For um um um For um You know FORUM

Got a forum up and going to help organize the gaming group a little bit better.  I am hoping that we can keep up interest in the various campaigns between sessions.  With the alternating schedules it usually ends up two months before a campaign reoccurs.  I am going to try and get the respective Gamemasters to upload some information on their campaign, not too much we will save that for the Obsidian Portal.

Speaking of the Obsidian Portal, I took a break from my normal miniature driven kickstarter habit to back the OP reforging.  I opted to wait until the reforging was complete to redeem my subscription.  I am super pumped for some of the features.  They will have an integrated forum so that will most likely make the Ultimategaragenerd forum obsolete, but I may keep it going and update the game days in case people are slow to jump into the OP.  Which doesn't make sense seeing as how its RPG oriented and will have rich and easily navigable campaigns for both Iron Kingdoms and Star Wars.

So here are the links to the Forum
http://ultimategaragenerds.freeforums.org/index.php

and if you haven't been over to Obsidian Portal(OP), definitely get over there and sign up and give it a test drive.  Also, if you are a member of our gaming group you should sign up to prepare for the upcoming campaigns being added in August.

Nothing old nothing new something borrowed

I haven't been really motivated lately for any kind of creative output.  I've been browsing sites, reading rules and researching savage world campaigns.  I usually go on these information gathering sessions before another bout of creative output.  I think I'm getting ready to focus on modifying the savage worlds ruleset for my campaign.  I get sidetracked when it comes to this, I still have the portal worlds campaign floating in my head and working out the rules for that campaign wants to take precedents.

Found some great resources.  This one is my favorite, Savage Worlds Eberron Conversion.  I found a few others including this page, Savage Iron Kingdoms.  Both these sites make me focus on portal worlds as Empires at Twilight is a more conventional fantasy setting.  I intend to borrow heavily from the magitech and steampunk concepts of both settings.  I was going to migrate Empires into that kind of setting, but its a tired setting, having been run thru the gamut of rule changes and concept evolutions.  Its my gritty fantasy campaign, I can't make it a high magic tech campaign, I suppose it wouldn't be fair to its essence.

Revenge of the Old Campaign

Here it is Sunday again and I am feeling the nostalgia coming on.  I've spent a majority of the afternoon honing my remedial coding skills working on Obsidian Portal.  I posted a link up earlier in the week directing everyone to the Twilight Empires campaign.  I've been cutting my coding teeth on that defunct campaign.  Got some cool stuff going on.  a hyperlinked MAP, some nifty homepage features; a menu on the left, some parchment backgrounds and a terrible banner.  Yeah I know how terrible it looks, I just wanted to make something.  Remember this is just a test. 

Now that I've sent you off to other websites, I will type this for my own amusement.  Continuing on with the Old School posts, here are some scrolls from the vault.

Page 1

Fendor - Southern city in Druin
  North of the Siafor ford and the Hera woods now known as the haunted woods.  Furry clothes, adorned with silvers, and shades of golden brown and browns.  Wide brimmed hats.  Cloaks are standard signs of status.  Color and design(and material) determining rank.  Druin Scouts are infamous and famous.  Fear the mountains and its foothills.

Rahar - Plain city and largest western keep rebuilt on ancient empires ruins.
((there are some scribbles at the bottom and the words Miak and Parth))

Page 2

Dwarven Kingdom
  Garuel-don
    King-Harven
    Has ladies in waiting/personal guard known as guardians of Harven.  Lives in Garvel-Kaer or the dwarven hall, largest mountain in the mountain range.  the mountain pass has seats on each end known as the high seats of western and easternesse.  Magically enchanted people of pure imperial blood can focus and look anywhere in the kingdom.

Page 3

Standard issue for soldiers.  Ringmail and platemail mix.  all wear helms, depends on family.  Families is how things are determined the most influential families are the Throne family, the Southron and Northron families.  Though all on good terms it appears that the Northrons may be attempting to make their own kingdom and rumor has it they are signing a peace treaty with the orcs.  Trading weapons and armor for an allegiance with them.

Page 4

Dwarves of the middle span have rediscovered the power of the stone metal.  Metal forged in the very fire of the mountains.  Forged of an ore created from deposits deep within the heart of the mountains.  The clerics from the Southron kingdom have discovered a way to create Orcbaine blades by infusing the blood of orcs within the blade but the process is long and hard and only four Orcbaine blades exist.  Though made of steel they appear copper.

Wow... about half way thru page two I almost stopped this.  This is some uninspired drivel.  I think its time to recycle the paper I wrote this on.  So terrible.  Blah.  The code achievements of today help balance out the terrible flavor of these four pages.  Now I just need to focus on a plan to get back out into the garage and start working on more terrain.

Twilight Empires

In searching around the internet I stumbled upon my own Obsidian Portal campaign, Twilight Empires .  What a nerd right?  The Twilight Empires campaign would be the final incarnation of all my compiled notes and a campaign that stretches back over ten years.  It started in a gray binder, which will be transcribed here as part of the Old School posts.

I think I ran this campaign world in MERPS, 3.x, Savage Worlds, and eventually 4E.  I Progressed the campaign forward during each of these phases.  Alot of the fluff between MERPS and 3.x was written without a ruleset or in conjunction with failed attempts to create my own rule set or modify some such ruleset to fill the role of what I wanted.

I'm still tempted to resurrect this campaign one day or take parts out and add them to Portal Worlds.  I am leaning more towards the later as I'd rather focus on that campaign more than running parallels.

Drakton

Departing from the terrain based articles that have dominated this blog thus far, I was inspired to take a trip down memory lane.  I knew I had some really old campaign notes in a box in the garage.  Of course when I brought said box in the house there began to fly those baseless accusations of hoarding.  I tell you the abuse I take!!!  I'm going to label all these articles with the tag old school, because for me this was my old school phase.  I don't intend to post these in any particular order but I will try to identify them to their proper campaigns and label them accordingly.

I found some from high school so I guess I will start there.  The one I'm going to transcribe I want to say was a map key to maps that probably no longer exist.

Page 1( I can only assume, I didn't number them.)
Island of Perfect Silence-

1. all towns- the cities of this town were created by races fleeing from old Zeacon when Drakton destroyed it.

Old Zeacon-

1. Sea Arkon- a city which was a large port, but out of fear Drakton destroyed and killed all the Solmaniac knights in the city.
2. Old Ruins- this city is nothing but rubbled pillars and stone buildings.
3. Turfson- another city Drakton feared so they attacked it.
4. Crowndong- This is a fort city with little growth since the fall of Old Zeacon.
5. Gatetown- a fort which tried to stop Drakton's fleet but lost theirs.

Zeacon-

1. Cavin- This city was established after Old Zeacon was set aflame.
2. Wizborn- This city was born on the week before Drakton was about to be built.  The city was flooded with students after the destruction of Old Zeacon. 
3. Pirate's Cove- was built as a hideout from the fleets of Seacof.
4. Ruins of Slave- is a slave<students> traders union ran by a druid: the very lead druid<priest> a drow: secretly; runs the shop <union> from the tip of the bay. His wish spell enables him to into sunlight.  He has a ring of Chameleon power which he uses to plot against Drakton.  He changes into a man<18 comeliness>. Blonde

Page 2

Seacof-

1. Vikton- once a small village grew from commerce into a large populated capitol.  The town got over populated and people<kender> moved east.  Small kender villages began to pop up along a road to a elf city <Elvin> which they did not know was there.
2. Elvin- is a <once> secluded town of peaceful <qualensti/silvenisti> elfs then kender and humans came and opened them up to war.  The two groups split and began to have small skirmishes.  The silvensti won more so they took the city.  The silvensti didn't like the city so they moved north to a river.
3. Kagonost- This city was built after people<kagonost> left <escaped> from the silvensti elf.  The silvensti hunt them often.
4. Cape Dratkon- is a port which most ships stop at on their way to Elvin for trade.

Ferdon-

1. Drakton- A major city which has the power to take over any country but Andorean.  They chose not to for fear of rebellion.
2. Sheltic- is a small town which gets little if any trade, built only as a stop.
3. Londen- is a town built in the grace of Drakton.  Built only because it knew it would be protected by Drakton.
4. Seaton- is a town which did the same as Londen.
5. Famoton- is a town which is a mix of races.  Most kender that live in  Ferdon live here.
6. Dwarf City- is a town of hill dwarfs that lives to keep their race clean of elfs.
7. Farbed- This is a city of mountain dwarfs.  Mostly ran by hill dwarfs because of the mountain dwarfes fondness of the mountains.

Thats the two pages of city descriptions I found.  Apparently I must have had a dragonlance sourcebook somewhere.  I remember being very fond of Kenders.  I know my DM back then had to hate them because I was so annoying when playing a kender.  Actually my current character has a slingstaff or hopak, hes a half orc and not nearly as carefree.

Gaming Boards.

I've been busy but also really unmotivated to tackle posting this.  But I've got free time and here in a minute the coffee fueled motivation to plow thru these fields.  I will start with the materials I used.

Lets see.

Tools
   Trowel
   Caulking Gun
   Spray Bottle
   Saw(anything would work depending on  your skill level)
   Box cutter
   kitchen knife
   surform
   Paint brushes

The foundation
   2x4 styrofoam sheets 4 of them
   2x4 1/4 MDF sheets 4 of these guys too(I didn't have these cut Home Depot stocks them)
   Liquid Nails caulk, 4 of these

The Playing Surface
   Sand(*I used some stuff with little pebbles in it, bad idea.  I mean it looks fine but more on it later)
   Paint
     Brown latex house paint
     assorted craft paints
   Dyed Sawdust
     dark green
     light green
     medium green
     small amount of yellow
   Ground Turf
     Woodland scenics Medium Green
....and plenty of glue.

The styrofoam I bought had a foil backing.  Its easy to remove.  I went with regular beaded styrofoam instead of the pink or blue stuff for the rough looking texture.  I really wanted to avoid a super smooth surface that looked like a lawn from suburban America.

I have a certain width I needed to cut the MDF down to.  Its really irrelevant for this because its to fit inside the rails of the gaming table I made.  Anyone google stumbling upon this doesn't need to worry about this step and at this juncture I should point out you might want a larger table top so don't buy 2x4 sheets, find something bigger.

THIS IS IMPORTANT!!! I didn't do it, I knew I should have but my table top is already really tall, as in we use stools around it and I didn't want to add anymore height, but this shouldn't be skipped.  Cut some 2x4s to fit underneath your MDF sheets.  Glue and screw these down.  This frame will keep your board straight.  I assure you they will begin to taco up on the edges if you do not.  When I glued the styrofoam to the MDF it did not taco.  When I did the texture it did not taco, nor when I did the base coat.  It wasn't until I started applying the glue and flock layers that it slowly began to taco up.  I assume this is caused from the shrinking of the glue layers drying.  I have now completed the texture and flocking of the table and have to go back and work around these delicate playing surface to correct the warping.  Learn from my mistakes padawan be greater than the master(I'm not a master, but garage hobbyist doesn't have a ring to it.).

Okay back to our regular scheduled programming.  So I caulked(LIQUID NAILS) my styrofoam to the MDF.  I gunned the caulk onto the MDF and spread the caulk around with a trowel. and stacked them up and weighted them down.  I let them dry for 24 hours

 The next day I mixed blue tightbond and water together I would say I used 1/3 water to 2/3s glue.  I had a gallon jug of glue.  I used a paint tray to mix it up and a cheap chip brush to apply it to the board.  You can be as messy, clean or organized as suits you.  I put down plastic for this project.  Before you get your texture on with sand.  You could at this point sand down sections of the styrofoam to create depressions for ponds, craters, or any other interesting texture elements.  I wanted a generic board so I only added small depressions and a few scratches.

Get your sand out.  Now sounds like the perfect time to address the sandy issues I have.  The pebbles look great.  With some drybrushing, washes and highlights they look like small stones.  Here is my problem. They are elevated a good distance above the playing field.  Not much on first appearance and it would be easy enough to place a miniature to the left or right of the stone if that would be were movement ended.  Its larger terrain pieces that will now float mysteriously above the playing field at the height of the stones.  I've already thought of a solution to this but its a huge time sink and I won't get into it unless you, dear reader, don't follow my advice or were too late and are dying to know my secret method.

So I will just assume you've been standing their reading your iphone with a sack of sand in your hand as your glue dries.  So on with the project; I sprinkled it on to the boards from about 3 or 4 feet above them. Go as crazy or easy as you like. I varied the heaviness of the sand coating, but wasn't too worried about it being thin as the styrofoam has a texture also. 

So I let this dry over night.  I know long process.  It annoyed the crap out of me too.  I wanted to be onto the next step.  20 minutes of work 24 hours of waiting.  The following day I dumped off the excess sand.  Making sure to get it on the plastic and not all over the place, unless you are at the beach.  Then go nuts.  I swept up the sand and dumped it into a cup.  I have several of these random debris cups(my wife assures me this is some form of hoarding.).  I bought a pint can of incorrectly mixed house paint for like 2 bux.  It wasn't quite enough.  I thinned it slightly with water as it was a pretty heavy paint and wasn't going far on the sandy texture.  Your call.  You could always just buy a gallon of paint, I think that would cover the 4 2x4 boards pretty well.  I actually ran out and used a different kind of paint to go over some spots you could see thru.  It actually created an organic effect so added bonus.

Well I think you get the format.  After pictures commence waiting.  I let this dry until the next day.  I should point out if you look at the top picture you will see a space heater on the right side of the pic.  It was 40 degrees outside and I didn't want to wait until the end of spring to add washes and highlights.  At this stage the panels reminded me of rusted metal plates.

So the next day I mixed up some washes.  I used some chocolate brown hobby paints.  The house paint was slightly glossy and this toned that down slightly.  I also had a section of one of the boards I wanted to use as a beach.  I sanded it down to an angle and did a yellow wash on it.  Good news.  With the heat and the watery washes it didn't take long for the washes to dry and I was able to begin drybrushing the same day.  Drybrushing huge boards is way more challenging than I anticipated.  If you use long sweeping strokes.  Long sweeping strokes show up.  About halfway through I realized circular dustings worked best.  The following pictures are in the order of wash then drybrushing.

Even with my circular technique you can still see drybrushing streaks.  I would have taken care of these if I wasn't going to grow some grass in all this dirt and I took a little better care of the sand.  Its still WIP even as I post these.  Needs some more washes and drybrushes to get to a good sandy appearance.

I let this dry over night. You don't have to.  I was tired and it was late.  Now on to the grass.  I mixed half and half water and glue, I got some white glue from home depot on sale.  I applied this to the painted surface with a paint brush.  I did one board at a time. I tried to focus the glue on low spots and work around the pebbles that I left in the sand.  I also left bare patches for added interest.

I used the dyed sawdust for the base of the greenery.  I make my own with sawdust and craft paints.  you don't have to.  If you do make way more than you need.  I didn't and started to run low.... okay I ran out.  Thankfully a third of one of the boards was sand!!!!  When I made my sawdust ground cover I kept thinking this is so light.  I started with a light color and got darker and darker.  Well it was all rather dark for this project.  It worked fine, but I wish I had used lighter ground cover.  While I was able to put the sawdust on all the boards it was sparse so I rushed out and bought the woodland scenics ground turf.  They didn't have fine in the color I wanted so I got coarse.  Wow this project is fraught with mistakes.  I had to use a strainer to grind the foam thru to get it to a texture that didn't look like bushes.  Because the lighter green ground foam turf was the last layer it lightened up the board.

I did not use a brush to apply the glue for the ground foam.  I used that spray bottle I mentioned in the tools section.  I mixed glue in 2 parts glue and 1 part water.  I bought a spray bottle with measurements on the outside so I could get it right.  I spritzed the boards heavily to hold the sawdust down and build up residue for the foam to stick too.  I sprinkled the foam and viola I was finished.  I intend to add a few more layers of fine foam to add visual interest and a final layer of acrylic spray sealant.  But here they are.

And here I set up a little encounter and got down close to show the final product.  You will notice the lip in the middle of the boards.  That is caused by the warping.  But here is a few.  An ogre and a band of goblins have attacked the coastal inn, The Calm Seas.  A band of local knights traveling to the borders happened to be staying when the Ogre and his minions attacked.

RPG Personality Test

This is what happens when I get bored.  I should be working on one of my many projects or perhaps my homework for my upcoming EPA test.  But instead I do this.

Serpent's Skull Session 2

We finally had a full table at the game session last night.  Human Male Fighter, Dwarf Female Fighter, Human Male Thief, and Half-Orc Male Druid.  Yes we are lacking in the healing magic and arcane magic section, but we make up for it with um.......Fighters I guess.  We also have some NPCs stranded with the group on the Island Smuggler's Shiv.

I think this is our first session we actually have ever used terrain to play an RPG.  It added a great dynamic to the combat.  The game didn't revolve around the combats that occurred and adding terrain didn't take anymore time than combat normally would.

We got some pics from the first combat(thanks guys) which was against a group(herd?) of giant spiders.  I  really enjoyed the combat which would have been a rather mundane low level giant spider encounter but navigating the terrain changed that.  Here are some of those pics.

Forgive the pics.... I didn't take them ;)

Don't give up hope

Been super busy with the gaming table. Want to post the whole process in a single post rather than several posts. I think I only missed one stage worth of pics. Also finished those jungle terrain pieces, still uncertain about jungle trees and won't have time before next session anyway. Will be posting up the terrain board in the next couple days.

Welcome to the Jungle

Finally got back in the garage today.  Started adding flora to the jungle mounds from the previous post.  Alot more time consuming than I anticipated, about 45 minutes to an hour for each mound.  I made a total of 12 mounds and only had time to finish up 5 today.  I did a few other things while out there messing around.  Cut my terrain table boards down to fit on the main playing surface.  Was going to texture and paint the terrain boards but I feel like I should add some slats to the underside of the quarter inch MDF to keep from bowing before I get busy with the playing area.  I think I will go pick up some 1x2 pine slats to make a frame support underneath.

I mainly used aquarium plants with some ferns I picked up from Micheal's craft store.  Without further ado here are the shots of the jungle pieces I got completed.

The palm like tree in the center was made from the stem from the fern with aquarium plant leaves hot glued to the wire nubs.  I gave it a drybrush of light green and light brown to give it a trunk like appearance.  I still wanted it to be a plant, so left it green.

Here's a pterodactyl's eye view of the 5 finished pieces and unpainted Garar Stormraven hanging out in the jungle.  These 5 include the largest pieces that I made.  The rest are alot smaller than the two largest pieces shown here and are more the size of the bottom left corner piece.

Busy Busy Busy

The jungle terrain is coming along rather slowly.  The drying steps just kill me.  I applied a light drybrush to the mounds, I don't know if it was noticeable.  My garage lighting is not optimal for painting and I didn't feel like bringing everything in the house, the cats don't make that very easy anyway.  Here is the dry brushing.

I know you can barely tell, they did dry really glossy and the drybrushing toned that down a bit.  I didn't think the drybrushing needed much time to dry so I painted some glue onto the figs and sprinkled some flock on just to give the bases some added variety before I apply the jungle foliage.

 The glue hasn't dried beneath the flock which lends the sheen to the underside of the flock.  I'm hoping to get them done tomorrow after work.  I was doing a few other projects while I was in the garage.  I finally finished up my evergreen trees.  Here is what they look like.  I won't go into too much detail on the how to, I was going to put up a tutorial at some point on both the tree types I created.

The small deep green trees nestled in the group are dollar store trees I picked up to help fill up the table.

The Flocking Test part 2

Well I got my test strip done, unfortunately I didn't use the same colors but here is the result encase you just can't be bothered to color your flock, and I don't blame you its a long process with all the waiting for dry time.  Anyway here is the test strips after painting the uncolored sawdust.

I personally prefer the pre coloring the flock before adhering it to terrain.  But I could see the benefit in doing it the other way.

Jungle Terrain

This is my second post tonight.  Feast or Famine here at my blog!!!  Recently we started up our monthly "Nerdnite" which is what got me fired up to start blogging again.  That and having an iPhone helps.  I've been dawdling on terrain off and on for the past couple of years, going in bursts but really not completing anything.  This winter I've been putting the most effort into it.  I started by making flock which I have no pictures of the process, but have plans of making some more in the future, so look forward to that post.

We kicked off our nerdnite with one of the long time players taking the reins of Gamemaster and deciding to run A Serpent's Skull AP from Paizo publishing for the Pathfinder RPG.  As I said earlier I had been dawdling on various terrain projects....ABSOLUTELY none of them jungle terrain!!!!

Unto the internet to find the path forged by those that have gone before.  And I must say very few have braved the Jungle Terrain before.  So into the heart of the jungle I venture.

So I decided to make a few foliage mounds.  To create "corridors" that could be arranged on the board in various ways.

Out came the pink board and this is the first step.  Layout and cutting up the pieces.

I sawed these pieces up with a serrated steak knife to give them a more natural shape.

I figured I would make 4 corner pieces, a few long pieces and some round pieces as generic terrain.  I feel like this is enough pieces to make an interesting battle in an RPG skirmish setting.  I may make a few more large scale terrain pieces for use with other games we play in our group.  But right now I need to focus on functioning pieces for the upcoming session.  All I had left to do today was paint up these pieces and this is where I left off for the day.

And I know quite well what they look like at this stage....  Hopefully I can er...um... Polish these turds.

Flocking Terrain

I have been making my own flock from some sawdust I picked up.  Its a horribly time consuming process and I am preparing to make a gaming table and was going to test to see if I could cover it with uncolored sawdust and apply paint to the glued down sawdust.

But before I get crazy I decided to test the theory on a small piece.  This is the first go at it and waiting for the glue to dry before I apply paint.

I also included a sample of my homemade flock which is the bottom piece.  I will continue to update.  I have several projects going so I will be posting a few more posts.