Graph Paper Games

Last night I got the first phase of my fieldstone modular dungeon painted with its mid-tone color, "Gleaming Tan" by Valspar.  The lighter color really makes a difference.  There is just one more layer of paint after this one--a highlight layer of bone white. I've already begun work building the second phase of the dungeon--mostly larger rooms with more options. Comments welcome!

The past couple of weeks saw the gaming group launch two new games--one just in the trial period, the other for a longer haul. My friend John ran Unity , which is still in Beta from a Kickstarter project.  The game is a techno-fantasy RPG heavily influenced by sources like Final Fantasy and RWBY.  There's a lot of anime/cinematic action with over-the-top powers and a strong reward for colorful descriptions of what your PC is doing.  We played the sample game in the world of RWBY, which is a favorite of mine and the kids.  It's a little reminiscent of 4th Ed D&D with at-will powers, powers that drain a pool of points (e.g. mana or focus) and daily abilities.  I kind of like the popcorn style of 4E and this was a good lighthearted game.  Hopefully I can provide a more in-depth review later. I also kicked off my D&D campaign "Down Among the Dead Men," a gothic-horror megadungeon.  Looks like I have seven players, which I'll cull down to fiv...

I have all the pieces from Phase One of the fieldstone modular dungeon painted with the darkest basecoat.  The pieces will have three layers: a dark layer painted over the entire thing ("Cowboy Boots" from Valspar), a terracotta-colored main layer that shows the dark color in the crevices, and a bone-colored highlight layer.

In the past, I have built a modular dungeon, which for those who don't know is a terrain collection used to depict a stereotypical dungeon layout for a fantasy roleplaying game.  I use pieces cast from Hirst Arts molds.  My previous one was primarily done with the Smooth Floor Tile and Wizard Wall molds, and was composed of small pieces that required a lot of assembling.  That almost took up too much time and stalled gameplay. I decided that I would build another dungeon, one that was less flexible than the gothic modular one, but easier to set up during the game.  I also decided I would use a different mold series from Hirst Arts.  I went with the "fieldstone" series of molds, which are on oldie but a goodie when it comes to Hirst Arts.  The accessories are not as detailed or numerous as the gothic line, but look good and are easy to cast. In planning the project, I went with phases of development, with the idea that I could expand the series in steps...

The title pretty much says it all. In my last post I was all "oh there's nothing going on and what am I going to blog about?"  Then one of the two people planning on running a game in my gaming group has decided to postpone his plans until later this year.  The other GM is running a game with a small, limited number of players, so the torch has been passed (back) to me to run something for my big, honking, inconsistent gaming group! So the first session will be sometime in late January, which means I've got a few weeks to pull something together.  I'm pretty sure I'm ready to stop running Bash , because it is just not holding the group's attention.  Or rather, some people are into it, but many are not. With the other game being Star Trek , I'm loathe to run science fiction, to avoid comparisons, although running a game featuring the decimated Resistance in Star Wars sounds like a lot of fun.  I've found that those games are hard to run wi...

Eighteen posts.  Which is, to date, the most sparse amount of production I've had since the blog began.  There were literally months (e.g. May, September) when I didn't post at all. And I can not even claim I was busy on other blogs, since my companion blog to this one, The Army Collector , had virtually no posts to speak of. The short reason I've mentioned before: I got divorced, moved twice, had my life turn upside-down six or seven times, etc.  I did, in fact, do some gaming in there.  Ran quite a few sessions of Bash , played in an old WEG Star Wars campaign, Baker Street , and LUG's Star Trek RPG.  But I tend to write less as a player than as a GM, because I'm uncomfortable speaking about other people's games lest I appear critical of my friends. And really, they are all doing a very good job, with their own style of play. So what happens in 2018? I'm continuing to work on a large modular dungeon based on the Hirst Arts fieldstone line of mo...