What'z going into your DCC Dm kit?

[dark cauliflower]

the book of names would be cool but people are charging 300.00 bucks for it. That's 6 or 7 copies of DCC!

Holy moly! Last time I looked it was about £12 on ebay. It was one of the cheapest and the last Gygaxian Fantasy books I bought. There seemed to be quite a few of that book and Insidiae being sold brand new and relatively cheaply at the time. I bought the Book of Names at the time only to complete the full set of them but I have not regretted buying it. Sure you can get name generators on the internet but I do like my deadtree copies.

Plastic figures from Caesar/Strelets

yeah I can't afford the book of names. That's way out of my budget.

Im going to have to look into Caesar/Stelets for minis in the future. Im currently cutting up a bunch of 1 inch and 1x2 inch cardboard squars for my Book of War stuff. Need minis of some form to use it. Cardboard can be nice!

[SavageRobby]

Miscellaneum of Cinder (a useful little book)

Speaking of, anyone know what happened with the digital version? I've been trying to find it, but the site that appears to be hosting it is down.

[Crimsontree]

Miscellaneum of Cinder (a useful little book)

Speaking of, anyone know what happened with the digital version? I've been trying to find it, but the site that appears to be hosting it is down.

Here's a digital version on Scribd:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/99508614/Misc ... -of-Cinder

[dark cauliflower]

lulu looks like it has it too:
Miscellaneum of Cinder
By Jeff Rients
http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/jeff-rie ... 14145.html

[Ogrepuppy]

I need a Judges screen.

Of all the things I hope Joseph produces for DCC RPG, this is #1 on my short list.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

PLEASE...and thank you!

[wildbill]

I must be lame or something. I have pretty much "not much" in my DM backpack. I have tons of dice of course, and plenty of pencils and erasers and paper for the players. It should go without saying I have my DCC RPG book. I am not a big fan of using miniatures to represent things. I am more about trying to get my players to use their imagination. Tee hee hee...

Other than that, I have all of the paperwork related to whatever adventure I am running. I try to not use other books written for other game systems because I am not good enough to translate them over. LOL!

Wild Bill

[Ogrepuppy]

I must be lame or something. I have pretty much "not much" in my DM backpack....I am not a big fan of using miniatures to represent things. I am more about trying to get my players to use their imagination.

That is most assuredly NOT lame, my good sir. Ever since that whole "4th edition" debacle I've been VERY anti-mini, and not long ago I met a DM who refuses to use them. Our gaming sessions (when I'm able to play) are infinitely better for using 'the battle map of the mind' (my term) rather than 'board game pieces' (as he calls miniatures).

Bravo for going mini-free!

[Colin]

Another anti-mini anti-battlemat GM here too. There are plenty of us around even if it doesn't seem like that because the last two editions of D&D were battlemat-focused, 4e especially so.

Colin

[GnomeBoy]

Current GM kit for DCC: rulebook, Random Esoteric Creature Generator, copy of Folktales from Around the World, and however much brain juice I can muster.

I may use minis, because I find them useful some of the time for keeping track of who is where, so my brain can do other things and I don't forget stuff. Who the hell doesn't like a puppet show? Minis use doesn't have to be wargame-style... Oh, and my minis include toys and random weird pieces like one Lincoln Log and parts from incomplete board games and broken jewelry, etc. etc. etc.

[Colin]

I may use minis, because I find them useful some of the time for keeping track of who is where, so my brain can do other things and I don't forget stuff. Who the hell doesn't like a puppet show? Minis use doesn't have to be wargame-style... Oh, and my minis include toys and random weird pieces like one Lincoln Log and parts from incomplete board games and broken jewelry, etc. etc. etc.

What has liking puppet shows or not got to do with the price of fish? You may as well have said, "Who doesn't like making costume jewellery?" for all the real relevance it has to whether or not something likes using minis in a game.

Also, sure use of minis (or tokens or any other mini stand-ins) doesn't have to be wargame-alike, but that still doesn't change the fact that some folks such as myself neither need, want, nor enjoy their use. Some of us don't have trouble keeping track of who is where in Theatre of the Mind (while doing other stuff), and/or don't have players who would try to abuse a looser narrative approach, and/or don't give so much of a damn about such tactical elements in the first place, and/or give our players a bit more narrative freedom anyway. Who the hell doesn't enjoy extreme embroidery?

Colin

[dark cauliflower]

I only need cardboard token, minis, spatulas... for my fusion of DCC/Book of War. And any fun I have with BOW by itself.

Outside of that I want to be pure as light when it comes to playing classic DCC, just like it was played by the men of the past!

[cthulhudarren]

For the record... in my yoot, I never used minis. Since I started playing again in the new millennium, I like to use minis.

[SavageRobby]

I sense a bit of hostility over the subject.

I'm similar to the above poster. Back in my youth, we never used minis - largely because we couldn't afford them. We'd periodically draw stuff out on graph paper and use pennies and such as markers when we needed to track a lot of activity and to avoid the occasional "no, I said I was over by the ______" arguments.

Later in life I've gotten more into minis and terrain and such, as much for the hobby as the utility on the table. Perhaps it is simply my lack of descriptive vocabulary, but I find terrain and minis an awesome tool for me and my players to better visualize the environment and make more interesting tactical decisions. When we first started, I was pretty tight about movement and squares and such (and 3.x rules kind of required that), but after moving to other systems (Savage Worlds, C&C, lately DCC) I'm much looser about such things. To me, that's the best of both worlds.

So while I don't think they're required for a good play experience, I certainly enjoy minis and terrain as an enhancement to it. YMMV and all that.

[dark cauliflower]

I agree completely. Minis should not be considered soo 4th edition that you feel loathe to use em. This DCC! We do what we want.

I can't remember using em in the ol 1rst and 2nd edition days. Games were different then.

With that said, I can't wait for evilmangames to release their new DCC Adventure Men line of toys!

[GnomeBoy]

Embroidery is all fine and good, but the extreme version is just too cut-throat for my tastes; embroidery should not be a blood-sport.

Having gotten that off my chest, I'm going to clarify that I don't use minis all the time. My preferred 'rate' would certainly be less than 50% of the time. But, for example, I have a game I'm planning to run for the 'Teen Room' at a con in February. If I find the kids can't grok what I'm verbally laying down, rather than have the game grind to a halt, I'll have minis with me to keep the game moving.

Also, I have occasionally run encounters with lots of moving parts, such as high numbers of opponents, various terrain aspects, a change mid-way through like the earth opening up or something else bizarre, and if we can plop some stuff on the table to show relative positions, the chaos plays out as more fun and less confusing. Having said that, sometimes 'confusion' is part of the encounter, and I specifically want no visual aids whatsoever, to keep things weird. No reason at all to use minis vs. invisible assailants, for example, from where I sit -- though I have seen others do it!

I did have a fight one time where, try as I might, the players just couldn't understand the size of the thing they were fighting. I went to the closet and pulled out a toy of Fin Fang Foom I had picked up at clearance, and plonked it down on the table next to a standard mini. We didn't use these to 'play out' the fight, but the 'puppet show' aspect of seeing things in scale so everyone was on the same page helped immensely.

And Colin, please feel free to ignore the box of sock puppets, minis, parcheesi pieces, and jam that I sent you -- along with the note threatening that you'll have to wear all of the costume jewelry enclosed, if you persist in not using the toys in the box in your games. I clearly stepped over the line with that parcel, and I apologize.

The jam, however, is excellent on toast. It would've been marmalade, but it tasted even better than the jam, and like a bat rastard, I ate it all myself...

[Colin]

No, the jam is good; I bathe in it. Marmalade, on the other hand, is the Devil's Work. :shudder:

Colin

[GnomeBoy]

Just glad it all worked out, in the end...

[wildbill]

I grew up playing D&D from the early 80s (1st Ed? What was the official name anyways? ) and then went on to 2nd Ed D&D. Even in college, when we would sit and play 2nd Ed for hours on end, we rarely broke out minis, even though we owned a ton of GW Warhammer Fantasy stuff. I can see someone's point about possibly needing minis if there are just so many opponents that my players are losing track of everything. Although, sometimes that can be half of the fun. Tee hee hee...

I am definitely one of those DMs that like to describe what the players are seeing and then let them figure out they are facing trolls or orcs or what have you. Yes, I know this is just a game, and it is all make believe, but I also want there to be some sort of realism involved as well. Just because all of us know about orcs thanks to reading a book does not equate to the character knowing what an orc looks like. They may not have ever seen one in real life! Maybe that's just me being evil.

Wild Bill

[TheNobleDrake]

Since a few others are talking about when they do and when they don't use minis - I figured I would join in.

I only ever break out the minis when I know before hand that the encounter design is going to have a lot of stuff that I don't want to bother remembering - who's near the cliff? Exactly how many goblins are actually next to the fire pit and how many are in the shadows? What is on which floating platform and how far apart are they?

Basically, If I am going to have to make notes of where things are - I feel I may as well just go ahead and draw a picture on the battlemat and grab something (even if its only dice) to mark the important details.

It's a case of deciding that, while I could track that all on scratch paper and in my head - I just don't want to.