greypaw
Cardboard Collector
Posts: 1
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Post by greypaw on Apr 28, 2019 13:43:45 GMT
Hello,
I'm an inveterate gamer in Portland, Oregon. Worse still, I've caught the crafting bug, and I will likely take the plunge, soon and start crafting tiles, sewers, nefarious traps, etc.. I've crafted virtually nothing in the past, so I'm excited and realistic. My goal is to create several modular pieces.
To add a wrinkle, my current game of choice is the recently-rerelease The Fantasy Trip - a GURPS predecessor with fast rules and deadly combat. Although it's a great system, the game utilizes hexes, rather than squares, which shall make my endeavors a bit trickier.
Anyone else creating hex-based tile or mats?
Anyway, I'm glad I found this community.
Grey
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Hello
Apr 28, 2019 15:23:59 GMT
Post by factoriatabletop on Apr 28, 2019 15:23:59 GMT
welcome greypaw, let me tell you that this forum is the place what you need! you will find a lot of people here that will give advice to you, and there are tons of pics in the threads posted you can be inspired!! like you, i am making tiles and matts ( handmade)...dont forget to post images from your work here!!! my best regards!!!
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Post by margaret on Apr 28, 2019 18:10:50 GMT
Welcome to the forum! The difficulty with using a hex grid for encounter terrain, as I am sure you realize, is that its hard to build straight walls on things that are meant to mesh with other hexes. It might work best to make mats and use a grid overlay and separate strips for walls. You can get a 36x30-inch acrylic panel [Optix] from places like Home Depot that you could draw a hex grid on with Magic Marker. Or you could incise it, but that’s a lot more work. www.homedepot.com/p/OPTIX-36-in-x-30-in-x-093-in-Acrylic-Sheet-MC-06/202038044
Arcknight sells a 1-inch hex grid overlay, but it’s only 12x18 inches arcknight.squarespace.com/shop/cmg-1-grid-squares-fade-hash
DM Scotty’s method for making low, stand-alone walls is shown in DM’s Craft Next #3: Reusable Dungeon Walls
Or you can use lengths of ¼ inch by ¼ inch square wood dowels to make stand-alone walls. You can’t create texture on those as you can with foamcore, but it’s faster. Both hardware stores and some craft stores sell the square dowels.
For techniques for making game mats see the information interspersed with other discussions on the following web pages: dmscraft.proboards.com/thread/3548/jennifer-gs-crafting-thread?page=3 dmscraft.proboards.com/thread/3548/jennifer-gs-crafting-thread?page=4, dmscraft.proboards.com/thread/3548/jennifer-gs-crafting-thread?page=8 and dmscraft.proboards.com/thread/3548/jennifer-gs-crafting-thread?page=1&scrollTo=47647
You can store a large, painted map by rolling it around a large-diameter pool noodle. Dollar stores should be carrying those soon, if they aren’t already stocked.
Almost all scatter terrain works on hex grids as easily as on square grids or no grids. And road and water overlays can be placed between the mat and the transparent grid overlay.
A stone-colored cave/dungeon floor mat, a mottled green mat for grassland/shrubland/forest mat, a mottled sandy-colored mat if you are doing deserts, and maybe a random cobblestone mat for cities. Overlay road or water strips as needed, put the transparent grid overlay on top and add your scatter terrain and stand-alone walls and you will have a great gaming layout.
You might even be able to find mottled green and mottled sandy-colored fabric in the quilting section of a fabric store that would give you those mats without any painting being needed. That fabric is a bit too easily shifted to use on its own, but with an acrylic grid overlay, it should work well.
Directions for making thin-sheet modular water terrain can be found at DM's Craft NEXT #8
The rocks and rapids would have to be added as scatter terrain on top of the acrylic grid sheet. Laying the grid sheet over thin hot-glue stream-flow stripes should work OK. If you want blue-er water, use a blue report cover instead of a whitish one.
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Hello
Apr 29, 2019 3:54:49 GMT
Post by sgtslag on Apr 29, 2019 3:54:49 GMT
Welcome aboard, greypaw ! I would suggest that you abandon the hex system, and go gridless. The hexes are likely 1" diameter. Just measure off inches, in place of hexes. Cheers!
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Hello
Apr 29, 2019 5:30:00 GMT
Post by tauster on Apr 29, 2019 5:30:00 GMT
Welcome to the club, greypaw. You've found one of the most helpful crafting communities out there. Be warned that crafting is addictive, but you'l have either found out already, or will soon enough. Share your pics please, we're always eager to see what the new blood does. And no, I was not referring to x-acto knife cuts or hotglue burns.
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Hello
Apr 29, 2019 5:41:02 GMT
Post by margaret on Apr 29, 2019 5:41:02 GMT
Re: sgtslag's comment: I certainly agree that gridless terrain would be simpler to create than a hexagonal solution. But The Fantasy Trip seems to have a lot of hex-grid-controlled diagonal movement as well as orthogonal movement and the diagonal angles are trickier to control without an actual grid. If you have a way to deal with that, then gridless terrain would be fine.
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Post by sgtslag on Apr 29, 2019 14:54:19 GMT
I remember when Fantasy Trip was new(ish?), and quite popular, back in the early 1980's. Never played it, know virtually nothing about it. If my comment on going grid-less is not possible, then please ignore it. I spoke as a grizzled tabletop war gamer, who is virtually ignorant of grid-based systems. I have no idea of what singular requirements they may have. I use Chessex vinyl, square and hex BattleMats, but I do not rely heavily upon the squares and hexes, only using them for convenience' sake, to speed up measurements. I do not use them for Area of Effect measurements (never played D&D 3.X/4e, never occurred to me to translate A of E's into squares...), other than simple, rectangular A of E's. I'm heavily into improvisational style of gaming. I play loosely with many rules. My style may be incompatible with your style. That's OK, for me, but it may not be useful to you. The approach I recommend with this, and any other forum is: Chew the straw, and spit out the sticks... LOL! Take what is useful, and ignore the rest. Cheers!
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Hello
Apr 30, 2019 18:05:29 GMT
Post by skunkape on Apr 30, 2019 18:05:29 GMT
Welcome fellow traveler! Enjoy your stay and share any photos with us that you wish to.
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Hello
Apr 30, 2019 20:51:40 GMT
Post by tauster on Apr 30, 2019 20:51:40 GMT
Couldn't put it in better words than sgtslag.
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Post by Sam on May 2, 2019 13:25:33 GMT
Anyone else creating hex-based tile or mats? Grey You can get Magic the Gathering: Arena of the Planeswalker games pretty cheap. It has hex grid game boards, and comes with interesting minis. They are printed cardstock boards, but can be accented with scatter terrain pieces.
Heroscape also uses a hex grid system.
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