Dungeons and Dragons

[fred67]

Y'all know me... know I'm a cheap-megablocks(*) (if you didn't know that, now you do).

So having played Dungeons and Dragons when I was younger, using the first generation rules, I thought it would be cool if my son (now 12) got interested. The new rules (4th edition, a.k.a. "4e") are so involved and convoluted that it's driving me mad just trying to create some freaking characters... but I digress...

Most of the new rules seem geared towards getting you to buy more stuff... where we once had graph paper, now you "need" to buy dungeon tiles... oh, and city tiles, and nature tiles, and cave tiles, and whatever other tiles they come up with... character creation is so convoluted I'm tempted to subscribe to D&D Insider just to use the online character generator.

The also practically insist you play with "Official Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" figurines. Yeah! Right! So I'm wondering if anyone's used LEGO instead. We have all our player characters, with bows, swords, crossbows, daggers, backpacks... all the stuff you need.

There's not a lot going on for monsters, but we do have orcs and trolls and dragons and smaller figures, like snakes and spiders and bats and so forth. I also have a couple of dragons from the fantasy era sets, and one really big creator dragon. I was thinking of gridding out a couple of 48x48 gray baseplates and making easy to place/remove blocks for walls and doors... you even have treasure and chests and so forth.

For outside, of course, I have 32x32 green baseplates and some of the older style (not brick built) trees that could just be placeholders.

So I figured I can't be the only one doing this, and wondered what other D&D fans might be doing. I'll perhaps MOC something up this evening, and hopefully some of you can give me some ideas.

YES, I have googled... found some very cool stuff which I'll share in this post/thread, if people are interested. Some of the things I found are not quite what I had in mind - they used minifigures, but kept to the graph paper as a base; much of what I found was just LEGO dungeon scenes... too elaborate, IMO.

This one is much more detailed than I'd want to do... I'm already getting bogged down with the new rules, I don't want to get bogged down in the details of putting something like this together, but it is quite cool. It's not quite for D&D, but the checkerboard floor is something I'd want to include; thinking 4x4 to represent a 5 foot square.

Edit: I want to make it clear that brickquest sounds really cool, but I was specifically wanting to use LEGO to play D&D, although now I'm interested in brickquest, too.

(*) With due respects to Sam Quint from "Jaws."

Edited May 31, 2011 by fred67

[Morbus Iff]

If you haven't seen them yet, you might want to take a look at the various HEROICA threads, specifically this one, which discusses taking the simple HEROICA rules and turning them into something slightly more complex (but less complex than BrikWars/BrickQuest., which you've probably seen). It's not LEGO for D&D, it's more HeroQuest in LEGO, but might give some inspiration/ideas.

Edited June 9, 2011 by Morbus Iff

[Legoless]

I haven't played D&D for donkey's years, but a group of us used to play a similar game called Call of Cthulu (based on the writings of HP Lovecraft).

It required a gamebook and some multi-sided dice (plus character sheets but they could be improvised or photocopied). We didn't go into the rules too much- as long as you have a fully immersive game where everyone is playing by the same (simplified) rules, who cares, as long as you are having fun?

Nowadays I play World of Warcraft, but really can't be bothered with the minutiae of how to spec my char properly (as long as my gear is reasonable for the job I'm happy) and some of the convoluted tactics. You almost need to be a post-graduate engineer these days to play fantasy games.

So why not just play D&D the old fashioned way? I bet you'd find a group of friends willing to join you- not to mention veterans who tire of the endless 'mission creep' designed not so much to enrich the playing experience, but to enrich those who produce the doodads that are 'required' to play the modern game.

[fred67]

I actually did get a set of the original rule books. I think the kids are liking the newer rules, though, because they allow special features for characters that weren't in the original rules.

For me, the newer rules are turning out to not be that bad really, but the way they're explained in the books is so convoluted as to make it nearly impossible. I think they do it that way so you buy more stuff, especially the D&Di (Dungeons and Dragons Interactive) subscription (I think that's what it's called), which includes an online character creator.

Also the newer game play is centered around larger scale and using "dungeon tiles" (i.e. more stuff to buy), which is why I want to use LEGO.

We've actually done a bit of playing using minifigures; I've gotten a bunch of new pieces and will upload pictures of my "modules" and generic playing area when I can. I think it's been working well so far.

[Eldervampire]

Okay, I've played all of the D&D rules sets since the Gygax era. 3.5 is imho, the best combo of detail to flesh out you charecters and still not having to have the playboard type of set-up. I have built a dungeon, and set it up with Minis that were supposed to portray our paty memebrs but, we never used them for the game sessions. Everyone wanted to use the AD&D Standard minis, except for me of course. Take a look at the 3.5 rules, you may have a better time of understanding and enjoying the game.

Mike

[brickmack]

I haven't ever played D&D but it looks like a fun game. Might have to ask some of my IRL friends if any of them play it.

[pp7]

Getting a D&Dinsider subscription can be expensive but the Character Builder and online books make it totally worth it. Unless you absolutely need the hardcover Dungeon Master's Guide on your bedside table, this is the way to go! I've been playing SUPER GHETTO DnD for the past three years (I used a d4 as my character for an entire 1-year campaign) but in the 4th ed campaign we're making a slow but steady transition over to Lego-based play.

We started by building minifigs that were representative of our characters. Our Eladrin and Half-Elf used the Elf heads from Series 3 and customized their bodies with various armour and pants. One wears a cape and the other a robe (two Elf capes!) and both hold wands, all of which I got in the small HarryP Forbidden Forest Set. Also from that set, our Genasi Battlemage is using Voldermort's angry white head with the helmet from Series 5's Evil Dwarf. My character, a Wilden Shaman, was seriously tough to build, and I'm still not happy with the final results but hey, its tough to build a tree-creature thing out of minifig materials! My spirit companion is a dinosaur, and I use the lizard head from Series 5 on a parka body piece with green bricks for his legs.

(And that's how far we've come without using Castles!)

All our allies stand on white 2x2s, and all the enemies stand on black 2x2s. We use a graph paper board for now, on which the 2x2s fit really well. The extra two studs on each platform are reserved for status effect markers (like, attaching a red slope for bloodied, blue tile for marked, or a green tile for poison, etc) remaining flexible based on what the battle calls for.

That's the system so far. What we're looking to do is build up a solid minifig collection, particularly from Castle, and then build a proper lego board with 4x4 tiles deliniating positions (so every figure has lots of room to lay prone, fall over, or whatever!)

What I'm looking for in particular, however, are lego pieces I can use as LARGE size enemies. Currently, I'm thinking the Fire Dragon from Ninjago, which I would mount on a 6x6 and put its wings up high so that the figures can go right up to it underneath the wings. That set is kind of expensive, though, and has much more than just the dragon.

Anyone know of any cool Dragons (or other LARGE creatues!) that might be cool for Dungeons and Dragons?

Or has anyone encountered a system that totally trumps this humble upstart? Please share!

[fred67]

For creatures, the flying dragons from the Castle "Fantasy Era" are pretty good, but expensive; I also use orcs and trolls from that era (orcs being "trolls" and trolls being "giant trolls").

I was just using the CMF bases for the figures, and on one side we'd put a red brick for bloodied.

Getting a D&Dinsider subscription can be expensive but the Character Builder and online books make it totally worth it.

That's the problem - they make it so complicated and convoluted that you pay for more. I simply refuse... I don't pay monthly for online video games, either. Yes, I'm a crotchety old man; I buy something and then I want to use it, not pay forever.

We haven't played in quite some time. The battles went fine, the parts where we don't use figures (just maps for being a village or tavern or something) is OK... it's when exploring and getting ready for battle. As the DM, I try to be prepared for what's going to happen, but the players ultimately decide where they're going to go, so then I often spend a lot of time... well, an example works better: so they tell me they go through a particular door, and if often ends up like this: I clear off some of the table, set up the tiles for the room, dig out my LEGO D&D "kit" that has a ton of minifigure parts, and start putting together the figures that will be in the room (all behind my DM screen, but a lot of good that does).

15 minutes later we're finally ready... and the players are bored out of their minds.

Now, we don't HAVE to use LEGO (or figures at all), and I think game play would go a lot faster, but I still also think the original rules made the game play a lot more fun by not concentrating so much on the minutiae and not having the momentum hit a brick wall when the DM has to set up a new location with tiles. The way we used to do it, the DM would outline the room on the map we were making (we always played that we were making maps, even if it technically slowed the movement of the characters down), and sketch in anything interesting, and it would take no more than a minute or so - with everybody watching what the DM did because it was interesting to see what we got in the next room (or farther down the hall, or whatever).

[Lothos]

Might want to give the Pathfinder series a try. rules are simplified and the creation process is fantastic.

[iamded]

Last year my friends and I decided to embrace our nerdiness and give D&D a try. If there's one thing I recommend, it's to not get bogged down in the 4.0 rules. Don't even use them. They're ridiculous. 3.5 seems to be the way to go, we've discovered.

We used Lego figures a couple of times, but that's as far as Lego was involved. What you've got planned looks wonderful, the sort of thing I'd like to give a shot.

[Legoist]

I've been playing D&D a lot, both as a player and a DM/GM/referee - as you prefer . I played with OD&D, AD&D 2e, D&D 3.0 (my favourite), D&D 3.5 and D&D 4ed rules, I think I've only missed AD&D 1e there... I've been lucky to have friends who were interested in it and took me in, without being complete nerds Later I've been even more lucky to have a girlfriend/wife who seriously enjoyed the game with me and our friends. We stopped playing a few months after 4ed, when many in our friends circle started to have children, but perhaps in a few years we'll be playing with them.

Now to the point... As a DM, I never bought or used neither minis nor battlemats/tiles. I've always been a strong proponent of RPG's intrinsical cheapness ("pen & paper") and the importance of both the DM describing with words and the players imagining things (visuals, sounds, smells and everything). I've normally only be drawing room layouts on paper myself, and used anything available (dice, coins) to represent characters and monsters. But I am not insensitive to better visual props, and I've thought many times that LEGO minifigs would be a great idea! Sadly, when I playing D&D I was still in my dark age so I didn't have bricks or minifigs to use, but I was seriously consider getting some. Now I'm no longer playing D&D, but I think all the time whether some minifigs or sets I'm buying could be used for D&D later on.

Some things to keep in mind:

- Visual props are useful for handling the rules of the game related to distances and movement, but using too much visuals can distract the players from the game itself or confuse them (e.g. 3ed doesn't have rules for facing, but if you use Lego minifigs some players may behave differently because of how the minifigs are facing)

- A huge part of the game is about exploration, which means that stuff should not be shown to the players until the characters can see it! This means that if you build a dungeon, you should really design it so that rooms are added to it as the characters advance. This is an extra building and logistic challenge.

- The above also applies to hidden things... How do you build a secret door? If it's visible in the build, this is an unacceptable clue from the game point of view. There are also illusions in the game which may require you to build things twice, one for when the illusion is working and another for when it has been discovered and vanished. The key problem here is that having a solid model made of bricks could lead your players to assumptions, hints or clues that may not be good for the game.

- A similar problem, maybe not too common but potentially much worse to handle in the solid model, is limited illumination. There are always circumstances when the players are in the dark (or fog, or dense foliage etc) and their torches or lamps only illuminate until a certain distance, so what is visible to them may change at every step.

- Last but not least, sometimes things in D&D are just huge... maybe you don't mind for the cost if you already have a large Lego collection, but you should worry about the time required to build them! Our gaming group usually met bi-weekly on average, I don't think I would have ever made it to prepare both the adventure and a Lego model for it.

There is however everything you need in Lego to make a fantastic setup for D&D!. There's plenty of small critters (spiders, scorpions, snakes...) and weird minifigs to represent human-sized monsters. I would however go for brick-built for everything that is larger than a minifig!!

Edited November 19, 2011 by Legoist

[pp7]

That's the problem - they make it so complicated and convoluted that you pay for more. I simply refuse... I don't pay monthly for online video games, either. Yes, I'm a crotchety old man; I buy something and then I want to use it, not pay forever.

We haven't played in quite some time. The battles went fine, the parts where we don't use figures (just maps for being a village or tavern or something) is OK... it's when exploring and getting ready for battle. As the DM, I try to be prepared for what's going to happen, but the players ultimately decide where they're going to go, so then I often spend a lot of time...

Last year my friends and I decided to embrace our nerdiness and give D&D a try. If there's one thing I recommend, it's to not get bogged down in the 4.0 rules. Don't even use them. They're ridiculous. 3.5 seems to be the way to go, we've discovered.

We used Lego figures a couple of times, but that's as far as Lego was involved. What you've got planned looks wonderful, the sort of thing I'd like to give a shot.

Now to the point... As a DM, I never bought or used neither minis nor battlemats/tiles. I've always been a strong proponent of RPG's intrinsical cheapness ("pen & paper") and the importance of both the DM describing with words and the players imagining things (visuals, sounds, smells and everything). I've normally only be drawing room layouts on paper myself, and used anything available (dice, coins) to represent characters and monsters. But I am not insensitive to better visual props, and I've thought many times that LEGO minifigs would be a great idea! Sadly, when I playing D&D I was still in my dark age so I didn't have bricks or minifigs to use, but I was seriously consider getting some. Now I'm no longer playing D&D, but I think all the time whether some minifigs or sets I'm buying could be used for D&D later on.

Some things to keep in mind:

- Visual props are useful for handling the rules of the game related to distances and movement, but using too much visuals can distract the players from the game itself or confuse them (e.g. 3ed doesn't have rules for facing, but if you use Lego minifigs some players may behave differently because of how the minifigs are facing)

- A huge part of the game is about exploration, which means that stuff should not be shown to the players until the characters can see it! This means that if you build a dungeon, you should really design it so that rooms are added to it as the characters advance. This is an extra building and logistic challenge.

- The above also applies to hidden things... How do you build a secret door? If it's visible in the build, this is an unacceptable clue from the game point of view. There are also illusions in the game which may require you to build things twice, one for when the illusion is working and another for when it has been discovered and vanished. The key problem here is that having a solid model made of bricks could lead your players to assumptions, hints or clues that may not be good for the game.

- A similar problem, maybe not too common but potentially much worse to handle in the solid model, is limited illumination. There are always circumstances when the players are in the dark (or fog, or dense foliage etc) and their torches or lamps only illuminate until a certain distance, so what is visible to them may change at every step.

- Last but not least, sometimes things in D&D are just huge... maybe you don't mind for the cost if you already have a large Lego collection, but you should worry about the time required to build them! Our gaming group usually met bi-weekly on average, I don't think I would have ever made it to prepare both the adventure and a Lego model for it.

There is however everything you need in Lego to make a fantastic setup for D&D!. There's plenty of small critters (spiders, scorpions, snakes...) and weird minifigs to represent human-sized monsters. I would however go for brick-built for everything that is larger than a minifig!!

In our campaign, we LOVE the rules! We out-do each other by how rulesy we are, and constantly challenge on DM on every rule. We play by the book, quite literally, for battles. In RP, however, there's lots of room for fluidity. Our DM is pretty cool about that.

The other thing is we only use Lego for the battles. All RP is done without any visuals (unless the DM has given us some kind of map, or a code or something). Using Lego to RP or set up RP scenarios becomes incredibly difficult, as fred67 has described, and can easily slip into a glorified way of playing with dolls (though outsiders already think that's what we do anyways...!)

Thanks for the detailed concerns, Legoist. 'Facing' has not yet been an issue, though I hadn't considered that initially. It does play a psychological element that you don't get when you use dice, bottlecaps, or salt shakers (which we commonly use for minions or large creatures!)

For the 'what you can see' element of the game, the DM currently only draws the parts of the area we can see on our erasable graphchart grid. We'll lose that ability if we switch to a lego tile base. Very good observation, I hadn't thought of that! However, we have managed to do secret doorways and invisible characters pretty well. Our campaign is anal about perception checks, looting, and looking for secrets

All this has been very insightful. Though we are anal about rules and treasure hunting, we've all been pretty accomodating for the visual aspect right now. No one complains if we use toy girrafe for a dragon, as long as it takes up four squares. Same with minions - using 8 d8s with each one numbered one to eight is way easier than using, like, 8 minifigs with different coloured pants (or something!) We just want to take our experience to another level by wowing ourselves with what we can use based on the fun stuff available from Lego!

If anyone has tried something that hasn't been mentioned or thinks of some cool possibilities, definitely post! I'm very encouraged by the responses so far!

[Legoist]

I have mentioned this thread and shown this picture to my wife, and she immediately said we should go back to playing D&D soon

The 2 things I like most in this picture are (1) the checkered floor, which perfectly matches the D&D rules for distances but still looks totally realistic and (2) the small green baseplate used to keep track of character's stats & conditions, and even the carried equipment! That's as simple as it is brilliant!

BTW, I believe that when talking about using Lego (or else) for D&D (or else), it's important to decide what are the main purposes and keep them in mind during designing/building. If we'll ever do that, my purposes would be porbably these:

1) to help handling certain rules, especially in battle: positioning and distance are major factors in a D&D game, and a visual aid (doesn't have to be Lego minifigs of course) makes a huge difference; you don't need to build all the scenery, I think a good starting point could be just to use a baseplate on which you can rearrange a number of 4x4 plates depending on the current location's size and shape

2) to keep track of things such as what is your character holding in hand vs what is he carrying in his inventory, this is something that normally you write on paper but being able to SEE it there makes everything more clear; changing what you have in hands is also something you cannot do with traditional RPG minis; if you drop an item, you also easily see where exactly you've dropped it

3) visually suggest basic tactical choices to the players: here I'm thinking mostly of battleground's features such as cover or higher ground; normally as a DM I need to choose whether I'm going to tell the players in advance about terrain features (which could make the description of the area too long and boring sometimes) or wait until it's the players asking "is there any structure to cover behind? is there any higher ground to get to?"; with a Lego scenario, you just "plop" those things into it

4) inspire the mood... I have no doubt that bringing Lego into a D&D game makes everyone more cheerful

Edited November 23, 2011 by Legoist

[Hendo]

An old thread I came across, and my first post to Eurobricks...

Just wanted to add that I've used Lego minifigs for years for D&D type games, most recently for my long-running Pathfinder campaign (Pathfinder being a derivative of 3rd Ed D&D).

I agree that RPGs don't require such props, in fact they can get distracting, but to help players visualize the tactics of combat, minis can come in handy. Having a basement full of Lego available means I can use Lego minifigs instead of traditional pewter or plastic figs - the first advantage being that I can tailor a Lego mini to have characteristics specific to a given character, including changes and upgrades (such as to armor or weapons) as the adventure progresses.

The number one rule I follow when I use Lego during a game session is this: Don't give players access to the brick except for minis on the table. The first time I used Lego during D&D years ago, I made the mistake of letting a player build a horse cart. Other players jumped at the chance to build, and within an hour, the session turned into an excuse for my friends to play with my Lego all afternoon. These days, I keep the Lego out of view except those elements immediately needed at the table.

The number two rule I follow is prep, prep, prep! As GM, it's my responsibility to prepare the adventure before the players gather at the table. Reading manuals, drawing maps, designing treasure hordes, these are things the GM does between game sessions. And if I want to use Lego for minis, any Lego building I do is also done between sessions, out of view of the players*. The morning of a game session, I move monster models and NPC figs up from the hobby room to the dining room, keeping them hidden in blue tubs and behind the GM screen until a combat requires them. But the point is, they are pre-built surprises that I don't delay the game by building during the session. *(Side note, it's a game all its own trying to hide my secret building from my wife who is a player in the campaign. :)

And finally, someone said earlier in the thread to not worry about terrain features. This is absolutely true. While I might spend a night before a game session building models of monsters, I don't build entire dungeons or castles. Such would make the game just a board game or a miniature wargame. Rather, I just keep a few plates and bricks available that I can toss on the battle mat and say, "the cave has some water about here and a pile of rocks over here." Moreover, my battle mat has evolved to be simply 2-4 large baseplates (48x48 studs each), each with a grid of tiles, in 4 stud x 4 stud squares, each square separated by 1 stud - so that the gray baseplate shows through as grid lines. Since the grid lines are exposed studs, I can quickly place down 1x8 and 1x4 bricks (one brick high) to show roughly where walls are in a new room if the players are having trouble visualizing When the party leaves the room, the bricks come quickly up and back to the blue tubs behind me. ...Meanwhile, each minifig gets a 4x4 plate to stand on, which moves freely on the tile work of the battle mat while clearly indicating the space the character is in. (Larger monsters get a base of 8x8 and so on, to match the game mechanics.)

Oh, and my monster designs are often pretty crude. Anything that represents size and color works. If I have time to articulate the arms of a yeti or the head of a dire hyena, I might, but most of my models end up pretty blocky. Still, my players seem to love it. And for the boss monster for an adventure I might put more time into the MOC design, which serves well to impress on the players that the encounter is something special.

Anyhoo, not sure if anyone will catch this reply, so long after the original thread. But I wanted to share my experience for what it's worth.

...Came across this while searching for possible monster MOC examples actually. An upcoming adventure of mine will include some encounters with dragons and drakes, so I was looking for Lego MOCs of such - but in particular some that are around 12 studs x 12 studs for a base. The party isn't yet ready for an old dragon, and so per game mechanics, I aim to build something smaller than the Viking dragon sets, but larger than the old 1-piece Dragon Knight dragons. Any ideas for such?

[fred67]

Hi,

Some people frown on reviving old threads, but I appreciate your reply. I've essentially given up trying to use LEGO, and I think D&D 4 is too complicated - it takes away from the fun. I guess getting started with the starter set was worse - my son and his friends would kill something/one, pick up their weapon - and we had no stats on how the player could use it or what damage it would do, etc.. It's really turned into a money making farce, IMO, and now I have the four main manuals, I've been trying to find the old ones online and already have a few.

If we picked it up again, we'd use pencil and graph paper. No figures at all. When I first started playing, we bought miniatures and painted them because they were cool and we were 'into' art, and while we might bring one to sit in front of us and represent our fictional selves, we never actually used them for game play.

I am eying the pathfinder set - it's relatively inexpensive on Amazon. It would be nice to be able to build our characters in LEGO the way we used to use the little metal figures, and perhaps some of the other interesting characters, but not using them for game play would help keep the game moving, IMO.

[Flipz]

I can't speak to D&D specifically (I've been looking for a good group in my area for years), but when I played the Star Wars Roleplaying Game (Saga Edition), I used the maps I had on hand from the miniatures sets, and LEGO figures. The campaign fell apart pretty quickly, but mechanically it seemed to work well.

If you really want to build sets, I personally would recommend just building the "major" locations, like the bar everyone meets in and always comes back to to trawl for rumors, or the palace of the king who regularly hires the party for new assignments, the sort of recurring locations that you'll keep coming back to. For everything else, there's MasterCard I'd just use sketched paper maps as one of the previous posters mentioned, and just use the minifigs as regular minis.

If you haven't seen them yet, you might want to take a look at the various HEROICA threads, specifically this one, which discusses taking the simple HEROICA rules and turning them into something slightly more complex (but less complex than BrikWars/BrickQuest., which you've probably seen). It's not LEGO for D&D, it's more HeroQuest in LEGO, but might give some inspiration/ideas.

Hey hey hey, if you're going to mention Heroica and RPGs, do it right. (You HAVE seen us in the Games forum, right? )