Stonefall Trap

Inspired by a hallway in The Goonies, this heavy stone block is apt to fall from any ceiling without warning.  It's actually modelled wrong.  It needs to have a hook in the top for a support rope, rather than crossed ropes which would be obvious to bypassers, but it gets the idea across.

This feature began life as a desiccant pill for use by pharmacies to keep medicinal pills dry during storage.  I sweet talked the local pharmacist into giving me a dozen or so of them a while back, and have had this one rattling around the bottom of the bits box for some time.  Nice to finally put it to use.

For those keeping score at home, this is War In A Box's 500th post:

Blade Traps

Any trap good enough to scare Indiana Jones is good enough for Castle Meatgrinder.  Obviously, these little gems won't make an appearance until they are triggered or disabled.

I debated with myself over whether markers for traps were even necessary for Castle Meatgrinder.  They are, after all, single events that can just be described as is.  Either you find it and avoid it or trigger it, take HP damage, and then move on.  Why waste time on a 3D terrain piece for something so transitory?  Two reasons:

1.  They look pretty cool.  They help to make the 3D version of Castle Meatgrinder look as deadly in person as it does in your head.

2.  Making a terrain piece and putting it on the table changes the way the game is played.  These go from forgettable eye-blink damages to real and lasting features of the dungeon by marking an area always and forever as "Here Be Pain and Dismemberment".  In an empty room, they are no big deal, but in a room where the characters might face a squad of orcs?  Or one they might have to flee through?  Now you've added another variable for the players to have to juggle.  Maybe your thief, in order to get into position to gank the enemy spellcaster, has to deal with hiding in shadows and risking a leap over the whirling blades of death.  That's the something added by building physical markers of the blade traps.

The Stone Tree

Not exactly sure what the deal is with this stone tree.  It could be a statue of a tree.  It might have fruit of pure gems and jewels that can be plucked.  That hole in the trunk might be the lair of some seriously creepy crawlies.   I'll figure it out later.

Next week, it's trap week at War In a Box.  We're going to celebrate the Holy Week by trying to put a lot of holes in adventurers foolhardy enough to enter Castle Meatgrinder.

A Little Altaration of the Dungeon

Another quick hit for Castle Meatgrinder.  It only looks like an obsidian sacrificial slab.  It's actually a mysterious altar of doom, a manifestation of pure chaos leaching through into our universe as a trap for the souls of the foolhardy and unwary.

Heh.  Altar-ation.  I keel me!

Massive Firepots

Another cheap version of an idea originally promulgated by The Crafty DM today.  Two enormous stone firepots resting on massive wooden frames. 

These are, of course, cheap electric tea lights bashed and painted for appropriate dungeon ambiance.  The LED lights in these things aren't very bright, but they flicker a bit.  A subtle effect, but it gets the idea across.

You may have noticed that the old robot used for scale has been replaced by a more fantasy suitable miniature.  The minotaur shown here is actually a Pendraken 10mm figure, but he's a big 10mm, and works well as more of a human sized beastman when used as a 15mm figure.  He's about 15mm to the eyes, to give a better idea of scale.  There are quite a few 'big' 10mm figures that would work well as 'normal' sized 15mm figures.  I'll have to show you a few of the ones I anticipate using.

Wargaming Field Report

On the road this week means there's no chance to work on my little projects, but there is a chance to get out and see a bit of the wargaming wilderness in other parts of the country - the greater San Francisco metroplex, to be precise.  Up in Concord, CA, there's a lovely little shop called Black Diamond Games.

Clean, crowded with all sorts of gaming product, and with a staff that puts the F back in FLGS.  They also have a smallish, but oh-so-important to a cheap bastard like me, collection of discount and used stuff.

They even have a store van painted up like a boss.  Is this a regular mainland thing now?  Hope so, because it's pretty dang cool.

Much as I would have loved to pick up shrinkwrapped copies of the old Star Frontiers Volturnus titles...there were other things that called out to me more.  Like these Reaper Bones figures that should work great in 15mm.

If you are ever in the area, Black Diamond Games are well worth a side trek for a little exploration of your own.

Overlooking Features

The only thing worse than adversaries attacking you from elevation is when you can't immediately access that elevation yourself.  The half-a-level rooms of my dungeon were designed to allow for one room to overlook the room below.  Open doorways dropping ten feet to the room below are against fantasy-OSHA regulations, though, so I built some fall protection in the form of a nice protruding balcony.

 You like the additional architectural touch of raising the balcony up a bit by adding a flight of access steps?  Purely unintentional.  When I first built the thing, I measured from the tabletop to the floor, forgetting that this balcony would be resting on the floor of the room below - a full 5mm above the tabletop. Rather than cutting the supports, which would have meant the balcony was just 5mm above the floor, I added the steps to give it a little more vertical difference.

The difference in thickness of the rooms is only 5mm, so that extra 5mm still leaves the balcony only 10mm above floor height.  About shoulder height compared to the standard miniature.  Just as the scaling of the furniture and the whole dungeon is a little off, I figure the vertical scaling is off by a factor of two as well.  That balcony should be considered 10 feet off the ground.  In true scale that would be two to three inches.  Highly impractical given the limitations of the one box.

The railing height is pretty good though.  Should meet fantasy-OSHA standards of 39 to 42 inches above the ground surface.  (Guess who wears the safety hat as part of his day job.)