More Dungeon Terrain & a New Hero!

The holidays are generally good for me for getting gaming stuff done.  This holiday season has not been an exception in the least.

First up, a redo of my terrain boards for caverns.  The first one I did just wasn't "popping" as much as I wanted it to and I realized the reason why.  I didn't leave any black space in between the "squares" on the board.  I originally thought it would be better since I was trying to do a cavern floor rather than a dungeon room with floor tiles as spaces, but it was just too flat looking.  So I did a hallway that was more consistent with the dungeon floor tiles I did, leaving black in between the cavern "squares."  The new tile is on the right.  I like it better.

I decided to do some cavern wall pieces as well just to give me the option of putting a wall every now and then to give the illusion of more depth.  Unfortunately I painted it first before doing the new tile, so it looks more like the tile on the left with no black spaces, but I think that's probably fine for the wall since there are no "squares" on it.  Here is the wall piece with the new cavern hallway.

Next up, some dungeon terrain!  I am always on the lookout for ways to make more brazier type dungeon pieces.  I stumbled upon using the axle cap as the top with the small flower pot as the base, with this structure glued to a regular 1" round precut thin wooden base.  The flame I stole from DM Scotty.  It's the business end of a Q-tip cut down to fit.  Before cutting it though you soak it in white glue and then gently pull some of the cotton up off the tip creating a flowing shape that looks like fire when you paint it.  Just go to DM Scotty's page, he has a great tutorial on how to do this effect.  When I was finishing them up I really liked the shape and thought I could do the exact same shape without the flame effect and have it serve as a basin for holy water.  Below are two braziers and one holy water basin.  I put hot glue inside the hole in the axle cap to make it look like it's holding water.  Can't see the effect very well in this picture, but you get the idea.

I wanted to make a teleportation device for a dungeon room.  I wanted something simple, but something so eye-catching that the players would just have to have their characters touch it.  All it is is a shaker peg with the bottom piece cut off (be patient doing this, if you go too fast you'll split the peg!) and glued to a regular thin wooden 1" base.  The paint job is straight forward except for the top.  I painted all the metal colors first, including the top part, and then painted the very top white.  After the white dried I painted on a special neon red paint.  The white undercoat really makes the red "pop."  No way my players can resist having at least one character touch this thing!

Given I was doing caverns, I needed to make some doorways for the cavern as well.  I wanted to start with open hallways since they are easiest.  Below is one of those, made just like the other hallways just painted with the cavern effect on the sides instead of the gray stones, as well as a "magical portal" doorway for a room.  I wanted to frame it to make it look at little different as well.  I toyed with the idea of putting some cotton on the gray parts of the smoke in the open doorway and have the cotton "reaching" into the room towards the characters, but I haven't done it yet.  Not even sure if I want to take the chance of ruining it to be honest if it ends up not looking good.

And finally, my newest hero.  I decided to do an old-school looking Ranger.  He's a standard milk bottle construction with a rounded plug for a head, tile spacer arms, small wooden precut shape for a shield, tile spacer sword, and tile spacer bow on his back.  The new part of the construction is I took a small round bead and split it in half.  Then I glued it to the back of the head to make it look like he is wearing one of those hoods that they wore in Europe during the Middle Ages.  It drapes down over his shoulders as well as you can see.  He's also got high boots and chainmail shirt and pants.  I am really please with him, he looks like those old Grenadier D&D figure Rangers, which is exactly the look I was going for.

To quote the bar keep at the Prancing Pony from the Lord of the Rings movie, "He's one of them rangers!"

You can see the "tail" of the hood that I made by splitting a bead and gluing half of it to the back of the round plug head piece much better in this second picture.

I'm really happy with him, he is one of my favorite hero figures I've made to date.