Giant Hag

 

This is an FDM print of a fairly old Duncan Louca design, one of a set of three hags he did. I've printed it at a height of 75mm, as I had a need for a giant hag in a game session I was running, though that need passed long before I ever got the mini painted.

It's painted entirely with glazes (Army Painter Speedpaint and Vallejo Xpress) and washes, apart from the metallic gold of her piercings and the strings dangling from her waist. It's a very quick way of getting a reasonable tabletop result, though the mini would benefit from some more deliberate shading and highlighting, especially about the face.

My Ender 3 FDM printer is getting pretty old and a bit outta whack now, and I'm getting quite a lot of stringing, blobbing and adhesion issues. It may be time to start saving up for an upgrade. 

WotC Displacer Beast

 

This is an old mini from the early 2000s, when WotC was newly the owner of D&D and had just published 3rd Edition. They also started producing a range of white metal miniatures to match the art in the Monster manual, of which this is one — the Displacer Beast.

I don't know who the sculptor was, but it does a decent job of replicating the skinny, almost skeletal aspect of the MM artwork. It was a hell of a thing to assemble though.

 

It originally came with a plastic "slotta" base, but I've mounted it on a bit of steel I ground to shape, and added some groundwork with superglue and baking soda. It's supposed to be blue-black, though my one is more blue than black. never mind.

Old Character Minis

 

I took some photos of some of my old character minis with my iPhone, just to see how they'd turn out. Meh. The lighting is pretty crap, but then it was all pretty ad-hoc.

From left to right: Fnord, Smirnoff, and Aedan Comarren. 

 Here's another attempt. Also pretty meh. Somehow I kept activating the iPhone's focus lock, which was annoying, and the tonal range is quite compressed. It's certainly a convenient camera to use, but I think a proper SLR is going to be more useful for this sort of thing.

And here we go with a photo taken with my Nikon D3500 on my lighting stage. The tonal range is wider, though the details are not as sharp — I can set the camera to do some pre-sharpening, but I prefer to do that sort of thing in a proper photo editing app. I don't have a macro lens for this camera, so I have to stand off a metre or so. One day, when I win Lotto, I'll get a macro lens, but until that happy day it's not a high fiscal priority.

Rock Troll

 

This 3d printed rock troll I made in response to events in our ongoing D&D campaign, and as usual, mostly too late. Never mind, maybe next time.

I don't remember who designed the model, nor where I got it from. The internet is big.

It's about 65mm from the soles of its feet to the top of its hump. That would make it about 12' tall in 28mm world.  I printed it on my elderly Ender 3 FDM printer.

Front

Rear, with Sergeant Measuresby.

 

What's the point of the Cleric?

 

Really, what's the point of the Cleric as a separate character class? It's pretty much just another Magic-user with better hit-points and combat ability and no armour restrictions.

Even if the DM chooses to play a game in which sects and cults are socially important, there seems no point to me in the Cleric as a separate class. It would be more satisfying by far, in my opinion, to take care of all that religious palaver through roleplaying. If a player desperately wants a fighting spellcaster, there's always the multiclass/dual class Fighter-Magic-user option.

Saving Throws

 I don't know the exact history of the saving throw mechanic across the various editions of D&D and its ilk. I do know that it has changed considerably in detail, but not in essence — regardless of the specific implementation, it gives the player a chance to avoid or ameliorate some sort of effect, be it damaging or not.

---

AD&D has a fairly byzantine system, in which saving throws are split into categories depending on the effect. Some effects, however, fall into two or more of those categories, and as far as I'm aware it has never been unambiguously stated how those categories were originally conceived. The Rod Staff or Wand category, for example, would seem to embrace the agility needed to avoid the magical rays cast from them, but the trouble is that the effects created by rods, staffs, and wands are by no means limited to dodgeable rays.

The categories, in order, are

1. Paralyzation, Poison, or Death Magic
2. Rod, Staff, or Wand
3. Petrification or Polymorph
4. Breath Weapon
5. Spell

I've read opinions that this is supposed to be read as a hierarchy of effects, but the arguments are not compelling.

Like the concept of hit-points, AD&D saving throws are pretty abstract. The exact way they work isn't really spelled out, and is left largely to the imagination.

---

D&D3e introduced a three category saving throw system:

1. Fortitude
2. Reflex
3. Will

They were based on the character's abilities: CON, DEX and WIS respectively, and instead of basing the saving throw on a class of effects, the important thing is to decide how the attack would affect the character and assign a save category accordingly.

The character's level is still the most important influence on the likelihood of making or failing a save, but now (some of) their characteristic totals also become relevant.

One side-effect of the change to this system is that saving throws become a bit less abstract, and there's no implicit mechanism to reflect pure luck. How does a warrior, pinned spreadeagled to a rock wall, save vs. the breath of the dragon who is about to incinerate them? None of the characteristic-based saving throw categories would really apply without an unconscionable amount of hand-waving.

---

I know little of D&D4e, and what I did see of it I hated. let us pass it by.

---

D&D5e ties saving throws even more closely to the character's ability scores, and now they're implicitly a STR save, or a CON save, or an INT save, or whatever. On the face of it, it's a simple, logical system, and for the most part it works fine. Just like D&D3e, the effect on the character and the nature of the attack are the most relevant things, and just because an attack comes from a wand, there's nothing specifically wand-ish to be considered when determining which characteristic to save against.

D&D5e reduces the abstraction of the saving throw mechanic even further than D&D3e, and again, there's no specific method of reflecting a save based purely on luck.

---

The saving throw mechanic used by the Swords & Wizardry retroclone simplifies matters considerably. Each character class has a single Saving Throw target number. There's no worrying about the nature of the effect, or the character's abilities, or any of that. A saving throw is just a saving throw; it'll always be the same at any given level regardless of how or why a save is required.

Fighters have the worst saves (though not by much). Wizards are better. Thieves have the best saves (though not by much). As with other variants of D&D, the saving throw target number gets lower as the character rises in level, but there's just the one target number at any given level.

Having a single save is also advantageous if one wants to go the characteristic save route, as used in D&D5e, since you can just add (or subtract) any ability modifier to (or from) the target number, and Bob's your uncle. In S&W that's unlikely to make much of a difference; as it's a 0D&D retroclone, ability modifiers tend to be small.

This is the most highly abstracted, and in my view the most elegant, saving throw system within the extended D&D fold, and I like it very much. It performs the basic function of the saving throw (allowing the character to escape some or all of an effect) but it is not tied to anything but the character's level. Want to avoid some falling damage? Make a saving throw. Being attacked by an acid-spitting dong-worm? Make a saving throw. Want to remember something your character knows but you can't recall? Just make a saving throw. Easy-peasy. How did the save work? I dunno, make it up. These games are supposed to be games of imagination.

Isometric Mapping in Owlbear Rodeo

I've been fiddling around with an isometric map hack in Owlbear Rodeo. It takes a wee bit of work to create the isometric character and monster tokens, but not a heck of a lot more than the normal round ones.

It has the advantage that I could sort of get to use some of the gajillion figures I've painted, but I can foresee a certain amount of clutter and confusion occurring when trying to manage moving and ordering the tokens. Nothing that is insurmountable.

The isometric map image is overlaid on a hex grid, but I haven't worked out how to match the grid and the map as yet, so the measuring function isn't reliable. We'd just have to count squares like cave people.

A plain whiteboard map like this is easy enough, but creating an illustrated environmental map would not be so straightforward. Again, not insurmountable, but quite a bit of work. There are quite a lot of isometric mapping tokens, of wildly variable quality, available here and there on the internet, so doors and chests and furniture and what-not are achievable relatively easily.

I haven't yet played around much with drawing on to the map with the app's drawing tools; they're pretty primitive. Probably good enough to indicate general room extents and that sort of thing.

Here's a pretty pictorial map, which is all very well. However, as you can see, we have no way of seeing what's going on down behind the bridge — the view can't just be rotated, as it would be in a video game.

Meeples of the Sea

 

In our most recent D&D session, we were engaged in some nautical shenanigans, and could have used some ship models.

Continuing my policy of making exactly what we need for our games just too late to actually need them, I printed these very simple little tokens from STLs I found on Thingiverse.

There's so little detail there that it's hardly worth bothering painting them, so I won't. Besides, I quite like the look of the translucent red resin.

They printed support-free, so of cleanup there is none.

I printed some in FDM as well, for comparison.

They required a lot more post-print work, due to the stringing I just can't seem to eliminate from my FDM prints.

These ones are printed at a layer height of 0.1mm, and it took about 6 hours to print four of them. Considering the lack of detail, I should probably have dropped that to 0.2mm — it would make no functional difference, and it would cut the printing time in half.

Still, I've got them now, and I'm not likely to need any more.

In spite of which...

I whipped up this very basic little 14th century cog.

It's designed at about 70mm long, which would make it roughly 1/200 (small cog) to 1/300 (large cog) scale, but I didn't design it to be any particular scale. It's just intended to be small enough to go conveniently on the gaming table, and large enough to be able to tell what it is.

I've put the STL up for sale on wargaming3d.com at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/c14th-cog/

Tree Support Critter

One of the by-products of 3d printing in FDM can be these organic-looking forms which are generated as support structures for the actual model.

Usually I just discard them, but from time to time I get a piece that I think might be worth turning into something else. This one (I forget which model it came off) I've glued to a steel washer base and painted to represent some some of subterranean fungoid creature, or maybe an underwater coral thing, or maybe just a bit of weird terrain.

As usual, we also have Sergeant Measureby with his Spear of 5mm Increments for scale.

Grenadier Beholder

 

I don't remember exactly when I bought this miniature, but it would most likely have been some time in the mid-1980s.

It's a Beholder, from Grenadier — my favourite miniature manufactory then, and still one of my favourites of all time. Apparently this sculpt is now being cast and sold by Mirliton. It's kind of goofy, but then the Beholder is kind of a goofy concept for a monster.

It's also a lot smaller than the original Monster Manual description, but that was par for the course in the days of metal casting — big, bulky critters were (and are) expensive to cast in white metal. Much bigger ones are now available in plastic or resin from companies like Reaper or Wizards of the Coast, and they have their own charm, but they tend not to be quite as cartoonish as this elderly chap, and they've gone completely in the other direction in terms of size; some of them would be maybe twenty feet or more in diameter in scale.

I was reminded of its existence by someone on the D&D Miniatures Facebook page, so I thought I'd get some decent photos of it, because why not.

Early Xmas Prezzie of Randomness

 

These just arrived for me from Amazon, a week earlier than they promised, which is nice. An early Xmas prezzie to myself.

Now, when I want to find out what stuff our murderhobos can loot from a ship's captain's cabin, and what the name is of the cabin-boy now bleeding out on the cabin threshold for the crime of getting in their way, I can find out with the roll of a die or two. Huzzah.

Dungeon Sticks

 

I've just started printing some tabletop mapping components, designed by a chap called Ecaroth on Thingiverse, and named by him Dungeon Sticks.

They're basically interlinking half-height wall segments. Each piece has a male or female connector, or both: the particular ones shown here use an octagonal star socket and peg, so once assembled they are more or less locked in place (though there is still a little play). There are other versions that just use round pegs and holes, but they're more easily disturbed.

I like them better than full-blown decorative tile systems for three main reasons:

1. First, because the half-height walls makes it easier for people seated around the table to see what's going on, and
2. Second, because they're quicker and easier to put together in the heat of the moment, and they require minimal preparation.
3. Third, because they're more generic than diorama tiles, they interfere less with the "theatre of the mind" that I think is so important a feature of tabletop roleplaying. The more detail that is presented on a tabletop scene, the more that it colours the imaginations of the participants, and the more precisely accurate it has to be, not to mislead.

No doubt I'll eventually get around to painting these, but I'm in no particular hurry. They are, after all, just a glorified substitute for dry-erase marker lines on my battle-map, and being blue doesn't really affect their functionality at all.

Ecaroth has created them in several styles as well as these stone walls — there are a couple of natural cavern styles, as well as a space opera-ish set of 'Space Station' walls. Also, he's provided a bare template set that one could create one's own custom designs with, which will come in handy if I should find a desperate need for something I can't jury-rig with the existing components.

They are taking a while to print though. A set of ten medium-length wall segments will be on the printer for about fifteen hours, so they're not the sorts of things I can dash out in a panic just before the game session starts.

I experimented with shrinking some of the "Space Station" components down for use with my old 15mm RAFM Traveller figures, but with only limited success.

These were printed at 60% scaling, and they'd really need to go down to 50% to be in scale with the figures. However, even at 60% the tolerances get too close; now that these pieces have been locked together, they're definitely not coming apart, and some of the walls in the door pieces are so thin that they're barely printing at all.

I think they'd probably be more useful for 15mm if I edited them to accommodate little magnets in their base, and just use them free-standing on a metal whiteboard.

Later on...

The Dungeonsticks are fine, as far as they go, but they do have their limitations. Having to accommodate the post and socket at each end means that they're not really truly modular; two "2" pieces aren't the same length as a "4" piece.

So, I've decided to just go with free-standing pieces that I've cut down from Fat Dragon's Dragonlock tiles. I cut away the tile base in Windows 3d Builder, deleted any free-floating remainders, and added sockets for 3x3mm magnets.

Larger magnets would provide a stronger attraction to the whiteboard (or whatever), but I have a whole lot of the 3mm magnets, and they stick well enough that the pieces won't fall over if the table is inadvertently bumped.

These sorts of scenery bits will be a lot more flexible than any sort of interlocking system, and I can create them from any tile system without having to worry about conforming to any particular connector type.

Giant Trapdoor Spider

 

This gigantic trapdoor spider is 3d printed from a model by Schlossbauer, on Thingiverse. It's printed in eSun PLA+ on my Ender 3. I printed it scaled at at 150%, because I like my giant bugs to be really big.

The wizard is a very, very old mini, from a company called Asgard I think, and sold in the late 1970s. I got it from a friend and repainted it. The other mini is one of WotC's "iconic" character minis, from when they first published D&D3e. I think it's a class called a Loremaster; I can't remember the character name.

Perilous Assumptions

D&D RC

D&D CC

I made a semi-fatal error recently, when I used a monster (three of them, in fact) straight out of the D&D Creature Catalogue, intended for use in BECMI D&D, but used instead in my AD&D game.

It was a critter that I'd used in other editions of the game, so I thought I knew pretty well what to expect from it.

What I discovered is that a BECMI monster type stands a good chance of being considerably more powerful than its AD&D equivalent. That's something I was not expecting.

It could have been worse I suppose; I only ended up killing one PC, but another one was drained away to a mere shadow of his former self.

I will have to be more careful in future.

Green Devil Face

This is a dungeon dressing piece from Fat Dragon Games, and also a feature of that classic megadeathkill dungeon module, The Tomb of Horrors. I can't remember if it was actually named as such in the module, but I've always known it as the Green Devil Face.

Because I am incredibly slack about tuning and maintaining my 3d printer, I tend to get a lot of stringing and zits on my prints these days, and this is no exception. However, in this instance I don't really mind so much, since it's supposed to be an ancient dungeon thingummy, so a certain amount of cud and cruft is to be expected.

I really should get on to tuning that printer though.

D&D RC P.O.D.

P.O.D. reprint on left, original printing on the right.

My Print-on-Demand copy of the D&D Rules Cyclopedia of 1991 has finally arrived from DriveThruRPG, after the first one they shipped disappeared into the postal aether.

It's my favourite iteration of the pre-d20 System D&D, and I'm pretty happy with it overall.

The paper they've used is thicker, whiter, and more matte than the stock used in the original printing, which is more like the thin, flimsy, shiny stuff they used for AD&D2e, and I very much prefer the new paper.

Feel the thickness!

 As a result, the book is about a third again thicker than the original, though the page count is identical.

The covers overhang the page area more too. Whether this is beneficial, or neutral, or problematic, I suppose only time will tell.

The binding is just a perfect glue-binding stuck into hard covers, so it's unlikely to be as long-lasting as the saddle-stitched signature-bound original. On the other hand, it was only about twenty-five yankeebucks, so you can only expect so much.

Incidentally, the sticker price on the back cover of the original was $24.95 U.S., so this reprint is about the same price as the original was back in '91.

Inside, the matte paper is a bit easier on the eyes, I find. The green accent colour used throughout is a lot paler than in the original, but it's still adequate for delineating table rows, which is its main job. The images have been replicated well; they're pretty much all black-&-white line art, so there's nothing particularly tricky there — though they do seem a bit crisper and cleaner than the examples in the companion Creature Catalog volume, which I also bought in P.O.D. (softcover) a couple of years ago. The text is all clean and readable.

In the back of the book there are some full-colour maps; these are all a bit softer and fuzzier than the originals, but not so much that they're not perfectly usable.

All in all, I'd call it good value for money.

Owlbearskin Rug

 Just what every high-class establishment needs lying by the fire — an owlbearskin rug.

Printed from the FDG May 2020 newsletter freebie STL. The 28mm figures are from Reaper.

Is it a bird? Is it a bear? It's an Owlbear!

It's My Party, And I'll Roll If I Want To

I can't say I particularly like D&D5e, but it's very far from being my least favourite version of the system.

4e was a fucking dumpster fire as an expression of D&D, regardless of its merits as a tabletop fantasy skirmish wargame.

3e arrived with good intentions, but it introduced a whole lot of needlessly byzantine munchkinish complication and tipped the game more and more towards being a kind of wire-fu superhero game.

2e introduced some reasonable fixes for some of the more egregious idiosyncrasies of 1e, but in the process it made everything terribly, terribly bland.

AD&D1e was an eye-watering mish-mash of differing and competing systems all rolled up into one steaming manure pile, but at least it did have panache. A weird googly-eyed panache maybe, but it was there. It had an identity of its own.

Of them all though, I think my favourite version is one I've never actually played as a player: the BECMI series, as published in the 1991 Rules Cyclopaedia. It provides a good framework into which one can pour one's own personality in the form of house-rules, and is robust enough not to founder under the weight of them. It's easy to run on the fly, without constant reference to specific use-cases. I like it a lot.

NOTE: The Rules Cyclopaedia is available again as a (scanned) reprint POD from DriveThruRPG, in soft or hard covers. So is the Creature Catalogue; I don't know about any other BECMI stuff.

I have spent a ridiculous amount of money on D&D stuff, and RPG and wargaming stuff in general. There are more shelves full of it in the library. No doubt it will all end up in a skip after I shuffle off.

Bulette

This is an old WotC pre-paint, one of the lucky-dip figures they were selling in boxes of about ten assorted minis way back when.

The poor unfortunate about to be gobbled up is a halfling from my D&D game, a character whose name I don't even remember now, who survived only just long enough for me to paint this mini for him, before being garroted and disembowelled by an assassin as a warning to others.

Art & Arcana

This arrived for me today from the Book Depository. It's not the sort of thing I'd normally lay out my own money on, I had a bit of spare built up in my PayPal "buying toys and shit" account. It cost me about $54 in Kiwibucks.

It's an illustrated history of D&D from its earliest days right up to the present-ish (that being 2018), and is plentifully illustrated with art from every edition of the game, plus some of the peripheral TSR properties like their collectable cards, computer games, Dungeon board game, and Dragon magazine.

It doesn't go into minute detail, but it covers everything (as far as I'm aware). It's an interesting potted history of a game that has been perennially important throughout my adult life. Interesting, that is, if you're interested in that sort of thing.

It's a pretty hefty tome; I haven't weighed it, but it's heavy enough to make me very grateful for the Book Depository's free worldwide shipping.