4e...

So. Miniatures. That more or less sums up fourth edition Dungeons and Dragons. Well, that, and World of Warcraft.

I admit, the WoW comparison is a cliche', but a valid one. D&D is the same in a lot of ways, but different in enough that it makes someone like myself who cut his teeth on second edition AD&D be taken aback. The biggest change in that regard is lethality. The AD&D I remembered could get pretty brutal, and character deaths weren't unheard of. Now, players get a specific number of "healing surges" per day, which allow them to pull hit points out of thin air. They're typically allowed one heal in combat, and as many as they want out of combat. Each day, their number of healing surges replenishes, meaning that your party could take a six hour nap inside a level of a dungeon you just cleared, and then they'd have a fresh batch of healing surges that they could use when they descend to the next level. Of course, for a creative DM this isn't a problem. The rules specify a night of uninterrupted sleep, so it'd be easy enough to make it impossible to get a good night's sleep in a dungeon, or other dangerous place, but still, the philosophy behind healing surges are clear.

The biggest, and probably most annoying aspect of 4th edition, though, is its insistence on miniatures. 4e more or less demands that you use miniatures in your game. All the powers refer to "squares" instead of "feet" when determining range, and the combat section of the Players Handbook is filled with diagrams of miniature combat. Back in the day, sometimes I used miniatures (or M&Ms, or a whiteboard, etc.) for very complicated encounters, or for situations where it was critical that everyone knew where everything was, but the vast majority of the time, we as players just... gasp... used our imaginations! I know, right? What a novel concept!

To be fair, miniatures are fine, but what annoys me is that I know the only reason Wizards of the Coast are doing this is to push their own line of crappy, plastic, pre-painted miniatures. These minis suck. Not only are they crap, but you can't even buy specific miniatures that you want -- they come in "booster packs" as if they were freakin' Magic cards. So say I wanted ten kobolds... this would require me purchasing a number of "booster packs" of a specific series of D&D miniatures (that may or may not still be "in print") and hoping that I got what I wanted. And if I was lucky, then I'd have a lame, plastic, pre-painted mini.

In response, I've compromised my principles half-way. I'm going to be using miniatures in my campaign, and probably a combination of D&D dungeon tiles, and a wet-erase battle mat - but the catch here is that I'm only going to be using quality pewter Reaper miniatures that I'll assemble and paint myself. It's a lot of extra work, but range and quality of the Reaper minis are amazing, and even though I won't win a Golden Deamon with my painting skills, I'm decent enough with a paintbrush that I can produce figures that look pretty damn good at arms length. The kobold pictured above is one out of twenty-one kobolds I've painted specifically for my campaign.

I've also decided to reject Wizards' insistence that dungeon tiles be used to map out the entirety of the dungeon -- and I'll only be plopping down relevant dungeon tiles when the party bumps into an encounter. Here's to using one's imagination.

Oh, and my campaign's lethality factor will not be compromised.