4 Responses to BrickQuest: Building Dungeons and Monsters with Lego

1. 

   Ian on December 1, 2005 at 11:17 am

   As long as we’re talking about legos, I’ve got a similar suggestion…

   There’s a strategy game marketed towards kids out called HeroScape (although you oughtn’t let the target audience fool you, it’s a fully fledged and fun game in and of itself). The nice thing is, the basic $40 set comes with an obscene amount of strong plastic tiles in vsrying sizes. The tiles all lock together securely and stack on top of eachother loosely (they don’t lock in place while stacking, but they fit into wide grooves). I’ve been able to pick up a full battlefield (probably 2 feet by 3 feet, with an area in the center that was 11 layers high) with one hand. Granted, it didn’t stay together completely perfect when I set it down, but nothing fell off.

   It’s a great and cheap outdoor terrain accessory, if you don’t mind using hexes instead of squares for your D&D game (or other system of choice).

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2. 

   Frank on December 1, 2005 at 12:29 pm

   I bought a copy of HeroScape to check it out. I debated getting a 2nd while TRU and Target still had them on sale.

   Since I was switching to either Rune Quest or Cold Iron, I was going to be moving from square grid to hex, and doing more outside than inside encounters.

   There are two basic problems with this kind of accessory for me:

   1. The hexes are too big. A Megamat already isn’t quite large enough to run outdoor encounters where there is an opportunity for missile fire as the encounter closes.

   2. With anything molded and painted like this, there is always the issue of things that aren’t flexible enough. Of course the system is actually cheap enough (it would be cool if they released some tile only expansion sets) that you could paint a bunch of tiles some different colors. You would also have to supplement the set with other models.

   I had been thinking about something like BrickQuest for several years. Peter beat me to it… I should build some modules though so we could have a cool huge dungeon at GenCon next year…

   Of course now that I’m hex based, LEGO is a less worthy choice, though you can do staggered squares and get a hex grid. LEGO of course has more flexibility, though for dungeons it can still be difficult to do curved walls, and at the BrickQuest scale, “cave” walls aren’t going to look very good. Of course there’s also the problem that the natural 4×4 square is still slightly bigger than an inch (though that’s probably not a problem for most dungeons).

   Of course as a heavy module user, modular dungeon products (3-D or printed) always seem problematical. Too many dungeons use zero thickness walls all over the place, or have awkward shapes difficult to render.

   One of these days I will do a LEGO RPG though. I will restrict myself to creatures renderable in LEGO. Unless I keep it purely to the dungeon, I’ll have to come up with a decent modular system for outdoor encounters.

   Definitely cool stuff…

   The funny thing is that I remember back in the mid-90s looking at the Egyptian LEGO sets and thinking it would be cool to do dungeons with it, but who would ever have enough LEGO to do that…Many thousands of dollars later, I literally have TONS of LEGO and could indeed do it…But there’s the time aspect…

   I think what I’ll have to do to make it really work is get buy in from a group of players and have two sessions a week. One session each week would be building things. The other session would be playing. As the campaign rolled on, it might be possible to reduce the building sessions. If player surprise was an important component, the group build sessions could be relegated to building standardized modules and “known” creatures (here’s the directions for a wolf Fred, could you make 9 more? Jane, could you build me 10 20′ long 10′ wide coridor sections and 2 40′ long sections? If Dick is really creative with building creatures, he can just build to his hearts content, and the GM will stat them up later).

   Anyone in the Portland Oregon area who wants in on such a game?

   Frank

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3. 

   Martin on December 1, 2005 at 6:31 pm

   Ian: I’ve got HeroScape, although I’ve never actually had a chance to play it, and my first thought with the hexes was also that they could make neat budget terrain. 😉

   Frank: There’s actually a system associated with BrickQuest, with rules and everything. To my eyes, the best part looks like the little Lego character sheets — I love that idea. 🙂

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4. 

   Frank Filz on December 1, 2005 at 9:10 pm

   Oh, I’m definitely aware of BrickQuest as a system (funny – Peter was actually just asking about copyright issues…). I’ve run Evil Stevie’s Pirate Game which was designed for LEGO pirates, mostly a wargame but with some RPG elements (especially the way I ran it).

   Lots of LEGO gaming fun…

   Frank

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