RPG Props: The Village of Dusk
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In our Friday night game the heroes have found themselves lost in the Shadowfell. After a harrowing skills challenge in the haunted Dreadwood they finally managed to find relative safety amongst the shadar-kai of the village of Dusk. Here are a few shots of the props I built and the battle that followed.
The Heroes Approach the Village
Entrance to the Village
Village Overview
Dayereth Leads the Way!
North View
Norkers Attack!
Fight for the Shrine of Melora
Attackers on the Bridge
A Mini's Eye View
Anrz Speaks to the Shadar-Kai
Verick Stops the Norkers
The night ended before the battle was completed. Things look bad for our heroes but will see how it wraps up next week.
12 Comments
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February 7, 2009 at 9:42 am
I heard about this setup, John. It looks great. I assume this was your D&D 4e game. Did you use some sort of distance measuring for movement during the combat?
February 7, 2009 at 10:22 am
We just used a tape measure. It worked fine simply converting “squares” to inches for range.
Oh and yeah it was for our 4e game.
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February 7, 2009 at 10:53 am
I love well developed miniature terrain. I have a couple of large sheets of pink styrofoam insulation just begging to be carved up. You should do some tutorials on making terrain!
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February 8, 2009 at 10:32 am
What I especially like about all this is the celebration of gaming. All the effort that goes into it, the interaction at the table, the aesthetics, the pics and captions, the story of the props in addition to the story of the adventure. It all adds up to a great passion for gaming and is inspiring to the rest of us.
JohnnFour’s last blog post..Distilled Cultural Essence – Part 2 of 4: Expressing a different society, Section 1
February 8, 2009 at 11:56 am
John, the props for that game were awesome!!!
However, after reading some of your articles and seeing how people respond, I think you should tell everyone about the kicka@# skills challenge you tortured us wit.. I mean challenged us with and how much that helped impart the feeling of despair and hopelessness that is the Shadowfell…
February 8, 2009 at 1:27 pm
That’s an amazing piece of work. Thanks for sharing.
February 8, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Thanks for the great comments. I love building great terrain pieces and promised my group I would keep making props. Although not strictly necessary I think it really can add something to the game.
Now I need to get started on some high quality props for the games I’ll be running next month at Con-Quest Sac.
John Lewis’s last blog post..RPG Props: The Village of Dusk
February 9, 2009 at 8:37 am
Very nice work. I like the idea of using a tape measure to do it (since that’s what they do in most normal miniature battles) would really help alleviate counting squares for my ranger since I’m almost always at max range.
February 9, 2009 at 8:42 am
Tape measure would be nice instead of the grid. Agreed. I wonder if some players would get frustrated by the loosey-goosey nature of tape measured games though.
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February 9, 2009 at 8:52 am
For the most part I’m fine with the grid. I use dungeon tiles a lot as well 20″ x 30″ sheets of 1-inch graph paper. But when I put together something like this the tape works just as well.
To be honest most of the measuring we did for this scenerio was just “eyeballed”. I’m really fortunate in that I have a group of really good players in my game. They are all much more focused on good story-telling and exiting adventures then little details like whether a creature moved 6″ or 6 1/4″.
Glad you liked the pics.
John Lewis’s last blog post..RPG Props: The Village of Dusk
February 9, 2009 at 12:34 pm
It was a brutal skills challenge. I love having the terrain pieces simply because it allows my character…soldier that he is…to make more sound tactical decisions, such as bottle necking the enemy up on the bridge.
February 10, 2009 at 4:21 pm
As long as I get to move 7 1/4″ too!
Actually I see no reason why measuring wouldn’t work on a normal board since they’re all 1″ squares. This will help me a ton….thanks John!!!!!!!!1