Here we are again.

 I've given up on running TTRPG campaigns for the foreseeable future, because I've got sick and tired of never knowing from week to week whether the game is actually going to happen.

I get that people have lives outside of a silly game, but I do think that if you have a choice, and yet you prioritize other things over this social commitment you've made, then it's pretty clear that it's not all that important to you. And if it's not that important to you, then why should I bust a gut to come up with entertainment for you?

I'll still happily play, but with somebody else doing all the hard work.

But not online; I just really don't think much of online play. It's missing something important in the experience, and the hardware and interface is too intrusive.

More Paper Dollies

I've started putting together a 28mm army of 10th-11th century Saxons, using Peter Dennis's Paperboys download-print-and-snip paper flats.

I print them on Brother 143gsm matte paper, so when they're folded and glued they're fairly sturdy — as long as I'm not too ham-fisted with them.

Here's the first batch of huscarls, mounted on 3mm grey-board covered with a vaguely grassy patterned paper, also from Paperboys.

I didn't notice that I had the Save Ink/Toner checkbox in the Acrobat print dialogue checked, so the colours are all a bit washed out. But now I know about that.

I run around the edges of the cut-out figures with a sepia felt pen, to remove the glare of the cut edges. Then I use superglue gel to tack the figures in place on the base, and then go back with PVA to create an encapsulating boot around the feet for strength and durability.

I have two sets of Paperboys Saxons — one (on the left in this photo) is from their 1066 book, and the figures are printed in shoulder-to-shoulder groups for big-battle wargaming. The other set is intended for skirmish games, and each figure is printed and mounted individually.

The 1066 base is much more densely populated: with three ranks, there are twelve figures on the base, whereas on the other there is only six. I could bunch up the individual figures more if need be, and I'll probably try that for the front rank of a shield-wall base.

Of the two types, I find that I prefer the look of individual figures when mounted on their bases.

I'm currently putting together some units of the Great Fyrd as well, and there will be some light troops as well — slingers, archers, and javelinmen — as well as some mounted troops who, for Saxons, would probably be mounted infantry rather than cavalry.

They look pretty good on the tabletop from the front or back, or in oblique up to about 40-60 degrees. They disappear from directly side on of course, but that's not too big an issue most of the time.

Because they're so cheap and quick to prepare, these paper soldiers would be ideal for trying out new periods or genres of wargaming, or even as an end unto themselves. I'm quite enjoying them.

Later on...

I've given my Anglo-Saxon fyrd some moral support in the form of a holy banner and a bunch of monks, which I'm sure will be of great comfort to them when the Vikings come rampaging over the hill.

Also, I experimented with giving one of the bases — front right — a couple of coats of spray satin varnish.

It doesn't show up as much in the photograph as in real life, but it seems to have darkened the ink a bit, while at the same time giving it a bit of a milky film that lowers contrast.

I doubt that I'll do it again.

 Later on (again)

Now I'm having a go at making some shield-wall stands, this time using the Paperboys Viking skirmish set.

There's a single close-set rank of four figures in front, and then a few more loosely scattered figures in behind them just to give the crowd a bit of volume.

There is a little bit more work involved in using individual figures rather than the base-wide groups in the 1066 set, but it's not really much more arduous, and I do prefer the look of them.

One good thing about Vikings is that they're really very similar visually to the Saxons, so at a pinch I could use them all together. The raven banner might be a bit of a giveaway though.

Something else new with this lot: instead of glueing the grassy basing paper around the edges of the grey-card base, I've just painted the edges green and sponged them to mottle them. It's a lot faster and easier than the other method, with the additional benefit that I can get a lot more bases out of a single printed sheet of basing paper, since I don't have to allow for any overlap.

Later on (again again)

Using 40x40mm bases is pretty flexible on the wargames table, but moving a whole bunch of individual stands about as units gets tired pretty fast.

So I've made some movement trays to accommodate 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 stands, to be 3d printed. The 6-stand tray is 120 x 80 mm, so 6 stands in 2 ranks. I can't fit a tray 6 stands wide on my printer platen.

The STLs are available (for free) at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6934223

 I've tried making a six-stand tray in two halves, and though it does work, it's not ideal. The gluing surfaces are just too small.

I've added some reinforcing strips of masking tape on top and bottom, and that certainly helps a lot, but I wouldn't rely on it not bending in the middle at the worst possible time.

I'm not likely to have a lot of use for a tray that wide in any case, and I can always use two 3-stand trays if need be — which would probably be a better option for several reasons.

HeroQuest (and HeroQuest-Adjacent)

 

Some years ago, when I was making some dungeon tiles, a guy gave me these.

They'd taken all the miniatures out, but apart from that they appear to be complete.

Fortunately, I have large numbers of plastic miniatures sitting around doing nothing, and although they won't match the Warhammerish minis that originally came with the game, they'll do the job just fine.

So now, after years of basically doing nothing with these games, I can actually have a go at playing them.

I don't think I've ever played HeroQuest, but I have had a couple of games of Space Hulk way back in the dim, distant past, and that's basically the same thing... right?

Also some years ago, at a clearance sale I bought a copy of the Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Adventure Board Game, of which BoardGameGeek has little to say except that it's "Quite similar to HeroQuest".

I've never played it.

When I first got it, I did flick through the rulebook, and found that it says very little about how to actually play the game. Which is one reason why I've never played it.

It includes a bunch of minis, some of which would be usable for HeroQuest, but I think it would probably be easier to just use some of the bajillion WotC collectible figures I bought back in the day.

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Next day...

It occurred to me that hey, I have 3d printers. So I jumped over to Thingiverse to see what people might have done about making replacement HeroQuest miniatures.

My optimism was fully justified; there are masses of them there. It looks like many of them have been 3d scanned from the originals, moulding seams and wonky weapons included.

I grabbed some and did a bit of clean-up — new weapons, new bases mainly, and removal of obvious mould seams — and pumped out some STLs which I will now print.

Sure, I could have just used old WotC pre-paints, but I kind of like the idea of having the old retro mini designs. Except for the Wizard. The old HeroQuest wizard just didn't look wizardy enough to my eyes, so I got a mini that somebody had made of Gandalf from the animated Rankin-Bass Hobbit cartoon, and whacked that on a HQ base.

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Next next day...

I've collected together sufficient figures for the base game. The orcs to the left are WotC pre-paints, as is the gargoyle at right rear and the sorcerer to its left. The two mummies at centre are Reaper plastics, and the two zombies to the right of them are hard plastic GW figures. Everything else is 3d printed, from a variety of sources.

The actual HeroQuest figures are those with the rectangular bases, everything else is a proxy.

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Behold! Organisation!

Judging by the detritus in the box originally, it did come with some rudimentary and rather flimsy internal boxing. However, I decided that rather than try to revive that, I'd just make some better and sturdier compartmentalization. So now the game board can sit on top of everything else without crushing it, and the components can be stored and retrieved in a more or less rational manner.

I'm putting a lot of labour into this game which I may well never actually play 😃

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Dice

After our first ever attempt at the game the other evening, I've designed and printed some HeroQuest dice, because we didn't have quite enough.

One of the original dice had been misprinted, with a skull overprinting one of the white shields. That could be worked around easily enough, but still. Why not take the excuse to make some of my own?

I've used the Moorcockian arrow symbols for Law and Chaos for the "white" and "black" shield designs.

My dice are printed in Esun resin, and they'll do for the moment. They'd be better printed in one of the tougher ABS-like resins, but as long as we don't go rolling these on concrete or anything, they should do well enough. I don't have any tougher resin, and it's a bit pricey, so I don't feel the need to buy some just for this project.

A brief session of test-rolling returned the expected proportions of skulls, good-guy shields and bad-guy shields, so they're true enough for our purposes.

One of these days I may get around to painting in the faces, but I'm in no great hurry to do that.

Pendragon

 

Chaosium have, fairly recently, released a new edition of their Arthurian TTRPG, Pendragon.

This is the King Arthur of Thomas Malory, of the movie Excalibur or the book The Once and Future King, not the 6th century Dux Bellorum who defeated the invading Saxons at Mount Badon. It's medieval, but mythic medieval. Arthur's knights ride around in highly polished 15th century plate armour and have jousts and quests and what-not.

It's a generational game, in which time passes and your character ages and may die, of old age or the sword, and you carry on playing your heir. And so on.

Many, many years ago I was introduced to another medievalist game, Chivalry & Sorcery.

It was developed by a couple of medieval recreationists, and they wanted to be as historically accurate as was feasible in a game that included dragons and goblins and spell-casting wizards. We used it mainly as a resource for prices and wages and things like that, though a few of my friends have run C&S campaigns over the years. I still have a copy of my own around somewhere.

Although the idea of Arthurian knightly roleplaying appealed (and still appeals) to me, I found C&S too dense. And the typewritten text was really small.

Anyway, fast-forward to the present, and I got myself a copy of the Pendragon 6th Edition Starter Set from DTRPG in PDF form, just to have a look at it and see whether or not I'd be interested in playing it. It's only twelve YankeeBucks or so.

As a starter set, it's an impressive piece of work. However, it uses a different task resolution mechanic than any of Chaosium's d100 systems, which is a mark against it in my book, as I was really hoping for something that slotted into the generic BRP ecosystem.  I can't really be bothered learning a bunch of new systems any more — it's never really floated my boat, but I was (grudgingly) more open to it in the past.

It looks like, once again, this is an Arthurian game that would mainly be useful to me as a resource for home-brewed Arthurian gaming in another system. Which is a shame really, because what I've seen of it looks pretty good, if I only had the energy any more to figure out a whole new rules system. But life is just too short.