Tips and Tricks

How to Pick Colours for Mini Painting — MM 36 72j3f

It’s Mini Monday, where I share customizing, scratch building, kitbashing, and miniature painting projects for your roleplaying and tabletop gaming. This week we’ll talk about how to pick colours for mini painting with colour theory. 6u5964

Pick colours for your mini painting projects thoughtfully, because it’ll give you a better end result, and, like painting, it’s a skill you can improve on. Build some understanding of the theory, then use that to inform your choices and achieve the results you’re looking for.

Colour Theory 104e1u

Colour theory might seem like a deep rabbit hole, which may seem intimidating, but I highly recommend you dive in. Colour theory opens up the language of colour, an understanding of how colours work together, and an understanding of the emotional responses that colours can create.

Here’s a quick look:

The colour wheel below shows the primary colours (red, blue, and yellow) and the secondary colours (orange, purple, and green). You can make the secondary colours by mixing the two primary colours nearest to the secondary colour you want to make (and that’ll cost GW some sales).

Analogous colours sit side-by-side on the colour wheel. They give you a simple range of colours for creating rich monochromatic (single colour) colour schemes.

Complementary colours sit opposite each other on the colour wheel, but still work well when paired together. As you can see, there’s more to the “red wunz go fasta” thing when painting Orks.

This is just scratching the surface of colour theory, and I encourage you to seek out more information.

3 Tips to Using Colour Theory f4b1c

Like any theory, you need to put colour theory into practice to get a real understanding of it and make it stick. Here are three ways to help yourself implement colour theory in your miniature painting.

Limited Your Colour Scheme 5dj6b

I painted the mini below with two reds, two browns, black, white (mixed to make grey), and metallic paint. It is a simple mini, but restricting your range of colours forces you to get more creative. Using analogous colours for this type of painting will also give you a base colour, shading colour, and a highlight that compliments each other.

Another way to think of it is to drop a primary colour or two. Forbid yourself from using it, and see how your colour scheme becomes much tighter.

Clash Your Colours with Purpose 545l8

If colours are not analogous or complimentary, then there’s no colour harmony; they are contrasting colours. That doesn’t mean you can’t use purple and green together, you just have to know why you’re pairing them. Think of the green Hulk with his purple shorts, or Superman with his red and blue spandex, they stand out. And sometimes standing out is exactly what you want.

A World in Black and White 2d3x5q

Of course, real life is full of colour, but to really understand and successfully pick colours for your minis you could do worse than follow Frank Miller’s example in Sin City. Frank’s masterpiece is a master class in light and shadow, with pages in black and white and only occasional splashes of colour. You can explore this with nothing more than paper and a black pen.

As an example, here’s the cover of The Grimdark Pamphlet, which I thought was a good colour choice for a book of game options that challenges the often black and white world of most adventurers, where the good guys are good and the bad guys are bad. Or was it that I didn’t want colour so I could push the idea of the colourless, grim aesthetic most associated with grimdark settings?

Now, I’m not saying you need to paint a mini only black and white, but there are plenty of great paint schemes that focus on black and white, such as drow with their white hair and black armour, the Black Templars, the Blood Angels Death Company, and Goff Orks. Notice how these schemes often use a third colour to accentuate items such as weapons.

You can take this idea further to explore light, as Miniac did in his Color is for CHUMPS video. Check it out and tell him I sent you.

 

Tips and Tricks

Building Ork barricades from Trash — MM 35 11565b

It’s Mini Monday, where I share customizing, scratch building, kitbashing, and miniature painting projects for your roleplaying and tabletop gaming. This week we’re building Ork barricades from Christmas trash.

Ah yes, the dust has settled after the strangest Christmas and New Years’ Eve in living history, and 2021 is picking up steam. Time to make something, and what’s better than recycling that Christmas trash to make something Orky. Of course, you might already have recycled/trashed/incinerated/buried the last signs of the festive season, but you’ll always generate more waste, so let’s go!

Da orky chant - Ork barricades
“‘Er we go, ‘er we go!”

Ork Barricades 5x5671

These Ork barricades are similar to the ones you can get in the Mekboy Workshop, or the barricades Games Workshop used to sell as a terrain pack, but they’re very easy to build yourself using nothing but bits of scrap cardboard and plastic.

I cut out 6-inch strips of cardboard, then glued bits of cardboard and plastic onto them. That’s basically it. We’re done.

Okay, but seriously, there are a few tricks to making this look good:

  1. Cut the cardboard and plastic sheets at angles. Bend them and add damage like cuts or bullet holes to make them look even more Orky.
  2. Stick the sheets down at angles, leaning on each other. This gives a sense of three-dimensionality to the terrain and makes it stronger. Orky things are always off-kilter.
  3. Cut out “teef” of card to decorate the terrain.
  4. Cut tiny squares of plastic to make Orky rivets. I use those little plastic tabs that hold bread bags closed. Cut them into strips, then squares, then superglue them onto your model.

A wall with “teef” to show that the boyz own it.



Painting 5131g

I used a heavy-duty red primer to make the models more resistant to wear and tear. I then painted the “metal” sections black or stippled orange onto them. I also left some unpainted. I then dabbed brown onto the orange sections with a sponge to make them look rusted. I then dry brushed the edges of the models with silver paint and put a black wash over the whole thing to finish it off. The ground was painted dark gray and dry brushed light gray.

Just be sure to let your Ork barricades dry between coats. I had to redo a bunch of dry brushing because I was getting too happy with the brush, which just blended everything together. Patience, young grasshopper, patience.

And that’s it.

You can even make doorways to take little junk doors.
And here they are again, with the doors closed.

The best advice I can give is to give it a try. I was skeptical about how good the cardboard would look, but in the end, I was very pleased with how they turned out. The only thing I’d change is that I’d base them on tongue depressors or hardboard instead of cardboard.


Tips and Tricks

RPG Leveling is Broken — Why Levels Suck k3o1v

RPG leveling is broken. And yes, I’m looking at you, Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder 1 and 2.

First off, thank you to Plastic Polyhedra for hosting this month’s RPG Blog Carnival, to which this topic relates.

Image by Esteban Sayhueque

The Problem with Levels 3v5344

Here’s my gripe:

In real life, but even more importantly, in stories, characters grow in ways that have nothing to do with their skills and abilities. Think of most comic book heroes. They generally have a set of skills that don’t improve during the course of their adventures, though they might get better control over their powers over time. There’s not much story in abilities. Rather, characters face personal challenges that grow their personality… their character.

Now, I get that gaining power is fun, but it’s false fun. Gaining an extra attack, just because I’ve reached level 5, doesn’t make my character stand out from other barbarians. Reaching level 15, just so I can kill level 15 monsters, isn’t real growth, it’s just gated content. Bilbo didn’t gain a new feat that enabled him to sneak past Smaug. He had a magical ring for that!

Character Building is not a GM’s Prerogative 2n4g5z

The GM can offer chances for a player’s character to grow, but ultimately that isn’t the GM’s job. The GM’s job is to stoke the fires of the furnace that will forge the character’s character, and the player’s the blacksmith.

But the mechanics can help.

A Few Solutions 113r3z

Leveling up in D&D or Pathfinder type games could, with a few rules tweaks, be more meaningful. We won’t even throw out the core rules, I promise.

Your character should change in a meaningful way during their adventures, such as gaining new flaws, changing alignment, become more set in their current alignment, developing a new phobia, or seeking to accomplish new goals.

A ton of RPG systems already implement mechanics for these. The Mouse Guard RPG and Cortex both used a system similar to 5e’s flaws, ideals, and bonds, but they change very frequently and are linked to how you gain experience. This isn’t a new idea.

Encourage your players to play to their flaws, ideals, and bonds, or to hooks linked to their alignment, and offer them experience for doing so. How much you offer them is your dial; turn up the roleplay by offering more, or turn it down and focus on traditional advancement by offering less. Then, when a character levels up, force them to refine their flaws, ideals, and bonds, or add new ones. Encourage them to be specific.

Get your players more connected to their character’s story, because feat or skill choices aren’t meaningful decisions.

Image by Ubergank

The Grimdark Pamphlet 65245e

The Grimdark Pamphlet offers new ideas and rules for taking your Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition game to darker places, where your choices matter and death is a real threat. We update the book from time to time with new rules, so your once-off purchase gets you a growing repository of rules and GMing advice. It also includes information on ing our playtest.

Till next time, Be The Hero!


General

Why I Made All the Miniature Pallets — MM34 4m1j3p

It’s Mini Monday, where I share customizing, scratch building, kitbashing, and miniature painting projects for your roleplaying and tabletop gaming. This week I’m talking about miniature pallets and scatter terrain.

I found this great miniature pallet tutorial on Terra Genesis before going on holiday. So I took my hobby knife, steel ruler, glue, and enough coffee stirrers and matchsticks to fill a veritable warehouse to the inlaws, then got crafty.

But why make so many? Well, I’m glad you asked! (And I’m going to tell you even if you didn’t.)

Scatter Terrain d6w1z

They make great scatter terrain. Keep a bunch handy to scatter around the table to make your wargame table or RPG map more interesting. I keep a bunch of model train trees for the same purpose.

Other Builds 6c1yl

Use them in other builds. I could add barrels and boxes onto a few, or stick the miniature pallets onto piles of rubble. They’re so versatile that you’ll easily blast through a pile of them if you regularly build terrain. It’s a little extra detail for very little extra effort.

Weirdly Modular r221m

Stack them into towers of pallets to hide miniatures behind, build walls with them, or make bridges. If you think about all the uses people find for life-sized pallets in real life, then it’s easy to see that the possibilities for using these are endless. Because of their uniformity, this can be taken to a whole other level, just by using matchsticks between the slats to two pallets together.

And that’s it. A slightly weird one today, I know, but I wanted to point you to Terrain Genesis’s great article and hopefully inspire you with a super easy terrain project. I hope you enjoyed it.

Our Plans for 2021 51684t

So, what’s on the cards for 2021?

I’ve got way too many terrain projects on the go, which are sure to feature here. I’ll also be putting more work into my Goff Orks, which will feature too. Those are all a given, barring anything major that life might throw in the works (touches wood vigorously).

I’ll probably focus on getting more fantasy minis painted, drawing heavily from the minis that came in the Dungeons & Dragons Legend of Drizzt Board Game and the Dungeons & Dragons Castle Ravenloft Board Game.  That first one is 10 years old this year, but both games contain a good range of monsters that most fantasy players will want to have, even if they buy miniature incarnations of them from a different manufacturer.

So expect to see new posts, from me, every second Monday.

Have a great 2021 and I hope you build and paint awesome creations!


General

When the Bad Guys Win – Blog Carnival Roundup 135b25

4 Comments

This December, at the end of a year that’ll stand in infamy among years, we looked at “When the Bad Guys Win“. Here’s a roundup of all the articles submitted as part of the carnival, and what a carnival it was!

Image credit: Publisher’s Choice Quality Stock Art © Rick Hershey / Fat Goblin Games

When the Bad Guys Win 342s6z

Tom Homer of Plastic Polyhedra — the hosts of January 2021’s RPG Blog Carnival — asked (When) is it okay to TPK? He looks at some of the pitfalls of common solutions for rescuing a campaign from a TPK and suggests that TPKs might be unavoidable, but can have negative consequences. Understanding this is an important part of being a great GM.

I want to build stories around the PCs, so what happens if all of those PCs suddenly die?
— Tom of Plastic Polyhedra

Steve Rakner of Roll 4 Network wrote about creating the ultimate boss battle. Steve brings more ways to up the ante in a boss fight, all of which have little to do with power levels or adding buckets of HP to the boss. Follow his advice and your players are sure to the Big Bads of your table for years to come.

Gonz at Codex Anathema wrote about The Darkest Hour — how to deal with a Total Party Kill (TPK). There’s life for your campaign after death, and Gonz reveals how you can go from a TPK to a memorable campaign that builds on the legacy of characters that have come before.

Image credit: Yuri_b

Tony Bro001 at Roleplay-Geek Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. He also looked at a number of well-known movies and stories to highlight the importance of beating down the heroes, and how an NPC can be a useful proxy for the PCs.

Timothy S. Brannan of The Other Side made Skylla, a 7th level witch for Dungeons & Dragons 3.5. Pathfinder 1e fans will find a link to her stats for that version of the game, in the post.

Here, at Rising Phoenix Games, I talked about upping the stakes for memorable encounters in When the Bad Guys Beat Christmas. Similar to Steve, we looked at ways you can put the pressure on the player characters to create encounters that they’re invested in.

And that, as they say, is a wrap!

Thank you to everyone who took part, as well as to Scot Newbury of Of Dice and Dragons, who herds cats to keep the RPG Blog Carnival alive and growing. If you’re an RPG blogger, do consider ing us on our adventures.

Rising Phoenix Games is 10! 184v1g

The last day of the year marks the anniversary of the founding of Rising Phoenix Games. We’re looking forward to bringing you more exciting games in 2021!

Have a Happy New Year and stay safe everyone!


Tips and Tricks

When the Bad Guys Beat Christmas 6u2h23

“When the Bad Guys Win” is our RPG Blog Carnival theme for the month. Be sure to check out all the other posts, and the month’s summary at the end of the year.

‘Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the tower
Not a hero was stirring
They’d been sapped of their power
Knocked out cold on the stair
Beaten by goblins
And left sucking for air

Image credit: Publisher’s Choice Quality Stock Art © Rick Hershey / Fat Goblin Games

Up the Stakes!

What a great mantra for adding spice to a game (or story). If things are getting stale or boring, add conflict. Add danger. Add risk. This simple rule keeps fresh blood pumping through your story. It keeps players (or readers) invested.

So how do you add conflict to an evening’s adventure? Add more encounters?

Well, sort of. Encounters, by themselves, add only short-lived conflict and some risk.

We’ve all defeated a random monster in a dungeon and then forgotten about it. To make an encounter work, it has to connect to the narrative. To make it sing, the encounter needs high stakes. It needs real risk.

And I’m not talking about the chance of a TPK. Total Party Kills are not fun. The risk that they might occur is a powerful motivator, but let’s, for the moment, assume the player characters are invincible or, at the very least, we don’t want them to die.

How’s this idea?:

The heroes enter a dungeon. As far as the players know, this is a randomly generated map. They’re level one, and they encounter some goblins. Heck, the party might even just have come from the tavern, where they all met for the first time. It’s all very vanilla.

But things are about to get serious.

They manage to drive off the goblins, but not before one of the green skins shouts a curse.

“Death to the humans!” It declares, before taking a crossbow bolt to the chest. Other goblins take up the chant, and some of these manage to escape.

When the party leave the dungeon, they find their village, including the once-cozy tavern, burned to the ground. Corpses litter the streets. Worse still is the number of missing people. There are signs that goblins have rampaged through the village, and they’ve left a corpse riddled with their black-shafted arrows hanging over the village well. A clear sign that this was an act of revenge.

But there are survivors, and they lay the blame for this squarely on the party.

If the party didn’t care about the village before, then standing on the sidelines is no longer an option. They must leave or take up the villager’s cause.

The goblins have won this fight. Now they’re a significant enemy, and the choices the party will have to make do matter.

Up the stakes!

Santa’s Solo Sale is Here! 22666h

446l9

Until the 11th of January, 2021, get 30% off any of our solo RPG titles.

Merry Christmas!

 

 


General

Plan to Win with a Painting Plan — MM33 6t534x

It’s Mini Monday, where I share customizing, scratch building, kitbashing, and miniature painting projects for your roleplaying and tabletop gaming. This week we’ll look at what a painting plan can do for your next painting project.

I feel like I’ve come a long way since I painted my first Adeptus Astartes some 20 years ago, but I also feel like I’m just scratching the surface of what we might call the basics of miniature painting.

For the Emprah! My first Space Marine.

Below are some of the Space Marines I’ve painted since my very first. While painting the ones on the left I learned about varnish, brush selection, dry brushing, edge highlighting, and making my own transfers. And that’s on top of learning better brush control. Now we’re going to talk about something that will improve your painting, save you time, and help you assimilate everything you’ve ever learned about model painting: writing up a painting plan.

Get Organised with a Painting Plan 125032

Abraham Lincoln is often quoted as saying “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.” Drawing up a plan puts this wisdom into practice. A plan sets out your paint scheme for a mini, while breaking it down into steps. It can also guide you when batch-paint many models at once, so that you can have a table-ready army in less time than it would take to paint each miniature individually.

My plan for my Angels Encarmine has evolved with each model I’ve painted so far, and now looks something like this:

  1. Clean mould lines.
  2. Glue fine beach sand onto the base.
  3. White base coat, with a spray can.
  4. Red coat, with a spray can.
  5. Black parts.
  6. Balor Brown (was Snakebite Leather) on base and scrolls.
  7. Skin tones.
  8. Hair.
  9. Red touchup.
  10. Silver dry brushing.
  11. Edge highlight grey on black.
  12. Dry brush skin tone over the top of the base.
  13. Flesh wash on red and skin.
  14. Freehand company and squad markings.
  15. Add transfer for chapter markings.
  16. Glue on dry tea or flock.
  17. Glue on banners.
  18. Final touch-ups.
  19. First coat of matt varnish.
  20. Second coat of matt varnish.
  21. Do the dance of joy.

I have a painting plan for my Orks, Genestealer Cults, and for fantasy races like drow. But you don’t need to follow the plan step-for-step every time. The plan’s more like a set of guidelines, and breaking the rules is often a great way to improve your plan.

Guidelines GIFs | Tenor

Do you use a painting plan, or do you like to do it off the cuff? Let us know in the comments!

Christmas at Aurora’s 6e334f

Christmas is almost here, and Aurora has a whole emporium full of goodies for your Dungeons & Dragons 5e party.

You can find Aurora’s Whole Realms Christmas Catalogue on the DMs Guild.

Until next year, keep improving!


Tips and Tricks

Hobby Momentum — Mini Monday 32 1s1438

It’s Mini Monday, where I share customizing, scratch building, kitbashing, and miniature painting projects for your roleplaying and tabletop gaming. This week let’s look at hobby momentum and why it’s important for your hobby, and maybe life.

This weekend I banged out three new bits of scenery. What’s more, I was only home for half of the weekend, so I surprised myself with just how quickly it all came together. The magic ingredient was momentum.

What’s Hobby Momentum? 1l1k2c

Hobby momentum is progress that rolls onwards, lends motivation, and helps you get bigger projects done. It builds up from working consistently and frequently at your hobby.

I’d been banging away on my scenery for over a year now, but in the week leading up to the last, I finally painted five of the buildings I’d been working on. I’ve also managed to complete a heap of other small projects, including making decals, custom Space Marine banners, a new Ork Weirdboy, painting some spiders, and finishing off the first of my Angels Encarmine heroes. Seeing these completed must have motivated me, because I got cracking on the three new terrain bits on Friday night. By Sunday all I needed to do was paint them.

It felt like the whole thing took little effort, and that’s all because of hobby momentum.

Life Without Forward Momentum 4qe4q

On the flip side, I recently finished a project that seemed to have stalled for ages. Things only progressed when I managed to break the project down into small enough pieces to get some momentum back.

The Terrain 4t1f7

All of these terrain projects incorporated older terrain projects that I’d not been very happy with, two or so years of collecting bits, and lots of browsing Pinterest. That certainly made these projects quicker, but the push came from hobby momentum. Having finished a bunch of terrain provided clearer inspiration for this build.

Barrel Pile 2t4qf

Luke tries to force push, but the hot glue is strong with this one.

This model terrain consists of a styrofoam base, milk box lids, some wire wrapped around a small thread spindle, and some silica gel containers from medicine bottles. I made cardboard toppers for the green containers to hide the logo on them. I hot glued this onto the base and then added more sand and dirt with wood glue.

The red fits my colour scheme, which is red and grey.

Water Tower and Barrel Dump 5z6q5t

Another styrofoam base, onto which I hot glued more of the barrels I cast for my Grot Oiler. I built the tower from a toy army barrel, some thin dowel sticks, bits of plastic, and wire mesh.

I originally built the base as a hill for my Old Egyptian DBA army, which means it has sat in a box for twenty years or so. Turning it into a dump made so much sense and fits with the factory terrain I’ve built so far.

Broken Wall 5a4a54

This was one of the first bits of terrain I built for Warhammer 40,000. Like so many of my terrain projects from years ago, it was a single piece that didn’t match anything else on the table. I figured a little effort could update this and help it fit with the set.

Mmm, look at that dust.
Nothing like rebar to bring your construction together.

I added rebar with bits of bent wire poked into the styrofoam, then added more gravel around the base. Done.

I really am getting too happy with this spray can.

You’ll have to come back to see these painted up, which is a project for another Mini Monday.

RPG Blog Carnival @ Phoenix HQ 4tb5n

Why not check out the RPG Blog Carnival, which is happening here, at Rising Phoenix Games, this month. Our topic is “When the Bad Guys Win.”

You’ll find new articles on the topic in the comments, as they come in. If you’re a blogger, you can also submit articles of your own. Details on the page.


General

RPG Cyber Sale — Get 20% Off Supplements 655s6n

From now until Friday you can get 20% off great RPG games and supplements in our RPG Cyber Sale! Just use the coupon code “CyberSale2020” on the Rising Phoenix Games Store.

Aurora’s RPG Cyber Sale 5392t

It’s Cyber Sale week at Aurora’s Whole Realms Emporium, and Aurora has a massive collection of gear on sale now, perfect for your Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition adventures.

Undersea Sourcebook: Feats & Equipment, so you’ll be well equipped for any adventure.

 

Aurora’s Christmas 3m2218

Christmas is coming, but what do you get the barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, monk, paladin, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, warlock, or wizard in your life?

Never fear, Aurora’s Whole Realms Christmas Catalogue is here!

The catalogue contains loads of gift ideas for each of the core classes from the Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, as well as more ideas for celebrating this special holiday in character, such as Christmas treats, scented candles, confectionaries, and even magical stockings.

Here’s a peek inside:

Aurora’s Legacy 2v2u6o

Aurora’s Whole Realms Emporium has a legacy extending way back to AD&D. You can read more about the history of Aurora’s Emporium and our part in extending the legacy here, on the blog.

RPG Blog Carnival 4a2vv

RPG Blog Carnival kicks off tomorrow, right here on the Rising Phoenix Games Blog. Our theme for December is “When the Bad Guys Win.” Be sure to tune in for loads of interesting articles from RPG bloggers from around the world.

Have a happy holiday season everyone!

Be the Hero 1a662i