A new stack of Dungeon Tiles

During orktober, I have been printing mostly movement trays and dungeon tiles, and now the tiles are painted up.

Part of the "Castle Range" from Printable Scenery, the 2x2 floor tile is what I`ll be churning out mostly as before.

 

And as such, another stack of 13 tiles have been finished, so the complete collection so far can start accomodating for medium and larger sized rooms, though i still want to print and paint up quite a bunch of various tiles.

And they can be used for Rangers of Shadow Deep, as I`m slowly preparing for the Tor Varden storyarc mission...

Some fresh Dungeon Tiles

While Covid-19 and "bubbles" are seemingly going to be around for a while still, both clublife and the planned DnD campaign are still on hold for me.

But that does give me time to print and paint material for the latter in between all the 6mm violence, and the stuff I'm going to be printing during Orktober.

And that are some more Dungeon Tiles this time round, in the form of 4 rocky floor ones from Printable Scenery, as well as another 3 long from Open Forge on Thingiverse.

Nothing to spectacular at all, but they do need to be printed and painted of course to be able to put them on the table once we can get started...

How I`ll present my games

With the end of social distancing in sight, and the start of the DnD 5E campaign as a result coming closer, I have been thinking about how I`ll record the adventures of my party on here.

To that end, I have been scrolling around, and I must say I like the format of the excellent Tower of the Archmage blog.

For that end, I will make my own variation on his recordingstyle, but all credit goes to him for inspiring me on this.  But the session profiles will be looking like this over here:

*****

Adventure name

Text of fluff detailing where they are going and why

List of participants:
Character name (player name) class and level
Any joining mercenaries, hirelings or other npc's

Report on how the adventure went, including one or two pictures

Results:
Gains: any gold or items the party found
Kills: all the monsters the party made
Losses: who of the party went down or accompanying npc's

Map Update:
Any new locations on the world map, if any, shall be implemented and a copy of the map how it stands at current will come here.  In the tab on the top of the page, the map will also get an updated version, and the adventure will be "indexed" on there with a link to the adventure post.

 

*****

And that is how I plan on recording all the sessions over time.  It should allow some quick reference in case that due to circumstances some time passes between sessions (for example, in a multiple evening adventure), or some "catching up" for a player that might miss out on an evening game.

And to entertain you followers of course!

Preparing for DnD: scatter terrain and Dungeon Tiles

So, as this month brought the idea of becoming a DM came to fruition, preparations have started to get the show on the road.

So that means printing (and painting) heaps of Dungeon Tiles, and I did try a few different ones this month in order to "select" which series I want to go for.

The first of those are 4 of the standard Dungeon Stone ones from OpenForge.  The downside for me is they aren't one piece prints, but they do have a trainload of extra rooms and effect in the FREE range, so I`ll definitly be using those as well.

From the sample pack of Printable Scenery, the Rough Stone floor tiles have been tried out as well now, and as those ARE one piece prints, I think I`ll be printing more of the ranges soon.

From the same manufacturer come these Castle Floor and Rustic Floor tiles as well.

While some small Dungeon Stone items have been done to round out the tiles for this month so far...

Now, apart from the tiles, some scatter terrain has been painted up as well.

The first thing is this bush, from the Journeys in Middle Earth scenography stl pack.

From my Dark Realms patreon comes this Owlbear rug.  Now let's just see if the party will ever slay one to be able to use this rug...

Some Braziers where also done, always nice to have around to make your dungeons just that tat bit more atmospheric.

To keep in the easter spirit this month, I also painted up some eggs... of the dragon kind

The first of a batch of tents I`ll be needing for my first group adventure has also been painted.

A pit trap has also been prepared, just in case I need to deter my party from going somewhere just yet...

So that makes for a nice start...

A Raven Calls: Ayshi the Sorcerer, solo agent

In this piece about the upcoming DnD campaign, I`m showing off the solo adventurer of the group, or Free Agent.

As one could read with the set up of the campagne, Barbara, my GF, can't make it to all the sessions, especially when they are at the club, due to baby Thorin.

So I came up with the plan to use her as my test case / run solo adventures with her.  The idea is that she is a times joining the party, but then again leaves on her own business.  Or at least, that is the instory behind it, and the fact she chose to become a Tiefling, a race often scorned by society, makes this a bit easier story telling wise.

The out of game reason is that apart from the fact that I can test some things in those solo adventures, she can stay around the level of the main party as a result, and prevents a level 2 suddenly having to be dragged along by a party of level 5's or so.

She opted to play a Tiefling as I said, and picked Sorcerer as her class, with the Draconic bloodling option.  That dragon was apparantly a white one, hence the tail.

For those wondering, the runes in the book are for the Black Mage in Final Fantasy, and for the Spiritcaller in Aion, two MMO's she used to play with those classes as the mains.

Ayshi, lvl 1 Tiefling Sorcerer

Str: 9 / Dex: 13 / Con: 14 / Int: 16 / Wis: 13 / Cha: 18

Repertoire of spells:

Lvl 0: Thaumaturgy, /
Lvl 1: /

Both her 4 Cantrips and 2 level 1 spells still have to be determined, but this will happen by the time she actually starts playing, and what the "bigger story" aka the main party is consisting off...

The combination of the Constitution bonus and the Draconic bloodline bonus means Ayshi will have a rather high amount of Hit Points (as I let my players start out on max Hit Die points for their first level, she totals 9, aka D6 (6) + 3 from the bonusses).
The high Charisma (Tieflings have a +2 on that stat) makes her spellcasting rather okay, but the biggest weakness she has lies in the below average strenght, causing a -1 to hit and damage penalty on her rolls.
The other stats are about average, so she will have to see to stall for time and cast down mobs, as getting in close might cause severe problems.

In a party I think she can be pretty usefull as a missile barrage type of mage, but she will have to rethink those tactics and play more on wits and guile when there is no warrior to hide behind present...

Rats? Rats!!!

Okay, so these are perhaps the most necessary critters for the game: rats.

Every boat, every cellar, every dungeon... they seem to be all over the place.

So I printed up 18 of them, as well as some "wood pattern" 20mm bases, and added them in groups of two to a base for easier tabletop handling.

The stl was already enlarged to 200% or they would just be to tiny, but I think they scale nicely with a 28mm figure now.

Paintjob was pretty basic: brown basecoat, a drybrush of a lighter brown, skin on the tails, snouts and paws, and then a Strong Tone wash.

And sort of the same for the bases, though I went for lighter brownish grey there (including the "base" the beasties come on) for the second layer to give some more contrast.

And there we have it, 9 bases of little furry animals to bite the heroes in their ankles...

A Raven Calls: the Finruvia World Map

So, as we progress through the preparations for the DnD 5E campaign, I spend the past early morning tinkering with Inkarnate to create a world map for the setting.

Now, this setting is totally fictional mind you, as this allows me to toss in all sorts of source material, books and series where I get ideas from.

The map, as one can see, only has the main landfeatures on it like mountains and forests, as this allows me to "evolve" it whenever the adventurers go to new locations and settings.  The only city is the one at the bottom, which will be the starting point for the brave souls and where they can try and find perhaps a "handler" (or quest giver if you like) to get them on the road once the characters have been created.

I have also created a tab at the top of the blog, where this map will be updated, but it will also have numbers on it once the campaign gets going.  On the tab page, these numbers will contain the link to the "report" of the session, in order players can look back on their journeys.

Next up for this budding DM: prepare the first game session (or 2), print tiles, and get the needed models together (though the combination of a large Middle-Earth collection and 3D printer access should prove sufficient).

A Raven Calls: going Dungeons and Dragons (5E)

Okay, so this has been brewing for a while, and since I have my Ender and as such access to print what I need, I really wanted to DM a group.

And so I send out notes to some friends to ask if they where intrested, because Noshi certainly is.  

But this did bring a bit of fun-packed problem with it; baby Thorin.  The idea was to run a session once a month at TSA once the covid-19 pandemic is a thing of memory.  But with a baby, one can never be sure if we could actually get both there.

So I came up with the "free agent" idea.  While I will indeed run the sessions over at the club with the party, I will, in parallel, also run "duets" or DM and a single player, sessions with Noshi at home, shortly after the monthly game.  That way, she kind of becomes a free agent that can join the table when she can come to the club, but she will also be staying "on level" with the other players as a result as she has to solve her own solo adventures in the meantime.

I went through DriveThruRPG to grab each and every free adventure module suitable with DnD 5E as a result, including some "low prep" and "one shot one night" adventures to that end.  And those are also handy when someone of the party has to cancel last moment.

The campaign world itself will be totally of my own invention, with a "growing map" as players travel the lands, and I kind of will be basing myself on the sandbox model of the very first Elder Scrolls videogame from the mid 90s, Arena.  To that end, I can exchange and intertwine hack and slash, puzzle or dungeon crawl adventures as needed, and let the campaign and the players grow from there onwards as I devellop my campaign world "sort of on the go".

The planned start is somewhere around summer break, as this gives me ample time to print up dungeon tiles, monsters, npc's and the likes as well.  As it will be held mostly at the club for the bigger games, this also gives the benefit that for the sessions taking place in forests or villages, I have all the club scenery at hand to lay out the "lay of the land" as an added bonus.

I did impose upon myself two "DM Rules", things I will adhore to while adventuring:

a) No-one dies before they reach level 8, unless of their own insane stupdity (so no, your not immortal, but that goblin spear through the chest will put you out of the adventure, but you'll recover as it missed any vitals).

b) not ONE FOOT will be put down in Ravenloft (blame our old GM, we always ended up there from the word go... even when we weren't playing the setting).

But for now, I`m first going to sort through all the files and adventures, and as a result already prepare some print maps for the Ender-3 to have a go once the first batch of dungeon tiles, whom I`ll be start printing this week, is ready.

This will be fun hopefully, and let's see how I manage on my first outing as DM instead of as a player... it,s not like I can`t tell a story, or have an immense mental and fysical library of books, series, novels and games to draw from to create campaings.

Because I can`t count how many times I though with a book or series "heck, that would be a great adventure to play"...