Friday 3 December 2021

Speed(ish) painting Infinity minis with Contrast paints

...for people - like me - who don't like painting minis!

Let's get this out of the way: I've never been a quick, or good, painter despite doing it for the last maybe 30 years. Getting back into wargaming post-Covid has gotten me back into painting, and I've been watching and reading a few tutorials in dreadful anticipation.

The most inspiring advice was along the lines of "staying in the lines is less important than getting contrast on the mini"; that struck a chord because I'm always disappointed with how flat my colours are.

I really appreciate the impression of volume that shaded and highlighted miniatures have, but never had the patience or the skill (or the time) for all that blending and shading. Having watched loads of interesting YouTube videos on "sketch style" or underpainting and glazing, this is my low-effort take:

Some attempt to show the steps in the process...

Step 1: Prime black with brush-on black primer - because I hate getting in all the crevices with spray primer. You can use black spray primer but the only really important bit of this step is getting black paint on the in-between and underneath bits of the mini. 

I reckon this is around 10 mins a mini, it doesn't need to be perfect because:

Step 2: Zenithal prime with grey and white spray primer, for super-fast underpainting that doesn't need an airbrush. You could use one. I have experimented and for the best results I think I am settling on:

Wednesday 24 November 2021

Indie RPGs saved my relationship (and they can save yours too)

I was, on reflection, probably too busy with the other elements in my life to dedicate the time and the attention she needed. She was inflexible, demanding, frustrating, a source of great joy that left me burnt out and miserable.

D&D is a harsh mistress. We had a difficult relationship for many years, through 4e and 5e and variations on 3e, and it took something new to change that. Indie games turned my relationship with gaming right around, so a big thanks to their creators and to the November RPG Blog Carnival for prompting me to get out of my rut and blog about how much I love them!

Indie RPG books
My collection so far

I have said it before: the moment I read and played Stars Without Number and Dungeon World it was like a light went on in my head. Suddenly I saw so many other, better, ways of doing things in my games. Better ways of prepping, organising, running, and playing games. Better mechanics and frameworks, better tools, better abstractions.

Thursday 4 November 2021

On the painting table: Infinity Nomads

I've been pretty busy with work and life recently, but I have picked up the new Infinity starter and managed to get a couple of games in.

Having new minis means I really should get back into painting, here's progress so far including my first real attempt at edge highlights. Comments welcome.

Billie the bot, an Alguacil, and a WIP Sombra

In other news I'm playing in a weekly 5e game which is a great break from DMing. Got plenty of ideas in my head for upcoming games but haven't had enough time to get them down on the blog.

Happy gaming until next time, stay safe.

Tuesday 14 September 2021

Go Build a Dungeon!

A better-late-than-never wrap up of all the great posts from August's RPG Blog Carnival, plus bonus gems on the subject of dungeon building:

If you build it, they will come... Image (cc) Kanut55

Lapidary Ossuary gave us this series of insightful posts detailing dungeon building from the ground up, with the finished product as a showcase. As a reader of dungeons/adventures, the layout analysis is particularly interesting.


Codex Anathema goes all out with posts on dungeons in both Eberron and Ravnica, and guidance on building dungeons and running dungeons in your games!

Dreaming Dragonslayer provided an excellently referenced framework for dungeon building, with an example 5 room dungeon, with a well reasoned argument for keeping the number of rooms in the 5-9 range.


All rounded off by shorter posts from Rising Phoenix on building dungeons from terrain pieces and from The Other Side on exploration in the Vault of the Drow.

Bonus: a classic post in this vein is Goblin Punch's Dungeon Checklist from 2016; seven timeless things that every RPG dungeon should actually have (in my opinion too)

Now go build a dungeon (and let us know how you get on) and don't forget to check out September's RPG Blog Carnival over at the Five Foot Square!

Sunday 1 August 2021

Join the August 2021 RPG Blog Carnival - Let's Build A Dungeon!

I want to get better at building adventures.

Dungeons are essentially adventures where the shape, flow, and structure is clearer, so August 2021's RPG Blog Carnival topic is "Let's Build A Dungeon", hosted right here.

This is an open invitation to all RPG bloggers, please feel free to join in:

  • Write a post taking us through your dungeon building process or
  • Write about any good dungeon building advice, methods, resources, or tools you love or
  • Write a post taking apart a great published dungeon and explaining what makes it great or
  • Grab a cool map and/or some random tables and go where your imagination takes you - just tell us what you did and what you think of the end result - or
  • Write a post about any other aspect of RPG dungeon building, map making, or design!
(And of course, "dungeon" can refer to pretty much any point-and-node shaped or location based adventure really)

Drop a comment on this post with a link to your carnival post so we can come and see it. Go see everyone else's too!

Need a map for inspiration? Image (cc) constantly-confused

(Blogger requires you to use HTML in the comment to add a clickable link; don't worry if you can't or don't want to, just post the URL and I'll sort it later)

Early September I'll put up a summary/digest post linking to all your carnival posts, and the Carnival will move on to another blog, so you have the month of August to write and submit an entry. Looking forward to reading them all!

I'm going to have a go too. If I can learn how to build a better dungeon I can extrapolate out to building a better adventure. Or at least that's the plan...

Sunday 25 July 2021

My Gaming Notebook (or how I am learning to embrace order)

Let's start by saying I lean somewhat toward Chaotic. My notes, traditionally, are scribbled on margins, envelope backs, and other blank spaces sighted within my apathy radius.

I also have real difficulty with parsing text or writing while I'm talking or listening.

In that context, let's talk about July RPG Blog Carnival topic of "The Gamer's Notebook".  This post sat in my drafts since the beginning of the month as I wanted to take the opportunity to actually think about what I should be doing and if my emergent process is actually any good.

As a GM:

When I run a game I have started trying to keep separate reusable reference sheets for different things depending on their purpose and just reference the ones I need that session. I dread flicking through monster lists at the table as much as I do looking backward and forward in a published adventure looking for a certain piece of information.

Generally I'll want to have:

Tuesday 20 July 2021

Infinity Operation Crimson Stone: 15 point beginner list building

With face to face gaming likely to be coming back soon, and the new Code One starter box for Infinity incoming, I'm pretty excited about the idea of getting back into any game - but Infinity was always my favourite skirmish wargame and I am hoping this is an easier entry point.

From playing Haqqislam before, and feeling somewhat that their Red Veil / starter units weren't a great starting point, let's see what's in the box!

Cyber-ninjas and werewolves you say? Image (cc) chesterocampo

Nomad implied list, from the units in the box:

Tuesday 13 July 2021

10 more gems from the blogosphere

First off, Sheep and Sorcery featured an unspeakably cool post that is not only a serviceable and colorful light OSR game but also a reference post for some excellent, flavoursome random tables it utilises. That's about as indie as indie games get. I should have told you months ago.

Prismatic Wasteland made a strong case for the application of freeform, player driven truths in mystery RPG scenarios. This is definitely something I'm going to try sometime as I find it hard to plan and run mystery scenarios myself.

Angry GM manages to write about story structure in a way that's usable for me as a GM, and it's been a revelation. Angry is sweary, opinionated, and wordy, and the other thing I like is that his advice is pretty much always good.

Library of Attnam has this random regional trouble table for shaking things up in your neighborhood - although some of it is campaign-starting stuff in its own right.

I'm in an OSR mood at the moment and really liked this short adventure over at Sundered Shields and Silver Shillings. It's for GLOG but I would definitely use it for e.g. Mork Borg...

Rats! Image (cc) TmoeGee

...and d66 Classless Kobolds has this wonderful list of crowdsourced quick settings that is definitely too good to not share!

And Against the Wicked City presents d100 reasons your wizard had to drop out of academia and go adventuring instead.

Spiceomancy reminds us of the importance of players being rat bastards, and how to foster that devious quick-witted behaviour.

And as my own thoughts turn to dungeons and megadungeons I am reading this post at Bat in the Attic about minimalising dungeons, and this one at The Yak Man Cometh about mapless (roomless!) dungeons with interest...

As always please support the blogosphere, and let me know of any more gems in the comments.

Tuesday 6 July 2021

UVG: d11+n more reasons to travel the Ultraviolet Grasslands

The seed for one of these travel quests came from a conversation with a friend along the lines of "what if the party were all bards and the campaign was actually a stadium tour," and the rest came all at once after that.

I'm writing them down for when I come to run a game in the Ultraviolet Grasslands and hope you find them useful or entertaining, further suggestions are very welcome in the comments! 

Ah those crazy cat lords. Image (cc) maricamolesi

Thursday 1 July 2021

Inclusivity in tabletop gaming

Recently I have stumbled upon a few thoughts on inclusivity in our hobby:

 


It's not something that's personally important to me - hetero white male privilege? - but it's of personal importance to other people so it's important to me that I'm more conscious about it at the table.

As always, comments welcome.

Monday 28 June 2021

On loot and lifestyle

Most players love finding loot, but how often do we do anything with it apart from hoard it or go equipment shopping?

Wealth could be a deeper and more meaningful part of the story, and this month's RPG Blog Carnival over at Campaign Mastery has got me thinking about how I could make more of it in my games.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be

All RPG campaigns need glue to hold them together, and a popular glue is having PCs have a shared goal or a shared enemy. One that I think could be fun is a shared debt - all the PCs owe somebody big time - which is effectively both of the above.

Starting the players in debt is an easy way to bring disparate characters together, it gives context to accumulating wealth, and can be an effective short (or even long) term goal.

Some games have this built in, some it's easy to factor: in a Traveller or Stars Without Number game, ships are expensive. You're not likely to get one without a loan.  In a cyberpunk world if you want chrome you're likely to end up owing - or being owned by - someone to be able to afford it.

What about fantasy or other settings:

Wednesday 23 June 2021

Blades in the Dark: a Review

Inage (cc) Yowan2008
I haven't been tending to the blog for a while, sorry.  Covid has affected gaming opportunities, I have not had a personal laptop, I have had difficulty getting things down on paper.  Plus I have been playing a lot of Cyberpunk 2077.  A lot.

Here I am trying to re-ignite things with a review format that feels like it could have legs.  Let me know if you want more of these.

Who are the players and what do they do?

Characters in Blades in the Dark are scoundrels in the underworld of Doskvol, a haunted fantasy-industrial city fuelled by leviathan blood and electroplasm.

The players work together as a Crew, lining up and running "Scores" to acquire Coin, Rep, and Turf.  At the same time they need to manage their Heat (and Wanted level) and relations with other Factions in the city.

What is the core mechanic?

Wednesday 17 February 2021

On Maps and Mapping

I have come to dislike maps.

Don't get me wrong, I love actual maps - I'm a big fan of the cartographic arts - but not so much in my games.

Drawing maps takes time
Image (cc) xkcd webcomic

When I am planning an adventure I'm usually trying to get as much information out of my head and onto paper as I can, and drawing maps slows me down.  I move things around until they "fit" (and often change them in play anyway) and worry too much about filling all the space.  I learned a lot from reading "Draw Maps, Leave Gaps" in Dungeon World.  Now I might sketch a grid with notes on relative positions, or room ideas, because:

Drawing out maps on the table in play can be painful. If the DM does it, it can break the narrative flow while everyone waits.  If the players deputise then it can end up being a long game of reverse Pictionary as the DM explains how a wall is 35 feet long - 5,10,15,20,25,30,35, is that right? - and then there is a 10 foot alcove. No, ten feet wide not 10 feet deep...

Also: Published maps may look beautiful, but  they never make it onto my table intact; all just wobbly lines of whatever-coloured dry-wipe marker.

Maps can be restrictive

Monday 1 February 2021

Your characters, your stories, your worlds

This is the round-up for the January 2021 RPG Blog Carnival.

First off, a big thank you to Rising Phoenix Games for such a nice handover from last month's carnival.

Campaign Mastery considers the impact of the current global pandemic on future stories and characters in our games:

"You can’t discuss a character of the 1930s or 40s without considering the impact of the Great Depression. You can’t talk about the 1940s (even if someone was a child at the time) without considering the impact of World War 2 on their lives..."

The Other Side shares the process of building a Basic D&D witch, inspired by Moldvay, as part of the #charactercreationchallenge:

"The witch class I am pairing with this is the one from Dragon Magazine #43 and using the guidelines set out by Tom Moldvay on what a witch should be..."

The Sea of Stars looks at the stories and characters in a novella through the lens of roleplaying game adventures.

"I think this is a good model for single character campaigns, the primary character has to be competent because there is just them at the core of it, I think this should be leaned into..."

Take On Rules takes us through an adventure design process somewhat similar to mine, although I am intrigued by the use of index cards and may well try it out sometime - if I can reduce things down from a page of A4!

"The end result of this preparation process wasn’t a fleshed out adventure. Instead, I filled my head and notes with ideas, images, and touchstones to draw upon during play..."

Shuttered Room presents a table of interesting reasons to be stumbling on newly rolled party members, ranging from "Solo Adventurer" etc. to the likes of "You were the doppelganger" and "Lovecraftian Resurrection":

"Either get yourself raised from the dead, or roll 2d6/d66 to see how a new character can be introduced mid-session, seamlessly or with a great thump of deus ex machina..."

Image (cc) toon13

Rising Phoenix promotes a narrative approach to character development, and the idea of levelling up more than just mechanically:

"Leveling up in D&D or Pathfinder type games could, with a few rules tweaks, be more meaningful. We won’t even throw out the core rules, I promise..."

Codex Anathema looks at the complex relationship between character building, world building, and the stories we build from the interaction between the two, in the context of current campaigns:

"When creating a new character, for me it’s essential to talk with my DM about his ideas regarding the campaign storyline ... I can suggest what I’d like to hapen to my character, and he can plan ahead and try his best to incorporate such ideas to his own..."

Roll4 outlines some simple rules for creating memorable NPCs by sketching them with defining features to be fleshed out over time:

"I’ve found if there is too much information, then the character’s don’t have room to grow. Too little, and they’re boring..."

Campaign Mastery returns with a deeper process for developing NPCs - or even characters - with interesting subtleties:

"Baggage. History. Everyone has it. Sometimes, you can use it, as in the above example, to make a dull process seem more real AND more interesting, to make a player feel like their character is really there, even if – as in this case – there is limited interaction required..."

Another second post, from Sea of Stars, continues this theme with questions for developing player characters and their connection to the world:

"Inspired by Judd the Librarian’s questions, I decided to write up a few questions to help people think about their characters..."

Roleplay Geek takes us through node design for a point-crawl adventure in Mega City 1:

"When designing the scenario from scratch you may go through this process multiple times as you focus in on what is important for each session. In fact having a node map at the macro level is useful..."

Full Moon Storytelling shares some tips for character names, and a second mystery post...

"Your naming conventions should embrace the fact that the peoples travel extensively..."

Of Dice And Dragons promotes the argument - that I very much agree with - that characters should be more than just stats, with some helpful links too:

"Building a character should be more than just selecting stats and the best weapon based on those stats. You should be considering the why..."

What a great start to 2021, let's keep the momentum going! February's carnival is hosted by Sea of Stars - where the theme is Gifts of the Gods.

Massive thanks, of course, to Scot Newbury for all the work maintaining the RPG Blog Carnival - and the RPG Blog Alliance network too.

Monday 11 January 2021

Sci-Fi Dungeon / Derelict Adventure Generator

I saw there is a One Page Derelict jam on itch.io and thought it would be fun to write up my first Stars Without Number adventure, set on a derelict refuelling station. If these tables give you any ideas for an adventure why not check out the jam?

Based on my seemingly popular 5 Room Dungeon tables from last year. Just roll a set of polyhedral dice and consult the tables for inspiration.

The d20 - Access is challenging because:

  1. it is surrounded by space debris.
  2. its automatic defences are still active.
  3. it is invisible to active sensor sweeps.
  4. pirates or other raiders swarm nearby.
  5. it was lost due to a hyperspace mis-jump.
  6. it is guarded by an alien construct.
  7. all the airlocks are on emergency lockdown.
  8. someone rich/powerful keeps it secret.
  9. it is embedded in an asteroid.
  10. it has drifted too far out of the system.
  11. it requires antique access keys/protocols.
  12. there are rumours that it's haunted.
  13. the wreckage is under quarantine.
  14. it is infested with vermin or aliens.
  15. it drifted into solar storms or radiation.
  16. the owning megacorp hushed it up.
  17. military access codes are required.
  18. a decoy hides its real location.
  19. its location is known only to a select few.
  20. a rogue AI guards against intruders.


Image (cc) RadoJavor

The d6 - A group of:

Thursday 7 January 2021

6 more brilliant blog posts from around the web

Some older, some newer. All worthy of your time.

First off, one I stumbled on and used in my Stars Without Number campaign: Coins and Scrolls has a comprehensive - and often hilarious - d500 mutations random table.

Image (cc) MassCreed

Bastionland makes an excellent point about some important key questions, and their answers, around how easily we are able to pick up and play RPGs and game settings.

Another great random table - there are never enough tables - this time Graphite Prime asks "what happened in that town?"

The Grave Robber's Guide asks "How can games teach themselves", which has started off an interesting train of thought in my mind...

I stumbled upon an interesting experiment in reusable dungeons over at Lapidary Ossuary which looks at a problem I am mulling but from the other side.

Papers & Pencils has a whopping SIX d100 dungeon-creation tables up - the rest are linked from this one.

Please support the blogosphere and, of course check out this month's RPG Blog Carnival which is hosted right here!

Monday 4 January 2021

A dynamic, living OSR megadungeon will be my next campaign!

Sometimes things just fall into place.

Having received The Black Hack for Christmas, and enjoyed reading through it, I have had a yearning for doing something old school; a hex crawl, or a megadungeon, or the like.

Along came an excellent series of megadungeon posts at Hobgoblinry (two, three, four, five...) referencing a thought provoking post from Lich Van Winkle on the application of wandering monsters and my fate is sealed. A megadungeon it is.

Friday 1 January 2021

Join the January 2021 Blog Carnival: Characters, Stories, and Worlds

Happy New Year! 

Image (cc) victoriaclare
I'm pleased to be hosting the first RPG Blog Carnival of 2021, to join in simply write a blog post on any of these topics...

  • Character or NPC creation
  • Writing character backstories and motivations
  • How you play interesting/fun characters
  • Plotting campaigns or story arcs
  • Tips or tools for writing adventures
  • Your favourite adventures or setting books
  • Worldbuilding resources or tips
...or any topic of your own choosing that loosely fits the theme.  At the moment I'm particularly interested in how we can build player backstories and goals into the campaign story and world and would love to know how you build your characters, your stories, your worlds.

Leave a comment on this post with a link to your submission, and go check out everyone else's while they check out yours.  At the end of the month I'll wrap up all the submissions in a debrief post and hand over to the next host, so be sure to check them out and take part in February's carnival too!

Not a blogger? If you're inspired to start a relevant thread on Reddit or Discord or a forum or Twitter (etc) then please post a link to it in the comments too!

If you are a blogger and would like to host the Carnival one month, or anyone who wants more information or to view the carnival archives, just head on over to the official RPG Blog Carnival home page on the OfDiceAndDragons blog.

Note: Due to the arcane inner machinery of the Blogger platform, you'll need to add an HTML tag when you comment for your links to show - like so:

<a href="http://plasticpolyhedra.blogspot.com/post-url.html">Name of your blog post</a>

(or just post the URL and I'll sort you a link ;) )

Looking forward to reading your submissions already, and I wish you all a great year!

Please consider indie and small press RPGs, and support the blogosphere.

Image content used that is not original was sourced via creative commons or similar and is used in good faith - and because I love it - however please contact me if there are any issues.