Making Progress

Back on December 1st, I posted about the set of stairs that I'd made from the Hirst Arts molds.

As a refresher, here it was when I put it together:

And as of my painting efforts today, here's how it looks now:

I'm trying techniques for dry-brushing highlights onto the surfaces, but I'm not sure it's really working so far. It's progress, though.

Adding Dimension, Part 2

So, with the blocks I cast myself, and the blocks that I'd purchased from Billie, I'd started to put together more walls and floors, and I could at least build a dungeon room and some hallways. I didn't get to use them for a dungeon, as I've been hoping to do, but I did put together some interesting encounters using them. Here's a picture from one, where the PCs fought goblins and orcs in a ruined manor.

I had other aspirations, though. Looking at the Hirst Arts site I had made a list of the other molds that I'd like to get, but it remained a wishlist, due to the expense. Of particular interest to me were the Cavern Floor Mold #281, the Rock Cavern Root Mold #83, and the Rock Cavern Pillar Mold #84. As well, Cracked Floor Tiles Mold #203, Cavern Floor Accessories #282, and Fieldstone Accessories Mold #71 caught my eye. You can see the problem here. Six molds at $35 each. So, yeah, that adds up.

Well, I was fortunate enough to make it to GenCon this year - my first GenCon ever - with the help of my friend Craig, and well, wouldn't you know it, Hirst Arts had a booth in the dealers room! (Go Figure!!) I took a look at their stock and hung around to talk to the people at the booth, but I waited, figuring that they would have some deals on the last day, and of course, they did. It was "Buy 4 molds, get a 5th for free". Not exactly the win-fall I was hoping for, but a 20% discount is nothing to sneeze at. I hadn't made a big convention purchase in awhile, so I went for it, and picked up all the molds above except for the Cracked Floor Tiles Mold #203. I'd still like to get that one, since it gives much cleaner floor tiles than the Flagstone Floor Tile Mold. Just aesthetically better to look at, but not really all that important.

Getting home, I set about casting blocks from these sets, and building more pieces. I had plans to build another bridge, since the Fieldstone Accessories mold had some pieces that would work a lot better for the arches, but I never did get around to that. I did put together sections of walls from the cavern molds, though, and I built a set of stairs. There's a tutorial on the Hirst Arts site about this, and the stairs look very nice, but there's no way that you'd fit a D&D miniature on them. The mini would just topple over. So, I did a little redesign and came up with this:

Here are some pictures of the cavern wall pieces together:

I'm looking forward to using them in an upcoming campaign. :)

Adding Dimension to My Games...

This is something I've become keenly interested in over the past year.

About a year ago, I was reading on the Penny Arcade site about how "Gabe" was getting a lot of Dwarven Forge terrain for free, for his D&D game. This was, of course, a clever marketing tactic by Dwarven Forge, because I am sure that scores of gamers said "I MUST HAVE IT!!". I'm sure, because I was one gamer that did, I'm far from an atypical gamer.

I started investigating 3D terrain, and found out how expensive it was, and my dream unfortunately died a sad death upon seeing that. At $100+ per set, with a set looking to be enough to make a small room and a short corridor, our budget just couldn't handle what it would take to put together anything significant. That was the impression, anyway.

Searching elsewhere, I happened upon the site of Hirst Arts, who make Castle Molds. These are silicon molds you can buy and use to cast your own blocks, to build your own 3D terrain. With the molds being around $35 each, and a container of dental plaster (the best stuff to use for this) being around $50, which can last you for a LOOOOOONG time, that was a much better option, but still a little bit expensive. Fortunately, I found out shortly thereafter that a friend of mine, Billie, had two molds... Fieldstone Wall mold #70 and Flagstone floor mold #260... which he wasn't using and was good with loaning to me for awhile.

Ordering a big box of dental plaster was still out of my reach at the time, so I first bought a small container of Plaster of Paris, which was pretty bad, and then switched to this other product called Permastone. Permastone turned out to be really good, and a lot closer to dental plaster than Plaster of Paris.

I looked up all the techniques and tips on the Hirst Arts site, about properly mixing the plaster, and using "Wet Water", and everything else to make sure there are no bubbles in the plaster as it sets. Once I'd gathered my supplies, and figured I knew (basically) what I was doing, I set about molding blocks.

It was slow-going at first, since I was still pretty bad at organization and time management, but I finally cast enough to put together part of a room!

We went through some difficult times after that, due to a minivan running a red light and t-boning us while I was taking Caroline to work one night (3 days before my 40th birthday!). It took me awhile to get back into it, but when I did, I bought the molds from my friend, along with his dental plaster and all the blocks he'd cast, and I focused on casting as much as I could as well. I started sketching some designs and plans, looking at different kinds of old bridges, and I came up with this...

I went on to use this bridge in an encounter. The encounter didn't turn out as well as I thought it would, mostly due to organizational issues, but it still went well enough.

Here's a picture from it.