Dungeons And Dragons Eight Week Project

A(nother) New Project

I've been trying to clear the decks of ongoing stuff ready for an important project. The Thursday evening Dungeons and Dragons group is finally getting to play face to face!

So far we've only played online, and we've been going for many months, but at last we get to play without all the embarrassing pauses and connection issues.  Without Roll20, we can use maps and minis, my favourite way of gaming.

 

I want to have as complete a collection of minis for the game as possible, but that's not as easy as it seems. 

The party are currently exploring my fifth edition version of the fourth edition module, Madness at Gardmore Abbey, but I've added plenty of optional content, and I've changed large parts of the adventure to fit my vision and hopefully avoid some of that 4th edition feel*. 

So there's a big list of potential mini requirements.  Some stuff may be encountered before the live game day, so could be 'wasted' effort; others might never be encountered (again with the effort), so where to start?

And can I get it all done by mid August?

Characters

Well character minis are a must, even in games where I've used card standees for monsters I've stuck to 3D minis for the player characters. 

There are six (yes, six!) player, so that's probably the first target.

Creatures

I want to avoid spoilers, but they have done a fair bit of scouting out and general information gathering, so they've a rough idea of the various creatures they are likely to meet, including...

A dragon and it's kobold minions, various undead (they've already neutralised one necromancer), a Fae knight and his retinue, four minotaurs, quite a lot of orcs and some mercenary bands. 

There are more of course, but I'll try and keep them as a surprise.

Not Just Minis

And then there's terrain.

For the most part I'll use hand drawn floor plans, though I'm keeping open the option to make something suitably grand if time allows. I will be using some furnishings and props, probably some of my Mantic Terrain Crate bits where possible.

I might try building some extra bits, it will depend on time and need.

I had hoped to build some Orc's Drift terrain for Dave Stone's Terrain Challenge in July and August, but I might have to see if dungeon terrain and props count instead.

Planning Ahead 

I accept that I'm not going to get everything ready in time, so I'm going to have to plan smart.

If the PCs are a must, special creatures are also important, but I can work out a list of the most likely encounters. This will also help when planning the terrain and props.

I've still got quite a lot of the WotC prepainted dungeons and dragons minis, so I'll be looking through to see if any of these will be appropriate (no doubt regretting selling off so many). In some cases I've got Reaper Bones minis that I prefer, but if time is short, the prepaints may well get used.

Expect a few waffling posts where I overthink this.  I'll try and post (spoiler free) updates here, but I may be a bit quiet for a while.

Ulterior Motives

Long term reader's know about my Orc's Drift project (check the tag on the right if you don't), where the idea wasn't just to do stuff for the Orc's Drift Campaign, but to have armies and terrain sorted for many other games.

It's the same here.  I hope to have painted up quite a few minis from my 'loft of shame' for RPG use, and it should also help me sort through some of the stuff and decide what I want to keep and what I can get rid of.

* Firstly, I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed 4th ed when it was released; I did, after all, run an eleven year campaign using the rules.  

However, I found most of the published adventures suffered from a need to follow one path through, fighting everything in the dungeon in order.  Partly this is due to the aggressive scaling built into the game; the first adventure, Keep on the Shadowfell (actually published just before the release of the game, and, in theory is an exemplar of the new system) requires exactly this plodding through.  Individual encounters may have multiple paths and loops within them, but there is only one real optional section in the dungeon.  This focus on tactical rather than strategic play was, for me, the main reason I eventually decided that 5th ed was a system better suited to my wants.

Madness at Gardmore Abbey is one of the later 4e adventures, and is a huge pack.  It is generally reckoned to be the best of the official adventures, and is much less set in the approach the players can take; an aspect I play on to the maximum.