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Post by tauster on Feb 6, 2018 16:32:36 GMT
One key element that is totally missing from the Dwarven Mine terrain set is railroads. Can't have a decent 'dwarven mine' adventure without a cahse in mining carts over broken racks. Yes, I'm looking at you, Professor Jones! Seriously, watch this clip. It is movie history, and it has several metric tons of glorious inspiration for terrain builders, even a very nice rock face at the end. So I hunted ebay for old H0 tracks and eventually got lucky:  The guy also sold some houses for cheap, and even though the scale is slightly off (compare the house sizes with Lady Forscale on razor's edge above, and in front of a lovely water mill below), I think I can still use them. There are no scale-nazis on my table, so I now have enough house for a small city street corner. Probably going to paint them over sometime, but that's no priority project.  The Station building will probably be ripped apart as I want to make a mold of the front and back. I could use those either for new buildings or for broken ruins.  So there's a new challenge: - How to make dwarven railroad track pieces that are more or less modular? I want to put them together just losely and in flexible configurations, certainly not as perfect as on a real model railroad board, but I also don't want to attach them permanently to each other. - I'm aiming for a battered and tattered look, partially ruined but still usable at high risk. I have neither any use for well-maintained tracks nor would it make sense in Tethyamar, where the dwarves have been driven out two centuries ago. Oh, and of course I need something like this:   I don't think dwares would buil their tracks on a rickety wooden framework like the ones in the Temple of Doom, so how should it really look? Any ideas are more than welcome! |
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Post by sgtslag on Feb 6, 2018 17:47:35 GMT
I believe the Dwarves would use iron/steel. Wood is something they would have to trade outsiders for, and they would need a lot of it! Otherwise, you could come up with wood-like mushrooms, which grow in the caverns. With that, your imagination can make them look as desired: smooth, no grain; grain, like wood (might as well go with wood, then...); something else, unique, or based on 'grain' found in mushroom stalks?
Alternatively, the Dwarves could sculpt supports out of stone, like an artistic sculptor, removing excess rock to liberate the desired design within. Cheers!
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Post by tauster on Feb 6, 2018 18:15:55 GMT
Thanks for the input, that certainly helped. I also realized that those two screenshots above might point me in a workable direction: The tracks are build very close to the vertical tunnel walls. So I could make some dungeon wall pieces with tracks on - they would require only relatively small support bracing below them, going diagonally into the rock wall. Food for though... Keep the ideas coming!  [edit] Take a look at the geometry of the vaults of realworld salt mines. Very inspirational! gizmodo.com/15-incredible-underground-salt-mines-hidden-deep-below-1570065606/all    |
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Post by erho on Feb 6, 2018 21:22:40 GMT
Looks great!
Seems like those are 15mm buildings, same scale as the battery operated Thomas the tank engine toys and accessories.
Keep us posted!!
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Post by sgtslag on Feb 6, 2018 23:07:08 GMT
Sidebar...
Visited salt mines in Germany, a few years ago. They have switched to pumping the mine full of water, to dissolve the salt. Then they pump the brine solution out, and evaporate the water out of the brine solution, to recover the salt. I believe they replace the brine solution with something, to prevent cave-in's, but I don't remember the full details.
They have older mine shaft areas open for touring, which is what I went through. Nothing like what you have pictures of... That is uber-cool! Also very inspiring for what is possible for Dwarven craftsmen to create. The layering is gorgeous to see. Lots of eye candy in your photo's. Thanks for sharing. Cheers!
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Post by tauster on Feb 7, 2018 5:10:06 GMT
Never been to a salt mine, have to remember that next time we plan holidays...
My main inspiration in the pics above (there's much more of them in the link!) is the geometry of the angles. I think that the designers of the LotR and Hobbit movies took inspiration on such pics when they designed dwarven stuff. Very similar!
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Post by tauster on Feb 18, 2018 1:59:16 GMT
2 o'clock in the morning and I just said goodnight to the players of the Mithril Legion. We had the best game night in several years (at least I had because I play only once every few months nowadays) and made some great progress, story-wise. I'll do a detailed report sometime later, here's some quick points. (I may edit this post later on) None of the 8 PC died (4 players with 2 dwarven characters each) and only 2 of the 10 remaining (out of 30 or so) NPC dwarven comrades were lost. The two barbarians used a giant ogre cannon successfully (and very amusingly). It does a lot of damage but two barbarians and two more NPC dwarves are required to operate it properly so it balances out in the end. They could probably do more damage when fighting individually, but if you can fire a giant cannon longer than two dwarves high, you don't calculate. You fire that big cannon. [edit]See next posting for thoughts on that big cannon.[/edit]They encountered once again the annoying green dragon kiddo that had pestered them in the previous session. They lost two dwarves to his breath weapon and had a hard time when they had to fight the hoard itself when the dragon animated the piles of his treasure into golemlike statues. Being showered in gold and gems is no fun when you get grit blasted by the riches. The dwarves finally clobbered the four glittering creatures into inanimate coins but failed once again to slay that annoying green dragon kiddo who could flee deeper into Tethyamar. They grabbed the gems, left the small mountains of gold behind with a heavy heart and followed the little dragon. [/edit]See here how I made the dragon hoard guardians. The players totally loved the idea of fighting animated treasure. These critters are ridiculously easy to make:
1) Take a cheap mini you like. Something artificial-looking or golem-like works well, but you could take almost everything as long as is not too delicate. If you craft your own shape, you don't have to make it too detailed because of step two:
2) Basepaint it in gold, let it dry and glue on some gems and a few patches glitter here and there.
3) This one is optional but too cool not to make if you ask me: Make a few 'treasure spray/explosion' markers. I cut out small bits of a flexible plastic bottle (shampoo bottles work great), textured them with hotglue and glued them to a small neodym as 'base'. Then I repeted step 2 (see above). I glued another magnet on the outstretched hand of the mini (take care to get polarity right!) and hid the magnet under the paint.
Initially put the mini on the table unarmed, then click on that *ahem* golden shower marker (scnr!) and grit-blast the party with gold. [/edit]  [edit]It was no surprise that they absolutely loved the adorable little dragon mini, even though it was a pain in the behind and had just killed two dwarves. It is just too cute![/edit] When they followed the dragon a day later, they came to a tunnel fork: One tunnel where a light breeze came from and one with still air. They took the former and after an uneventful half-day of travel rested. Duting the rest two giant demonic werewolfes (some kind of barghest) attacked. It was a hard fight in a tight tunnel, one of the beasts very nearly choked and punched the life out of one of the barbarians before they chopped it down. The pair ate ungodly amounts of damage, and the players realized that they wouldn't stand a chance against a larger party of these creatures, so they went that half-day travel back and took the other road of the fork. After another half-day of travel they stood before a giant double-wing gate made of what the party's senior smith identified as some kind of adamantium alloy. At the same time his conventional smelting wisdom sayd that adamantium can't be alloyed, which could mean only one thing: They had found the legendary Forbidden Forges. I described it roughly the same way I did earlier in this thread, and the players immediately realized that they had found the equivalent of an nuclear bunker, still filled with live weapons. We later came up with a more fitting metaphor: The dwarven equivalent to Area51. Gleaming eyes and intense handrubbing ensued. The smith could open the door (reasons follow later below) and they opened four rooms, three of them were filled with useful things. [edit]The smith was born after Tethyamar's fall and had spend his youth and formative years with his parents (both smithes) as a refugee, wandering from place to place before settling down in a small human (cormyrean) settlement where Ghellin, the last king of Tethyamar lived in a hidden exile. All of the dwarves tried keep their traditions alive, so there was still a Forge Council, even if the great forges were lost and it had not much anymore to decide. All of the senior council smiths had died defending the realm, but the remaining members taught the newly initiated council smiths all the rules, and all the rites of old - including the rites to open the Forbidden Forges.
That was what I told the party when they stood before the gates of the Forbidden Forges, then I told the player of the fighter/thief with the 'smith' background that he was one of the council members, and recalled the rite to open the gate.
He told the others to go back a few meters (then some more, just to be sure) because he wasn't sure he would recall the rite correctly, and had no idea what kind of defenses would activate should he make a mistake. He didn't (I dould have let him roll for INT or something like that but there was no point in that, story-wise), and the a small door opened at the bottom of the giant gates, just large enouth or one dwarf. It was dark and silent inside, and they entered with a great deal of anticipation.
There were several doors, all closed and all unlabeled. The smith knew the opening rites for these doors, but they found no way of knowing what was behind each door. They reasoned that was probably known only to the dead senior council smiths, which was just fine because pick-and-chose would have ruined the whole fun. 
[/edit]Door 1: Broken multidimensional prison The smith identified the molten(?) metal things as parts of a multidimensional prison (kind of a tesseract) that once must have had kept a multidimensional prisoner. Whatever was imprisoned there had obviously broken broken free long ago, leaving lower-dimensional parts of the prison behind. One of the party's mages recalled vague myths and legends of a joined project with Netherese High mages, but no more details came forth. What they found out was that some components of the prison could in theory still be activated, which after several spellcraft checks they did. They were able to use the control amulet to open a large extradimensional space, as big as the chamber seen in the pic below. It has a very obvious drawback (more on that later). Now they have enough storage capacity for the dragon hoard and whatever artifacts they come across in the other vaults of the Forbidden Forges. More handrubbing. [edit]Each time they activated the amulet, I let them roll a d100. The first roll was a 86...
High rolls like that resulted in them seing mirror versions of themselves on the other side of the room, looking back at them. Not with mirroring movements like in a true mirror, but close enough. One player had his character carefully point his spear towards the event horizon, his mirror twin doing the same thing. Both tips touched, I did a dramatic pause ...and then told them that none of what I just had described had ever happened - they had just activated the amulet and the door opened, please roll a d100. 
They rolled a 87, and I repeated the same event, with the same result - none of what I just had described had ever happened, you have just activated the amulet and the door opened, please roll a d100. This time they rolled low, and beyond the door was an empty room. My players played along perfectly. One dwarf volunteered and stepped through, examining the room and checking for traps and other hidden things. Nothing, just a big empty room. He left a gold piece on the floor and returned. They closd the extradimensional room, opened it again (low roll on the d100) and found the gold piece where it had been placed. The unsuspecting dwarves were happy with it and decided that now they could finally recover the complete dragon hoard, plus whatever they'd find in the Forbidden Forges.
[/edit]Door 2: Broken gears A room with flawed high-precision gears. The players found no obvious use and left them behind. 3) Battle drones A giant metal cube and a weird metal triangle, plus after much searching for secret doors, two similarly shaped control amulets that let the two shapes fly (with an intense ominous magnetic humming) and sprout weapons. Now they have two battle drones with the amulets reaching about 50m. Player quote: 'We might have a chance to survive this whole thing after all.' 4) Wings
Three pairs of mechanical strap-on gearwings of dwarven and of elven design. They seemed to be in perfect working condition.  The players immediately joked that those were perfect for the two barbarians of the group, so that was settled. The third went to Welky, the thief of the group.   They strapped them on and uttered the activation passphrase chiselled into the wings. The straps tightened and tiny meta tubes puntured their skin, very painfully entering into the spines, shoulder blades, between the ribs. 21 points of damage! After the initial shock was gone (none of the players had forseen that) they felt the entry points go numb and the pain faded. The three of them tried their new toys out and fluttered around in the vault, playing catch-the-ball and got quite giddy. They appeared to be drunken; somehow those winge seemed to inject some kind of drug... When they finally landed and uttered the deactivation phrase, nothing happened. Well the wings folded down into a more managble size (more on that later), but they couldn't take them off again. The tubes were still stuck into their bodies, and they realized that they probably found the reason why those things had been locked away. Now the party has two barbarians with delicate mechanical wings. Haven't seen my players so amused in several years. We ended the session there, tired like hell but totally happy. I have thrown much of the coolest stuff at them in this session, so it will be hard to top that next time, at least when it comes to exotic treasures. Guess a fight against large party of barghests and ogres with big guns, in a large dwarven facility will have to do. [/font][/font] |
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Post by tauster on Feb 19, 2018 18:55:05 GMT
In hindsight, that big cannon was probably the most important lesson this combat room session told me:
You can give your players a massive weapon without unbalancing the game, simply by making it slow and requiring a crew of several people (fighters) to operate it.
Example: You introduce a large but still somehow portable cannon that does 6d10+12 damage with a shot (damage chosen just for the sake of this example, I don't remember exactly how much, but in our game it did less). Utter madness, I would have said before that session.
The first balancing factor is that it can fire only every other round because you need to clean it out after each shot and then reload it, which takes 1 full round.
The second balancing factor is that it takes not only one dwarf to aim and fire the monster, but a second to do the cleaning and reloading plus another one for counterbalancing the rear end. 6d10+12 amount to a truly massive damage, but no DM would bat an eye at three dwarven warriors fighting with axes doing 1d10+3 every round.
Third balancing factor is that similar to a mage casting a spell, they can only fire that cannon if they remain undisturbed during the reloading round and during the aiming process.
This is probably old news to many DMs, but we never had such a weapon before in our games (because of fear of unbalancing the game). I would consider this combat room session a success for just that lesson.
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sotf
Advice Guru
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Post by sotf on Feb 19, 2018 19:15:03 GMT
In hindsight, that big cannon was probably the most important lesson this combat room session told me:
You can give your players a massive weapon without unbalancing the game, simply by making it slow and requiring a crew of several people (fighters) to operate it. Example: You introduce a large but still somehow portable cannon that does 6d10+12 damage with a shot (damage chosen just for the sake of this example, I don't remember exactly how much, but in our game it did less). Utter madness, I would have said before that session. The first balancing factor is that it can fire only every other round because you need to clean it out after each shot and then reload it, which takes 1 full round. The second balancing factor is that it takes not only one dwarf to aim and fire the monster, but a second to do the cleaning and reloading plus another one for counterbalancing the rear end. 6d10+12 amount to a truly massive damage, but no DM would bat an eye at three dwarven warriors fighting with axes doing 1d10+3 every round. Third balancing factor is that similar to a mage casting a spell, they can only fire that cannon if they remain undisturbed during the reloading round and during the aiming process. This is probably old news to many DMs, but we never had such a weapon before in our games (because of fear of unbalancing the game). I would consider this combat room session a success for just that lesson. For cannon it tends to work better to have a set series of actions to fire it. Having it be something like Fire->Clear->Load->Aim->Fire Cannon would still work well to then go with a dual proficiency requirement. They'd start with a siege weapons proficiency, and I've added a black powder proficiency to my games because I tend to like the early black powder weapons to be available to the players... Something else that limits it would be weight and cost, the weight could make it a pain in the rear to drag around and having the ammo cost be pretty high as well...and also be extremely heavy. Then you could easily add the dex saves for reduced/eliminated damage from it because of how much time it takes to aim and fire that it's easier to avoid...save perhaps some specific ammo types. And that's if you don't just have cannons do a blast radius effect... |
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Post by tauster on Feb 19, 2018 19:43:36 GMT
Great ideas, thanks! I will make their lives a bit more miserable, even though I won't introduce any weapon proficiencies - they can fire it but with a worse THAC0 (2nd edition rules equivalent to BAB) than their usual weapons. They don't have the time to train during this mission, so proficiencies wouldn't help them anyways.
I haven't specified how many ammunition (cannon balls AND black powder!) they salvaged from the ogres, so as soon as they run out of ammo, they will hope to meet more ogres - these guys kicked ass and made for a hard fight, so I'll let them earn their ammo really hard.
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Post by tauster on Feb 19, 2018 19:44:30 GMT
I edited that last game session report (blue text), see above.
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sotf
Advice Guru
Posts: 1,084
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Post by sotf on Feb 19, 2018 20:01:02 GMT
Great ideas, thanks! I will make their lives a bit more miserable, even though I won't introduce any weapon proficiencies - they can fire it but with a worse THAC0 (2nd edition rules equivalent to BAB) than their usual weapons. They don't have the time to train during this mission, so proficiencies wouldn't help them anyways. I haven't specified how many ammunition (cannon balls AND black powder!) they salvaged from the ogres, so as soon as they run out of ammo, they will hope to meet more ogres - these guys kicked ass and made for a hard fight, so I'll let them earn their ammo really hard. I believe there's 5e rues for cannon in the DMG...can't remember specifically because I've expanded on the list for the games I've been running. I've added a few other black powder based weapons (Mainly a blunderbuss, grenado, and similar things). I also added a few things with it to a dual proficiency set along with Cannon...namely a mortar and the hwacha (Because rocket arrows are just plain fun...and take forever to reload but are fun things for causing absolute havoc). The siege weapon proficiency is in there as well (Also covers things like catapult, ballista, trebuchet, and the like). I've used 3 major ammunition types that would have different rules and effects. The normal Ball ammo which would be more of the heavier hit, small splash radius but would be the more normal anti-fortification thing. Chain/Bar ammo, which would be great for larger targets that aren't fortified (Their main use tended to be for taking down masts on ships or plowing through troops) Grapeshot, which would have a decent AoE and is anti-infantry/cavalry. It's the shotgun shell to the Ball being the slug for them. Cannon are more direct fire while mortars are indirect. Personally, while Cannon would use the more normal targeting rolls, a mortar would target an area and using a scatter option to mark where it would hit (and until the aim is shifted would be hitting the exact same area each time, and probably give a bonus to hitting the mark each time after the first you try to adjust the aim for your original target rather than where it landed). |
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Post by tauster on May 16, 2018 19:09:57 GMT
Haven't done any new dwarven stuff in a while, so here's a little something I started today. It might turn out as a total failure or set me on the road to great success, that's still totally open... When I made the 150mm GFBOD, aka Giant Flagstone Base Of Doom ( here and the following post), I realized that I'd need too much milliput for the layer that the rolling pin will, well roll over.
Greenstuff would be even more expensive, clay wouldn't stick on the Alucore surface, plus it would shrink and later crumble. So I need to come up with a new material. I want to make some bases for scatter terrain that can be illuminated from below with the tiny LED ball lights I got recently, so I made a wooden socket that will be covered with the new mass. If I can't come up with a good recipe, I can always paint a piece of wood black and stamp it or otherwise paint fake texture on, but that would be a plan B if everything else fails. Anyway, here's how I made the wooden socket, plus some pics of resin objects I had cast earlier. From below I drilled a 14mm hole deep eonugh to pierce through the board with the center tip of the paddle drill. That's where the LED ball will be hidden later.
I then drilled/carved a shallow Ø30mm grove on the top with a forstner bit because the giant resin screws I want to use are that size. I want them to slip in so they don't topple that easily. I could just as well put other objects on top of that hole, like the hemisphere with the screw inside or those pyramids.
The difference between a screw that's been glossed over with resin after curing and one left semi-transparent. I love both versions, couldn't pick a favourite.
More screws, and a giand hemisphere with a metal screw floating inside. I let the players sort out what the heck those things were made of, and what for, and how. I'll suggest that someone on another plane might have ordered those things from Tethyamar's master smiths and/or the high mages of Netheril, probably someone on Mechanus. I know that they'll run with that and come up with their own speculations. The idea that Netheril's archmages were actually taking orders from even more powerful beings has tons of story potential, so I can't possibly not use that! I also made a giant crystal pillar out of a shower bottle. It is hard to see in the pic, but I really love its asymmetric curves and will probably use it as part of my aboleth terrain set. Those guys need a whole different level of weirdness, so anything that the players couldn't place is probably a good idea. But that's not what this project is about, that's just a way to make the end result somewhat usable on the game table later on. The goal is to find a cheaper milliput alternative. I started a youtube research on salt dough recipes and realized that PVA glue, corn starch, acrylic color are all good candidates to start with. A while back I used a mix of PVA, white acrylic color and Natriumbicarbonate (baking soda) and got a wonderful paste for my giant winter board aka ' Glazier's Heart'. The stuff was hard and durable but I couldn't remember the exact recipe, so I eyeballed it and, on a hunch, added a generous helping of a repair paste I used several times in the past. I just started by mixing that paste with baking soda and glue then added more glue, corn starch and white acrylic color until the mass felt right.
I didn't take pics during the mixing because my hands were full with this stuff, so here's the result: Then I slapped it on the wooden block I had prepared earlier and used my giant flagstone rolling pin to give the whole thing some texture.
The mass is much rougher that milliput and crumbles more easily. I will need to make it smoother and able to stick together much better. No idea how long the while thing will take to dry...
All leftovers were used to make pieces of ruined dwarven architecture, with the help of a beyblade mould I made recently (see here and here). |
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Post by tauster on May 23, 2018 17:47:02 GMT
Here's the finished piece. It took almost a week in warm German may weather to dry out and harden up, and it acquired some cracks in the process. The surface is very rough, so I didn't need to roll bark or a tinfoil ball over it to give it a realistic look. I based it black, drybrushed some white on and washed it with a brown wash.
Fors and Cale are already exploring it. Looks OK to me. Not great, but certainly good enough to game with. I still have to find a more efficient way of making multiples of such stands, as it took too long for my taste to finish this one.
Detail shot. I know it is unrealistic that the cobblestones go around the edges like that, but I hope my players won't get it. If they do and have the balls to comment on it, I'll can always punish them. Putting giant tentacles next to a hero's mini always seems to do the job.
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Post by sgtslag on May 23, 2018 19:39:23 GMT
LOL!!! Too true; too funny! Cheers!
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Cheers!