Papercraft: Cart Horses

Following up from my post yesterday about techniques for making Paper Miniatures (and to accompany the Adventurers Cart I posted a few weeks ago), here's a PDF with some Cart Horse miniatures.

• Cart Horse (PDF)

Paper Miniatures

I read with interest the detailed instructions in NewbieDM's Tutorial – Counters, Tokens, or Pogs and thought about sharing some of the techniques I've used for creating paper minis over the years.

Standee Styles

There are a couple different styles of standee that I've made over the years most are either:

• A-Frame where the assembled miniature when viewed from the side resembles a letter A. The base ends either lock into each other or are glued together to form a square base.
  
  
• T-Shape where the assembled miniature resembles an inverted letter T.  I find this type most useful as they fold flat, take up less storage space and stand vertical.

Source your Images

I use a variety of sources for images Googleing works well, but my favourite (particularly) for PC and NPCs is the HeroMachine.

Build your Standee Template

In your favourite image editing package (Photoshop, GIMP) build a template for each standee using guides.  I usually use a scale of 1" = 5' so each humanoid standee base is either 1" square or round.  Mounted or monster miniatures will of couse be much larger.  Make sure everything is merged into 1 layer and then duplicate that layer to make a whole bunch of standees.

Add your images

Once you've chosen your images paste them into your template on a new layer and scale them to fit your template.  Make sure to proportionally scale the images otherwise your elf may look more like a dwarf and vice versa.

Once the frontside image is in place, duplicate that layer and flip it upside down, this becomes the back of the figure, move this backside layer so it is vertically above the frontside.  I then turn this into a sillhouette by changing the hue/saturation until the figure is all black.

Repeat this for each backside image and add a little text to number each miniature and you should get something resembling this:

Cut, Fold and Glue

All you need to do now is cut fold and glue the miniatures together and hey presto... your own zombie army!!

Plastic Bases

There are a few manufacturers out there who make an assortment of bases for use in boardgames and can be picked up very cheaply (£1 for 20).  These minis tend to be a little more economical as you don't need to waste as much paper and ink printing out the bases.  Just leave yourself a little rectangle of paper at the bottom of each mini to slot into each base.

Character Archetypes?

I was asked to create a filler game at short notice this week and wanted to try out a new character creation concept (well new to me anyway), character archetypes.  It's a halfway house between letting your players roll up their own characters or presenting them with fully written characters.

The archetypes are printed onto small pieces of card in the form of a TITLE, PRIMARY STAT & SKILL (or in the case of SBA a Primary Skill (at Superb +5) and a Stunt) and a BACKGROUND SENTENCE to provoke the players into writing their own background.  For example:

THE DASHING ARMY CAPTAIN

RAPPORT / Intergalactic Ladies Man

"Last one to rescue a young lady is a rotten egg"

or

THE YOUNG PLANETARY SCIENTIST

SCIENCE / Scientific Genius

"Those fools at the Royal Society don't appreciate the possibilities of my discovery"

I used this method because:

• I didn't have the time to pre-gen a bunch of characters for the game and write the scenario.
  
• The players were relatively unfamiliar with the system (Starblazer Adventures) and the genre (Victorian Sci-Fi).
  
• I find that players are less reckless with characters they've had a hand in creating rather than ones they're just given and this results in better roleplay.

So how did it work out?

I was quite pleased with the results.  I gave the players a few minutes to digest their choice and then did a small piece of 1 to 1 roleplay with each player to introduce their character into the game and to discuss some options which they might consider.  Each player then spent about 10 minutes or so fleshing out their character before we began with the opening scene.  I'll certainly be using it again and might consider it for other systems.

Papercraft Obelisks

Sersa V at Save Verus Death posted some nice papercraft obelisks which I had to build.   Perhaps this will be all the encouragement I need to run the Desert of Desolation again.  Here's a pic of how they turned out:

Cliche avoidance... or 4 ways I've put a party together through enforced captivity.

I know I've been guilty of using the "Bar Brawl" or the "Adventurer's Noticeboard" cliche's every once in a while but here are a few of the other ways I've brought a party of PCs together:

"It's a lovely summers day and the grass is even tastier than it was yesterday."

This was the opening line in a Justifiers RPG scenario where the PCs were all beta-humanoid sheep. They had been on a mission, to investigate the dissappearance of a fellow Justifier team, which had gone horribly wrong and they began the adventure in a pasture having been subjected to a neural wipe without any memory of themselves, their past or their species. Over a couple of sessions they gradually discovered their identities and skills as the neural wipe wore off.

"The guy in the unseasonal outfit seems to have wires running from his sleeve to something in his hand..."

In this Squadron UK scenario (see Project Daedalus postings) the PCs are the only survivors of a terrorist dirty bomb in Trafalgar Square.  The bomb awakens their latent superpowers (the genetic legacy of their grandparents) and during their recuperation in a secret government facility they get to know one another and explore their new found powers.

"You notice that the ship's motley crew are carrying short lengths of chain with manacles at each end.  Something tells you that you should start running..."

I started one of my The Lands of Dual fantasy campaigns by collecting together each of the players from their respective homelands with a slave pirate ship.  It's amazing how quickly a party bond with each other when they're chained together rowing for 18 hours a day!!

"You best be getting up to the Castle before the Siege starts..."

In this campaign opener the PCs were press ganged into becoming siege defenders by the Baron of a coastal town.  The PCs were unaware that the Baron was being controlled by the forces of darkness and that the King's forces, massing on the hills outside of town, were being led by a particularly devout Warrior Priest with strict instructions to erase the castle and it's inhabitants from history.