Dark Souls RPG previews plan to create a line of boss, NPC and player miniatures
Ah…Chosen Undead. Thou art but plastic.
Dark Souls: The Roleplaying Game designer Steamforged Games unveiled an early look at a line of physical miniatures planned to accompany their recently released tabletop RPG.
The unpainted minis will reportedly portray iconic bosses and signature enemies pulled from the first entry in Fromsoftware’s vaunted video game series. The scant two images included in the press release don’t yet show any Capra Demons or Sif holding a sword in their fangs, nor even the golden pairing of Dragonslayer Ornstein and Executioner Smough. We’ll have to assume they’re all still on the other side of the fog door, for now.
The 10 player character classes will also be represented on a small scale so that those Chosen Undead who find it hard to visualise themselves can better see the carnage. And in true FromSoft fashion, the Dark Souls RPG’s version of Lothric is also rife with esoteric and oblique non-player characters who are just as likely to be a merchant or hidden quest as they are a future foe. Steamforged says a lucky few will also make their way into the mix of minis the company plans to produce.
Dark Souls: The Roleplaying Game, released earlier this year, translates the broken and shadowed world of Lodric into the Dungeons & Dragons 5E ruleset. The Dark Souls video game series is best known for its methodical combat system that rewards patience and mastery - and thus punishes wanton, frantic button mashing. Converting those expectations into the popularly used, but markedly different, turn-based combat of 5E created a lot of expectations and scepticism among tabletop players.
It does mean that the upcoming miniatures can serve a tactical purpose for those groups who use battle maps or terrain to actualise their campaign environments. It would also be interesting to see a Frostgrave warband composed of Unkindled or Silver Knights - heck, even a small horde of Wheel Skeletons - take to the field in the system-agnostic skirmish wargame.
The Dark Soul RPG book’s printing initially suffered from a host of mistakes, misprints and poor editing, and many players in the UK who received their copies first complained about the overall quality of the core volume. Steamforged Games has since said they plan to replace both the standard and collector’s edition.
Steamforged Games hasn’t provided any release date beyond “later this year”. The company has a history of producing miniatures for their expansive catalogue of licensed board game, including some massive and intimately detailed models for the Monster Hunter Board Game.
