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  • Heroforge: Lago Ratburgher – Now in Glorious Technicolor

    Posted on February 12, 2021 7:00 am by gdaybloke Comment

    As a roleplayer, it’s often a challenge finding a miniature that’s -just right- to represent my characters. That somewhat changed a few years back when Heroforge started producing customizable miniatures, taking advantage of advances in 3-D printing and designing a fairly robust website that let clients choose just what components they wanted for their figures. Different races, different poses, different equipment loadouts; it quickly became a quick and easy way to design character visuals, and most of my D&D Beyond character sheets have a Heroforge headshot.

    Last year, Heroforge kicked it up a notch by adding custom colorization of your figure, and the option to have your model printed in glorious technicolor. As someone who enjoys the act of painting, this feature didn’t immediately appeal to me personally, but I totally get that there’s a lot of gamers out there who don’t enjoy painting, so for them it as an amazing opportunity.

    Roll it forward to the recent holiday season and early January, and I got older, and my stepson decided he’d like to buy me a Heroforge model. This presented what we in the blogging world call an opportunity. I’m always keen to have more minis in my collection, and now we had a chance to not only get a mini for another of my PC’s, but also to see what Heroforge‘s colored models come out like!

    Enter: Lago Ratburgher, Halfling Rogue drafted into the Ratburgh constabulary to serve as an archer.

    Let’s be clear, this isn’t my first Heroforge model, so I knew to expect possible layer lines from the printer, and we got them. The graininess hasn’t been evident on all of the Heroforge models I’ve painted in the past, but it’s not unknown. The point of all this, though, was to look at the color.

    Realistically I knew not to expect the same lustre and vibrancy that we got on the 3-D render, but I’ll confess I expected a little more than we actually got. The coins on the base are a dull yellow, the arrowhead and helm are greys – it may just be that metallics aren’t really dialed in yet – and the three gemstones on the base are all quite dull.

    Conversely, I was impressed by the precision. Each quilted diamond of the armor has a darker center and lighter edges as portrayed in the render; the blue trim is spot on, as is the trim around the kneepads. There’s even color variation in the skin under his cheekbones.

    What made me smile, oddly enough, was the shiny spot on the helmet. That white spot near the front right of the helm’s crown is present both in the render and on the model – they’ve got color gradation doing a pretty good job of presenting reflective surfaces on steel, even if the coins in the sack do look a little like ravioli. I mean, he -is- a halfling, it’s totally understandable if he’s been looting pasta.

    The verdict?

    As someone who enjoys painting, I will likely not be relying on Heroforge for color printed models. I’ll happily use Heroforge for custom figures, but I’ll tackle the color chores myself – both because painting is a big part of the hobby for me, and because I like my models to have stronger saturation. For a non-painter, though, someone who may not be into painting ? The color service provides a simple, straightforward way to put your favorite character on the tabletop.

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    Painting Reviews RPGs 📎and tagged D&D Heroforge
  • Okay, who ordered the one-eyed mouselord?

    Posted on January 18, 2021 7:00 am by gdaybloke Comment

    When I first started into miniature painting, I had a small Prince August rubber mold and a spool of solder. I heated it on the stove in a little pan, poured the solder into the mold, and came out with a little viking. His axe looked more like a mace, and in retrospect the paintjob was absolutely terrible, but I was proud of it. Now we scroll forward through literal decades of modeling history and we have some ridiculously cutting edge sculpts out there, be they cast in metal, plastic or resin. The hobby has come an awfully long way, and with the rise in popularity of 3D printers, creative types can not only make amazing things for themselves but they can share them with a hungry audience through Patreon subscriptions and other services.

    While many are quick to jump on STL files, though, some of us still prefer to have our models professionally produced (even if only because we don’t own high quality printers of our own). The latest Kickstarter by Broken Anvil is a good example, where the models are being made available both as physical models, or as STL files for those with printers.

    This kickstarter also showcases another perk of the changing way we get miniatures. Traditionally, most miniature companies produced core models, common models, popular models. I can’t blame them at all – being companies and being dependent on sales to continue to exist – but the flipside is that some monsters, some character variants, even some models for major wargames never saw production, or if they did it was only in limited runs.

    For example, how many models are out there for Dragonborn characters for Dungeons and Dragons? How many bugbears? Until recent years when GW started pumping out models for their Hobbit tabletop minis game, there was even a dearth of halfling models, especially when compared to the big three – humans, elves and dwarves.

    For the monster side, until we started getting Reaper’s Bones lines and the deep cuts, how many Bullettes? How many Umber Hulks? Heck, R.A. Salvatore pumped up the popularity of the drow and the Underdark in a massive way, but if you wanted to get drow and drider miniatures you really had to go digging.

    The Dungeon Delvers kickstarter presents gorgeously sculpted mousefolk perfect for a Mouse Guard RPG, a bunch of fungal fiends, dark dwarves, subterran monstrosities, and a bunch of frogfolk that will be perfect for Bullywugs in your next campaign.

    Back when I started playing games there was pretty much no chance I’d be able to find a miniature suitable to use for a myconid, let alone attendants to Zuggtmoy as the party came up against her soporific majesty, but now we have a channel through with the most wonderfully bizarre and corner case concepts can be made real.

    Don’t even get me started on the Geomancer they’ve got in their stretch goals, that’s an awesome looking piece.

    This is such an awesome time to be a creative type in the tabletop gaming industry, and there are some wonderful opportunities for the rest of us to support those creative types, and benefit from their art. Follow your favorite sculptors on social media, and let them know when a project they’re working on tickles your fancy!

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    RPGs
  • John Carter of Mars

    Posted on May 17, 2019 7:00 am by gdaybloke Comment

    Want an underrated movie that was completely mismarketed but just plain fun? John Carter should be on your radar. Want a series of classic man-out-of-his-element science fiction tales? John Carter should be on your radar. Interested in an RPG set on a distant world full of savage beasts and brutal culture while at the same time graced with alien beauty and grace? John Carter should be on your radar. But what do I know… let’s ask Lostie Rorschach.

    rorschach80

    Why John Carter?

    Why would Modiphius – or anyone – make an RPG about John Carter, Warlord of Mars in 2019? Someone who’d never read the books might think of him as the “Martian Tarzan”. And possibly have images in their heads from the Frazetta pulp art of a half-clad, Conan-looking dude, holding a sword with a bikini’d Princess swooning at his feet. Or maybe they saw the ill-fated Disney film, but were mystified or lost interest when it “flopped” (a whole article in itself, with wide-ranging effects).

    Whatever the source of their impression, chances are non-book readers have a negative view of the material as non-scientific kid’s stuff, juvenile, derivative, and sexist. One young viewer I know even accused it of “ripping off AVATAR”.

    I corrected him sternly, and for all the others, they are terribly WRONG.

    • For the science of the day, Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) got Gravity pretty right, having John make fantastical leaps and demonstrate great strength from being used to only Earth gravity. That same concept would get re-used decades later for a guy named Kal-El
    • There are moral themes that John grapples with that any parent should be proud to have their kid reading about. Just his internal debates about the brutal Thark culture versus our own absolutely resonate with today’s world … or even with John’s own Civil War origins.
    • If someone can legit say John Carter is derivative, please make the argument. It’s inspired a ridiculous amount of follow on material, but aside from Verne and Wells, it was there first.
    • As for the gender politics, *as written*, Dejah Thoris is probably the most empowered female character of early 1900s fiction. She has agency, intelligence, courage, leadership, and loyalty…all without the Earth-born superpowers that put John Carter closer to being an actual “Mary Sue”. There’s a reason the first book is named for her, and not John Carter.

    The eleven John Carter novels and many associated stories represent fiction decades ahead of its time, forming a baseline of the pulp genre and all that followed. It’s hard to say we’d even have comics and science fiction and then gaming the same way we do, if not for the John Carter series. As far as influences, the John Carter series inspired the likes of Carl Sagan, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert Heinlein. I could go on, but I’ll urge those who’d argue to find and listen to the excellent audiobook introduction by Finn JD John to “A Princess of Mars”.

    So the real question to me is, “Why did such an RPG take so long to happen?”

    Continue reading → Post ID 20761

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    Modiphius Reviews RPGs
  • Atlas Animalia

    Posted on September 21, 2018 7:00 am by gdaybloke Comment

    I’ll be among the first to admit they’re something of a purist when it comes to their games. When I play Warmachine, I like to play pure faction, sans mercenaries. When I played VS System, my favourite decks were single team (with one or two notable exceptions). When it comes to RPGs, I like to lean on official resources. Part of it is simply acknowledging that if anyone ever let me come up with my own rules for things, they’d likely be imbalanced as heck. When I started DM’ing D&D again, after over 20 years of, well, not, I picked up the PH, the DMG, the MM, so on and so forth, but when I found Metal Weave’s Baby Bestiaries on Kickstarter I couldn’t resist backing them. Two absolutely stunning hardcover volumes written as guides to raising infant versions of all sorts of stereotypical fantasy gribblies. We alway see grown Owlbears, what about the cubs? Nascent shambling mounds? Diminutive Umber Hulks, not yet grown into their carapaces? The idea fascinated me, and I was thrilled to add the books to my library. Likewise, when they announced Atlas Animalia, it was a no-brainer for me to click the link.

    Metal Weave’s books – at least, the ones I own – are supplements to help breathe life into your fantasy campaigns. The Baby Bestiaries asked where all the baby monsters were, and provided all sorts of information on the care and feeding of Hydra Snakelets, freshly hatched Dragon Turtles, and more, giving you a wonderful resource for that druid in the party that’s super keen to raise their own pet Bulette, or the ranger that really wants to establish ties with a local Harpy nest. With Atlas Animalia they take it another step further.

    Everyone with a grounding in fantasy RPGs knows about Owlbears, but what if your game is set in a polar climate? How about an Asiatic setting? Atlas Animalia introduces owlbear variants tapping into Great Horned Owls, Sun Bears, Pandas and Polar Bear. Our own natural world has astounding subspecies of animals, why shouldn’t your fantasy setting?

    Continue reading → Post ID 20761

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    D&D RPGs 📎and tagged Atlas Cockatrice D&D
  • The RPG experience spectrum ramble

    Posted on April 25, 2018 7:00 am by gdaybloke Comment

    Trundling across my social media feed in the last few days has been word that White Wolf Entertainment, hallmark of RPGs in the 1990s, has teamed up with our pals at Modiphius to release a new version of Vampire: The Masquerade. You can read more about it here – Linky! – but word on the streets is that you’ll be able to put in pre-orders later this month, for delivery as early as August. This put me in mind of the Vampire game I played back in the old country (and the Werewolf game and the D&D game) and as I pondered the roleplaying of yesteryear and thoughts blended with the D&D group I’m DM’ing for right now, I felt a little rambly.

    I’ve had the discussion a few times recently about roleplaying games, why we play them and the way we play them. When I was a feckless teen (as opposed to the feckless old fart I am now) there was a degree of escapism, but over the years it’s really a source of creative expression, of developing camaraderie. Of intellectual and social dynamic experimentation. Of hypothetical problem solving.

    As a player, when I sit down to play I am working together with my fellow players to overcome the challenges set by the Dungeon Master, Storyteller, Games Master, or whatever other term is in use. We have to work together with whatever limited resources we have available, with the tools and abilities our characters have, to unravel the puzzles, overcome the obstacles, defeat the villains, and together, we play a part in a much larger story.

    Continue reading → Post ID 20761

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    RPGs
  • IKRPG: The Monsternomicon

    Posted on October 2, 2014 7:00 am by gdaybloke Comment

    The Iron Kingdoms Roleplaying Game (IKRPG) has a long and storied history dating all the way back to the Witchfire Trilogy for the d20 system. That’s 2001, people. Do you even remember what you were up to in 2001? It was my second year in Canada and for the bulk of the year, Gdaysheila and I were working up to the arrival of Gdaygirl. Is it any wonder, given how much time has passed, how many new and shiny toys Privateer Press has given us over the years, that new releases for the IKRPG are among the most desired? Doesn’t matter if you’re not an RPG fan, all it takes is a fondness for the setting. If you play Warmachine or Hordes of the tabletop, if you flip cards for High Command, if you’re a Keyboard ‘Caster for Warmachine: Tactics, there’s entertainment awaiting inside the cover of any IKRPG volume. If you’re a roleplayer, well, there’s not a lot more that I can say to you that you don’t already feel – It’s new book time!

    The Monsternomicon was pre-released at Gencon 2014 and was one of the first things to sell out. It certainly didn’t hurt that there was an exclusive Pistol Wraith pin of our friend on the cover here. While not as thick a tome as the previous IKRPG volumes, it’s nonetheless full of gribblies to make the lives of your RPG participants heck.

    Continue reading → Post ID 20761

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    Hordes Reviews RPGs Warmachine 📎and tagged Arboreal Cannibals Dragonspawn Mindbending RPG Undead
  • A Cunning Plan: Achtung! Cthulhu review pt 2

    Posted on September 22, 2014 7:00 am by Dale Kunz 1 Comment

    rorschach80

    Achtung Cthulhu : Keeper’s Guide to the Secret War

    Greetings Programs!

    Yes, a full 6 months later, I’m finally getting to Part 2. I won’t bore you with my excuses, but hey, I’m still producing faster that George RR Martin. For those who’ve forgotten, you can find Part 1 by clicking the end of this sentence.

    So someone in your gaming group would be the one to act as Game Keeper, devise the adventures, hoard the secrets, and generally works
    their best to drive the players insane. The volume at hand is ably suited to assist those efforts. Some world continuity is doled out,
    but by and large, the Keeper’s Guide is simply stuffed to the gills with tools for an industrious Keeper to shape around his own ideas. SO
    much is here, its easiest to tackle in order.

    ACKGcover

    Much like the Player’s Guide, the Keeper’s guide opens with a couple of excellent timelines. The first is labeled as the secret history of
    WWII. It does a delightful job of juxtaposing the major events of the war alongside a wide range of occult and supernatural occurrences.
    Proximity does not mean causality, but readers are left to make their own connections. Some very useful real-world facts are here, some
    about real-world notable in the occult. And they’re blended so well with the in-game facts, you’ll have trouble telling them apart!
    The second timeline proceeds from within Germany itself, from an interior point-of-view, and includes far more in-game knowledge about the founding and growth of occult forces within Hitler’s Germany.

    Continue reading → Post ID 20761

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    Reviews RPGs 📎and tagged Achtung! Cthulhu Sidecars Squidface
  • Gday At GenCon: Iron Kingdoms Unleashed

    Posted on August 28, 2014 7:00 am by gdaybloke 3 Comments

    So there I was, Saturday of GenCon, and my host – Ninja Steve – and his stalwart companion Cromusz said “Hey, we’ve got spots in the Iron Kingdoms Unleashed demo today!” and I recalled that pal Rudy had mentioned there were occasional empty seats at the demos…

    After figuring out exactly which hotel I needed to be in (man, the number of times I found myself not knowing just which corridor to walk down…) I sauntered into the room and found this handsome chap with a spot at his table.

    GCSaturday31

    Iron Kingdoms Unleashed demo with none other than Privateer’s head quill-wielder, Mr Doug Seacat? Why yes, thank you, I think I will…

    [SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers from the IK Unleashed demo scenario. Consider yourself  warned if you’re sensitive to that kind of thing.]

    Continue reading → Post ID 20761

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    Field Reports Reviews RPGs 📎and tagged Bog Trog Gator IKRPG Seacat Stabbity Tharn Trollkin
  • Gday at GenCon: The Second Bit

    Posted on August 22, 2014 7:00 am by gdaybloke 1 Comment

     So the first part – posted yesterday – showed the leadup to GenCon and Friday’s adventures. Now it’s time to look at Saturday, and my subsequent trip home on Sunday.

    As with any good adventure in which I am prone to take part, baked goods feature. This may be because of my superpower – the ability to subconsciously detect baked goods in the vicinity, especially around my workplace. No banana bread is safe!

    I awoke Saturday morning to be greeted by LostHemiCupcakes, made with love and peanut butter by the Admiral herself. I don’t know about you, but to me? That’s pretty bloody awesome.

    Continue reading → Post ID 20761

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  • Gday At GenCon: The First Bit

    Posted on August 21, 2014 7:00 am by gdaybloke 1 Comment

    Alright, we’re going to cheat a little. The first few photos here are from stuff that happened before my Friday at GenCon, but they were part of kickstarting my GenCon experience, so they’re getting included.

    Wednesday I was still in the office, and my phone  buzzed. It was a text from Faultimus Von Durmstrang. More significantly, it was a picture of his Press Gang coin. I was being challenged by text. It was 10AM and I was in the office, so Faultie was clearly hoping I would be coin-less and thus that I would owe him a beer at GenCon.

    Dude, this thing lives in my wallet 24-7. Faultie owed me a beer. Also, I apparently hadn’t shaved that morning. Ladies.

    Continue reading → Post ID 20761

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