Those Other Hobby Games Hot

Damn you Barnes. You slipped this past my censorship. You and your wrong headed anti miniature/larping list making, incendiary bogus comments. Thats it. I'm kicking your ass.

Steve"you can have my minis when you pry them from my cold undying hands"Avery

What do you want from me,I posted a porno picture especially for you as the header!

I too am a former RPG and miniatures player. Although most of my D&D was played in 5th-6th grade the rest of my RPG experience has been reading rulebooks and rolling up characters rather than playing. Even now, my buddy and I will pull out his TMNT RPG books and roll up some wacky mutants for the sheer fun of rolling dice.

I also played 40K, Necromunda and Gorkamorka in high school but we never painted our armies or made terrain.

Some suggestions on best minis and RPG inspired board games would have been a nice sidebar to this week's column, though.

That is a really good idea, I'll follow up with that in the near future.

Of course it is a good idea. Why don't you ever consult me your columns before you write them? Apparently Bill Abner needs to hire me as an associate editor. If it makes him feel better I have a degree in journalism (OK officially it's in communications with an emphasis in journalism).

Both miniature games and RPGs are difficult to review properly, because of the significant dollar investment for a minis game and the significant time investment for an RPG. It's certainly possible to develop a nuanced opinion about any given game after significant play, but it's hard to put that into a meaningful context unless both the reviewer and the reader share common gaming experiences and reference points. That commonality is more easily reached in other areas, where the entertainment is more rapidly consumed, like books or movies or boardgames.

I started my first ever rpg game/camapign/whatever last week :o

I don't think it's fair to compare MONSTERPOCALYPSE to 40K. The investment in both money as well as time spent preparing and per game simply isn't the same. (Says I who haven't even tried MONPOC. But I have enough of it to give it a go some day).

But concerning roleplaying games, you should consider looking at some of the scenarios we make in Denmark. Personally I don't do much role playing because it's easier to chat with your fellow gamers over a board game, than while playing a role, but if you just want some role playing action for a few hours with a minimum of prepping, that is the way to do it. Basically lots of Danish scenarios are written for conventions, and normally work without rules (freeform) or with some core mechanisms for story creation. Only thing is that most of it is in Danish. But translated stuff do exist, and if you're interested I'll be happy to look for a few possible titles.

Did your AXIS AND ALLIES group finally all ship out to the old folks home, Tom? :-P

I frankly don't see how someone could really review a miniature or RPG game effectively because so much material is either not present in the retail product or simply not accessible to a single person. I can see where you could review the ruleset and give a precis of how the game plays, but really how do you review something like D&D where it's a totally different experience from table to table and player to player? Can you really review 40k comprehensively if all you play is IG and have no experience with the other army lists and codices?

There was that big flap a while back with the guy that reviewed WHFRPG...I still don't see how you can really write a review for an RPG that you haven't played for a pretty long amount of time. It's not like a board game where you can play a single game and get the lay of the land, so to speak.

I'd like to get back into RPGs a little bit, actually. But they are, as you point out, so group dependent it's ridiculous.

I'm getting back into both after a long hiatus. A friend wanted to run an old school 1st edition AD&D game which made me realize why I jumped to any other RPG system out there other than D&D. But it's fun. We are taking turns being the Dungeon Master and only get together once or twice a month, so it's not too much work. Honestly I'd rather be playing something else, but that's what they want to play....
And after seeing the last few disappointing releases for BattleLore, I decided to just go back to minis gaming to scratch that itch. So I've started painting up some 15mm fantasy figs again.
Barnes is right in that they do take up a lot more time, but the prep work is part of the hobby. If you don't enjoy that, it's not for you.

Everybody does that whole "let's do a 1st edition D&D game" thing at some point. And just about everybody loses their enthusiam after about two hours of playing it.

You're totally right that the prep work is part of the hobby, and like I said in the article it puts these kinds of games more squarely in the "hobby" idea. But I'm no longer willing for pin vices, super toxic glue, and various needlenosed pliers to be a part of what I do for fun.

I guess there won't be any future columns about LARPing then.

(crumples up nearby scrap grid paper and throws it at Barnes' head)
"MAGIC MISSILE" "MAGIC MISSILE"

Michael:

FIrst a comment, then a related question or two.

I see the issue of time commitment as point in favor of miniatures games.
It can be hard for me to round up enough guys on regular basis to play board games for three to four hours at a shot.
But I can frequently grab an hour here and there in front of the TV and paint some Warhammer figures, or draw up my army list, etc., and get my fantasy/gaming fix. I'm not a huge painter, but I enjoy it in small, regular doses. I also have pre-painted games (such as the Rackham stuff) so I don't put too much painting on my plate.

So my questions are:

1) Your aversion to miniatures games sound strong. How is it that you were willing to spend so much time painting and terrain building in the first place? Was it merely a means to an end? If so, it sounds like masochism. But I figure you must have gotten something out of it and enjoyed the process. That's what it's all about, right? Why the seemingly huge swing in attitude?

2) It sounds like your time issue with RPGs stems from being the game/dungeon master. If so, I agree with you. But as a player, RPGs required little commitment from me outside of the three hours or so I spent playing one evening a week -- which is equal to or less than the time spent on your average meaty AT game. (And we used our normal voices.)

Anyway, interesting piece.
Just a little fuzzy on the reason for your huge swing into the genres and then out of them.

Well that is the great part about RPGs, miniatures and CCGs – you can tune your deck, read a sourcebook, paint some minis or create a new army list when you're friends aren't available to play. You can't really do that with a board game.

Aren't most multi-player games player dependant? Board, card, rpg, whatever. I have had a lot of unpleasant experiences with games that "didn't click" with a given group.

If reviewing rpgs is so hard why does rpg.net have regular reviews? They don't have reviews immediately after a product comes out, but I would argue that board games with high replayability (games I value) also need a lot of table time to give them an accurate review.

People complaining about prep work in rpgs surprises me. The big publishers like Wizards and White Wolf do require prep, but a some of the small press stuff is quick to play. PDFs are pretty affordable and you tend to get a fun game for a session or two. Which is better value for money than a lot of "play twice" board games.

I feel much the same way

Most of what you said in this article has no bearing whatsoever on Monsterpocalypse, which, if you're just keeping one army, takes up as much space as a board game and requires just as much prep work.

Michael Barnes said:

Nah - they decided to alternate Warhammer FRP with boardgames every fortnight. I wasn't going to join but then thought 'what the fuck let's try it'.

I don't know, I still would like to play some RPGs especially those that are less focused on stats and more on story, but it's true, finding time and people for RPGs is hard... Creating a story (even in one of those storytelling group games) also takes some effort and I'm not usually in the mood for that when I have time to play a game... Boardgames can offer a pretty immersive experience with much less work from the players. I too played lots of RPGs when I was a teen and had lots of fun, especially with games like Cyberpunk 2020 (that I used to GM) and Call of Chulhu (we had a great GM for that and the stories were always thrilling and fun), but also with AD&D (2nd), Star Wars (d6) and others we played just a few times like Paranoia...

About miniatures, I really never got into them, although I did try painting when my friends started to play them. But I never had much patience for it, so... Still, I'd be open to a miniatures game in boardgame format, much like the Wings of War Miniatures game. I don't have to paint, the rules are simple and the game is fun. We don't try to measure with exact precision and play in a relaxed way so the game plays very fast and there are no discussions about LOS that stop play and make it a boring experience.

The whole time commitment is why I have been thinking about pre-painted minis games for a year or so and fell in love with Monsterpocalypse for about 6 months (I would be still playing if the community here didn't evaporate over a couple of months). I guess that bit in the parentheses is the key. If you don't have the right group for a game it doesn't matter how much you love it, and for something like a miniature game it takes a large group of regulars in a city to keep the momentum going (you can't just play your best friend over and over in your basement with the same two armies to truly experience these games).

I gave up roleplaying in my late teens for two reasons. One was I felt stupid talking and acting in character (though I quite enjoyed freeform roleplaying where it is a bunch of people in character wandering around a room recreating a similar situation as it doesn't feel as artificial and wouldn't object to doing that again). The other was I played a Call of Cthulhu adventure at a roleplaying convention that was just so good that I realized it would never be topped (the GMs just kept pushing and experimenting as they ran it and as we were the last group through we copped the weirdest, sickest stuff they could think of, such as the infamous encounter with a giraffe gynaecologist).

MattDP said

[CITATION NEEDED] ;)

Kidding aside, I can see where you are coming from, Matt. I've played D&D, off and on, since 1981 and also RP'ed my titties off with a whole bunch of other game systems during that time (GW Judge Dredd was my favorite). It REALLY hinges on the group you have comprised. The min-max, stat nerds do kill a lot of enjoyment for the game. That being said, I usually don't play with, or allow people into my group, who play like that unless they are really good friends of mine.

The majority of the time, I'm on the other side of the curtain, pushing buttons on a calc, scribbling notes, what have you. I find GM'ing a far more enjoyable pastime, even though it's prep heavy. To some people, it's a chore. But to me, it's cake.

I also research a lot of things to at least try to make it as accurate as possible, even though I know I have creative license, since it is a RPG. My favorite campaign was in Feng Shui when I decided to make an adventure to "All Men Are Brothers", which is essentially the Chinese version of Robin Hood, occurring a couple of centuries prior to Robin Hood and having a legion of characters.

It's been nearly twelve years since completing that campaign and some of my friends who played in it at the time are still nostalgic about it. They have told me that that was their favorite campaign, hands down, and it made me happy that I was able to do that for them; albeit it took a lot of work on my part. In the end it was all worth it.

On the other end of the spectrum, I have played against meglomaniacal DMs, munchkins, stat monkeys, and players who could not come up with an original idea to save their lives (i.e. I'm essentially playing Chow Yun Fat's character from The Killer, but with a lot less panache and no where near canon). For them, I give it the old college try, but it's far easier just to say, "Sorry, your game's not for me." and walk away.

I have no arguments against this article. Michael's observations mirror my own experiences very closely. Heavily into RPG's and painting miniatures for 10 years, I walked away from all of it in the early 90's. I still get pangs of nostalgia and am tempted every so often to dip my toe in the water again, but the time commitment scares me away. I spent countless hours playing, DM'ing and painting as a teen and there is no way I could sustain that effort again and keep my job and family too.

Board games have become the replacement for the earlier obsession with gaming and while the time commitment is more manageable, the financial investment is something I have to monitor carefully.

Actually, I was really tempted to get into WHFRP3E in recent months and it was the financial investment required, rather than the time investment, that put me off. My gaming dollars are limited and when I looked at my board game wishlist, I decided that adding a RPG like this one to the list would blow everything else out of the water.

I would still consider buying into some miniature games, but painting minis is definitely out for me, so it would need to come with pre-painted minis (one of the reasons I bought into Heroscape). I also hate tape measures and stuff, so it would need to be hex-based or something similar.

I have been running a bi-weekly Call of Cthulhu campaign for over two years now. We have skipped about a half dozen sessions, when real-world stuff intrudes, like when the annual state fair makes traveling into my neighborhood an epic journey. Otherwise, it hasn't been especially burdensome. I spend an average of maybe 1 or 2 hours a week on preparation, since 90% of what I run is pre-made adventures from Chaosium and Pagan Publishing. Actually running the game is reasonably fun compared to most other RPGs, because the fairly simple rules make skill checks and combat easy, allowing us all to focus more on atmosphere and role-playing. It's unusual for me to spend more than 10 minutes per session checking rules, charts or notes.

But Call of Cthulhu is special. It doesn't really allow for much in the way power-gaming, min-maxing, rules-exploiting bullshit, and characters are generally focused on survival, not grabbing loot and leveling up. In times past, I have run numerous other systems, and the crunchier ones like AD&D and GURPS were a lot more work, both to prep for and to run. At my peak abilities, I was running a weekly GURPS Fantasy game for 11 players, but I hit serious burnout after 10 months. I haven't run anything even close to that difficult since.

Newsguy, that's a good point about how painting miniatures can be a passive thing...that's what I did when I was painting all the "store demo" miniatures at AGF.

1) Your aversion to miniatures games sound strong. How is it that you were willing to spend so much time painting and terrain building in the first place? Was it merely a means to an end? If so, it sounds like masochism. But I figure you must have gotten something out of it and enjoyed the process. That's what it's all about, right? Why the seemingly huge swing in attitude?

Well, when I was a kid/teenager and also when I was at AGF all the time, I had plenty of idle time to paint miniatures and build terrain. At AGF, it was also a business thing because I knew that by playing and promoting the games we'd bring in sales (a lot, actually). But really, I thought that painting and modelling was a real chore, and I felt like if I was going to be painting anything I'd rather be spending the time and resources on something more artistically valid than little army guys. I'm not trying to disparage miniatures painting as an invalid or worthless pastime, but if you've got the talent or inclination to paint then don't blow it on WARHAMMER figurines.

But yeah, it is enjoyable to paint up your guys and see them out on the table and they're all customized and whatnot. My Khador army was totally custom, I did them all in authentic Soviet military colors. The "official" version is red, which I hated. They looked good, and it was fun to develop the skill over time. But always, there was only a certain amount of time and energy I was really willing to put into it before I was like "good enough".

I just don't have the inclination to do the modeling part of it at all. As others have suggested, all too often in miniatures games the modelling is really the prime raison d'etre. WARMACHINE was the first miniatures game where I felt like the game was something unique and fully developed as a game first and foremost. Of course, it's legendary that WARHAMMER guys apparently came up with that game as an arbitrary use for their models, and many games feel exactly like this. CONFRONTATION in particular. There may be some cool ideas, but by and large I think that miniatures games are really not very good- and the people that tend to like them the most are those that get into the modelling aspects more with the game as a secondary "justification" for their time spend pursuing that, perhaps.

2) It sounds like your time issue with RPGs stems from being the game/dungeon master. If so, I agree with you. But as a player, RPGs required little commitment from me outside of the three hours or so I spent playing one evening a week -- which is equal to or less than the time spent on your average meaty AT game. (And we used our normal voices.)

Probably true because I'm a runner, not a player. I don't really care to play RPGs other than D&D, and never have. But I did really like running them. You're right that as a player under most circumstances your overhead is very limited and they don't require as much time. But for me to really get the most out of an RPG, I've got to run the show. It's that old "director" bug, I guess.

People complaining about prep work in rpgs surprises me. The big publishers like Wizards and White Wolf do require prep, but a some of the small press stuff is quick to play. PDFs are pretty affordable and you tend to get a fun game for a session or two. Which is better value for money than a lot of "play twice" board games.

That's worth considering- the smaller RPGs generally are easier to get into straightaway without a lot of overhead. Even something like TUNNELS AND TROLLS doesn't require so much freaking homework.

The whole time commitment is why I have been thinking about pre-painted minis games for a year or so and fell in love with Monsterpocalypse for about 6 months (I would be still playing if the community here didn't evaporate over a couple of months). I guess that bit in the parentheses is the key. If you don't have the right group for a game it doesn't matter how much you love it, and for something like a miniature game it takes a large group of regulars in a city to keep the momentum going (you can't just play your best friend over and over in your basement with the same two armies to truly experience these games).

This is a good point too. Without a solid local community, miniatures games just collapse whether they're traditional modelling based games or prepainted ones. In order to get WARMACHINE and the Rackham games to sell, I had to actually play them and build a community for them from the ground up. The games where I didn't do that languished on the shelves. This is why publishers that don't have organized play and in-store support are just fucking stupid. Apart from Wizkids, who were just fucking stupid regardless.

As a player, I find RPGs to be unreliably fun. It only takes one player to disrupt things, and some game masters would rather accomodate a disruptive player than play with a smaller group. And even a good group can have an off day, where the players get stuck or go off on a tangent or just can't stop talking about something outside the game.

For example, the only D&D 3.X campaign that I played in was run by a decent game master with a reasonably interesting campaign setting of his own creation. None of the players were especially obnoxious, considering that only one power-gaming combat monster is better than usual for a D&D group. However, there was one guy who played a druid, and that player is just an extremely slow and methodical in every respect. Each round of combat involving his character would take at least a half hour, because the game master let him carefully review spell descriptions and come to a careful decision about what spell to cast. During one combat, I read through the first 8 issues of Planetary when it wasn't my action.

A few years later, I tried to play in a Firefly campaign run by the same game master but including the same player. Even though there are no spells in Firefly, and combat decisions tend to involve simple decisions like shoot or dive for cover, the combat rounds were still taking at least a half hour. It was otherwise a very good group, and I'm a big fan of Firefly, but I gave up after several months of bi-weekly boredom.

Boardgames are generally a more reliable form of entertainment. They don't usually offer the same memorable moments as the best RPG sessions, but selection of a boardgame is often a pretty good prediction of what kind of fun will be had. Betrayal at House on the Hill is notable exception... due to the extreme variety of possible circumstances in any given game, the second half of the game can be stupidly quick or really fun.

If you go back to rpgs this could happen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=PL&hl=pl&v=nhmUj9QJ9RM&feature=related

Well it's personal experience more than anything else. I played RPG's regularly for about fifteen years of my life and during that time I was moving around quite a lot, first as a student and then chasing after various junior job vacancies. The result was that I got involved with a number of different groups, for most of which I had little or no say about who got in to play and who didn't. And out of all those groups, only three lead to satisfactory game experiences, and two of those groups were comprised almost entirely of my friends. Only once did I happen upon a fun group to play with purely by chance, one that didn't contain any social retards (although they did take a lot of drugs, but that's another story). Mind it was about the most fun campaign I ever had - I GM'ed and it ran over 3 years and was all kinds of awesome. That's a tiny, tiny minority of the role-players I've met in the course of my life.

The final straw for me was going to meet the host of a local group I got involved with and finding out that his house was a filthy cesspit with the exception of a pristine complete set of every Star Trek DVD ever released and that one of the gamers played a Dwarf fighter called "grunt" who had no personality whatsoever (and neither did the gamer) whom he simply re-rolled for every new campaign or in the result of death. Never again!

Funny how RPGs seem to be the only type of game whose success rests in large part on the quality of one person (the game master).
I wish we had a Consumer Reports or a ratings system for those guys.
I'd pay good money to find a good GM and bypass all the Dungeons of Dumb.

"There may be some cool ideas, but by and large I think that miniatures games are really not very good- and the people that tend to like them the most are those that get into the modelling aspects more with the game as a secondary "justification" for their time spend pursuing that, perhaps."

My personal experience differs from this: I hate painting and modeling and there are many other things I'd rather be doing. Many of the people I've come across feel the same way - That's why I've seen less than a dozen fully painted armies in my life and most of the time it is large fields of gray plastic or silver pewter.

Miniature gaming for me is the ultimate immersion in theme. Many games spend have the rulebook explaining fluff so I know the quirks of the units I'm taking to battle, I know why I'm going to battle, the core rules typically become transparent really quick so I can focus more on the troops I'm commanding and how I'm commanding them. When I look at the battle field I can get down and see what my guys see. There is a tremendous visual appeal that I have towards the game. Being able to look down and see troops and scenery (with perhaps a few dice or markers here or there) really get me into the game. Granted painting models would add to that but for me, not enough to actually get me off my ass and paint. Also I typically use store bought or pre-made scenery so the actual "modeling" portion of miniature gaming for me is only a very small percentage of the overall time I've spent miniature gaming.

Two tips I have are stick with "dead" games so you don't have to keep up with constant rule changes or updates and to don't get caught up in the "Painting is a huge part of the hobby" because it isn't - It can be, but no one is holding a gun to my head telling me that I can't use my unpainted models.

I would go so far as to say that the quality of an RPG game is 99% in the hands of the GM and the group. GM maybe 60%, players 39%.

Yes it is ridiculous to rate RPGs, etc., when your experience with it is mostly likely based on -- in decreasing order of likelihood -- looking at the books and not playing, playing one session, playing a campaign with one group, playing multiple campaigns with multiple groups. I'd think that last option is the only circumstance in which your rating means anything.

There 'aint no gaming experience better than a good role-playing game session.

On the other hand, there are few gaming experiences worse than a bad role-playing game session.

At the moment I'm doing a lot more role-playing than I am board gaming. You get yourself a good roleplaying group and it makes for a lot of fun.

I ran a regular GURPS game until about 2005, then two of the players git a divorce...

Now that I have moved my plan is to play Savage Worlds, the campaign will be updated on Tim's blog so I don't have to paint, or do much except show up and play.

I want to try a game of Inspectres as it looks cool for one shots. It is 75% player driven as the players decide the outcome of the adventures not the GM.

Tim is one of those guys that has been painting for years so he paints well and fast (plus he combines RPGs with minis).

There was a time I would paint anything in a game... I even painted the MB Axis & Allies units and the pieces in Fortress America!

I naturally loved painting larger scale (25 mm and up), but never really got fanatical about Warhammer or such. I just enjoyed painting the few games that I bothered to buy.

I quit painting any miniatures for a few years- mainly because the few games I bought did not require painting. Later, as I bought some games that did need some painting, I kept it simple- either just a basic two-tone color scheme or a quick dry brush technique.

It did not help that I had to start wearing glasses for close work - I still have not gotten used to them!

I am painting the minis to the new game Incursion- a kind of WW2 Space HUlk. Very good game and great miniatures! I find that painting them now is very relaxing to me, almost like a meditation of sorts. I really enjoy painting them. I will say that once they are done I DO NOT want to paint anything else like them for a while. I have other projects that require my time- but at this moment it is very serene doing the painting, relaxing in a quiet room with a cold drink and some music in the background. I can see how some people would love doing it a lot.

As for RPGs...naw. I am too introverted for that.