Papercraft: Ruined Columns

My regular Friday group began another chapter in their on-going campaign which called for them to explore an ancient ruined temple.  The scenario I'm DMing is lifted straight out of an issue of Dungeon Magazine and the map of the temple is dominated by a huge room with lots of toppled columns, some of which have crashed through walls exposing new routes and blocking off others.  I drew out the main room and was particularly unhappy with the result, it was hard to replicate the adhoc passageways and the columns just looked like giant frankfurters, so I decided to make some ruined columns of my own.

As I've found with my other papercraft projects like the Adventurer's Cart, a 3D element can be a real game changer when it comes to combat, so I quickly knocked up a design for a large 4" column and a short stubby 2" column using Google Sketchup and the Unfold Plug-in (See my Papercrafting article for more info) and then exported them as 2D artwork into Photoshop for resizing to the correct scale.

Once printed and cut out they're very easy to put together as they're simple tubes.  I inserted a large bolt into each column before sealing them up, it's not essential but it acts as a weight to keep them from toppling over when the player's get excited. 

• 2" x 1" Ruined Columns (PDF 1Mb) - makes 6 columns
• 4" x 1" Ruined Columns (PDF 934Kb) - makes 3 columns

Enjoy, and don't be afraid to drop me a comment with other papercraft suggestions.

Citymorphs #005 to #008

The first batch of Citymorphs taught me a few lessons (like making the jpgs 300 pixels square) and that if they are going to be used by a randomizer engine I'll have to incorporate some features like edge tunnels if I want another point of tesselation.  So here are four more...

#005 - Harbour and Canal

Another harbour tile, this time with a river or canal, adding a new middle edge feature, I'm still learning here... 

#006 - Very Little Venice

All towns and cities are going to have a river running throught them in some way, so here's a tile with a river bending through it's middle.  Of course to keep it tesselating I had to add in some bridges and edge tunnels which needed a bit of thought.

#007 - Harbour and factory

Enthused with the transparency experiments on the bridges of #006 Very Little Venice I decided to give the factory in this tile a bit of smoke for it's furnaces and of course some coal barges to keep those fires burning.  I have no idea what the factory makes but its location close to the harbour is ideal for exporting its products and importing its raw materials..

#008 - The Chasm

A few years ago a great chasm opened up in the ground and swallowed some buildings.  The river has greated a lake at the chasm's bottom but it must have found a tunnel to flow out of as it always seems to stay at a constant level.  The locals have recently built a bridge to keep some traffic moving through this area but some of the ruined buildings still rest precariously over the chasm edge.

Monday Motivations #7

Article #7 in a regular series where I offer up some ideas for character backgrounds by class.  I aim to collect these ideas together for a future pdf publication.

What made your character decide to become a wizard? Why did they leave their home town? Did they leave family behind or are they looking for something? These are all questions players face when generating their characters, with the best will in the world it's tempting to rely on cliché.

BARD

Bard by AIBryce

1.  Every Bard Needs a Hero - You've made a respectable living up to now sing in the various inns and taverns of your homeland, but singing the same old songs and telling the same old tales has begun to wear thin.  It is said that a bard is only as good as the hero he follows, you must therefore strike out and find your own hero who you can immortalise in song...

2.  The Great Bard's Instrument - When you needed to repair your instrument after a particulary rowdy evening in a local tavern you stumbled across a dusty tome of the Great Bard's work in the luther's workshop.  The tales and songs were familiar but it was the illustration of the Great Bard himself which captivated you.  You had never seen his image before or the instrument he played, so different from your own.  When you ask the luther if he can make such an instrument he tells you that the instrument was made long ago in a land far away and perhaps they have the skills and knowledge to recreate it.

3.  The Masked Mariachi - The people are a sad and dispirited lot, their backs and spirits have been broken by the work party enforcers sent by their despotic ruler to harvest the crops and mine the ore needed to further his own ends.  The people need to rise up and overthrow him, but to do this they need hope, the kind of hope that can be spread through song.  You know that this won't be easy, you'll need to travel swiftly from village to village, be selective in where you play, and you'll need a disguise but the people need you.  The people need the Masked Mariachi...

DRUID

1.  Blight - A terrible blight has cursed the land and the desperate townsfolk turned to you to save their crops, there was nothing you could do.  Your grove has withered and in order to save it you have uprooted it's heart vine which now sits safely in a pot of earth in your backpack as you try to find a new home far from your blighted birthplace.  Perhaps the townfolk will forgive you for abandoning them if you could only find a cure...

2.  Nature's Balance - You became aware of a shift in the natural order of things several months ago during a peyote ritual.  The visions you had showed a dark tide sweeping across the land and plants and animals alike withered and died in it's wake.  The visions grew stronger each time you performed the ritual and you became convinced that the only way you can stem the tide and regain the essential balance is to journey into the heart of darkness and cut out it's root...

Citymorphs #001 to #004

Inspired by Risus and Dyson, I've started geomorphing, but as I mostly enjoy DMing urban environments I thought I'd try something a bit different.  So here are the first in a series of Citymorphs:

#001 Palace District

Every city has to have a big cheese and they need a nice place to crash, of course the hangers on and other courtly types need somewhere to live close which makes for a similar architecture and style.

#002 Colliseum

The people have bread, so give them a circus.  Print off 2 of this tile and you have a whole colliseum for them to while away the hours watching chariot races.

#003 Harbour

Maybe your city is also a port, if so it'll need somewhere to land those ships and some warehouses to store goods and cargo.  It'll also need some sort of harbour master's buildings to control what comes in and what goes out.

#004 Municipal Buildings

With all this commerce going on there's got to be some sort of tax collection and administration going on.  Civil servants like nice buildings to make them feel important so grand architecture and domes are the order of the day.

Monday Motivations #6

Article #6 in a regular series where I offer up some ideas for character backgrounds by class.  I aim to collect these ideas together for a future pdf publication.

What made your character decide to become a wizard? Why did they leave their home town? Did they leave family behind or are they looking for something? These are all questions players face when generating their characters, with the best will in the world it's tempting to rely on cliché.

RANGER

2.  The King's Deer - Your family were starving and even though you knew it was wrong you shot the King's deer to survive the harsh winter.  Your Father was livid when you returned with the carcass, you explained that you were careful to clean the spot where you gutted it and bury the entrails but he didn't speak to you for weeks.  When the King's Warden posted bounty you knew that in order to protect your family you would have to leave your home and go on the run...

3.  Sacked - You were one of the Baron's huntsmen until the day the castle was sacked by a Goblin horde.  You had no love for the Baron, who was a blundering oaf when it came to tracking and stalking, but it was the beatings he personally administered to you as a stable boy which made you hate him.  You did little to help him when you chanced upon him in a clearing, soon after the castle had fallen, trapped under the weight of his dying prize charger.  The sounds of his screaming when the Goblin's found him still haunt you across the many leagues you have travelled since... 

4.  Trophy Hunter - The old ranger to whom you were apprenticed taught you many things, the woodcraft necessary to stay alive in the wilderness, how to differentiate and track prey from their prints and stool, how to set traps and lure the prey to them and how to butcher your kill quickly so the meat does not taint.  These challenges would satisfy most rangers, but your lust for knowledge is insatiable.  The day came when the old ranger told you that he could teach you no more, with some swallowing of pride, he admitted that your skills had far surpassed his own and that he had been learning more from you than he had been teaching you for the last year or more.  His advice to you was to travel to distant lands and to find new prey to hunt and new teachers to learn from...

5.  Big Fish - Your skill with the bow is legendary in the province where you were raised and your success in local tournaments earned you your freemanship.  However, in the last tournament you entered you were soundly beaten by a strange bowman with sun darkened skin from the desert lands.  His accuracy and speed drew gasps from the crowd and incredulity from you.  Your friends did little to help your dark demeanor that night in the inn, barracking you with taunts of "big fish, little pond".  To save face you brashly claimed that you would travel to the home of the black bowman and learn his secrets.  Their taunts echo in your mind as you pass through yet another backwater village on your long journey south...

CLERIC

3. Missing Relic - Your order was founded in a time of war, its' first and most revered Abbot was killed on the battlefield in a distant land as part of a crusade to bring the word of your God to the unbeliever.  Your Abbot has decided that your final test as a novice is to retrieve the lost foot of the founding Abbot and return it to the reliquary where it belongs.  You have been furnished with a map showing the approximate whereabouts of the battlefield and a scroll which Scrollmaster Deach has created at great personal cost to help you located the missing remains...