ReaperCon 2021 - Day 2

 

Yup. Still ReaperCon.

Yesterday we got a note from the hotel giving us coupons for breakfast. I guess people who weren't staying here were taking advantage. It's a nice idea but not very practical. They took the coupon at the official entrance but everyone would go back for refills using the 'exit' and no one was checking anything.

No biggie. Brought the coupon and had a nice breakfast.

I took some pictures of the main room again. I will admit to these being carefully framed to look like there was a good crowd. In fact there were sparsely occupied areas to be found as well as dense ones.

My first class was on weathering. Even I admit this looks pretty darn good for a class mini. However the instructor did a LOT of prep work for us. The bulk of the darker rust areas were from them sponge painting rust, using a product to mask areas that would be rusty, then spraying on the main color. Our part was rubbing off the paint/mask to reveal the rust.

We did do the streaks and scratches.

As always I like this instructor and after seeing how well it works I may buy the product depending on price.

My second class was a mistake. I was too advanced for the material. The instructor was also reading off their handout like it was a PowerPoint presentation. No pictures because I didn't feel it warranted any.

I chatted with the instructor after class and found out they learned all this from someone I learned it from before they every started painting.

I demurred about going to the second class that was supposedly more advanced material. They even gave me a copy of the handout to help me make my decision. My decision was to give away my ticket.

If you're going to read off the handout for your class there's isn't a lot of incentive to sit and listen to it. 

A lot of people would find inspiration in that class. I'm not one of them.

I did finish painting the dagger. I remembered paint dries a lot slower here than at home and planned accordingly. With that done I could enter them into the contest.

I pre-registered even though I was on-site. They seemed to be trying to speed up the process by having us enter the bulk of the information online rather than filling out paper forms someone else would enter into the computer. I found out that was the way to get the special coin anyway so it's all good.

I chose to gave them take the display pictures. There was a self service photo booth but there wasn't a line and I'd rather have a good picture from a good camera that someone other than me took.

Toxic Blue

Hangry Dwarf

Appearances are not always deceiving 

These are much better. I had to come up with entry names and since I'm not vested in the results I picked what came to mind.

The rest of the evening was spent socializing.

I mentioned I'm wearing my old convention shirts as a flex on the majority of attendees. Someone else I know is wearing the same range of shirts for the same reason. We never said we were nice.

ReaperCon 2021 - Day 0 and Day 1

OK. Days 0 and 1 get a single post since Day 0 isn't very picture worthy in my opinion.

Day 0

Day 0 was travel, more travel, hotel stuff, shopping, convention check-in, and a 'Meet & Greet' dinner.

There was nothing special about any of that. We got our convention welcome pack then went to our room to start the process of making big piles of stuff.

There's also a gift certificate usable only at their convention booth and convention money (Reaper Bucks). They said each hotel got different special minis and I'll be checking into that when I go shopping.

We snuck in a day early to do our metal-by-weight shopping. We've always set aside Thursday for that but it seems the company only wanted it to happen Friday and Saturday. Our bad. We did our shopping anyway. There's some advantages to being old timers.

The factory, looking back towards the store entrance. This is all product storage now.

The mold racks. They have a lot of molds. Casting is done in a room behind these.

Way in the back are the unpackaged minis you buy by weight, either with cash or trade in metal value.

I'll have better pictures when I take the official factory tour Saturday. 

The pizza Meet and Greet was burgers and hot dogs this year. That was a welcome change since I think the pizza the hotel serves is vile. The last couple of years I've resorted to scraping off and eating the toppings. They also had cake.

Food and food serving stations are not picture worthy to me.

These have been the standard type of badges the last few years. The ribbons are given out both by the convention and attendees who bought their own. Some people try to get them all and end up with huge tails that hit the floor. I take the ones that I earn at the con and the ones that I happen to acquire. This will grow throughout the weekend.

I'm going against my nature to enter minis in the painting competition. I'm only doing it for the Reaper Bucks. The minis are ones I grabbed from my dungeon crawl case. I have no interest in being judged which takes all the stress of competition away.

One of them broke in transit. His fragile dagger finally succumbed to my casual handling. Since I feel it's the best of the bunch I felt the need to fix it. My attempt to sculpt a replacement was a dismal failure. I found a suitable dagger on the pile of returned metal and pinned it in place. That's acceptable and will be easy enough to paint.

I pre-registered for the competition to get the special coin. I was mistaken in what I thought it would be. All Resper Bucks are cardboard coins and you get a 'special' silver one for doing that. It's still cardboard.

These are the terrible pictures I took to pre-register. They'll take better ones when I submit them. I hope.

The day ended with me chatting while I fixed the mini and my weekend table buddy painted.

Tomorrow will be much busier.

I Forgot to Post This

I took pictures of this and meant to post it. But, of course, I didn't.

Yes. I know they've been done many many times but I wanted one. This isn't the original file I downloaded. I modified it to put a more secure bar across the 'back' and remove the printed dome in the lower left corner. By the time I got around to making the picture anonymous for posting the original file had been deleted. So I forgot about it again until a Twitter post reminded me.

I did get my second jab on schedule so obviously this was taken between the two. I'm responsible enough to get vaccinated even if I'm not so good on posting pictures of things.

The dome is a glass piece meant for some kind of jewelry. It makes the final result unwieldy enough that I wouldn't want to carry it around a lot but looks darn cool. The glass is clear. I put a piece of tinfoil under it then mixed yellow paint with white (PVA) glue to make the color. So it looks perfect from the top but can have different amounts of yellow based on the viewing angle.

The white and red are printed. The yellow bar is a piece of filament firmly glued into the piece (that was my mod since the original file had a very shallow indent) and looking at it I'm wondering if I should have used a more opaque yellow or if that's the most opaque pure yellow I have. Regardless I'm not printing another.

I cut a piece of clear plastic the same size as the vaccine card so not only does it fit tighter into the slot but it also protects the card from wear. This isn't my first rodeo in making badge/card protectors. I used a transparency sheet meant for inkjet printers for the plastic. That stuff is handy for far more than inkjet prints, in case you were wondering.

Funny thing. I showed this to my neighbor and they told their family about it. Later on they asked if I would make one for each member of their family but with their initials instead of the dome. Since I'd already remove it to a flat surface it wasn't difficult to make new bottom files with the initials. They chose the colors for each person and I went to work.

I know that the rectangles no longer conform to the prop standard but they do alternate so that they are aesthetically more pleasing to me. There are end clips that go with them but they don't add anything to the pictures. I cut more plastic and handed them all over to the neighbor. I was told the family is pleased.

As a total suckup I made one for my boss. I experimented with using yellow ink in the glue layer instead of yellow paint. It didn't work as expected. The ink mixed well with the glue but as it set it moved to the edges of the glass blob. I'm thinking that's because there's some space there and the glue rose up, along with the lighter ink. It didn't bother me enough to pull it out and try again. I don't like my boss that much.

I don't plan on making them for anyone else. They're all over Etsy for those who want to buy them. It's why I don't sell on Etsy. All the designs that have mass market appeal are where the mass market can buy them. It was fun to do for myself. It was a nice thing to do for the neighbors. It was a political move for me to do for my boss.

Update - The original design just moved platforms. I've published mine on all the ones where I have accounts.

Something Different - Printable Game Money

I belong to a Print and Play group on Facebook. It's exactly what it seems - printing games rather than buying the manufactured ones, if there are manufactured ones. There's plenty of games that are print and play only.

One of the members there made a very lovely set of game money for those who need it or want it. As much as I liked her work there was a problem for me. She made the bills so that they had rounded corners which meant work to cut them out and get those curves. Most of us have special punches to round card edges but I felt this wasn't quite .. quite. When you're printing game money you tend to need a decent amount.

Because I'm me I couldn't let this stand. If I was going to need game money (for whatever reason) I wanted files that would be efficient. Pretty, but also efficient.

This isn't something I'm good at doing. Graphic design is so not my forte. However I do have a friend who is good at it and likes projects. This wasn't a normal project for him as he tends to focus on model making but as I said he likes projects. We went back and forth and there was a lot of testing printing but eventually we got there. Well. He got there and I enjoyed the fruits of his labor.

As you can see from the picture at the top of this post the money is very colorful and we tried for bill colors that weren't going to be too similar. However there's only so many colors that work so we did our best.

Here's the fun part. There's four different kinds of files! The dollar sign is a bit limiting to modern games and possibly historical. I asked him to make a set with stars instead of that so they could be used for generic and/or futuristic games. Then after that was all set and tested I asked him for more. Since color printing isn't something everyone wants to do I asked for greyscale versions so they can be printed on colored paper. That's more like most game money anyway. That makes up the four versions!

To make this you need a printer (duh), a steel or steel edge ruler, a cutting knife, and some kind of cutting mat. The back of a legal pad works as a cutting mat. The instructions are included but the reason for this is cutting a single sheet of paper is a pain in the butt unless you plan for it.

Those of us who do this a lot tend to have either a slide blade cutter paper trimmer with guide wire (nice, buy it at your favorite craft store) and possibly a guillotine/chopper cutter (not an affiliate link or recommendation, just an example). Those work for most things but having tried the slide blade cutter for testing this I found that once you start cutting the paper flops all over the place. I can also see where it might be difficult to use the chopper. So those aren't recommended but hey, it's your choice.

These aren't currently up on his site.  They're so different from his normal categories that he chose to give them to me rather than put them there. That may change if he and I start making more printable game components but for now they reside here and in the files section of the Facebook group.

OK! On to the files!

I created a page to hold everything if we add more so they're easily found there. But hey, you're reading this so you should be able to download them from here too. It's only fair.

Colour Dollar Money Set

Greyscale Dollar Money Set

Colour Stars Money Set

Greyscale Stars Money Set

If you find these useful drop a comment on the blog. If there's other components you want to see us make drop a comment on the blog. Heck, drop a comment on the blog if you just want to say hi.

Enjoy being your own mint.

The Color Brown

The color brown is an interesting thing since it's not actually a color on its own. You won't find it on any color wheel and the art stores have the various shades in their own offset from the real colors. Brown is a muted orange. Yes, it's orange. Go figure.

Let that sink in for a bit. Brown isn't a color. Take a look at these two color range images and see if you can spot the overlaps. Once you see it you can't unsee it. You can thank me later.

I've been doing some color mixing and browns are part of that. You'd think it was easy - grab some form of raw and/or burnt umber, maybe add a color, done. Nope. It doesn't quite get that simple. Well, most of the time it is but only if you want a warm brown. Once you get into shades of brown it gets more complicated. Because brown doesn't exist on its own.

What brought about this post was me having made a mistake in my painting and needing to correct it without messing it up worse. In short I'd used an orange heavy brown where I shouldn't have done. The painting is too far along for me to want to strip and start over, especially since I've done that once before with these.

It turns out I hadn't actually mixed the type of brown I wanted. Or maybe I did and grabbed the wrong bottle. Of course I haven't labeled the bottles even now. The end result is a lot of places painted far more orange of a shade than I would like.

So the solution seems easy. Make a brown wash and fix it right up. Not so fast. That orange isn't going away. Putting a brown over it is a tricky business because then I'll have an orange undercoat and brown doing whatever it's doing on top of that. The wrong shade and tone of brown over that orange could easily make things worse instead of better.

I have a book on mixing colors for watercolor, acrylic, and oil paints. I've been referring to it as part of this overall project and I'm pleased to note that there haven't been many big surprises. I'm decent on my color theory. Maybe not great but for the projects so far I've had a handle on it.

But this one has been a stumper. I've continued painting while trying to figure out how best to fix this mistake I made with minimum effort. More will be made clear as to why the fix is slightly more difficult than it might seem. Bear with me.

Tonight I had a revelation. I was talking brown with someone else and it got me thinking of how easy and how difficult it is to make a brown using other colors. Pretty much take any three colors, mix them, and you'll get brown. It might not be a pretty brown but you'll get brown. More importantly you'll get shades of brown. Unless you've used a purple brown you really don't see what this means. Yes. I have purple brown paint. It's useful.

As I said earlier brown is just an orange kind of shade. I'm trying to take an orange heavy color and brown it down. The fog cleared a little and I realized what I need to do is take that same shade and add some color to it to make it more brown. It took far longer for me to reach that conclusion than it should have but I was sulking.

So what color do you add to orange to make it more brown? Orange is really just red and yellow so blue seems the obvious answer. Since it's the obvious answer I did some research in my handy book of color mixing to find out I was right in that it wasn't the answer. According to the book I need to add some mauve. Instead of blue I need a blue shading to red. In my mind that's going to make the end result rather red heavy (orange is red and yellow and I'm looking at adding blue and red) but it's worth a shot.

Tomorrow is the test. I'll use the same base color and add just a touch of blue. Blue is a very intense color and anything with a heavy yellow mix is not. Again, color theory. I won't get into yellows here but I will probably have a rant on them in the near future. Therefore anything I add needs to be done with a light touch. If the blue doesn't quite work out then a touch of red. I can play with this all I like since it only take a few drops to find out if it will work or not.

I don't have to make much note of what I'm doing here. I'll be mixing up a completely new brown to take the place of the mistake in the future. Of course I will take notes in case I really like the resulting brown so I can duplicate it, starting with the orange type color as the base. I always take notes now. So when I say I won't make much note of it I think I mean that I'm not going to make a chemistry experiment level kind of notetaking. More of a reference. I think. I don't know. I'll write something down at least.

I'm very curious to see if my knowledge of color theory will hold up in practice. It's easy to say that something should work and to see it in a book. It's quite another to look at it on the palette and then the mini to confirm it worked. I'll take the hit of painting these areas twice because it was my mistake in the first place.

And what happened in the first place? I used the color I had mixed up for rust as the brown. It's a lovely color for rust. It's not a lovely color for leather.

I'll end this on a more humorous note. 

Competition painters and people who are more into the whole color theory aspect of painting miniatures can get hung up on browns. Really hung up. One whole drawer of my paints are nothing but browns. Brown is a serious color, even if it isn't a color.

Way back when I got here I would hang out and paint at a local game store, which has sadly been closed for many years. Someone I considered a friend would be there painting as well. He was as into color theory as I am. He has to be. He competes. I just do it because I'm that picky. But we were on the same page when it came to picking colors.

Whenever we would start talking about browns the other people from the group would say "They're talking about brown again" and tune us out. They didn't have nearly the same level of interest as we did. That got shortened to "The brown discussion" when it would come up at the paint table. I remember those days fondly because we would spend a lot of time finding exactly the right brown for the color palette. Even then I was pretty good at picking the right family of browns for the project at hand, if I do say so myself.

How I Roll - My Traveling GM Bag

Another blog had a post asking what people kept in a traveling GM bag. Rather than comment there (burying the answer and giving that blog traffic instead of mine) I decided to do a post on the contents of my traveling GM bag.

I used it when the game went virtual as well because we were going with a camera on the battle mat so it was still a physical game and I needed all the same things. There was no point in having things scattered about more than they were so it stayed as-is.

My Traveling GM Bag

Here's my oh-so-glamorous GM bag

This is a rolling suitcase I bought at the thrift store on half price day. It probably cost me about $5 or less. I know there's all kinds of fancy cases out there but honestly I'm frugal and needed some way to transport all my stuff. A suitcase works just fine if you don't mind that it's not all fancy and things can get messy.

As I said, things can get messy. Everything moves to the bottom of the suitcase as it gets moved around. I don't mind that and pack with the idea that it's going to happen. Heavy stuff near the bottom, more fragile/lighter stuff near the top. Even then contents can shift during travel.

One of the most important things a GM needs - a way to take notes. At least that's what I consider most important. I've written on my feelings about taking notes before so this should be nothing new. I did try the Rocketbook and while it works for some people it didn't work for me. Printouts of the transcribed notes are in the green folder. I went back to my trusty spiral bound notebook for the last couple of sessions and found myself much happier. I never decided if I was going to put the pages from the spiral bound notebook into the folder or not before the game ended. Since I will be using written notes in future games it's not a consideration. But notes and the way to take them are extremely high on my list of things to have.

This is my GM screen. Isn't it fantastic? Isn't it perfectly in keeping with the theme of the game? Another thrift store buy it's wonderfully horrible. I thought about covering it with something more appropriate but decided to leave it in all its tacky glory. However this thing is perfect as a screen for me.

It's short enough I can see over it when I'm sitting down. It lets me put sticky notes for things like player-character names, special abilities, PC ability scores, etc. The center lets me put in notecards with more detailed information and I can add as many sleeves as I want. Hint - put some tape around the bottom of the sleeves or the cards fall out.

Even better if you run more than one game you can start from the other end and have a separate screen for the second game. It's pretty cool that way.

I use a screen to hide my dice rolls and keep my notes less visible. I don't need a lot of room for that and having a custom setup for my 'in my face' notes is perfect.

Pencils, pens, and the markers I use on the battle mat. Of course I'm going to have a pouch of pencils, pens, erasers, sticky notes, and other writing related materials. I'm a GM. The center box holds the special pens for the Rocketbook. That's a leftover I never bothered to remove. The markers are self explanatory and I don't know why I even keep the yellow marker since that color never shows up anyway. But they're all there, ready to be used.

Dice. Of course there's dice. What kind of GM doesn't have dice? I swear even in a fully virtual game I'll have dice on hand just for the tactile click clack they give. I tend to keep three full sets of poly dice and swap them out when I want a different look or I think they're not performing up to snuff. I also have:

• D24 (hours of the day)
• D30 (Forgotten Realms has a 30 day per month calendar)
• Weather dice (the set of 2 - one for current, one for forecast)
• Place value dice into the millions (because I bought them and would maybe have a use for them some day)
• Pink D20 (the D20 of Shame)
• Random dice (because dice)
• Red glass blob (makeshift campfire marker)
• Black cat eraser (something I've had with my dice for a very long time)
• Orange tricorder accessory from a ST:TNG Data figure (so I don't lose it)

The triangle you see with a note and a value is from a treasure notecard. I'll get into notecards next.

I love this. I keep this handy. I love 3 x 5 notecards. I absolutely love 3 x 5 notecards.

I use notecards to have item information I can hand off to players. I make trinket, treasure, and magic item cards as the need or inclination hits, then keep them here for when I give out loot. The top card is a low value magic item with the name, the information on what it does, how it works, and in the corner the actual value. When I hand out these I rip off the corner so they don't know what it's worth. I take a picture before I do so I have it available to me - I don't have second copies and if the player can't keep track of their own inventory (game and physical) I can get it back if I feel like it.

Up at the top is a fine tip black Sharpie. That's my writing instrument of choice for notecards since it's permanent and dark. It also means I throw out a lot of notecards when I make mistakes in writing them up.

The trinket and treasure cards are from various item generators. I have a big thing for item generators. All the links are affiliate links so if you buy them I'll get a few pennies, so I can buy more item generators. Inkwell Ideas  has my favorite ones in their Infinite Choices products. Rusted Iron Games has some smaller, more focused generators in their Roll With It! series. Dicegeeks has a great selection of random item generators along with other types of random lists.

These folders have non-campaign specific paperwork. The red one has blank characters sheets and other things that are useful when people need them or I'm working on something. The bigger one has the 'working' paperwork. Let's get into that.

I like combat tracking sheets. You can see one there. I don't require players use them but I offer them every time there's combat. It has places for the round, initiative (I reroll every round), character action, result. I find these help a lot in the combat details - like how many rounds an effect lasts, what damage was done, overall what the character did at the time. I have them in various sizes so they're not wasted. Short combat? Short sheet. I also have bits of scrap paper for notes, maps, blank treasure and XP tracking sheets, etc. There's nothing in these folders that is essential to the specific game. I just keep it together.

These folders, on the other hand, do contain campaign specific materials. Notice how much less there is in them than the non-specific materials. I try to keep these thinned out so I'm not hauling around maps from months previous that will never be used again or I have online and can look up if needed. I also try to build a nemesis party for every game I run and rarely get to use it. It's so fun to have when it works and is always a subplot to have handy.

The campaign paperwork generally has notes and printouts for the next session or two and what was done in the previous session. I thin it out when I'm reviewing my notes before the next game so it's an ongoing process. I keep some of it if I can use it in other games, like maps printed to scale or canned encounters I found useful. Others get tossed during the winnowing.

The characters! I ask the players to send me copies of their character sheets so I have them on hand. Whatever version I have is the one that will be used when that player isn't available so it's in their best interest to make sure I have the most current version. I also have their backstories and any other information I've given them or they don't know yet in their folder. If you're going to do this you'll find very quickly you can't write directly on the folders. Put down a piece of tape, write on it with a Sharpie, and put another piece of tape over that so it doesn't rub off. I put both player and character names on the folders.

I keep each version of the character sheet. Their entire character history is in their folder. I can look up numbers or abilities at the table and I find it even more useful when doing game prep when I can reference whatever I need. I can also put things I want to give the player into their folder and know where it is when I need it.

As much as I'd like to have a fully immersive game with appropriate minis for every encounter I just can't do it in a traveling game. Instead I found this workaround. Those are old Stratego game pieces with colored, numbered paper sleeves. Note I said they're the old version of the game. The old version has a smooth top edge. The newer versions have crenellations. Another thrift store find and if you can find them here's the sleeves you can print out for yourself. Print at full size and 1/2" tape fits perfectly around the bottom. You get 10 each of 6 colors.

They're not as sexy as the minis but it makes it so much easier to keep track of things in combat when someone says they're attacking Red 6. You can also make the different colors different monsters. They fit into the 1 inch squares and I didn't get around to making something that would fit more squares for bigger monsters. But these are a good start.

I could have bagged each color individually but that's a waste of bags and I generally needed 2 colors for each encounter so having them together helped. Kind of since they were all mixed up.

Hint - don't stress about having them in any kind of order. There's no need to pick through so you have 1, 2, and 3 unless you feel that need. 2, 5, 9 work just as well.

The position of the token also can be useful. My standard is upright is active, on their side is prone/unconscious, flat is dead/down. They still fit in the square and help the players determine their actions. They also continue to take up space on the mat if you leave them there, which makes for obstacles and other fun issues.

Books. Where would we be without books? These are the only ones I carry since they're the ones needed pretty much all the time. The DMG is pretty self explanatory and I don't use it as much as you might think. If I didn't bring it I would need it, of course. The setting book is a must. And the player's handbook as well. If there were other setting or game specific 'required' books I'd have them in the bunch. But books are heavy and I also don't like the abuse they take from being hauled around. So I keep them to a minimum.

My final tool - my tablet. I have the SRD apps for my games and use those for things like monsters so I'm not hauling around those books. I can also keep copies of splat books (or pages of splat books) on there so I've got them as needed. I have the PDF copies of most of the books in my Dropbox (no, I won't link that) so I can look them up in a pinch. I use this as a tool but it's not a central tool overall. It's an accessory. 

There's a lot of debate about electronics at the table. This isn't me being a hypocrite since I ban electronics at the table and I haven't gotten anyone saying anything to my face. Unless I need it for the game I don't play with it.

Not shown is my battle mat. I don't put it in the suitcase so it kind of doesn't fit in this post but it's something I always bring. I still have the plastic sleeve for it and I think the packing tape patches add character. I just added a wrapping paper core support so it won't sag when I stand it in the corner. Even if the game doesn't use squares it's a way to draw out the scenery at least.

Summary

I can carry a lot of stuff in a rolling carry on sized suitcase. I try to carry as little as I can since it makes the stupid thing heavy. Finding a place to put it during the game can also be a problem since space is always at a premium. Keeping the bag handy is much better than having the contents strewn about the table is my opinion. My preference is to have a chair within reach and have the suitcase across the arms so I can dig through it as needed.

I use a lot of different kinds of folders. I like thinking I know where things are when I need them. That doesn't always hold true. I put things in the wrong folders at times. But in general I prefer to have them as organized and protected as I can.

Hopefully this will spark ideas on how to make a traveling GM bag. We always have to carry the most stuff so finding a way to do it efficiently and effectively is a task. My way still needs that space to hold the bag where I can get at it quickly. I carry a lot of stuff now that I look at it. But I also use a lot of paper in my game so that adds up. I'm more old school in that I like pencil and paper at the table so I lead by example. Lay out what you always use, what you like to have, and what you keep around because of habit. Out of that you should be able to assemble a good set for games away from home.

Yeah. About that Secret

This is a quick note that the secret I promised is going to be even more delayed. Things didn't work out quite as I expected so it's taking longer.

Hopefully you'll find it worth the wait. Hopefully I will too.