Making Mini Terrain

I was so excited when I got my Bones 4 Kickstarter rewards from Reaper Miniatures; so many amazing miniatures!  I picked out 12 miniatures for a batch run, but when I made plans to attach them to a pedestal, I realized that several of these miniatures did not come with a base attached.  The Bones 4 package included some simple plastic bases, and I glued these minis to the plastic discs, but the minis looked out of place on the flat featureless disc, like they're sitting on someone's kitchen countertop rather than a dungeon.

It's possible to buy various styles of cast resin miniature bases, or laser-cut plywood miniature bases.  They look good, but they are pricey, I'm kind of cheap, and I don't want the base to be so nice that it distracts from the miniature.

Tiny Piece of Terrain

I decided to look into how to make a tiny scrap of terrain surface for the base.  I've tried gluing sand to the base after attaching the mini, but it doesn't work so well; the tiny feet get swallowed in the layer of sand and glue.  You gotta put the terrain down first.  Terrain is typically somewhat chaotic and amorphous, and this stuff needs to stick to the base and the mini. 

Don't fight forces, use them.

-- Richard Buckminster Fuller

If you've ever used Gorilla Glue, you've probaly made a mess with it.  Gorilla Glue is kind of a cross between varnish and expanding foam.  Like a good varnish, it's main ingredient is tough polyurethane; but it cures using airborne moisture and it turns into a foam, bulking up like a foam blob until it is several times its original size, thereby expanding into the gap you're gluing.  It goes on looking like maple syrup, but it foams into hard yellow spittle and makes a mess. 

It occurs to me that the randomness of this glue could provide me with the randomness I need to make convincing terrain.  But how random is it?  How big will it foam up?  I decided to experiment with white Gorilla Glue, sand, and gravel. 

Experiments

I thoroughly washed an old food package lid, drew 1-inch circles on the back with a Sharpie, and numbered them 1 through 7. 
In each circle, I put a drop of white Gorilla Glue. 
In circle 1, I left the drop in the center of the circle.
In circles 2 through 7, I smeared the drop around to basically cover the whole circle.
In circle 3, I sprinkled sand on the glue.  The sand came out of a 50-pound bag I bought at a hardware store, and it has some tiny bits of gravel mixed in. 
In circle 4, I sprinkled gravel on the glue.
In circle 5, I sprinkled gravel on the glue, then poured on sand to fill the gaps.
In circle 6, I let the glue foam up, then I mixed sand into the sticky glue to form a gritty paste.
In circle 7, I let the glue foam up, then I mixed gravel into the sticky glue.
I devised some of these experiments to prevent something I call the "chocolate chip cookie" effect, wherein glue foams around pieces of gravel, resembling the way cookie dough rises around chocolate chips; this is unlike the way rocks appear on the ground, poking up through dirt which washes away from the rock. 

Here I let the glue cure overnight, and shook the excess sand and gravel off it.  In circle 1, you can see the glue in circle 1 hardened on the outside, then foamed and expanded through a hole, kind of like a volcanic ejection.  In most of the other circles, you can see the glue has neatly foamed to resemble white spittle, where it is not mixed with sand.

Here I sprayed white primer on the terrain.  #4 and #7 have a little of the chocolate chip cookie effect.  Honestly, though, all of them (except for #1) look like believable terrain.

Here I painted #2 through #7 with dirt- and rock-colored paint.  They mostly look believable, but #3 looks the nicest; you can see there is only a little gravel on #3, so I suspect that a few pieces of "accent" gravel provide decent contrast with the appearance of dirt and sand from the other experiments.  It could also be a psychological effect wherein my mind doesn't like the more gravelly sections because they look too rocky and irregular to walk on without twisting my ankle. 

Conclusions

A little gravel goes a long way, but in general the sand on the glue works pretty well. 

But even if you wind up with terrain that REALLY looks like a chocolate chip cookie, there's at least 1 monster for whom you have the perfect terrain!

He doesn't want to eat your adventurers, he wants their rations.

Latest batch of Miniatures

I got burned out on miniatures...for about a year.  I paint miniatures in batches of 12 at a time, and I just stopped right in the middle of a batch, and let them sit in the corner, gathering dust.  I don't know why I didn't get back to them.  Video games were definitely one distraction.

Then I got my Bones 4 Kickstarter rewards, and I had a lot of awesome miniatures to paint!  That got me to finish my current batch in a hurry. 

Only one monster!

It's adventurer vs. adventurer!

Most of these are Reaper Bones, some are metal miniatures from various manufacturers, and 1 of them is sculpted my me out of Green Stuff epoxy putty. 

Farewell, Google+

I don't WANT to go to Twitter, but where else should I go to post brief status updates?  I'll never go back to those F***ing B***ards at that other social network site. 

Shadow Blaster

If you like D&D and other role-playing games, you probably like dice.  Unfortunately, one of the standard RPG dice is problematic: the d4; it's hard to pick up, it doesn't roll so easily, and it's a hazard on the floor.

The typical d4 is shaped like a Platonic tetrahedron.  In its most stable state, it presents only angled sides, making it difficult to pick up.  If the weather (and your hand) is dry enough, squeezing it will only force it to slip out of your fingers.

You may be able to slide it off the edge of the table into your other hand, but if you drop it, the sharp peak on the top makes it hazardous to step on; it's the caltrop of dice.

The solution is to roll the d4 without ever needing to pick it up, or even letting it loose in the gaming environment.

Shadow Blast

Many years ago, my Game Master ran a game wherein me and my friends played as extra-dimensional creatures who posessed some kind of weird raygun-like ranged attack called the Shadow Blast.  The Shadow Blast did multiple d4s of damage.  At some point, we were expected to roll 20d4 for damage.  Picking up all those d4s made the attack a ridiculous time-waster at the game table.

The Pop-O-Matic bubble is a classic way to "roll" dice without picking them up, and lots of people have hacked the Pop-O-Matic bubbles out of old board games in order to fill them with other dice.  Unfortunately, you can only roll about 4 d4s in one of those little domes.  It would be neat to craft your own, but I have been unable to find a source for the "popping" spring at the heart of a Pop-O-Matic, other than by sawing apart old Pop-O-Matics.

Enter the Shadow Blaster

That's why I invented The Shadow Blaster.  The Shadow Blaster meant that I never needed to pick up a d4 ever again.  It's stupidly simple: it's a jar filled with d4s.

For a jar, you want a wide, squat glass jar with a flat bottom, like a salsa jar, or maybe some other kind of chip dip/vegetable dip/pickle jar.  The flatter the bottom, the less likely the dice will end up 'cocked' at an angle.  The wider the jar, the more d4s you can put in it.

Wash the jar.  Use Citra-Solv to remove any label stickum, and maybe try to dissolve out any stale chili pepper smell from the lid.  Let it air out for a while.  Drop in some minty chewing gum.  You will never completely remove the stale chili pepper smell.  But once you put dice in the Shadow Blaster, you will never need to open it again, so who cares what they smell like.

Now get various d4s.  You want to pick d4s with numbers at the peak (so you can read them when they're crowded together).

You will also want to get these d4s in color groupings such that you can call out how many dice you roll by color.  For example, my Shadow Blaster has 12d4 in it, colored much like this:
4 dark d4s
3 red d4s
2 yellow d4s
2 green d4s
1 blue d4

In this way, if I wanted to roll any number of d4s from 1 to 12, I could specify which colors I would read (or "all of them") before rolling.

Put the dice in the jar, seal it up, glue on a cool label, and you're set.  Shake up the jar!  The dice should make a satisfying popping and clinking rattle.

Let the dice settle at the bottom, and read your random numbers.

Need a cool label?  I've got you covered; print out this logo, cut it out, and glue-stick it to your jar.

Cool Tool for the Disabled

You might think this stupidly simple idea isn't valuable; that you never had much trouble picking up a d4 in your life, and you never needed to roll more than one d4 at any time.  But suppose you have a friend with a motor-control disability (maybe Parkinson's disease, a broken arm, arthritis, or Carpal Tunnel syndrome) which makes picking up small slippery dice difficult or even impossible.  If they can pick up a jar, then Shadow Blaster to the rescue!  Just drop a complete set of 7 dice in the jar (or whichever dice your game needs), and if they all lay flat at the bottom, have your friend shake the whole jar every time they need to roll a die, and only read the one die they need.

Polar Vortex

POLAR VORTEX: Coming to a front yard near YOU.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power premiered a month ago on November 13th.  Last night I watched 3 episodes of it.

Not Much Like the Original Show

I never watched the old show, "She-Ra the Princess of Power," when it was on TV.  The theme song threw me, as a teenager I was out of the show's key demographic, and I thought He-Man was stupid.

I briefly researched the old She-Ra, and I am disappointed by the lazy writing; turns out that not only is She-Ra a female-marketed He-Man-like character, She-Ra is straight-up He-Man's twin sister.  We've seen this kind of thing with Superman/Supergirl (cousins), Luke Skywalker/Leia Organa (spoilers!)...  It's just lazy writing.  And then there are the character names: "Spinnerella" is someone whose powers involve spinning really fast (oh, I was hoping for a cool spider-themed character, but no); "Castaspella" is a sorceress; I'll spare you any more details.

The original show lasted only 2 seasons.  For some reason, they ground out 93 episodes of it.  I have heard that some people complain that the reboot's titular heroine isn't busty enough, compared to the original; that the new art is an insult to the art of the original series.  Having recently seen some of the original, I say the original wasn't good enough to bother comparing.  Besides, the original was on the airwaves 32 years ago, you're probably old enough to move on to other dramas.

The Reboot

The first thing I noticed about the new series was its similarities to other cartoons, like "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic," "Adventure Time," and "Steven Universe."  The art is stripped down.  I am occasionally reminded of the fantastic architecture of Moebius.

I have since learned that the reboot was developed by Noelle Stevenson, the author of the graphic novel "Nimona," which I liked so much I had to buy a copy for a friend.  I see similar story elements in both "Nimona" and "She-Ra and the Princesses of Power."

I liked it!  But then I also like "Adventure Time" and "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic."

Yeah, But I'm a Boy, What do I Know?

I asked my cisgender female wife for her opinions of the new show:

• The art is too sparse for her tastes.  The lack of detail detracts from and obscures the sense of fantastic immersion.  I can see her point--it would be awsome if every scene could be as lushly-rendered as a Moebius cover, but I understand that you don't get detailed art for free; every line on the screen costs animator time.  
• She-Ra's hair is what really tells my wife that the heroine is special and magical; her costume and physical changes don't differ much compared to her 'secret identity.'
• My wife liked the "horsey" joke.  
• My wife thought the choice to make Glimmer heavyset was interesting.  Why did they do that?  Is it a comment that all people are different and have different body types (I immediately notice that the heroes generally have identical body types in the old series; I assume this is lazy design)?  Is it an observation that Glimmer doesn't need an athletic physique because Glimmer uses magic instead of athleticism?  Is it a way for thicc girls to identify with someone on the cartoon?  
• The target audience is likely young, because the story is so simple and the plots move so slowly.  

Conclusion

At the end of a stressful day, I'd rather watch the simple lightness of "She-Ra and the Princesses of Power" than the pointless darkness of "The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina."

Kitty Holiday Card Ornaments

Cut the cats out of the postcard.  Take some wire pieces (I used paperclips), bend the wires into "U" shapes with hooks at the ends for claws.

Tape the wires to the back of the cats so they can claw onto your Yule tree.

Attach the cats to your tree, and celebrate the Holiday!