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EDIT: Review posted on RPG.net! : https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/19/19119.phtml (This thread is a partial draft of the review.) As something of a litmus test of the recently released Loke Battlemat's "Castles, Crypts, and Caverns", I thought I'd see how well the maps fit with the D&D "Starter Set : Lost Mine of Phandelver". This set is the first starter set released, now free as a PDF on D&D Beyond, so I figured it would be the more popular D&D published adventures for the current version of D&D. This thread is a WIP as I try out the maps! CC&C is primarily indoors, so, for the outdoor areas, I'm looking at the Loke Battlemat's "Box of Adventure : 2. Coast of Dread" for some outdoor areas. This set has sunken ships for the D&D "Ghosts of Saltmarsh" hardback adventure and (SPOILER) one of the D&D starter sets (END SPOILER). The maps are wipe-off, so you can easily modify the maps. Or you can use the Loke Battlemat's vinyl clings. I'm using the "Add-on Scenery - Wilderness". Loke Battlemats also just finished its BackerKit "Big Box of Dungeon Doors" campaign, so contact them if you're interested in them. Coast of Dread review : (Insert review link here) (Insert pic of book covers here) CC&C is sold as a two-volume set of spiral-bound battle maps, with 1" grids. You can either use the battle map as a two-page spread, or one page of the battle maps. You can place the battle maps adjacent to each other. Both CC&C and the BoA's have an "index" of thumbnail shots of their battle maps. I found this invaluable when *quickly* searching for a battle map to use with the D&D maps. Some gamers don't like the spiral-bound format, since you can't remove the maps, but I've noticed that the spiral format with the index lets you find the map you want easier and faster. It's a trade-off, and if you don't like the spiral-bound format, take a look at the Loke "Box of Adventure" maps, which are loose double-page spread maps. The BoA sets also have cut-outs of rooms, storage boxes, etc. which you can add to maps for some customization. The Loke battle maps aren't an *exact* match with the D&D ones, but I tried making the D&D maps from the D&D Reincarnated tiles and wasn't able to make the D&D maps, either! In any case, I've used dice to indicate the locations on the D&D map, as well as the monsters in the encounter, plus our intrepid heroes, so you can see there's plenty of room for fighting. Needless to say, spoilers ahead! ***** Part 1 : Goblin Ambush & Goblin Trail While the Goblin Trail traps don't really need a battle map, for the Goblin Ambush, you can use the CoD swamp map (see below), adding some cover for the goblins, either by drawing in some trees and brush, or using the vinyl clings from the "Add-on Scenery - Wilderness". The ambush involves two dead horses (which don't particularly affect combat), which you will end up drawing on the battle map. The Goblin Trail encounter is just an unattended snare and pit, so won't need a battle mat. Unless you decide to *combine* the encounters, with the party first encountering the pit and snare, then being attacked by the goblins. Use the Disadvantage rules if someone falls into the pit or is snared! Part 1 : Cragmaw Hideout (Insert pic of D&D map of Cragmaw Hideout here) For the Cragmaw Hideout encounters, I used the CC&C books and one of the CoD maps. For the first and second outdoor locations (bottom of the map), I used a CoD swamp map, which easily doubles for a generic outdoor map. I then used trees and a river vinyl cling from the "Add-on Scenery - Wilderness" to create the first and second encounter forested areas more closely. I also used the wall clings to section off some cavern areas of the CC&C book. The Add-On Scenery lacks bridges, so I had to copy some dock sections from a CoD map, cut them out, and mount them on index card. After placing miniatures from the encounters onto the battle maps, you can see there's plenty of room for some good fights! Location 3 is a wolf den, 4 is a passageway, 5 is a goblin guarding a bridge, and 7 are three goblins next to a reservoir. In the next pictures, location 6 is a common area, with a southern room, from the location 4 passageway. Location 8 is the boss lair, north of location 7. The location 8 boss lair encounter calls for some storage boxes, so, like the bridge, I made copies of the storage room cutout from CoD, trimming it down to the size I wanted.

I almost didn't bother posting these, but I went ahead and did so. Just some quick rats and spiders. The rats are from the D&D Castle Ravenloft board game, the spiders are from the Legend of Drizzt board game. To mix it up, I alternated colors between brown/dark gray/light gray. They came out a bit dark, but I guess that's okay for rats and spiders. Nothing spectacular, but they actually get used quite a bit (on the rare occasions when my group actually gets to play).

Dungeon23 is short for MegaDungeon 2023. I first heard about it from @Crowley who mentioned it in the chat during one of Anne’s ( @Vaitalla ) morning streams before Christmas. The idea is to create one room each day during 2023. The suggested format is: 12 Months – Levels 52 Weeks – Themes 365 Days – Rooms Some rooms can be empty. Descriptions can be short or be complex. Do two or three room complexes to catch up if you fall behind. Keep it simple to keep going. Many people are using graph paper journals or notebooks for this. Anybody is welcome to join in the fun, post their rooms, suggest resource links (if they are not commercial), kibbitz, doodle…

I finally got inspired to paint these guys up after BlazingTornado posted one a while back. For what they are, the sculpts have a respectable amount of detail (except the teeth...the top row of chompers had to be freehanded on each skeleton due to soft details). I was originally going to go with a tarnished bronze look on the shields. But, after I muddied them up a little, I fell in love with the look and decided to keep them as-is. I think the rust effect came out pretty well on the sword blades. They won't be superstars in my skeleton army, but they're good middle-of-the-road models.

Hello Rotten Friends! If you liked the last campaign, I think that you may be interested in the coming one -> The ROTTEN MMXXII! A lot of new cool cooperations, new miniatures, and awesome projects to come! Please remember to sign up for the coming project: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rottenfactory/rotten-mmxxii And to keep an eye on rotten social media to be up to date with all the news. :) FACEBOOK INSTAGRAM TWITTER Cheers, Pawel

Wastes of Chaos: Enter the 5E Borderlands Venture beyond the civilized lands, into the howling badlands where the Cult of the Black Goat does as it pleases and where ancient constructs lie just under a thin layer of dust. There you may find great riches, ancient magic, and a swift death. Welcome to the wastelands for 5th Edition! BACK TODAY! In addition to the books, be sure to check out the awesome minis!

The Dungeon of the Mad Mage board game came with three of these shadow minis. I struggled to find ANYTHING interesting to do with the paint job. By definition, I feel like a shadow wouldn't have highlights or anything (I actually did end up adding some very subtle highlights out of habit...they help bring out some of the sculpt's details somewhat). I also gave them a glossier finish. I'm not sure why...it just seemed appropriate. The main thing I like about this mini's design is the way it allows you to (kind of) place another medium-sized mini on the base and be "stalked" by the shadow (as shown below). It's a neat little feature. I know that they did at least one more of these guys in a different pose (maybe more...I can't remember). I may pick it up at some point for the sake of variety.

I said I'd dig this guy out and post his a couple of months ago, then promptly forgot to do so. Better late than never. As I said in lazarp's thread, this is a sculpt I've always liked. In painting him up, I wanted the skin to basically resemble the color of a nasty bruise. Not sure why, just one of those weird ideas that hits you sometimes.

Of the 5 Wrath of Ashardalon heroes I painted years ago, this one's my favorite. I love the sculpt...lots of opportunities for fun paint work.

This one's not a bad sculpt for what he is (though, I wish they'd sculpted in his right foot...makes him look bizarre at certain angles).

Just posting some older stuff from years past while I work on a larger product. Definitely not my best work, and definitely not a great mini (there weren't any lips sculpted in...come on!). I do like the way the hair and armor turned out.

Another one of my old ones. The armor is based off of Sebastian Vael (a DLC character from Dragon Age 2...lame character, cool armor). I mixed some silver in with the white to give it some shimmer.

Even though I did this one years ago, I still like him. The armor is inspired by Simon Belmont's armor in the NES Castlevania 2 box art (more of a plum/wine color than straight brown leather).

MCDM is making a monster book, and it looks awesome! I've backed MCDM's other two books, and think they make top quality stuff, so backing this one was a given for me. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mattcolville/mcdm-monster-book This book is sort of reinventing a lot of classic creatures, making them much more fun to play and fight! It also has brand new creatures. There is a preview PDF linked to on the KS page. This KS went live yesterday, and it's already funded($600k) and well beyond its first stretch goal of $800k, which adds Rival Adventurers to the book! The next stretch goal is at $1m, and will add Lairs & Hoards to the book - or it might potentially become its own separate book! (Similar to Kobold Press' "Lairs" supplement to their "Tome of Beasts" series of books, I guess.) There's going to be a single mini available for this KS, and it's the creature from the cover art: You can also check out Matt Colville's video explaining the book here(and I highly suggest watching it!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhJeOOGiWGM

Definitely one of my favorite inclusions in the Ravenloft board game. Originally, I thought the paint job would be entirely a bone color. After I started prepping him, however, it became clear that there was just as much rotting flesh as there was visible bone. Makes sense, considering the artwork in the monster manual. A quick Google image search shows that people approach this model's paint job in a variety of cool ways. This combines my favorite elements from what I've seen, plus my own spin on the way I like to paint undead/zombie-types.

Another older piece from me. Not much to say about this one...I had a blast painting him. I wanted to make him a little bit darker than most of the other Ashardalon models I've seen. If you have any thoughts or critiques, I'd love to hear them.

Here's another one of my older ones. I'm fairly happy with the end result, but I remember the process of prepping and painting this guy as being 100% miserable from beginning to end. The base was severely warped and required a ton if effort to straighten out...there were random chunks of plastic missing from the model that needed to be filled in...there was a huge ugly moldline/joining point running down the middle of the model...the underbelly was tricky to get to and paint...tons of flash removal...the list goes on and on. Anyone else have such quality control issues on their copy? I'm curious. Anyway, the part of the model that I genuinely love is the way they sculpted the head. I'm happy with the way that part came out on the finished product. If I had to paint this guy over again, (which I most definitely will NOT be doing 🙂 ), I'd have gone a lot brighter with the body's final highlights to bring out the details on the scales. Comments and criticism welcome.

Here's one I painted quite a while back. I absolutely love the crazy design of the Otyugh, not to mention the creature's unapologetically filthy lifestyle. I tried to capture that nastiness in the paint job, all the while making sure things didn't go from "purposefully gross" to "just sloppy". For whatever reason, I didn't take the time to remove his mold lines. It's an obvious weakness in the finished presentation (let this be a lesson about the importance of the preparation phase, I suppose...). Feel free to leave any comments/criticism.

Posting on Grump's computer, not my Fire. I need to have more than one sentence paragraphs! (I almost posted as The Auld Grump because I hadn't logged Dennis out before logging me in. ) From time to time Grump has told me that he has literally dreamed a scenario, and I never really believed him. But I told Grump that one of his Christmas presents this year was going to be running a game so he could play for a change. Then I realized that I had NO FREAKING CLUE what I was going to run, and almost asked if he would like to run the game WITH me instead. Then Saturday night I had a dream where I was running a game, directing a movie, and watching the movie/game and suddenly I knew what I was going to run! Grump left out how WICKED AWESOME it is to dream an adventure. Suddenly I know why Grump runs games. I woke up from the dream because I WANTED TO WRITE IT DOWN! And it was REALLY nice to have my subconscious send me a message in something other than a nightmare. It sent me the solution! Wow, that was still a lot of one sentence paragraphs! Strangely, I dreamed I was running/directing/watching an Eberron adventure, even though until yesterday, I had never read any Eberron material, just knew what Grump had told me. Eberron is actually pretty awesome, and is NOTHING like Forgettable Realms or Greyhawk. It is its own place, and holds together better than any setting I have read before. The dream was a mash up of Casablanca, Raiders of the Lost Arc, National Treasure, and Maltese Falcon. Some of it was narrated by the Grump as Humphrey Bogart. The idea is that the PCs start out hired by somebody to track down an artifact that will help the gods manifest on Eberron, instead of the hands off approach that is used in the setting. (Eberron even has atheists!) In the dream the introductory patron was this fat naked man that was sometimes a silver dragon, meeting the players in a bath house, while nubile young women scrubbed him. A fat silver dragon, using the human shape to conduct business. Part of that is as a dragon, being naked really does not bother him. And part of it is to make the player characters uncomfortable, so they would not spend too much time wondering what he is really up to. And what the players don't know at the time is that sometimes he EATS one of those nubile young women. He starts as their mentor and patron, both for the players and those young women, but he is really REALLY evil, and wants to use the artifact as a way of controlling the Draconic Prophecy, fulfilling its tenets in such a way that he decides what it means. The women are cultists, but do not know that he is just using (and eating) them. They literally mean nothing to him beyond his own convenience. Rescuing the damsels from the dragon will probably be one of the adventures, at least if I know the way Grump thinks. (He WILL try to rescue them!) Even after the players learn that the dragon is the bad guy, they will need a patron, and I need to come up with several, good, bad, academic, and mercenary. Travel in the adventure will be free as long as they have a patron, and EVERY time they are traveling, something happens, or sometimes THEY happen to somebody else! I picture one of those maps where you see the characters' travels being highlighted with a colored line, like in those old movies. And the scene where Indiana Jones is racing his horse alongside a train, then jumping from the horse on top of the train. In the civilized areas travel will be by lightning rail, and when going to less civilized areas travel will be by either ship or airship. Trying to keep one thing Grump has told me over and over. "An adventure is not the story. The adventure is the framework for the story that the players tell." Don't come up with a single way to handle or solve a problem, come up with three, and expect the players to come up with four, five, and six. Doing this like the old serials and writing each part while running the previous part. I have a general shape for the story, and an idea of where it is going. And most of all, even if the dragon DOES get the artifact, it won't do what he thinks it will do. The dragon is just as much a pawn of the REAL villain as the players start out as the dragon's! One of the things I like about Eberron, more than the Pathfinder world, is that the place is designed for globe trotting, and can handle a plot that covers more than one continent, let alone country. I am sure that Grump's DMing dreams are more coherent than mine was, but it was WONDERFUL! I went from worrying about the game to really REALLY looking forward to it! I am actually EXCITED about this! SO! I am asking for ideas for potential player patrons! One is already in the game, the Wayfinder Foundation, pretty much the Pathfinder Society by a different name. (Or the Pathfinder Society is the one with the different name, since Eberron came first.) I am picturing the leader of the Wayfinder Foundation a lot like the explorer in Up! But I will look up what he supposed to be like before committing to that.

5th Edition enters the Plane of Shadow! A realm just beyond the mortal world—seize magical power, play new heroes, and bring the secrets of the shadows into the light! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deepmagic/book-of-ebon-tides-5th-edition-enters-the-plane-of-shadows?ref=e2bbsa&token=8048a244 The Plane of Shadow exists beside the mortal world, one step beyond the veil—and your heroes can enter this otherworldly realm of fey shadows, undead horrors, and wild adventure! The Book of Ebon Tides provides a complete guide to the people, places, heroes, magic, and monsters of the Plane of Shadow, a land where fey magic, illusion, and trickery are as potent as steel. From shadow goblins to ghouls, from elves to bearfolk, this is a world of mystery and enchantment. On the muddy black riverbanks and along alleys paved with bone, new heroes wander in the light of the moon, summon lunar devils, and battle in crumbling castles. Come explore a shadow world next door to every other, just one step down the shadow road. . . .

Greetings y'all! I'm starting this thread to use as a painting blog, to help catalog my journey, and to use as a source of ongoing motivation. I have a LOT of stuff I've been putting off, that I want to get through for a homebrew campaign I'm working on, and some warbands for Frostgrave, as well. So, I'll take any extra motivation I can get Once I actually finish pieces, I'll make sure to post them in that part of the forum. To start things off, I have a dragon I've been working on for a couple of weeks, and just got to the point where it's "good enough for now," although definitely not finished. It's easily my favorite piece I've ever owned, so I put off doing any work on it until I was "good enough" to do the piece justice. That is, until I realized that would never happen , so I decided to: 1) Do the darned thing 2) Do some work on it every day 3) Push myself outside my comfort zone to try new things 4) Be patient and forgiving with myself 5) To not freak out when I try something that I don't like, and just go ahead and fix it There's still a good amount to do to it (I have a list with 15 bullet points on it, and growing!), but I'm happy enough looking at it, and want to take a break to focus on some other pieces. I took some progress shots (though perhaps not as many as I'd have liked). So please, join me as we journey through my learning experience: I fully assembled the mini before putting down any paint. Here's where the mini was after a couple days work, about 4-5 hrs. I used an airbrush to give it a zenithal undercoat with black and white, and then to lay in the base coats of the red and blue. I then painted the underbelly and the wing-fingers with a brush. Here, I'm trying to show the work I've done (still fairly subtle, at this point) on building up the vibrancy/transitions on the red skin/scales. I was fairly happy at this point, as I could start to see that I might actually be able to paint this to the standard I want. The next day, I did some work on the face, horns, and blocked in the body spikes. I generally liked the mouth and tongue, but felt it was a bit vibrant. I thought the blue on the horns was alright, but also wasn't completely sold on it. Here's where it was after another `30min of work. Since I felt the tongue was too much, I did something about it! I did a very light glaze with a grey, just to knock down the saturation a bit. Looks better. I added some more blue to the horns, and still wasn't quite happy with it. Picked out the teeth, which is nice, easy bit of definition. And that eye!!! It looked much better than I expected, although that's the last time it would be that well defined... Here it is after another couple days of progress, building up that red (it takes soooooo long on something this big!!!!), as well as more work on the mouth/face. I'd accidentally painted over the eye (which becomes a recurring theme in this tale ), so I blocked in some color, just to separate it from the face. I added a glaze of 'RMP's fair skin' to the tongue, and now I'm lovin' it. Also added some fleshy-ness to the gums on the upper jaw (though it's a little hard to tell), and that was definitely another good decision. Here I continued to build up the red, progress is slow but steady. Not pictured (which is unfortunate, because it was a good learning experience) is my attempt to redo the horn entirely, to a scheme that was a transition of bone to brown to black at the tip...I was really unhappy with it. I had the bone starting around the eye ridges in at attempt to add more contrast and draw the viewer's eye towards the face, but it just looked awful. So I spent a good while redoing the horn and fixing the whole face. I'm glad I made that mistake, as I think the face looks much better than it did before I started on the horn. Part of that was adding in a new level of bright highlights. Here's the mini in some soft lighting, and although the picture is kinda blurry, it better shows the transitions throughout the red. I think this was also the point where I started working on shading the red, by applying a light blue-black glaze to the shaded areas, which really helped add some contrast to the piece. I had an accident that almost gave me a heart attack, where the figure seemingly jumped off the desk Luckily, I caught it before it hit the ground, and it sustained no major damage. It did separate where the dragon attaches on to the base, and although that was a little frustrating, it ended up being a happy little accident, as it made it MUCH MUCH easier to work on the base. I started by putting down some paints and pigments, until it was at a place I thought was ok. Also, the rock spire that it's curled around was originally about 6 inches taller, which I cut off to better see all of the dragon. So, I started work on sculpting a new top. I started by building up thin layers of cardboard with superglue, to level it off (it had quite a slant to it). Then I mixed up some greenstuff, and tried to match the overall flow and texture of of the rocks. Although not a perfect match, it's close enough to not be distracting. Mission accomplished!! The pillars were a part of the mini. And here's the beast in its current state. I painted the newly sculpted top to match what I'd already done, and left the pillars with a super quick drybrushing. I touched up the eye to look acceptable (it's on my 'to do' list), added some grass tufts to the base, and was happy to leave it be like this, for a time. The final pic is another attempt to 'more accurately' show the value transitions with the red, though the colors seem a tad washed out. Thanks for taking a look at my work, and for reading my ramblings! C&C is welcome As I said, I have a to do list for the dragon, but I'm not afraid to add more to it!!! I'll strive to make a post in here a few times a week, and eventually you'll get to see a completed dragon! EDIT: I forgot to mention that once the dragon broke away from the base (super cleanly, luckily), I took the opportunity to redo the underbelly on the whole model, darkening it up some. And along the neck, I experimented with wet blending for the first time! I've been apprehensive to try it before, but decided this was a good spot to experiment, as it's a large enough area, but felt less...consequential, I guess, if I messed it up. And I'm pretty pleased with the result! Next up: Frostgrave warbands for me and my brother!

This is Miguel Zavala's redesigned Umber Hulk, printed on my Mars Pro and painted with Vallejo acrylics. It's a monster I haven't used much, if at all, in my own campaign, but my favourite character of old, Sir Fnord the Pretty Neat died of them twice, both times by having his head ripped clean off.

5th Edition enters the Plane of Shadows! A realm just beyond the mortal world--seize magical power, play new heroes & bring the secrets of the shadows into the light! Coming Soon - Click to learn More!! 62541_1080x1080.mp4

I finally got around to doing some basing on my take on reaper's Gauth, in bones I do not know the SKU unfortunately, but I think it is from Bones 4? Anyway, I tried to paint him up as a White dragon, but I also wanted to keep it interesting, so I highlighted from three different colours on separate parts of the hide, mostly pale purple, grey on the central spines down his back, and turquoise on the belly! Take a look, let me know what you think, c&c's more than welcome!

I saw the Rocky miniatures, and with how cute they are I could not resist getting one to use as a dragon to send against my players. As such, here is my take on the Flying Rocky, as a juvenile Red Dragon! Comments, criticisms and advice as ever more than welcome!