Clean up the beach - make cool terrain!!

Hi everyone,

Here's our *Process Flow* of steps for taking Ocean Plastic from the beach to create Tabletop Gaming terrain!

Here's an interesting (and fun?) or at the very least positive idea for those of us who like the beach and like table top games!!

The beach on the Eastern Shore or Oahu.  Lots of plastic washed up onto the beach after days, weeks, months or years in the Pacific Ocean.

1) Go to the beach (when you can - or ask a friend who is going)
2) Collect beach plastic (which doesn't belong there anyway)
3) Make terrain and bases out of the weathered plastic pieces

Over the recent holiday we had the chance to visit Hawaiian island Oahu.  It was lots of fun.  But, sadly there was a lot more trash-plastic on the beach than when one of us was a bit younger and we visited the same location.  Realization for us that the concerns about ocean plastic are very real.

Here's a pile of several of the pieces of plastic we hauled to the trash can.  Some had been in the water a long time - others much less time.

What to do?  Well, we thought we'd do our share and put plastic in the trash can.  We may have filled a trash can up over our several days there.  And, the good news is that the stretch of beach we worked on did seem to stay a bit cleaner -- meaning the more plastic didn't wash up again over night.  So, it does seem possible to attack the problem.

Here are several of the plastic pieces we saved and brought home.  The water created fascinating textures.  This is what got us thinking about using them for modeling.

And, while we were at it, interesting discovery.  Time in salt water does amazing things to plastic!!  Need plastic which looks like cobblestones or ancient concrete?  You're all set -- just get some beach plastic.

Not sure, but we think this was a piece of a shoe....

We ended up using some to make Sci-fi looking bases for some of our Starfinder Minis.  And, thinking of lots of uses for Ork structures and terrain for 40K.

This piece is more weird - very orange inside.  We wondered if it might have been part of a ball because of its curvature??  We liked how it looked a lot like cracked stone.

We also shared some with our good friend Mr. S at Game Kastle -- knowing that he is a big fan of finding materials which naturally create the textures of real-life for his super detailed models :)

Here are some pieces which must have spent some time at depth.  Think the blue piece was the bottom of a bottle.

We even found a six sided die on the beach.  No idea how long this guy was in the water.  The little dots are pretty worn down.  But, after some scrubbing we could sort of see which side was 6 and which side was 4....

What was that role?  I think we got a 6!!

Caution:  some of the plastic you find is really brittle.  While this might not be great for modeling with, we figure this is some of the most important to pick up and put into the trash so that it doesn't break up into little micro plastic pieces which (as we understand) can really mess up fish and birds.

We've cut a piece of the Ocean Plastic *Shoe* out for mounting on a base.

We put the mini band-saw to work and cut some pieces to mount on square miniature bases.

Here's the miniature we mounted on our shoe plastic :)

We mounted our Starfinder Android mini on the piece of shoe plastic.  The granularity of the pattern on the Ocean Plastic seems perfect to us for the scale of the miniature.  Make it look like the android is standing on a very old concrete surface. 

Here is our Starfinder mystic miniature mounted on the reclaimed Ocean Plastic

And, we mouted our Starfinder mystic on the ball plastic.  Makes it look very much like a rocky alien surface.

All in all -- lots of fun.  Beach gets cleaner, we get weird plastic pieces for models :)

Creating Starfinder RPG maps from actual maps

Hi everyone,

Have had a bunch of things going on lately - and time to share updates on those!

One item - we've been enjoying playing Starfinder!

We have more to say about how and why we've been enjoying the game - but a quick write-up on one things we've been up to....  And, that's creating *maps* for our Starfinder sessions.

A challenge (early on) with Starfinder is that there aren't very many modules released yet.  And, even if there is an old adventure module to use (from D&D or Pathfinder or something like that) - the maps might not be quite what we need.

So....  We've been taking actual maps - from Google Maps - and then converting them for game use.

It works out pretty well!

(As a quick Spoiler Alert - we've been playing a Pathfinder - Starfinder hybrid.  A top secret wormhole has connected the Starfinder space station home base for the party with a fantasy (pre-gun-powder) world setting.  So, we're eager to make maps which match.  That being said, the same tricks here would work to make higher tech looking maps for a 100% Starfinder campaign.)

1) We picked an area with interesting geography (we actually picked the LA basin -- and in this example, showing what things looked like when we used an area around Pasadena).

 Here's our map with all of the roads and signs turned on.

2) Then, we went into Google Maps and with the options, turned off roads and signs.

Here's how the map looks when we turned those off.  (Or course you can still see in the satellite image where the major roads are -- but this is cool because we can use these for our RPG road locations).

3) Then, we grabbed a screen-shot of the Google maps.

4) With that finished, it was tablet time.  We used our iPad to and Pencil to draw over the top of the map - tracing the features we thought were useful.  We used the app "Procreate".  Here's how things ended up.

Here's how our drawing turned out.  We had looked a bit at JRR Tolkien's maps and noticed that he drew little mountains and shaded them.  So, we tried to do the same thing....

Some thoughts for improving....

- We could certainly have a layer of hex's or grids in the iPad app and have those as part of the map
- We could also use icons instead of our hand-drawn things if a more crisp image was important

D20 Holder for Pharasma Numbers Spell

Hi everyone,

We've continued to enjoy playing Pathfinder - have a few different campaigns going these days.

And, for our Life Oracle (healer) of Pharasma, having little Pharasma symbol tokens to keep track of the "re-rolls" which come from channeling have really been great for other players to keep track.

Here's a link to our post on making 3D Pharasma Tokens

So, when we stumbled across the Level 1 spell "Lucky Number" we started thinking about how we might create something similar....

Here is a link to the Lucky Number spell detailed information

The plan....
- Create a plastic "holder" for a d20
- When the spell is cast, the affected player rolls their d20 and puts in into the holder
- Then, no worries about losing track of what that die roll was
- And, (as we've learned again and again in table-top games to be really valuable) there is a nice *reminder* of the extra provided by the real-life token of the item

Getting to work....
- After quite a bit of thought, it occurred to us that looking down on a d20, it has a hexagonal sillouette.  So, if we could 3d print a little hexagonal box, that would be perfect.

- Looking around on Thingiverse, we found one which was perfect!  A little hexagonal box - we just needed to figure out what size would be just right for a standard d20.

- There was some trial and error....

Tried @ 30mm -- way too big.  The d20 rattles around and doesn't even stay locked on a single number.

Tried 25mm -- still too big.  Better though.  Almost feels locked in place.

Tried 24mm -- too big -- still rattling (and that didn't seem like proper workmanship)

Tried 23mm -- now, too small.  Couldn't get the d20 into the box!

Tried 23.5mm -- just right :)

Here is our rather iterative approach to getting the size just right!

We are thinking that it might be fun to have some symbols on the sides of the d20 holders.  Working on options there....

Here are some printed out spirals to use as symbols on the d20 holders.  We haven't managed to print a high enough resolution spiral-comet yet - so trying these instead for now.

And, after some thought, decided to prime these grey so that they look like they are made of good "dungeon" stone :)

Our d20 holders lined up for priming....

We noticed that after priming things were a little bit more snug.  So, it is important to remember that paint does have a real thickness.  We probably could have gone 0.5mm larger after all!  (But, they did fit.)

Here are our d20 holders with dice inside :)

So, what's next....

- Working on those Pharasma symbols.

- And, the other idea is the light these up from below!  We left a spot unpainted on the bottom.  With a small LED, they do have a very cool blue glow!

And, how did they work?

- Well, in the first game, our character cast two "Lucky Number" spells.  So, two party members' characters had lucky numbers.  One was a 3.  Great!  And, it actually did come up during the session.  But, the other character had the number 20.  Rats - that doesn't leave much room for improvement!!

Custom Dice! (Wasn't as hard as we thought!)

 Hi everyone,  

Custom dice....  Playing at events or conventions, we've ended up with a few souvenir custom dice here and there.  Also, we've seen people playing with Space Marine dice when playing Warhammer 40K.  

Thinking about that -- and, while gearing up for playing 40K with our Ork Looted Train at Warhammer The Summit -- we were thinking how cool it would be to have more of the Green/Pink dice to go with Spork's Pink Orkies :)  [We figured the one Green/Pink die we'd found must have been a custom run somewhere.]  

We had found this single die -- perfect for Spork's Pink Ork Army.  We were trying to figure out where we could find more.  No luck so far....

We had gotten the Green/Pink D6 at Kublakon about a year back.  And, thought (maybe??) we got it from the Chessex stand there.  

So, we started out by doing some checking of the internet to see if we could find a way to order more.... Nope -- none of the websites seem to have the Green/Pink type.  

So, we started digging deeper - and when we found the e-mail for Chessex (figured we'd ask them directly) we stumbled upon the spot on their website which mentions custom dice.  

Custom Dice !! ?? !!  

Giving that some thought, it struck us....  "Wouldn't it be cool to be playing Pathfinder with one's Pharasma Oracle -- and have Pharasma symbols on the "6" side of the dice?" 

So, we took the image we had created in Windows Paint to 3-D print our Pharasma tokens.  (Here's a link to that adventure!)  And, e-mailed them to very friendly Chessex team....  (And, we also asked about Green/Pink dice, too.)
 

 

Here is the Pharasma symbol we had created in Microsoft Paint - coloring in the blue and yellow tinted one so that we had a monochromatic version....

Responses from Chessex:  

- No - they didn't make Green/Pink dice  
- But, Yes :) they'd be happy to make D6's with our graphic.  And, they even sent us a rendering of how the dice would look.  Said it would take 4-6 weeks - and at a price of about $1 per die we wanted created that way.
 

Pretty amazing that this is a rendering!  The Chessex team sent this to us very quickly after we sent our e-mail of the Pharasma image....

So, we placed our order.  And, right on time (just over 4 weeks), we got a very nice box in the mail from Chessex with the dice inside!!!  You can see for yourself - they look just like the rendering Chessex had sent us!  

The happy box from Chessex!  Pharasma dice inside!

And, of course we had to give them a try.  Did a lot of rolling.  They seem to be just as random as any other six sided dice.  (There was a brief moment of worry that the Pharasma-swirl might not come up as often as a normal "6 dots" on a d6.  Not to worry - they seem to work just fine.)

 

Here are our custom Pharasma dice along with our Pharasma tokens....

Creating custom dice rolling tray!

Hi everyone,

We rebuilt the Farkel dice game tray into a custom-color RPG dice tray!

Over the past few months, playing some Pathfinder home campaign sessions, we've come to really want to have one of those cool dice rolling trays.  (How else can someone be sitting comfortably on the couch and still have a nice way to roll their dice!)

With that goal in mind, we stumbled across a game at a thrift store - and starting thinking about whether or not we could make a conversion....  From the "Farkel Game Set" (which doesn't really fit with the aesthetic of RPGs) to a cool looking dice tray....

We'll outline what we came up with below.  Bottom line is that it turned out pretty well :)

Step 1:  Found the Farkel Game Set -- $1.50.  Got us the plastic pieces we needed -- and even several dice for the collection.

Here's a look at our $1.50 Farkel Game Set box.  Came with what you see here....  We didn't really like having all of that Farkel came business on our tray.  (Though it certainly would have worked!)

Step 2:  We pried the back plastic off of the rim plastic.  Turned out it was only glued at eight places (on the points of the octogon).  We found that 3-4 of these were pretty weak.  Once we had them loose, we pried the rest apart.

Here's how things looked once we pried everything apart.  We were able to get the rim plastic off of the back plastic.

Step 3:  We pried the red Farkel felt off of the back plastic piece.  It wasn't too hard to pull off.  Seemed like something kind of like wood glue or Elmer's glue which was holding it on there. 

The nice thing about the back piece is that it has black felt on the rear surface.  This helps it sit nicely on a table-top.  We left this alone :)

Here's how things looked with the felt removed -- and the two plastic pieces separated.

Step 4:  Size the new felt.  It turned out that there was an "inner lip" on the back plastic piece.  This was great because it meant that we only needed to size our new felt piece to go over that lip.  And, we didn't need to be very exact about it.  Then, the rim plastic bites on that lip -- but is glued to the outer edge of the back plastic.

[Where to get felt?  We got ours at Jo-Ann's Fabrics.  Suspect you can buy sections of felt - in pieces or by the yard in any fabrics store.]

We roughly cut the felt -- and then were ready to trace the imprint of that inner lip.

Here are the parts with our rough-cut felt piece.

Step 5:  Cutting to the outline.  We used our little clamps to hold the felt tightly to the back plastic.  Then, we traced that inner lip edge.  This gave us something to cut to.  So, we removed the clamps and cut with scissors.

 

Here's how things looked prior to cutting.  You can see the pattern we needed to cut to.  Nice and easy.

Step 6:  Test fit up.  We put all of the pieces together and had a look.  Things did fit!  We were a little bit worried because our felt was certainly thicker and more substantial than the red Farkel felt.  But, all was good.  We could press the rim piece down to where it previously bonded to the back piece.

And, we liked the colors.  The turquoise with the black rim.  We chatted a bit about what to do next.  Should we keep the colors the same (same black) -- or perhaps air brush the rim plastic another color.  In the end, we decided to stay with the high contrast black.  But, we wanted to end up with a mat finish -- and paint over the "made in...." marking.

Here is the test fit-up.  The turquoise with black looks good - and pieces fit together even with our thicker felt.

Step 7:  Paint and glue.  We used our black primer spray-paint to paint the rim piece -- and we didn't worry about the back piece.  Once this was done, we used super glue to glue the two pieces back together.

Here is our finished dice tray!

Here's how the tray ended up!  We had to re-glue a little bit of the back felt - but otherwise very solid.  We've been using it now for a month - and mission accomplished - works well on the couch!!  (By the way, as we're sure everyone who uses these knows -- it works well on a table as well!)

All finished - here's a test....  Not so surprising - it works :)

3D printing tokens for use in Pathfinder home campaign

Hi everyone,

We have been enjoying a Pathfinder home campaign for several months now.  And, it has been lots of fun to get together with a consistent set of friends for some RPG fun.

One of the characters we have been using is Dartmouth -- an Oracle of Pharasma.

Dartmouth has recently reached 5th level.  And, as we worked on the list of feats available for her advancement, we stumbled upon the "Fated Channel" feat.

Reading up on the Fated Channel feat, it seems that people have enjoyed using it -- but have found a challenge with remembering that they can elect to roll twice on a d20 roll in the next few turns.  [And, Wow! that reminded us of the trouble we had remembering things playing Warhammer 40K!!]

So, we had the idea of creating some little tokens we could use as a reminder piece for everyone -- that they could roll twice on something in the next so many rounds.

Ideas....

1) Pass out Pharasma colored d20's to everyone.  Certainly practical.  But, didn't seem to include very much flavor of Pharasma or Dartmouth the Oracle.  And, while it would be really cool if there were Pharasma d20's, didn't see any easy way to make custom dice for our small group.

2) Print out paper tokens.  Maybe even laminate them.  Was thinking that we could print out the Pharasma symbol.  And, then pass these out....  Worried about them just getting lost though.  A D&D or Pathfinder table quickly get cluttered with paper and dice.  Not a friendly place for a two dimensional object.

3) We thought about printing cards.  But, that seemed just as bad as using paper tokens.  Would be fine if we were playing with a group who used cards to keep track of spells and things.  But, heck, we're not.

4) 3d print a token!  Aside from the fact that we didn't know how to pull this off -- it did seem like a very cool option.  Doesn't get lost.  Has nice spirit of Pharasma and Dartmouth.  Plus, probably fun to make a paint.

So, we went at it.  Here were our steps....

1) We do have access to an XYZ Printing 3d printer.  It is a zero-bells-zero-whistles model, but has been pretty darned reliable for us so far.

2) We found a website called "embossify".  The website claimed to be able to take a 2d photo -- and turn into an embossed 3d STP file for printing.

3) So, we tested this out.  We took the Pharasma image -- downloaded it -- then uploaded it to embossify.com

4) Then, the trial printing.  Well, not so good.  We did not end up with something which looked ANYTHING like the Pharasma symbol.

 Our first attempt at 3D printing after the embossify process.  Not very recognizable!

Studying the problem, it seemed as though the nice coloring of the Pharasma "spiral" was causing the issue.  The embossify software seemed to be treating these as unique 3d surfaces. 

(Here is a link to Pharasma information -- including the colored in spiral:  http://pathfinder.wikia.com/wiki/Pharasma)

So, we went with the brute-force solution.  We colored in the "spiral" using Windows Paint.  Then, all we had was a black-and-white image. 

Here is our Pharasma symbol after coloring it all in!  (Pharasma symbol from Pathfinder.wikia.com)

After embossifying, here is the STP file pulled up in our 3D printer software.

5) Printing again with the file which came from embossify was money.  Printed out very nicely!

The good, the bad and the ugly.  The good one was generated after coloring in the Pharasma symbol.  The other two were trying to use the blue, white and yellow spiral.

6) We did some mass production -- printed out 9 of the little tokens.  (One for each of the players, plus a spare in case one gets lost.  And, one extra to light up.)

7) We did some priming and painting -- and bingo, little symbol tokens are ready to go!

Here are our Pharasma symbols after mass production.  We made one for each member of the party (plus a spare)

For painting, we primed 8 of them black - and then came back and sprayed the top surface white.  The idea was to keep the black in the groove of the spiral.  Did some dry-brushing to make the top a little bit more white.

On one of them, we kept the plastic clear.  Our plan was to put this on top of one of our lighted bases (We had gotten these from Powered Play Gaming -- and here's our Blog write-up about that.)  Turned out pretty cool!

PS:  After playing several home campaign sessions, here is our feedback:

- The little symbols really help.  When someone is healed, they get a token.  If we're in the middle of a battle and they use it up -- they just turn it over (they are black on the back).  Then if they get healed again, they flip it back over again.

- Interesting side-point -- it's pretty fun to have the Cleric start having such a big impact on offense instead of mainly defense.  We have certainly not had as many misses since Dartmouth started fateful channeling :)

Well, here is Dartmouth surrounded by her tokens.  You can see the one lit-up token as well.

Future thoughts....  Maybe build a magnetized attachment for Dartmouth which we can snap onto her base when she is spell casting....  Thinking of turning the spiral 90-degree so that it is spiraling outward from her toward her target(s)

What is cool about the Pathfinder Society

Hi everyone,

We have started playing a little bit of Pathfinder.  But, not just playing in our small group.  Nope, instead playing with the "Pathfinder Society" at Game Kastle in Santa Clara.

The sessions are scheduled using the Warhorn website.  It was really easy to set up and account and then sign up for a Pathfinder Level 1 (through Level 5) session.

We decided we'd play a Half-Elf Cleric/Bard.  Decided to name him Perry.  Fights with a rapier.  Started working on a miniature for our next session :)

Well -- the whole world (except us) probably already knows what is cool about the Pathfinder Society (and, we're just the last ones to figure it out)....  But, regardless, here's a quick take on what we're liking about it :)

High level explanation?  Well, the main rules (Pathfinder) are like the Programming Language.  Rules about syntax, what can be done, what can't, etc....  Then, you have the Operating System (the Pathfinder Society)....  How gaming sessions are managed, how experience works, how items are divided up....  It's very much like the OS on a computer which is managing files, data and access....  It is so cool to have both!!

Got Perry primed.  This is our first real attempt with white primer.  Working on 40K have been using black primer.  Let's see how this works out!!

1) The "Society" is cleverly set-up so that a group of people can "campaign" together in small one-session (one evening) stints.  [In Warhammer 40K we just spent several weekends in a row trying to find a time when the four of us who like to play together could get together for one large battle.  Very hard to manage schedules when everyone is busy!!]

2) There is a very nice structure around how much experience or treasure a group of adventurers should receive from each adventure session.

3) The classic argument over the +2 Longsword ("It's mine!"  "No, I found it!"  "Yes, but my character would make better use of it!") is settled.  Maybe a bit contrived -- but everyone can have it because the notion of party-treasure-sharing is boiled down to each character worrying about their own advancement.

4) Pathfinder vs. D&D rules?  Yep, there are differences -- and, we can see that many people have strong opinions.  We could live with either one -- for us, the fun is in the playing.  And, if it's the Pathfinder Society which has figured out a way to get together easily - then those rules work for us!!

Not too bad using the white primer after all.  Thinning down the colors so that we don't lose detail.  Finding that Perry looks OK with the white primer.  Using our 40K painting tricks as best we can!

5) If you can't make it one night - big deal.  Just show up at the next one when you can.  And, doesn't seem like it even matters too much if you play your character at or with different groups the way things are structured.

Well, we get to play again tomorrow night.  Very much looking forward to it!

 Here's Perry, ready for action tomorrow night.  Fingers are crossed that we don't kill him off.  If we can nurse him through two more sessions as a lowly first level Cleric he'll gain that crucial second level -- and will add a level of Bard.