Lego Inspirations

One of the earliest posts on this blog was about my use of Lego Minifigures in role playing games. That post has been a big hit! Many people have come from search engines to this blog because of that post. In fact, we had a request! A comment came in a couple of days ago on that year old post:

"Do you have any photos of your lego collection in action? It could be inspiring..."
Ace

Well, Ace, I am a man of the people and I am here to give my people what they want! Will I show off my Legos? That's like asking a mother at a baby beauty pageant to show off her kid! I'll have my Legos in makeup and a dress in a jiffy!

But, first, let's take a walk down memory lane. About the time I began building my Star Wars Lego collection, I was doing an online comic strip. You won't have a lot of luck finding Planet Zonk any more, but there are places you can see some of it. Anyway, I thought at the time that I could promote the strip by creating fan art for other web comics and stealing their readership. Didn't work for me, but I enjoyed doing the strips. It was a challenge to do a strip in the style of the original artist. I created one strip for Irregular Webcomic and two for Legostar Galactica. The work for LG led to the photo below:



I sent this photo to my players. They didn't respond! Hmmm ... ;)

Of course, that was three years ago. While it hasn't exactly exploded, my Imperial force has grown and even improved! I was able to update some of the caps on the officers and add a team of Shadow Troopers. Excellent!




Over the last three years I really have assembled quite the roleplaying toolbox of Lego parts. I have lots of figures, with tons of accessories. I have scenery and vehicles. And, I have been trying to keep it all in one portable box. Although, I may just upgrade the box eventually! I think the key is to buy things that are inexpensive, shop for the best bargains and wait for people to put the good stuff on sale. I still love eBay and Bricklink. Lego has also recently been doing more "Army Builder" type sets, allowing for more figures for less money.


In the earlier post, I talked about building a figure for a Star Wars game. This is he: Rey Venge. (Don't poke fun! Think about "Han Solo"!) As you can see I was able to find a purple turban from the Oriental Adventures sets, a head from the Extreme Sports sets, a black and purple shirt that belonged to Professor Snape in the Harry Potter sets, legs from a figure in the DinoAttack sets and a gun from the new Batman sets. I also added a sword from the Castle sets because he found a cool sword while adventuring. I probably spent $5 or so on him, but I don't think he could be much cooler! He's totally right on and completely custom. You just can't get that in any other format without a lot of work.




The GM who is running the game where I play Rey also wanted to introduce Imperial Knights. At the time he introduced them, I didn't have the right selections in my collection to make this look good. We got around it, but I knew it could be better and it was an excuse to buy more Legos! Thus, we end up with the rather impressive group we see above. The cone shaped helmets came from eBay, everything else came from BrickLink, but from about four different vendors on BrickLink. It was fun figuring out which bits actually existed, who had them and then waiting for them to show up piece by piece in the mail. For example, the sabers; in the materials, the Imperial Knights carry "Silver" light sabers. I hoped I could find a chromed bar for the actual blade. No luck, I don't think that Lego has ever made such a thing. I thought about a clear bar, but I didn't think it would have the right effect. In the end I settled for the light grey bars but made sure I didn't use chromed handles. I think they look great. I gave them helmets just for fun, the GM seemed to like all the trouble I went to. They really stand out on the board as well. I think the plain black and red head studs really do look like closed helmets! I think these really do show off the customization possibilities of Lego.



But, Lego isn't perfect. I have felt since I started using Lego that they sorely lacked in two places: aliens & droids. The Star Wars universe is full of both and Lego hasn't done the best job putting out figures that represent the wide and wild variety of possibilities for both. Also, when they do introduce an alien or a droid, they usually tuck it into a high priced set. As far as I'm concerned, Lego could produce sets of just figures and I would buy them by the cart! But, they are in the business of selling plastic bricks. Too bad. In that vein, we have the picture above, or what I like to call my "Instant Aliens". Since you don't always have the right figure for an alien, I keep this lot around. The guys in the front left are inexpensive bits I have cobbled together with Zam Wesell heads. The Tuskens in the background are the definition of what I have mentioned up to this point. I have not paid more that $.75 cents a figure for them, you can pay much more than that for them now. And, they make great targets for your Jedi!



And, again, with the droids, I have had to come up with various ways to make droids not represented in Lego or not available inexpensively. I do indeed have typical R2-D2s and R2-D4s, but I wanted to show off some of the less typical items of my collection. I'm proud to say that I used the claws that came out a while back to mount heads on Battle Droids to create IG-88 before Lego released their own IG-88 model. The IG-88 you see in the picture is actually IG-88D! How fan-boy is that??



Last but not least, my droid army! I'm pretty proud of these guys - although I'm also a bit frustrated. In taking this picture, I had the clip on the legs of three of the Super Battle Droids break, rendering them useless. I wouldn't have minded so much if it had been the cheaper gray ones, but one of the blue ones broke. I violated my rule when I bought the blue Super Battle droids. I paid $5 a head for them. I was running a game and really wanted to scare the players and those were the only Supers on the market. Now those droids are worth about $8 a head. And, yes, I see that I mounted the arms on the gray Supers upside down and totally forgot to mount arms on one of the front droids altogether. I think I was getting tired by the time this picture was taken! I have plenty of extra arms and bodies and even heads for the tan droids, but the legs are the rare commodity. At least at one time they were rare. I like to chage out the body and arms for different colored parts - give the droids the feeling that they were built from scrap parts or that they had seen a lot of action.

Well, that's a start. I have a lot more in that box and I took a ton of pictures but I don't want to bore you. Hopefully you can find inspiration here. Just because I have primarily Star Wars figures doesn't mean you couldn't use them for other games. Lego has a wide variety of sets in current production, not to mention what they have made in the past. Your minifigures are out there!

RPG Legos?

We all know that miniatures make gaming easier. Having that visual element while trying to figure out a fire fight is just so helpful. Plus, looking down at the board and seeing your character facing off against a bunch of foes is darned exciting. I think most of us love minis.

However, this is Dusty Dice - we adults don't have time to paint a bunch of pewter and plastic, not to mention the cost. While the new pre-painted figures that are coming out for several games are great, they, too, are pricey and they just don't have the variety of paint'em yourself minis - although they are getting better.

So, what's a time and cash strapped gamer to do?

A few years ago, when my friends and I started playing d20 Star Wars, I had to figure out this very problem. The books were expensive enough! The pre-painted figures were not on the market yet. There were no new metal figures out (because they were about to release the pre-painted figures - but I didn't know this). Finding old metal figures on eBay would have taken forever and would have been super expensive. The d20 Star Wars Core Rule book suggested using Star Wars action figures. At the time, I thought this was a pretty expensive and limited idea.

Now what?

I decided to go with Lego minifigures. Lego had been producing Star Wars sets for years. There was a pretty wide variety of figures, and at the time they had released several sets that widened that variety. No painting involved and for the most part a single figure only runs a few dollars. Plus, we're talking about Legos here. How many times have you rolled dice and knocked over all the minis on the table? Lego makes large grey and green base plates - the figures move around much less. Add to that that you can build walls and scenery with Lego bricks and there are dozens of pre-built bits already out there - it became something of a no brainer.

We stopped playing Star Wars and began a Super Heroes game a few years later. Instantly the Legos came out. With all the Legos that have been produced, you are sure to find minifigures and scenery to fit your game. We recently started a new Star Wars campaign - my character comes from a planet where the men wear turbans. I was able to find a purple turban from the Oriental Adventures sets, a head from the Extreme Sports sets, a black and purple shirt that belonged to Professor Snape in the Harry Potter sets, legs from a figure in the DinoAttack sets and a gun from the new Batman sets! Sure, it cost me a few bucks - but my figure looks awesome!

There are some pitfalls to this and you have to know where to look. Lego sets are not inexpensive, especially if all you wants are the minifigures and a few bricks. Lego does produce sets that are heavy on the figures - these are sometimes called Army Builder sets by those that use them for role playing and war gaming. Currently, Lego has two sets from Star Wars Episode 3, one of battle droids and one of clone troopers. If you are playing Star Wars - these sets, several of these sets!, are must haves. Watching your player's faces as you line up a couple of dozen battle droids is pure Game Master joy!

There are also ways to buy just figures. eBay is the most widely used source. A search for Legos or minifigures will bring up hundreds of hits. I have a few resellers that I like and that I stick with - I'm sure it won't take long for you to develop those relations as well. Then, there is my favorite: Bricklink. Bricklink is a Lego collector's paradise. If Lego ever made it, chances are someone is selling it on Bricklink.

As I said above, a minifig can be had for a few dollars. I use the $2 rule. I feel any Star Wars related mini is over priced if it is above $2, I try not to pay higher than that. I have bought several Star Wars minis for well below $2. I have bought Tusken Raiders for $.75 cents each when they were in an inexpensive set. I have bought battle droids for less than a dollar each even before this new army builder set came out.

There are times when you just don't have an alternative. Lego has a bad habit of putting out rare figures in expensive sets. For example, I have paid less than a dollar for an R2-D2 when there was an inexpensive set newly on the market. Currently, the low price for a domestic R2 (there are cheaper international prices - but that's before shipping) is $4.00. Lego produces a $100.00 set that has a black R2, R2-D5 - its current low price is $10 - that's down from $20 when the set came out. I can buy an R2-D4 (the red one) for about $5. And, Lego has just introduced a set with a green R2, R2-R7, which you can buy for about $30 on Bricklink, which is a third of the $90 price for the whole set!

Will I fork out $20 for a minifigure - Nope! I'll come on here and complain about it, but I won't fork up the cash! Lego often reintroduces popular minifigures in different sets and makes them less expensive. Lego has just released a set called Hoth Rebel Base. The set is $50 and features a white 3PO figure, K-3PO. However, this set also has two Snow Troopers, two Pilot Rebels and two Hoth Rebels. On Bricklink I would have to pay $65 before shipping from several different resellers - and I wouldn't get any of the cool bricks that come with the set.

I could put out $40 for an original Princess Leia, I could buy a rare Princess Leia for $20, I could buy an updated Leia for about $10, or I could scrounge around the site and put together something close for about $3 -it's all up to you.

By combining the strengths of eBay and Bricklink, I have built myself a respectable Lego RPG collection for a couple hundred dollars. It rivals what any pewter and plastic collector would have at that price and I didn't have to paint anything and I have all the advantages of using Legos. Give it a shot!