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Post by gnomezrule on Aug 6, 2015 22:49:49 GMT
So I am looking I am like many of you a fan of cool looking dungeons.
In the course of my crafting I have seen a number of really cool designs. Like many of you I keep my eyes peeled for junk or stuff that can be used to make furniture or items for play. I often keep a mini with me for scale just in case.
I find a lot of items to be large considering for most 28mm rpgs translate roughly to 1 inch is 5 feet. This means if I make a bookshelf and its 2 inches tall. That means its 10 feet. How often in life have I stood next to a 10 foot tall piece of furniture.
Like many of us gaming its nice to have 2 inch hall ways so that things don't get cluttered. How many times in real life have you found a 10 wide hall in the average home. You get the idea.
We all love those big open spaces fitting a BBEG fight. Jump up on this 4 by 4 dinning room table . . . woah the dinning room table is 20 feet across.
So am I cramping my own style with these reservations or do you ever pick up a bottle cap and consider making it a barrel or dungeon urn and then realize . . . wow that would be more like a hot tub than a barrel.
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Post by lordbryon on Aug 6, 2015 22:58:07 GMT
I have the same affliction. That being said I think if it appeals to your eyes then go with it.
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Post by birdskull on Aug 6, 2015 23:25:38 GMT
For me it's a mix between what looks good and, for a lack of a better term, works good. For example: Dwarven Forge looks good, but it doesn't necessarily work good.
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Post by runningwolf on Aug 7, 2015 0:26:35 GMT
Scale should take second place to looks and playability.
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Post by nvdberg on Aug 7, 2015 2:12:45 GMT
Everything we use and build are REPRESENTATIONS of an item, person, location and even effects. If it scales exactly than that is great. If the sizes are off but don't hurt the gameplay it's all fine.
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Post by DnDPaladin on Aug 7, 2015 3:34:37 GMT
some people do keep the scale up and the chairs and tables are actually quite good. thats if you look at the characters and not their bases. unfortunately playability at that point doesn't work at all. thats why some people keep playability in mind and others dont.
a good exemple... doll houses, you have that doll and everything you make is made for that doll. you have no bases to fit in, you just set the doll into the chair and at the table and voila.
for me scale is important, but only for articles that needs to be the right scale. 1 = 5 is a good scale per say... it sure doesn'T fit the characters well. because those bases includes the charcaters movements in it. a true scale doesn't apply that. if you were to make scale right... you'd take a mini, count its size and then use that size for scaling. 1 = 1 would be your actual mini size. as such you'd be making chairs and tables for that size. heres thats not what we do... we look at the bases and say its 1 inch and thats our size. yes it works, but what size is it. its the size of the movement zone not the size of the mini. thats why most of our stuff looks too big or too small.
2 inches high for shelves and doors is too much. i did that... my doors looked like they were made for giants. let's be real. a door is about 2 feet wide. thats 3 feet short of of the whole 5. some doors are bigger then that. but your average door is human sized and human sized needs it to be about 2 feet wide.
so yeah... its realism against practicality. if i was making a door 2 feet wide... the charcater would pass, but not its base. and thus the door wouldn'T be playable on that tile.
EDIT: ditch the 2 feet, my doors are 3 feet wides... still 2 feet short of the 5.
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Post by Wyloch on Aug 7, 2015 13:37:00 GMT
some people do keep the scale up and the chairs and tables are actually quite good. thats if you look at the characters and not their bases. unfortunately playability at that point doesn't work at all. thats why some people keep playability in mind and others dont. a good exemple... doll houses, you have that doll and everything you make is made for that doll. you have no bases to fit in, you just set the doll into the chair and at the table and voila. for me scale is important, but only for articles that needs to be the right scale. 1 = 5 is a good scale per say... it sure doesn'T fit the characters well. because those bases includes the charcaters movements in it. a true scale doesn't apply that. if you were to make scale right... you'd take a mini, count its size and then use that size for scaling. 1 = 1 would be your actual mini size. as such you'd be making chairs and tables for that size. heres thats not what we do... we look at the bases and say its 1 inch and thats our size. yes it works, but what size is it. its the size of the movement zone not the size of the mini. thats why most of our stuff looks too big or too small. 2 inches high for shelves and doors is too much. i did that... my doors looked like they were made for giants. let's be real. a door is about 2 feet wide. thats 3 feet short of of the whole 5. some doors are bigger then that. but your average door is human sized and human sized needs it to be about 2 feet wide. so yeah... its realism against practicality. if i was making a door 2 feet wide... the charcater would pass, but not its base. and thus the door wouldn'T be playable on that tile. EDIT: ditch the 2 feet, my doors are 3 feet wides... still 2 feet short of the 5. Well said.
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Post by daveyjones on Aug 7, 2015 14:16:03 GMT
i usually just grab a figure and make things roughly scaled to make sense with the figure standing next to it.
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Post by skunkape on Aug 7, 2015 19:07:14 GMT
I'm often bothered by the scale of things, but I try to remember I'm not building a model railroad, just terrain for gaming, so I just remind myself that playability comes first!
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Post by sgtslag on Aug 7, 2015 22:00:11 GMT
I went back to 1/72 figures, which are really close to 25mm = 1" => 6 feet. For me, 1/72 scale figures are much closer to 5' = 1" scale than 28-30mm figures. I also translated the listed sizes of 1st Ed. AD&D Giant figures, to the 1/72 scale, which showed me that Hill Giants are around 54mm tall; Frost Giants are around 60mm tall. I don't remember the sizes of the rest of the Giant races, but it was actually fun to see them in properly scaled figures, next to 6-foot Humans.
My dungeons, and maps, are all still in the 5-foot/10-foot wide categories, as that is what I learned to play on, for dungeon sizes, realistic, or not... I only worry about figure scales, but I keep the dungeon sizes, close to what I learned them as (5'/10', typically, with exceptions being 20' and bigger).
Several years ago, I saw a photograph taken at Gen Con, of a life-sized D&D Troll, green skin and all, with an adult male standing next to it. It was frightening how big that Troll really was! No matter my skill, I would hate to face anything that much larger than me!!! Cheers!
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Post by kgstanley81 on Aug 8, 2015 5:08:16 GMT
It also comes down to the figures your using, older figures are 25mm, then it went to 28mm heroic scale, most now (bones/GW) are around 32mm, wargames factory try the 1/64 about 28mm, but hard to find terrain (thinking modern) 1/48 looks pretty good next to newer figures like GW figs, so most of my stuff I try to go with about 1/64 or 1/48 as long as it looks good
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sotf
Advice Guru
Posts: 1,084
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Post by sotf on Aug 9, 2015 1:42:52 GMT
Appearance of scale tends to be a better thing than actually being to scale.
For example, if you're going with moderns and want cars. 1/35 tends to be the best appearance for the normal 25-32mm range of scales. The same with buildings, their features such as doors should be larger and windows slightly higher.
The big reason for this is the fact that bases create a scale bump for appearance rather than the actual scale of the minis straight off the mini itself. And unfortunately, the fun basing options tend to exacerbate the issue when you add things like slate or other stuff that raise the mini up even more while things like the stand on a statue bases out there are horrific for it.
A good rule of thumb for terrain is that the doors should fit the standard base size for the game even if 5' wide doors are crazy in reality.
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Post by gnomezrule on Aug 9, 2015 2:06:54 GMT
Appearance of scale is so true. There are lots of things that look good on the table but are 3 or 4 times as big as they should be. Dining room chairs that are almost an inch wide. LOL they look fantastic . . . wait that chair is taller than the table and 4 feet wide.
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sotf
Advice Guru
Posts: 1,084
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Post by sotf on Aug 9, 2015 23:52:52 GMT
Appearance of scale is so true. There are lots of things that look good on the table but are 3 or 4 times as big as they should be. Dining room chairs that are almost an inch wide. LOL they look fantastic . . . wait that chair is taller than the table and 4 feet wide. Not entirely, with gaming, you also have "flat" chairs where you don't need to make the legs of it, end result looks right, but it fits as well.
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Post by runningwolf on Aug 10, 2015 19:01:19 GMT
I'm often bothered by the scale of things, but I try to remember I'm not building a model railroad, just terrain for gaming, so I just remind myself that playability comes first! That is my philosiphy along with the close enough mentality. I've seen some killer stuff people have made that might not be proper scale but looks awesome. I think of some things like a map. A city is not a circle but it is a marker.
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Post by lordmorbius on Aug 14, 2015 3:43:18 GMT
So I am looking I am like many of you a fan of cool looking dungeons. In the course of my crafting I have seen a number of really cool designs. Like many of you I keep my eyes peeled for junk or stuff that can be used to make furniture or items for play. I often keep a mini with me for scale just in case. I find a lot of items to be large considering for most 28mm rpgs translate roughly to 1 inch is 5 feet. This means if I make a bookshelf and its 2 inches tall. That means its 10 feet. How often in life have I stood next to a 10 foot tall piece of furniture. Like many of us gaming its nice to have 2 inch hall ways so that things don't get cluttered. How many times in real life have you found a 10 wide hall in the average home. You get the idea. We all love those big open spaces fitting a BBEG fight. Jump up on this 4 by 4 dinning room table . . . woah the dinning room table is 20 feet across. So am I cramping my own style with these reservations or do you ever pick up a bottle cap and consider making it a barrel or dungeon urn and then realize . . . wow that would be more like a hot tub than a barrel. Years ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina. Its a residential mansion, built during the Victorian age, that currently serves as a "living museum". In the late 1800s the wealthy class indeed did have giant homes with giant furniture. The Biltmore Estate library room is literally big enough to fit my house inside of just that one room, and still have room to spare. The bookcases are recessed into the walls and are two stories tall. There are sliding stair cases that move back and forth along the book cases to allow access to the folios on the upper shelves. The fireplace alone is big enough for a grown man to stand up inside of it and not bang his head. At the main entrance of the estate is a wrought iron chandelier that is literally 3 stories tall (it hangs down the central shaft of a winding spiral stair case that goes up 3 stories, so that's how I know how huge it is. In essence, people who are wealthy enough to have the money to build limestone mansions, castles or underground strongholds have the cash to make it as big, lavish and huge as they wish.
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Post by onethatwas on Aug 14, 2015 15:02:07 GMT
The issue or scale and realism can be fixed by changing the scale measurement, rather than the size of the object/room.
Each 1 inch square=5 feet is the current scale.
Change it to 1 inch=3 feet, and virtually EVERYTHING gets fixed.
It does, tecnically, make all your mini's into representations of Elijah Woods from LoTR, and also TECHNICALLY mess with the mathmatics of movement. But it is alot easier to consider the minis to just be markers of where your correctly proportioned character stands in this resized world (they are still 6 feet of barbarian awesome, just not directly represented as such, to scale) and also easy to just say the character can move 6 units of measurement, just like before. The fact that it turns out to be 18 feet instead of 30 can easily be ignored.
TBH, you are the only one who even needs to know about the scale resizing.
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Post by DMScotty on Aug 14, 2015 17:51:05 GMT
For me playability always beats scale. Of course you don't want to be too crazy off.
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Post by DMScotty on Aug 14, 2015 17:53:03 GMT
2.5D is all about playability.
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Post by gnomezrule on Aug 14, 2015 20:53:02 GMT
I have to give you that one DMScotty. My first big craft endeavor was a small hill top hut followed by a cave I made with soft foam walls it looked pretty good. The players were really excited. Once we cleared that dungeon we moved on and I had made several 2.5 d models more like AJ's paper craft models the players still oohed and ahhed and set out the model was easier and faster and my old Grognard was really impressed. He said "I hate 3d models this is awesome. I was able to see and my hands weren't bumping walls." Scale in AJ's method of using premade tiles is easy because there are so man paper craft things available. I just wanted to try my hand at the other crafts.
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