Barrowmaze 2 Arrives

I arrived home late tonight -- a long day at the office, and then dinner with clients -- but this delivery really capped things off, in a good way: Barrowmaze 2, along with two Tomb-of-Horrors style illustration books, and the mega-map, arrived in the mail. 

Greg Gillespie did a terrific job with Barrowmaze.  The room descriptions are just long enough to be evocative without burdening the DM with endless walls of text.  In addition to the artwork in the illustration books, the Barrowmaze adventure book itself is crammed with illustrations.

My only quibble is the hard-cover book binding.  We in the OSR need to find a better way to package these old-school adventures, that allows the DM to keep the adventure books open and flat on the table, rather than using traditional book binding which results in the pages flipping unless you break the bookspine or place weighs on the page-edges to keep the book open.

Fantastic product.  I feel bad for those of you who missed out on this megadungeon crowdfunding project.

Pathfinder RPG: Rise Of The Runelords Miniatures

While the Pathfinder RPG is far too cumbersome for my tastes, I do admire Paizo's related miniatures. 

Reaper produces the unpainted versions, while Wizkids is behind the comparable pre-painted versions.

The Rise of the Runelords pre-painted miniatures were released several weeks ago, but I only recently picked up a case.  The Sentry Box, after no small amount of arm-twisting, finally agreed to sell me a case of 128 miniatures for $400, the same price that Paizo was advertising on their website.

I was looking forward to this set of miniatures, as it includes several miniatures based on the artwork of Wayne Reynolds, an artist whose illustrations I enjoy.

I didn't take photos of all of the miniatures, but here is a fairly representative sample of the figures that come in the Rise of the Runelords set.  Among the figures are several iconic characters, including Seoni (centre) and Harsk, some npcs and what I presume are succubi and harpies.

The grey giants in the back row are stone giants.  There is also a red dragon in the back row and a pair of lamias in the front row, plus some other monsters that must be peculiar to the Pathfinder game.

Here's another stone giant, who appears to be casting some sort of ice globe, flanked by more of those Pathfinder-specific monsters.

The above appear to be more monsters and npcs.  Someone who knows more about the Rise of the Runelords adventure path can probably identify these.  The sculpts and paint jobs are very well done, considering the regular-sized figures cost me only $2.50 each, with the large figures double that.

I'm not much of a fan of the Pathfinder goblins.  As part of the case of miniatures, I came into possession of 11 goblin miniatures:  3 goblin dogs, 2 dog riders, a goblin riding an alligator, and 5 goblins on foot.  I have no use for these (I have 50+ LOTRSBG goblins that I much prefer to these fellows) so if anyone is interested in these figs, i'm willing to part with them for $30, which includes shipping within North America.

Motivation? Here's Your #$%&! Motivation!

"Now Commoriom, as all the world knows, was deserted many hundreds of years ago because of the prophecy of the White Sybil of Polarion, who foretold an undescribed and abominable doom for all mortal beings who should dare to tarry within its environs. Some say that this doom was a pestilence that would have come from the northern waste by the paths of the jungle tribes. Others, that it was a form of madness. At any rate, no one, neither king nor priest nor merchant nor laborer nor thief, remained in Commoriom to abide its arrival, but all departed in a single migration to found at the distance of a day's journey the new capital, Uzuldaroum. And strange tales are told, of horrors and terrors not to be faced or overcome by man, that haunt forevermore the shrines and mausoleums and palaces of Commoriom. And still it stands, a luster of marble, a magnificence of granite, all a-throng with spires and cupolas and obelisks that the mighty trees of the jungle have not yet overtowered, in a fertile inland valley of Hyperborea. And men say that in its unbroken vaults there lies entire and undespoiled as of yore the rich treasure of olden monarchs; that the high-built tombs retain the gems and electrum that were buried with their mummies; that the fanes have still their golden altar-vessels and furnishings, the idols their precious stones in ear and mouth and nostril and navel."

-- Clark Ashton Smith, The Tale of Satampra Zeiros

Otherworld Miniatures Crowd-Funding: Dungeon Adventurers

Otherworld Miniatures is running a crowd-funding campaign on indiegogo, featuring four, 12-miniature sets of dungeon adventurers.  And you're not participating in this, why?

For $280, you get all four, 12-miniature figure sets (a total of 48 miniatures): male adventurers, demi-humans, females, and hirelings and henchmen.  Plus, as the stretch goals are unlocked, a whole raft of additional figures and adventure-dressing get added to your pledge. 

Check out some of the miniatures that have already been produced for this crowd-funding campaign:  here are the fighter, magic-user, cleric and thief miniatures from the first 12-figure set.

It's no secret that I consider Otherworld Miniatures the premium producer of old-school minis.  I've posted about their miniatures on several occasions, about their pig-faced orcs and lizardmen, both faithful reproductions of the original artwork for those monsters.  They also recently released an awesome lich, which is on my "must-buy" list.

The Dungeon Adventurers crowd-funding campaign is attractive to me because the figures are incredibly old-school, complete with light-sources and backpacks (see below).

Compare that to your typical figure from other manufacturers, which are uniformly heroically posed and are absent any evidence that the represented characters are actually dungeon-delving.

Hirst Arts: Pairs of Stairs

I have a small box of Hirst Arts stair elements, so I decided to build a couple of 10' sections of dungeon stairs. 

The front-most staircase is made from Hirst Arts chipped stone stair elements, while the staircase in the rear is built from the smooth, marble elements.  The stairs descend at a 45 degree angle. 

You'd need to put three of these staircases together to repesent your typical 30' staircase, found in many dungeon designs.  Suddenly a 30' staircase seems awfully imposing!

Hirst Arts: Platform

I'm still playing around with the Hirst Arts construction elements.  Here is a raised platform, with two sets of stairs on either side.  With so many elements at my disposal, I am trying to find ways of using up all of the excess pieces. 

The platform comes apart in four sections, and each is 3" x 3", which is my favored scale for 10' x 10' dungeon tiles.  Using a scale of 1" = 3'4" allows for walls on the section, while still permitting two miniatures abreast on your typical hallway.