D&D with miniatures - Evil wizard and Kenku Warlock 3/24

[CookAndrewB]

Thanks. As I'm not entirely sure how long these figures will see use, I didn't want to put a lot of time and energy into them. This is somewhere between my normal standard and "at least it got painted" standard

[beefcake]

"At least it got painted" I like that

These are cool. DEfinitely tabletop worthy if only for a couple of encounters.

[CookAndrewB]

This is Rugolf, the ogre that turns the Ferris Wheel at the Silverpearl amusement park. He is a 3d print of a Milton Bradley Battlemasters Ogre Champion.


I made Rugolf to act as a challenge for a battle in town. The general idea was that Rugolf was enraged by the goblins above, and would come crashing into the scene swinging his mace at anyone that got near him. The challenge would be that Rugolf is a member of the theme park staff, and thus is a "good" guy, though a dim-witted and angry one. It would be bad to kill the friend of one of your employers.


Fortunately, the party caught onto this angle. Unfortunately, my dice rolls with Rugolf were abysmal, and he ended up standing like a statue, completely perplexed by any attempts to communicate with him. I was hoping that they might enlist his help, or enrage him to attack. Pretty much anything to make him of interest. And yet, the dice said that he should basically refuse to do anything.

Here is Rugolf compared to a regular, if not a bit tall, human.


I gave him a little extra love in the paint job department as he was supposed to be a focal point for the game. And yet I don't think he even moved one time in the scene.   

[Little Odo]

Love those goblins - they turned out a treat.

[CookAndrewB]

This stone golem started life as a Super Mutant from a pack of Fallout "green army men" style toys. I needed a stand-in in a pinch and discovered that this fella has no discernable markings that would indicate he is from a post-apocalyptic franchise. So a simple grey paint job and I got myself a golem!


As this figure is very big, the tiny skulls on his hip actually worked well as 28mm scale skulls.


Here is a 28mm figure (if not a slightly tall one) for scale.


Next up will be the evil cult turned into frogs and crabs, working on turning themselves back into evil cult members so that they can kill the (also evil) wizard that turned them into crabs and frogs, to begin with. When the game started, these frogs and crabs were supposed to be just simple wilderness encounters, but the party read evil intent into them and I just ran with it. And since then, they have been doing shady things on the periphery of the campaign and the party gets a certain sense of paranoia whenever a crab or a frog enters the scene. The figures are from a wide range of sources, and are in the progress of getting the proper "I don't know how much effort I want to put into a crab figure" level of paint.

[Mister Frau Blucher]

Hey, Andrew, love the goblins, ogre, and stone golem! What does the golem do at the park, collect ride tokens?

Looking forward to the frogs and crabs, and their unholy vengeance!

[CookAndrewB]

What does the golem do at the park, collect ride tokens?

Looking forward to the frogs and crabs, and their unholy vengeance!

Well, one golem (not possessed or controlled by the Wizard) was part of a puzzle. The golem stood in the center of a room facing one door and behind it was a locked iron gate. Around the outside of the room were smaller alcoves that had a magical shadowy curtain. If the golem is touched it attacks the last person to touch it, but never takes damage. To unlock the gate the Golem had to turn around AND see that there was nobody there. So an attack would have to be performed from the alcoves in a manner as to turn the golem around. At the end of every turn, the golem reset in the center of the room facing one of the two doors. If one door opens, the other shuts, but that didn't really matter too much.

The possessed golem was holding a frog turned human (The cultists into Frogs was more of a Freaky Friday situation where the frog/crab souls had to go somewhere so they went into the human bodies and became the quasi-imortal amusement park staff) who had learned some alchemy by observing the Wizard Dward, and was getting close to cracking the anti-addiction potion for the amusement park's healing sandwiches. The plot gets pretty twisty. So the Goblins were hired to deal with the crab/frog cultists, but then became addicted to the sandwiches and focused all of their energy on raiding the amusement park to get sandwiches. Because the frogs/crabs-now-human staff is of a magical origin they really don't feel the effects of the addictive nature of the sandwiches, and they eat a TON of them to stay healthy to the point of near immortality. Sort of like eating so many preservatives that your body won't rot... but on the soul level. So the goblins were bribed by the wizard in a golem to capture the one person that could stop them from being addicts, thus ensuring that the cult could continue doing what they are doing. This seems weird since the wizard banished the cult, but the party is going to find out that the cult can bring the wizard back from his pocket dimension (which the wizard can't do himself), and then the wizard is planning on laying the smackdown on the cult once and for all. But that won't happen if the cult is stopped, which the former servants (frogs-turned-human) know, hence they were trying to stop the cult and keep the wizard locked away because they hate the service industry.

It is all a bit twisty and has developed on the fly. For a while, the group was working for the wizard under the guise that he wanted to protect the amusement park (his creation) and so they needed to stop the goblins. He was a bit dodgy about the cult's motives and actions but assured the party that the cult was harmless. While quite evil in terms of crabs and frogs, they were just lowly critters after all.

There was an old lady who took tickets. My son's character ended up hiding under a desk with her while a goblin hunted for them. Not particularly brave, but they did survive.

[Grumpy Gnome]

Quite the narrative you have constructed mate. Very cool.

[CookAndrewB]

Storytelling is the fun part of being the DM! Well, that and the improv of trying to react to the unforeseen things that the players do. It is all good mental gymnastics.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

If life gives you a crappy Supermutant, turn it into a stone golem! That's what my grampa always used to say.

And he is a crappy supermutant. But works really well as a golem. The stiff pose actually works very well for that purpose, and the cheeky facial expression gives the impression that he's really enjoying unlife. A nice contrast.

[Mister Frau Blucher]

Man! All I can say is, I wish you were my DM!

[CookAndrewB]

Man! All I can say is, I wish you were my DM!

That is a better compliment than just about anything I can imagine! I'm just glad the party puts up with my weird twists and turns. From reading your comics I think our brains must work similarly. 

[CookAndrewB]

Cult of crabs and frogs... Um, former cult now crabs and frogs? Whatever, here are the grunts:

Files from Thingiverse.

The Amphibromancer, and his half-halfling, half-crab, elite guard!

The weird crabby halfling guys were a lucky find. I had much better luck finding various frog-wizard models.

And the whole cult is ready for their day in the sun!


I'm currently busy sculpting the "big bad" Dward. I did a little work on his background and decided that he was a simple adventurer once upon a time. Not a very good one, and he spent his career failing to rescue princesses, never quite reaching the treasure, and getting spanked by any number of cave-dwelling monsters. Then, one day he found an odd item on a dead adventurer in a cave. This odd codpiece had a demonic face, and once worn the malevolent demon, Nix started to worm his way into Dward's brain. The first major undertaking as the champion of Nix was to seek out a cult that was (unsuccessfully) trying to summon Nix. Dward was to convince them that he was the champion of Nix, and guide the cult towards success. That was the plan. Dward's reputation as a second-rate adventurer and the codpiece's irritating magic (it tempts people to stare at it, and then berates them for looking at the wearer's crotch as if they were a pervert) caused the cult to eventually banish Dward. After years of exile with only the Demonic codpiece for company, Dward hatched his overly elaborate plan to create an amusement park to lure the cult where he would trap their souls in helpless beasts and get his revenge. The demon Nix delighted in driving Dward mad and delighted in the absolute absurdity of the plan. There really wasn't a downside where the demon was concerned.

So we know the plan worked. We know that sometime after the plan the cult organized and hatched their own revenge plot. We aren't sure how Dward got trapped in the pocket dimension, but he claims he can't come back to reality himself, though he can pull things from reality into his pocket dimension. We also aren't sure how the cult was going to bring him back, but the group caught them performing a ritual on the beach that incorporated a piece of Dward's cloak shaped into a voodoo doll of sorts. Of course, this is where the party attacked and (barely) defeated the cult in their first encounter. So we will never know what would have happened if the cult completed the ritual.

[Grumpy Gnome]

Those crabs and frogs are brilliant mate!

Of course I am a big fan of crabs and frogs though so I may be a bit biased. Mrs. GG was not impressed when I said that if I live long enough to see functional anthropomorphic body modification I would be tempted to become a crablike creature.

And Kermit has always been a personal hero to me.

[CookAndrewB]

I just realized that it is the Cult of the Edible Legs.  Perhaps that was the true end game for Dward. To turn his former cult friends into a delicious meal!

I think that also makes him a bit like Gargamel in some respects. Both were probably not great at their magical arts. Both would like to eat their foes. And I believe I can sculpt up this hair and eyebrow combo!