How-to: Under-bed Play Board

Happy Holidays everyone! This year, for Christmas, I undertook my first real woodworking project- meaning one that starts with boards and ends up with something that actually feels finished. My son is nearing the magic age of three when choking hazards become less of a problem and toy franchises really start vying for his attention. In preparation for this transition, I built him a play board that could serve as a base for train sets, LEGO, car tracks or really any sort of world-building toy.

I had a couple of these when I was a kid, but they were much simpler... just single sheets of decent quality scrap wood. I wouldn't say I was excited about having them, but I recognized their invaluable utility. I wanted to provide something similar for my son, but I also felt like taking it to the next level.

A board like this can also be useful for gamers in need of a stowable play surface. The 3ft x 4ft board I built is a little too big to easily cart around, but would still be handy for those without a good playing surface.

When I was finished, I posted pics to my Facebook page and immediately started receiving comments asking for instructions on how I built it. So, here they are. If you have a little one with a penchant for building toys, a board like this will serve you well.

The Great Craft Room Makeover

If you have been reading this blog for awhile, you likely know that crafting is an important part of my family's character. Whether you are talking about epic group Halloween costumes that take months to pull together, elaborate mixed-media dungeon sets, hand drawn maps, or simply mini-painting, the Sporkchop household are big fans of homemade creativity. This past summer, the Wife and I decided to finally construct a dedicated space for all of these crafting endeavors. With that in mind, we embarked on the great craft room makeover.

Make-it Monday: Halloween Costume 2013, pt. 3, Hoof Design

I made some good progress on the Halloween costume this weekend. While I have still not yet begun assembly, the Wife and I did manage to pick up most of the remaining ingredients for our outfits. I also took some time to sketch out my plan for turning my feet into hooves. 

I plan to use some of the sculptural mesh the Wife got to build her collar to form a sort of boot topper that will blunt my feet into large hoof shapes. We picked up some fake fur at the fabric store, which will make a nice border to mask the edge of the hoof where it meets my leggings.

In addition to the fur, I also picked up some fabric for my cloak, some craft leather strips to wrap my leggings; some rhinestones, which I plan to use for eyes in my coyote head; and several packs of sculpting clay, which I will use to make lightweight antlers.

So, I am just about done purchasing for the costume. Unless I am forgetting something, I think I only need to get a tunic, and a wig before I have all the raw bits.

In other make-it news, I also got together with my dad this weekend to discuss my mini display case project, which had stalled out a bit over the past month. After hanging out in his wood shop for a bit, we managed to work out some clear next steps. This week I hope to knock out a diagram to calculate the total board-feet I will need to purchase in the wood of my choice.

New Project: Build a Mini Cabinet

As in a cabinet to house my minis, not that the cabinet itself will be particularly small...

I have long lusted after the furniture produced by Geek Chic, but lament the prohibitively high prices. Fortunately for me, however, my father is an incredible woodworker in his own right, and I have often found myself thinking, "I bet my dad could build something like that." Well, now that the wedding is over, I have decided to do that musing one better and see if my dad can teach me how to "build something like that."

I have often admired those who can make durable, high-quality goods like furniture, pottery, homemade clothes and other useful craft items, and I have wanted to improve my own skills in those areas. So, yesterday I emailed my dad and proposed a project: Would he help me to build a wall case for my gaming minis, and use the project to help teach me some of the basics of woodworking? He responded with an enthusiastic "yes", so as soon as I got home from work, I broke out the trusty ol' SketchUp to begin roughing out my ideas.

with doors shown

doors hidden

isometric view

The plan is to build a wall-mounted case with glass doors to keep the dust out, and interior lighting to set off the minis. I determined that it needs to be just over 3 inches deep in order to accommodate some of the larger figures, and that the shelving should be removable, with a minimum spacing of 2 inches for the medium-sized minis.

I would love to document this project as it progresses, so keep an eye out for updates here on the blog. Who knows, if the mini cabinet goes well, maybe I'll try and tackle one of those tables next!

Make-it Monday: Effects Box and GM's Day!

March fo(u)rth my minions, for today is GM's day. A day on which to lavish your game master with praise and gifts of tribute in hope that your character will live to see level 20. Seriously though, it's a thing... make with the gifts and praise.

I engaged in a bunch of random creativity this past week, but nothing that felt like a full project. The Fiancee is in full-blown spring-cleaning mode, and I am desperately clinging to her silky, pegacorny hide in an effort to avoid the lashing maw that is her vacuum cleaner. As such, over the past weekend we tackled the office/guest bedroom like an owlbear on a forest sprite.

Along with more mundane tasks like purging unnecessary paperwork, I took inventory of my unfinished papercraft projects. I laid a select few tiles onto some scrap foam core in order to move them into the finished column. I also finally picked up a can of clear coat and got my painted minis sealed up to prevent flaking and dryness.

Today, however, I would like to introduce you to my cheap and easy effects box. In D&D, as players increase in level, they have to deal with a wider variety of persistent effects that can help or hinder their abilities. Keeping track of just who these effects apply to gets tricky when everyone is hasted, half the party is invisible, the wizard is poisoned, etc. etc.

My simple solution for keeping track of such things is my effects box. I picked up a small sewing kit from a local craft store, and have filled it with a number of generic tokens and other markers. The box currently has black and white go stones, some colored glass hobby "gems", my homemade death pogs for tracking which victims are only mostly dead, and several sets of status markers made by wrapping colored pipe cleaners into little loops to represent different effects.

I also have a couple large area of effect (AoE) templates, also made with pipe cleaners. I made the first to help the Fiancee's sorcerer more quickly figure out who she could catch with a single fireball. After our last play session, however, it became clear that we needed more. We had two persistent AoE effects on the battlefield, plus the sorcerer still slinging fireballs, but only one template to mark them. So, this weekend, I worked up a couple more 20 ft radius hoops for good measure.

Newly sealed minis on newly finished papercraft

Do you have any quick and easy tricks for keeping your players' buffs and debuffs sorted out?

Make-it Monday: NPC Cards

This is the first post of my 2013 goal to make a thing a week. This week, I would like to share my template for NPC cards with you. The card template is a Word doc with fields for inputting abbreviated stats for D&D 3.5 edition monsters or NPCs. Once filled out, the card is designed to be printed on a 4 x 6 index card for use at the table.

The blank form

A completed example
(This was taken from the version I was using before I made the form)

The quickest way to fill out the card is to make sure "restrict editing" is active and set to fill in forms. Then simply tab through the card filling in the necessary stats as you go. If you want to further customize the form, simply turn of the document protection and adjust as necessary.

This card is really intended for NPCs who will likely face combat, thus necessitating a stat block. It seemed silly to make a card template for a non-combat NPC, as that would likely just be a blank notecard. If you want to add fluff to this card, you can use the note section, or jot down personality traits or draw a character portrait on the back.

If you think these cards might be helpful for your game, you can download the blank template here.

NPC Cards and a set of Gamemastery Face cards make a GM's job much easier

Goal for Lucky '13: Make a thing a week

2013 baby! What could go wrong!?

Welcome to 2013 dear readers and the compulsory resolutions/goals post. 2012 was an incredibly busy year for me outside of the blog-o-sphere. I took my first international trip in over a decade, completed a major two year long project at work*. I was featured in my first half-hour TV special. And the fiancee and I got rolling on our wedding planning.

Within the confines of this blog, things were a bit more modest spotty. I completed my second April A to Z challenge and passed 50 subscribers. Other than that, I've been a bit of a slacker. I don't want to be a slacker, but real life and actual creative pursuits need to come before writing about creative pursuits. I love this little blog though and don't intend to stop. However, if I am going to up the consistency and quality of my posts, I'm going to have to get more efficient about things. I need to make my blog work with, not against my real world escapades and goals.

This brings me to my one blogging goal for 2013.

Make a thing a week

Halloween Costume Update

The Fiancee and I finally had some time to work on our galactic centurion costumes this past weekend. We both have the basic structure of our breastplates just about finished. I cut out the template for my pauldrons (shoulder pads) tonight and plan to cut, bend and (weather-permitting) prime the foam for them tomorrow.

My armor in-progress with the ridiculously messy table behind it.

The Fiancee's armor is primed. I think she's a D12 cup.

He's Crafty!

So, I'm supposed to be preparing to launch the third act of my campaign this week, which meand I of course found it necessary to procrastinate and do nothing of the sort this weekend. Rather than prepping for my upcoming session, I launched into a crafting project that I have been itching to undertake for quite some time: I built my own custom GM screen.

During the two and a half years I have been running this game, I have never used a screen. This is partly because I used to run my game from a laptop, which served as a sort of screen in itself, and partly because I run an out-of-print version of the game, making appropriate screens difficult to come across. Well, recently I started looking at custom built screens and finally decided to take the plunge.

Here's what I used:

Materials:

• 3 pieces of foam core scrounged from work (approx 10" x 16" each)
• duct tape
• 12 mylar photo corners
• Elmer's Glue
• 3 binder clips
• Scrap-booking paper with Japanese dragons printed on it

Tools:

• Metal straight edge
• Matte knife
• Cutting mat
• Popsicle stick <-- Perfect for spreading glue
• Junk mail <-- Perfect as a drop cloth when spreading glue

Making the Screen:

1. I laid the foam core down end to end and joined it along the GM- facing side with duct tape.
2. I trimmed the two outside sheets of foam core to 10" x 12" to allow for a better fit on my table
3. I trimmed my scrap-book paper to fit the foam core.
4. I glued the sheets of paper to the foam core backing and used the metal straight edge to burnish it smooth. (I had to do this because the foam core had previously used museum signage on one side.)
5. I measured and marked the desired position for each stat sheet on the GM side of the screen and mounted each sheet with mylar photo corners. This will allow me to easily swap out stat sheets if I play a different system or have need of a special reference at some point.
6. I clipped the three binder clips to the top of the screen, which will allow me to display maps, visual aids or other references for the players.

I am quite pleased with the results of my afternoon's effort. While it may not be as professional looking as a store bought screen, the foam core makes for a much cleaner looking structure than cardboard, and the photo-corner system adds some excellent versatility not available in an off-the-shelf screen.

I am also once again toying with some modifications to my game management technique. There have been quite a few articles floating around lately that discuss ways to run games from index cards, and I just got run over by the bandwagon. During the last adventure I ran, I found myself being forced to choose between flipping back and forth in my notebook if an NPC or monster appeared in more than one encounter, or transcribing the same stat block multiple times. Well, in an effort to solve this particular inefficiency, I created an NPC card template that can be printed on a 4x6 index card and easily moved between encounters when running a game.

P is for Papercraft

Need. More. Pillars!

I am a bit of a hapless penny pincher when it comes to gaming. I buy all my rulebooks used from Half Price Books. I use Legos in place of minis and for a long time I used a go board in place of a battle mat. (side note: the go mat led my group to begin referring to the start of a combat encounter as "go" time.)  However, I also greatly enjoy the creative extras that float around a game's periphery and going above an beyond to give my players a more immersive game experience.

Well, shortly after the earthquake that devastated Haiti, I donated to a cause hosted by RPGnow.com called Gamers Help Haiti. The site offered a large bundle of online, indie game offerings (mostly pdf e-books, map packs and the like) in exchange for a donation of $25 or more, with all proceeds going to the relief effort. Anyway, included in the virtual bundle I received, were a couple of pdf dungeon tile sets from Fat Dragon Games (FDG). FDG offers a wide variety of quality print-and-assemble 2D and 3D sets for building custom environments for your game.

I printed to the tile sets, glued them to foam core, cut them out and was immediately hooked. Ever since I printed my first basic dungeon set from the Gamers Help Haiti bundle, I have been hopelessly addicted to papercraft and FDG. At $2 to $15 per pdf, the FDG sets are far more cost effective than some alternatives. I find myself squirreling away old Red Baron pizza boxes and scraps of foam core (when the exhibit shop at work is throwing it out, it comes home with me!) to serve as backing for my tiles. Every time I swing by my local art store, I jealously eye the Logan mat cutters. My hands become so sore meticulously wielding the exacto knives that feed my need.

My addiction has given rise to quite a collection of papercraft tiles and set pieces that frequently grace my gaming table, along with a couple of realizations:

• When you factor in the time it takes to mount and cut dungeon tiles and the fact that printer ink costs more than Charlie Sheen's tiger blood, it becomes apparent that brand name, store bought tile sets are ultimately cheaper than the do-it-yourself variety.
• 3D set pieces take up a lot of storage space very quickly.
• Having a 3D set that you can quickly throw together somehow feels so much more satisfying than just drawing it out on a battle mat.
• I really want one of those Logan cutters!

sigh...