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Since my cat was out of food and was unwilling to let me sleep, I decided to go to the store and buy some.  While I was there I looked around for anything I could use in my D&D game the next day.  It is nearing Halloween so there were many spiders and little items that I might be able to use.

It was then that I went into the toy aisle to look and realized that there are simply a lot of classical fantasy toys out on the market.  Ninjas and Pirates have pretty much taken over where for my generation robots and knights once stood. I am sure that just like the generation before me, looking for cowboy toys, I was annoyed to see the small part of my childhood no longer sold in stores.  I have been searching on eBay and found a great deal of the D&D miniatures, that are sadly no longer sold in stores, and wish that there was someone out there making the fantasy version of M.U.S.C.L.E.  

I love painting my PCs in detail and choosing the colors they wear and customising the weapons they are using, but for Al, the bandit who simply wants to steal enough money to afford a nice farm and then ask Rosie to marry him, I just want a bandit who can take a few hits and then be recycled at a later date. If I took the time to do that I would not be able to prepare the encounters of the rag tag bandit crew loosely based on the A-Team, and my players would grow bored at being delayed because the giant rat figures are not done.

Someone may be asking, "Why not use tokens?" And to them I say that is like playing chess using checkers with little stickers on them.  I actually used little beads from a craft store colored green for a whole host of orcs and it worked perfectly. But, I still miss the hordes of little guys charging into battle and I am glad that I kept my Hero Scape figures for so long in a little ziplock baggie.

I would LOVE to be able to buy adventure packs complete with miniatures like what I see in all the D&D videos online, and I do applaud dungeon command for allowing my to run into a store and buy a pack of drow and a bag of chips, but we will need to have more of them.  I know they are new and I am very happy with what I have seen so far.

Well, time to go off and build some more treasures for tomorrows game, we are flipping back to 4e from Next and that means the magic item pinatas needs to show up to make the game balance better.

It has been a long time since I have played Dungeons & Dragons(D&D) and it was even longer since I have been a DM.  But, when the stars aligned with my son asking, "Dad, have you heard of D&D?" and I recieved a nice bonus from work. The books were aquired once more.  I went to the local book store and picked up a Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and the next day a Monster's manual.

I began pouring over the unfamiliar rules and realizing that I liked the way that 4th Edition(4e) was handled and after making my own first character I was delighted in the changes and the fun that could be had.  Add to that the idea of the power cards that easilly explained how each of the powers worked and I was hooked.


The next night my son and I spent some time at a local IHOP and made his first D&D character.  He was excited and on the way home he asked if he could play some when we got home.  He managed to slay 4 skeletons and a goblin while rescuing the daughter of the local town's mayor.  And then he asked if we could play again and I smiled while fighting back tears of joy and pride that my son was just as hooked as I was when first introduced.

The next day I prepared a series of encounters and some of my nephews decided to play with us as well.  So, they journeyed into a dungeon, fought some bad guys, walked on some acid(none of them are named Aeofel so they were ok), and ended up working for a very strange litch named Roger.

At the end they returned to the Inn and decided to drink themselves under the table and told of their grand adventure. Now they await the morning when their new journey would begin. Meanwhile, as the DM I am scrabling to find a place local in the DFW area of Texas where I can find miniatures that might work for these characters...and the monsters they will meet.