Last week, Bartoneus wanted you to get your basic pants on and asked about which original D&D class is your favorite. Wielding the power to warp reality (while gaining d4 hit points per level) was the favorite with the Magic User taking 23% of the vote. Second place was the “race as class” option of Dwarves/Elves at 21%, and Fighters and Thieves tied for third. Last place was the poor Cleric, who prays to his deity to be granted the power to be liked.
The keen-eyed among you might notice two things: one, that poll I linked to doesn’t work, and two, everything looks different. That’s because we’ve launched our new site design (with the imaginative code name: Critical Hits 6.0) that not only freshens things up a bit based on your feedback, but also is setup with a new space for our illustrious new writer/blogmate Phil, the Chatty DM. We’ve also taken onboard at least one more regular writer and a few guest writers to help us keep the content flowing.
Mike Shea of the awesome Sly Flourish blog is going to be writing us a few guest reviews and editorials (the first was his Assassin’s Creed 2 review). Dixon Trimline, a longtime RPG player but first time blogger, will be bringing his gaming experience to us, and debuted with “Winners and Losers in D&D.” Finally, Vanir of StupidRanger will be coming to us with his own particular brand of insanity in a column called “Dire Flailings”, which should be premiering this week.
We’re still doing some tweaks which is why you may see some oddness, but if you see anything that is definitely broken or just bugs the heck out of you, let us know.
OK, onto business! This week it was announced that the Player’s Handbook Heroes series of miniatures from WotC will be canceled. For those of you unfamiliar with the product, the idea was to separate the big “mystery packs” that they had been doing since the beginning of the D&D minis line with Harbinger. One pack would be for DMs and full of monsters, with one visible bigger monster and the rest random (there have been no announcements about the fate of this line.) The other pack was designed for players, and contained 3 hero minis, completely visible, and divided up by power source. The packs also contained a new, unique power card for each of the three classes represented in the pack.
As soon as the announcement that PHH would be canceled, there was a lot of talk on Twitter about how they didn’t look like they were selling in stores, and how the power card inclusion was a bad idea, and so on. My immediate theory was that the intended audience, players, wasn’t buying them, and the burden was remaining on the DM to provide miniatures for everyone, and so maybe the DMs didn’t care as much about picking them up. That tends to be how it works with all the groups I play with.
Thus is my Inquisition of this week:
[poll id=”152″]
Ultimately, the reason that the line was probably canceled was a combination of factors that lead to low sales. Let’s just hope that the next thing they come up with is awesome for us mini-lovers.
The guy whose house we game at has all the minis. So everyone who DMs uses his minis, except for me, I use Fiery Dragon counters.
So far, most the mini’s we’ve been using are nothing more than a fist full of change. I usually use pennies for monsters. Anything silver is either a player character or a character of importance. We just took a sharpie and drew arrows for facing.
I DM for one campaign, and play in a second. Both campaigns (and side games) are played at my house, using my minis.
I forgot to mention it in the post, but as usual, many thanks upon the genius that is Graham for helping with the tricky move parts.
I provide nearly all the minis for the games I run, as well as for one of the games I’m in (that’s at my house). I’m something of a minis fiend… in fact, I care far more about appropriate minis for my PCs than most of my players. Original Sultan did make and paint his own mini for the game, and E uses the same mini she used for her character from the last campaign that character was in.
I had to vote none of the above because we have 1 player who brings all the miniatures. The GM just gives him a vague list of miniatures for their adventures. We call it an ingredient list and he brings the figs.
A sample list would be
12 humans
3 orcs with axes
a large reptile
we GMs usually ask for more figures than we need just so it’s unclear what the players will actually face.
As I have a decent collection of old metal minis, and my son have constantly growing collection of plastic minis, we usually bring our three large tackle-boxes full of minis to wherever we play, and that’s usually at our house, the neighbor or somewhere where we go by car.
Back in the 80s, I carried two huge bags on every gaming Sunday. One with all books and one full of mini boxes, on buses and subways to the gaming place we used back then. The people who say you don’t get strong muscle and good physics by playing RPGs just don’t have a clue. 35 pounds of gaming equipment, and people pay to exercise in a gym?
.-= Totte Alm´s last blog ..Making a map in Dundjinni -part one =-.
I provide a selection of minis that players can pick through and most of my players don’t bother getting their own. OTOH, I have a couple of players who always go out and find their own minis for new campaigns, so it’s a bit of a mix.
I actually think what kills the “hero pack” idea is that most players only need one mini for any particular game they’re in. So they’re only going to be buying a couple minis a year at most for their own playing needs. If there were still a separate D&D miniatures game I could see having hero packs that played to that setup, but if you’re just using them for D&D you don’t need to pick up too many of them to have the characters you fill any immediate need you have.
My players provide their own minis.
I agree with Jer’s analysis of why the hero line likely failed, but I also think WotC’s release plan wasn’t very optimal. There was a lot of lag between when new races/classes came out and new minis appeared. Even then, the representation of races was disproportionate. Of the original five players in my game, only one found a mini for his race/class combo (male eladrin wizard). The rest (a deva, two gnomes, and two shifters) could not find race appropriate minis and so went with minis from older releases or from non-WotC lines.
And while I buy minis for monsters, I have bought maybe one “pack” of D&D Minis since Harbinger. The current release format does not fit my needs, so I buy singles. I would prefer monster sets of the same type, or a set of all monsters from a published adventure, or even sets based on a particular MM. I can’t afford to “gamble” on random minis that I may never use. It’s expensive enough just buying singles; enough so that I’m likely going to switch to tokens for the next adventure.
.-= Kameron´s last blog ..Finding the Friendly Arm Inn =-.
I’m with Kameron on the uselessness of random mini packs. I hope with the ending of the PH mini packs they would go to a non-random format for MM minis. Or do a “living set” similar to the model that FFG uses for it’s cardgames.
Personally, I didn’t buy these because the paint jobs were really, really bad, and not nearly cheap enough to make up for it. In fact, they were quite expensive! I hope they’re still going to fill this important niche, just with a higher quality product next time.
.-= adamjford´s last blog ..adamjford: @madisonkerr THAT. IS. AMAZING. =-.
We have one player (who is sometimes the GM) who provides all the minis. So I answered “other.”
I voted somewhere in the middle.
Typically, the DM provides all of the NPC minis while most players are responsible for bringing a mini they like that really seems to drive home their vision of their character.
While I enjoy minis, I think tokens are still better due to all of the things that need to be tracked – health, bloodied, status effects, etc.
We have a few guys in the group who own a lot of minis (I’m one of them), and we usually supply for everyone.
Regarding the D&D minis: they were very expensive for what you got. It doesn’t help matters that the quality of the D&D minis has gone down the drain since they switched over to 4e. I’m not sure whether they changed manufacturers or painters or something, but whatever they did, the minis look terrible. I haven’t bought any since the last 3rd edition set. Prior to that, I was picking up loads of commons and uncommons for various gaming purposes.
Our DM brings a big sack o’ minis, so I voted for the DM provision, but sometimes the players, if they’re long term RPers will use their own minis for their characters &c. One of the players in our group’s boyfriend bought her a really spiffy mini for her dragonborn paladin in our current 4e game.
We all get some from time to time and place them into the chapter pot of available miniatures. We also have a few quirks, such as having an ever-growing amount of Delver Sergeants as our “red shirts” for use as general enemies or lackeys.
But to the main point – we seem to all put in about the same amount and loosely trade back and forth depending on who needs what for the current game(s).
-Quilt City O.G.R.E.s
Organization of Gamers & Roleplaying Enthusiats
http://www.QuiltCityOgres.com
http://ogres.wikia.com/wiki/The_Ogre_Lair
.-= Quilt City O.G.R.E.s´s last blog ..On X-Men Origins: Wolverine – Round Three (of three) =-.
We’re using minis and battlemat play less and less in our 4e D&D game (and not at all in our other games), and I expect that to drop off completely in the near future – at least until we get back to playing a normal Dungeon crawl style game.
When we do use minis, we’ve a small shared stock of miniatures that are used for PCs and those times when they match up with the appearance of the critters they’re fighting. Otherwise, we use Jelly Babies. I guess the US equivalent would be to use Gummi Bears.
That way the heroes get to eat what they kill 😀
.-= greywulf´s last blog ..How to Survive as a 1st level Character =-.
I currently DM my group, but we play at the previous DM’s house. I have a massive collection of minis, having been a former D&D Minis Game player, so I provide my own monsters, but the previous DM has just as large a collection, and everyone else in the group borrows from him.
I think the biggest reason for the PHH failure is the price. A pack meant for players (who need a single mini for probably more than a year) at a price of $10 is crazy. Especially when the pack contains two minis they may never have a use for. Even as a “collect everything” person, I didn’t buy all the packs. I bought 2 when they were first released, then went to online sellers to get specific ones I actually liked, which definitely wasn’t all of them.
I still don’t think people who demand “monster packs” (non-blind groups of goblins, zombies, orcs, etc.) are going to be happy. In order to keep the price reasonable (and still be pre-painted) the packs have to come in blind random boxes. The only way that could possibly change is if the D&D Heroscape line is a big hit and they can push D&D Minis sales as non-blind boosters for that game.
Personally, I love the random packs. It’s like Christmas multiple times per year! I enjoy cracking open a booster and finding a mini I don’t yet have. (Though I’m miserable when I open a pack with all minis I already own.) I hope WotC goes back to the fully blind (with the additional minis in the box) format. Getting less minis for the same money doesn’t make me happy either.
I always thought the PHH either needed to include 1 more mini or go down a couple bucks, but definitely understand all those invisible numbers floating in WotC’s background pushing against that. And as alot of people here have apparently seen as well, it always looked like the biggest buyers of the PHH series (and maybe even all the DnD minis) were eBay style resellers who went peicemeal for player’s who want a specific mini or DM’s looking for “Monsterpacks” or complete collections. It might be advisable to WotC to try and develop some online sale method that they can capitalize on. Maybe an “on-demand” monster pack, or maybe limited pool single mini sales. Heck, I bet if they did add a single mini’s online option they would also increase their book sales, since who’s gonna want to pay the S&H for just the mini when they could probably get a book and mini for a similar overhead. Heck, maybe they should dip into their Magic line marketing info and look at larger “pre-made army” packs that might satisfy DM’s looking for Monster groups AND Players who might see this as a more reasonable way of ensuring they get the mini they want without it costing a crap-load per fig. (I work in biz analysis, so this sorta stuff just starts bouncin round my brain like a super-happy-fun ball. Do not taunt the super-happy-fun ball)
1) Just realized I used “heck” twice. Sorry bout the redneck roots showing.
2) Had a second epiphany on how to make something like the PHH or other mini ventures more appealing: What about including a handful (maybe 4-6) of specialized status tokens. Imagine it like a poker chip but with a custom printed “De-Loused” or “Poisoned” printed 3 or 4 times around it’s sides so everyone doesn’t have to keep a damned colorwheel next to their character sheets. If a particular grouping doesn’t have a lot of specialized status needs, load em up with some nice generic “Marked” and “Bloodied” tokens to fill in the gap. I’m sure if they had the volume it would be pretty cheap per pack for WotC, but would add a definable selling point to players who are working with a 5 color poker chip set and are just not able to give everyone a unique chip for their powers.
In my games, players are usually responsible for PC representations when at all possible. The DM is responsible for finding monsters and the like, and if any players contribute, it’s always appreciated.
As to why the phB mini lines failed, while there were some cool figures (some), none of them ever really fit the class or race or just general look that I felt my character was going for. As a result, it never felt like it was worth the money to purchase them, when I could use something from Reaper or Magnificent Egos that would be much closer to my vision for my character.
.-= agentofn0thing´s last blog ..Who ya’ gonna’ call? =-.