Custom Minis for Your Campaign

Written by Justin Mason

Once again pondering the many ways to add a custom touch to your role-playing game, I was referred to 3dTotal and their “3D Model Printing” service.

Yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like -- they can actually “print” miniatures from standard 3D model files. 3dTotal offers a few free model options, however there are many 3D-artists references available for custom model design.

The resulting miniature is "rugged" and "durable" -- not the brittle plaster-like material associated with some 3D-Printed products.

3DTotal Ltd. has partnered with Growit LLC to offer this pretty amazing service. The miniatures are printed (or “grown”) in layers as small as 16 microns (.0006 inces) which means the final piece is of a quality and detail rarely seen. In fact, it virtually eliminates any “stair-stepping” effect that often is associated with rapid prototyping.

Download their Preparation Guide, and in just a few minutes, you’ll be underway to having your own custom miniatures that can be perfectly customized to represent player-characters, unique monsters, or npcs.

Prices for printing the miniatures range from $50 (the option most average miniatures would fall into) to $500 (for pieces up to 7.5” tall.)

No more “searching for the miniature that looks most like your character.” Now, for an affordable price, you can actually have the miniature that IS your character.

Table-Top Role Playing 2.0

Written by Justin Mason

You’re the Game Master, it’s game night, and you have all your notes ready. From world design, to the contents of the dungeon, non-player character and monster stats, and treasure lists -- it's all there at your finger tips. So, the question is, how organized are you, really?

More and more Game Masters are loosing the thick wire-bound notebooks chocked full of scribbles and sticky-notes and stepping into the age of the internet.

Yeah, I know, the internet has been easily accessible for over dozen years, so it’s not really a “new day.” The internet is integrated into just about every aspect of our lives, but it’s taken a long time for table-top role-playing community to really catch up to standardizing the technologies use in our campaigns and game sessions.

Obsidian Portal is the service that should be destined to usher in this game-table upgrade. It’s free, it’s expansive, it’s user-friendly, and most of all -- it’s cross-platform compatible. Meaning, all of the services and standard features are of use to both Game Masters and players regardless of what game system, game world, or genre they may be using.

I could write a lengthy, detailed description of what Obsidian Portal is, but since they’ve gone to the trouble of already compiling a video that does just that, how about I just share it with you right here:

World Building with Obsidian Portal from Michael Harrison on Vimeo.

As a Game Master who has used the Obsidian Portal service to run a weekly, 56-game-session campaign, I guarantee you that it makes it fun and easy to keep track of your campaign, setting, characters, storyline and game session notes.

Also, involve your players in the wiki function of the service and you will witness a dimension and element to your setting that’s totally new as you also get to see, for the likely the first time, your game world through the eyes of the players/characters.

I highly recommend you check it out. It’s a worthwhile 11-minutes.

Dice that Blow the Mind

Written by Justin Mason

Last month we started this blog off with explaining how you can get your very own, professional quality, custom character portrait for your character or npc. Well, we thought we would continue with the theme of custom accessories and supplements and point out Q-workshop.

Q-workshop is a Poland-based dice company. They have virtually hundreds of unique sets of dice from a dozen or more main categories ranging from fantasy, to post-apocalyptic to science-fiction. They even have neon, glow-in-the-dark dice -- come on: how cool is that!?

All of their dice are very affordable, and consist of a quality and intricacy we’ve not seem matched in the industry.

However, why stop there? Q-workshop not only makes some of the coolest most unusual dice in the industry… They also make your dice. That’s right, you can design your own custom set of dice, submit it to them, and they will turn your imagination into a tangible, roll-able, set of dice!

We’ve never seen another service quite like the custom dice service offered by Q-workshop, and all other alternatives come up short, and lacking in comparison (there just really isn’t a comparison). It’s not the cheapest option, but it is affordable enough for just about any game group to design a unique set and have enough made for all the players.

We highly recommend you check out Q-workshop, their plethora of unusual dice sets, and if you’re looking for another way to add your signature to your role-playing campaign, be sure to check out the custom dice creation service.

Custom RPG Character Portraits

Written by Justin Mason

As many of you may already know, Mythic Design has teamed up with a very talented company named AvatarArt.com. They're primary service is to provide players and game masters with professional quality character portraits. However, upon seeing the quality of their work, we brought them on board as quickly as possible.

So, in appreciation for the outstandingly fantastic work they do for us, I thought I'd do them a small favor and plug them here on the blog.

Portraits begin as low as $25, and are priced in a tiered system starting with (Basic Level) Black and White sketches and progressing all the way to (Immortal Level) Full, book-cover quality digitally painted pieces. Every level is affordable, and will exceed your expectations on quality.

The turn around time takes about a week-or-so per level. Starting at a week for a Basic Level sketch up to 5-6 weeks for an Immortal Level portrait and background. Though these are their stated turn around time, we have experience much faster results (depending on their current workload).

AvatarArt.com's lead artist, Mates Laureniu is based in Romania, and produces amazing work. His portfolio includes works ranging from simple character sketches to detailed custom 3-D design, to movie character and set design.

So, if you're looking for an awesome portrait for your RPG character, definitely check out AvatarArt.com -- They're a top-notch service with a high-quality product.