New Commandos painted, Inspiration and taking Tabletop to the next level

Artizan S.A.S (Europe)

Well the first four Commandos are done.  I'll need at least two more for the group though as i'll have six players for the game.  

With fantasy figures the colour choices are always down to your imagination and choice, but with a semi historic game it's always best to find some guidance online.  

For these figures I used a photo of some SAS Re-enactors.  The advantage is that re-enactors are pretty strict about getting things right and the photo is in colour (not easy to find real colour  photos of WW2 SAS uniforms you see!)

Some very well turned out Re-enactors

We're also going to break our usual routine and instead of our usual 7pm - 10pm playing slot we're going to go for a longer afternoon into evening session.

The main reason for this is that one of our friends, Roy, will be travelling an hour to get to us (thats dedication!) and it makes sense to make the session longer so his trip isn't wasted.

Roy's approach to DMing has influenced mine greatly.  He puts a lot of effort and planning into his preperation which I didn't used to do but now can't imagine doing it any other way.  The difference between a standard adventure and one with background music, special sound effects, miniatures and props is really significant and its really not hard to achieve.

Imagine these two examples:

1. Six players are sat around the table in a brightly lit room. Some are eating snacks and there's a conversation going on between two of the players about something unconnected with the game. 

2. Six players are sat around the table lit only by flickering candlelight.  Sinister sounding music plays in the background just loud enough to be heard and the sounds of wind blowing through trees can be heard. 

For my Weird War II game i'm working on the figures but i've also prepared the sound track i'll be using, some WWII style playing cards (Savage Worlds uses them to determine initiative) and some spent brass bullet cartridges to use as Bennies.  Theres still more to do, i'd really like to print out ID cards for each player and period character photos for each player and I need to think about what background ambient noises would add to the atmosphere.

I'll update with more of my evil plans soon.