Lego D&D Prep

Transcript

Today I’m getting ready to get back in the DM saddle, so we’ve got a little prep to do. What better way to introduce my kids to Dungeons and Dragons than the Lego D&D set?

The Build Plan

I’m not going to build the whole thing—just the first scene. The adventure is broken up into individual scenes with different steps of the build. I’ll do the first build tonight and some more prep. This will actually be my first time running 5.5 or whatever they’re calling it these days.

My D&D History

I think this set is going to be great for introducing my kids to D&D. My very first roleplaying was Basic Fantasy RPG around 2000—I was 10 or 11. I begged my mom to print it off at her work because back then it was hard to get printers like that at home.

I played a ton of Basic Fantasy RPG, then D&D Third Edition came out. Not 3.5, but the original Third Edition was my first actual Dungeons and Dragons. Loved it. I was one of the few people apparently who did. I also really loved Chainmail—they revamped it to use Third Edition’s rules so you could go back and forth between the tabletop skirmish game and the RPG.

Played a lot of 3.5 after that. I always loved Fourth Edition from the jump. I played World of Warcraft, I loved wargames, so Fourth Edition was the perfect game for me. I know that’s probably sacrilege, but I think a lot of people are coming around to how good it was. I loved the grid, how tactical it was, the in-depth combat you could roleplay around.

Sadly, I lost my entire book collection in the storage shed incident I’ve talked about before, but I’m slowly rebuilding my Fourth Edition collection. I have the Fourth Edition Dark Sun—Ashes of Athas—that I really want to run someday.

Fifth Edition—I DM’d a massive campaign. At one point we had eight players at once, about 10 total. We played for almost a year, maybe a year and a half. Made me hate the system. Sold all my Fifth Edition books thinking I’d never DM it again. Now we’re on 5.5.

The Lego D&D Set

I thought about converting this to OSE, which is what I love now, but I printed off the official Lego adventure and it comes with character sheets. I think we’ll just run it as-is since I’m knocking the rust off and it’s going to be with my little kids. Hopefully I can draw my wife into it too.

The set comes with four characters: a dwarf cleric, a gnome fighter, an orc rogue, and an elf wizard. The book has a history of D&D at the front, which is cool.

Red Dragon’s Tale Adventure

The adventure is really well structured. It gives quick tips to the DM, sections for players to read, and a clear “player stop reading” marker where the DM-only info begins. Each class gets a short description so even people unfamiliar with D&D know what they’re doing.

There’s an option to use D&D rules or go without, which is pretty cool. If you use D&D rules, you need the Player’s Handbook, DM’s Guide, and Monster Manual. The character sheets are simplified a bit but start at level five.

The adventure progression is modular: Scene One is “In Plain Sight,” then there’s a meadow you add on, a dungeon, basement, tower, and the dragon itself. As you build, you’re adding scenes out. Each scene has encounter information for the DM with things to read aloud to players.

I don’t think there’s going to be much prep needed since it’s for the kids—I’ll just let them go where they decide to take it. The adventure is free—just Google “Red Dragon’s Lego Adventure” and you can get it from Wizards of the Coast.

Painting Update

Painting-wise, trucking away on these purples. It’s very subtle—this is going to be hours and hours of glazes working it up. The white has more shadows being worked in. Hoping by the end of the weekend going into Monday it’ll look closer to the box art. My goal is this will be the best painted model I’ve ever painted. After I get this commission done in the next two to three weeks, I’m doing a Dusk army with the same philosophy—definitely the best army I’ve ever painted.