Dungeons and Dragons Eight Week Project - Scenery 1 - Planning and a Tomb

As I recently mentioned, I'm combining my eight week project with the Season of Scenery Challenge to add some scenery to the adventures.

Floor Plans 

In the past I've done full 3D and 2.5D builds, but this is going to be a bit less monumental. All this group has seen is maps drawn on Inkarnate and shown via Roll20. I'm looking forward to showing them another way, and experience has taught me that when players actually see terrain, they interact more with it, like the glow around objects in video games.

I plan to use my trusty Pathfinder mats, with some hand drawn prepared floor plans for special areas. I could print off the Inkarnate stuff, but that's a lot of ink, and I want to show that you don't need fancy software to enjoy the game. 

There's also the minor issue of furnishings. I try and have the Inkarnate maps as detailed as possible, but sometimes circumstances (the characters) can change them. It's not much of a problem if it's just moving a chest, but it can be more dramatic, as in the incident where the party deliberately collapsed a ceiling to stop a horde of gnolls.  I won't be able to print off new maps part way through the game, so drawing and scenery models are the way to go.

I'll try and draw out a few special encounter areas. Previously, I've used 1 inch squared flip chart pages, but these are nearly gone, and I can't find replacements at a reasonable price.  However, I did find a product called "spot and cross paper", used in dressmaking for patterns. This alternates dots and crosses on the vertices of a grid, and it's available in inches. A roll cost me under £17 for 10m on Amazon, and it's better quality paper than the flip chart too.

Scatter Terrain 

I've plenty of unpainted Mantic Terrain Crate stuff, which will come in useful, but I've already identified some gaps in what I need. For speed (and economy) I might use some of the Crooked Staff Print and Paste terrain, my limited experience suggests that it should be good.

But what do I actually need?

As always, the goal is to finish up with a terrain set useable for many games. 

While it would be nice to do a special piece just for this adventure, I suspect that time is against me, so, to begin with at least, it's going to be fairly generic.

Tombs are a must, there's plenty of exploring still to do in the crypts. 

Rubble/rubbish piles are always good, providing some cover if high enough, difficult terrain, great for hiding in or behind and very atmospheric.

Pillars, again good for partial cover and to prevent being surrounded. They also help a large underground space to seem more believable.

General Furniture; beds, chests, tables, crates and barrels. More stuff to add 'realism' and introduce stuff for the characters to interact with. I won't bother with benches or chairs, they can be assumed, and the models tend to get in the way. That said, if they are present, someone's bound to pick one up and hit someone else with it.

Special Furniture, such as altars, weapon racks, torture equipment, tents etc. may or may not be made. It's down to time available. A stone table* could stand in for an altar. 

I suppose tombs really fall into this category, but they are such a significant feature of the Abbey, that I couldn't really leave them out.

But enough waffle, time for some actual terrain.

Speedpainted Tomb

Here's a tomb from Mantic's Dungeon Saga game.  It's supposed to be for a dwarf, hence the small size, but I think it looks fine. It's really an experiment in using Speedpaints to see if they are practical for getting the Terrain Crate stuff done quickly. 

I started with an Army Painter Dark Tone wash, followed by a white drybrush.  Then it was a simple coat of Army Painter Speedpaint Holy White.  The result is a grey rather than white, but it looks ok.

To add a bit of extra interest I painted the very top section in Vallejo Game Color Hammered Copper and then stippled Vallejo Game Effects Verdigris over it, especially in and around any cracks and flaws.

I really like the result, but I've only two or three of the model, so it's not really a practical choice for the adventure.  

I might reserve it for any particular special undead the party meets. Clearly I need to find an alternative for the tombs in the game.

Well, Well, Well

And as a bonus, here's the Dungeon Saga well. I painted one a while back to use in Frostgrave. This one is more experimenting with Speedpaints for Terrain Crate models.  Besides, there are wells in the Abbey, should I ever need a model.

Briefly, wash and dry brush just as the tomb, then I picked out various stones with various Speedpaints, including Pallid Bone, Gravelord Grey, Hardened Leather and Sand Golem. 

The whole lot was given a light dry brush of VGC Bonewhite to soften the harsh contrasting colours, then a coat of matt varnish, both to lose the glossy finish and to protect the Speedpaints. I worry that excess water (such as a spilled drink at a game shop) will reactivate them causing a colourful mess.

So there's a lot of waffle and my first two minis for the Season of Scenery. There's plenty more (especially tombs) to come. 

I'm fitting in the terrain building amongst the mini painting,  it's a nice change of pace. 

*I suppose the Dungeon Saga tomb would work as a stone table, but it does look rather funereal.

Home Made Spray Booth

Just a quick post today to show my spray booth,  quickly assembled from bits in the garage. 

I used one of those cardboard packs that things like large photos come in.  Importantly,  it has flaps inside which fold up to form the sides. These aren't that common,  but it shouldn't be difficult to sort out something similar from an ordinary cardboard box. 

For strength I added two battens,  glued and stapled.  A couple of bent copper staples,  rescued from old cardboard boxes, are screwed into the wood and act as clips to hold the side flaps in place. These don't work quite as well as I'd like,  and I'll revisit them soon.

The whole thing folds up easy to store. 

I'll use it outside or in the garage,  so I haven't bothered with any form of ventilation or extraction. 

While I don't imagine it'll last long,  it certainly does the job. I primed a few minis in it and I found it cut out any breeze problems.  Now I just need to practice a bit more with my airbrush. 

Dungeons and Dragons Eight Week Project - The Undead of Gardmore Abbey 1

Madness At Gardmore Abbey features a lot of undead, both in the original adventure and my remix.

What Do I Need?

The heroes have already met quite a lot of undead creatures, but there are plenty more to come. 

They've realised that there are two main groups; recent undead raised by the necromancer Vadin, and creatures dating back to the fall of the Abbey, presumably created by the intense magical effects released. 

In terms of minis, general skeletons and zombies will always be useful, as will ethereal types that can work as spectres, wraiths or even ghosts.

All of these are available in Reaper Bones and I might have something in my WotC prepainted minis collection (Burning Skeletons and Chillborn, for example).

I'll look through stuff I've already got painted or part painted, and see what I can use, but, inevitably, I'll need to add to the collection.  Fortunately, I've a lot of prepainted WotC minis, and a lot of unpainted Reaper bones.

First Up, Skeletons 

Out of this lot I've managed to paint up or complete, including basing, seventeen skeletal undead creatures.  One of these, the Undead Elf, required no work as I completed them as one of my Palette Cleansers back in 2021.

All 17 skeletons, including an elf from a long time ago

I'd already got a few completed skeletons back in 2015, they do need rebasing though, and I need more than them.  To accompany them I found some part painted skeletons still on their broccoli bases, and a number of unpainted ones.

I started with the unpainted minis (the tiefling is a WotC prepaint, but it needed a lot of work, so it's effectively starting from scratch), prepping them with a bit of mold line removal, base removal and pinning, then a good wash in hot soapy water (they are the original white bonesium, and it needs to be cleaned to take paint properly). Then they were given a wash of Army Painter Dark Tone. As I mentioned regarding the Heroes, this really helps bring out the details. Next, a white dry brush and then on to colours.

I used my Army Painter Speedpaints, which do have the potential to reactivate, so it's one coat only here, which should encourage me to get these done quickly and not over complicate the painting. 

APS Pallid Bone for the bones and then yellow and green for the cloth and shields. These were mixes based on Zealot Yellow and Orc Skin to match the finished skeletons, with various other shades added to give variety and make them look grungier.

The first batch after Speedpainting 

When everything was dry, they were given a light coat of Colour Matt Varnish to seal the Speedpaints, then a dry brush of VGC Off White on the bones.

I experimented with some Vallejo Effects paints, Dry Rust and Rust. I'm pleased with the results, an improvement on my usual Dark Flesh and Fiery Orange.

I also drybrushed VGC Desert Sand around the feet, cloaks etc to give a dirty, dusty look, but this didn't come out very well.  However, it did highlight the wood texture on spear shafts, so I used this an all the wood.  Remember, "we don't make mistakes, we have happy accidents".

I treated the dwarf and the halfling as individuals rather than matching the rest of the skeletons. I've more of these minis (Reaper Bones SKU 77561 and 77562) so at some point I might do some converting to give me even more dead adventurers.  It was nice to reunite them with their elven chum.

I'm particularly pleased with the WotC undead tiefling. The original mini is mostly just dark metal armour and bone. I wanted to add a bit more colour, and looking carefully, I decided that they must be wearing some sort of tabard; it's not all just armour. I used Army Painter Speedpaint Red for this, and blue for the wide belt. After a quick varnish to seal the Speedpaints I lightly went over the details in VGC yellow; the idea was to make it look like embroidery that had faded and worn away in places. 

The first batch

Unarmoured mooks

Armoured warriors

The adventurers

Old Bones

I took the opportunity to update some older painted and part painted minis. In most cases this means rebasing on clear rounds, with possibly a bit of detail and/or shading adding.  These are the 2015 skellies, to which I added a batch that I must have started and abandoned.  

Once the bases were sorted I gave the bone a coat of APS Pallid Bone.  Some of them needed a little more to make them match the first batch, but essentially it was just a case of varnish then drybrush of VGC Off White.

The armoured skeleton is Reaper Bones Barrow Warden 3 (SKU 77348),  I part painted it years ago in rather uninspiring steel with brown boots and bronze trim on the pauldrons. Even the shield was steel.  It was too monotone and dull, so I used APS Gravelord Grey to shade the armour some more,  especially the mail coif, APS Grim Black on those bat wing shoulders and I painted up the skull shield using VGC Bonewhite,  Off White and Dead White. 

Once finished,  I daubed some of the VSX rusts on the armour, and now I'm really pleased with the results. A fitting leader for the skeletons.

So now I've got sufficient skeletons, not just for the game, but for future in person D&D games.  I've also got roughly the same in unpainted and part painted skeletons, this time with a red and yellow livery, not to mention various scythe wielding skeletons, skeletal monsters and even dragons, so plenty more to expand the collection if I want. 

I'm not tackling any of these now, but I do potentially need some more fleshy undead. That might be next, or possibly some scenery. 

MEGAforce Boardgames Night: Gloom

The most recent MEGAforce games night saw three rounds of Kingdomino, wherein each of us won one game, followed by a game of Gloom.

We have played this before, but I've not discussed it on here, so here goes.

Gloom

Gloom is a card game, the aim of which is to heap Misery on your weird Gothic family before bumping them off.

You can also play cards that add Hope to your opponents' families, reducing their Misery scores or even preventing that character from being killed. 

Each turn you can, usually, make two Actions, usually playing an Action Card, and then redraw up to a hand of five.

It sounds pretty grim, but there's a dark humour to it; the cards include such oddities as 'surprised by topiary' and 'mauled by manatees' and the descriptor, unless detailing additional game effects, can be grimly amusing too.

Card play often includes some additional effect; you might play a card on an opponent to add Hope to one of their characters,  but they get to draw extra cards from the deck, or even your hand. Or a card adding Misery  to one of your family might also cause you to discard your hand,  or portions of it. 

But the really clever part is the design of the cards. They are printed on transparent plastic. This means that values added to a character cover up and replace existing values (and make scoring much easier to calculate).

Here you can just see the red Misery scores, but they are covered by the grey 0 and black Hope scores gained from the "blessed by the bishop" card. When properly stacked, you only see and use these top values.

There are other details, such as icons which can grant bonuses when certain deaths are inflicted, such as the heart on Samson's card above, and there are cards which negate or alter others.  I used 'smoke and mirrors' early in the game to prevent Grim inflicting a death on one of his family. 

Strategy 

You can only play a death card on a character with some Misery, and death cards must be the first played in your turn. There are, of course, exceptions to this with certain cards. 

It can be worth killing off another player's characters if they have a very low Misery score to prevent that player harvesting more Misery later.

There seems to be a system in the placement of the three possible Misery/Hope positions. I've not examined this closely, but it felt like the bottom spot came up on Action Cards less often than the others.

Winning 

The game ends when one player bumps off all their characters,  at which point all players add up the top Misery scores for their deceased characters. 

The three deceased members of my family at the end of the game. 

Gloom plays well and can be great fun. This time we emphasised the story element by narrating how the various action cards play, which certainly added to the fun.

It's not a game I'm desperate to play every time, but I'll certainly enjoy another go if it's suggested, earning it a solid place in A tier.

Gloom is produced by Atlas Games and available from them and many other online retailers.

Dave Stone's Season of Scenery Challenge

Another Online Challenge?

I wanted to take part in this challenge when I first heard about it. I love building terrain, but it often gets side-lined in favour of minis (or drawing maps, or planning etc). The challenge is a great way of focusing my efforts. I've a lot of stuff to build for Orc's Drift, so this seemed like an excellent opportunity.

However, I'm now in the process of sorting out minis etc for the face to face D&D session, so can I spare the time?

No, not if I'm going to meet the D&D8W project.

Fortunately, Dave has kindly pointed out that the challenge is for any scenery, and dungeon stuff definitely counts (I love fuzzy challenges!)

So I'll be plodding along, including some D&D terrain in my eight week project and cheekily including it in the Season of Scenery.

If you like building scenery, or if know you you need to, but just need that bit of impetus, check out his blog and sign up.

Dungeons And Dragons 8 Week Project - The Heroes of Nentir Vale

As I mentioned in the introduction, I'm putting together minis for a face to face D&D session in August. 

Player Characters are the most important requirements, so a big welcome, please, to....

Two thirds of the Heroes of Nentir Vale

The Heroes of Nentir Vale

The party consists of Roland, a half elven paladin of Bahamut; Tharnak, a dwarven paladin of Kord; Harrow, a tiefling cleric of the Raven Queen; Namfoodle Timbers, a gnome bard; Kei, a dragonborn wizard; and Tarryn, an elven rogue

Of these, Kei's player has chosen a Dragonborn Elementalist, an old WotC pre-painted mini.  He's going to repaint it to bring it more into line with his vision. Tarryn's player has an idea of what she wants and is looking at various options, probably from the Reaper Miniatures range, and again, want's to paint her mini herself.

So that's four player characters to paint and, in some cases, convert.

Kei plus the base models for Harrow, Tharnak and Roland.  

Below is the necromancer about to donate her scythe (and left arm) to Harrow

Roland 

I had several options for Roland, mostly needing weapon swaps to show his magic glaive. The player has chosen Reaper's Erick, Paladin Initiate (SKU 77197). It was pretty simple to swap his sword for a polearm taken from the ever useful Frostgrave Soldiers sprue. I know it's not actually a glaive, but it's close enough and it looks nicely ornate.

Painting wise I gave him a wash of Army Painter Dark Tone to act as primer and to help the detail stand out more*.

Armour and other metalwork was Chainmail, washed in more Dark Tone, then highlighted up.

The player requested royal blue for the tunic. I tried a lighter blue for the undershirt, but this didn't look right, so I went with white highlighted up from wolf grey. 

The shield is something he must have picked up in Gardmore Abbey (he doesn't normal use a shield, but the mini has one slung).  The device is supposed to represent the claw marks left by Bahamut, and ties in to my adaptation of the original module.

I'm really pleased with how Roland has turned out.  The fairly passive pose is unusual for an adventurer, but I imagine him resting for a moment, contemplating Bahamut's glory.

Tharnak

Tharnak was a bit harder to source than I thought; the bulk of my dwarf miniatures use axe or hammer, not sword. But I found this Reaper dwarf, Durgam Deepmug (SKU 77400), and removed the axe in his left hand, ready for a shield (added after the bulk of the painting was finished).

As with Roland, I gave Tharnak  a Dark Tone wash. This has the same effect as Reaper's liners, but I've misplaced my Reaper paints.

Metalwork was painted in the same way, and at the same time, as Roland. His player wanted dark red for the tunic and reddish brown and yellow for the pants and the fabric portion of the gloves. Other gear was painted in appropriate brown shades. The brief was good quality, but worn. He's still using the stuff he left his clan forge with.

As with Roland I'm pleased with the result, with the exception of the shield.  The detail of the symbol is good (for me), but far too small.  It's something to revisit if time allows.

Harrow 

Harrow was also difficult, mostly because a lot of the female tiefling miniatures are, shall we say, underdressed. I did find a Reaper Hellborn Paladin (SKU 30185) but she's equipped with sword and shield.  However, my son found a necromancer mini with a great scythe.

It seemed sensible to use the elf's left arm to replace the paladin's left arm and shield. The right hand, without sword, could then hold a holy symbol.

Harrow's player has a portrait, which gives me the colours for skin, hair and horns. She's trying to avoid the goth stereotype of the Raven Queen, and would be happy if strangers just thought she was some sort of itinerant farm worker. So muted colours, a mix of metal and leather armour and nothing too showy.

Again, another fun mini to paint, I'm particularly pleased with the skin tones.  But I was running out of ideas for colours for clothing and equipment.  The mini is rather more armoured than the character (better than some of the cheesecake alternatives) and the player specifically wants her to look as ordinary as possible; difficult with some of the fancy armour pieces. 

I've only just noticed that I completely forgot to paint her arm bands.

Namfoodle Timbers

I was anticipating difficulty finding a mini for Timbers, gnome bards with acceptable instruments are rare.  In the end, the Wizkidz Pathfinder Deep Cuts Gnome Male Bard (73205) pack has acceptable options. I hadn't appreciated how petite the mini would be until it arrived, so I had to scrap my plans to give him a more appropriate instrument.

In fact I sometimes find it difficult on a mini this small to pick out fine details. It might be me, but these WizKids minis are particularly prone to this, especially the supposedly ready primed ones. I can paint equivalent sized 15 mm minis perfectly well, but I struggled here. Thinking back, it was the same with Torin.

The player asked for burgundy tunic and dark green trousers. 

The burgundy was a base coat of VGC Dark Flesh, highlighted with VGC Gory Red and Blood Red. The trousers were VGC. I thought his boots and pauldron would look better in grey than brown.

I could complain about his lyre, but it's actually a reasonable representation. The solid plastic for the strings is annoying, but I don't suppose there's any other way of modelling strings at this scale.

This was the least enjoyable mini, probably due to the difficulty of actually working out what I was painting.  It might be the sculpt, or my painting, but I think he looks very worried.

So a set of character minis, and the most important minis for the game.

Some of the players have never experienced face to face D&D, so using minis will be a new experience for them.

Converting and painting these minis reminded me of the ones I did back in 2019.

Moving On, What's Next?

With the PCs done it's time for some opposition. There's one encounter the players have been building (and levelling) up to and I think there's a good chance it might be on the agenda for the session. 

*I was surprised just how much detail is on the mini.  The first Reaper Bones minis were criticised for lack of detail, but I think it's often just harder to see in the white plastic

Dungeons And Dragons Eight Week Project

A(nother) New Project

I've been trying to clear the decks of ongoing stuff ready for an important project. The Thursday evening Dungeons and Dragons group is finally getting to play face to face!

So far we've only played online, and we've been going for many months, but at last we get to play without all the embarrassing pauses and connection issues.  Without Roll20, we can use maps and minis, my favourite way of gaming.

 

I want to have as complete a collection of minis for the game as possible, but that's not as easy as it seems. 

The party are currently exploring my fifth edition version of the fourth edition module, Madness at Gardmore Abbey, but I've added plenty of optional content, and I've changed large parts of the adventure to fit my vision and hopefully avoid some of that 4th edition feel*. 

So there's a big list of potential mini requirements.  Some stuff may be encountered before the live game day, so could be 'wasted' effort; others might never be encountered (again with the effort), so where to start?

And can I get it all done by mid August?

Characters

Well character minis are a must, even in games where I've used card standees for monsters I've stuck to 3D minis for the player characters. 

There are six (yes, six!) player, so that's probably the first target.

Creatures

I want to avoid spoilers, but they have done a fair bit of scouting out and general information gathering, so they've a rough idea of the various creatures they are likely to meet, including...

A dragon and it's kobold minions, various undead (they've already neutralised one necromancer), a Fae knight and his retinue, four minotaurs, quite a lot of orcs and some mercenary bands. 

There are more of course, but I'll try and keep them as a surprise.

Not Just Minis

And then there's terrain.

For the most part I'll use hand drawn floor plans, though I'm keeping open the option to make something suitably grand if time allows. I will be using some furnishings and props, probably some of my Mantic Terrain Crate bits where possible.

I might try building some extra bits, it will depend on time and need.

I had hoped to build some Orc's Drift terrain for Dave Stone's Terrain Challenge in July and August, but I might have to see if dungeon terrain and props count instead.

Planning Ahead 

I accept that I'm not going to get everything ready in time, so I'm going to have to plan smart.

If the PCs are a must, special creatures are also important, but I can work out a list of the most likely encounters. This will also help when planning the terrain and props.

I've still got quite a lot of the WotC prepainted dungeons and dragons minis, so I'll be looking through to see if any of these will be appropriate (no doubt regretting selling off so many). In some cases I've got Reaper Bones minis that I prefer, but if time is short, the prepaints may well get used.

Expect a few waffling posts where I overthink this.  I'll try and post (spoiler free) updates here, but I may be a bit quiet for a while.

Ulterior Motives

Long term reader's know about my Orc's Drift project (check the tag on the right if you don't), where the idea wasn't just to do stuff for the Orc's Drift Campaign, but to have armies and terrain sorted for many other games.

It's the same here.  I hope to have painted up quite a few minis from my 'loft of shame' for RPG use, and it should also help me sort through some of the stuff and decide what I want to keep and what I can get rid of.

* Firstly, I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed 4th ed when it was released; I did, after all, run an eleven year campaign using the rules.  

However, I found most of the published adventures suffered from a need to follow one path through, fighting everything in the dungeon in order.  Partly this is due to the aggressive scaling built into the game; the first adventure, Keep on the Shadowfell (actually published just before the release of the game, and, in theory is an exemplar of the new system) requires exactly this plodding through.  Individual encounters may have multiple paths and loops within them, but there is only one real optional section in the dungeon.  This focus on tactical rather than strategic play was, for me, the main reason I eventually decided that 5th ed was a system better suited to my wants.

Madness at Gardmore Abbey is one of the later 4e adventures, and is a huge pack.  It is generally reckoned to be the best of the official adventures, and is much less set in the approach the players can take; an aspect I play on to the maximum.