Observations of the Fox

I've actually done a decent amount of work on the shrine since my last post about it. However, in the meantime I've been in hospital and there have been a few other issues... So, where were we.. Oh... that's right. We've got the shape of the stonework building. Now to put a roof on it. We're doing that from pieces of wood to build a structure that can be removed as needed. First step is getting the angles. I could do this with trigonometry, calculations on a page, or tricks with compasses, but I'm just going to lay the pieces of wood against the existing structure, line them up and draw the bits I need. With the two pieces overlaid, I get where the shapes will be fitting together and identify where I'll need to be cutting. I've done some rough sketches and have got a good idea of how I want the general shape to look, but I'm allowing room for evolution and unexpected elements to guide the design as necessary. Needing some cross beams for structure, I...

April 2008... seventeen years ago. That's where it all began . 2500 posts ago. I never intended for this blog to become an exploration of two decades in my hobbies of roleplaying and wargaming...or for it to be an archive of my general musings over that time. It's basically been a third of my life, and in that time I've had a few jobs, completed two university degrees, moved house nine times (spending 8 years at one house, two years at a house I know pay a mortgage on, and a succession of other rental properties as my life shifted dramatically a couple of times). I've been bankrupt in that time, have scraped by (often needing two choose whether food, rent, electricity , or medicine were the priority from week to week...knowing I could afford one, maybe a second, while the other two would have to wait), and have occasionally had times when the only methods for survival were the kindness of charity groups, or the turnover of sales on my online gaming shopfront . I've ...

As it stands, two halves able to be divided for better access to the middle, better display options, and easier storage... with a modular section in the middle.The middle section is an interchangeable 10cm x 10cm square.   I've cut a few of these already from 3mm MDF. The first two modular middle sections will be a small temple structure, and a "sacred tree". I haven't decided on the third, but it might be a well, a variant temple/shrine, or a statue to a hero...I'll probably do them all and use them as scatter terrain. For the moment, I'm working on the small temple. Like the wider building, we've got a layout to go onto some foamcore. This is cut out, with V-shaped groove in one side of the foamcore while the other side remains intact. his allows the material to fold well, while maintaining its structural integrity.  When folded, I just use PVA glue, which tends to work fairly well, and once texturing goes over the surface, this reinforces any joints. As...

I've always figured that good terrain needs a few things... It needs to be sturdy enough to handle bumps and scrapes when it's used in a game. It needs flat areas for miniatures to be placed on. It should be evocative for a setting or tactical zone where an encounter is occurring. I like to make sure it's modular, so I can use a few key pieces in a couple of varied arrangements to create an assortment of battle/tactical zones.    It helps if it's light. It's memorable if it does something cool (modular...removable bits to reflect damage, or allow access into the piece...electronic with bits lighting up). (I discussed a few of these in the last terrain tutorial I did, all those years ago... Scroll down to the Terrain building part ...or click here for the first post in that series.) So I've got a good sturdy base (which is hollow underneath) , that gives me the start of a light sturdy piece (with the option for electronics maybe) . For the top, I'm going wit...

 If you're reading this as I'm posting it, it's been a while since the last post on this project...if you're reading it months or years after the event, I guess that doesn't really matter. I've modified the board idea. So now instead of a single 50cm X 50cm board, the Tulou terrain piece will be split up onto a pair of 30cm X 60cm boards. That way I can display the board as a pair of cross sections which won't go too deep into a shelf, and will allow two half Tulous (I'm not sure if that's the proper plural form) to go at either side of an urban combat zone, perhaps reflecting a training exercise between military legions when Mrs Vulpinoid and I finally get our armies and face off against each other. Shifting back to my old system of 30cm squares (roughly a foot) also gives the opportunity to expand the Tulou a bit, because everything was feeling a bit cramped under the old system. The 30cm square grid is also easier to store. These images aren't...

It's been a quiet month here at the blog. This is only the second post. It's not as bad as the quiet years, 2022 (when no posts were made at all) or 2023 (when a single post in late December indicated my intention to start things up again).  I've been doing a lot of help with Erin, getting her game design work started up (and that's been working over on itch ), but that hasn't stopped me doing things in the background. The problems is that I've got so many fragments of ideas that basically fit together, but the fit isn't perfect. So, I'm assembling bits and pieces from a few similar and overlapping jigsaw puzzles, while I'm looking at the finished products of a dozen other designers and considering both their elegance and flaws... I'm seeing brilliant designs out there (often ignored) and mediocre designs that are getting heaped with praise (purely by the virtue of well connected designers). I'm just plugging away at my game design SRD and m...