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Other Stuff => Workbench => Topic started by: snitcythedog on 15 March 2011, 10:30:43 PM
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Several years ago I came up with a few rules that I use in building terrain. I hope my mistakes help others build better terrain.
Snitchy's diatribe on terrain.
Or: How I learned from my mistakes and now have a soap-box to stand on and point them out.
These are some guidelines that I have created to help everyone make not only better terrain, but also terrain that is more durable. And begin rant.
First: Make no terrain that removes excessive space from the tabletop. For buildings you have two options. Option one is for buildings that do not have an interior. Build them at a slightly reduced scale so they do not occupy too much table space. Option two is to build the building with an interior. This will make the whole building usable instead of just part of the building. Adding a second stories will expand the play area.
For other terrain features make sure that any ridges (such as the banks of rivers) are flat on top and have enough space to stabilize a large base. The sides of stepped hills also need to be able to stabilize a large base. You never know where someone will end their movement.
Rivers make it hard to avoid eating up space on the board. Try to make sure that they do not have any large lakes or features that cannot be used as tabletop.
Second: If the building or terrain feature can be entered, make multiple entrances and exits. If there is only one entrance no one will use it and this becomes a waist of space. The same goes for rivers. Make sure that there are multiple crossing points. If there is only one, this will be the focal point of the game and it limits game play.
Third: When making modular terrain, try to make sure that edges of rivers and features match up. Also try to hide the seams between different sections so they cannot be used as an improvised ruler. Felt painted to match the board will work for this.
Four: This is not strictly necessary but it is one of my pet peeves. Try to use forced perspective when doing interiors. This means do not do a full interior. You cannot play a game, with the interior of the objective building, cluttered full of nice furniture. The way that you make interiors look like they are occupied is to build features within a ½ inch of the wall. Wood paneling, clocks, pictures, fireplaces and the works. This will give the interior of the building features that will put the building in context just as much as the exterior.
Five: Reinforce the terrain piece as much as possible. When I am gluing a piece together, I make sure that I have multiple materials overlapping each other with layers of glue in between. Another way to reinforce terrain is to glaze your piece with superglue. This will not work with foam, but with other items, it will harden your surface, and make sure that your basing materials and scratch built parts will not fall apart. The way you do this is to put a dab of liquid superglue on the part to be glazed. Then either blow the superglue or used a can of compressed air to blow the superglue into a thin film. This is another way to layer glues and materials. Use spray sealers on your terrain so they do not chip.
Six: Make sure that your terrain will not chip another piece of terrain that it is set on. Do this by adding felt to the base of your terrain features. You can do this with the underside of a roof so it does not damage the rest of the building.
Seven: If your terrain travels, try to have a dedicated box to carry it in, and use foam or bubble wrap to protect it. I have seen several people who have done wonderful terrain that once it is completed they just throw it back into the box with everything else. If you are going to spend the time to do these works of art, please protect them.
Eight: Make the terrain visual interesting. One way you can do this is to hide "Easter eggs" on the piece. Add little details that people might not see initially. Add animals to the bases of your trees. Add a cat sitting on the roof. Add a cup of coffee sitting on a shelf or stove. Any little detail will increase the overall effect.
Nine: Be consistent. Use the same color paints, the same basing materials, the same color ground cover etc. etc. This makes your terrain uniform. Nothing is worse than having a beautiful desert board with a building with a snowy base sat in the middle.
Ten: Most linear obstacles should be of average height. This means to the waist of a man-sized model. Larger obstacles block line of sight. A whole wall that is too tall will limit game play. If you are making linear obstacles either make them random lengths, or make them an odd size (4 or 5 inches). Either way they are not used as a ruler.
Eleven: If you have a terrain feature that does not allow models to move over the entire feature (like a train engine), try to make up the space with a multi-story building, or scaffolding that can be accessed.
Twelve: Continue with a concept. If you have a chimney or vent on a building exterior, make it lead to something if you can (some things cannot be properly represented on the interior like wind or water mills).
Thirteen: Make something that at least appears to have a purpose. If you have a steam engine, what is it for? What is it attached to? If you have scaffolding what is its purpose?
Fourteen: Allow no ambiguity in your terrain. Is it rough terrain or clear? Is it deep or shallow water? If necessary write the terrain condition on the bottom of the piece to stop any arguments.
Fifteen: Base everything on something hard. How many hills have you seen at your LGS that have been chipped to the foam on the edges? Basing the bottom of terrain gives you two advantages. First it makes it sturdier and second it will stop most dings from other terrain or rough handling.
Sixteen: Try to make terrain that is not specific to only one scenario. If you make Cryx mining rigs, great but find other uses for them too. How many times are you going to play that one scenario?
Seventeen: Paint everything. Unpainted or untreated materials will show through no mater what you do.
Eighteen: Use durable materials. If you find something that you like (say trees). Is there a company that makes them harder? Is there a way to make them stand up to more abuse? Always think durable. This is not a diorama where you can use dry flowers and they will not be touched. This is a war game! Treat it as such.
Nineteen: When kit bashing (again I will use a toy train) make sure that the original model is not readily identifiable. If you have to do major modifications to make it your own, go ahead. Tinker with it.
Twenty: Horde things. My wife hates me for this. Almost anything can and will be useful for terrain at some point. Horde as much as you are allowed or can.
Twenty-one: Keep a scrapbook. Try to sketch all angles of your piece. If a building with an interior, try to sketch the whole thing, every wall, inside and out. It does not have to be fancy. It does not have to be original art (that is what we are making here). It only has to keep you focused on the task at hand.
Twenty-two: Try to work on only one project at a time. It will help you from getting overwhelmed, and keep you going on the task at hand. If you get burned out by all means do a quick smaller project but get back to the big one as soon as possible.
Just some suggestions. Hope I am not being too preachy here. But I have been doing this for about twenty-five years now and I think that it will help others.
Snitchy sends.
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Nice rant :o
Waists of space are certainly expansive ;)
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Thanks for your thoughts.
Although my terrain philosopy may be little different for some issues, your advice certainly makes sense for most gamers interested in scratchbuilding their scenery.
Plus, there is always lots of newbloods that really need this kind of articles, to avoid a lot of mistakes we oldbloods made in those early days so many years ago.
Your point # 8 seems like a hidden jewel to me.
Making the places look "lived in" just add to the realistic illusion.
Thanks for sharing and best wishes.
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Your point # 8 seems like a hidden jewel to me.
Making the places look "lived in" just add to the realistic illusion.
"Lived in" is a better description. I never thought of it in those terms. For the differences in terrain philosophy, that is pretty personally tailored to each terrain builder.
Plus, there is always lots of newbloods that really need this kind of articles, to avoid a lot of mistakes we oldbloods made in those early days so many years ago.
That is my thought, and why I initially codified my views on terrain.
Snitchy sends.
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...so they cannot be used as an improvised ruler.
Or just allow premeasuring. I've never been a fan of games that force you to guess ranges and such. If you play with people who habitually abuse being able to premeasure, threaten to shove the tapemeasure somewhere very uncomfortable. :D
Four: This is not strictly necessary but it is one of my pet peeves. Try to use forced perspective when doing interiors. This means do not do a full interior. You cannot play a game, with the interior of the objective building, cluttered full of nice furniture. The way that you make interiors look like they are occupied is to build features within a ½ inch of the wall. Wood paneling, clocks, pictures, fireplaces and the works. This will give the interior of the building features that will put the building in context just as much as the exterior.
An excellent point, something I've considered but not really fully developed. I like the tip of keeping clocks/shelves/fireplaces/stoves/etc within 1/2 an inch of the wall.
Five: Reinforce the terrain piece as much as possible. When I am gluing a piece together, I make sure that I have multiple materials overlapping each other with layers of glue in between. Another way to reinforce terrain is to glaze your piece with superglue.
I've gotten into the habit of doing the basecoats of terrain with a 50/50 mix of paint (usually black) and white glue, which I buy in 1.5l bottles. Don't bother premixing, just drizzle paint and white glue on the surface and paint them into each other with a decent-quality housepainting brush. Toughens up styrofoam, foamcore and plaster nicely.
Seven: If your terrain travels, try to have a dedicated box to carry it in,
This is something I'm finally getting around to doing, with a series of banker's boxes to hold terrain, and increasingly organized systems of stowing the terrain pieces inside the boxes.
An excellent series of tips!
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Fantastic stuff. Having been through a lot of terrain building over the years, I can agree with all of this and have been through all the mistakes to be drawn to the same conclusions.
One other one I would add is to use the strongest but thinnest basing for ALL your terrain items be that 1mm plasticard or 3mm mdf or whatever. Nothing worse than differing thicknesses all over the table and some are warped or chipped or such. I use 1mm plasticard for everything, even the figures.
also glue your trees into the terrain using a hole and then PVA glue. This is so if you need to replace the tree you simply drop a few drops of water into the hole and the PVA glue will weaken and you can easily remove and then replace the tree.
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I will stick a copy on the wall of my gaming room.
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Seven: If your terrain travels, try to have a dedicated box to carry it in, and use foam or bubble wrap to protect it. I have seen several people who have done wonderful terrain that once it is completed they just throw it back into the box with everything else. If you are going to spend the time to do these works of art, please protect them.
We tend to use A4 photocopy paper boxes.
They are relatively strong, freely available from anywhere that gets deliveries of A4 paper, and all the same size, this makes it easier to get them onto a shelf than using a mixture of different sized boxes.
But too tall for most terrain, so we cut them down to about 1/3rd height. This generally makes them a bit stronger, but sometimes we reinforce them with sellotape etc. just to make sure.
We make most building projects roughly A5 or A4 based (just a couple of mm smaller to make them easier to fit in the box).
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I've enjoyed reading your notes and like an earlier reply will print off a copy to use as a reminder when building new terrain.
Thank you for taking the time to type them out.
Tony
http://dampfpanzerwagon.blogspot.com/
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Twenty: Horde things. My wife hates me for this. Almost anything can and will be useful for terrain at some point. Horde as much as you are allowed or can.
lol so true, I have two huge wicker baskets on top of a cupboard filled with polystrean, card, toilet roll's and just about any other stuff my wife would like to throw out. Because you never know what you might use! :D
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Thanks for the comments all.
I will stick a copy on the wall of my gaming room.
This is what I put on my game room wall.
http://theglen.livejournal.com/16735.html (http://theglen.livejournal.com/16735.html)
Thanks again for the comments everyone, and I am glad my mistakes can help someone else.
Snitchy sends.
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I can absolutely echo the comments about discovering many of these the hard way.
I game with figures that are nominally 30 mm, but which have extra large bases, so the "what interior/exterior dimensions are best?" is an extra -special challenge for me. Always trying to balance the need for sufficient space without making the building seem unnatural, all while working with buildings that are slightly smaller than they really would be.
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Just seen this, Snitchy. Some very useful and valid stuff in there. Definitely lots to consider for my terrain-building projects.
As to pre-measuring, I'm not a huge fan as estimating ranges accurately in combat situations is a valuable skill in real-life (or was pre-digital age) so why not on the table? Saying that, if it's an accepted part of a game's rules I can live with it. It does p**s me off though when people move their figures to 1mm outside close range before they conveniently stop >:(
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As to pre-measuring, I'm not a huge fan as estimating ranges accurately in combat situations is a valuable skill in real-life (or was pre-digital age) so why not on the table? Saying that, if it's an accepted part of a game's rules I can live with it. It does p**s me off though when people move their figures to 1mm outside close range before they conveniently stop >:(
I'm quite fan of the whole non-premeasuring thing.
It can create some interesting situations. :D
Even if you can estimate ranges accurately IRL, who's to say your troops will succesfuly make a charge or fire on target over that distance?
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I'm quite fan of the whole non-premeasuring thing.
It can create some interesting situations. :D
Even if you can estimate ranges accurately IRL, who's to say your troops will succesfuly make a charge or fire on target over that distance?
Very true - anything that adds frustration and takes away the DBM-style certainty is fine by me!
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There are a lot of great points there. I know I've suffered from some bad decisions that you've noted. I've also agonized over the perfect balance of playability and detail/appearance.
My own two major struggles are about interiors of buildings, and terrain bases.
I've more or less abandoned the idea of building 3d interiors for games meant to be played largely "on the outside". I've found it takes too much time, isn't used frequently enough depending on the game systems, can be really fiddly to move around in depending on the number of floors and/or size of the interior, and generally makes the entire piece a bit more fragile and require more constant touch-up and repair. Instead I've resorted to making simplified architectural drawing-style floor plans with doorways, windows, and stairs marked clearly. When a model elects to go inside I replace the closed building with the floor plan that it goes with. Without those pesky walls in the way, moving models is much much easier. Yes some visual appeal is lost, but the trade off for me is worth it.
Now for games that are played mostly on the interior like dungeons and spacecraft/colonies, those get the detailed treatment.
As for basing terrain, I've waffled back and forth a lot over the years. My preference now is "no basing at all where possible". Depending on the kind of surface you play on this is possible to varying degrees. If you play on a cloth mat over foam, there is no need to base trees, just mount a pin on them and stick them through to the foam. Same goes for simple linear obstacles. Buildings that I base these days don't have a base that extends beyond the walls or exterior structures that can be really seen. Obstructive terrain like rocky outcroppings or high hedges have been built with the idea that they won't get based, or if they do, that the detailed features of the piece will obscure the base entirely, leaving no lip. Things like barrels or crates or shrubs and small loose detailed objects don't need basing at all, in fact a lack of basing gives them a lot more versatility in placement around your board. Large pieces like hills, crop fields, roads, streams, bridges, and rough terrain are often a specific kind of detailed base, but with a little extra planning and material consideration hard bases of MDF or plasticard can be avoided or minimized.
Mostly these consideration have come about by moving to cloth table coverings over foam instead of fixed textured and flocked base boards. I can interchange game cloths to vary the environment, therefore it is more advantageous to reduce or remove terrain basing of any kind so the terrain I build can work attractively whether it is on a desert cloth, verdant meadow cloth, or urban cloth.
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Very true - anything that adds frustration and takes away the DBM-style certainty is fine by me!
Specialy when it's the opponent who gets frustrated lol
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There are a lot of great points there. I know I've suffered from some bad decisions that you've noted. I've also agonized over the perfect balance of playability and detail/appearance.
My own two major struggles are about interiors of buildings, and terrain bases.
I've more or less abandoned the idea of building 3d interiors for games meant to be played largely "on the outside". I've found it takes too much time, isn't used frequently enough depending on the game systems, can be really fiddly to move around in depending on the number of floors and/or size of the interior, and generally makes the entire piece a bit more fragile and require more constant touch-up and repair. Instead I've resorted to making simplified architectural drawing-style floor plans with doorways, windows, and stairs marked clearly. When a model elects to go inside I replace the closed building with the floor plan that it goes with. Without those pesky walls in the way, moving models is much much easier. Yes some visual appeal is lost, but the trade off for me is worth it.
Now for games that are played mostly on the interior like dungeons and spacecraft/colonies, those get the detailed treatment.
As for basing terrain, I've waffled back and forth a lot over the years. My preference now is "no basing at all where possible". Depending on the kind of surface you play on this is possible to varying degrees. If you play on a cloth mat over foam, there is no need to base trees, just mount a pin on them and stick them through to the foam. Same goes for simple linear obstacles. Buildings that I base these days don't have a base that extends beyond the walls or exterior structures that can be really seen. Obstructive terrain like rocky outcroppings or high hedges have been built with the idea that they won't get based, or if they do, that the detailed features of the piece will obscure the base entirely, leaving no lip. Things like barrels or crates or shrubs and small loose detailed objects don't need basing at all, in fact a lack of basing gives them a lot more versatility in placement around your board. Large pieces like hills, crop fields, roads, streams, bridges, and rough terrain are often a specific kind of detailed base, but with a little extra planning and material consideration hard bases of MDF or plasticard can be avoided or minimized.
Mostly these consideration have come about by moving to cloth table coverings over foam instead of fixed textured and flocked base boards. I can interchange game cloths to vary the environment, therefore it is more advantageous to reduce or remove terrain basing of any kind so the terrain I build can work attractively whether it is on a desert cloth, verdant meadow cloth, or urban cloth.
There's a good point in here about keeping base sizes fairly close to the actual structure. Minimizing your building footprint definitely allows the widest possible range of placement options.
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An excellent point, something I've considered but not really fully developed. I like the tip of keeping clocks/shelves/fireplaces/stoves/etc within 1/2 an inch of the wall.
I've more or less abandoned the idea of building 3d interiors for games meant to be played largely "on the outside".
If you do not do interior partitions, interior movement is pretty easy. Here is an example of the forced perceptive.
(http://www.voidgamers.com/images/data/photo//imagegallery/SNITCHYTHEDOG-P7300022.JPG)
This was a WIP photo and is pretty blurry. If you look at the desk, the top is only a Popsicle stick. For damage on the interior, I either pin everything, or have items glued to at least two surfaces.
Thanks for the comments all.
Snitchy sends.
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That is a wonderful piece of terrain and far more detailed than you'd usually see :o :-*
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In a perfect world of limitless free time, energy, and money, I would cleverly detail every interior for every building I make, pretty much exactly as Snitchy has above. There really wouldn't be a reason *not* to at that point. I am unfortunately subject to the seductions of too many diverse scales, genres, periods, architectural styles, and game system mechanics to devote the necessary resources. :D
Definitely a great example to follow for those so inclined.
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I agree with the ideas you've posted here although sometimes it doesn't always work out that way. Your points about either using building interiors or slightly small buildings is very valid. I've got some older buildings that are large and very difficult to use in games because they can't open up for interior play.
Here's a couple examples from my own experience.
http://ironworkersminiatures.blogspot.com/2008/03/rescue-on-tatooine-wizards-of-coast.html (http://ironworkersminiatures.blogspot.com/2008/03/rescue-on-tatooine-wizards-of-coast.html)
I don't know why these images won't link but here's a link to the battle report.
Here's a shot from a battle report I did a couple years ago. We had this old Tatooine style multi building base that was suppose to be the first part of the modular system. However the buildings where all close off and the only real playable areas where the roof tops and some of the narrow ally ways. It's huge and hard to store which is the main reason we stopped the project. It's not bad to stick on the edge fo the board or on a corrner but if we had made a whole table we'd basically be playing big rooftop battles. Not too bad but not as good as it could have been with even simple interiors.
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_u5bGwDHRPI8/TUuEBARLcxI/AAAAAAAABnk/vpJQy4sJB9A/s1600/venturestar-8756.jpg)
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3-Ya8CAPvWM/TYex8dLRtTI/AAAAAAAABpc/A_SgYOoDsCM/s1600/sg_stuff-3632.jpg)
Here are a couple shots of our newer buildings. They are simple construction but effective. You can put minis on teh roofs or on the walkways or even under the buildings around the support pylons. The roofs lift off and they have fairly spacious interiors. Even with kinda chunky resin furniture the insides are very playable. On some of the smaller buildings for theis set we will be using forced perspective furniture. Rather than blocking off a large section of table with a chunky closed building now we have three levels of play surface on each building.
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They look great and very useable. Plenty of space inside and I'm sure they'll prove to be ideal for gaming with :-*