3 D's: Daemons & Dungeons & Dragons

[Solun Decius]

Great to see all the cool Player characters and board game pieces.
Yorric's DnD4 set and the Castlevania enemies all have this way of retaining a board game feel, with the strong (on WFB minis I'd call it overpowering) main color, but still with nice shading and good detail as minis should be. It really makes for interesting pieces and you nailed what you were aiming at. For this purpose it's really brilliant.
Muninn's Castlevania characters are just really nice pieces. Very vivid colors and smooth skin and faces. I love the contrasty colors and attention to each pice of detail on them.
Great work both of you!

[lord opium]

Can I just ask what model Yorrik use for the human fighter?

[Abraham Danglebreech]

Brother Muninn, I think the painting is sound and please don't think my comment was a slur of some sort. I was imagining the work load you have: doing GM prep for the next game AND getting ready all the minis you need. If it was me, I'd struggle getting stuff done on time and so would concentrate on getting models ready for sessions in the future (you seem to be doing the latter). The "monochrome" I mention was referring to some minis being left unpainted and grey (which is what I would probably end up doing if I was in your shoes!), and not the rather splendid monochrome schemes for the PCs.

Again, this log ticks all the right boxes for me, not least because my own project has a similar aim, except I'm not currently playing the campaign that the conversions are for.

Just wanted to make sure there was no misunderstanding! Curse my poor attempt at humour

(Leaves the room quietly while sheepishly fiddling with hem of sweater, staring at shoes)

[Yorrik]

Daniel36> The Castlevania game was an idea my friends and I came up with to sort of emphasize the encounter-based monster hack/platforming that Castlevania is full of. It occurred shortly after the Third Crusade. The set up was that 100 years prior the Belmonts had entered Castlevania and defeated Dracula, but only one member of the party escaped to tell the tale. They were warned that Dracula would rise again, so at the outset of the game, the Belmont family was sprawling and healthy, with many of them hardened in the Crusades. However, one treacherous Belmont made a deal with the Angel of Death (pictured above), to save the life of his love, who was slowly dying. During a wedding of the primary Belmont heir, Death appeared and slaughtered every Belmont man, woman, and child, and also all the non-Belmont guests who were in attendance. Only five survived, and only due to Death's counterpart, the Angel of life, who impressed upon the survivors (the PCs) the urgency of entering Castlevania and defeating Dracula. After that, the game was a series of linked encounters that had themes based on location, many of which involved interacting with the shadowy denizens there. One of my favorite encounters was the Clock Tower, which involved gear-shaped pieces of cardstock that represented the moving guts of the massive device. players had to jump from gear to gear, all while avoiding flying Medusa head minions, some of whom would petrify on a hit. Eventually they discovered that there was a conspiracy at work involving Death, the Vampire toady Orlock, and Dracula's various wives. The party got assistance from the ghosts of the party that entered Castlevania 100 years prior, who provided a safe place to have extended rests (Save rooms!) as well as providing a bonus in the final fight against Dracula. All in all it was a successful game, and I recommend using the setting for DnD4e, since many of the unique neato mechanics transfer well from one to the other.

Solun_Decius> Thank you very much, I am very pleased with the way they turned out. The "token" rather than "representative" feel is really emphasized by the bases, I think. An easy thing too, since all I did was paint them codex gray, drybrush bleached bone, and wash with the appropriate color.

Lord_opium> The fighter mini is "Alain, Iconic Cavalier" from the Reaper Pathfinder line. It was a great mini to work on, and I like that he has a more relaxed posture than most "dynamic" models (perfect for the character, since he was explicitly lazy). I loved working on the shield since it has such a nice, flat area to work with - I'm sure some folks who are better at freehand then I would have a field day. It has an odd inclusion though - the mini has, like, a giant nail or something attached to his back (you can see it on the mini, it's the spear-looking thing that *doesn't* have a flag). We couldn't figure out what it was supposed to be, but I wasn't comfortable digging it out, so I left it.

Thanks for all the views, fellas! We'll try to keep the progress coming. I'm currently working on the three remaining Dark Sun PCs simultaneously, so progress is coming in little bits on each guy.

~Alas~

[Brother Muninn]

Henge Guardian>> Thanks, we wanted the PCs to be able to stand out from the other minis so they'd be easily identifiable from each other and from the enemy minis. You only really need a few colors to set them apart: some primary colors, black, white, and a metallic.

Zoring>> You should see it when we use all the rings. We've also got "marked" rings, "effect" rings, and "save ends" rings.

Yorrik>> I'll toss up a better angle when I get the chance.

Daniel36>> Yorrik gave a good summary of the plot, the play was great with a lot of flavorful, interesting encounters.

The one that will forever stand out to me is an encounter where we were riding on the back of a gargantuan monster and we had to rip off the plates that were bolted to it's body to get to the actual monster. However it was infested with flea men minions who exploded whenever they took any damage. I think I died twice in that fight.

Solun Decius>> Thanks! The only mini I wasn't totally happy with was the Belmont. I kept going back and forth on his color scheme, and just kinda landed on shades of brown. I almost went with shades of black & grey, but I wanted something that wouldn't just blend into the other minis.

Abraham Danglebreech>> lol, okay, now it makes more sense. No offense taken, I thought it was an astute observation on your part. I've had a plot/encounter outline for several months, and I basically work on the minis in advance and flesh out the RP stuff as I go along.

Late at night after I've set down my brush I'll pick up my laptop and write out characters and dialog. I'm keeping it kinda shallow at the moment, but soon I'll be introducing reoccurring characters and villains.

I'm not painting that many guys, to be honest. I'm striving to have one to two good minis per session (not per encounter). I work full time, so that's about all i have time for in a week. The rest of the minis are filled out by prepainted D&D miniatures. For instance, the Gladiator encounter used the Mul, a plastic dragonborn, and four plastic humans with spears. This week I'll try to take a shot of the battle mat so you guys can see the scope.

~Muninn

[Brother Muninn]

Got our latest session done. It was a short one, so we only got one encounter in. Although i did give them a sneak peak at what they ran into at the end of the encounter.



I learned a lesson from this mini. Make sure the juice is worth the squeeze. I'm not sure how long this guy'll last on the table, but he took a long time to paint. Soo much detail. If I ever tackle a highly detailed mini like this again I'll make sure it's an elite or solo or something.

Yorrik got some more work in on our PCs, nothing new for the Kreen, but here's our Ardent, Ka'si


and our Hexblade, Sharos


More later.

~Muninn

[Solun Decius]

Wow, that is a lot of detail. Very colorful and strong paintjob too.
Do you never use these minis again in the game? If it's not a special character and not too powerful, could your players not encounter another of the same type later on, under more difficult circumstances or joined with another enemy?
Just thinking of the reuse value

[Brother Muninn]

Solun Decius>> So far I haven't found the occasion to reuse any of the minis. I haven't really even been thinking in those terms.

I suppose the easiest to do would be the drakes from the first fight. Lord knows there're plenty of hungry desert reptiles in the big desert.

Forgot to mention, the gnoll mini is a Demonic Gnoll Adept from the Chainmail line. It originally had a standard flail, but I made a new, more Dark Sun appropriate flail using a paper clip, green stuff, and a fish hook.

Other than that I'm just plugging along on my next few encounters. Probably won't see anything new this week, so I'll drop in a few more minis from past games, if you guys like those.

~Muninn

[Yorrik]

I'm scared of that thing. I just looks mean to me. The aspect of the gnoll I like most (besides all the tawny tones you've used) is the fish hook. That thing is brutal. I love to see your conversions, because they often include the use of something that I wouldn't have thought of (in this case, a real *******' brass fish hook).

I should have at least the Ardent done by Wednesday, and hopefully some more paint on the Hexblade. I was holding off on the Knight, as I wanted to jimmy up a jawbone axe thing, but that's just not going to happen. So instead I'll carve out some new plasticard axe heads, and hopefully they're stay put this time.

Looking at the Ardent picture makes me realize how colorful it is. I had intended to stick more to bland tones, but looking at it now makes me realize how bold and different each of the colors are. Still, she looks piecemeal, which as what I was going for. I'm thinking I'm going to paint over the blue/blacks. They look too garish for me.

[Brother Muninn]

Here's the completed Ka'si Tak'cho. I had a tough time getting the lighting corrected in photoshop, so she looks a little more orange than she does in real life. Aside from the fun damaged/chipped look Yorrik added to the blade I'm particularly fond of the hair which resembles the sunbleached look of someone whose been exposed to a harsh environment.

[mdiscala]

You use real unique color schemes, which is very cool.

[Brother Muninn]

Here's what our board looks like in game, and again please pardon the lighting, The Demon Gnoll put up a good fight, but in the end the day went to the PCs (Next time, Gadget!)


Here's some progress on our Hexblade. I'm not sure where Yorrik is going with the coat, but at the moment it gives me a Michael Jackson in "Thriller" vibe.


Plus, I've just figured out a way to post the guys I'm going to use in future games, I'll just post them inside a spoiler box. So you can expect quite a few things you haven't seen yet.

~Muninn

[Abraham Danglebreech]

Great to see the minis in action. Not had a game in ages! Do you ever use floor plans or do you always use a wipe matt? I only ask because a while back myself and a friend made some floor tiles to cut up to use in our games. They're not amazing quality and i don't know how good they will print out, but the guy over at windsofchaos has them up on the site for download here, bottom of the page.

There is also a little photo of how you could use them here.

Dunno if they are of any use and I don't mind if you plain just don't like them (though please go easy with the minecart tiles - I'm quite proud of those!)

Great paintjob on Ka'si Tak'cho and the Demon Gnoll looks particularly nasty!

Looking forward to seeing more

[Daniel36]

Ugh I am so jealous of your Pathfinder minis.

[Maglok]

Your models are very nice. The are so bright in colors. Maybe tone down the white balance a little on your pictures.

I think they will look awesome irl on the table because they stand out so much. Particularly like the purple horned guy.

[Brother Muninn]

Abraham Danglebreech>> We almost universally use the game mat. We do several types of games/systems, so it helps to have something that's easily adaptable to different situations. The tiles are neat though, and if I come up with an encounter where they'd fit I'll certainly steal them.

Daniel36>> Thanks, glad to hear you're enjoying them. There should be even more pathfinder stuff here in the future.

Maglok>> The color balance is a bit of an issue. For now I'm just using a sheet of paper as the background, which is what I use as my whitepoint in photoshop. What I really need is a good lightbox to shoot with.

I tend to work the pictures up from a computer at my newspaper and the monitors there are calibrated for print work, so it's possible that they're too saturated for other people's liking. It's something I need to work on for sure.

Anyone know how I could hide photos of so you could see them, but my players won't accidentally stumble across them? In some forums the "spoiler" function hides text and pics, but Warseer's doesn't seem to do that.

~Muninn

[Maglok]

On flickr you can post pictures publically or just if someone knows the link or privately (friend accounts only)

[Abraham Danglebreech]

Game matts are better in my opinion. As much as I like spending ages painting made-to-measure minis for RPGs and even though I like the look of a tiled out dungeon, it can sometimes turn off the imagination switch. I suppose the difference between a game matt and dungeon tiles is akin to the difference between reading a really basic b/w comic strip and a fully detailed, painted one. Sometimes less is more and it helps the reader/player get more involved by having to fill in the gaps with their imagination.

Never going to give up painting minis though!

As regards the +++SPOILERS+++ function,

Warseer has one. I tried using it myself but I was unhappy with the look of the thing. It basically puts a blanket over everything you want protected. Though I have never used it to hide an image before. Its on the far right of the top control panel in the advanced edit section

Hope that helps.

[Brother Muninn]

Okay, so this doesn't seem to be working quite right. Even with the spoilers you can see the links, which is a pain.

So Yorrik, just don't highlight or click the links. :P

Here's the finished product (more or less) dwarf I posted earlier. Still not totally sure how I'll use it, but I have another dwarf in my painting que so maybe a troupe or maybe as guards.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y27...0Sun/Dwarf.jpg

Here's a GW Mordheim Auger. I'm not sure how I'll use this one either, but I painted it to look like it has jade knives & bracelets, so maybe a desert priest, or preserver.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y27...20Sun/Jade.jpg

~Muninn

[Hadriel Caine]

Great stuff in here. Games like D&D are such an opportunity with such an invested GM.