morari

I'm definitely looking forward to this! I backed their last Kickstarter and was quite pleased with all of the unique creatures I acquired from it. :)

I like the idea of an all-in-one portable dice tower. That said, I'm a little concerned that the "class" and "deities" icons look to be taken directly from WotC. Are they being licensed for this project or are they royalty free icons that WotC used originally?

Oh wow, I never noticed the chain icon either. That's awesome! I have dozens of saved characters made up too, so it's not for a lack of trying. I've not pulled the trigger on the grey plastic yet, but was generally pretty impressed with the one I have in their "ultra detail" translucent. It required very little clean up, and the details really popped once it was primed. I'm sure thinner areas are more prone to breakage, but I've never had any issues on mine... even having dropped it once. I fee like for the price point, the service is almost exclusively aimed at players. It allows them to delve in and further mold their character, as opposed to getting something off the shelf that's just "close enough". It's simple enough that anyone can sit down for an hour and come up with a satisfying model. I feel that interaction really helps players further connect with their character even. And really, what's $30 for a figure you'll be using for 20 levels? The only other costs your typical RPG player even has to consider is for a copy of the rule book and a set of dice. Hero Forge is certainly a luxury item, but it's not so far out there when compared to hand carved dice boxes and such. Nice, fair review overall. :)

I'll definitely be grabbing a few of the older sculpts, with a keen eye toward any new ones yet to be revealed. I've really enjoyed the pieces I've gotten from a few of their past campaigns, as the sculpts are always so fun and full of personality. I'm still waiting to have the time to paint my Oni Troll up like Omega Red. :P

I'm backing this one. I've already been eyeing some of the previous Dragonlock dungeon tiles that are up on Drive-Thru RPG. I may be getting ahead of myself, though. I just got my 3D printer a few weeks ago and am still in the "setup" phase, really. Fine tuning settings and what-not for optimal prints. I didn't expect it to be an out-of-the-box experience by any means, but yikes!

13th Age. It combines the best aspects of 3rd and 4th Edition, with a smattering of more indie-centric mechanics to inspire actual roleplay and collaborative storytelling. It still feels like D&D, while also presenting refreshing takes on tired tropes. The bestiary itself is a treasure trove of interesting ideas. I also love how purposefully vague the entire setting is, to the point that the designers themselves provide contradictory sidebars. Nothing gets the creative juices flowing like small nuggets of various concepts--much more so than huge paragraphs of written-in-stone canon. I've not had a chance to actually play 5th Edition, but have been keeping up to some degree since the playtests. The tone almost seems to be aimed at being an OSR, with the best art direction to ever come out of the franchise. The rules, while in no way bad, tend to be uninspiring on a read-through. They threw out almost everything that was done right with 4th Edition purely because grognards apparently dislike change . Admittedly, the Advantage/Disadvantage system is great--it's simple, quick, and clean. I've adapted it to a few other systems with success. Inspiration, though not revolutionary, is a step in the right direction for storytelling, but I fear is often overlooked or underutilized by poor GMs. If someone were looking for a hack 'n' slash type of system without any previous baggage, I'd recommend 13th Age without hesitation. If you're hung-up on your game absolutely needing the D&D brand though, it doesn't really look like you can go wrong with 5E. The only people I see putting up with the bloat and utter imbalance of Pathfinder are those with years and years rules memorized from 3E. Really though, there's something out there for everything nowadays. You could go with Dungeon World for a more modern take, or grab a true OSR like the Black Hack. I've been itching to get around to Shadow of the Demon Lord, myself. It looks to be appropriately crunchy, albeit straight forward enough for ease of play. Besides, I'm a sucker for despair-laden dark fantasy.

I received mine Friday. They all look awesome! I can't wait to get them all put together, at least. It may be a while before any get painted though, since I already have about "20" mini sitting up on the shelf from various Reaper Kickstarters at this point. I really, really love the details on the Thunderbird in particular... even if I did break one of its toes off. :(

I've been getting pretty heavily into 13th Age this year. It's such a great system! I just pledged in the "Gods & Icons" Kickstarter a few weeks back... Oh well, I guess I'm in for this, too. Those dwarven tower coins will work nicely with all of the "Best Damn Coins" that I already have. :)

I find this sad and shocking I know, I know! They're super cute sculpts, but just don't do anything for me when it comes to gaming paraphernalia. If that was what I was looking for, then I actually prefer the general style of the Bonesylvanians, and I skipped them for similar reasons of function over fashion. These chibis will simply never see the gaming table, so they'd only end up being decorative collectibles for me. I do really like my Legion of Justice and Caeke peeps though... so go figure. :P

I'm finally all locked in, I think! It only took two additional orders past my initial pledge. I may have one of just about everything, plus some extra cemetery fences. The only stuff that was really of no personal interest were the Mouslings and the Black Stars. I also skipped the remade giants and the Sledgehammer for practical reasons, despite really being on the fence about it. For me, I kept the budget down a bit by cutting out almost all of the dragons. I love dragons, and there are certainly some nice ones available, but I already have sooo many from the first two Kickstarters that it's simply too hard to justify additional entries. That said, it was impossible to pass up the more unique lizards, like Ma'aldraar, Lavarath, and Clear Kyphrixis.

I saw the update about the new material. They have sooo many new parts and accessories now, too. The price hasn't changed too much, either. I ordered a mini in the old "Ultra Detail Plastic" last November and have been pretty please with it. The figures can certainly be fragile, but really only if you drop them. And the details are certainly good enough for tabletop quality paint jobs... maybe even more if you're an experienced painter and spend the time to fully prep them. The company seemed to have pretty good customer service, too. They promptly fixed a mistake I made with the order, and shipped the figure much quicker than estimated. I'd say the new "Gray Plastic" is even better, given it specifically addresses the issues of durability and detail. I'll have to wait to find out, though. Only particularly unique character can really justify the purchase. That said, I do have a few dozen figures saved on the site. Simply building the character is pretty fun in itself! :)

Y'know, docks could be pretty interesting. I have some home-made pieces that are fairly modular, but they're essentially fancy popsicle sticks at the end of the day. We do a lot of set pieces in and around ships though, so...

The photos look cool, but I really wish that we would see more compatibility between sets and pieces. I backed the first two campaigns pretty heavily, but skipped out on the third because of this. I don't want slightly different stonework for my cities and castles, I just want cool new pieces to turn my preexisting dungeon walls into those things. In my mind, the third campaign could have just introduced some streets, windows, and roofs to have accomplished what I wanted. I fear that the castle will end up the same way. The initial dungeon tiles are still the most versatile and I'm already using them less and less outside of set-piece finales.

It seems like "use power if bloodied" would be the most straight forward application, and probably wouldn't hurt balance much. I imagine you could tie power recharges to the Escalation Die as well, which might be an easier way of handling them than default 4e anyway. Certainly you'd also want to look at upping the defenses on monsters to account for the early encounter pacing of the Escalation Die.

Thanks for the overview videos, Bryan! Really good stuff there. We've been toying with adding the Escalation Die to our 4e game. A lot of the concepts from 13th Age sound fantastic, though. The character background and personality being so heavily integrated into the rules themselves would certainly help par down the mandatory character questionnaire that seems to kick off every campaign we run. I've really been tempted to switch everything over, but really have a hard time letting my 4e books go to waste, especially when we've seemingly used so little of them so far.

I wish I knew some designers to send your way! As far as as the skirmish game goes, I probably wouldn't be as keen on it. But really, that's just me. I've tried a number of skirmish games in the past and they never quite seem to click for my group, though I do recall Mordheim at least having some fun RPG-esque elements. It being "overly complicated" would only further hinder our adoption, I think. :P

Ooooh! I would love to see something like this. Though honestly, I wonder if it wouldn't be better to do the RPG as a third-party addon for a more mainline system? You say you have trouble doing RPGs, but maybe it wouldn't be so far fetched to release the Spirit Beasts as an unofficial monster manual for D&D? Likewise, I'm sure you could do custom classes (or options for pre-existing classes) using the various cultural cues inherent in your product. Just a thought. :) Regardless, keep up the good work! You've definitely found an underrepresented segment of the fantasy market here. I can't wait to see the models in person! :)

Just finalized my order and PayPal add-in. I ended up with about double what I had originally planned for. The theme and style was too cool not to go all in, though. My order ended up looking like: Ai Apeac the Decapitator (free with my Early Bird pledge) Ewah Skin Walker Camazotz, the Death Bat Vision Serpent Crystal Skull Engine Ahklut, the Orca Wolf Basket Woman Wendigo Going Native Dungeon Crawl Team (with the Warrior Poet leader) Piasa Bird Capelobo Flying Heads Great Thunderbird Ogopogo, the American Lake Monster I don't think that there was a bad figure in the bunch, though. Narrowing it down was pretty hard, especially when it came to picking only one of the "snakes". I'd like a few more of the Crystal Skull Golems as well, but figure I can get them later down the road, when the situation actually calls for it. :)

We also do this! Saw some at Target awhile back for $5 a pop, so we picked up several. We have one between each player, and the GM has their own. It's mostly good for drinks and snacks, but it's not unheard of for dice trays and notebooks to find their way onto the stands. The only problem is that we have a fairly small table, so once the trays are setup between each chair, the entire room gets kind of cramped feeling... then I have to pull up a spare desk chair for the dog to lay in, otherwise she gets sad and whines at us all night from the other room. :P

Outside of the prerequisite dice, pencil, paper, and DM screen... We always have a plethora of minis about, and usually use Dwarven Forge dungeon tiles for most important areas. The players have their three-ring binders with world lore and character sheets, as well as their wood and leather "Book of Holding", which lets them store and transport physical stuff, as well as doubles as an individual dice tray. Printed and sleeved power cards. We use physical coins for currency, all in theme with the world. We also have some gems and such. A lot of handouts, such as hireling stat/bio cards, wanted posters, maps, custom tarot cards, etc. I do custom initiative tents for everything, too. They just sit atop the DM screen for everyone to see. Speeds things up, and provides some character/monster art for the players. What we don't do is have electronics about. Phones are annoying enough in day-to-day life without them also interrupting the game time that is already hard enough to coordinate and schedule. :P

I've added several more models to my original list. I didn't realize the Flying Heads were so large, so they're on it now. Furthermore, I'm really loving the actual model for Ogopogo, so he's in the pickings now, too! :)

The gothic-tech aesthetic really makes me think of the video game Quake. :)

I do the same thing while DMing. It's easier to keep track of character voices when you associate them with an actual person, at least for the recurring cast. The tiefling warlock in my game has a demonic patron that sounds like Christopher Walken, though. In my head, I was thinking "The Prophecy" but in practice it has become more akin to "True Romance".

I've been painting up Rotpatch and my Pumpkin Horror figures with the... *gasp* ... pumpkin orange color, and highlighting with fire orange. It's a nice effect. :)

You rock!