Observations of the Fox

 Just letting folks know that my friend Erin has started writing a bunch of min-games on tri-folds.   Her aim is to make one of these a month, for the rest of the year, and maybe make a few extras to catch up on earlier months, then release an annual pack of 12 games at the close of 2025. They're being released on itch.io . All of these games are free, but she'll be doing some work with me on the Walkabout and Familiar games when she gets a chance as well (she's been generating some fun " glitch art " lately that'll probably be incorporated into at least one of the Vulpinoid Studios products that sit in the pipeline.  I know that there aren't many folks who go to links from this blog (there certainly aren't a lot of people who've visited my itch.io page), but if you could take a look, and maybe download a free game, it'll help a new designer who's still trying to find her feet. 

  Based on the current sketches, I quickly mocked up some ideas in CAD. Specifically using the excellent free CAD app, OnShape . I don't expect everyone who makes wargame terrain to be proficient with CAD packages. this is just to get an idea of how the form would look based on the measurements and ideas I currently have for the project. To see how it goes together as a bunch of detachable components, I've composited a multi-piece shot in Photoshop.   I'm not particularly liking the way the rooms fit together allowing for stairwells that will fit figures, and gaps over the tulou's entrance gateways. However, that's specifically the reason why I've generated this CAD model. I can do things digitally without needing to waste resources, or spend time crafting something that doesn't particularly match the aesthetic I had in mind. I think the courtyard needs to be a bit bigger, but that will mean the tulou ends up too big to fit on the base I've got ready for...

I think I've got the basic structure of the tulou sorted out in a way that will make it aesthtically pretty cool, but also functional as a piece of gaming terrain.  The idea is to have the outer shell of the tulou attached to the base, which lets me texture it and paint it up. In the middle will be a series of modular rings that can be added to the structure storey by storey.       At this stage, I'm thinking that the ground floor of the tulou will be a combination of workshops, storerooms and communal spaces, maybe a mess hall and a kitchen, and since this is a military barracks, then maybe a set of cavalry stables. The two upper storeys will be the sleeping areas for the majority of the troops. Videos I've watched today suggest that the boxed set will contain 50 figures, so at 16 rooms per storey and 2 storeys of rooms, that gives plenty of room for the troops of the starter box. I'll make these upper storeys so they can slide one-by-one into the middle of the...

So, I'm told the Warhammer Old World uses square bases, and given the size of the miniatures I can fairly safely assume they won't be 20mm square bases. A quick search brings up this... This means that our standard infantry would be on 25mm squares, and larger creatures would be on 30mm or 40mm squares. In a 1/60 scale, that basically means that a single figure takes up 1.5m x 1.5m. If I'm planning to have corridors in the tulou that people can walk down, then those corridors would be the equivalent of 1.5m wide, let's add a millimetre or so to each side and suddenly we're saying 1.6-1.7m for the corridor if we're going to have room to actually place a figure into the gap, especially if any figures are overhanging the edges in any way. That's a pretty wide corridor, and doesn't fit the cramped and overcrowded vibe that I might have initially thought for the Tulou. This isn't even taking into account the larger bases (where a 2 metre wide corridor wo...

The Warhammer Fantasy RPG world, which is the same setting as "The Old World" for Warhammer is set in an equivalent era to the late Middle Ages and early Rennaisance...and my research indicates that Tulou were built from the 15th century onwards. So, by these two ideas, Tulou wouldn't be anachronistic in the setting. Similarly, even though there are plenty of other anachronisms in there already, this sort of building would probably be pretty mundane for the world. The catch now is working out how big the structure needs to be, and how many people would live in it. Traditionally, it looks like a couple of hundred people would live in a Tulou, and if this first illustration as anything to go by, there would be 30 to 40 rooms spread around the circle (36 in this case), at 3 storeys of habitation. So that's about 90-120 rooms (with a few people in each room). It was all very egalitarian, with similar sized rooms, and I'm figuring that people would work outside the bui...

It always begins with an idea. The idea was to make some terrain in preparation for the final arrival of the Cathayan miniatures in Warhammer. I posted a link to the video...but here it is again... I've been waiting 30 years for this...well actually I've been waiting for the Nippon miniatures because I wanted to have samurai and ninja running around the table fighting off against Skaven and Chaos cultists and anything else that might be found in the Warhammer Old World... I figure the Nippon might be further down the track, and might be a barely touched spin off like the Brettonian armies, the Kislevites, or the Tilean trade guilds. At least we're getting the Cathayans, and that's a great start. My wife wants a full army (because we've got a queen coming who can magically transform into a dragon, and military hot air balloons), I want a full army... so we'll need some terrain to display our models on and to work as signature pieces to add to a table for conducti...

That's basically it for the folder, except for a couple of key things that I do include, but forgot to add at the beginning of the series. One of the things I like to do is prepare for the unexpected to a limited extent. I've already mentioned that I do this with fragments of maps, and story hooks, but I also do this with random encounters, monsters and NPCs. If I'm playing a heavy game like D&D, Pathfinder, Rolemaster or Warhammer FRP, I'll find a random character generator, or visit one of the SRD websites for the game and download some potential folks and critters for the characters to possibly encounter in the area. For creatures I  might use one of the card sleeve sheets and file away nine typical creatures in the area. I'd roll a pair of d10s and use the lower of the two results to determine what might be encountered in the area when things in the story are getting slow or monotonous (this way I can assign common creatures/encounters to low numbers and rar...

I'm doing two parts with this post because we're getting to the end, and there isn't really a lot to say here. I figure a quick game is a good game, as long as things are fast flowing, you can get away with a lot of hand-waves and plot holes, and it's only later that players will ask "What about this bit?" or "What happened there?" Sometimes the players will forget things, and we can just skip over them, sometimes those things can be addressed as a plot hook to be picked up in a later session. As long as enough storylines see closure at the end of a session, there's an overall feeling of a satisfying story. However, this often means making sure plenty lof quick notes are taken along the way...a few scrawls here, a modification to the relationship map, a word or two describing a sigil or sign that might make a useful plot device later. For tyhese reasons I'll try to make sure there's half a dozen lined sheets, half a dozen plain sheets,...

In the time since I've started this sequence of posts, there's a few interesting things I'd like to observe and critique (like this , which I've been waiting 30 years for). But to avoid disrupting the sequence I'll get to those developments once I've finished this run... ...so, for the moment, back to part 7.

I've got a thing for maps ...all of the top few posts I've created over the years have been about helping people to draw better maps and understand how maps can be better incorporated into their games (for examples, see here , here , and here ).  Sure, there are heaps of Virtual Table-Tops (VTs or VTTs) around these days, but this series is analogue, and I like the feel of making marks on a page with a pen or pencil in my hand.  When I include maps in my gaming folders, I like to make sure to start with things that are immediately relevant for the players. The immediate buildings and landscape around the point where they start, the local region including places they might be able to travel to in the first session, then maybe a wider map of the country/continent/world. If it's a sci-fi game, this might be swapped out for a star system chart and possibly a sector chart. Half a dozen maps to start things off usually covers the "needed" preparations.  Once a map hits ...

Here's where things might go a bit differently to what other people would put in their folders. I've discussed relationship maps on the blog before (also here and here ), because they're a really useful tool for quickly seeing how different factions and individuals react to one another. Relationship maps can really help to establish the structure and politics of a setting. Vast factional maps can give ideas of what different kingdoms/countries/empires/corporations think of each other openly. Detailed maps can provide the specific favours and grudges that might drive the motivations of specific characters. I like the consider them to be working documents that are subject to change depending on how the actions of the characters impact the world around them. If player characters are included in the relation ship maps in some way, I'll only include the reactions and attitudes of the NPC/Supporting-Characters on the map, because the player will need to decide their attitud...

As a teacher, I'm used to students leaving their workbooks at home, the same applies to players in a game campaign...not as often, because players usually want to be a part of the session's activities, but it still happens.  A player without their character sheet is problematic, especially in complex systems, or  if there's a lot of moving parts in the game. Over the years (decades) I've been playing and running games, I can think of several times where different players have come to a session without their character sheets, and inevitably the player says "I know my character so well that I don't need my sheet" . The first few times, I figured that this was reasonable, but invariably every time something would come up in the narrative, and the player without the character sheet would mysteriously have just the right skill or piece of equipment that would quickly overcome the issue. "No, honestly, that's on my sheet at home. I'll make sure I br...