LEGO blocks go together with Dungeons & Dragons like cookies and ice cream. Most kids that stumbled onto early boxed sets didn’t have the miniatures the creators envisioned for play, but they likely had a castle LEGO set or two they could use for figures and maps.
LEGO fan Ymarilego hopes their idea gains enough steam to pull together a set that brings an official take on using LEGO bricks for dungeon building. LEGO Dungeon Master is one of those ideas that people have been doing for years, but seeing an official take on it would be very, very cool.
Several different LEGO sets offer pieces for use in gaming. The Castle sets offer an obvious starting point for use as D&D miniatures but other sets help immensely. Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter releases are obvious sources of monsters and fantasy pieces, but even some LEGO original settings like Monster Fighters or Nexo Knights give good creatures to use on the battlefield and awesome character customization options. The LEGO Dungeon Master set offers a baseline for Dungeon Masters that don’t want to chase bricks across several different lines to get things started.
The pieces for LEGO Dungeon Master offer three hero figures, six monsters, and enough blocks for several 8×8 rooms and 16×16 monster lairs. The heroes roughly correspond to the classic D&D classes of Fighter, Magic-User, and Thief; while the monsters include a Waterwight, Bonelord, Lizardman, Crypt Guardian, Goblin, and Witch. Rooms have been designed to be square for maximum modularity and also with an eye for storage in between games.
Hasbro, the current owners of Dungeons & Dragons is aware that there’s a market for tiny yellow headed figures slaying monsters. It released Dungeons & Dragons set as part of its KRE-O line a few years ago. The KRE-O figures even came with some rules to play with them like a small war game.
Hasbro and LEGO are often direct competitors, which might cause difficulty for this product to become an official D&D item. But remember: demand in the business world often causes companies to come to the negotiation table to make deals. Look no further than the wildly successful LEGO Dimensions game where characters from several different IP live and play together.
LEGO has already dipped their toes in a fantasy gaming project. The Herioca line from 2011 offered a series of board games that could be customized LEGO style. The pieces were smaller than regular LEGO, but a few have shown up as full figures in LEGO’s Minifigure blind packs. All it would take to really flesh out this projects is for a Master Builder to have some properly themed sets to add more figures and features for a really customized look.
When a LEGO ideas post gets 10,000 supporters, the company takes a serious look at whether the project can happen. Multiple elements comes together during this evaluation, ranging from how expensive the end set might be to how many custom pieces would need to be made. The LEGO Dungeon Master set needs to make it to the next round first and all it takes is a click… and maybe a little bit of luck.
What is your favorite LEGO castle set? Let us know in the comments.
Images courtesy LEGO
Rob Wieland is an author, game designer and professional nerd. He writes about kaiju, Jedi, gangsters, elves, Vulcans and sometimes all of them at the same time. His blog is here, his Twitter is here and his meat body can be found in scenic Milwaukee, WI.