Flotsam and Jetsam

[tauster]

imgur is down atm, so no pics today... [works again]

Need a large (6x8 cm) metal symbol of Lloth? A cool spider for 1,19€? Look no further!





20 nail art brushes for small details for less than 4€. Should work well for minis. 

[sgtslag]

Nail art brushes link opens a new tab with this page in it...

The Lolth spider symbol is perfect. Looks like what I remember from the TSR Q1 module, from the early 1980's! Quite large, though. Cheers!

[bluecloud2k2]

Feb 28, 2017 20:16:27 GMT tauster said:

Need a large (6x8 cm) metal symbol of Lloth? A cool spider for 1,19€? Look no further!

Sadly that page is all Gutentagen and Bratwurst to me.

(that's my attempt at humor. I understand if it leaves a saur taste in your mouth)

[skunkape]

Mar 1, 2017 4:59:28 GMT bluecloud2k2 said:

Sadly that page is all Gutentagen and Bratwurst to me.

(that's my attempt at humor. I understand if it leaves a saur taste in your mouth)

"Waka Waka Waka"

[tauster]

Computer games are a source of inspirations I rarely tap into, mainly because I haven't played any in over... *does a quick calculation* wow. I think the last PC game I played was around 2000. This will change with Torment:Numenera soon, but here's something I stumbled a few weeks ago: A screenshot from Sunless Skies kickstarter trailer. I immediately fell in love with the idea of street lanterns floating on chunks of earth!



As always ebay is your friend, and so I found quickly the cheapest victorian-looking lanterns in the railroad model section: 20pc for less than 7€, shipping from china included.




Today the envelope arrived and I'm happy to report that they look great. They're made of cheap plastic; the removable post bends with the slightest pressure, but that's OK considering the price.




Not sure where they will fit in my campaigns, but they will definitely go somewhere! The cool thing is that you could make them like scatter terrain and then place them on your street scene. Probably not in the average DND village, but I guess Waterdeep and some other large cities do have some magic street illumination. Or maybe they're filled with fireflies that get fed daily (thus requiring NPCs that care for them and who can intereact with the party).

Not to mention cities in wildspace (spelljammer) which utilize even more magic than the average groundling setting! *rubs hands* I can easily picture them floating on the gravity plane of a large asteroid settlement where they light the way to the pier.

Wiring them is completely optional, but it would add immensely to the cool factor. The description says 6V, so I'll have to experiment a bit with small batteries...

[skunkape]

You could put the battery and such in a base that would increase the height of the lantern. Something a little smaller in diameter than a tealight, but that height might actually look good!

Maybe 1/2 inch in diameter and 1/4 to 1/2 inch in height.

[Sam]

I visited the site. Under shipping it states "No shipping to the United States". They are nice looking lights too. A single 9v battery would probably run several of them at a time. I think they are micro bulb lamps, not LEDs.

[tauster]

Yep, they're definitely not LEDs. Haven't tried with a 9V battery, but I'll share the results.

I know that most of the ebay sellers I buy from in Germany don't sell in the US... and it's probably the same the other way around. The main reason I post those finds here is that you'll likely find the same products with a similar price sold in the US (or elsewhere) from other ebay sellers - just search for the article names and variants of them.

[tauster]

Finally got that cheap silicone mold, tested it at once... and boy is that cool!




Problem/challenge is that hotglue doesn't stick to the surface at all. Which is what those molds are all about of course, but it leaves with the problem that the viscose glue gets drawn out of the mold when you move the gluegun around, especially when you pull  it upwards. One way it works better is to draw the nozzle always sideways, but even then you end up with kind of a 'flat blob' - what will be the bottom is not completely flat:




It's flat enough for small tiles, and when you integrate them into larger pieces, it wouldn't matter anyway. So making whole tiles out of hotglue might not work. I'd probably sculpt my own tailor-made tile and then make a mold for mass production, so no big deal.




So... when flatness is difficult, why not try something intentionally curved? I wedged the mold into a large container and hotglued away. Then serendipidy struck. Somehow I had managed to cast...



... a giant turtle shield! How cool is that?

Now I need an excuse to include giant turtles into my games. Either the Underdark campaign (there's a ocean in the deep dark, so plenty of water down there) or into the Spelljammer campaign Giant flying turtles in spaaace? Bring them on!

'nother thought: First the party encounters some creatures that utilize that shield, for example as armor (scary thought because that would be a really giant creature!) or in some other kind, maybe as a chariot or even better a flying platform. Then they encounter living turtles, and discover that those beasts have some nasty abilities. Although I can't think of special abilities turtles could have. At least in D&D.

[tauster]

Another *ahem* investment: a used punch that makes giant leaves.




It doesn't handle the really strong cardstock but regular cardstock works fine if used carefully. Might work on plastic sheets as well, haven't tested it so far. This thingie should save me a lot of time when making plant stuff, and a some money too.

[skunkape]

Mar 3, 2017 18:04:12 GMT tauster said:

'nother thought: First the party encounters some creatures that utilize that shield, for example as armor (scary thought because that would be a really giant creature!) or in some other kind, maybe as a chariot or even better a flying platform. Then they encounter living turtles, and discover that those beasts have some nasty abilities. Although I can't think of special abilities turtles could have. At least in D&D.

Give the turtles the ability to generate a slow effect for all of the other creatures, maybe switching out the speed of the PCs, making the PCs slow and the turtles fast?

[tauster]

I painted the lantern...
- basepainted with Leadbelcher
- rusted with Macharius Solar Orange
- washed with Nuln Oil





...then glued it to the hotglue testpiece which got a quick paint job and got glued to a ball of crumpled tin foil.


Now somewhere there's a story hidden in that pic...


[large version]

I lead the wiress through a whole punched through the foil, just in case I want to connect a battery later on. And I glued a piece of scrap metal on the bottom to use my magnetic fly stands. Painting the rock will come later.

Love that piece, and I'll probably make a whole bunch of them. Not sure about the details, but there's an awesome session waiting for my players, somewhere down the road! Ideas are welcome, the weirder, the better. Any ideas within a Spelljammer game would be awesome!

[tauster]

not sure how to apply that to the game, but it's really fun, and some ideas could indeed be applied to the gaming table. Yes, I'm looking at you, #8!

de.pinterest.com/pin/68732848087/

I have seen those model railroad mini-figures a while ago, and really like the idea of realistic miniatures available in hundreds of real-live poses. Too bad they are much too small to be used in most games as is!

Here's more, and here, and here...

[tauster]

BtW: I finally installed Torment:Numenera yesterday and immediately fell in love with the aesthetics of the environment. So many awesome designs, so little time to recreate them all... *sigh*

I didn't really play long, less than an hour, but even the very first encounter looked beautiful:



...could be easily recreated with lots of pencils. In fact I did that a while ago, on a smaller scale, to make basalt-like terrain pieces...




And a few molds...




But making a really large encounter with that... so tempting! You could make small and large stackable pieces to simulate that they change heights dynamically. Lots of action scenes popping up immediately...

[Sam]

I always wanted a basalt cavern. Have not got ambitious enough to build it. A couple times I put golf pencils on my craft list, but never actually got any. Maybe someday.

[tauster]

Here's something so cool that I'm trying very hard to find applications on the table for it:

A tiny USB-powered LED with touch-control ON/OFF and dimmer


What's all cool about it:
1) tiny: 12x42x2 mm
2) durable: no moving parts and the 2mm circuit board is extremely strong (I can't bend it even if I would)
3) double-sided USB connectors => light can be placed in both directions 
4) touch-control functionality: a short tip  on the large black area for ON and OFF, putting your fingers longer on it makes it gradually brighter or darker. It remembers the brightness setting when you pu it on next time
5) soft ON / Soft OFF: the light gradually gets brighter when switched on and gradually darkens until it is completely OFF. Does not switch itself ON automatically when plugged in a powered USB.
6) very strong LEDs: on it's brightest, you shouldn't look directly into the lights. Definitely bright enough as a booklight.

Now all I need is a tiny powerbank. And some ideas what I can illuminate on the table. So let's have a brainstorm!

1) tiny powerbank as a base + USB cable with connector wrapped around a miniature fly stand + illuminated miniature.
1a) a flying creature that surprises the party and the players with the glow effect.
1b) a glowing construct whose HP are represented by the brightness (let the players figure that out by themselves)

[edit]
Afterthought:
That's a really great product, well thought-out and very well produced. It costs 1.21€, and that's shipping included. I knwo that they probably crank these things out by the millions and economies of scale drive the costs down, but still... I can not, for the live of me, see this as a product 'made in Germany', price-wise. Even when I discount for lower Chinese wages, I have a hard time imagining this being made here for that price (shipping would probably be more than half of the price).

And that's only one product of many I bought recently from Chinese ebay sellers. I've known for years that China has become the workbench of the world, but products like these make it painfully clear what's really going on, and how far we've come in this development. I can only hope that the power of innovation here in Germany (the same for Europe and the US) is enough to come up with stuff that's higher on the value chain to compensate for Chinese competition. Granted, I don't know where this little precious has been developed and designed, but it wouldn't surprise me it that's a pure-Chinese product. Wow...

[tauster]

Got me a bit of pure acetone and tried Wyloch 's foam-eating method. I made the same rock piles he did in his tutorial, but somehow ended up with a texture that didn't look like naturally eroded rock but something more ...organic, like veins. Maybe it's because we used slightly different materials... However the texture looked still great, so I did two more test pieces. The intention was to come up with rock arches that look very organic. I had Torment:Numenera's Bloom aesthetics in mind: Something fleshy, grown, where the characters have to squeeze through or let themselves be swallowed to arrive on the other side.



I used the hotwire cutter to shape the blocks a bit, lightly brushed some acetone over the polystyrene and then carefully poured a little bit in the middle. The acetone ate away most of the material in seconds, leaving me with the half-eaten remains that hardened quickly. Before that, I turned the block around so that the glibbery melted stuff drooped down, where it hardened. I was lucky because it did not drop down completely and solidified as a funnel-like structure.




The thin structures are very brittle, so I had to scrape them off with a stiff brush. What's left still looks great.

[tauster]

Not much going on craft-wise in the last days, as too much other things keep me from making stuff for the game. Which doesn't mean I've been lazy (which I actually was, from time to time).

I lucked in a small mountain of acrylic discs of various sizes and thicknesses that will come in handy for transparent bases and doubtless a lot of other things.




I researched and bought all(?) the stuff I need to make one of those resin-and-wood lights:



I have polished the wood (a piece of poplar with gorgeous grain), got the resin and the melamin wood for making a mold. Now I'm only waiting for the mold release agent so that I can use the mold several times.


Only a few days after I discovered the awesome idea of jerrycan minibars,...



...my father threw his old, just-large-enough jerrycan away.




I quickly recovered it and after a one or two weeks of the pre-project procrastination phase which is typical for projects that require skills I don't have yet, today I finally started and sawed the beast open.



Which wasn't easy, but I got it done without hurting myself and destroying only one sawblade. Which is a totally acceptable outcome. The thing still stinks, even after gassing out for days, but I thought if I polish the inside up, it will be good. 



Turns out that those wire brushes for the electric screwdriver are a pain in the behind to use, especially in tiht places with sharp metal edges in the way. I quickly stopped and decided that I'll just spraypaint over everything inside. I'll give it a soft cushionig anyways.

I test-fitted the edge guard band over both lide and opening and discovered that I need to saw another 4mm away to get a nice fit. Damn...



So that's where it stands. Not sure how far I'll get it done over the weekend, as there are lots of other things on the list that are much more important. The garden screams for attention, and there's still a lot of preparation for the baby that's coming in a month or so, give or take two weeks.

[tauster]

Still got nothing done, terrain-craft wise. But I do have a week off, so I was able to make some presents...




I call it the 'DIY hammer', and it will be a gift for my father. The other one is for my brother's workshop. I think you'll guess what it means, but here's an english version.


...and do a little TP drama comic. A real cliffhanger, even!




I just love holidays at home. Saves you a ton of money and you have time to make all the silly ideas accumulated during the rest of the year.

Wait. Dit I say 'all'? Scratch that. This is just the tip of the iceberg's tip. I could make that stuff all summer long and still had stuff left to tick off the my do list's silly brother!

[tauster]

Here's a very cool gadget that I'll try out in a game session soon(-ish): a cheap LED projector.

It has 7 color schemes, and 3 of them are especially great for games:
- red for elemental plane of fire or hell itself, or lava environments
- blue for underwater adventures
- green for encounters in deep forests




It runs with 4 AA batteries which hold longer than a game night, and it's supposed to have a built-in speaker, so you can plug in whatever has an audio jack (didn't test that feature though). I think this will be a cool mood-setter. I'll share a quick report when I was able to use it.