Old Children's Sculpts

I’m working on two terrain pieces assembled from old sculpts my children made more than 5 years ago. I feel a bit like an archaeologist.

Pikachu? 

The Shadow in the Sun / One Page Dungeon Contest

Lina (15), Hendrik (13) and Joaquín (11) wrote a dungeon for the One Page Dungeon Contest.

You suddenly wake up in a huge, pretentious hall filled with diamonds and furniture that was all colored in bright yellowy gold. A being, which you can't recognize because it's shining so bright, sitting on a throne starts talking:

“You have been chosen to save the sun from the shadow trying to take us over! The shadow beings have been waiting a long time to defeat the light beings, which make the sunshine, so the sun is forever dark. They are in the center of the sun, waiting until tonight, so they can eliminate us, leading to the sun never rising again. Will you help us?”

You agree to help them.

The sun ruler explains to you what awaits you in the dungeon:

The first step is to go to the weapon dealer to get weapons for the mission. The difficulty is that the dealer is very sketchy, and because you don’t come from the sun, he’ll try to scam you to get more money or give you weapons that don’t work. If you try to defend yourself, he might end up killing you, so what you need to do is be as careful as possible. From him, you'll need to buy Darkvision and the weapons or enchantments of your choice but be careful; shadow beings are immune to weapons using fire. The most effective weapons are metal, wood, or light-related weapons.

The second step is finding the secret passageway inside the weapon shop to the inside of the sun. There, you’ll find a room (1) full of traps designed to kill you. You’ll need to find the traps and then find a way to get around them. The traps are not only on the floor tiles but on the walls too. The traps include the floor disappearing, the walls crumbling, or highly venomous lizards being thrown at you. All the traps could instantly kill you, but luckily the room isn’t that big.

Once you’ve escaped, the next room (2) awaits you. There, you’ll have to fight your first group of three shadow beings, which will protect the next rooms at all costs, even at the cost of death. The downside for you is that the room is incredibly dark, so you’ll need to have Darkvision to even have a chance of making it out. The shadow beings have very powerful weapons, which can each kill you with three hits. Their problem is that the sun beings have gifted you very powerful shields, so not every attack reaches you, but you’ll still need to be careful and kill them as fast as you can.

In the next room (3), there’s venomous fog, which can kill you fast, but the door to the next room is closed, so you have to find a key for the door. The difficulty is that the room is filled with a lot of things, ranging from antique teacups to fluffy pillows, making it hard to find the right key. The time until the rise of the shadow beings to the surface of the planet is getting shorter every minute, and once they’ve gotten to the surface, nothing can stop them.

In the penultimate room (4), a huge shadow beast is waiting to kill you. It could devour you instantly, but it has one weakness: it is deadly allergic to bread and salt. You can buy bread in the weapon shop, but salt can only be found in the fourth room, so you should not only look for a key but also salt to defeat the monster.

The last room (5) is filled with shadow beings, which you’ll have to kill as fast as possible because there’s only half an hour remaining until their rise. With the right weapons, it’s easier to kill them, so choose wisely.

If all goes well, the sun shall rise; if not, we're doomed, because with the sun, all of our solar system goes down.

Are you up for the challenge?

Fimo Dragon Rampant

A picture from our last game of Dragon Rampant.

The miniatures on the table are two Pokémon monsters made out of Fimo and a couple of Space Marines and Orks from my friend’s collection.

The Fimo monsters won.

Have a great weekend!

Space Marine Lina

I found an old drawing book I did with my daughter when she was about four.

I think this is a space marine.

Squirrel Planet / Entry for the One Page Dungeon Contest 2022

Once upon a time a group of friends came across a black squirrel. Since they had nothing else to do, they decided to follow it. After 20 minutes the squirrel disappeared. The group witnessed it going into a tree and because they were curious, they tried entering the tree, which surprisingly worked.

When they opened their eyes, they found themselves on a weird planet, ruled by squirrels. They were soon noticed and brought to the king of the planet. He explained to them that they had to go into a dungeon to either stay on the planet as squirrels or go back to earth with no memory of the planet, if they managed to get out. Otherwise they would all die.

Space Chicken Fighter (1) In this room the group encounters a space chicken fighter whose special weapon is his dangerous lightsaber which can easily be deadly.

Roboteeth Pony (2) In this room the friends encounter a pony whose roboteeth can do a lot of damage, but the pony can only use them every third round.

Turkey-Platypus (3) A turkey-platypus with dangerously long nails awaits the group in this room. One scratch robs you of half your health points, but the turkey-platypus cannot scratch that easily, because his nails are really slim.

Mutant Space Squirrel (4) This three headed space squirrel is the end boss. It has the ability to teleportate itself, read and control minds and control hair. It’s weakness is that it can’t breath without its helmet.

If you finish the dungeon every character who died will be resurrected and you have the choice between going back to earth without memories of this planet or live on the squirrel planet as a squirrel.

[Note] This is a dungeon written by Lina (14), Hendrik (12) and Joaquín (10) for the One Page Dungeon Contest 2022. After reading it, I told them that I thought it was too linear, not giving the players too many options. That it felt more like a film, not like a game.

I suggested a room, room 0, with a large machine looking like a retro arcade, that would show low resolution pictures of the four monsters and had four buttons and could teleport the adventure party to the four rooms. And maybe there could be some spray cans lying around.

My daughter got angry and screamed that they had put a lot of work into this and didn’t want to change anything. I repeated that the jury might find the dungeon too linear. She replied that she didn’t even care about the prizes. Well, I said, but maybe you want to play it with your D&D group and make the dungeon more interesting. Ok, then add a room, if you must, she said.

3D Scan of Joaquín's Fimo Troll

This is a 3D scan of Joaquín's Fimo troll.

The technician who scanned it called me to ask why I needed a scan of such an object.

I said:
I want to use it as a troll for Warhammer, but it is too big, so I would like to print a smaller version of it and then make a unit of stone trolls or swamp trolls.

He said:
Aha. Interesting.

(To be honest, I want to use the troll for Dragon Rampant, Hordes of the Things or The Portable Wargame, but I assumed the technician wouldn't know any of these games.)

Anyway. The scan is very good, very detailed, but there are holes in the 3D mesh, between the fingers of the troll, that I need to fix before I can print the model and it's far more difficult to do things like Cut & Paste in ZBrush than I thought ...

Joaquín's Fimo Troll

My son made a troll out of polymer clay.

I modified it slightly with green stuff. It can stand now. I also added fingernails and toenails. I would like to paint the troll, hopefully soon. I think it will be a great monster for an orc & goblin warband.

Happy Halloween

My son made a skeleton man with a power sword out of Fimo.

I put it on a 40 mm base and painted it using mainly Foundry paints.

The Goblin Thief / One Page Dungeon Contest

This is my entry for the One Page Dungeon Contest 2021.

It's a simple adventure I wrote for my kids during the winter lockdown when we played a lot of RPGs using an old German ruleset called Das Schwarze Auge. (In my blog post Playing Das Schwarze Auge after 37 years I wrote about how we played the adventure.)

My daughter drew the goblin. She says he looks like me, but more evil ...

You walk through a street at night which is deserted apart from a creature the size of a child, which crosses your path, bumps into you, steals the most valuable thing you have, runs away and disappears in a cellar beneath a worn down building.

1 Stairs go down to a room, 5 m × 2 m. There is an old sofa opposite the entrance and a chest full of fancy clothes and moths in one corner of the room. An unlocked door leads to room 2. A glass cabinet hides the way to a corridor (3).

2 A room, 3 m × 3 m. Three drunk pirates, equipped with sables and knives, sleep on a bed frame or lie on the floor. One of them sings: "Wir lagen vor Madagaskar und hatten die Pest an Bord." (Really no need waking these up.) There are other things in the room, in various states of decomposition: a chair, a turned over table, a barrel, partly filled with cheap rum, a viola bastarda, missing some strings, a bucket full of crabs. The miserable scene is lit by a small lantern, standing on the floor.

3 A small corridor, 1 m wide and 7 m long. There are two doors on the left side, which are unlocked, and one door on the right side, which is locked.

4 A room, 6 m × 3 m, that is used for storing wood. Planks, full of wormholes and covered with spiderwebs, are piled up to the ceiling. There is so much wood in the room you can hardly enter it, and that’s not all: a knight’s armour, a bastard sword (two useful items, but difficult to handle or even carry for flimsy adventurers), human bones, fish bones and rags are scattered on the floor. Beneath the rubble lives a family of large rats.

5 A room, 3 m × 3 m, with two small beds inside. A beautiful lamp stands on a chest beside one of the beds. There are a couple of animal bones inside the chest, potsherds, pieces of floor tiles and a little rusty iron stick.

6 The door to this room is locked. There are two small beds inside. The goblin thief is hiding beneath one of the beds. When discovered he will try to defend himself with a kitchen knife or negotiate.

Around this time, two goblins carrying a spear and a bow return home from the street.

Fimo Monster

My youngest son made a monster out of polymer clay.

He tried to sculpt a crocodile, but I think his miniature looks more like an eastern newt.

I painted it using Foundry paints and varnished it with Polyurethane Gloss Varnish by Vallejo.

Now I want to use it as a Greater Warbeast in Dragon Rampant ...

Mountain Dungeon / One Page Dungeon Contest

Lina, Hendrik and Joaquín wrote a dungeon for the One Page Dungeon Contest. It's called Mountain Dungeon and it's probably influenced by our corona lockdown which lasted two months.

Please keep in mind that they are 12, 10 and 8 years old and that English isn't their native language.

Once upon a time there was a family lost in the woods. This family found a haunted mountain and after they entered no one found them. Then some explorers went to the mountain. The explorers are you. Try to get out of the mountain dungeon.

1 If you stand on one of the traps the wall will go away and the arrows will shoot at you.

2 You come in and have to go on the rotating plate where you have to fight with the chicken monster.

3 In this room you have to fight with a big slime monster.

4 You have to try to escape of this room fast because the walls slide together.

5 There are traps with portals where you disappear. There is a giant monster too.

6 There are fireblasters that shoot at you.

7 This room has a pool full of piranhas and you have to cross it on a rope.

8 There are monster plants that would love to eat you.

9 The witch tells you to go into a door, you don't know which is the right one.

Joaquín's Killa Kan

During our Christmas break, which was otherwise quite stressful, we played Warhammer 40K with Hendrik and Joaquín at Krüger’s house. It was their second tabletop game. They played Space Marines. Krüger and I played Orks.

The scenario was Seize Ground which means we played for objectives. Three, I think. Hendrik and Joaquín were not very lucky and some of their troops arrived late in the game: a terminator squad and a tactical squad in a drop pod. This was an advantage for the Orks. Nevertheless the game was undecided until the end. Then the Orks won.

What I like about playing in this group is that the focus is more on playing the game and not so much on winning or loosing. That's very relaxing. Also there is some basic trust that nobody is cheating. Unfortunately when I play with adults that's not always the case.

Last weekend Joaquín made a figure out of Fimo. He says it's an Ork in a robot. A Killa Kan, I imagine.

Three Mud Huts

Over the holidays I made three more mud huts.

And my daughter made a house for a goblin sorcerer.

Happy New Year!

Lina (9), Hendrik (7) and Joaquín (5) Wrote Another Dungeon for the One Page Dungeon Contest

1 You fall through a hole into this room. For example, if you go for a walk in Berlin and don’t respect certain signposts around construction sites or while watering flowers in your garden.

2 Eerie black and white photographs hang on the walls. A man with a hat. Four children. A doll. When it is dark, the pictures look like ghosts. In a corner of the room is a rocking chair.

3 An empty room with trap doors.

4 A window is painted on the wall. You can see a street and a field. If you stand there and look out of the window, it gives you the creeps. Because of the street. And the noises.

5 A monster with two heads. It destroys everything that comes close. Stones are scattered on the floor. The monster throws them at you.

6 A little animal with green fur. It looks harmless, but if you try to feed it, it bites and you might catch the rabies and die a couple of months later.

7 A mirror maze. It’s hard to get out without banging against the glass. If you take the wrong door, you return to room 1.

8 There are goblins and ghosts in this room who destroy furniture with knives and try to summon a giant by piling up the pieces. You have to prevent this.

9 Schleimi is evil. He can turn you into slime. Because he has slime powers.

10 There is a hole in the ceiling. A rope lies on the floor. A book shelf stands next to the wall.

Puschel Wuschel / Monster Man Contest / Gurps Stats

Lina (9), my daughter, wrote and drew a monster for the first Monster Man contest.

Puschel Wuschel

They live in a land made of cloth. Everything is made of cloth: houses, streets, trees, even the cemetery.

If you annoy them, attack them or offend them, they become very large and eat you.

If you protect them, they come and live with you. But remember to always treat them well or they will eat you.

They defend themselves without weapons, only with monster powers. 

They glow in the dark, learn very fast and everything they have is soft and cuddly.

Stats for Gurps:

ST: 5 / 15   DX: 12   IQ: 12   HT: 9

HP: 5 / 15   Will: 12   Per: 12   FP: 9

Speed: 5.25   Move: 5

Dodge: 8      DR: 2

SM: -4 / +1

Bite (14): 1d-5 cutting / 1d cutting

Claws (14): 1d-4 crushing / 1d+1 crushing 

Traits: Blunt Claws; Constriction Attack; Eidetic Memory; Growth 5 (Maximum Size Only, Trigger, Unconscious, Uncontrollable); Language Talent; No Fine Manipulators; Sharp Teeth; Stress Atavism (Severe).  

Skills: Brawling-14

Notes: Glows in the dark.

Bubble Guble Super Raum / One Page Dungeon Contest

Lina (8), Hendrik (6) and Joaquín (4) wrote a dungeon adventure. This is our entry for the ONE PAGE DUNGEON CONTEST 2017. I hope it is useful or playable or whatever …

1 In the middle of the room you see a commode in Louis XIV style. If you open one of the drawers, you find two purses. Inside of them are three coins, two chicken wings and two lives. If you don’t watch out, a troll with a chainsaw and chainsaw teeth will kill you.

2 A dead camel.

3 There are a lot of keys scattered on the floor and beetles crawling around. Room 3 is full of treasures. Some treasures have beetles inside and some beetles have treasures inside.

4 Room 4 is called Bubble Guble Super Raum. Pink bubbles are floating in the air. If they burst, you die. You meet Sofie, the elf. She says: Warzenschwein führt dich heim, nach vorne, dann links und rechts. (Wart-hog takes you home, go straight ahead, turn left, then right.)

There is an invisible secret passage with a trap between room 4 and room 5. If you fall into the trap, you will never get out again.

5 There is a giant wart-hog. It’s called Hulk Schweinekotz. It has attackers on its back. One of them has three eyes and no mouth. Another one has a long neck and feet, a muzzle and two eyes. And a funny nose. I can tell you that. On the floor there is a bowl of muesli. If you eat the muesli, you will become a super hero and you can fly through the whole world in three seconds. You will develop a lot of muscles and you can knock off ten thousand attackers with one finger. And shoot red bolts out of your eyes.

Orc Head for a Hand Puppet

I spent a rainy Sunday afternoon in October making hand puppets with the children and took the opportunity to make an orc head.

It looks a bit like my grandfather from my mother's side and still needs to be painted.

Anybody know if Humbrol enamel paint and gloss varnish work well on paper mache?

Happy Halloween!

Karl

Tupi + Giant Insects vs Orcs / HotT Battle Report

After a three-month summer break, in which I spent most of the time cleaning up my parents' house and taking my children to swimming lessons, Krüger and I had a game of Hordes of the Things on Friday (The Waltrop Campaign / Day 11).

He played the orcs who live on the northeastern coast of Waltrop.

Warband General, 5 Warbands, 1 Hero, 3 Riders, 1 Shooter

Krüger was the defender and placed a hill in the centre of the table and two tropical forests right next to it on each side. This is something he had wanted to do for a long time and it looked kind of silly.

He deployed his hero and an element of riders on his right flank, two elements of riders on his left flank, all of his orc warbands and a shooter in front of the hill.

I played the inhabitants of the jungle.

Behemoth General (a very big insect), 5 Shooters (Tupi Indians), 4 Beasts (Fiendish Giant Praying Mantis), 2 Water Lurkers

As seen from my side of the table, my army was deployed like this:

Beasts / Beasts / Shooters / Shooters / Behemoth (General) / Shooters / Shooters / Shooters / Beasts / Beasts

So this is what happened:

Krüger’s hero destroyed one of my beasts.

My behemoth general made it to the top of the hill and destroyed two orc warbands.

Two Orc riders destroyed one of my beasts.

My behemoth was pushed back into the forest and destroyed another element of beasts in its path.

(We had some doubt if the rules actually work this way.)

My last surviving beast destroyed Krüger’s shooters.

Three Tupi shooters combined their forces and shot down two orc warbands.

Krüger’s warband general chased my general through the woods and finally destroyed it with the help of some side and rear support.

Krüger’s hero destroyed one of my shooters.

The orcs won and now occupy hexagon 11 on our campaign map.

Six-year-old Hendrik watched us prepare the game and drew his version of the campaign map. He thinks it looks much better than our map. I think he might be right.

Maleficent

I have watched "Maleficent" twice with my daughter and wouldn't mind watching it again. It's entertaining, sad and a bit scary, a horror movie for children. I like the basic idea, to tell the story of "Sleeping Beauty" from the perspective of the other side, the side of the witch that curses the newborn princess Aurora. It's "Sleeping Beauty" after 50 years on Freud's couch, who says: the evil witch isn't evil, she has good reasons for behaving the way she does. For a fantasy movie produced by Disney, you get a complex, rich narration. The original movie serves as an undercurrent which the spectator constantly relates to the remake. In this version of the story Maleficent is the queen of winged fairy creatures living in an enchanted forest. She falls in love with a human, is betrayed, hurt, but doesn't turn cold and egoistic like the human beings she gets into conflict with. Angelina Jolie plays her well. (I didn't even know Angelina Jolie could act at all. I guess I have to watch "Tomb Raider" again.)

The special effects are fun. Robert Stromberg, the director of "Maleficent", worked on visual effects for movies like "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Pan's Labyrinth". The cinematography reminded me of old Czech movies in a good way. The only thing that bothered me was the orchestral soundtrack which played non-stop. Why do the Disney studios think this is a good idea? I like the slow, eerie cover version of "Once Upon A Dream" by Lana del Rey though, which plays through the end titles.

Ok. I know. This is a wargaming blog. I stop trying to sound like a film reviewer now. If you play Wood Elves in Warhammer or any other tabletop game, like I do, you might especially enjoy a combat sequence in the first third of the movie. The old human king leads his little army of knights and foot soldiers against Maleficent's tree creatures and is defeated. Here are two lists for Hordes of the Things, representing the armies:

Maleficent's Fairies (Defender): Aerial Hero General (Maleficent), 1 Behemoth (large treeman), 7 Beasts (fairy creatures)

King Henry's army (Attacker): Knight General (King Henry), 3 Knights, 4 Blades, 4 Spears

Anybody know a manufacturer who produces a 28 mm miniature resembling Maleficent?

Sea Animals with Two Legs

Apparently last week somebody googled "sea animals with two legs" and found my blog. I suppose he or she was very disappointed which is not my fault. It's really Google's fault, but I don't want to disappoint anybody, so I asked my daughter to draw a sea animal with two legs.

Lina says her drawing depicts a transformer gold fish. Unfortunately it has five legs. Anyway, with all the information I have about this at the moment and my limited knowledge of GURPS, I tried to come up with GURPS stats for the creature.

If you think my description of the transformer gold fish, a sea animal with five legs is inaccurate or can be improved in any way, please let me know.

ST: 20   DX: 10   IQ: 3   HT: 12

HP: 20   Will: 10   Per: 12   FP: 12

Speed: 5.5   Move: 5

Dodge: 8   DR: 1

SM: +2

Punch (13): 2d-2 cr

Habitat: Salt-Water Aquatic, Tropical Forest

Range: Atlantic Ocean, Karubi Islands

Traits: Amphibious; Bad Temper; Discriminatory Smell; Doesn't Breathe (Oxygen Storage); Extra Legs; Horizontal; No Fine Manipulators; Pressure Support 3; Subsonic Hearing; Vibration Sense; Wild Animal.

Skills: Brawling-13.

Well, it is a transformer fish. So it should be able to transform itself into something. With Shapeshifting (Alternate Form). Into a gold fish? Some kind of two-legged garden gnome? I don't know.

Are you happy now, person who googles "sea animals with two legs" and finds my blog?