First scenery project for Rangers Of Shadow Deep

 Although there's still a week left in 2022 I'm getting a slightly early start on my planned gaming activity for 2023.  This past year has been a bit of a weird one for me in that while I still really enjoy painting miniatures and playing miniature games it's all gotten a bit stale for me.  I think the main reason for this is that my tastes haven't really changed or evolved much over the past 15ish years so my painting has gotten a bit repetitive.  This combined with challenges around my schedule and personal time have pushed me in what feels like a logical new direction; I'm going to try to play more smaller scale, but more 'complete' games.  By this I mean my current thought is that I'm going to paint far less miniatures in the coming year but build and paint a lot more purpose-built scenery for my games so that things look and feel more complete.  Given the challenges I've had actually getting out and playing games with other opponents my plan is to start off with games that have strong solo play, so my first two sets of projects will be for Rangers Of Shadow Deep (fantasy) and CQB (modern).

My first small project will be for Rangers Of Shadow Deep but will also potentially work for D&D and/or the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game.

Nest Trees.  The second scenario in the Rangers Of Shadow Deep rulebook requires some 'Nest Trees' which are the homes to some malignant giant spiders.  This is a great example of a scenery requirement in Rangers Of Shadow Deep which almost any player can easily add to their table.  If a player isn't interested in doing a spider themed tree they can easily use either regular unmodified trees or even a counter or cardboard cutout.  For me with my new plan, and also the fact that I like haunted forests as a game setting I decided to take some diorama trees and add; eggs, webs, and some partial corpses.

I think I went a bit too heavy on the web but overall I'm pretty happy with how these turned out.  For anyone wondering why I've started with the scenery for the second scenario its simply because I need a slightly larger space to build and photograph my intended scenery for the first scenario but I'm REALLY excited about getting to work on it.

Hopefully this is a new and fresh direction that will generate some fun new projects for me.

Thanks for checking in.

-Jay

The Exiled Dead

 It's been a little way since I got paint on any miniatures but as luck would have it I had a box of miniatures that I have stats for in 3 different games (and they also feel like they'll fit great in RPGs as well).  Say hello to The Exiled Dead!

These figures are a Warhammer Underworlds release, but I had forgotten that I had gotten a White Dwarf awhile back that also had their stat cards for Warcry, and like most (all?) Underworlds releases their rules for Age Of Sigmar are available for free online.  In addition to their intended Games Workshop uses I feel like these would be a great as constructs in the Ravenloft domain of Lamordia.

I got The Exiled Dead from my friendly local game store, please remember to support your FLGS as well.

Thanks for checking in.

-Jay

Review: Van Richten's Guide To Ravenloft

 Today I'll be taking an objective look at the newest official D&D supplement; Van Richten's Guide To Ravenloft.

I'm going to preface this review by calling out a few things about my personal thoughts and feelings before I get into the review proper.  As the newest version of an old-school edgy campaign setting from the TSR days Van Richten's Guide has been extremely polarizing in it's reception by the RPG community.  I really enjoyed the original I6 as well as the campaign setting, supplements, and adventures for Ravenloft in 2nd edition.  I thought the black and white art style really suited the mood and feel of the setting, and although it's reliance on pre-existing tropes has often been a criticism of older Ravenloft material, I genuinely enjoyed the feeling that any Hammer or Universal horror film could be directly ported into my D&D game.  So what I'm saying is that as a 49 year old gamer who's been playing D&D since 1983 I really enjoyed Ravenloft's initial run through TSR and wasn't necessarily looking for a shift in tone or feel.  But, none of us longtime fans should look at a setting and assume because the tone or feel has shifted from what we initially enjoyed that that makes the new version inherently bad, or 'less-than' the old version.

So having said all of that in the name of clarity and full-disclosure, as I said before; I'll be taking an objective look at Van Richten's Guide To Ravenloft.

The first thing that I think needs to be recognized about this newest book is that it really doesn't fit into any familiar categories of books that Wizards Of The Coast have published before.  I opened the book expecting a detailed campaign setting and instead what I got was a campaign toolkit.  This will no doubt disappoint many pre-existing fans who were hoping for a 5e update of much of their beloved earlier material, as well as potentially seeming a bit complicated and vague to new players hoping to crack the book open and get right to it.  My initial impression was that this was disappointing and a bit of a failing but upon further reflection it actually seems genius to me.  By laying bare the structure of how to build domains and Darklords and what Ravenloft more or less 'is' the book allows the DM to easily create their own unique content, or for us old-time fans to port over several thousand pages of content in a way that a 256 page single volume was never going to be able to do.  If you're a new DM and you want a campaign ready to go as written, this might not be the right choice for you, but if you want something that feels entirely unconstrained by it's page count this book is terrific.

To the subject of the domains themselves as laid out in the book there is some tremendous content and ideas but my main criticism is none of them get quite the attention they deserve.  My favourite features of the Domains Of Ravenloft section is that there are two entirely new domains that draw on entirely new and distinct cultures for inspiration, as well as a few of the existing domains being given complete make-overs (I LOVE what the new book has done with Souragne!). 

The section of the book that has thus far seemed to be the biggest target for criticism online has been the section on Horror Adventures themselves.  This section in addition to addressing setting mood and creating atmosphere also brings up the subject of running horror games in a safe and comfortable (real world) setting.  This is the part of the book that players of my generation in particular seem to have huge issues with.  The simple fact of the matter is that we are living in the 21st century and there should be no issue with writing horror content with 21st century sensibilities in mind.  If I personally have a criticism of how this content was included it would simply be that it feels like it belongs more in the core Dungeon Master's Guide than in this book, but given that it wasn't included in the DMG this is the logical place for it.

Separate from the individual sections of the book themselves there are two other elements of the book I would like to call out; one positive, one negative.

On the positive side in spite of my fondness for the original Ravenloft art style, I have to say I really enjoyed the art in this new book.  One of the subtle things the art does is that in many of the isolated character images it simply looks like regular 5e artwork that could be in any core book, without anything sinister or horrific about it.  But in some of the action images (where admittedly the heroes are still looking very heroic) the sense of 'wrongness' is extremely well executed.  This image of a Tiefling is one of the best pieces of horror art I've seen for any D&D product.

My last remaining criticism (I'm really going to try not to rant here) is; how lazy some of the writing feels.  I know saying how lazy it 'feels' may seem a bit unfair but there are a few things with the updated domains that just felt like minimal effort was applied.  The two that stick out like sore thumbs to me are the updates to the Darklords of Falkovnia and Lamordia.  In the case of both domains the previous male Darklords were replaced with female Darklords, this is NOT my problem at all.  My problem is these two new Darklords names could only have been lazier if they took the male characters names and just added 'ette' onto the end of them.  Vladeslav is now Vladeska, and Viktor is now Viktra.  I think the reason it annoys me so much is I'm more than happy to get onboard with new characters, so why would you you use their names to constantly remind me that these new characters are effectively sequels?  The other place I found the writing felt lazy was in lieu of stat blocks for named NPCs simply giving them equivalents from the Monster Manual or Dungeon Master's Guide.  I realize this probably radically increased the amount of content that could be included by eliminating bulky stat blocks but it leaves many of these heroes and villains feeling truly underwhelming.

Overall I would highly recommend Van Richten's Guide To Ravenloft to anyone looking to run a 5e D&D horror game or to anyone who wants the tools to update their existing Ravenloft game to 5e!

And as always please support your friendly local game store and purchase this product from those who support our hobby community, many of whom kept their lights on through a truly horror-themed year.

-Jay

First Thoughts - The Devil's City

Yesterday I discovered two amazing looking books on Kickstarter I really wanted to bring to everyone's attention.

Matt Corley, the creative mind behind; Tales From The Margreve, Lamp Light's Sanitarium, and Harper's Tale has recently turned his focus to investigative horror set at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century building up from a basic foundation of 5e D&D.  So what I'm saying is, if you like:
-D&D 5e
-Horror RPGs
-Call Of Cthulhu
-Ravenloft: Masque Of The Red Death
-Investigative RPGs
-Horror stories or games based on real (seriously!) world events
...then this is a Kickstarter you owe it to yourself to check out!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/37222410/the-devils-city-for-5e

The Devil's City Kickstarter is basically comprised of two books.  First up an illustrated 90 page novella co-authored by Matt Corley and Sara Tantlinger based on a fictionalized version of the story of HH Holmes (I'll come back to that in a bit for those of you not familiar).  Like I said I'll elaborate in a bit but if you're a horror fan, the story of HH Holmes is definitely a case of truth being far stranger than fiction.

The second book will be Horror In The Windy City.  A 5e compatible campaign book that will build on to Mr Corley's existing Whispers In The Dark game.  The author has extensive experience writing horror gaming and he has shown he consistently 'gets it' in terms of writing excellent thinking-person's horror rather than classic D&D hack-n-slay style.

So that's what the Kickstarter is, now let me tell you why I backed it, and why I hope you'll consider backing it too.

From a gaming point of view I've always liked D&D as a game system and it's the system the greatest number of existing players are familiar with, and the greatest number of potential players are open to.  Most of my gaming friends and I have always liked the idea of Call Of Cthulhu and in all fairness it is a good system but in my opinion it doesn't have the familiarity or the ease of use of D&D.  I really think for a ton of gamers investigative games could be a real inroad to discovering D&D outside of the more traditional 'dragons inside dungeons' style of gaming.  As prep for this I'm planing on running a group through Whisper In The Dark in two weeks.  I'll let you know how it goes, and how it works.

From a story point of view the story of HH Holmes has always fascinated me.  Again I have to reiterate, this is a TRUE story from our real world.  I'll give you the truncated version but if it interests you the way it interested me do some research online and back this Kickstarter!
HH Holmes was 1890's version of Jigsaw from the Saw movies.  He built a hotel in Chicago that was filled with secret passages, dead-end hallways to nowhere, and (in a manner of speaking) traps.  In short he built a hotel, invited people to stay there, and then starting murdering them once he got them inside.  I can't stress enough, this is a real thing that happened in an American city just over a century ago!

So there you have it.  An investigative horror RPG set in an only slightly warped version of our own world 130ish years ago.  A talented creative team, a game that manages to be familiar and new at the same time, and an inroad to a whole new genre of gaming.

I hope you'll all check out the Kickstarter at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/37222410/the-devils-city-for-5e and my plan is next week to write a full review of the novella, and the week after that to provide a review of of my Whispers In The Dark game-play experience (hopefully integrating) Horror In The Windy City's new alignment system.

-Jay

Some more horrific odds and ends

Over the Christmas season I got started on a lot of different projects and didn't get around to finishing any of them because of...reasons?

First up I figured I could use more ghost-pants for my upcoming Ravenloft game and really wanted to finally get around to painting my Warhammer Underworlds Shadespire figures so I painted up the first three members of the Thorns Of The Briar Queen.

I really like these figures.  Obviously they're designed in the same style as the Age Of Sigmar Chain Rasps but they have a lot of individual character, as well as some fantastically detailed bases.

The other things I've begun thinking about is where my Ravenloft adventurers will be headed after Forfar.  I haven't decided yet, but if they end up in Lamordia, I think I'm ready.

These are the current WizKids Flesh Golems.  Historically Flesh Golems have been difficult figures to come by as many manufacturers tend to make them really over-sized.  What's nice about these figures is that they are larger than a 'normal' human but not unnaturally over-sized.  I'm honestly not decided yet on whether or not Lamordia will follow immediately on Forfar but if it does this should be a good start.

Next up, some solo adventuring!

-Jay

Return Of The Spooky Ghost Pants!

It's been a busy holiday season this year and I've fallen behind on a few hobby projects but I did manage to get one more model done that's going to do double duty in my Age Of Sigmar and Ravenloft games.

The Dread Warden!

The Dread Warden is a unit champion for my Age Of Sigmar army, and he also ticks two boxes for my upcoming Ravenloft game; he's ghosty, and he's got a magical light....more on that soon.

I'm hoping this isn't my last post of 2019 just yet but the passage of time seems distorted in both the lands of the mists and the lands of southern Ontario so we'll see how quickly the next three days go by.

-Jay

A Forlorn Hope Part 1 of ?

I've begun work on my series of Ravenloft one-shots kicking off on YouTube in 2020.

In my case "work" means writing, mapping, and plotting but also painting and building.

The adventures will kick off with our characters freshly escaped from the lands of Barovia and seeking a way through or out of the mists of Ravenloft.  This should allow for a variety of quests looking for key items and clues to help the characters move through various locations with the eventual goal of escaping from the domains of dread.  (Think Quantum Leap if it was directed by George Romero).

For our first of three planned adventures the group will find itself in the haunted lands of Forfar, the Ravenloft domain originally detailed in the outstanding Castles Forlorn by Lisa Smedman.

I've gotten my models done for 2 NPCs the group might meet in their first adventure, as well as 2 NPCs they will definitely meet.  Also some monsters, because; what's D&D without monsters?

The guide.

Bondi is survivor living off the lands in Forfar that the group will definitely encounter early on.  Her primary role will be to set the group on their path as well as potentially providing some knowledge about the area and depending on how the group relates to her being a useful ally further down the road.

The mysterious stranger.

This fellow will have yet more information for the PCs but the group will likely be left wondering what master he serves.  The stranger may or may not have a larger role to play as the narrative develops but regardless will not lose interest in the PCs.  He will also somehow seem to have eyes and ears throughout the land.

The warrior.

Michael is engaged on a quest of his own, unrelated but potentially running parallel to the group's goals.  Whether he will be an ally or an enemy will depend highly on the choices the group makes.

The knight.

Sir Donnegal will be encountered by the group near the end of the first session.  Is he a stranger, or have they met before?  Sir Donnegal may be the answer to some of the players' questions, but he will likewise be the starting point for many new questions.

The Goblyns.

I needed some Ravenloft Goblyns for this and my third adventure and once more my Escape From Goblintown goblins seemed fit for the job!

That's my first batch of hobbying for this project.  Another batch of scenery making lies ahead and then in January I'll update with DMsGuild and YouTube links for where you can find more Forlorn Hope content.

-Jay

Review - The Ghostly Library

About a week ago I was privileged to be sent a preview copy of a new adventure for D&D; The Ghostly Library.

The Ghostly Library scratches a lot of different itches; it's a mystery, it's a ghost story, it's set in Ravenloft (sort of...), and by sort of I mean it's set on Gothic Earth.  Gothic Earth is a fairly low-fantasy re-imagining of our own world circa 1890 with the supernatural layered in.  It was a setting TSR developed as a bit of side project to the original Ravenloft campaign setting that now appears to be experiencing a second renaissance on DMsGuild.

It can be difficult to discuss a mystery adventure without spoiling details but I'll endeavour to do my best. 

The Ghostly Library by Mrs C, Evans starts off with the characters being engaged to determine the cause of some recent disturbing attacks on one Doctor Henry Fitzroy.  Fitzroy has been victimised by seemingly 'normal' people with no apparent links to each other on multiple occasions and now seeks resolution and peace from his current circumstances.  During the course of the PCs investigations they should discover not all is as it seems, and at the climax of the adventure the players will be forced to set aside normal conflict resolution in D&D (ie violence) and use their wits if they hope to succeed and survive.

One of the measurements of a truly great adventure mystery is that clues are laid out in a way and a context most players could be expected to pick up on without applying any weird leaps of logic.  This keeps the adventure from descending into chaos and prevents players from getting frustrated and feeling unsatisfied with their gaming experience.  Mrs Evans has done a terrific job of presenting multiple logical avenues of investigation, while also providing one extra encounter that can be thrown in at a time the players might feel the most lost.  It's truly fantastic to be able to write an adventure in this style that provides the DM narrative tools to help guide things back on track if necessary without removing player agency.

The adventure is populated by a variety of distinct and interesting NPCs for the players to interact with, and breaking from the standard medieval high-fantasy setting of D&D should give the players time to absorb and deal with moral implications of their choices before they make them.

Overall I would highly recommend The Ghostly Library for any true fan of gothic horror (as opposed to slasher or jump scare horror) as well as to anyone looking for a satisfying investigative mystery for their players to engage in.

The Ghostly Library is currently available from DMsGuild at https://www.dmsguild.com/product/284042/The-Ghostly-Library?term=the+ghostly

-Jay

 

Banshees

The unbelievably slow march of the ghost-pants continues.  This afternoon in preparation for a Ravenloft module I'm planning to run I painted a box of the Age Of Sigmar Myrnmourn Banshees.

The Banshees themselves were quite simple and straightforward to paint.  The real work on these models is their bases.  Each base had an assortment of rubble, weeds and roses on them.  It's well thought out because the bases seem to blend in fairly well with the Garden Of Morr scenery piece.

I'm excited about getting these models on the table soon.  Now I just have to figure out which game they'll be playing in first!

-Jay

Liam The Sorcerer Druid

Today's addition is a new character model for an upcoming Ravenloft game I'm hoping to play in.

One of the things I really like about 5th edition D&D is how subtly flexible the system really is.  It doesn't (at the time of this writing) have  the seemingly limitless specialised character options previous versions of the game had but it's surprising how many truly unique character types you can create either by use of the feat system or through creative multi-classing.

Years ago I ran a Ravenloft (2nd edition) game that centred around one of my favourite adventure/campaign/box-sets of all time; Castles Forlorn.  Castles Forlorn has tons of stuff in it that really appealed to me; ghosts, vampires (sort of), a Scottish highland theme, and time travel!  I haven't touched the material in years but when a friend suggested a 5e Ravenloft game with characters native to Ravenloft I pulled out my Castles Forlorn book (a reprint of the original content from DMs Guild) for inspiration.  I decided on a red-headed Druid.  In Forfar (the land of "Forlorn") red-heads have a traditional innate magic ability.  I decided to replicate this in 5e by having my character have started life out as a wild magic sorcerer before becoming a true Druid.  This will be my first experience both playing a multi-class character as well as trying the multi-class spellcaster rules (until my Saltmarsh character Garkas levels up again....).

For my miniature I stared with another Games Workshop Mordheim human and once this time added a head and arms from the Frostgrave Sailor sprue.  I also added a backpack because at this point adventurer miniatures without backpacks just look wrong to me.

So that's Liam ready for action.  He won't be nearly as powerful as other members of the party right off the bat but I'm hoping he's interesting to play and should be different than anything I've played before.

-Jay

Catching up on fantasy RPG figures

Today was a bit of an assortment of figures for three different fantasy RPGs in currently playing-in/running but I've also got an eye to their utility for Frostgrave and Rangers Of Shadow Deep.  Its always nice to get a few different things done as even if its only three figures it feels like three entire projects.

First up I'm playing my second game of the new/current Warhammer Fantasy Role Play tonight and I muddled through without a miniature for my character last week.  Meet Jurgen the Grave Robber.

Jurgen is a Reaper miniature.  Surprisingly it's very difficult to quickly find miniatures for a lot of the character options in Warhammer Fantasy Role Play.  I suspect I need to build up a pool of WFRP figures as well as Dungeon Crawl Classic funnel miniatures, basically rough around the edges lower class fantasy civilians.  Aside from the figure I have to say the current version of WFRP is (in my opinion) the best version of the game to date.  I always liked the idea of the original but the system, especially character advancement, was so crunchy it always felt like more work than it was worth.  The current version maintains a lot of that old-school Games Workshop feel including some of the core ideas behind character advancement but simplifies it to a far more manageable level.  Hopefully Jurgen has a long future of murder-hoboing ahead of him.  Jurgen will also work really well as a PC or NPC for my Ravenloft games.

Next up is my (temporary) updated Garkas miniature.  Garkas has hit third level and I chose Pact Of The Blade, so now he is armed with an ethereal magical battleaxe.  I also added some hair in preparation to transition to another miniature after my next session or two.  I've already approved kind of a weird idea with my DM that will require replacing the entire figure when I hit level four.

This is really just a bit of fresh paint on my existing figure.  I redid his axe and added some hair.  I still really like this miniature but I'm excited about the next step in Garkas' evolution. 

Lastly is a figure I'm not ready to be very specific about yet.  She's an NPC for an upcoming adventure.  More on this shortly.  In the interim she will probably also be joining my warband for Rangers Of Shadow Deep.

The only downside with this miniature is it's the latest victim of me trying to paint eyes while I've got a minor hand strain.  The figure is one of the new Frostgrave plastic Soldiers.  I absolutely love these miniatures for a multitude of reasons:
1.  They're plastic
2.  Multi-part with most D&D weapon options
3.  Female figures that don't fall into "chainmail bikini" territory
4.  They fit really well with winter themed adventures

That's it for now.

-Jay