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Showing posts from June, 2025

Tulou and Fortress (Part 14) - Filling in the layout

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We've got the basic frame of the Tulou, so now it's time to start filling in the interior of the model. I begin with adding some pillars which will hold the layers in place.    The pillars also form the end points of walls. For the walls I've cut some pieces of MDF to match the length between the pillars, I've also cut some gaps from them for doors and windows. I haven't specifically decided on the proportions here, or the design of the doorways and window shutters, I'll have to do a it more research for this, but having the holes for the doorways and windows is a good start.  The lights are working in there, so I'm happy about that. The next bit is to clad the mdf sheeting with wood panelling to make the walls look more like wooden walls than mdf walls. So I have some sheets of balsa wood that I'll be cutting into thin strips and gluing to the walls. Some kind of staining should be applied later, once the glued strips have dried in place. The whole thin...

Tears in the Rain

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I wrote a post 15 years ago about Praxis . In this particular instance, Praxis was a sub-forun of the Story-Games community, which was quite vibrant at the time. I was only alerted to the post because I've had a high number of visitors to the blog this month and was curious about what pages those folks had been looking at.  So I looked at the post, then tried to follow the links in it... Praxis is gone, Story-Games is gone, and considering I was saying at the time that many of the old ideas were being repeated, it's sad that that these moments have also been lost in time.   It's great to see 1km1kt still around with it's archive of free games... rpg.net still exists too. It's interesting, and probably not surprising that the stable workhorses of the hobby have staying power, while the avant-garde who constantly debated and gatekept the community from newcomers faded into obscurity.  (Yeah, a bit of hyperbole, and a bit of sour grapes...it's just one perspective....

Tulou and Fortress (Part 13) - Adding some colour

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It's time to start applying some colour to the model. With the level of of texturing and detailing that I have added to it. The easy way to get the majority of colour onto the model is by drybrushing some suitably earthy tones onto the form.  This is done for the tulou and the little temple that goes in the middle. I found a brown ochre shade, but that doesn't feel quite right. So in order to get something that's a bit closer to terracotta I've adding in a mix of some red and some black to darken it down in a first heavy drybrush coat. The second coat is done lighter (in the sense of colour, and the sense of less paint going on)...for this one we just use the straight ochre paint. A final really light drybrush coat uses a 50/50 mix of the ochre and white. I'm still not happy with the result and there will probably be some washes and extra detailing to get to what I'm after, but it's really brought out the texture and that was one of the main intentions at th...

50 years... 50% off

 We're running a little sale over on the online store...  DrivethruRPG Vulpinoid Studios  

Tulou and Fortress (Part 12) - Further Texturing

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Hmm... I was sure I took more progress pictures before writing this... Anyway... The point of this post is that you often need to apply surface details before adding a texture over the top. These surfacedetails don't need to be much, they just need to add some visual interest and break up any large flat surfaces (unless that's the specific look you're going for, such as the outer wall on the tulou.  The next step will be adding some paint, so I'll try to make sure there's plenty of extra photos then.

Tulou and Fortress (Part 11) - Texture Beginnings

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Here's where we left things... It's a bit like the flat polygon models in 3D computer graphics, it only takes on a more distinctive and interesting appearance once textures and colours have been added to the model. I'm making the interior of the tulou with wood, building up a framework and staining it to look appropriately aged and lived in. However, the part that I'm working on at the moment is a stone wall covered with hard packed earth. So I'll be looking for something with a bit of texture, but not too much. The first step is to get the model into position, then apply a layer of a glue that will adhere to both the foamcore surface and the intended texturing material. I'd often use sand or dirt, especially if I were making castle walls built of stone, roughly textured ground, or roads. In this case, the wall is pretty smooth, almost like a cement render, so I need much finer particles. I was cleaning up one of the linishers in the school workshops and found s...

Tulou and Fortress (Part 10) - Let there be Light

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The shrine in the middle is looking alright. So it's time to head back to the outer shell.  I'd preciously cut and scored the foamcore so that I could bend it to the right curvature. Now it's time to add the electronics to the piece before construction work begins. It needs to be done now because it will be harder later to pull the model apart and wire in the lighting.     The next step here is the make some structural elements out of foamcore that will support the outer walls. Thankfullt for this project, the outer walls are circular so they're generally self-supporting. However, they'll still need to be able to support figurines on them because they're intended as miniature terrain rather than a model.    I've cut the end cross sections of the wall, and scored them in much the same way that I've demonstrated earlier in the project. Folding right angles, taping while glue dries, holding them to shape (this time with clamps), and gluing them to the base ...

SNAFU SRD

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    (Click Here) So I've been working on a single resource document for Walkabout and Familiar, and a bunch of those little side projects I've been working on. It was only meant to be a basic thing, maybe 16-pages, a zine. But it's kind of blown out a bit because I've tied in a lot of those old cookbook ideas, and really want people to understand what the game system is about, including knowledge about how the bits work and why they were designed to work that way.  Yeah, I've covered a lot of that stuff here on the blog over the years, but I'd like a coherent piece of documentation that ties it all together. I'm not there yet, but if I don't get something up now, I'll miss the TTRPG Game Manifesto Jam, and then it'll just end up as yet another unfinished backburner project. Hopefully I'll get the chance to update it a bit over the next few days.