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Post by Erasmas on Mar 16, 2015 20:46:36 GMT
I will be running a long-term D&D campaign (likely in 5th edition), that is still some ways off; it is probably still about a year-and-a-half away. But, in order to combat my procrastination and because there is so much that I want to do for this campaign, I am already starting to put stuff together. You can already see a couple of the things that I have started on scattered around the various threads that I have here on this site. But, I decided that it would probably be best to go ahead and consolidate everything here as I get it churned out. Anywho... one of the things that I have planned will be a rooftop chase sequence. There actually was another poster here that had a similar idea and I, admittedly, used her's as the genesis for this. That, and it is actually a fairly common scene in wuxia movies. And after having seen cardboard turned into corrugated tin so "easily" (by just tearing off one side of the paper and cleaning it up), I was struck with how well it mimicked the tiled rooftops of medieval Asia. So, I started rolling around ideas in my head. The first hurdle to overcome was that their roofs are pretty steeply pitched, which is most decidedly not conducive to having miniatures standing on them. Because of this, I decided to flatten them out and build them up more like a set of 2.5D stairs. Now, because of the removal of one side of the paper, the cardboard because very flexible and loses most of its rigidity. In addition, I wanted to give these enough "lift" off of the table to help sell the illusion of them being a drop-off. So, a undercut a piece of double-layered cardboard by about an inch all around as the base, then glued a piece of non-corrugated cardboard (a box from a LEGO kit) to the same dimensions as the entire roof on top of that. Then, making certain that the that the corrugation was oriented (see what I did there? ) the right direction... perpendicular to the length of the roof, in this case. I cut it to the proper dimensions and removed the sections from the ends where it would meet at the diagonal (where the corrugation needed to change directions). I then peeled back the paper on the edges by 1-inch wide. I cut a triangle with the corrugation going the other direction (now with the length of the wall) and inserted those. I also had these nifty little MDF punch-outs that I saved from some sci-fi terrain that I purchased that had a shape that I thought worked as decoration for the corners and for the ends of the peak. I glued those down along the diagonals, leaving just a tad sticking off of the corners. I then built up the layers repeating this process and... viola! You can also see a section of wall that I made in the same fashion (though it has far less layers to it).
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Post by Deleted on Mar 16, 2015 20:52:15 GMT
Turned out great man! Can't wait to see more.
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Post by DnDPaladin on Mar 16, 2015 22:35:23 GMT
these looks awesome !!! glad you go 5th edition. its quite easy to port anything. and they are starting to come up with official new races and archetypes already. the new additions that are already made are... - warforged, aaracokra, deep gnome, changeling, Goliath, Genasi and the new archetype is for wizard and it is artificer. so that shows how easy it is to make new races and archetypes so i dont doubt you to be able to make an asian style settings. if you want to make race creation a breeze, i found a document that someone made on the net. it balances out the races creation by giving you guidelines thru points. basically all balanced races have about 5.5 to 6 points. and the abilities are worth certain popints. and the guide is up to date with elemental evil as well. so its good start.
as an exemple, i created myself a race called the beastial, basically i redid the anthropomorphs. it ended up easily done. took me about 30 minutes to do the race and all the sub races.
5th is definitelya greta thing for creative people. going back to your stuff, this stuff looks amazing. i guess you will put some white glue all over it to stiffen it up. i just can't wait to see it all painted and finished. i hope you will also take some pictures of the chase in action when the time comes.
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Post by curufin on Mar 16, 2015 23:56:14 GMT
Amazing job! It is absolutely perfect!
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Post by Erasmas on Mar 17, 2015 2:18:35 GMT
Excellent. Thank you guys!
And yes, I would love that link. The plan is to PVA glue the whole thing, yes.
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Post by Alexis on Mar 17, 2015 4:57:17 GMT
Looks cool. I'm looking forward to seeing more!
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Post by beerfrog on Mar 17, 2015 13:13:40 GMT
That looks spectacular. I also like the idea of the roof top chase. Very action mocie-esque.
Just one question though; There won't be any panda humanoid monks will there?
Keep up the good work!
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Post by voduchyld on Mar 17, 2015 14:21:28 GMT
They look better than mine, which i should post sometime soon. I did a rooftop chase in my Dragon Age Campaign, a month-and-a-half ago, during the adventure hook of one of my players. I made simple shingle strips, painted in a terracota color, to simulate european clay shingles. My player had lots of fun, jumping across rooftops to avoid being caught by the Seekers of Truth, in Orlais. He had been framed by an associate and had to flee to Ferelden, which is where my campaign takes place.
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Post by vestrivan on Mar 17, 2015 14:22:52 GMT
Amazing job, can't wait to see it finished.
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Post by Erasmas on Mar 17, 2015 14:37:05 GMT
It's funny you should say that, BeerFrog. One of my players has already discussed his character concept with me. He will be playing a panda that was given sentience by the awaken druid spell (we will be fudging opposable thumbs and the ability to exist in an upright position most of the time). He won't be a monk, but a class that I made for our 3rd edition setting called the brawler. I will have to port it over to 5th, obviously, but I think it will be similar. But, he is going to play him somewhat in the vein of a sumo wrestler. It should be a lot of fun! Onward! Here are some more to add to the collection. The one with the decking in the middle is going to be a guard tower. I am going to build a top for it with four corner posts and a second roof on top of those. I can't decide if I should put half-walls around this portion of it or not... though I was thinking of leaving the part with the posts removable for rapid mini placement/removal. I also was working on a large area that has a zen garden in its center. I built it from a large piece of normal cardboard with a rectangle removed from the middle and backed with more LEGO box, non-corrugated cardboard. I had my son decide where the rocks would be placed (he is only 6, but he's good for making my orderly brain do "random" or "chaotic" in my crafting), traced them and made concentric circles around them. I then penciled in the rest of the rake lines. Then, painstakingly, I traced over them with my hot glue gun, to form the 'crests' of the rows. I haven't decided yet whether to cover them with TP and PVA to downplay the stark transitions between the rise and fall of the rows... but the whole thing will be covered with large grit craft sand.
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Post by Erasmas on Mar 17, 2015 17:55:37 GMT
Before I got started on the rooftops, this is what I was working on for this campaign. I had come across this race from World of Warcraft called the jinyu... which were koi people... and I loved the idea. So, fast-forward a little bit and I found a place for them in WLBJ*! So, on a random stop by my FLGS, I was scouting the Reaper selection as I am apt to do. I saw a tag that read "Tiik Warriors" and decided to check it out. Man was I glad that I did! Lo and behold, there were these two fish people (though I could tell that once they were assembled that they wouldn't look quite so close to what I was looking for. However, they were close enough and, with a bit of modding... they were perfect! Here is what they looked like out of the box. Apologies for the black paint possibly confusing your eyes. Anywho... I opted for leaving off the lower jaw and the angler fish styled appendage. Now, here they are based (without flocking) and given weapons. I had a spear that looked right left over from a weapons pack, so I carefully bent the arms and fingers of one of them to hold it ("carefully" meaning putting short sections of rubber wire insulation on the tines of my needle nose pliers, to avoid marring the pewter). The other guy I "built" a net out of a small scrap of nylon potato sack netting - something awesomely ironic about the concept of a fish catching a person in a net. You can also see some of the armor work I had done in this picture, just made out of strips of cardstock. In addition, you will see that I filed down their top teeth and inserted paperclip armatures for their primary "fu manchu"-esque catfish whiskers. And here they are with both set of whiskers in place (I went for longer ones than from the original concept art). I also gave them lioncloth flap things. After this picture, I also added belts with a medallion buckle, they have had more armoring done, they got flocked, and they have been primed. I also found a few more of these from my first box of Bones... so I will be able to field more than two at a time! *White Lotus, Black Jade... not to be confused with the WWLBJD movement (What Would Lyndon B. Johnson Do?).
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Post by DnDPaladin on Mar 17, 2015 19:54:04 GMT
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Post by Erasmas on Mar 17, 2015 20:15:04 GMT
I will definitely try to remember to get pictures of the sessions that use some of this stuff.
And thank you for that link, Paladin! It should come in very handy when I start doing the crunch for this setting.
EDIT: I wonder... does this guy (or anyone else, for that matter) have a similar "formula" for creating classes? Nevermind! I found that he does, indeed, have such a thing on his website!
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Post by SpielMeisterKev! on Mar 17, 2015 23:04:18 GMT
Howdy,
Don't be koi now...get out the paint!
Kev!
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Post by curufin on Mar 18, 2015 1:19:58 GMT
Man, you made some great progress! The "L" shaped building is cool. Love the zen garden. Very nice mods on those minis. We really need a 'top drawer' emoji.
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Post by Erasmas on Mar 18, 2015 15:31:59 GMT
Yeah, sadly I don't get the same kind of enjoyment out of painting as I do out of building. I do like painting, but the mood strikes me far less often. But, it will all eventually get done! That's the benefit of having a deadline (even if it is very far off). Anywho... some more progress and other stuff! Firstly, here is another one of the NPC's mini. She is going to be an elf that moves with a lot of speed and has lots of nasty surprises up her sleeves (pay attention, this pun will be important later). I had designed a mini that I was fairly pleased with on HeroForge... but I am already going to have to order one or two others from them for this campaign. And at $25 apiece, I was holding off on doing so. In the same fated trip that I found the koi people, I also found this lady - a half-elf monk. The braid on the ground in front of her was from an Infinity mini, which I removed to make her into a TRON character. But... being the good little pack rat that I am... I kept it (as I do with all of my pewter cut-offs and flashing). When looking through my stuff for that spear for the koi guy above, I saw that and thought it would be a good addition to this chick. She has a really nice movement to her, a spinning strike type of flow. And the braid ends up complimenting that really, really well (IMHO). But... remember those sleeves that I mentioned... notice anything missing? Exactly - she has no sleeves. Now, I didn't quite want her to have Zizi's sleeves from House of Flying Daggers or anything, but I did want big, billowy, dynamic sleeves! There we go; that's better! You can see here that I have already gotten rid of her pitiful excuse of a ponytail that she had, making room for Mega Ponytail. She is also in midriff... and I want the sleeves and her "skirt" to be all one piece, so I green-stuffed her bellybutton. Now, the character is also supposedly to have a blindfold, because she is missing her eyeballs; which, surprisingly, results in blindness. Well, technically she isn't "missing" them, as they're on a necklace that she wears... long story. Anyways, back on point. Blindfold. She too has now had her ponytail attached, been flocked, and then primed. I will try and get a group shot of the three stooges here and primed for painting. In other news, I built the guard tower last night, with a bit of help from my lovely wife. Now, in the rooftop pictures above, there is one that has wooden decking in its middle. That is for this thing. Here it is with the main portion of it constructed. I built a 'box' out of some lengths of the MDF sprue that had a really interesting shape. I then cut down some chopsticks we had lying around (oh, the irony!) to form the posts. Built a second, smaller roof on the top. And here we are! Well, the corrugation showing is ugly and I wanted to spruce it up a bit with some cardstock layers. I drew out a design and got to work. Now, quite a bit of cutting, cursing, remeasuring, sorting through odds and ends, gluing, etc... I somehow arrived at this! You can see it sitting in-place above. Here it is separate from its base.
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Post by curufin on Mar 18, 2015 15:57:39 GMT
You sure aren't pulling any punches. Great looking additions.
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sotf
Advice Guru
Posts: 1,084
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Post by sotf on Mar 18, 2015 19:50:06 GMT
Something to consider as well is that one of the best places for a few touches that tend not to cost that much is the pet store. There are a TON of things that you can get that are from several asian/indian areas in inspiration
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Post by Erasmas on Mar 18, 2015 20:34:45 GMT
Oh yeah... I have a lot of aquarium pieces for this game! In fact, my birthday was just last week and some of my players got me some more.
I love that stuff! Pre-painted (and usually pretty well), and a lot of dynamic insides and outs on them. Excellent LOS blockers and ambiance pieces, for certain. The only complaint that I might have about some of them is that the openings on most of the buildings are WAY off... but, they are being used for a purpose other than what they were created for, so what can you do?
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Post by dmagamus on Mar 19, 2015 4:23:12 GMT
I'd suggest not downplaying the transitions on the zen garden, especially if you're using large grit sand. Here is the same thing done using incredibly fine sand.
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