One Page dungeon 2013

Recently I decided to participate in the One Page Dungeon Contest again this year. Quite an interresting contest that tends to yield a lot of curious entries. And if you want to participate, you still have a few days to do so. For more details and information on the contest have a look at it here.

My submission this year is titled "The Mad Riddler's Halls". As the name suggests it is a dungeon based around puzzles and riddles. As suggested in the contest guidlines it is held vague on purpose to make the dungeon mostly system independent. Still I had a hard time fitting it all on a single page. As a little teaser I present you a high resolution blind version of the map for my entry.

To download the image in original size (4400 x 3400 pixels at 400 dpi) please visit my DeviantArt gallery here. The PDF with the full entry can be found here.

Unboxing

Today must be my birthday or Christmas day or both. That is how I feel anyway after the mailman dropped of a nice little parcel from Reaper Miniatures at my doorstep. Of course it did not arrive without warning, after all I received a shipping notice not too long ago. Still I was left speechless for a moment. Then I started opening that little package of miniature goodness, only remembering to get my camera at the last moment. After all I think I should share some unboxing snapshots. Here are the first few:

Box in a box. A classic. Did that to my sister as well last christams.

Packed to the brim, almost overflowing.

Spilling the innards. Some of them anywy ...

Wow! I only opened two of the bags inside the box so far. And I think I might not have enough desk space available to arrange them all once I'm done unpacking. I will try anyway for one final snapshot. Until then I must say that I am mighty glad to have participated in Reaper's Kickstarter.

Toybox Terrors

It has been a while. Not only since I wrote the last post for this blog but since I released my last GSL product for 4E D&D. A few days ago the latter changed. I uploaded another little bestiary of curious creatures to DriveThruRPG. The theme of Toybox Terrors is constructs, little toys or toy like constructs that can be helpful and terrifying at the same time to be a bit more precise. Here is a preview of the cover featuring one of said constructs.

Toybox Terror Cover

If you want to know more about this little booklet of strange creations head over to DriveThruRPG and have a look at the previews there. Now I wonder when inspiration for the next batch of curious creatures will strike me. With pets (Curious Creature) and toys out of the way, what could I do next? Maybe another Dungeon Crawl? I guess it might be a while until my next 4E compatible release.

What would space marines do with trademarks?

Just a short while ago I stumbled over the issue of Games Workshop's "Space Marine" trademark bullying. (Details on the case can be found here or on any one of a dozen news posts and blogs best found by the search engine of your choice). It might not exactly be "news" anymore, but it disturbed me non the less. At first I was speechless, now I am not anymore. I have lost all kind of respect for several companies over this kind of thing before. I'll now add Games Workshop to the list. Note, that I don't dislike trademarks in general, but acquiring a trademark on a term used in popular culture for more than eighty years? No, just no ... Whoever issued GW the trademarks in question. You should be ashamed. Very much so.

Anyway, a lot of people have already said a lot  about the case. Some of those comments are way more qualified than anything I could say, but I am not in the mood to stay quite. This kind of trademark bullying outrages me, not only as a creator of various content but as a customer as well. I am right now seriously ashamed that I ever bought products belonging to any of their merchandises. Sadly I can't undo my actions, but I can make sure not to repeat them. I best remove all remaining GW related products from my Amazon wish list (among others) right away*. Something you might consider doing as well, if you are similarly upset (power of the customer).

In the meantime maybe someone in the US could petition the white house to put some marines into space. I'm sure there is a free room or two on ISS. You know just to let the guys at GW know what space marines are really about? Any takers for the idea?You could of course do anything else legal to let Games Workshop know your displeasure. But, like M.C.A. Hogarth asked, be polite about it. Just don't be silent.

* of course I know that this decision to not buy products associated with their brands anymore might also hurt other companies who work under license. But I don't feel at fault for that at all.

Ruins Contest

Another blog post already? Something must be wrong with me. Anyway, after a short absence I decided to take part in one of the Cartographers' Guild monthly contests again. The theme for the January 2013 challenge is Ruin. Anything from Ruins to ruined maps is supposed to be allowed.

I created a Ruined Castle Battlemap not too long ago, but entries to the challenge have to be made within the month the challenge is issued. Older maps are not viable entries. Still I want to create something similar and decided to make it a.) grander and b.) modular. This means I will create 3d models of various ruined buildings first and arrange them into a ruined village of sorts later. Here are two work in progress snapshots:

Ruined Tower

Ruined Barracks

Obviously the barracks still need to be fisnished as well as several more models I haven't even gotten started on yet to make sure the map doesn't seem too dull. I just hope I'll get it all done before the time for the challenge runs out. Either way the reulting ruins map will be adapted into one of my regualr battlemaps afterwards if everything goes well. Wish me luck!

Yet more Traveller Spaceships

I mentioned the possibility of creating 3d dungeontile models for 3d printing in the last blog post. Right now I am still working on that idea, but I'm only making slow progress. Designing 3d models for print is a bit more demanding than designing models for renders. Thus I am currently only working on the second basic tile. Someone over at the Cartographers' Guild mentioned the possibility of using the printed tiles as masters. Anyone willing to share more thoughts and ideas on that? Anyway I'll get back to that topic once I managed to get a set of basic tiles finished.

In the meantime other things take up a lot of my time. Regular battle map releases and of course designing Traveller compatible spaceships. After the last free release in the latter line I am working on some more spaceship ideas. Right now I have one ship almost finished. Here is a quick snapshot for you:

Spaceship Work in Progress Snapshot

A rather simple design on first glance. Feel free to guess at its weigth class and or purpose. It is due to be released next monday. Of course I'm trying to design more complex space ship models as well. Here are two more snapshots featuring components to be used on the next ship to be released after the one featured above:

Triple Barrel Beam Turret (WIP)

Heat Shield (WIP)

Most future releases in the line will probably be either regular space and starships or small craft. If a particular idea strikes me I might slip in a captial ship or two though. These will remain the exception from the rule though as designing them is a bit more of a hassle. Especially as I have resolved to try and add more detail to my ship designs.

3d Printing Dungeon Tiles

A little while back I spent some time modeling a small set of dungeon tiles with Blender. I first posted some snapshots of these tiles over at the Cartographers' Guild. And later I ended up creating a few dungeon maps with these tiles which can be found at DriveThruRPG and its sister sites.

Dungeon Tiles Snapshot

And while I thought that these tiles looked pretty decent I still wanted something more. This longing was probably rooted in the fact that no matter how nice those tiles looked on screen they couldn't quite measure up to something like the fantastic tiles of Dwarven Forge. It does make a difference after all if you can touch them.

Sadly I'm not much of a sculptor if the sculpting is not done with a 3d modeling software. I blame my clumsy fingers. And for the longest time I did not consider the possibility of having tiles created using a 3d printing service. From the early days of 3d printing it has been rooted into my brain that this process is crazily expensive. Still I decided to look into it again. And while 3d prints are still expensive they are much more affordable now.

And while I have little hope that the prices of 3d printed tiles could match those of cast sets I decided to look into the possibility anyway. The first step will be redesigning those tiles. Design for print is after all something different then design for rendering. A first attempt at such a redesign is the blank 2 x 2 plain floor tile.

Example Tile Redesign

Now I have to look into how expensive such prints would be. I guess I'll try Shapeways first. If one of you can point out a decent competitor I'd be grateful, but from what a quick search on the internet revealed they seem best suited at first glance. Next I'll have to try and assemble at least a little dungeon from printed tiles. And, of course I still need to find out if there is any interrest in such products at all. Having a few tiles for myself is fine, but if other people were interrested in them it would be even better. Thus let me ask you right away, would you be willing to invest into custom printed dungeon tiles? Would the possibility to assemble your own sets tile by tile outweigh the higher cost compared to large sets of cast tiles?

I'm looking forward to some feedback. And just maybe this could become a slightly bigger project for next year.