Kingmaker Exploration Party

[Jordan Peacock]

For a change, I'm actually getting to PLAY, rather than be the GM: one of my veteran players is taking over in order to run a Pathfinder RPG campaign -- the "Kingmaker" campaign - -while I take something of a break.  However, I can't just take a break completely, so even though the GM has a bunch of pre-painted Pathfinder and D&D minis at the ready for the campaign, and is using printed battle maps, I have been focusing on kit-bashing and painting minis for the PCs (and eventually whatever companions and cohorts they pick up on the way).

 

Recently, the adventurers acquired a wagon after defeating a bunch of bandits.  It was a wagon in pretty sad shape, but they fixed it up, and hitched up a couple of horses "liberated" from the bandits.  This has made it a lot easier to tend to their assigned task of exploring an area known as the "Greenbelt" -- hunting down monsters (or, in the case of the kobolds, making peace with them), and dealing with rampant banditry.

 

From left to right (rear row):
* Human Paladin Sir Greys (Reaper #77197, "Erick Paladin Initiate")
* Elven Kineticist Selana Kelsa (Reaper #77036, "Devona Female Wizard")
* Gnomish Rogue Lis (composite of old Mage Knight miniature pieces)
* Grippli Oracle Chirp Meadowsong (Reaper #77165, "Hellakin Goregutter," with head swap from Reaper #77268, "Squog Warriors")
* Kitsune Magus Yuri (Reaper #77473, "Kogo Male Kitsune")
* Half-Orc Sorcerer Gruush (Mage Knight Minions #065 "Medicine Troll")

Foreground:
* Human Warden* [spell-less Ranger variant] Rook Greys (Reaper #77320, "Galadanoth Elf Sniper")

The horses are a couple of plastic Games Workshop Warhammer Fantasy Battle horses (presumably from some sort of Empire set).  I had some "bitz boxes" out in the garage that I picked up at a game bazaar, including several horses -- either on sprues, or with badly-mangled partly assembled riders stuck to them with overly-caked glue.  I tried assembling a few and "dismounting" a couple more.  The two pictured are just two I randomly picked out for the picture.  (I figured there wasn't much sense in just taking pictures of the horses, since none of them are Reaper; they all need saddles and such.)

 

The wagon has wheels, cabinets, lanterns, keg, and crates/barrels of Hydrocal castings done with Hirst Arts Castlemolds.  The rest of the wagon is made up of wooden craft sticks (a mix of "popsicle sticks" and "matchsticks"), plus a couple of plastic head-pieces that someone had trimmed off of some Warhammer Fantasy dwarven mining carts for some purpose, and a random plastic shield hung on the side to show the heraldry for "Erastil" (since at least two members of the party -- the Greys cousins -- are followers of Erastil).  I used some epoxy putty to add a cushioned seat for the driver's bench.  I hope to personalize the wagon more as the campaign goes along -- adding trophies, maybe even some more shields or banners with heraldry of the rest of the party, or perhaps even a top for the wagon (if we can afford it, and get it done somehow back at the trading post).

 

I'm also working on some pieces to represent an adventurer campsite, but they need a little bit more work before I bother taking a photo.  (I tried making some tents with paper, and some others with putty.  Results were ... mixed.)  I suppose that's another thing I could imagine being useful from Bones: an "adventurer tent" (maybe even make it hollow), a "bedroll," and some sort of campfire (in translucent yellow or orange?): bonus points if it has a suspended kettle or a spit over it.  Beds and shelves are great for dungeons, but some scenes happen while the PCs are traveling and their camp gets ambushed by monsters out in the woods.  Or maybe the PCs are the ones doing the ambushing!  :)

 

[Gargs]

First: Congrats on getting to play! Kingmaker is awesome and I'm currently running a Kingmaker game. Hopefully you and your group can make the most of it!

 

Second: I'm guessing you intended to attach a photo? :p

 

Third: Keep us apprised of your adventures! There's lots of great opportunities for hobby related stuff in this campaign.

[Jordan Peacock]

Oh.  Yeah.  PHOTO.  Riiiiiight.  (Oops.)

 

[Gargs]

Nicely done, I especially like the wagon and kudos to the party for the initiative in really fixing it up. My players were like "meh, seems like too much work."

[canuckotter]

For the camp scene, if you happen to have Hirst Arts mold #59, it includes a little fire. It took me all of about 20 minutes to paint up, and it makes a fantastic campfire. Which you probably already knew (if you have that mold) so I don't know why I'm bothering to mention that...

[Jordan Peacock]

21 hours ago, canuckotter said:

For the camp scene, if you happen to have Hirst Arts mold #59, it includes a little fire. It took me all of about 20 minutes to paint up, and it makes a fantastic campfire. Which you probably already knew (if you have that mold) so I don't know why I'm bothering to mention that...

 

Yes, actually, I've got a few casts of it.  :)  It's part of my grand plan for the camp.  I still need to do some more work on the tents and props, though.  (Probably this weekend.)  There's also a pot from one of the Hirst Arts molds that I think might be a good starting point for a kettle, but it's very flat-bottomed, so I may either end up using some putty to round out the bottom before suspending it over the fire -- or I may just try making a whole kettle from putty or some other "bit."  That might make it easier to add handles.  I also plan to use Adventuring Accessories (#2638) to decorate the camp, and also to add a "leather-working station" (inspired by similar things in Skyrim) -- basically consisting of some sort of hide stretched on a pole frame -- to represent the area where my warden (AKA spell-less ranger) might be doing crafting work after hunting.

 

(Aside: A "backpack marker" can be useful for more than just decoration, too.  I tend toward building characters who try to maintain light encumbrance, but sometimes they pick up stuff that'll push them over lightly-encumbered and into penalties.  When that happens, I keep separate tallies of weight for the character's encumbrance with and without a backpack.  If a fight should break out, or some other circumstance where maximum mobility is essential, my character can DROP the pack, and with any luck he might be able to pick it back up once the fight is over with.  Most of the time the GM seems content to let that be covered out of narrative, but when area-effect blasts and such start coming into play, it's probably more essential to mark precisely where that stash was left untended.  A backpack piece mounted on a penny base seems to do the trick.  After our last game where we were crawling around the dark in a mite-infested tunnel, I think I need to do the same with a lantern, so we can keep track of where the light source is, if it has to be set down so my character can have both hands free for a bow.)

 

My players were like "meh, seems like too much work."

 

@Gargs: One possible factor in this could be that our GM deployed the "Background Skills" optional rule from Pathfinder Unchained.  The short version is that it gives us a couple of extra skill points each level, but these can ONLY be used for a few skills that are now designated as "background" skills: Appraise, Craft (any), Handle Animal, Linguistics, Perform (any), Profession (any), and certain Knowledge areas.  (You can still spend regular skill points on them as well.)  Combine that with a presumed lack of conventional dungeons full of wealth to raid, and limits on what we can buy (if we get any money, we can put in orders at the trading post, but it's going to take a long time to fulfill), and it starts to look like crafting our own gear -- or repairing whatever we can scavenge -- is pretty appealing.  (My own character is "Rook the Warden"; I had been talking about how I thought it was silly how most of the classes fit with archetypes of popular fantasy pretty easily, but the Ranger messes up the basic woodsman/frontiersman/outdoorsman archetype by arbitrarily throwing in spellcasting out of the blue.  The GM found a 3rd-party book that introduced a "spell-less ranger" type, and I'm calling that a "warden" for the sake of brevity.  Basically it gives up the spellcasting at higher levels in exchange for beefing up the animal companion a bit, and swaps out Spellcraft skill to gain Acrobatics instead.  For background skills, I'm going for Craft: Leather and Profession: Tanning, under the theory that I'll try making leather and hide goods out of what monsters we clobber along the way, even though the tanning process traditionally should take several months ... but most of our adversaries so far have been BANDITS or BIG BUGS.  Well, and mites.  We ran into some kobolds, but we worked out a peace deal with them after rescuing one of their number from the mites.)

 

 

 

 

 

[canuckotter]

Another option for the future would be to look at the Mantic Games terrain stuff... Their TerrainCrate KS is (apparently) about to start fulfilment, and one of the things in that was a campsite set in the "Battlefield" crate. I'm assuming these are going to be going up on their site as standard products once the KS fulfilment finishes... I've got the Battlefield set coming to me, once it comes in I could take pictures of the campsite stuff if you're interested.

[Boaz]

 Don't forget GM Scotty and his youtube channel theGMsCraft with nearly 700 videos he has an an angle on making almost anything fast and cheap ...

Edited April 27, 2018 by Boaz

[Jordan Peacock]

11 hours ago, canuckotter said:

Another option for the future would be to look at the Mantic Games terrain stuff... Their TerrainCrate KS is (apparently) about to start fulfilment, and one of the things in that was a campsite set in the "Battlefield" crate. I'm assuming these are going to be going up on their site as standard products once the KS fulfilment finishes... I've got the Battlefield set coming to me, once it comes in I could take pictures of the campsite stuff if you're interested.

 

I've got some of Mantic's "Dungeon Saga" terrain pieces: two sets of the doors, and two of the Furniture Pack.  They're pretty nice, sturdy hard plastic, with good detail, and they seem to do well with flat surfaces staying flat (e.g., bookshelves, throne, cabinet) without visible warping compared to some other plastic furnishings.  I'm not familiar with this Kickstarter, but if they keep up the same level of quality, that'd definitely be worth looking into.  Thanks for the heads-up.  :)

[Jordan Peacock]

 

Another shot of the PC minis for Chris Thesing's Kingmaker (Pathfinder RPG) campaign, this time with some campsite elements I made over the weekend.  I have a number of painted paper tents I've put together (enough to house the entire party) but I decided to try my hand at making some tents and other equipment.  

Three of the tents are based on a plastic tent-like element I got as part of a model kit grab-bag years ago.  I made a crude "Make-a-Mold" mold off of it, then made some Hydrocal castings, but those came out as pretty crude (lots of bubbles, and the dry bag of Hydrocal powder had picked up a bit too much Florida humidity in the garage before mixing), so I used some epoxy putty to enact repairs and to add "tent flaps" at each end, using some paintbrush handles to make indents to suggest folds and stress points where the frame would be supporting the tent at the corners.  In the foreground is an experiment where I tried adding putty to a paper tent "form," but that was a near-disaster; the cardstock paper didn't hold up all that well to having the putty worked around it, and I ended up having to go back a few times to enact "repairs."  I only ended up with 4 tents for 7 adventurers, but I might manage to churn out another 3 before next weekend's game.  (If not, hey, I still have the paper ones.)

 

I made a bedroll in the foreground under the assumption that my warden PC (spell-less ranger) is more likely to prefer camping under the stars if the weather permits.  I used the textured handle of my hobby knife to roll over the putty in an attempt to texture it to suggest some sort of coarse fabric.

 

The cook pot at the center uses Hirst Arts Castlemolds pieces for the pot, logs, and fire.  I made the frame with toothpicks, and made the joints, pot handles, and stones lining the campfire with putty.

 

Next to the bedroll is a leather-working area with a hide stretched on a frame (again, toothpicks).  The hide is putty; the pail and bowl on the penny base are Hirst Arts Castlemolds casts.  I was inspired by the leather-working stations in Skyrim, and I figured, hey, it's basically just some poles stuck in the ground, so it could be set up at any camp site without too much trouble.

 

I also have a few penny-base props that might serve some game purpose.  One has a lantern from a Games Workshop Fantasy Battle pack; the intent there is for if there's another game venturing into burrows or caves where my warden has to set down his lantern in order to free his hands to fire a bow; that's important to keep track of, for purposes of figuring out which areas are well-lit, dim, etc., for concealment penalties ... or, perish the thought, someone drops an area-effect spell that happens to include the area where the lantern was left untended.

 

Similarly, I've got a couple of backpacks from #2638 "Adventuring Accessories."  (A long time ago, I managed to just get the sprue that has the lute, tiny pouch, backpack, and loot sack on it.) 

 

My character's basic gear comes awfully close to pushing him into "encumbered" territory, especially if he should come across any worthwhile loot.  Therefore, I keep track of what items are on his immediate person (worn, sheathed, in a quiver, in a belt-pouch, etc.) separate from what is in his backpack -- and if dire circumstances should arise where mobility is of the essence, he *could* simply drop the pack and free himself up to fight or run as needed.  The marker could serve as a reminder of where that backpack was left, in the hopes that he might be able to go back for it -- but of course that could be complicated if someone drops a /fireball/ on the spot, or maybe a goblin swipes it and bolts off at full speed.

 

Another useful item from the same sprue was a bag o' loot.  I've got two of them in the picture, though they're largely obscured by our Mage Knight "gnome" conversion figure.  The original was supposed to portray a bag filled with a platter, a goblet, a vase and some other assorted loot, and I painted it as such, but for the other I applied a few "pebbles" of putty to transform the contents into gourds, roots, and leafy vegetables -- provisions.

 

And then, there's another odd item in the camp: I had a few of these odd plastic "bits" from a Warhammer Fantasy "Empire Militia" set, consisting of little plastic rabbits and birds that I suppose were meant to be suspended from some trooper's belt as snacks for the journey?  Anyway, I built another rack and suspended the rabbit and one of the birds from it -- representing, perhaps, some game caught thanks to a successful Survival skill check, destined for the cook-pot once the warden gets around to gutting and gleaning them.
 

Eventually (once I actually have one tent for each PC, at least), I hope to personalize things more.  It might be nice to get a pavilion for the princess or for the knight (though we'd actually have to BUY one, as I think it's beyond my character's ability to craft from what's available).  At the next game, I hope to poll the players to find out if their characters might have any sort of identifying symbol, emblem, coat of arms, etc., that I could use to decorate and personalize the tents.

[hosercanadian]

That camp looks great.  Very effective results with found materials.  I am waiting on the aforementioned Kickstarter and my games are on hiatus due to work but I may blatantaly steal some of your work here.

[Chaoswolf]

Good work!

[Jordan Peacock]

The campaign has progressed a bit.  We've finished exploring the "Greenbelt," dealt with the bandit king known as the "Stag Lord," took over a bandit fort, and received a charter from our friendly local empire to start a little not-entirely-independent kingdom.  (Wouldn't that mean this is a barony or a duchy or something like that, rather than a "kingdom"?  Eh, what do I know about titles?)  Sir Greys has since undergone a bit of a promotion.  I still have never learned his first name (or whether he even has one), but the consensus of the group seems to be that he's the best choice for leader, so now he's "Lord Greys."

 

In the meantime, I've put a little more work into the minis for the characters, and for their improved campaign gear.

 

I got another copy of #77197 "Erick, Paladin Initiate" on sale, and decided to combine it with some Games Workshop Warhammer Fantasy bits to make a riding version of the model.  For the camp, Lord Greys now has his own pavilion (rather than a little pup tent), and a mini-shrine of Erastil to set up at camp for daily devotions.  I also upgraded the cook-fire with a bigger pot (we have a wagon to carry these things).

The pavilion was originally made of Sculpey on a crumpled foil core for an old campaign, but over time I've used some epoxy putty to touch it up, make repairs, and add details (such as the drapery folds) -- plus a couple of Warhammer "bits" such as a stag-head shield from a Bretonnian knight sprue, and a posted notice from the Flagellants set.  The "shrine" is a Dwarf standard base with a spare Bretonnian helmet and another Flagellants post.  The cook pot is a piece of scrap plastic from some random junk toy bit from the thrift store, a plastic "food item" from a Phantom Menace Tatooine play set, toothpicks, epoxy, and some Hirst Arts Castlemolds "bakeware" bits.

The riding paladin conversion features a Bretonnian knight's horse in caparison, the greatsword swapped out for a spare lance from a Warhammer Fantasy Imperial Knights sprue, and a spare plastic "laurel" bit from an Imperial Militia sprue.

 

  
 

And here's a bit more detail on the conversion process of #77197.

[pcktlnt]

That is a lovely conversion. Thank you for the step by step instructions. 

[Chaoswolf]

Yes, it is. Very cool conversion, indeed!