I love many types of games, but none more than pre-painted tabletop miniatures, specifically Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures.  I find the original 1.0 ruleset tight, possible warbands varied, and dice-rolling is at a minimum.  Its pacing is specifically what keeps bringing me back to the game…my friends and I gave up Dungeons and Dragons, the RPG, due to the continuous lengthening of combat to the point where by 10th level our 8 hour gaming sessions ended up being an hour of role-playing, an hour of arguing over which Chinese restaurant to order from, and 6 hours of tedious dice-rolling.

Toward the end of my DM’ing career (more of  hiatus I hope) I created a hybrid D&D 3.5 combat system that used DDM 1.0 mechanics…a single dice roll or power usage, set damage, and static combat stats.  Plus, each character would still be able to use their feats, many of their spells, and abilities, just modified and able to fit onto a single DDM card.  While we never got to play D&D with my modified ruleset, I was very proud of it…I’d publish it here if I still had it.  Because an average 200 point D&D Minis skirmish would run no more than an hour (often less), it seemed a waste that WOTC never considered using a modified version for D&D RPG.  Sure, it wouldn’t allow the full range of possibilities in combat that the RPG does.  But when I played a few rounds of my version it more than captured the flavor of each character, their strengths and weaknesses, yet in a much more compact form.  Because our RPG’s were heavy on role-play, using my modified combat system would have allowed us to reach much higher levels and continue our campaigns longer.

I’m not sure why, but the past year or so I’ve found myself thinking about DDM, alot.  This even in the midst of having beautiful twin girls (they just turned 1!), already members of the Future Gaming Girls of America.  I finally asked my wife a week or so ago if she would mind if I bought back into DDM (I sold my entire collection in 2009 or so), and while she gave me the bemused ‘You’re ADHD and you won’t be playing it a month from now’ look, she said it was fine.  At one point we made quite a tidy sum on my collection (far in excess of what I paid), and so she figures I can always resell them if I inevitably move on to something else.

Because I still don’t have anyone to really play with (yes, I might be a tad crazy for investing heavily in a hobby where I won’t ever likely play anyone live), I decided to chronicle my experiences  and perhaps entertain some folks along the way.  Hence, ‘playing with myself’ is not a euphemism for a tentacle porn site…not that I even know what tentacle porn is *cough*.  I will simply play both sides of any skirmishes and detail how I go about acquiring every DDM piece from Harbinger to Desert of Desolation (all the DDM 1.0 minis), with a couple of twists.  More on those next post where I’ll talk about the goals of PWM and what else you may see here on the blog and upcoming Youtube channel.