me know how it went for you.

I suspect that the next few adventurers will go well as the players enjoy a lot of the roaming around and exploring but a few are very intrigued by the whole king ruling process. On one hand I'm a little curious to see how it all plays out but on the other, well, four weeks of game play that's almost uninterrupted (except for the Halloween break) is a good run for us as almost all of us are working more than full time and a few have a lot of personal responsibilities. If we stopped playing sometime soon in the future it wouldn't surprise me.

For me as the Game Master, 5th edition leaves me a little cold. Again, I'm so used to the horde of material for 3.5, 4th, and Pathfinder, that I keep wondering, "why am I running this again?" but the players asked me to and I've agreed and it's not bad to GM. The numbers are generally much lower than they were in 3rd and 4th so the match is much easier. The hit points are higher for a lot of the monsters and the game doesn't care that the monsters don't follow the rules that the player's do. That was a strength of 4th edition too.

Hopefully everyone else's gaming is going well!

Kingmaker: Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Week Three

There was no game on Halloween. It's one of my girlfriend's favorite times of the year so I stayed home and watched horrible horror movies. There are worse ways to spend one's night.


This week one of my regulars, the youngest of our group, who plays a dragon born fighter, had a new assignment at work and was unable to make it.


On the other hand, one of my other amigos, a peer in age if not a lot of personal preferences, showed up for the first time.


I started him off at half experience. It's something that I allowed the group to decide on in terms of "Hey, if someone misses a session what do you want to do about xp?"


There was some back and forth about giving them no experience points and giving them the full quantity. I myself didn't vote as I just wanted to hear what the players wanted to do. Mind you, those that miss are already missing out on gold and magic items which I may have to tweak depending on how heavy that effects the game down the road.


This week we had the following:


Naronel: A elf wizard. He's already summoned a familiar, a hawk I believe? I made him name it as it refused to obey any of his commands until he addressed it by it's name. The player was not amused but everyone else at the table was.


Gerak: A Halfling rogue.


Amun: Human druid.


Eran: Elf Monk. I forgot his miniature from Stonehaven miniatures. As I've mentioned before, Stonehaven makes like one of the two elf monk miniatures out there and I forgot it. Ugh.


Damaia: Tielfling Warlock. She has missed one session and with the player running the elf wizard missing two session, and now one player missing this session, I now have an Excel Spreadsheet tracking the different experience point totals of the players. Sigh. One of the drawbacks to not just giving everyone the same experience points.


The players were deciding what they were going to do next. While I did throws parts of the starter set adventure, The Mines into this game, they've been pretty happy to stick with the King Maker saga despite not actually being under charter. They're pretty happy to "take the money and run" for all the numerous side quests and missions that this adventure offers them.


This week, it was find out why the kobolds are acting up. Good deal as I have a ton of Reaper Miniature's Bones kobolds already painted up. Some of them brown, some of them red. The players spoke with the purple shaman kobold leader and agreed to bring back the statue of their people if the kobolds would cease their violent activities.


Turns out the kobolds are at war with mites, more small low level enemies but of a fey nature. Because 5th edition doesn't have stats for the mites, I took used the kobold stat block as a template and tinkered with it. For example, I gave them damage resistance to weapons unless those weapons were cold iron or magic.


Add in that I noted how small the mite lair was and gave any Medium sized creature disadvantage for any melee combat. Made the fights last a little longer and made them a bit more challenging.


Knowing that sooner or later the players would probably fight the mites, I had bought two packs of metal mites that Reaper miniatures makes as well as some blister packs of the prepainted plastic ones for Pathfinder from the Shattered Star set. I managed to get more than a base coat down on the metal ones but I'm probably going to wind up popping them off their bases. They come with medium sized bases and are smaller then most of the halflings that Reaper makes.


This is why I actually like the prepainted plastic ones. They are larger and have a little more detail to them. But in a standard 'brick' of eight packs, I had no duplicates and only had one prepainted mite and one prepainted mite riding a giant spider. It wasn't a giant tick like the guy in the adventure rides, as seen here from Paizo's, but I'll take it.In some instances I needed like twelve mites.


It did make me hate the organization of the Monster Manual thought.


In practice, it makes sense I suppose to have animals and giant insects in one section of the book. Those monsters wouldn't be encountered that often.


I tell you thought, in my three weeks, because it's low level, the players have fought wolves, bears, giant spiders, giant centipedes and who knows what else that's from that section. I think it would have been better off just being in the main body of the work.


Anyway, after the players fought the mites and returned the statue, because the players dealt with the 'shaman', whose actually a reincarnated gnome sorcerer who hates life, the kobold sorcerer demanded the death of the players. The kobold cheiftan turned on the sorcerer and many kobolds were fighting the players.


Cantrips in the new edition are nice and deadly. It's a good way to give the old 'fire and forget' characters some staying power in the game. Of course those nifty tricks now become less and less useful as the players gain in power and ability but start off nice and powerful.


I fudged around with the xp values for some of the encounters as Pathfinder, especially at low levels, uses a much higher experience point base for many of the enemies than Dungeons and Dragons does. Despite that, all of the players are now third level.


Like many, I'm one of those Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition players and Dungeon Masters that is eagerly awaiting the release of the Dungeon Master's Guide. I'm hoping that it can bring a lot to the table because having to guess what magic items do for example? Not a good feeling. From previews and the current free version though, it's annoying that there are no prices for magic items already.


Looking up things like Boots of Elvenkind? The magic items in the free download are anemic enough to not have one of those traditional magic items that stretches back to 1st edition. Ugh. Not a big deal yet as the player's haven't had the chance to use them, but they will next week so I'm sure I'll have thought of something by then.
So three weeks in and we're still messing around with a few things.
1. The five foot step: We've all played a lot of 3rd and 4th edition so we can looking that one up.
2. Rogue flanking.
3. Surprise and Advantage in the attack!
Overall the game runs fairly well but feels very limited by the amount of material out for it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing as a consumer, but I'm 'itchy' in that I'm used to the support 3.5, 4th edition, and Pathfinder offer. With no Dungeon magazine and no Dragon magazine, the game feels very 'tight' or 'restricted'. But I know I can 'convert' stuff if I have to, but I have no desire to do that with things like the races which seem to have these weird subrace types and other bits. Heck, there's no Dungeon Master's Guide out yet so how would you even convert magic item with little to compare them to.


Oh well, the Kingmaker adventure path has given us three sessions so far from just the first adventure and I think we'll squeeze two more out of it before it's done the way the player's tend to plan so we'll see how it goes from there.