Budget Painting Handles

For a long while I've used bottle tops as paint handles. They do the job, but as my hands get older I'm finding it painful to hold them for long periods of time.  Recently I used an old toothpaste lid which was taller and more comfortable to hold*, but top heavy; fine for light minis (like the goblins I painted here, check out the first photo of the third goblin) but not ideal. However, turned upside down they were much more stable, but with no upper surface. Clearly I needed to fill in the void.

The obvious material was hot glue and I added a metal nut for extra weight and stability. I finished it off with a milk bottle cap, which I trimmed down once the glue had cooled.  I'll use blu tac to hold minis in place.

The raw materials, just add hot glue

All stuck together

Trimmed and finished

This works fine for minis with bases, but if I'm preparing minis for clear basing I remove the broccoli base and glue wire into the feet.  In the past I used crocodile clips to hold the mini for painting (as with the Apache band here), fastened to BBQ skewers, and stuck in holes drilled in a block of wood. This tends to be a bit unstable and fiddly.

I decided I might as well upgrade these too, and thought about just filling in with hot glue around the skewers. Then I tried the bolts that came with the nuts I used earlier and they fit nicely in the tops and the clips screwed onto the thread. Much better!

The raw materials, again, just add hot glue

Clip screwed on to the bolt

Two completed painting handles

So two different model paint handles at very little cost. The only outlay was a pack of eight nuts and bolts from the local 'cheap stuff' shop. 

I've not used them much yet, but they are bound to be more comfortable than the old caps or the skewers. 

I'm sure other toothpaste lids would work, or indeed other lids or tops. They just need to be relatively tall compared to the width to keep them stable.

EDIT:  Crocodile clips are easy to get hold of online, 5 amp clips are sufficient.  The nuts and blots were 40mm long M4 bolts, which are just the right size for the clips and long enough to attach the clip to, but not so long as to be unstable.

*I've been saving these for a while simply because they have an interesting shape.  I have used them as rocket exhausts in scrap piles.

D&D Adventurer Magazine parts 5 & 6

I'm continuing to look through these.  It's now possible to work out roughly where they are heading and what they are covering by looking at the Hachette website.  They are starting a new Adventure in issue 12, so I'll probably finish with issue 11 (always assuming I can find them, they are getting thinner on the shelves - which is normal for partworks).

Both issue continue to develop all four of the sections, and I'm getting a better idea how these are put together now.  

Issue Five

Sage Advice covers the Three Pillars (exploration, social interaction and combat) in a very general way. A nice touch is suggestions for including aspects of one pillar within another. 

Then there are pages covering the different ways time passes in the game and how different light levels affect characters. 

Finally there's a section on damage resistance, vulnerability and immunity.

Character Creation covers the fighter class. As with the previous classes, there is a page of background and a page on first level features.

Lore covers the Neverwinter Wood. While it would have been nice to have details of potential wandering monsters, there is a very useful map of the region. This is the same area as the big map in issue two, but has the adventure locations from both Lost Mine and Icefire Peak marked, along with short paragraphs describing them. 

The second Monsters page looks at skeletons. No stats unfortunately, it looks like these will only ever be included in the Encounters.

The freebie in issue five is another set of dice, the third so far.

Issue six 

This issue is mostly concerned with levelling up. 

Sage Advice is a single page looking at magic items and discussing attunement. 

Character Creation is a large section, with an overview of levelling up and giving details of hit point increases. 

Then a page about Orcs as a character race followed by four pages detailing the new stuff the four classes covered so far gain at second level. If you're building up the collection in binders, these pages slot in after the relevant class sections covering first level abilities.

Lore continues the orc theme by looking at the Kingdom of Many Arrows.

Issue six also includes another dice tin and set of dice (two tins and four dice sets now, plus the bigger D20) and four more character sheets promoting the pre-gens to second level.

As previously, I'll look at the Encounters at the end, so you can avoid them if you don't want spoilers.

Summary

Honestly, for me the Encounters are the draw in the magazines. I've found useful stuff in nearly all of them. I will also be sharing the relevant class information pages with any new players in my campaign, though so far this covers only the options chosen for the pre-gens. 

It's interesting to see how the information is presented, and also how things have changed since fifth edition was first published. The inclusion of orcs as a player race so early in the run marks quite a shift. Previously, you had to wait until Volo's Guide to Monsters for this.  It emphasises the shift towards treating the different races as all essentially neutral, with certain individuals, perhaps, giving them a bad name.

The page on levelling up confirms that the Adventures use milestone XP, but does mention XP points as an alternative method.

The features at second level are designed specifically for the pre-gens. Whilst this is fine, and only what the starter sets do, I'd hoped that the collection would build up into a complete set of rules. There is a suggestion that other wizard schools will be covered in future ( the halfling has abduration), but there's no option for readers to make different choices. Of course, D&D Beyond is an option, though it isn't specifically mentioned here.

Given the total cost of the collection, I was hoping that more choices would have been covered.

The Encounters

The Crypt of the Elf Lord is almost brilliant.  It's another one I'm stealing for my campaign.  Briefly, the adventurers follow a lead from Carp Alderleaf, who, judging from his role as 'finder of concealed places' in The Lost Mine of Phandalin, must be a bit of a tear-away.  The crypt  is the last resting place of an Elven king and his crony's.  There is a trap, a puzzle, potentially a couple of combats and a nice treasure.  

However, the crypt is accessible for 'a few nights' only,  and characters can get trapped in it if they remain for more than eight hours.  The Encounter gives no method of escape, meaning a potential TPK. It's relatively easy to address this though, here are a few options that immediately occurred to me.

Extend the time limit and warn the players; Carp got trapped in the crypt for a day, only able to escape the following evening.  Thus he can both inform the characters of the location of the crypt, and warn them that it is likely to be difficult to get out (though he won't know that this is the last chance for a year).  The characters could even start the Encounter by looking for Carp after he fails to return home rather than the hook as given.

Foreshadow the danger; What if others managed to get into the crypt but fell afoul of the transitory nature of the entrance?  The remains of a couple of adventurers will show that there is some danger.  Maybe they are the ones who conveniently placed the silver coins in the goblet, but were unable to solve the rest of the puzzle.  One of them has a bundle of papers that note star constellations, especially Lavarandar's Lantern, with a mention of the dates it should be visible in the night sky.

Make another exit; If we assume that the crypt exists on both the material plane and the Feywild, presumably it should be possible to exit into the Feywild at other times.  The actual exit might only be present in the Material Plane, but the characters should be able to dig to freedom with appropriate Strength checks.

Queen of Scars has yet more orc action. It's an interesting Encounter, presenting a problem with several ways of solving it, though it's clearly intended that the problem be talked through rather than fought through. I'd have liked to have seen the titular Queen being a bit tougher, but that would make a violent solution much harder (its already very tough to fight to a win here). 

It's nice that the Encounters are demonstrating that there should be non-combat Encounters as part of a balanced Adventure, and although the writer discusses various ways of solving the problem, this is not prescriptive.  There are also repercussions to the solution chosen, which should influence the way the characters are viewed in Phandalin going forward.

Vallejo Xpress Paints Three Goblin Trial (77445)

Long time readers may know that I've tried Citadel's Contrast paints and Army Painter's Speed Paints with varying results. I struggled to get the Contrast paints to really behave as I wanted, but the Speed paints were much better.  There was the issue of reactivation, but I used this property to help blend colours.

When I heard Vallejo were doing their own equivalent I had to try them.

Since I used Speedpaints to try and reduce my unpainted Reaper Bones mountain, it seems a fair test to try Xpress paints on more Bones.

For this test I'm painting some of the more recent Bones goblins, and I'm trying three slightly different methods with a limited number of paints.  All the goblins had the metalwork painted first with Vallejo Game Color Chainmail Silver and then washed with thinned  Vallejo Xpress Color Black Lotus.

Goblin 1

The first goblin is painted using mostly colours straight from the bottle straight onto the white Bonesium.  The flesh is VXS Imperial Yellow, the loincloth is VXS Plasma Red and the various leather bits are VXS Wasteland Brown.  The shield was a roughly 50:50 mix of the black and VXS Templar White.

I also dabbed a bit of the thinned brown on the face to see if it helped define the features.

Goblin 2

For the second goblin, I mixed colours a bit more, especially for the skin tone.  This was a mix of three parts yellow and one part brown.  to take the brightness out of the red for the cap I added a bit of the skin mix to the red.  On the photos the cap and the loincloth on goblin 1 look very similar, but the cap is darker in real life.  The skirt is VXS Dwarf Flesh, which gives a surprisingly good faded buff colour.

the bracer and fletchings are black and the leatherwork is the brown.  I went over the rope with a thinned black to give it more definition.

Goblin 3

The final goblin has an all over base coat or wash of Wasteland Brown thinned in a 1:5 mix with Xpress Color Medium. My hope here is that this helps accentuate the shadows, rather like Reaper's own brown liner. 

I then used pretty much the same colours as I used on the first goblin. 

Results

I'm a huge fan of Vallejo paints, but I feel the results are mixed.  I'll admit to sometimes not shaking the paint well enough (Army Painter put mixing pellets in the bottles to help, I'll have to add something to these).  Also, the goblins are lovely minis, but the detail is fairly shallow.  I like the last goblin best; the initial wash helps define the shadows, and darkens the colours slightly.  If I could get a thinner wash that collected more in the shadows it would be better.  A final drybrush of Vallejo Model Color Ivory would also emphasis detail, and of course I haven't done anything for the eyes or teeth, both things that would improve them.

Based properly (this is just one coat of VXS Orc Skin) and they would do for hordes of goblins in a roleplaying game, and they are certainly better than unpainted minis.  

Final Thoughts

Some of these paints are really nice, Wasteland Brown is a favourite at the moment.  All go on Bonesium very well, with no difficult patches.  I want these to give a reasonable result for as little effort as possible, so I'm prepared to sacrifice quality to a degree.  I'm not sure the above test minis quite work yet, but I'll give them a drybrush, paint in the facial detail and base them to match the rest of my D&D mini collection.  They were very fast to paint though, so they certainly meet that requirement.  

I suppose I should try another goblin with Speedpaints for a fair comparison as well.

What do you think?  Are they disappointing or acceptable for what I'm looking for (i.e. a fast way to get the Mini mountain reduced?  Please leave a comment, especially if you've tried them.

Dungeons and Dragons Adventurer Issues 3&4

I've had the chance to read through the next couple of issues of Adventurer magazine. You can see my thoughts on issue one here and issue two here. 

This time I'll  give a briefer overview and try to share my thoughts as to the suitability, or not, of the part-work.

As I've done previously, I'll cover the adventures at the end, so you can avoid spoilers.

Both issues use the familiar artwork with different spot colour. I wonder if they'll change this when we get to the second adventure?

Sage advice covers Conditions and Spell casting times and range.

We're starting to get more detail on spellcasting now, useful as the Character Creation sections look at clerics and wizards.

Character Creation covers Skills, Elves, Halflings and Dwarves, so we have general information for all the pre-gens races. There are introductions to wizards and clerics, much like the rogue stuff in issue two. 

As with rogues last time, a page of rough background before we start to look at actual class details and features.

Lore gives an overview of the Sword Coast and the start of two new sub sections; Factions, introducing the Red Wizards of Thay and the Zhentarim, and Monsters, looking at Vampires.

Unsurprisingly, they are filling in the Forgotten Realms world here.  Given the importance of Phandalin in the first adventure (or series of Encounters) I'd have liked to see more on that region, the town especially.  I should note that the Encounters (see below - or not if you even intend to play in them) use information from the Lore section as background.

The 'Freebies'

Issue three includes 'flats' of the four pre-gens. These are very nice, sturdy and clearly printed.  

As I said previously, if these had been around when I started playing D&D I'd have been building up a collection, but by now I'm too much of a minis addict to quite now.  I have, in fact, used card 'flats' before.  For adventures where I couldn't find anything quite matching the monster I was looking for, or for large numbers of minion types.  One Monk is a great source (among others) of these.

Issue four includes a big d20 and a pouch to hold it in. While not essential, it's nice to have. I keep mine ready for secret rolls when I'm running online games. 

The cheapest big die I could find on Amazon was around £8, so I guess this pretty much covers the cost of the magazine?

Summary

The part-work is starting to build up some useful information, but there's still a long way to go before it's even close to products such as the Starter Set or the Essentials Set.  There's a nice match up with the lore and the adventures, both encounters feature factions covered in the new Lore sections.

There are several examples of incomplete information. For example, two of the conditions are missing, though they are mentioned as being covered later. I appreciate that space is an issue, but I feel there are plenty of instances of inessential artwork which could have been omitted or reduced in size to give more room for text. Rather than keep all the definitions together, they will be spread throughout the part work.

On a related note, the DMs Tips are generally very useful, but the presentation is space wasteful. 

If you want more information about where the magazine is heading, check Fauxhammer's articles which mostly cover the freebies (mostly dice sets apparently), and Hachette's website, which gives a brief rundown of the contents of the next few issues.  This last is very useful for working out how the series is likely to progress, for instance, they will be levelling up the pre-gens, and introducing a new one, a gnome bard, all before issue 10.

And finally, the Encounters

The magazine refers to each issues six sides of Adventure content as an Encounter, but they often cover multiple locations with different groups of creatures. They remind me in scale of some of the encounters in the Essentials set adventure Dragon of Icefire Peak. I suppose Encounter has now replaced what I would call a scenario.

The Tower of Iron Will is billed as a mystery. There is a necessary combat, but the players will have to work out what has happened in the tower in order to succeed. I really like the concept and I'm certainly stealing this, with some changes, for my campaign.

Unfortunately, there are some issues with the clues, and there are aspects of the mystery that didn't, to me, quite make sense. It won't take much to knock it into a workable scenario though, especially by giving more options and reducing the linearity. There's also another mistake in the map numbering, but reading the text should make this obvious.

Daylight Robbery is more an extended encounter, though with the potential for expansion to something a bit meatier. Unlike the Tower, I found it very linear. There are few meaningful choices for the players (apart, perhaps from the 'open the box or take the money' choice). It also features an ambush, which I'm not keen on, but that's just a personal opinion.

Both 'Encounters' use milestone XP, or I assume they do, as there is no mention of XP. I believe that the pre-gens will level up to second level by about issue seven. As an exercise I tried calculating the XP available. Issue 1 gives 155, issue 2 gives 240XP, issue 3 gives 1300XP.  Issue 4 is hard to calculate, as the Boss Monster is a lower level variant of a D&D classic, so I'm not sure, though I'd guess she's about Challenge 3 or 4?

This is assuming no additional XP granted for completing a mission, though monetary rewards are given. By my reckoning the characters are second level by the end of issue three. However, this would require more information for both players and DM to handle, which won't be available for some weeks yet. 

The adventurers will also have amassed some treasure by now, but the only thing given a price so far is copying spells into spell books, and the Encounters haven't yet included any extra spells for this purpose. It would be trivially easy to include Shezayda's spell book in the Tower of Iron Will.

I do like the adventures. They are more than just a series of combats, and, as such, are a good guide to new DMs designing their own encounters. I would like to see more background and detail of Phandalin to help the players become more involved with the town and it's inhabitants. Four NPCs from the town have been mentioned, but with little more than a name and gender. Again, space issues may be the reason, but see my comments above.  My main complaints are lack of detail, though again, encouraging the DM to improvise is great, although few actual guidelines have been given, and the linear nature of some of the Encounters.

Another Milestone

Well, I'm amazed that I've reached 50 000 views on my little blog, and so soon after hitting 40K.

Thank You!

The same sort of things are proving popular, and the fact that there is a wide spread of views throughout the 'back catalogue' suggests that most of the views are genuine.

At past milestones I've looked at what people have been reading, this time I'd like to reflect on the projects that fell by the wayside, the started but never completed stuff, and perhaps learn a bit about why. Who knows, I might even decide to return to some of them.

I'm not considering stuff that is, essentially, eternally ongoing, such as painting Reaper Bones for roleplaying, or adding to existing playable armies.

Barsoom 

This one is embarrassing as it's the first thing I blogged about. The aim was to play skirmish games set on the Mars of Edgar Rice Burrows' John Carter of Mars books. As is often the case, this was a an idea dreamt up by Bodvoc (or Merlin as he was known then) and myself, I couldn't tell you who first came up with the idea. We were going to adapt the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Games rules (I think we found a document on the internet?). We had a small collection of 18mm minis from Black Hat Miniatures and I built a one metre game board. 

I don't really know why we never got any further. We were both working then, and gaming opportunities were very limited. We didn't get any games played, and I never even got any minis painted. Sadly, the game board succumbed to damp and had to be destroyed.

If I were to return to Barsoom I'd use Fistful of Lead Galactic Heroes, there's even a set of suggested stats for Barsoom.  I don't think I'd make a dedicated board, but I do have vague plans for some sort of terrain tile, and a red desert might be fun for a variety of Sci-fi games.

Kings of War Goblins

I started this army back in 2015 to give myself a new force to play the then new second edition.  Since I started them, second edition came and went, and I finished a regiment of sniffs and a regiment of fleabag riders. I've also got enough Sharpsticks for a horde, but (familiar story) they aren't based. I fully intend to return to these, as they will make up the bulk of a 500point Ambush force. I haven't tried mixing the old plastic goblins with the new ones yet, but I may well look into that in the future.

As to why they got abandoned? I'm not really sure, but I suspect that it was a choice between painting more goblins and painting more orcs for whatever battle was looming up. Once I've got the current lot of orcs rebased it sounds like a great time to get at least an Ambush force of goblins sorted out.

10mm War of the Ring

Another MisterC/Bodvoc joint project. This was a way to get the feel of playing mass battles in Middle Earth. We'd both played a bit of the War of the Ring game when it came out, but wanted to reduce the scale and rewrite the lists to be closer to how we imagined them from the books. In the end there was a lot of chat and a bit of painting, but this all came in useful when we moved to using Fantastic Battles, you can see the first lot of orcs here.

Our Fantastic Battles in Middle Earth project is alive and well, if a little neglected. I'm sure we'll return to it before long, and I have some Grand Plans in that direction.

A Song of Ice and Fire

This was more of a vague theme to my hobbying for a while. I built a Stone Crow and some Wildlings and began a rough hut. I'd initially thought of collecting enough to try the Never Mind The Billhooks rules, but more realistically I was aiming for Fistful of Lead warbands. 

I'll probably return to this at some point, though the drive to play Westeros set games has lessened. The idea of having forces of fifty to sixty minis a side with bright heraldry is still appealing, though I think now I'd use Dragon Rampant rules.

Trident Realm

This is a biggie. I've lots of minis, and I've painted some of them, but I've never got as far as getting anything table top ready.

Basing has been a problem; I set out with a very clear mental image of how I wanted them to look, but nothing I tried came close. This was very demoralising and sucked all the joy out of the project. It didn't help that I wasn't familiar with the different units or what makes a good starting force.

I'm going to reset my expectations for the bases, build some minis afresh and do an Ambush force and see how they go. I've a fair bit of other stuff on at the moment, but I'll get back to these later this year.

Kings of War Dwarf Demo Army

At one time I had plans to have a box containing two demo armies plus the Quickstart rules and a bit of terrain to lend to people expressing an interest in the game. I've got the Orc army done, but the Dwarf army currently consists of just a regiment of Brock Riders. I have my existing Dwarves to draw from, but I need, at the least, to rebase some of them.

Part of the reason I did Dwarf buildings for the Second International Terrainscape Challenge was to come up with a 'look' for a Dwarven building to accompany the set. (I wonder if another Terrainscape Challenge would be fun? Perhaps next year).

This is one of those 'I want it done, but there are so many other things I'd rather work on' projects. I'm going to have to just bite the crossbow bolt and get on with it. Probably one unit at a time.

Orc's Drift Dragon Rampant

Bodvoc and myself played the first scenario in the Orc's Drift campaign, Kachas Pass (write up here and design thoughts here), but never got any further. There are several reasons for this, including me not yet painting up the required minis, something else coming along and me losing a lot of my files when I changed PC.

I definitely want to get back to this, I've always enjoyed the old second edition scenario packs. Now that, in theory, Bodvoc and I should be getting more gaming days, perhaps it's time to look at this again?

Deadzone

I've not painted anything for Deadzone for ages.  Probably not since the Ripper Suits in Orctober 2021.  I do want to get a few teams painted for the various factions, and I'd like to expand into Firefight territory, for the Marauders at least.

I should also sit down and work out a decent set of terrain.  I have a large box of the sprues, but far more than I need.  I may as well thin the collection down to what I need for games.

Dungeon Saga/Star Saga

I wnated to get full sets of painted minis and scenery for both these games.  I got all the minis for Star Saga done, but still have to finish the scenery, the doors especially.  Dungeon Saga-wise I only have a few undead painted.  I suspect if I raid my various stashes of RPG furniture I'll find more there (I know I did the well for Frostgrave).  We aren't doing either of these games at the moment, so the impetus isn't there.  I guess they could count as easy wins in terms of achievements though.

I should also mention the Conan game here.  As we've been playing a lot of board games recently, and after a years worth of trying to fathom Deep Madness, I don't think this is the game for me.  I painted the mummies and some of the gribblies, but I don't need the minis for RPG, so I guess it's the Bay of E for the game.

But What about the Rest?

There are loads more things I started and haven't finished, though I do intend to do so soon(ish).  The above projects are the dead in the water ones that I need to either cast raise hobby project on or scrap.

Before the Blog

I suppose I could also mention a couple of projects that I started many years before I began this blog. 

Kings of War Elves

I've shown my first KoW army, Orcs, in many battle reports, but I also started an elven army using Mantic's elves.  These are a bit 'marmite', folk either love them or hate them.  I like the thin, non-human look.  I've seen too many elves in miniature that are simply humans with pointy ears and hoods.  Perhaps an exaggeration, some have pointy chins as well.  I find the proportions of the Mantic elves to be subtly different and they work for me.  I have some issues with the original kits, the modern ones are much more flexible, but I have enough to do a small force.

I was inspired by the mention of the elven prince who fled up north.  Now, of course, this background has been woven into the Northern Alliance, but at the time I thought a force of winter themed elves would be great.

I came up with a paint scheme, mostly white with some blues, and even began converting plastic elk to make mounts for the cavalry.  I was using West Wind's yeti as Forest Shamblers and even tried putting skis on the war machine. 

Alas, the project was abandoned, partly due to a house fire and an enforced 6 months living in temporary accommodation.  Given the new N.A list I don't see much use for these any more.

6mm Fantasy

Even longer ago Bodvoc and I experimented with 6mm fantasy, using Irregular Miniatures strips of fantasy minis.  Initially we adapted a set of rules from one of the Wargaming magazines, with a generic rules set on one page, and specific rules and lists on a separate page for each race.  Rather like One Page Rules do now.  We never quite got these right (anyone remember average dice?) and moved to adapting other rules.  We had a good selection of different armies, Bodvoc certainly had elves, and I had dwarves, orcs and goblins.  Bodvoc has returned to 6mm with his Dark Elves for Fantastic Battles (you can see them towards the end of this post on his blog), using 25mm squares for the element bases.  I may well do the same, I'll have to see if any of the stuff I painted years (decades) ago is worth salvaging or is it the Dettol for them and starting afresh?

So that's a look through some of my abandoned projects. Have I learnt anything, apart from the fact that my aspirations outstrip time available? Well, yes, I think so.

If a project takes a long time to get ready then it's likely to be supplanted by something that's already ready or that needs just a little bit of extra. This usually happens if I'm looking at two new armies plus terrain.

If I'm already enjoying something I'm more likely to invest hobby time there than something different. That said, I do tire of long term projects, and there's always the thrill of the new. When I was doing Palette Cleansers this worked admirably.

I learnt the hard way during Lockdown that I need a goal for my hobby. Sometimes this can be the pure joy of painting a particular mini, but there's no point starting an army if I don't have a realistic chance of playing games with it in the not too distant future. Thus I found it relatively easy to do my Karpath army, Bodvoc and I were doing a slow grow campaign and were pretty regularly playing games.

The counterpoint to this is that I hate to feel forced to do something. Hobby shouldn't feel like a job. Or at least, not a demanding or tedious one.

So it's a balancing act. Fuzzy targets would seem to be the most effective long term, but a hard target helps short term.

At the moment I seem to be doing very little wargaming.  There's the MESBG stuff, but nothing else.  I'm still running D&D, albeit online (so no need for minis or terrain).  This tends to take away the impetus to crack on and get stuff finished. 

Dungeons and Dragons Adventurer Issue Two

I picked up a copy of Adventurer magazine issue two. Here are my thoughts.

The pack includes another set of dice, a large poster map and the magazine.

The magazine

Another twelve loose leaf pages (24 sides). Again, the first page is cover and contents and uses the same artwork as issue one, but with gold spot colour rather than red.

Sage Advice covers advantage, disadvantage and inspiration, and short and long rests and hit dice. 

Useful stuff, and pretty much complete for the topics.  I think that the description of long rests uses the same text as the PHB.  This can (and has) cause confusion regarding what disrupts a long rest.

Then come two pages introducing Spellcasting, covering the basics of spells (spell slots, duration, components etc). Concentration is covered, as is how clerics and wizards prepare spells

There's enough information here for beginning spell casters to function. So far the only spells we have seen are on the pre-gen character sheets, though, of course, D&D Beyond has more information. 

I note there is a mistake in the examples given using the pre-gens.  The wizard is stated as having three spell slots rather than two.

Character Creation has a page on the human race species, then covers rogues, with a brief overview of the class, followed by a look at sneak attacks.

Presumably we will get the major PC species covered in a like manner, similarly the classes. The human page is general background stuff rather than any actual rules.

Given the amount of information required to run the different classes this is going to take some time to build up a full rulesbook's worth.

Lore gives a very general look at the Forgotten Realms.

This is the kind of thing I'd expected in issue one, but the encounter in that issue needed the Phandalin background.

The Adventure can be run using the pre-gens from issue one, still first level. As with my look at issue one, I'll put details in a section at the end to avoid spoilers.

I'm using words like 'overview' and 'introduction' a lot. The series so far seems a bit like reading the first couple of paragraphs of the relevant sections of the Players Handbook. 

I suppose this is inevitable. The format allows for later issues to fill in details, and there simply isn't enough space cover everything in one issue.  There are frequent mentions of D&D Beyond as a source of further information and choice.

The dice

The standard set of seven dice. This time gold flecked translucent. They look good and shiny, and I suspect that they are better quality than the cheap ones available on Wish. There's no tin this time. 

Another nice dice set. Still only one d6 though. I believe that dice bags are another 'freebie' later in the series. The dice sets are supposed to be colour coded to the adventures. I suspect they are front loading these so that all the players get a set early on.

The map

This is a hex map of the Sword Coast, the same area covered in both the Lost Mine of Phandelver and the Dragon of Icefire Peak. The map is large (76cm x 56cm) and glossy printed on card. The map has five mile hexes and has several adventure locations marked.

This is nice, though I have a couple of minor issues. I prefer six mile hexes (fits easily with adventurers' travel speeds and also with sight distances), but five miles seems to be the current WotC standard. 

If the map is intended as a play aid it does give away future adventure locations ahead of time. I know my players would immediately want to explore everything. Worse, this issues' encounter is further away from Phandalin than another site marked on the map.

It does allow us to know a bit more about Adventure one as a whole, though, which is interesting. In my deeper delve into issue one I suggested that there might be some kind of floor plans in this issue, well there isn't.  I guess they may have been too adventure specific?

A map of the town of Phandalin on the other side would have been very useful. Perhaps we'll get one later?

Thoughts

After the excitement of issue one, and the thrill of fighting rats, Adventurer is settling down to providing more rules.  Given that there are only eleven pages of content, including three of an adventure, that's not a lot of room, it looks like it'll be a few issues before the players have enough information to make truly informed decisions within the game.

I wonder if more small guides, like the combat one in the previous issue, might help. Magic would be a good start.

I do feel that DMs need more advice. So far the encounters do include hints and tips, but I think the way a game plays out at the table top needs more explanation.  This could be me speaking through 40+ years of playing, and there's a wealth of information out there (probably too much).

I'm sure that a group with one player who already has some knowledge of the game will do very well with Adventurer. As I said last time, there are cheaper and more complete ways for mixed groups of beginners and more experienced players to start. Perhaps a totally novice group will find this ideal.

Checking against the latest One D&D playtest document, I can confirm that the rules in Adventurer are essentially fifth edition.  WotC are claiming that One D&D will be compatible with fifth, so I suppose that Adventurer will still be useful once One D&D is published.

Finally, to avoid spoilers earlier...

The Forgotten Vault

This is listed as Adventure One, Encounter Two. It is a simple 'fetch quest', though nicely done. 

The heroes are hired by a Phandalin NPC to recover something from the titular vault. 

I like the reasoning behind why he needs help rather than doing this himself, though it's a magical effect that works automatically that I'm sure any wizard would want to learn.

There are a couple of potential combats, a trap and a hazard.  It's fairly straightforward, but I can imagine it would be a lot of fun at the table.

The six pages include a bit of DM advice, though less than last issue.  One page is a player handout, though it is printed on the back of a monster stat block, making it difficult to use in play, and it is a genuinely important handout containing some useful information and clues.  The stat blocks could have appeared on one page, with the monster pictures on the back of the handout.  I'd like to have seen this also available as a download.

Once again there is no mention of experience points, I guess that they are going for milestone experience.  Given the very structured nature of the product this is understandable (looking ahead on the Hachette website, one of the future issues deals with  levelling up.

I like this adventure, there is a lot more to it than King Under the Hill.  My main gripe is the set up. It is simply given as a quest with the assumption that the heroes will take it on.  Indeed its not even clear how the heroes find out about it.  There's no tie in to the previous encounter other than they both start in Phandolin.  There is the potential for some interaction with the quest giver, Daran Edermath, but its very much a case of you decide to do his quest so he gives you the map.  All these points are easy to fix, and below are my suggestions on how to do it.

Daran was one of the villagers captured by the cranium rats in King Under the Hill in issue one.  Impressed by the heroes efforts, he is looking through his old adventuring gear with a view to rewarding them. In doing so he finds the map and then contacts them.  

This makes the adventure much more personal, deepens the heroes' connection with an NPC, and rewards them for their previous adventure.

I'd also be tempted to allow the heroes to access the vault via the river.  It should be easy to alter Daran's map to hint at the river (indeed, it probably needs some extra text to indicate where the heroes should cross the Triboar Trail).  Clever players can then make the link between the river on the overground map and the one on the map of the vault.

I suspect that Adventure One is focused on the hidden elven kingdom of Iliyanbruen. There is brief mention of it in King Under the Hill, and one of the locations on the map is an elven crypt.

Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Partwork - A Deeper Delve

I've had time to read through the first issue of Adventurer, so here's a more in depth review. I'll talk about the contents and add my thoughts, both about this issue and future issues, as far as can be determined. I'm trying to work out if it's worth getting more issues.  You might want to check out my initial look at the magazine here.

And a warning, there will be some spoilers for the adventure, so I'll look at that right at the end.

The Magazine

The magazine consists of fourteen pages (28 sides) designed to be separated and placed in ring binders. This is the same system Hachette have used in their Games Workshop part works. The different sections and sub sections build up over the weeks, presumably to make up a complete set of rules, along with background for the Forgotten Realms and a series of adventures.

The first page is just the cover, with contents on the inside. The cover art is very good, showing four adventurers fighting a bunch of skeletons. 

The next four pages are Sage Advice, split between three pages of Overview, giving a bit of background and history of the game, the difference between DMs and Players, the scope of the game, the general structure of play and how to use the dice. There is then one page of sub section B, The DM, giving a brief idea of what the DM's role requires.

There's a surprising amount of information in here, the basic sequence of play for instance (DM describes the situation, players decide what their characters want to try to do, DM describes the outcome. Repeat).  I'm not sure it's necessarily presented in the best order, and I do have some issues with some of the information (they missed a great opportunity to describe the 'checklist' all DMs should go through - can it fail? If not just narrate success. Can it succeed? If not just narrate failure. In all other cases determine what character abilities are relevant). But suspect that newcomers will find this interesting/useful. 

Character Creation gives an overview of abilities, species,  background and class. We are introduced to the four pre-generated characters (Crantor Thranax, human rogue, Eirina Illoris, elf fighter, Reizagar Stormhelm, dwarf cleric and Merovich Farfoot, halfling wizard). 

Ability scores, modifiers and proficiency bonus are next, then Species, with a focus on those of the Pre-gens. Character class is next, with information tailored to the starting characters, and finally a page on equipment, with nice illustrations of some of the equipment packs.

Some useful stuff, indeed I've used the illustrations for my online group already.  The big omission here is a guide to creating your own characters, but there is mention that this will be dealt with in future issues, and if the idea is to get people playing as quickly as possible then pre-gens are the way to go.  There's also frequent mention of D&D Beyond throughout the magazine, so I guess they are providing a way for the curious to find out more.  

Lore gives a very brief introduction to Phandalin. 

A predictable choice, given it's importance in the old Lost Mine starter set, the Dragon of Icefire Peak set and the recent Shattered Obelisk book.  Still, it's always useful to have a well developed town as a home for adventurers, and Phandolin is great for that.

Finally there is a six page Encounter. It looks like the magazine will feature a series of Encounters that build into Adventures.  Each Adventure is colour coded, and has a matching set of dice!  I gather that the Adventures take a party from first level to fifth and I gather that the early Adventures at least are using milestone experience rather than awarding it for monsters killed and quests completed.

In case you are ever a player in this, I'll give more details in a separate section near the end of this post, so you can skip it to avoid too much prior knowledge.

The Dice Tin

A tin. With dice.

Seriously, it's a nice set of dice, black plastic with red numbers, and they come in a foam insert in a tin with the Adventurer logo on the lid. As I said previously, this justifies the purchase on it's own. Amazon have sets of dice that work out slightly cheaper, but consist of multiple sets of seven, and they come in a cloth bag rather than a tin.  The foam insert even means that your dice don't rattle, though you'll have to lose this if you want to add any more dice.

The only downside I can see is how to pick out your Adventurer dice tin out from everyone elses at the table top.

The Combat Guide

This booklet is half page size, and has staples designed to fit in a ring binder. It covers the combat sequence, lists most (though not all) common options, explains hit points, damage and death saving throws and gives an example using the pre-generated characters.

This is a useful booklet, and I plan on sharing it with my players.  Not every option is covered, Dodge, for example is missing, but both Help and Disengage, important to encourage players to do more than just stand there and swing at opponents, are covered.

The Character Sheets

There are four pre-generated characters, already introduced in the Character Generation section and illustrated on the cover.  The sheets are well designed and clear to read, though the text is perhaps a little small for aging eyes in places. 

While there are no surprises in the choice of human, elf, dwarf and halfling, or rogue, fighter, cleric and wizard, they are avoiding the stereotypes of halfling rogue and elf wizard.  

These are nice character sheets, and I hope we will get some blank ones. Mention is made of D&D Beyond again for more character sheets.  

I do struggle to read some of the smaller type though.

Extras

While the various flyers don't add to the collection, they do allow us to see some of what is in store in future issues.

Subscriber Bonus

Subscribers get a free issue, a dice tray, a DMs screen (with new artwork), a free binder (though you'll need to buy more if you collect the whole set) and a dice jail.

Subscribers get free postage, so if you are seriously collecting all, or even a lot of issues, it's probably worth doing, and the bonus items are generally useful.

Looking Ahead

Those flyers reveal that future issues will also have sections covering Spellcasting and Combat (the Combat Guide is, I suppose, the start of this?).  The Encounters build up into Adventures, the included Encounter is coded Adventure 1/Encounter 1, so presumably it continues in issue 2. 

Issue 2 also introduces Spellcasting, Advantage and Disadvantage and talks about running a rogue.  The Freebies are another set of seven dice, gold this time, and an adventure map, which I assume is some from of floor plans.

Issue 3 looks at conditions and skills and has an article about the Red Wizards of Thay.  The Freebie is a set of character minis for the pre-gens.  These aren't 3D minis in the sense I'm used to, but full colour flats printed on transparent plastic.  Wizkids, among others, have produced these in the past, and I imagine that if the magazine regularly includes these then a new DM will soon have a decent collection.

I believe that issue 4 has a giant d20, but I'm not 100% sure.  I can't work out anything else about further issues.

*EDIT* the Hachette website gives more detail on future magazine contents, though nothing about the 'freebies'.

The minis from issue 3

The 'Freebies'

If you're familiar with Hachette's Warhammer 40K/Age of Sigmar part works you'll be used to seeing a load of 'free' plastic and paint.  I suspect that most people are buying these for the minis, not the magazine, but I could be wrong.

When they previewed Adventurer back in January the plan was to include dice with each issue. They have revised that, and now will also include adventure maps (floorplans?) Inspiration tokens and miniatures. These last appear to be the plastic figure flats that WizKids have brought out, judging from the picture of issue three above.  Whilst I'd have liked to have seen proper 3D minis, I'm certainly not short of them, and if this means that they can afford to include a good collection for new players and DM's, then that's a good thing. They don't need painting either, and are much easier to store.

Thoughts

What do I think of this?  Production values are high.  The artwork is good, with some nice new pieces, particularly featuring the pre-gen party.  Some artwork is reused from earlier WotC publications, but is used intelligently.

The gradual build up of rules may work well, but personally I'd find continual mentions of stuff being covered in future issues off-putting.  However, I'm a keen D&D player/DM who already possesses lots of rule books and scenarios.  I've been playing for 45 years more or less, so it's difficult for me to imagine what someone starting out might need.  This leads me to an important question...

Who is it for?

Honestly, I'm not sure. I can see the appeal of Hachette's various GW part works to players of the games. They consistently provide minis worth more than the cover price, as well as a set of rules, background and modelling and painting guides.  

But Adventurer magazine isn't really about the extras. While it's nice to have several sets of dice, there is, apparently, a limit to how many are useful at the table. Adventure maps, if they are floor plans, will be very useful, and the minis will hopefully build up into a comprehensive collection for new DMs and players.  It's all about the magazine building up a complete set of rules, a guide to the Forgotten Realms and a series of adventures.

Cost wise at £1.99 for the first issue, £4.99 for the second issue and £8.99 thereafter for a projected 80 issue run, that's £708.20 for the set. That's quite a few WotC hardback books.  However, it's a cheap buy-in if you just want to try a few games, and the intention is that you can play from issue one onwards.  I'm not sure in practice how well this works, there are some things I'd expect, such as a short example of play, that are missing.  Even the example in the Combat Guide simply states what each character is doing rather giving the player's comments as they interact with the Encounter.

I would imagine that players who begin this way might be rather frustrated if a particular option isn't covered for many issues. I suspect that a lot of people will start with Adventurer and move to the books or a starter set, and never forget that the fifth edition basic rules are currently available for free on the WotC website.  The roll out of options is, of course, controlled by the release schedule. This may not be too much of a problem for the players, especially if they are unaware of the possibilities they may be missing. It's more problematic for a DM wanting to design their own adventures, so perhaps the idea is that every DM runs the included Encounters/Adventures and nothing else?

Even when the collection is complete I don't think it will read well, certainly not like a rulebook (though the WotC rulebooks are disorganised and often dry).  I remember collecting the old Games Workshop Strategy Battle Games in Middle Earth part-work in the early 2000s, and that had the same issue.  The bulk of the rules were covered in the earlier issues, but remembering where to find particular rules could take ages.  Adventurer mitigates this with the loose leaf  format.

Another problem is that of edition. 2024 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons. WotC are in the process of revamping the rules. The current fifth edition is to be replaced by OneD&D. They are playtesting new rules and have made it clear that they are work in progress. There are signs of the Adventure rules following the playtest, for instance, OneD&D uses the term Species rather than 5E using Race, as does Adventurer.

Conclusion

I really want this to succeed.  It has the potential to bring a lot of new players into the game, and the wider field of roleplaying (it would be great if there were mention of other games' systems, but obviously that isn't going to happen).

I don't think many people will follow it through to the end of the run.  I'm sure this is normal for many part-works anyway.  

It's certainly not aimed at me as a long time player, and I wouldn't recommend it to friends unless they were a group with no previous experience or access to an existing group.  My personal recommendation would still be Lost Mine of Phandelver and the free basic rules document, especially if you have access to a player or DM with some experience to guide play along. 

Failing that, Adventurer may just be the thing, a gradual build up of rules so there's no overload of information at the start.

And finally, ignore this if you don't want mild spoilers.

The Encounter

This looks fun and should provide a good introduction to the game.

It actually contains several possible combats, along with non combat interaction with NPCs (and an extra NPC to add to the Phandolin roster for future adventures) and some interesting treasure.

The choice of opponents, Cranium Rats, is an interesting one, especially with regards to the BBEG in The Shattered Obelisk.  The location, the Stonehill Inn in Phandolin is great. Given how useful it can be in future adventures, a full colour floor plan would have been nice, but perhaps this is coming in a later issue? The description of rooms is sparse, the DM will need to improvise the details.  

There are frequent box outs of advice to the new DM. I suspect they will phase these out over time, giving more room for a more complex Encounter.

There are some niggling errors, such as the location of the cellar entrance and where the stairs lead to (conflicting information in the room descriptions and the general information though it is obvious from the maps).  I also wonder if there are sufficient instructions to a new DM on how to run an adventure, but I've been playing for so long that I find it hard to judge such things.