Category: Gaming

  • Using ChatGPT to generate Dungeons & Dragons adventure scenarios: Abandoned mineshaft near Oakdale

    I was play­ing around with the Chat­G­PT arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence recently, and decided to prompt it to see how well it could cre­ate a Dun­geons & Dragons adventure. Sur­pris­ingly well, it turns out. I’m temp­ted to run this sometime… Abandoned mineshaft near Oakdale Prompt: Using the 5th edi­tion Dun­geons & Dragons rules, cre­ate a small dun­geon…

  • Looks like we’re doomed

    Picked up Gloom­haven. Think of it as D&D as a boardgame. It’s the num­ber one game on BoardGameGeek, so it’ll likely be pretty good. Also, the reviews like it. We set up and star­ted get­ting famil­i­ar with it last night. Con­sider it Ses­sion Zero in D&D parlance. Can­’t wait for Ses­sion One!

  • The Waiting Followers

    The Waiting Followers

    (Char­ac­ter sketch and back­ground for a Dave Gross Call of Cthul­hu cam­paign: Hor­ror on the Ori­ent Express, 2016) The club was lively; a typ­ic­al Thursday even­ing at our usu­al retreat in Birm­ing­ham. When our sched­ules per­mit­ted, we traveled north to escape the din and bluster of Lon­don as the week ended. Benny Peyton’s Jazz Kings…

  • 3d printing small board game accessories

    I’m really happy when I can com­bine two of my hob­bies. This time it’s Boardgam­ing and 3d Printing. Often, many games have tokens or chits that are pooled for play­ers to take at dif­fer­ent times dur­ing play.  Usu­ally, these sit in piles around the main game area. On Thingi­verse, swholmstead shared this neat design — which I…

  • 3d Printing Terrain for tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons

    Pretty cool what a little time, 3d Print­ing tech­no­logy, some cre­at­ive design work, and a spool of PLA will get you. I’ve been test­ing vari­ous dun­geon com­pon­ents to see how well they’ll work with our play style. And how good they’ll look once painted and finished. The crates above have yet to be fin­ished. Usu­ally, I…

  • Friday: Lander

    Friday: Lander

    Stand­ard Lun­ar Lander — because it’s Friday.

  • More progress on painting Alien Frontiers Field Generators

    Work in progress, painting Alien Frontiers game components.

  • Alien Frontiers — Colony paint complete

    Well, I fin­ished paint­ing the colony com­pon­ents. Look­ing at the pho­tos, they kinda look messy. Note to self, don’t rush, even if you have 40 of the little bug­gers to paint. Ah well, on the game board at nor­mal view­ing dis­tances they look ok. I did­n’t want to paint the ori­gin­als that came with the game so…

  • Painting the components of Alien Frontiers

    Recently I’ve become aware of a trend to paint the often gar­ishly-col­oured mini­atures and game com­pon­ents you find in mod­ern board games. My first attempt was with Mice and Mys­tics, and now I’m work­ing on Ali­en Frontiers. This time, I decided to pro­to­type my  col­our schemes digit­ally. To do this, pho­to­graphed the com­pon­ents just after prim­ing, so…

  • Painting Mice and Mystics Miniatures — Part 2

    Well, I’ve finally fin­ished them. I’ve learned a lot, and quite a bit has changed since I last painted minis (about 20 yrs). I think they turned out fine, and I’m look­ing for­ward to my next set… not sure what that will be yet. Maybe some­thing Star Wars. Here’s a gal­lery of the fin­ished Mice and Mys­tics set.…

  • Painting Mice and Mystics Miniatures — Part 1

    It’s been about 20 years since I last painted any­thing remotely sim­il­ar to these mini­ature game fig­ures for Mice and Mys­tics. I have a lot of re-learn­ing to do. Paint is now mostly acryl­ic, not enamel. New tech­niques like Dip­ping make the work easi­er. And the dif­fer­ing plastics used on dif­fer­ent minis makes each attempt interesting.…

  • The Long Dark: Story Mode — Wow!

    I’ve been a fan (and Kick­starter sup­port­er) of The Long Dark for a while now, and have played it in sand­box mode off and on. As such, it’s cool and fun! But this trail­er for Story Mode gave me shivers. And not because we’re in the middle of a Cana­dian winter…