REACTION: Brach's Turkey Dinner Candy Corn

Don't try this at home.

In the interest of science, I am sometimes driven to take incredible risks so that you, the viewer at home, do not have to. In this video, I am trying the Brach's Turkey Dinner and Apple Pie + Coffee Candy Corn. Brach's decided that they would not just meet, but exceed the dreams of Willy Wonka in presenting you, the consumer, with a whole Thanksgiving Dinner in Candy Corn format.

The results are understandably surprising. Timestamps follow below.

For specific flavors, jump to:

09:00  Green Bean

11:00  Cranberry Sauce

14:25  Stuffing  (dark brown color)

16:00  Apple Pie and Coffee (light brown)

18:40  Turkey (medium yellowish brown)

Some of the flavor differences were a bit subtle... but not all. I don't want to spoil the video, but if you want to jump to the most surprising, 18:40 may sum up my experience with this particular bag.

Review: Stranger Things D&D Starter Set

UPDATE 06/28/19: The Amazon price has dropped to $16 on this box. This makes the value of the set a bit better. It is possible it might drop down toward the $12 - 14 range if it doesn't sell well after Stranger Things season 3 starts up.

Introduction & Disclaimer

In writing this review, I've tried to set aside my biases (which is not always easy). In reviewing the product, I've considered 4 potential consumers types.

1. Someone who has heard of D&D but never played, and is intrigued by the Stranger Things connection.
2. Someone who may have played many years ago and is thinking of trying D&D again after having watched Stranger Things.
3. Someone not as familiar with Stranger Things, but heard of and recognized the D&D brand at a large chain (like a Target, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, etc).
4. A D&D enthusiast who collects various books, sets,  memorabilia, etc...

Given that I'm more in the 4th camp, I've tried to realign my thoughts toward consumers #1,  #2, and #3 who are really the "new players" that Hasbro/Wizards is attempting to target.

I've read and re-read the Stranger Things D&D Starter Set with the goal of the review in mind: Is this a good introduction for a new D&D player who was attracted by Stranger Things?

I will also compare and contrast the box contents against the original D&D Starter Set for 5th Edition. There will be some mild spoilers in this review and I will further warn the reader of any major spoilers this post may contain.

Review: D&D Tactical Maps Reincarnated

TLDR Summary: It's a buy, but not necessarily a strong buy if you already own some of these maps. While several of them are only marginally useful, the collection is still a reasonable deal, providing a wide variety of terrain. I would have liked to have seen a few different reprints with more useful terrain, but on the whole, it's a decent deal for the price.

UPDATE: To make these maps even more useful, consider picking up the Tactical Maps: Adventure Atlas which include 88 new encounters written by DM Guild Adepts specifically for use with this product!

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D&D Tactical Maps Reincarnated collects 20 different encounter maps together from the last few editions of D&D into a single map collection. The maps are double-sided and printed on folded poster paper (so no dry erase or wet erase surface) with a 1 inch grid for tactical play. The paper is standard poster weight, so it requires gentle handling. You should probably get a thin plastic "plexiglass" insert from a cheap poster frame to lay over top the maps to protect them in use.

Note: I own most of the originals of these maps included in this reprint pack, so my impression of this set is based upon the utility I have gotten out of each map over the last several years. For the few that I do not currently own, I try to evaluate their utility based on the terrain and features. An index of the included maps follows at the end.

Green Valley (King's Road)

Green Valley Pass
This map, originally called the King's Road, was included in the Keep on the Shadowfell and reprinted in Fantastic Locations: Fields of Ruin map pack. This is by far the most useful map in my collection. In terms of utility, I have used this on par with the Paizo Woodland and Forest flip mats. It's a nice generic country side road with different terrain and good cover (damn you, Sharpshooter feat!). Goes well with the D&D Starter Set or really any adventure with an on-the-road encounter... so, basically, all of them.

Is Gloomhaven overrated?

Gloomhaven pops up on my social media radar every couple weeks where inevitably someone asks “Is it really that good or is it all hype?”  

And inevitably there are two camps that answer.

Pro-GH: It’s the awesomest, amazingest best game ever. There’s a reason it’s #1 on BGG!

Anti-GH: Oh God. It’s soooo over-hyped and overrated. It’s just a boring/grindy RPG wanna-be card game riding the Cult-of-New wave.

Ok, perhaps a bit of hyperbole there, but the truth, as always, lies somewhere in between. I don’t usually write about board games, but this game in particular is RPG adjacent and I find these discussions on social media do very little to help the potential buyer know whether they might like it or not, so I’m adding my (hopefully) more measured response to the discussion.

So the question I answer is really “Given my game preferences, will I like Gloomhaven?”

D&D Miniatures: New Plastics from Hero Forge

UPDATE 08/2020: This review is out of date. The most recent review of the primed "Plastic" option is here. You will want to watch it. Gallery also included.

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Hero Forge, the miniature 3D printing service, has again updated their plastic offerings. Aside from the somewhat pricey metals, they now offer “Plastic” and “Premium Plastic”. Premium Plastic, which I wrote about previously, used to named Gray Plastic when it was first introduced (replacing the now defunct Ultra Detail). What used to be Strong Plastic (Nylon) is no longer offered. It was not particularly good, as the texture was too rough to take paint well. The newest offering, replacing Strong Plastic is just called Plastic.

Full disclosure: Hero Forge offered me a figure to test out without any expectation that I’d write a review. They were looking for feedback for their new material, but were open to any post I’d like to make about it.

First off, I have to say the figure creator has a lot of new options. There are more two-handed weapon poses, more weapons, more outfits, more headgear and more skin options. Many of the items from my character creation wish list I identified in my last post have been addressed. They could probably add a few more pose variants, but that’s a nit pick. I’m even more impressed with the character rendering options than before. Bravo, Hero Forge.

So how does Plastic compare with Premium Plastic?

The Plastic option costs $19.99 while the Premium option costs $29.99. The new Plastic option appears (I’m assuming here) to use Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) while the Premium option uses Stereolithography printing.  Stereolithography allows for a much finer detail as the layers are much thinner.

Halfling Sorceress printed with the Plastic option

The detail on the Plastic model is better than their prior offerings. The quality is much better than the old “Strong Plastic”, and probably equivalent to the “Ultra Detail” they used to offer. However, you can still see the banding created by the FDM process.

This means there will be a little bit of challenge hiding this texture when the model is painted. This is not generally a major problem if you prime and paint, but can become apparent on broad or flat surfaces like a cape or shield. A slightly thicker layer of paint should help with this, but if you use washes to shade, the wash may follow the contours left by the printing process, rather than the figure detail. Priming is a must.

Secondarily, some fine details will be lost. In the above picture, you see an up-close view of the standard Plastic offering. I added a black wash to allow for better pictures. Keep in mind that the wash over-emphasizes the print layers.

Board Games: Owlbear Reviews Betrayal at Baldur's Gate

With Betrayal at Baldur's Gate, Avalon Hill has expanded the array D&D themed board games published this year. When placed alongside Assault of the Giants (review pending), Dragonfire, and the Tomb of Annihilation board games (as well as prior year offerings such as Tyrants of the Underdark), there is quite a variety of play style offerings in 2017 for D&D board game enthusiasts. If you are already familiar with Betrayal at the House on the Hill, Betrayal at Baldur's Gate will be super easy to pick up.

Like its predecessor, the players move around revealing the board one tile at a time while encountering Events, gaining Items, and discovering Omens. Eventually, the Haunt is revealed which determines the win conditions for the traitor (usually one player) and the heroes (everyone else).

Full disclosure: I have only had the chance to play a couple of haunt scenarios in the new Betrayal at Baldur's Gate, so you might want to keep that in mind when you consider my evaluation.

The Pros

First, I'll start with what I really enjoy about the game.

The new characters all have a special power, like a spell, or ranged attack, or re-roll mechanic for example. This gives each character a bit more flavor and adds to the already high replay factor.

The D&D theme is well done in terms of the scenarios, events, flavor text, etc. I wasn't sure a thematic mashup of Betrayal and D&D would work, but so far, so good. Also, there are quite a few D&D in-jokes and Easter Eggs sprinkled throughout the game tiles and text for those with an eye for detail.

The new haunt roll mechanic also ensures that the haunt cannot happen prior to the 3rd Omen card. Unfortunately, you can't read through the haunts without spoiling them, so I don't have enough data to know how well they fit the theme. However, in one play test, the haunt involved all players versus the game. There was no traitor, and working together to beat the boss monster gave a familiar D&D feel.

I do like the way the buildings and streets combine to make a large "ground level" map, with a smaller catacombs level. I also like that each level has its own draw pile. In the original, a critical room can often be accidentally "buried" at the bottom of the draw pile because of the way the draw mechanic works. This does not occur in the new version.

The sex pre-painted miniatures are also pretty nice and, as a bonus, are sized appropriately for D&D table top.

The Big Con

That said, one of my biggest complaints with the various Betrayal games (the original, Widow's Walk, and now this one) is that the scenarios do not appear to be play tested very well, or well edited in some cases.

How do I know?

We almost always have questions about the traitor powers or actions within the haunt. And I'm not just talking about minor questions, but almost always key issues with the way the powers are worded that make the haunt rules overly ambiguous.

My wife and I are veteran gamers. We have played the different Betrayal games as well as other traitor-mechanic games like Shadows over Camelot, Battlestar Galactica, Dead of Winter, etc... The design challenge with the Betrayal games over other traitor mechanic games is that every scenario has slightly different rules for the traitor and heroes. Because of this, the game designers need to be extraordinarily detail-oriented when writing up the haunt rules.

Due to the age of the original Betrayal game, haunt clarifications can sometimes be found online, but not so for Widow's Walk or Baldur's Gate, so you are on your own to interpret the rules as written.

For the hero group, the players can generally come to a consensus after discussion if there are any doubts. However, the traitor is usually on their own to interpret any potential rule problems or vague wording, unless they want to give away their secret powers or victory conditions.

I have yet to play a haunt that hasn't had an issue where the text was not entirely clear and required some varying amount of interpretation. In almost every case, a single sentence (or two at most) would have cleared up the confusion. A good editor should have caught these ambiguities, but I have the distinct impression the the designers did their own editing... or if there was an editor, the editor was only looking for grammatical issues, and not rules ambiguity. A play test of each haunt should haven eliminated most of these problems.

All boards games have some amount of rules vagueness that often need a forum, faq or site like Board Game Geek to help, but it is more pronounced in the Betrayal games simply because there are some 30 to 40 different haunts that all may have different issues, and you are not able to read the haunt rules in advance without spoiling the game.

This has been a big problem for me in that any win or loss is tainted by the "Hey, did we play that part correctly?" discussion after the game. It often takes away some of the shine of a win, or adds to the frustration of a loss. I don't mind losing. Losing a competitive game can be lots of fun. But I hate losing when it later becomes clear that an incorrectly interpreted rule may have changed the whole scenario or player strategy.

As a non-spoiler example, one of the haunts had a big monster with some smaller minions. The minions came out first, and the big boss a couple turns later. In the haunt, it appears to state that the minions go away once the boss monster comes out, but a sentence or two later, it implies the exact opposite. Within the same haunt, the text appeared to imply that the boss monster may be able to attack more than one character given certain conditions, but it didn't explicitly state it. As a group, we ruled that the minions stayed and continued to attack, but the boss monster did not attack more than once. That seemed to be the most balanced interpretation, and we won the scenario... but we may not have won if the boss monster were allowed a second attack, so the victory felt diminished given that we still don't know what the correct ruling is. Since that we had not just one, but two rules clarifications required for the haunt, I was a bit disappointed in that particular scenario, and that has tainted my view of the game for the moment.

Final Thoughts 

Don't get me wrong. I don't dislike the game. If you are a fan of the other Betrayal titles and you like D&D, you will almost certainly enjoy this mash up. However, my recent experiences with poorly worded haunts in the various Betrayal incarnations has tarnished what would otherwise be a really fun experience. It may be that I'm pre-judging Baldur's Gate too hard based upon the play experience with the other Betrayal titles. But it does not bode well that one of the first haunts I encountered had the same problem.

I would give it 3.5 stars of 5. It's a strong Buy recommendation for fans of the Betrayal line, but if you are also annoyed by rule ambiguities of the haunts in the other titles, you will likely find the same issues in this one. The great news is that there are plenty of D&D themed board games to choose from if this one is not your cup of tea.

D&D Character Sheets - a $10 Review

TLDR Summary: Don’t buy this. Not worth the price.

Wizards of the Coast recently released a new character sheet folio for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. I recently previewed this in an article a couple week ago, but here is a “full review”.

The D&D Character Sheets contains a folder with a ampersand dragon artwork, 4 copies each of 3 standard character sheet designs (12 total), 8 copies of the "newbie" character sheet, and 4 copies of the spell sheet. Basically, a folder with 24 sheets of paper.

Don’t buy this crap. Seriously. Just don’t.

With two exceptions, the character sheets included in this folio are all directly downloadable for free from the Wizards.com website. If you don’t have a printer, go to the library. They have internet and printers. I just saved you $10.

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/character_sheets

The folder? It's a folder. It's glossy. It's made of card stock. It's basically the same as any other glossy folder at an Office Depot (are those places still around?), but with the ampersand artwork seen above on the cover (originally a Dragon+ cover) which I find less than inspiring. Looks a bit like an 80's metal hair band album cover. These are character sheets. Why doesn't the illustration contain characters? Inside, it has a list of actions in combat, but MPMB's combat reference sheet is much better -- see below.

If you want more pictures, you can check out Grand DM's blog.

"Newbie" Sheets

One exception to the freely downloadable clause is the character sheet designed for new players. It uses a larger font with a larger layout area for the most basic numbers a new player would need (AC, Initiative, Saves). It leaves off ideals, bonds, flaws and the full skill list for a shortened fill-in-the-blank one. It also includes two sections called "Things You Should Do" and "Things You Shouldn't Do" to help the players take notes on good and bad idea.

Under "Things You Shouldn't Do" it should have listed "Buy these character sheets" as the first entry. These newbie sheets are not a terrible redesign, but they don't really bring anything new to the table.

Where is the Value?

Is a glossy folder with an ampersand logo really worth the $10?

If you want a fancy folder, buy a 3-ring binder. Print out your own custom artwork for the cover sleeve. Wizards.com even provides the same artwork on their folio as a wallpaper… but you can also just search “D&D wallpaper” on Google image search and find all kinds of awesome imagery... many of which actually contains characters doing character-y things.

Want help making your own character sheet folio with a player reference? Try these links:
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/character_sheets
https://crobi.github.io/dnd5e-quickref/preview/quickref.html
http://swshinn.com/dnd-5e/rules-summary/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2Fbq7v8pucJVENWZlE5Z2h1T00/view
https://olddungeonmaster.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/combat-reference-sheet_b.pdf

Final Thoughts

If you really want to waste $10, go for it... but this just encourages Wizards of the Coast to put out crappy products when they should be focusing resources somewhere else. If they had come up with some interesting character sheet designs that weren't available online, then maybe this might have been worth a look... but as a product, this whole thing is an underwhelming money grab.

If you want a truly useful character sheet, download  MPMB's fully-automated printer friendly character generator (mobile link) which is Pay What You Want from DMsGuild.com. This sheet is truly worth $10, but all that is asked is a voluntary donation.

D&D: Giant Miniatures Are Back (and bigger than ever) Again!

Even since the earliest days of D&D Miniatures Game (the skirmish game), I have been collecting the skirmish minis for use with the D&D table top game as well. I'd hazard a guess that the great majority of the consumers of the random booster packs were actually using the minis for D&D table top and not necessarily for the skirmish game. In 2008, Wizards of the Coast stopped selling the skirmish game, but continued to sell random booster packs of miniatures. The most recent line, Icons of the Realms, is licensed for production through WizKids.

Due to the high price of plastic, larger miniature were quite expensive to produce, and were therefore almost always rare creatures. The sculpts themselves were also often not particularly large in order to save production costs. Wizards of the Coast tried to mitigate some of this problem by introducing booster sets that specifically included at least 1 large or huge creature in each booster pack, but large creatures were still rare and pretty expensive on the secondary markets. With Storm King's Thunder, Wizards of the Coast (through WizKids) has brought back huge miniatures, and they don't disappoint. It is likely the falling price of oil (the main ingredient in plastic resin) has made these much larger figures cheaper to produce than in prior years. (Makes a great Christmas gift!)

A line up of the new giants showing the enlarged scale - Fomorian, Frost, Cloud, Fire, Hill. You can get them here.

D&D 5e: Storm King's Thunder - Quick Critiques

TLDR Summary: Storm King's Thunder has a lot to like within its covers, but also has some glaring adventure design issues that will annoy you and require some extra DM modification.

Introduction

If you've been living under a rock (or just don't pay attention to social media much), you might not know that Storm King's Thunder is the latest adventure path for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.

In previous adventures, the PCs have had to deal with Dragons, Demons, Drow, Elementals, and Undead. This iteration, it's time for the Giants.

This isn't technically a full review. I've only read through the first few chapters, and this is more of a first impressions post. This is not a "buy or don't buy" review article, but just some [very subjective] observations of mine. I may follow up with a more thorough review once I've read through the whole book and start running it for my group.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Royals board game (Origins Preview)

It's good to make friends in high placed.

As I noted in my Origins Post Game Report, my wife and I were able to try out a few pre-release titles, including Royals from Arcane Wonders, an area control game with a card mechanic. Royals supports 2 to 5 players.

Royals is scheduled for official release in August at Gen Con 2016, but they had a few hundred pre-release copies for sale at Origins (and is available for pre-order at Amazon).

Tyrants of the Underdark (Origins Preview)

At Oigins last week, I got the opportunity to try out a few games that are debuting this summer/fall. One of them was Tyrants of the Underdark, a deck-building board game scheduled for release on July 12 at $75 (Amazon currently places the release date on July 28). The game was designed by Peter Lee, Rodney Thompson, Andrew Veen and produced by Gale Force 9. Peter Lee and Rodney Thompson were also designers on Lords of Waterdeep.

Hero Forge Miniatures Review: A Massive Improvement

UPDATE 08/20: View my latest Hero Forge miniatures review here: 

http://ragingowlbear.blogspot.com/2020/08/hero-forge-custom-miniatures-review-2020.html

UPDATE 01//18: A lower cost "Plastic" option is now available which I have reviewed here.

Too Long; Didn't Read Summary:  So, you probably just want to know, "How much better is the new Premium Plastic offering?"  In a word, immensely better. OK, that's technically two words. The new plastic offering from Shapeways means that the Hero Forge Gray Plastic miniatures are an order of magnitude more durable than the Ultra Detail figures from before. The detail of the Premium Plastic is also significantly better in my estimation than Ultra Detail was. In summary, buy Premium Plastic. Avoid Ultra Detail [Note: Ultra Detail is no longer offered].

The Bronze figurine works well as a
showpiece. Detail is very good.

Introduction

A little over a year ago, I came down hard on Hero Forge miniatures (rightfully so). I had ordered 2 "Ultra Detail" miniatures ($50) as a gift for my wife and myself... a gnome and half orc. After receiving the figures, I immediately noted issues with the detail. While the detail was not considered a show stopper, the fragility of the figures absolutely was. The Ultra Detail printing process creates a very stiff and brittle plastic which breaks under even the most minor pressure. My gnome's sword blade broke off during light handling while painting, and later a drop of a few inches fractured the ankles separating the base from the figure. Both breaks could be re-glued, but it illustrated that the figures would not be durable enough for play.

Fast forward a year later, Hero Forge contacted me to try out their new "Gray Plastic" material as well as their metal offerings, Steel and Bronze, to see how they compare. They have also added some new items and features to their figure creation software, I will touch upon those later as I know everyone wants to know about the new plastic.

Full Disclosure: Hero Forge provided me vouchers to print 3 miniatures for the purpose of evaluation. There were no strings attached to provide a positive review. I hope I have provided an unbiased view of the results.

Review: How to Game Master Like a Freakin' Boss

You shall not pa--... On second thought, after you.

Here's a spooktacular Hallowee--
A great present just in time for Christm--...
Get your honey the gift of game mastering for Valent--
By gosh and begorrah! Happy Saint... oh, forget it.

Ok, so this review is super late. Spectacularly late.

Last year, +Venger Satanis was nice enough to send me a copy of How to Game Master Like a F#cking Boss. He asked if I would take a look and review, no strings attached. He assured me that I should be completely impartial and honest. I really dropped the ball.

In fairness, a lot has happened in my life in the last 6 to 8 months and the blog has badly fallen victim. If I post once a week, that's a good week... but I said I would give it a review and it has taken me too long to get to it. For that, I apologize to Venger for the extreme tardiness, but I will still be impartial as I am able.

Too Long; Didn't Read Summary: 
Q: Wow, that's crap-load of critique. Did you completely hate the book?
A: No, not at all. I found it a thoughtful and entertaining read. But I just happen to be detailed in my [hopefully] constructive criticism to help the reader get a deep understanding of my subjective opinion.

Dragon+ Issue 2 Review: Spoiler Alert - Still Sucks!

So Issue #2 of the new "Dragon+" dropped this past week. How is it?

Spoiler alert: It still sucks... possibly even worse than issue #1.

Technology 

Before we get into content specifics, I wanted to talk briefly about the app itself.

Testing on both the iPhone and iPad, the app freezes after it cycles through the "Updating design and content" message at startup. I am able to replicate this bug consistently. Force quitting and restarting the app usually resolves the issue temporarily, but it's annoying to have to go through this process each time the app needs to update itself.

The Letter to the Editor section has a link in the app to a Reader Survey... which crashes the app whenever I try to open it. I also tried to share an article via email with myself (which worked as of the last issue)... Crash!  I also had several crashes when just navigating through the magazine. All told, they did something in this update that made the app way less stable. 

Social Media

Aside from the digital magazine aspect of the app, it is intended to be used to keep track of Wizards' social media postings. From my experience, its utility is limited. The app appears to pull the RSS feeds for the website, Facebook and Tumblr and aggregates them into a single feed.