Bones Galladon, Male Wizard

I'm going to be running a Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition game in December and am getting some Player Characters ready in advance. This is the first, Galladon the Enchanter of Emberwood.  I didn't want him to look like Gandalf so went for a blue theme and tried out illuminating the first letter on the scroll like in ancient religious manuscripts.  I think it worked ok.

I'm going to have seven players for this game and I don't hink any of them have played 5th Edition yet so it'll be a bit of a challenge but the system is really good and i'm sure they'll enjoy the adventure I have planned for them.

Originally I intended to run a humorous game and have the players play Goblins, Orcs or even an Ettin (the Ettin was going to be played by two players who would argue over what to do each round) but when I put some thought into it I realised that the funniest encounters have never been written to be funny but became that way due to the players themselves.

With that in mind, the seven characters i'm making up will be fairly stereotypical and hopefully the players will breathe life into them.  

What do you think?  Are deliberately funny adventures more amusing than the serious ones that get derailed by crazy players?

World Works Games: Terraclips Dungeon Essentials

My son has been sitting on a big pile of cash since his birthday in November, he considered buying some Lego but in the end after a trip to our local games store he decided that he wanted the Terraclips Dungeon Essentials pack from World Works Games.  I think these sets are particularly well suited for Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and most fantasy Savage Worlds settings. 

This pack wasn't cheap at £35.00 but you do get a pretty good selection of push out card floors, walls, doors and a few bits of dungeon scenery.  There's enough to build three or four decent sized rooms with corridors, stairs and doors.

What you don't get however, is the plastic clips to hold the pieces together.  You have to buy these separately for another £12.50.  World Works Games is pretty up front about them not being included and you could glue the parts together but that would defeat the purpose of modular card stock scenery.

In its favour, this pack is visually quite impressive, the parts fit together well both mechanically and artistically and there are lots of different ways to build dungeons with it.  There are two other sets in the Terraclips Dungeon Rise range, Vaults of Ruin and Prison of the Forsaken, with all three sets I imagine you can make some very impressive dungeon lairs and there are other compatible sets for a sewer system, marketplace and various buildings.

The set is also quite practical for the weekly gamer, it can be cleared away or transported easily, not something I can say about resin scenery!  But fundamentally the price is quite a considerable barrier.  The full set of Dungeon Rise will cost you just under £150.00.  If you add on a pack of each the other sets you'll be looking at £300.00 in total which is pretty steep, but I suspect you'll have everything you'll ever need when it comes to fantasy scenery.  

Weird War Adventure Game Report

The Evil Mastermind Stahl-Mask with Hitler and his aides in Paris 1940

Hi everyone, as promised here are some more pictures from the first Weird Wars Episode which we finally played two weeks ago.

Pvt Skoneiczny lies in wait for the Zombies

The game session was six hours long with a break for pizza half way through.  Overall it went really well but I was concerned that it felt a bit rushed despite the players telling me it was fine.  In hindsight I think I should have split the game up into two sessions and let the players figure out more for themselves and find their own solutions.

As it was I ran the game like a car chase, the action carried on from one scene to the next without much time to draw breath, it was exciting and kept the tension high (as did the the background music and sound effects).  

If your think you might play this game please stop reading now! 

Deep in occupied France Professor Ulrich Von Samstagg is trying, under the supervision of SS-Sturmbannführer (Major) Stahl-mask  to create immortal Nazi Super soldiers.  Stahl-Mask intends to use the twisted genius to gain immortality and invulnerability for himself and invulnerability for his trusted minions and to then overthrow Hitler.

Von Samstagg had in fact accidentally created a Zombie Serum and one of his Test Subjects (a 14yr old French boy, Pierre) escaped and started infecting a horde of Zombies.  They are classic Rage Zombies with rudimentary intelligence and a pack mentality and Pierre wants revenge on the Germans.

The heroes were an odd bunch.  

A small selection of Lars Lukas'
(fictional) movie posters

The leader, half Scottish half Norwegian Captain Lars Lukas was a big name in Norway's film industry and although practically unknown outside his homeland is convinced he is as heroic as his film roles despite comprehensively failing to have the necessary skills.  

His second in command, Lt. St. John Smythe followed the more traditional route to command, he went to Eton, Sandhurst and was commissioned an officer.  He has the all the skills for leading men in combat except for the charisma to actually make them want to follow.

The Heroes and their Resistance
allies prepare to hold off the Zombies

Next was Corporal Ken Cambell, a Tank driver without a tank.  Most of the British Army's tanks were abandoned at Dunkirk and Ken was rather resentful of having to join a 'normal' unit.

The Zombie horde gets closer

Private Garath Evans is somewhat predictably a Welshman.  As the Units sniper he was equipped with the superb De Lisle silenced carbine, and a terrible welsh accent.

Captaion Lukas leaps onto the
wall to inspire his men

Private James 'Jimmy' Dobbs, a tough man from the East End of London, despite being a good soldier he has secrets that he takes care to keep quiet.

The Heroes fall back just before being overrun.
Leaving Pvt Skonieczny cut off and surrounded!

And finally, Private Aleksander Skonieczny, a rather vicious Polish soldier who had seen Steel Mask order his family's murder, he had tracked the evil mastermind across Europe and joined the French Resistance for the chance of revenge.

A German patrol is ambushed by the Horde

During the chaos Pvt Evans leaps aboard
the Halftrack and opens fire on the
Horde and the Germans with the MG34

The adventure started with the group getting a dressing down from their CO for getting involved in a punch up with some Canadians in the pub.  Another officer rescues them and they're sent to RAF Tempsford for special training and a mission.  After their briefing at the Airfield they are parachuted into occupied France and join up with the resistance (cue the obligatory pretty french Resistance leader) and they head cross county through a forest to Chateau Montbrun.  

On the way one of the Resistance members goes missing and shadowy forms are seen from the corners of the heroes eyes.  Once they reach the edge of the forest they realise they are being stalked by 30 or so Zombies and they engage in a fighting retreat to a nearby farmhouse where they hold out till morning.

With the dawn comes a German Patrol who get jumped by the Zombies and the heroes take the chance to grad the patrol's half-track and race the the Chateau.  They infiltrate the castle (my group dressed up in the patrol's uniforms) and neutralize the guards.

Doktor Von Samstagg before and
after he injects his super-serum

On the first floor they encounter Von Samstagg and who injects himself with his latest Super-serum which doesn't work as well as he hopes, the heroes fight and kill Von Samstagg only to find that Stahl-Mask has escaped in his rocket powered escape ship.

The full adventure is available on request.

Weird War II adventure final preparations

With my eagerly anticipated (at least by me!) Weird War II game imminent I finally got my act together and finished off the last few miniatures I had taking up space on my painting table.

Just a quick note.  I know the British Royal Marine Commandos wore Green Berets and the Paratroop Regiment wore Red, these models are intended to represent a fictional unit similar to the SAS (who wore also wore red in Europe at that time) and for that reason their Berets are a different colour.

I had three French Resistance soldiers (from Artizan Designs) to complete and one of them is to represent a player character.  The kneeling figure with several days stubble will be Dave's Polish soldier.  I also painted another British Commando bringing the full complement of player character models to six.

Not much more to say at the moment, I want to share the details of the characters and the plot they'll be facing on Sunday but I don't want to spoil the surprise for my players so you'll just have to wait!

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.

Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures

Games Workshop Griffin Rider

I've been concentrating on preparing figures for my next game, a Weird War II adventure using ther Savage Worlds system.  But i've painted quite a few figures for our Dungeons & Dragons games.  Using figures just makes life so much easier for everyone and helps to focus our imagination.

Games Workshop Griffin Rider

The first figure i'm going to share is my Paladin mounted on his trusty Griffin. I was particularly pleased with how well this came out.  I'm not the best painter in the world by a very wide margin, but I enjoy it and like what I produce.  I won't win any competitions but the standard I can manage is perfectly fine for a table top game between friends.

For main player characters and big nasty Non Player Characters (especially recurring Nemesis types) I generally prefer good quality figures from Reaper Miniatures or Hasslefree.

However, there a huge number of good miniature makers out there and i'd encourage you to try some of the smaller companies like Crooked Dice Games Studios and anything at all from Foundry Miniatures Fantasy ranges which includes everything from Elves, Knights, Orcs, 2000AD characters and the excellent Street Violence range.

As is usual when preparing figures for a tabletop game, your probably going to spend a lot more time on the player characters than on the poor unfortunate grunts they're going to be beating up.  Which is a good thing because you'll probably need a lot of grunts.  I've painted loads of Orcs, Dwarves, Humans and Dark Elves for our games and I feel its important that they look good without taking so much time that they're not ready when you need them.

I really like Mantic for the rank & file NPCs, you just get so much for your money.  For £20 you can often get up to 30 figures and the quality is very good.  Admittedly the range of poses is limited but its never bothered us in our games so far.

Another good place to get large numbers of figures is of course Ebay.  I picked up a job lot of Lord of the Rings Orcs and Rohirrim which i've painted in a more Dungeons and Dragons style.  Cheap well sculpted figures that fill up your GM's dungeon nicely but don't break the bank.

I suspect this blog is read by me and me alone, but it serves its purpose to remind me of my progress and achievements.  If anyone else stumbles over it and gets some enjoyment or inspiration then that's a bonus!

Brains....Brains....:Nazi Zombies on the Rampage

Ok so i've decided on which Zombies to use.  I've got some Mantic Ghouls I painted for our D&D adventures which will work really well as French villager zombies and i've ordered some additional Zombie Nazi's from West Wind.

I'm looking forward to painting those as they look really detailed and Zombies are always fun to paint.

 I also have 3 Mantic Zombies given to me for free by the owner of Krackers (the same game shop where it all started nearly 3 decades ago!).

Once they're all painted i'll have a horde of over 30 of the things to chase the players around with.  Add these to the dozen German soldiers and i've got plenty of opposition to throw at them.

Heroclix Hulk

I've also picked out this Heroclix Hulk I repainted as an Ogre for the same D&D game.

It'll work really well (in fact much better) as the transformed Dr Klomp. 

I've nearly finished the SAS (European) figures that will represent the players, then I need to paint the Resistance.  By the time i'm done with those the West Wind Zombies should have arrived.