SAS - Tan Dungeon Tiles

Well, I've made a little progress on my "short attention span" project list, including completing what I would call a starter set of the tan dungeon tiles. These were made with a color scheme of brown/tan/cream to contrast to the much larger tile set I have already made in shades of gray.

The tiles are carved with a 1 inch grid and some minimal detailing. The picture below shows a few different pieces in various stages of color layering. The bottom couple of small 5 foot wide hall sections have been base coated in CraftSmart "dark taupe". The middle three pieces have a moderate sponging of Folk Art "camel". The top piece has had its final light sponging of Folk Art "vintage white". The edges have been painted black. Any similar colors would work for this three part process as long as you used a chocolate brown, a rich warm tan and a creamy white.

Stages and Colors

The setup below shows all the pieces I made in this first batch thrown together in a basic dungeon layout. There are ~12 chambers of various sizes, and a decent sized assortment of 5 foot (1 inch) and 10 foot (2 inch) passages.

Tan Dungeon Tiles Starter Set

With the aid of the Proxxon thermocut hot wire table, this went faster than similar projects done previously with nothing but a few knives. My best guess would be that this took about an hour to cut all the pieces. Then maybe another hour or hour and a half to scribe and distress the pieces. Then another hour or so (in 15 minute batches) to paint them. All told, this is probably 4 hours of work. When done a half hour here and a half hour there as time allows, and while a Flyers game is on in the background, this was an extremely easy, and quick, project.

Total materials cost is maybe $4-5 of XPS foam (less than half of a $12 4x8 foot sheet of 3/4 inch foam), and a couple of bucks worth of craft paint. If you bought one 4x8 sheet of XPS and three craft bottles of paint, this would cost less than $20, and you'd have a good bit of the paint and more than half of the foam left over.

I'm working on a few stair pieces, but that's all I have planned for this set at the moment. But you never know...

High School Musical

It's a bittersweet day for me. Garnet Valley's fall musical wrapped today after four shows, including a postponed Thursday night opening performance because of snow and ice that became a Sunday matinee. I watched 3 of the 4 shows, which is about the usual.

Julia did 9 shows, beginning with Les Miserables in the spring of 2014, but her run has ended. Amp has been heavily involved in costumes since the fall of 2014, but this was her first show as the official Head of Costumes, and everything on stage was designed/approved by her. I think it looks great.

This is also Grace's first musical, as she is now in 9th grade. Because of her gymnastics background, she has a role as a cheerleader and featured dancer, and is a featured tumbler.

Grace and gymnastics teammates

The number of hours that go into these shows is huge, but the end result reflects the effort. Before seeing this video, Grace told me that the feedback that they were consistently given was that they weren't doing well enough, and that they had a lot of work to do. This was a consistent theme right up until the end. As I tried to explain to her (after the fact), this was simply the director and all of the staff trying to push them to be the best they can be. Garnet Valley Performing Arts has a longstanding tradition of excellence, and this batch of kids was being pushed to hold up to that standard. Then Grace watched the following linked video with me. Her reaction was "wow, we were pretty good". Yes dear, you were pretty good. Pretty darn good. Because a dedicated group of people pushed you to be the best you could be...

Music for the show is provided by a live band of students and faculty, consisting of drums, guitar, bass and a pair of keyboards.

Lights and effects are provided by another group of dedicated students.

It takes a village, and many of the girls basketball team are...the Garnet Valley girls basketball team.

The Friday night show of the "Gold" cast has been posted on YouTube (linked here), and while the Gold cast is generally thought of as the underclassmen cast, I think the performance is pretty amazing. Go onto YouTube and search "high school musical high school" for comparison. Highlights of this show, with a bias toward scenes my Grace is in, are:

• 15:40 - the cut scene into Wildcat Cheer. At 15:50, the quadruple backflip cheerleader is Grace. This was supposed to be a double or triple, but Grace said "it was opening night and I was feeling it".
• 56:00 - The Audition scene.
• 59:00 - The lead-in to "Stick to the Status Quo", the first act finale (which starts at 1:00:20). Grace has a featured bit at 1:04:05 (the back walkover in the middle).
• 1:16:00 - Grace in Wildcat Cheer reprise.
• 1:39:30 - We're All in This Together.
• 1:42:45- Bop to the Top
• 1:46:00 - Final auditions lead-in.
• 1:49:40 - Breaking Free.
• 1:54:00 - The End.
• 1:56:00 - Finale. We're All In This Together. Grace has another short left-to-right tumbling run at ~1:56:55... After that, she is the third cheerleader from the right, just behind the Ryan Evans character (behind and to the right of him)...
• 1:59:30 - Curtain Call. Look at all the great costumes!
• 2:02:00 - The grand finale.

I can't wait to see the postings of the Garnet (upperclassmen) cast. [edit - GVHSPAA has posted all of the other shows...]

As a postscript, I would note that our production of HSM was highly regarded enough that another large local high school is taking our sets and borrowing a lot of our costumes for a production that they will be staging in the spring of 2019. So be on the lookout for Sharpay and Ryan Evans' costumes, all the girls and boys basketball teams, and the cheerleaders. I guess we will go watch that one. And I guess that means Amp did pretty good, since she is now apparently costuming other school districts as well as our own...

Great job everyone!

Short Attention Span (SAS) Plans

I am fabulous at imagining and starting new projects. If I have a super power, that's probably it: imagination. Unfortunately I do not have a limitless amount of time to sink into my various and sundry hobby pursuits. I also have the attention span of a flea.

This isn't the best combination.

What it typically results in is what I have going on in the basement at the moment. A 6 by 8 foot gaming table cluttered with odds and ends of projects in various stages of completion. A large painting desk with a similar pile of this and that. Most horizontal spaces in the unfinished part of the basement with something placed or piled on them. And for all the activity over the past few months, very little actually completed to show for all my scattered effort.

Since the spring, or say the last 6-8 months, it is probably fair to say that the projects I have actually started and completed would be:

• The "ruins" set described in a June 2018 post. I started and completed a decent sized set of this. Subsequently, I started some more pieces, and of course they aren't done. But the first batch is.
• 8 Tyranid genestealers for use in Kill Team games.
• Assembly and basic painting of all purchased Kill Team terrain pieces. Enough to have them looking nice and able to use in a game with no shame.
• The handful of D&D miniatures posted recently.
• And, well, that's probably it...

The list of started but not completed projects is just a tad longer. In no particular order of importance, and with notes on what my shorter term goal would be:

• Kill Team space marines. 10 tactical squad and 5 scouts assembled and partly/mostly painted.
• Kill Team Eldar. 10 guardians and a weapon platform assembled and partly painted.
• Kill Team Tyranids. 1 Warrior, 4 hormagaunts and 4 termagants assembled and primed.
• Kill Team terrain. All assembled and in some state of painting. Lots of detail work left to be done to call them finished.
• Jungle terrain. Shoeboxes of fake floral bits to be made into little stands of jungle terrain. I've made about 20 of these, but have the stuff to make maybe a hundred more. These are little cardboard oval bases generally around 2-3 inches in size with a variety of plant material hot-glued onto them. I would settle for ~30 more to make a total of 50. The rest of the raw materials can go into stock.
• Many units of various historical minis in various stages of completion, dating back years. This only includes the ones I've started. Not the untouched lead pile... I would like to complete a unit or two or three just to say that I painted some historicals.
• Games Workshop lizard men. I bought a bunch of Saurians to use as D&D lizard men because the figures are cool. They are still cool, but only half done. Finish 12-15 figures as a start.
• Inventory my homemade dungeon tiles, caverns, tunnels, etc. I have posted lots of pictures with these various bits over the past few years. I need to admit that I am happy with some, not so much so with others, and settle on what I want to keep and what needs to go live on a farm. Perhaps an eBay farm where someone throws money at me.
• Related to the above, I have started a better modular D&D tunnel set for which I would like to complete the first batch. The Proxxon hot wire table makes this sort of thing easier than I could have imagined when I was doing my first versions of these with an old knife. The flexibility the Proxxon gives in terms of possible shapes is wonderful.
• "Tan dungeon" tiles. To be made for a particular expected use in our campaign, which will hopefully be starting up again soon. I just want a small batch of passages and rooms in a lighter brown/tan/cream paint scheme in contrast to my usual dark gray/medium gray/light gray color scheme.
• As an administrative task...finish inventorying, organizing and filing away all of the various D&D and Pathfinder minis I have bought over the past 3 years. There are too many little shipping boxes and bags with odds and ends of figures that never made it beyond "well at least they made it to the basement".

So the plan for the last 6 or 7 weeks of the year, which will include a good bit of holiday time off, is to knock off some of the partly done projects listed above. I wouldn't say sticking to this list and not starting something new is an absolute must...but let's call it an aspirational goal.

Most likely to get done would probably be the dungeon tiles and modular tunnels, which I am most interested in at the moment. Completing a unit of historical minis (medieval Ottomans or eastern Europeans, or maybe 15mm WW2) is a good candidate. As are the Space Marines. Josh and Ryan have been traveling, but we should probably be looking to get an evening of Kill Team together again soon. So maybe some additional painting work on sci-fi terrain.

I'm cautiously hopeful. Wish me luck.

A Bit of Beauty

Sometimes it's worth taking a moment to stop and savor a bit of beauty when it presents itself.

Fall Sunset

The other night, Ryder needed to go out and do his business. When I let him out, this is the sight that greeted me on the western horizon. I sat on the front step for a few moments. Within 5 minutes the colors had faded substantially. Within 10 minutes they were gone. But for those brief few moments, there was fire in the sky...

A Clarinet, GV Jaguars Football, and a Musical

Sometimes I don't feel like I have a high school freshman daughter. I just have a Clarinet. Or a Drama Club ensemble cheerleader-tumbler.

Grace's first semester in high school has been a whirlwind. Not the least of which is the amount of time spent in the marching band. Band camp three weeks before school even started. After school band practices. Football games. Competitions. More practices. And all of this for a school that practices hard, travels to competitions, but cannot realistically be said to be a school marching band program that is heavily into the competition scene. Our kids and band directors take it seriously and work hard at it. But there are bands that take it SERIOUSLY and work HARD at it.

My Clarinet

The football season has been a smashing success. We were 10-0 in the regular season, winning the Central League (which I grew up in at Springfield...). We defeated all of the serious Central League contenders this year, and all on the road. We shut out Springfield at Springfield (that one sure felt weird, sitting in the visitors' bleachers and looking across at the home stands!). We beat Haverford at Haverford. We beat Marple Newtown at Marple Newtown. We beat Radnor at Radnor. We humiliated Ridley in a home game (boy did that feel good!!).

As an aside, at the Springfield away game, I met the current Springfield high school band director, who is the son-in-law of Mr Miller, the middle school band director that I had when I went through middle school in the late 70's [ugh] (and who is the director of a community band that brother Dave has been involved in). Small world.

Some, but not all, of the GVHS Marching Band

In the first round of the state division playoffs, where we are ranked #3 out of 16, we destroyed Pennsbury 49-14. By the 4th quarter, we had 2nd and 3rd string backups running for touchdowns.

Last night, in round two of the playoffs, we destroyed Quakertown 49-14. Yep, same score, not a typo.

Next Friday, we travel to Quakertown to play the #2 ranked team, but Grace won't be there.

Next week is the culmination of the other major time commitment that Grace has been a part of, and that is her involvement in the fall musical, a production adapted from the Disney movie High School Musical. Because of her gymnastics background, she is a cheerleader who does tumbling runs, and sings as part of the ensemble. First full dress rehearsal is tomorrow (Sunday), which I will ask her about when she gets home from today's band competition in Hershey PA.

Then there are dress rehearsals Monday and Tuesday after school, "blackout" (rest) day on Wednesday, and then performances on Thursday, Friday and two on Saturday. Busy times.

She's having fun, and it's fun for us as parents to be along for the ride.

Miniatures Painting Again

This weekend is the HMGS Fall In! convention in Lancaster (PA), and I probably won't make it out there this year, even for a brief fly-by. Even if I no longer feel the need to block out the 2-3 days to attend the whole convention, play in a few games, and perhaps even run a game or two, I still always enjoy stopping in to these conventions for part of a day to wander the event rooms and get energized to go home and do some painting of my own.

That won't happen this time around but I am happy to say that the painting bug has already bitten recently, and I have been properly re-energized as far as painting goes. I have noted in recent posts that I have been painting some sci-fi stuff along with Ryan and Josh (for Kill Team), but the painting binge has extended beyond that.

There is a very nice ongoing line of releases for WizKids unpainted D&D miniatures (and Pathfinder minis). The figures are very nice for the most part, and pre-primed, so all you need to do is break something out of the package and dive in. Below are a few of the things I have been working on over the past few months. I won't discuss backlog of unpainted purchases...

Recent batch of painting - high view

The newly painted lot includes (in rough order of completion) a griffon, 4 gargoyles, 2 rust monsters, a pair of umber hulks (there are 2 more finished in addition to these 2), an earth elemental and a troll.

Recent batch of painting - lower view

These minis are the made from the same softer plastic that the pre-painted WizKids stuff is. I have purchased loads of those over the past 3-4 years. The paint jobs range from pretty good to pretty "meh", but they are ready to go on the table the moment that the magical eBay fairy delivers them to my house from my main supplier in New Mexico (kingsoflight eBay store - great folks...).

I paint better than the mass produced stuff coming over from China, but I also don't have to crank out "x" number of figures per hour. The main difference in my painted stuff versus the pre-painted is that I tend to go for brighter cleaner colors (or maybe I should say lighter cleaner colors). Some of the pre-painted stuff is pretty dark, and can blend into a table pretty well in a not-perfectly lit basement gaming area.

Next up on the painting table is up in the air at the moment. I have sci-fi stuff to finish for whenever we get together for another round of Kill Team. I have a bunch of WizKids character figures to paint that will be a fun challenge, but which I don't really need for anything as far as actual gaming goes. There are a bunch of elementals, mimics and other D&D monsters to get to at some point. And I can always dive back into my prepped-and-primed backlog of historical minis, especially Ottomans and later medieval Hungarians and other eastern Europeans.

Time will tell....

Into an Old Mine

Somehow I stumbled on this video on YouTube. A guy with a flashlight wandering through an old mine.

Creepy but cool. I couldn't help but to watch this and think "hey, nice warren of underground D&D tunnels." This would be even creepier with orcs or goblins or trolls or...

Yep. I'm a geek.

The Curmudgeon in the Cellar

No. I don't mean me. Although the description is becoming more true as time goes by I suppose.

I mean the title of a series of YouTube videos by Tim Kask, one of the fathers of Dungeons & Dragons. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson are credited with creating the game, but Tim Kask was an early playtester, proofreader, confidant and editor for Gary Gygax. He was the first editor of Dragon magazine, helped launch the careers of many of the pantheon of 70's and 80's fantasy artists, and helped Gygax split the game into Basic and Advanced D&D in the late 70's. His contribution was substantial, and his stories and memories of the behind-the-scenes goings-on are priceless.

The YouTube video series is now up to 50+ entries and counting (he is still posting new ones as of now), and is a rambling (and sometimes repetitive) series of stories told in the form of answering viewer/reader questions.

For those such as me with an interest in the history of D&D and the behind the scenes stories, these videos are a treasure trove of interesting bits. Gygax and Arneson are both gone, having passed before the proliferation of this sort of thing, and so their memories are largely lost, at least in the format of stories being told directly to you as the audience. Tim Kask is one of the ones remaining who is able to fill this role, at least from the earliest days.

He seems like a nice guy. Curmudgeonly for sure. A bit disdainful, if respectfully, of many of the more modern iterations of the game and the various developments thereof. A true proponent of "original D&D is the game we made, the game we loved, and it's all I need". Which is fine, as those are the stories and viewpoint I am working my way through this series for.

These ramblings and recollections aren't for everybody, but if you have an interest in the history of the game, and RPGs in general, this is worth an occasional listen in on.

Dungeons and Dragons Relics

These recent D&D remembrances have led me back. Back to the basement. Where the relics of the past, in the form of old D&D and fantasy RPG materials live, safe in their bookcase. So here are a few of the prized possessions, in this regard, which I am happy to still own. Sadly, there are some things that I sold off years ago that I wish I still had, but thankfully none of the truly good stuff. I couldn't bring myself to sell them off then, despite their value, for which I am thankful...

The "white box" books; the first three books. Original D&D in its first format. Not the truly first editions, but close followers thereon in the form of 3rd/4th/5th printings of those first three books in a white box instead of the original wood grain box. Also the First and Third supplements (missing supplement #2, Dave Arneson's Blackmoor, which I never owned).

Original D&D

Other TSR stuff.

Rogues Gallery - Pre-generated NPCs

The first set of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons hardcover books. Somewhat the worse for wear after very hard use in the teenaged years, but as with all of my collection, in very good shape all things considered...

AD&D First Printings

A few of the old original adventure modules in the original monochrome printings.

Old TSR Adventure Modules

The City-State of the Invincible Overlord by Judges Guild. Amazing early maps in these, and a tremendous amount of detail. Overkill, we would say these days.

Invincible Overlord

And Dark Tower.

More Judges Guild

Carse, Jonril, Tulan of the Isles, the Black Tower, etc, by Midkemia Press. Authored at least in part by Raymond Feist who would go on to become a famous fantasy author.

Midkemia Press

A bunch of Second Edition era Forgotten Realms materials, some of which are now quite valuable. This is the era of stuff where I owned other things and sold a few of them (Maztica and Kara Tur boxed sets, etc...)

The Shelf of Old Stuff

Included on the treasured Shelf of Old Stuff are such things are the two Ruins of Undermountain boxed sets, the Ruins of Myth Drannor boxed set, a couple old versions of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, the old Waterdeep city boxed set, and some Middle Earth role playing stuff, including the magnificent if unwieldy Moria folio. On the lower pictured shelf are many/most of the first and second edition D&D/AD&D modules. There are also a few editions of basic D&D (Holmes and Moldvay).

Lots of good memories here. (And kids, when I'm gone, don't throw these in the recycle bin please...)

[A quick clarification: Virtually everything above, and everything I own that is old stuff, I own because I bought it when it came out. Despite my recent (2014+) dive back into D&D, one thing I have been able to successfully resist the urge to do, to this point, is to go back and troll eBay for all the things from way back in the day that I didn't ever own, and to buy them now. I'm not sure exactly why this is, as knowing myself and being honest with myself, this is the sort of thing I would typically do... Perhaps it is because much of these old things aren't that good (sacrilege for a different blog post), and without some personal connection to them or memories that they would conjure, I am aware that they wouldn't have much meaning to me. Going back and re-purchasing bulk lots of earlier Dragon magazines that I used to own, sold off at some point, and enjoy owning again is a different matter, and I do some of that...]