Paint Night!!! Also Some Maps.

I'm super excited for paint night tonight.  I'm just back from a lovey family vacation, the kiddo is sleeping over at the in-laws and I've got free time to apply paint to miniatures.  The plan is to get one or two rats finished up for use in the Tuesday game.

Also for sharing are a couple maps I drew after being inspired by the blog Dyson's Dodecahedron, which I found out about through Geek and Sundry's Signal Boost! show. They're for locations in an future RPG campaign I'd like to run. Not being an artist myself they're much rougher than I'd like, but I think with some copying and revisions I could make them quite presentable.

A Druid's Home

First up is A Druid's Home. To the east of Dunahara lives a druid.  He keeps entirely to himself, living in the hollow trunk of an enormous tree stump. A stream flows from left to right and a small path cuts across at two shallow points. The trail leading to the stump can be difficult for visitors to find as the druid has encouraged a wall of brambles to grow up around his home. The druid is entirely self sufficient. A patch of bushes provides berries and a small fish trap gives a bit of meat. Anything else the druid might need he gets by transforming into various forest beasts and hunting game.

Dunahara

Dunahara itself is a fishing town of moderate size. A great storm passed through many years ago, sinking a large vessel just off the coast. Many fisherman live in huts practically hanging off the cliff side, but there are a few larger buildings like a tavern and stable. A number of farms in the surrounding area supplement the local diet and economy. The capital lies three days cart ride to the south but less than a day by boat.  Dunahara's fish arrive fresh daily and are much sought after by the capital's citizens.

More Rats

skitter, scratch, stab

Work has been progressing on the rat-folk models for the pathfinder campaign.  The skaven assassin I'm using for my character is almost complete.  He'll be going on the base with the tall archway on it. I've also started putting together a module for pcgen (a fantastic program for creating and tracking a character) that includes some things that we're using in our campaign.  It's got the ironskin spell that we wanted to use but wasn't already in a module.  It's also got some updates to the monk class and ratfolk race for options that we wanted to use but that weren't there.  It's up on github so you can use it if you're interested. Check it out here.

We've got skeleton guards protecting our loot.

I've also put together a map of the dungeon we're currently exploring. We were teleported into it by our employer (and now nemesis) and doors have been slowly opening up, leading to new locations full of folk who want to kill us. I'm no artist, so the tiles were made using a free tileset created by Buch over on OpenGameArt.org. Go here to get it for yourself.


I'm gearing up to start an RPG campaign that I'll be running myself.  The beast trainer adventure that I've mentioned before will be part of that. Right now I'm thinking about how the world works and what the major players are.  To foment conflict I'm looking at having four factions I can draw upon when the players want to be explore in a particular direction. Political, religious, economic and military powers are the broad strokes I'll rely upon to create conflict and tension in the world.

Rats, I'm stuck in a dungeon

Tuesday game night occasionally sees us playing some Pathfinder where the three players in the party are all Ratfolk. We're currently trapped in a dungeon and have plans to take over the whole complex, but first we have to assert our dominance.

Rats!

I was in Portland last weekend and was finally able to pickup a handful of miniatures at Guardian Games to use for the PCs in the campaign. I love Games Workshop's line of Skaven and I was able to find a few that I wanted without having to order online. Instant gratification!

I also picked up a wererat assassin from Reaper's Bones line of miniatures. I knew about Bones but had never purchased any. They really are cheap miniatures, about a tenth of the price of a GW character mini. They aren't high quality, and I don't think any amount of painting skill is going to turn them into display quality. But if you just want some cheap character minis you can use for gaming they're probably not a bad way to go. At about three dollars a pop, though, you're probably better off buying a regiment box from Games Workshop if you need a large number of similar miniatures.

I've gotten a start on painting them up.  One of the PCs is a bomb-tossing alchemist and I was hoping to find an old Poison Wind Globadier but no luck.  I may have to go to the web for that one.

Paaaaaaint Meeeeee!

The Riptide of Joy and Suffering hasn't gotten any love for a few weeks. I've got him sitting on my shelf, staring accusatorily at me. Some day I'll finish him up.

Indie Games at iFest

I ran over to Seattle Center Armory to check out some indie games today at iFEST.  The exhibitors were a mixed lot. There were some actual independent video game developers, an obviously not independent video game developer, a few people there showing off their board or card games and a handful of folks who were trying to get you to sign up for a class or a school to learn how to make video games. A real grab bag.  I did see some games that intrigued me.  Here's a breakdown:

The Rabbit and the Owl by Formal Sheep. This was an intriguing take on the platforming genre where you have two characters, one black and one white, who inhabit the negative spaces of each other's levels and can only affect the other character's space with specific mechanics. It's sort of like a platformer/puzzle version of Ikaruga, but as a cerebral puzzler instead of a frenetic shoot'em up.

Warcube by Haven Made looked interesting.  A low poly action shooter with puzzle elements.  The website shows off some flocking behavior that I didn't see on exhibit in the game, but it had a clear art style and fun looking gameplay.




Tiny bubbles, by Pine Street Code Works, has no website that I can find. They had a simple puzzle game about manipulating soap bubbles by cutting the walls between them or dying them different colors.  Combining and dying the bubbles is the key to completing the various objectives on the board. It looked like there was plenty of content and the gameplay seemed solid, so look for this game to be released soon.

Investigator, by Constance Chen, has you playing Sherlock Holmes-as-Alligator. Plenty of puns and make this a great read.  Constance had probably the best comment I overheard at iFest.  When someone asked her who her intended audience was she said, "Myself. I just like making these things."  The spirit of independent game development in human form.