Season of Scenery Summary

If you're a regular reader, you'll know that I combined my Dungeons and Dragons Eight Week Project with Dave Stone's Season of Scenery Challenge. 

Now with the eight weeks over and the game played, and with the end of August looming,  what did I get done scenery wise?

You can see most of the stuff in the Crypt of the Vampire Knight posts, but here's a bit more detail. 

Sticking to the Plan?

I did work out a bit of a plan, well more of a wish list really. Did it hold up?

Sort of. 

By the time I got around to doing the scenery I'd pretty much decided what the adventure was going to be so I could be a bit more focused.  I was building only the scenery that I knew I'd use, so I could put a bit more time and effort in to it.

Tombs

For speed (and because I really like them)  I used the Crooked Staff Terrain Print and Play Effigy Tombs.  To add variety I made a couple of different effigies,  and I made several tombs just with decorative slabs from Episode 5s Crypts and Tombs. These are probably the tombs of lesser knights of the Order. NB  the middle effigy in the picture below is deliberately incomplete.  It represents a new tomb (the previous Knight Commander) and hasn't been finished.  I see that the one on the right with the axe is missing its arms, this is an oversight. And there's a happy accident.  The first print I did had greyscale switched on, and it gives a pleasing dark grey texture.  Further,  the jar texture now gives a good extra texture for more tombs.

Three sample effigy tombs and six pillars

Altars

Essentially the same as the tombs.  I built them a bit smaller and had planned to add some sort of decorative element to indicate which god they were dedicated to.  This never got done, partly because I wasn't quite sure how to show this.  The blank altars worked perfectly well though. 

I used the textures from the pillars PDF, leading to...

Pillars

I built six of those, using Crooked Staff Terrain Print and Paste Dungeon Pillars.  They didn't actually get used in the game.  If there had been significant play in the main crypts, they'd definitely have been used.  

There absolutely should be pillars in the main temple, but I never put them in on the virtual map, so didn't want them suddenly to appear.

Rubble

I had a couple of ideas for the rubble, but in the end, I didn't make any at all. There's quite a bit of rubble in the temple, but this was just drawn on the floor plan. 

I did put some Terrain Crate rubble in my box, just in case, but it was already mostly painted, so doesn't really count for the challenge. 

Floor Plans and Tiles 

Initially I planned to draw out Floor Plans on Spot and Cross paper as required.  It's much better to have these prepared ahead of time, so I drew some out back in July. 

I drew them pretty much based on Chris Perkins' method (Mystic Arts has a good video explaining this if you can't find the original article). 

I drew out the Temple, which got used for the fight with the gargoyles, with the addition of the 3D altars, and the crypts below, which didn't see play. 

The temple map is pretty much taken from the original adventure, but the crypts are my own design, though they do incorporate elements from the pack.

But for the actual crypt I wanted something a bit more dramatic. 

I saw Crooked Staff's Dungeon in a Box and it looked impressive. I knew I could do something with it,  and it fits my brief of making stuff with multiple uses. I quickly downloaded the PDF and made my own set. 

But the largely square rooms didn't quite give me what I wanted,  so I looked at the 2D dungeons PDFs. Ideal.  Very easy to convert to the new style of 3D tiles,  and I've got the wide hallways I wanted. I also made some smaller doors using a texture I found on one of the bonus PDFs.

Gardrin's family tombs and the false vampire crypt

Built from scratch

Finally,  here's some pieces I made up from bit from my bits box.

Tharnak investigates the braziers

The braziers are two wooden beads stuck on a 20mm washer. The flame is hot glue on a length of barbecue skewer. The whole is painted as seen, I must admit that the photo makes the flames look better than in real life. 

Tharnak and the two snake fonts

The 'Snake Fonts' are toy plastic snakes glued to 40mm washers with an upturned button as the bowl. The buttons are metal and I had to grind out the bit that holds the thread with a rotary tool, which is why there's only two,  rather than the planned four. The whole lot is painted and the bowls filled with PVA glue mixed with green ink, partly to hide the rough interior. 

Combining the Season of Scenery and my Eight Week Challenge really helped me get the terrain ready for the game, I'll have to try this again.