Minis and RPGs: Thoughts on new directions?

[komradebob]

Hi all,

I'm interested in your thoughts on miniatures in rpgs, and possible new directions to take rpgs+miniatures in.

Some background:
I first became intersted in rpgs when I was @ 10 yrs old and saw a picture of an orc mini in a Ranger Rick or Boys' Life or something along those lines. I've always been a minis junkie, even after my taste in rpgs changed from DnD dungeon crawls to more scene based/character developing rpgs. I just shuffled my interests to more miniatures wargaming, seperate from the rpging.

A couple of weeks ago, my 8 yr old daughter was visiting, and I decided to introduce her to rpgs. We visit regularly by phone, and one of the regular activities is making up stories for each other or together. I figured rpgs were a next step.

She was having none of it, at least in terms of rules and sheets, and so on. The basic DnD boxed set I bought to use was completely uninteresting to her except for the minis and maps. I tried out Shadows, and the storytelling was okay, but no especial interest developed ( I'll chalk that up to Shadows needing at least three people to really utilize the full re-roll rules).

OTOH, I'd picked up some random fantasy and sf minis strictly because I liked them. These came out the following day, and we both had a good time playing with them, making up stories and characteristics on the fly. We also played Politics by other Means ( the Engle's miniatures rules based on his The Matrix Game), and roleplaying type play occured also.

Now, I know that one trend in rpgs has been to move away from the use of minis, especially in a miniatures wargaming sort of way. I'm wondering if anyone is thinking of going in the opposite direction, that is, really employing minis. For my daughter, it seemed as if the transition from other toys to roleplaying type stories was really enhanced by their use. I'm also trying to think of rules structure somewhat beyond traditional minis wargaming type rules ( beyond simple move/shoot/etc).

Anyone have thoughts on this, even tangential ones? I've been trying to come up with some stuff. I'm tending to think of something I can only describe as "village gaming" or "countryside gaming". I'd kind of describe it as a cross between model railroading and minis gaming and rpging.

Any other minis lovers out there with ideas?
k-bob

[John Kim]

Anyone have thoughts on this, even tangential ones? I've been trying to come up with some stuff. I'm tending to think of something I can only describe as "village gaming" or "countryside gaming". I'd kind of describe it as a cross between model railroading and minis gaming and rpging.

I had not previously been into miniatures much, but I was intrigued by discussion of them, and even had thoughts about running a miniatures-based campaign some time last year.  I used them centrally in my Conan D20 convention game.  Here are some thread references:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5467">Real Color (March 5, 2003)
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=10829">Conan Test Run (April 16, 2004)
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=11633">Conan Test Run Results (June 16, 2004)
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=12220">Gaming with Miniatures (August 2, 2004)

The first of these threads was inspirational for me.  For a time, I talked with my players about running a miniatures-based game.  It would have to have a fixed setting.  I was imagining a campaign like "Court of the Goblin King".  It would be seasonal with each session being some holiday or event where a bunch of people gathered in the court.  Character creation would start with the selection of a miniature, like vision cards in Everway.  Rather than making a character and then searching vainly for a miniature which looks vaguely like it, you should start with the miniature and create a character around it.  Somehow momentum on this got lost, but I'm still fond of the idea.

[komradebob]

John:
Thanks for the threadlinks-

A few thoughts-
Pick the mini first:
I'm not familiar with Everway. Was that the WotC game that had some sort of fantasy pics that acted as inspiration jumpoffs? I heard something about it but never saw the rules firsthand. But if I understand correctly, yes, that is sort of what I'm shooting for.

I find that starting with the minis is a vastly different sort of feel than starting with a rules system/setting, then working backwards to make the minis fit that. Several people in the threads you linked also seemed to indicate that as well. I'm trying tto figure outwhat implcations that has for design.

Cut scenes-
This is something I'd like to work in also, and is sort of where my thinking is taking a left turn from traditonal minis battlegames. I'm kind of looking for a way to get a "meanwhile, back at the ranch..." or a "Later that day..." effect.

Terrain is a character too-
Mike Holmes (IIRC) in one of the threads mentioned his son busting out some dungeon tiles as a surface to play with their minis. I've personally been looking at some of the fold up house/castle models out there ( like the Villages on the Cheep line). Those physical objects have a certain importance to the idea, too, but it is still kind of unformed. I do recognize that the choice of terrain has an effect on play, just as the choice of minis does. I mean that differently from the trad " Crenellations give a -5 to hit mod" sort of way also.

Village Gaming:
Maybe a better way of describing this would be "sets" in the movie/ tv show sense of the word. I'm not sure how model railroaders describe this effect on their tables. From what I've seen of model rr display tables, there are often a series of vignettes- say a small town, an industrial area, a bridge over a river, a tunnel, some wilderness, maybe an urban area. Thes things all exist on the model rr at once. Each vignette area is in scale and well developed, but representative of a certain aspect related to railways. The areas of each vignette are typically seperated enough to give each an identity, but don't necessarily correspond to realworld distances from one another, nor does each vignette attempt to cover all aspects of its setting.

That effect is what I'm kind of looking for for minis gaming. The "set" aspect is a bit different from model rrs though. With them, buildings tend to be complete and in proper ratio to the train. For "village gaming" the important aspect is that they are big enough for the appropriate amount of play space exist for the action that takes place there. The secondary aspect is that they bear some directional relationship to other sets. Big enough for the action means that if a bunch of wandering around the King's Great Hall, Private Chamber, and the Castle Garden are what's important, each will have room to move the figs. The rest of the castle may be unnecessary (riffing off the Goblin King idea). Directional relationship means that if the old abandoned temple where the baddies are hiding is to the north of the king's castle, it will have a model some where due "north". The size of the temple isn't based on actual dimensions, but on visual cues and the need to have figures move around on that "set". It might be vastly bigger if the temple is to be a "dungeon", or smaller, if only one main scene is to be played out there. It will exist far enough away on the game table ( or living room floor, etc) to indicate that it isn't in the same "vignette area" as the Goblin King's Castle Main Hall, but only really far away if there are other vignette areas between the two ( I mean, really, isn't a monster infested forest or river important here?).

This style of layout, however, plays hell with traditional mins wargaming rules, which are generally set up with consistent move rates/firing ranges in mind. I suppose maps could be used ( I do see a value in them,actually) but that could take away from some of the minis goodness.
Maybe some sort of board game approach? Roll how many real world minutes you spend crossing "The Woods of Doom", or draw a random encounter when crossing? Maybe moving your figures to another vignette area automatically shifts to a scene in another, unrelated. vignette area, creating the "Meanwhile, back at the ranch..." effect?

This also sort of puts me to thinking about something like Universalis with a lot of physical/minis related gimmicks added on. Anyone have experience with that?

BTW- John,
I'm curious what sorts of things you were thinking of doing with your Court of the Goblin King setup. I'd like to hear more about it, especially since it reminds me of that old movie with David Bowie in it...

[Blankshield]

Chris Weeks posted a little while back about mixing Universalis and Lego; I'm not sure how far he carried the idea past the initial thread, but it seems closely related to what you're thinking about here.

Frank Filz (and others of us who have gaming and Lego as hobbies) has talked from time to time about making a Lego RPG; that would also be similar to what you're talking about, I suspect.

Mostly just offering a couple more points of interest.

James

[komradebob]

James:
Actually, that's fairly close, although I've never caught the Lego bug.

Out of curiosity, where do things go storywise after the stuff has been assembled? I got the impression that a lot of the rules ideas from the thread were about distributing the blocks more than the "adventure".

Bob

[Blankshield]

James:
Actually, that's fairly close, although I've never caught the Lego bug.

Out of curiosity, where do things go storywise after the stuff has been assembled? I got the impression that a lot of the rules ideas from the thread were about distributing the blocks more than the "adventure".

I don't know; that thread is, I think, all the discussion Legoversalis has had.  At a guess, though, I would say the reason the discussion focused on rules for distributing blocks is because Universalis already has strong rules for building the story.

James

[ffilz]

Hmm, very interesting topic. I like the ideas of where you're going, they would fit some of what I have thought about in terms of a LEGO based RPG (which would definitely start with "pick the mini first" or more like "build the mini first").

Model Railroading is a great thing to look at here because they do tend to focus on the essential things to set the scene, which would be important in any sort of mini based RPG. They have a term "selective compression" which is useful also, that term means that the scale of a building is reduced, instead of a 20 story building, you have a 6 story building, instead of a 1000' warehouse with 20 truck bays, you have a 200' warehouse with 4 truck bays.

Chris Weeks is trying to develop a LEGO based game that involves building so that's part of where the LEGOversalis was going.

In my youth, I did run an adventure in something aproaching the style you're suggesting. I had a bunch of friends over to my house (normally we played at MIT) so I had all my miniatures plus model railroading stuff. I took a table and covered it with scenery and monsters and then the players spent a quite enjoyable several hours clearing the place out. Based on that experience, I think you'll find that real scale isn't important. Just use the ranges and movement rates from the game as printed (most D&D dungeons and buildings are much larger than they would be in real life anyway - coridors in real castles are not even 5' wide let alone the traditional 10' of D&D).

For separation of scenes, just declare they're separate. You could impose a travel time between them (LEGOwise, Chris has suggested having multiple "oceans" for the Pirate Game and allow ships to travel between, perhaps spending a turn or something "in transit." Actually, the Pirate Game may be a good example of a miniatures based RPG in the sense you are talking about. It's certainly a good example of just letting the scale be what it is (some of the ships are larger than the islands - the one concession I make to "reality" where the ships should be smaller than the islands is that when two players are interested in shooting each other and there's an island between them, I eyeball things and if it looks like they should be blocked by the island, they are, even if technically they could trace a path from one part of their ship to one part of the other without touching the island).

Frank

[M. J. Young]

One edition of http://welcome.to/cggzine/">The Way, the Truth, and the Dice includes rules for a miniatures role playing game using and based on Precious Moments figurines.

Not being into either miniatures or Precious Moments I paid it little mind, but it might have some ideas.

--M. J. Young

[Lee Short]

This fall when I was in France for 3 weeks, I saw a line of plastic fantasy-historical figurines for children that looked really cool.  I briefly entertained the idea of buying a dozen or so of them to bring home, to use as PCs and NPCs in a historical game I was considering running.  I planned to use them in John's "figurine first, then the character mode."  

The cool thing about these figures is that they were 3-4 inches tall, painted well and quite handsome overall.  The size would have made wargaming with them difficult, but I think that small spaces (inns, ballrooms, etc) could still be done with them.  I think they'd add mostly color to the game -- but, oh, what color they would add!  The figures were all over the place -- department stores, museum gift shops, even a corner store or two.  They were about 4 Euros a pop, so a decent collection would be kind of spendy, but way cool.  Most of the figures were historical figures -- knights in livery, men-at-arms, ladies in formal dress, etc.  There were a few fantasy figures -- wizards, dragons (not to scale), etc.  

I don't know if these are available in the US, or what they would cost.

[komradebob]

Lee:
I've seen those figures. They run $4-5 for single figures and $10-14 for mounted figures. I forget the name, something starting with "sch-", Scheidel, scheidler, something like that.

If I didn't already have a bunch of 25-28mm figures, I'd definitely blow some cash on those figures. Especially the dwarf king and the skeleton warrior.

Hmm, I checked out that christian wargame. I'm not sure how you win if the other fellow's figures all go to heaven first, but perhaps it has something to do with conversion and saving souls? I did like the rating system, and the figure forward approach.

Thanks for the tip on the model railroad terminology. I always wondered what the word for that method was.

I like the "in transit" effect from the pirate game, though I do think I'm sort of stuck on an idea to cutting to another set as a rule somehow before coming back. Something I'll muddle over some more.

BTW, can anyone think of a better word than "set or "vignette" to describe the small areas where events take place?

Robert

[John Kim]

Pick the mini first:
I'm not familiar with Everway. Was that the WotC game that had some sort of fantasy pics that acted as inspiration jumpoffs? I heard something about it but never saw the rules firsthand. But if I understand correctly, yes, that is sort of what I'm shooting for.

Exactly.  Picking the mini first probably just means some sort of flexible point system, so you can arrange to have appropriate traits.  One thing I was considering was having a voting system for deciding on an Appearance / Style rating.  i.e. The different players all vote to determine what Appearance rating it should have (which should also motivate better painting).  

This style of layout, however, plays hell with traditional mins wargaming rules, which are generally set up with consistent move rates/firing ranges in mind. I suppose maps could be used ( I do see a value in them,actually) but that could take away from some of the minis goodness.  Maybe some sort of board game approach?  Roll how many real world minutes you spend crossing "The Woods of Doom", or draw a random encounter when crossing?

I think the minis would have to have a place for a given scene -- i.e. where your miniature is placed has to have meaning for the system, or there will be very little point of having the minis as far as the system is concerned.  But there's lots of scene change options.  One would be an ordered placing:  i.e. when you change scenes, some mechanic determines the order in which players can put down their minis, which results in a new arrangement.  

Another option to consider is having ranges or areas for non-combat effects.  i.e. The Winter Queen has an aura which affects everyone within range 4 of her, perhaps.  

BTW- John,
I'm curious what sorts of things you were thinking of doing with your Court of the Goblin King setup. I'd like to hear more about it, especially since it reminds me of that old movie with David Bowie in it...

That would be Labyrinth.  I was thinking mostly that I wanted an excuse to have a setting where a variety of creatures including cool-looking monsters could interact in a non-combat fashion.  Now, there would also be fights, but it would probably be limited or ritualized in some way.  There would be a backstory, but each session I was imagining would always be in the court itself.  Each session would be a season apart, so the players would each get an update of information and then various people would interact at the party to find out what was going on, make deals, count coup, and so forth.

[komradebob]

One thing I was considering was having a voting system for deciding on an Appearance / Style rating. i.e. The different players all vote to determine what Appearance rating it should have (which should also motivate better painting).

The link in MJ Young's post works on a very similar system. That seems to make a lot of sense, when taking design from a "figures first" approach. I'll stash that one in my brain for future use.

Incidently, my actual play experience with PboM involved only one or two completely painted figures per side, and mostly unpainted figures. The painting definitely impacted interest, with the painted figures recieving a more "roleplay" type interest from both myself and my daughter.

Do unpainted figures constitute mooks? There's an interesting thought...

I think the minis would have to have a place for a given scene -- i.e. where your miniature is placed has to have meaning for the system, or there will be very little point of having the minis as far as the system is concerned. But there's lots of scene change options. One would be an ordered placing: i.e. when you change scenes, some mechanic determines the order in which players can put down their minis, which results in a new arrangement.

I like the ordering mechanic. That is something I hadn't thought of. I guess I was thinking more like the issue of having "transit boxes"- sort of holding areas for figures that were busy travelling. Since I'm thinking of a set up where there are several areas set out on a tabletop simultaneously (but which might be seperated by greater or lesser distances on a map), I was trying to figure out a way to prevent figures from arriving either too early or too late on another "set/location". Within a set/location, however, more traditional minis movement/range rules apply. Basically, I wanted to prevent firing a cannon on the "Fort Phil Kearny set" and have it be directed at the "Indian Village  set" that is supposed to be many miles away across the badlands. Now the fort and the village might be physically close on the table, but distant in the imaginary space. Am I making any sense?

That would be Labyrinth

I'm getting old, the memory is slipping badly :(

I was thinking mostly that I wanted an excuse to have a setting where a variety of creatures including cool-looking monsters could interact in a non-combat fashion. Now, there would also be fights, but it would probably be limited or ritualized in some way. There would be a backstory, but each session I was imagining would always be in the court itself. Each session would be a season apart, so the players would each get an update of information and then various people would interact at the party to find out what was going on, make deals, count coup, and so forth.

That sounds exceedingly cool. Especially if the critters were nobles, etc, kind of Narnia style. Maybe just saying sentient and having a common language.

I also saw some very cool minis and terrain ( collectable village type stuff) for sale around Halloween that made me think of Pumpkin Town.

On a related note, what sort of social contract issues might come up with a minis game, such as painting (touched on earlier) and providing figures, terrain, etc?

Another interesting observation about playing with my daughter was there was an urge to use different figures rather than stick to one figure as an avatar/pawn. Anyone have any suggestions for rules that work with this tendency?

[Nathan P.]

Random thought - the players are ephemeral gods of some kind, fighting over Creation itself. The only way they can actually effect things is if they take avatars (i.e. choose a mini). They can leave and exit avatars at will, and are omniscient (can see the whole "board", all the terrain and all the areas), but thats it. Their temporal power is limited by the abilities of the minis they choose as avatars, with the "character built around the figure" ethos.

I dunno if this idea appeals to you at all, but the last couple posts sparked it in my little ol' brain.

[komradebob]

Nathan;
That's simultaneously exceedingly cool and exceedingly creepy.

It could be a cool set up for Middle Earth, though, especially for Silmarillion fans, or folks playing the dis-embodied Sauron vs. the Valar and their Istari agents.

I guess I'm creeped out because it reminds me of the whole OT thing between Moses and Pharoah. I recall a couple times in the story where Pharaoh is about to give in to Moses' request to free the Israelites, but then " God caused Pharaoh to harden his heart to Moses' pleas (paraphrase)" and more plagues and nastiness ensue. Damn, God can be mean when he(it) wants to show his(its) stuff...

I also think it's interesting because it takes into account player knowledge and allows for it. I hadn't considered that aspect, even though it is a common complaint among wargamers that encounter minis gaming. I like the suggestion because it takes the reality of the situation and runs with it, rather than cobbling together rules that attempt to restrict or deny the situation. It may be the equivalent of the ic/ooc issue but for minis. Something more to chew over...

[Marhault]

I guess I was thinking more like the issue of having "transit boxes"- sort of holding areas for figures that were busy travelling. Since I'm thinking of a set up where there are several areas set out on a tabletop simultaneously (but which might be seperated by greater or lesser distances on a map), I was trying to figure out a way to prevent figures from arriving either too early or too late on another "set/location". Within a set/location, however, more traditional minis movement/range rules apply. Basically, I wanted to prevent firing a cannon on the "Fort Phil Kearny set" and have it be directed at the "Indian Village  set" that is supposed to be many miles away across the badlands. Now the fort and the village might be physically close on the table, but distant in the imaginary space. Am I making any sense?

This reminds me somewhat of the way locations are handled in some CRPGs.    Examples include Fallout (1 & 2), Wasteland, and the Ultima series (at least the early ones, I have no idea about the later ones).

komradebob, what about something like this:
When you define your 'sets,' set a perimeter for each one, anything between sets is boring land, of no purpose in the game save for 'travelling.'  Determine the travel distance between each set (I'd probably draw a map or something to keep it straight), when characters leave a set, figure out how long they'll be in transit, set them aside and note when they will arrive at the new location.  Your 'transit box' idea sounds pretty much perfect, what I would do is take a notecard, write the departure location, destination, transit time, and expected time of arrival on the card, place the card between the sets on the board and place the figures on top, and voila!  If you have a chase, set up another card and place it 'behind' the first one (ie. nearer the departure location) and you've got it made.