Monthly Archives: November 2019

21 Zombies Sitting On The Wall…

D&D, RPG

And if one of those zombies were to accidental fall there would be…

I some how managed to make it to twenty one zombie figures yesterday and today before my will to live finally started to drain away.

Luckily my order of Army Painter Necrotic Flesh Primer arrived today so that I could prime them and start painting.

I was being sneaky using the necrotic flesh as the primer colour because that was also going to be the base coat for the flesh areas.

So once dry I could paint the clothing matt black, and apply the zombie shader that Army Painter do for the Zombicide games.

Once that’s dry I can apply highlights to the clothing to give the hint of colour, along with strategic splashes of blood. Once happy (am I ever?) I’ll do the bases with the Ash Grey flock that I have.

But all that will have to wait until after our fourth D&D session tomorrow.

On that front I was at the library printing stuff off ready for the session. Plus two or three of the mini dungeons that are in The Lazy DM’s Workbook. They were to add to my DM folder as a resource to call upon if needed.

Right I need a good nights sleep so I’m ready for tomorrow.

Putting the horde together

D&D, RPG

The Mantic Kings of War Zombie Horde arrived.

So far I’ve only managed to muster up enough inner strength to put thirteen of them together.

I so hate this part of the hobby.

I think there is enough to make about forty zombies. Seriously I’m going to struggle to keep it together making that many.

I’ll stop at twenty. That should be enough for the Jim Murphy Undead mambo. Besides I’ve got those skeletons to assemble as well.

And then I suppose I’m going to have to paint them. It gets worse.

Stumped

D&D, RPG

One of the things you need for skirmish miniature games like Last Days or D&D is a collection of scatter terrain. Stuff like treasure chests, barrels, bushes, trees, weapon racks, etc.

For Last Days I’ve been slowly collecting stuff for a wilderness type setting, where there is an old wreck of a farm house surrounded by trees and fences, the odd abandoned car. The trees were an issue.

I’m not up to building my own. Commercial ones were way too expensive. You could be paying over twenty quid, nearly thirty for three trees!

So I’ve been putting getting trees off. I’d need a few and at those war gamer prices way out of my league.

Since then I’ve started DMing. It meant I needed to come up with a solution.

On thingyverse I found a great looking stl file. But I never got round to getting any printed off. My more urgent needs were tiles for caves and boats.

What I liked about the 3d printed option was they would be cheaper to get done. They make great table theatre. I’m a big fan of table theatre. It gives a wow factor. You have to admit when you see the photos of tables full of dwarven forge (or other 3D printed tiles) they look damn impressive. Although some may argue a tad over kill.

Finances force me to take the approach of just enough to get the idea over. So I use a mix of 3d tiles, cardboard tiles, battle maps, with scatter terrain strategically placed on them.

But I found an affordable solution, that didn’t require me to have access to a 3d printer. I found some tree stumps!

One of the things the 3d trees and the expensive war gaming solutions had was canopy. Although very visually impressive. They have the same problem that the dwarven forge dungeons have in the majority of photos out there. In those photos the dungeon walls block the visibility for the players of what’s going on. And that is also an issue with the trees that have a canopy.

The nice thing about the tree stumps is that they show where the tree is without getting in the way. On some of the stumps the players miniature can be placed on top of the stump to indicate that the player has climbed up the tree.

Don’t get me wrong I’d be all over using the 3d printed trees. They look awesome.

But as an affordable compromise that will still give that table theatre, and not obstruct visibility these are a fantastic option.

Next a collection of columns to use.

Here are a couple of useful links for those interested:

Urban Construct Tree Stumps, YouTube videos with links on trees

New Dungeon Project

D&D, RPG

So this morning I got my hands on the Wisbech Castle vaults map, and a map showing what is known about the tunnels under the town centre.

I decided to use the later first to create a dungeon based on it.

I’ve split the tunnels over two levels. They are too long to fit on a single page.

In the source material I’ve turned the area shown into an undead lair. The inspiration for this is from the Jim Murphy video Undead! Monster Mambo 4. I’ll probably run it the way Jim suggests. Which means getting a lot of zombie and skeleton miniatures. Sadly the zombies I have are modern zombies from Zombicide. I need zombies that are suitable for a fantasy setting. I also have just two skeletons. So it’s down to that nigh impossible task of tracking down miniatures at an affordable price. Which I think I’ve managed to do. If my calculations are correct I’ll have about twenty of each. The draw back is they are on sprues. Yep I have to resort to that bit I dislike, cutting and gluing once they arrive.

You will notice on my version of the map I’m producing I have two open pits. Which are connected. The adventurers will be able to descend down them, and at the bottom discover the connecting tunnel.

The reason I’m adding stuff like this is to make it interesting and dangerous for the adventurers “curious” enough to venture down. Otherwise I’m left with long straight corridors. So I think a little artistic license is justified.

Cool Easter egg idea

D&D, RPG

Whilst I was doing my googling in another futile attempt to find the tunnel plans I came across some ancient plans for local churches. (Although to be fair my friends have helped out a lot and reached out and found me a source of the information I need. Which is fantastic.)

I thought these are pretty cool (see below). Then it struck me. An epiphany. A light bulb moment.

These plans would be a cool thing to keep copies of.

Why?

Well when at some point I may need to create a church for an encounter. I have an instant plan to use. Heck they don’t have to be used for that alone. They can be reskinned for other uses.

But it’s down to that saving on time and effort whilst preparing for a session.

They also act as a cool (well in my opinion) Easter egg for your campaign with your players.

I’m almost tempted to use a historical map of the town as a starting point for a town as well that the party will come across. Another cool Easter egg.

As you can see from the above it’s not hard to think of locations and buildings that are local to yourself to use as inspiration for your campaign. Maybe the players won’t pick up on the Easter egg at all. But for those that do, I think it’s a cool reward for them. That being in the know. Maybe even give them some sort of in game reward for noticing.

The above plan is for the main church in town St Peter’s Church. Which I’ve been to a handful of times for services over the years. But I’ve also been up the top of the bell tower when they opened it up to the public on a very rare occasion a few years back now. So I know that the plan doesn’t show a floor used by the bell ringers.

So I’m not sure if there is an accurate plan of the tower. But still it won’t take much to add that detail in.

Update on planning session 4 #4

D&D, RPG, session planning

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

I think during the second session Diego asked how many days had passed since the party left Saltmarsh. He wanted to know if they were going to miss the Earth Goddess Festival.

At that point I knew within half a day roughly how much time had passed. However I thought I need start tracking this.

So I created (using the iThoughts app) a mind map to do so. Which then got exported as an image into GoodNotes for me to scribble notes onto.

Obviously all the Mintarn adventure hooks shown will not all be seeded at once. Only two have at the moment. With a further two at the next session. One of those points back to a previous hook (the lost Ironstar Dwarven mine) and a caper to steal a keelboat. Both of which come about from the introduction of the new players to the group.

But this allows me to track and calculate the passage of time, and see the path travelled through the campaign.

As previously spoken about I have a map for sea travel with hexes on ready to print. Plus I have turned the warehouse docks map from the Lazy Dungeon Masters Workbook (LDMW) into an ready to print A3 battle map.

For my needs if we look at the extract from the Mintarn city (otherwise known as Alhaster) map I am using , the dock area is made up of warehouses and jetties. Specifically each jetty is connected to a warehouse (see below).

So there was too much on the original map from the LDMW for my needs to use with the players. The other stuff would be too much of a distraction in my opinion.

So I took the area circled in blue, which is the warehouse and resized so that the A3 page only contains that.

The area circled in red I can recreate with my boat tiles, the little 3D jetty I have or use some of the tiles from the Dungeon Tiles Reincarnated: City set for the jetty.

I did get as you probably guessed the third and final Dungeon Tiles Reincarnated set. Sadly there was not enough pieces to make an approximation of the warehouse map above. And budget does not allow for additional copies.


But still it’s a useful set to have. I like the sewer pieces. Which should prove useful if the party decide to follow that adventure hook at a later date.

On that sewer hook front, I’d love to create a map based on the underground tunnels for Wisbech. But at the moment I’m not having much success in tracking down the plans showing them. I’d also love the plans to Wisbech Castle (not really a castle, but a large Georgian house these days) and it’s prison/dungeons. I think basing locations on these would be a fun Easter egg for the players. I did approach the Wisbech Castle folks via social media but was greeted with a wall of silence so far. Possibly the Tory overlords running the Castle and it’s volunteers hold grudges against those that point out how nasty the Tory party is. So let’s call this a clash of political opinion.

As you can also see in the photo above I some of the generic tokens I created. I think they came out pretty good.

With a week to go before the fourth session I just need the new players character sheets. Which I should be getting tomorrow or Monday. In the meantime I might make better notes for Mintarn for myself. Otherwise I’m already I think.

I try and talk myself into stuff

D&D, RPG

There has been a lot of official content from WotC for D&D since September.

Fancy running a campaign in the first layer of the nine hells of Baator? Then the big release of the year Baldur’s Gate: Descent Into Avernus is the campaign for you. For those of us that don’t want to visit there, or won’t do for a while because of current campaign commitments then this is still of use.

Apart from the campaign itself there is a gazetteer for Baldur’s Gate. Which is of use for any campaign in the Forgotten Realms, and for any homebrew campaign that needs a ready rolled city.

The part that really interests me is Appendix A: Diabolical Deals. It’s all about making a deal with the devil! It’s an interesting story element that I think can be used in many campaign settings. I like the idea of getting something awesome but at a heavy price, and the ramifications it could have further down the line. At some point that devil is going to want to cash in on the deal.

I like the new magic items and monster stats also in their own appendices. Although aimed at the campaign, I think they can be used outside of it.

Want to take on dragons? Then the reprints of the Hoard of the Dragon Queen and The Rise of Tiamat in a single volume called Tyranny of Dragons has recently been released. Once again for those running their own campaigns the appendices with the extra monsters and magic items are of main interest.

Just about to hit the shelves of your FLGS is Eberron: Rising From the Last War. For me running a campaign in the Forgotten Realms may not be of much interest. Eberron is a new world completely, more a steampunk meets fantasy setting. I’m not sure yet how I could use this in my campaign at the moment.

Not only has there been the excellent D&D Essentials Kit with it’s Dragon of Icespire Peak adventure. Which is worth the price alone if you ask me. But as I have mentioned in my DM prep posts there is at least one quest I can use in my own campaign. And that is what I love about this adventure in the kit. It’s so easy to take any of the quests and drop them into a campaign. Plus you get the awesome colour map of that area of the Sword Coast the adventure is set in. But more importantly the player friendly map of Phandalin. Which makes a great town/village to repurpose in other campaigns.

Finally for fans of Rick and Morty there is the Dungeons & Dragons vs Rick and Morty: Tabletop Roleplaying Game Adventure Boxed Set landing on the shelves of your FLGS any day. A ‘one shot’ fun break from an existing campaign.

As you can see that’s a lot, and I’ve not mentioned the many spin off products official and by third parties such as minis etc. And if you can afford it (it’s not cheap) the official D&D Sapphire Anniversary Dice Set!

I think apart from a couple of the above, the majority can be used as part of an existing campaign in some way. Or even spark ideas for a campaign.

I’ve already briefly talked about Baldur’s Gate: Descent Into Avernus and the bits I think I can potentially use in my campaign. But I also like the idea of some of the monsters escaping from Avernus to the Forgotten Realms causing havoc. Almost creating an adventure that is like an episode of Supernatural. Or having that Blood War spill over into the Forgotten Realm and draw in Angels with humanoid kind stuck in the middle. A bit like AvP, but done right ;)

Out of the campaign books I think that the Baldur’s Gate: Descent Into Avernus is the most use to myself and my homebrew campaign.

My mileage out of Tyranny of Dragons may vary, it certainly interests me. It’s just how much can I use in my campaign? I already have Hoondarrh, the Red Rage of Mintarn for my players to encounter. Could that develop into the party having to deal with Tiamat? Maybe have cultists from the Cult of the Dragons avenge/help Hoondarrh. I like the dragon mask idea.

Happiness is mandatory

RPG

Back in the late eighties I played MERP while at poly. But I did get to play Paranoia as well a couple of times.

A while back I backed the Kickstarter run by some-one I knew (James Wallis) to publish an update to the Paranoia rules. I partially backed it as support for James, but also because of long faded memories of having played it during better times! (It’s weird that I think of them as so considering what I was going through at the time).

After delays the Kickstarter eventually delivered. Naturally like all kickstarters I spent time checking it through, since then the contents have largely been left untouched sitting on the shelf.


That is until the tail end of last week. When Matt Colville and chums live streamed and then posted the subsequent recording of them playing Paranoia as part of their break from their current D&D Campaign (You can watch it here).

I don’t know what I was expecting, maybe them to be playing the ‘old school’ version of the classic RPG. But no, they were playing the ‘new’ version. The one I’d backed on Kickstarter.

I watched as they created characters as part of the game play. “Hey this is interesting and fun” I thought. I really should read what I have. It’s in the rules! What also struck me was how simple and relatively quick this process was.

Matt was also using the first mission from the mission book that comes with the rules. Now Matt (I feel I can call him that after all this stalking I’ve been doing) had done some excellent prep before hand, and introduced some fun elements to his session.

When I looked at the mission book and that first mission I was impressed. I loved how they had written it. You could basically run the game without having read the rules before hand! Although it does refer you to the relevant rules sections through out for further detail.

I only remember from the intro/taster scenarios for other RPGs I’ve read over the last year or so of one other doing something similar. As I read through the mission I was impressed, and felt I could run this now no problem.

Naturally as I said Matt did some excellent prep. You really need to watch the video to see a great piece of theatre he added to the session.

At the end of the video he briefly talked about influences he used for the computer, such as the Terry Gilliam film Brazil, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy plus also by Douglas Adams the 1987 computer adventure game Bureaucracy (you can try it here). The more modern classic video game Portal was also an influence, along with a clip from the Monkees tv show (I used to love that show growing up, but I’b be damned if I remember stuff like that clip from it).

Matt also wrote some notes, ok rewrote some of the missions dialog to fit in with his interpretation of the computers character. Which he has shared with his Patreon backers.

So where does this leave me? Well I’m trying to find interested parties to play the first mission. However the response has been consistent for the group.

I see Paranoia as a great filler RPG. Something to play as a break from an on going campaign, or between campaigns. It’s light hearted, fun, and something not to be taken seriously. A nice contrast to most RPGs out there.

It was great to be reminded I have this RPG, how much fun it is, and simple to get into.

United Against Dementia Charity Game Night

charity, Fenland Gamers, game night

It’s on very very rare occasions that we at Fenland Gamers charge to attend a gaming session. It’s in the clubs dna, we don’t believe in charging people to play games. As gamers our games are expensive enough, and it’s hard enough getting them to the table without having to pay to do that.

But for the second time only we ran a session that required those taking part to hand over some dosh. Like the previous time we had a really good reason. We were gaming for charity. So the money paid was really a donation to the charity we were raising money for.

The charity chosen this time was the Alzheimer’s Society who are running an Autumn Gaming event to raise money and awareness for Dementia.

There are a lot of great charities out there. And to be fair I could have gone with several that had a personal link of some kind. But this one had that personal link also. So when club member and manager of our hosting establishment asked if we would run something for this particular one, we jumped at the opportunity.

So last night was the night we chose to hold our charity gaming evening.

Our hosts for the evening were our most excellent regular hosts The Luxe Cinema.

We started off the evening with a couple of rounds of the ‘filler’ game No Thanks! while we waited for Nathan to turn up. It’s a classic, and rightly so. And the evening started off as I hope the rest of the evening would be going with me winning.

As my victory celebrations were coming to an end there was still no sign of Nathan. So we went ahead with playing Wingspan with the first expansion for the game (that had only just arrived through Jonathan’s letter box that morning).

Surprisingly Jonathan had gone a different route to the one I would have gone for a first play with an expansion like this. I would have just used the new expansion so we got to see what it had to offer. Jonathan had mixed it in with the base game. Which is fine, no problem with that at all. After all that’s how it’s designed to be used.

We did get to see some of the new birds and mechanics introduced by the new expansion. Sadly luck of the draw meant we didn’t get to see any of the new end of round scoring conditions.

It’s great to see European birds now in the game. With the new mechanics, new bonus cards and end conditions, it’s more variety for an already great game. And to be honest if you have both, something you shouldn’t be playing without, even with new players. The new overhead to learn and teach is so negligible it’s not worth even considering.


I did use the WingMate scoring app for the first time ever. Which looks beautiful and totally in keeping with the look and feel of the game. However I’m not totally sure about the flow of the app when doing the scoring. But it was a single use, and I need to play with the app more first. But as you can see from the screen grab above Jeff won. With Nathanial and Jonathan drawing for last place.

Next up saw us diving for treasure in Deep Sea Adventure. What can I say about this? I managed to walk that fine line between pushing my luck and getting the treasure back to the surface and running out of oxygen and dropping my loot to the sea bed. In other words I won.

After the underwater adventures it was time to be artisans and create some stain glass windows in Sagrada. Although I did feel like I was being punished and handicapped by my secret objective card. After all how else would you interrupt having to score the sum of the yellow dice you have in your stain glass window? That’s the card Jonathan should of had with his unnatural love of playing that colour.

But after creating our beautiful stain glass windows the scoring judged Jeff’s window to be the most awesome to behold.

Our evening of gaming for charity ended with a couple of games of Rhino Hero. That saw Jeff win the first game, and then share the victory with Jonathan for the second and final game.

We had a great evening of gaming for charity.

Thanks to Jonathan you get to see some wonderful photos below of me on my journey to becoming full unkept hobo dwarf.

Games played: No Thanks!, Wingspan (with new European expansion), Deep Sea Adventure, Rhino Hero, Sagrada

If you feel that you would like to donate to our Just Giving page to help the Alzheimer’s Society fight Dementia you can click HERE.

I’d like to end this post with a big big thank you to those that donated and played, to those that only donated, and our hosts and their staff at The Luxe Cinema. Your generosity and support was most appreciated.

Some generic sci-fi/cyberpunk RPG tokens.

D&D, RPG

I really did like those double sided tokens that Sly Flourish uses, and kindly shared with the world.

The image below is the pdf he shared with the world turned into an image (I did this without permission).


I thought well if I made a ‘b side’ for those tokens that show that whatever they represent has been killed, unless I need the token during the encounter again, I can leave it in place showing the corpses position. Ok it doubles the amount of tokens carrying around. But that’s neither here or there I think as an issue.

So using the image above I found a suitable icon online and created the following image to use as the ‘b side’ for each of the above.

I thought those by Sly are great for fantasy themed games like D&D. But something more thematic would be more suitable for a sci-fi or cyber punk RPG.

So once again I hit Google Image search to find some suitable icons to use. I found ones I like. But it’s much much harder for these themes. I think the ones I found work really well for cyberpunk maybe a little less so for pure sci-fi. But there has to be a compromise.

These are the two sheets as images that I created.


I hope that people find these useful.