MAKER MONDAY: When life hands you melons, SMASH THEM WITH YOUR THIGHS!

Orc min smashing a melon between her thighs

Miniature is “Bae Victis” by Vae Victis. Painted by Devon Jones. Photo by Devon Jones

rc min smashing a melon between her thighs

Miniature is “Bae Victis” by Vae Victis. Painted by Devon Jones. Photo by Devon Jones

Devon painted this Bae Victis min (from Vae Victis) as part of an ongoing project — a shadow box to commemorate our gaming group’s wrap of Paizo’s Skull & Shackles. He painted it as part of Vae Victis’s monthly paint-along, accessible through their Discord channel. You can find more info through their Patreon.

We finished that game a couple of years ago, but life happened. Better late than never.

This half-orc honors our tank, who wasn’t the best cook in the Shackles but excelled at smashing things. Spoon, we salute you!

Get in, gamers! We're doing bug stuff!

Welcome back, gamers and makers! We’re eager to get back to showing you some of the fun things we’re doing -- and hear about how you’ve been occupying yourselves during a hard couple of years.

Our games shifted entirely online at the start of the pandemic, so creating terrain for in-person games we couldn’t play has been both sad and an exercise in hope. But we’re about to start an in-person Starfinder campaign (Attack of the Swarm) with a few friends, and we couldn’t be more excited to be playing games in meatspace again. 

Devon and a friend have been working on a dice-roller app. It’s not ready for primetime yet, so I won’t link to it, but I’ll keep you updated. It’s been useful for complicated high-level rolls, making our high-level campaign run much more smoothly online.

Devon has been maintaining his regular monthly schedule releasing 3D-printable terrain files. You can find them for free at Thingiverse and MyMiniFactory. If you like them, please consider supporting our Patreon.

If you’re playing online, what apps are you using? We’re using Miro for our tabletop and Zoom for communication. These apps allowed us to complete Skulls & Shackles, a Pathfinder campaign that ran for three years. Online gaming is better than no gaming.

Blimey! The pirate ship be done, ye bilge-sucking landlubbers!

The pirate ship project is done!  This final release gives us the forecastle and the poop deck, as well as a thing that contains all of the blender and OpenSCAD source.

There are plenty of places to go to from here.  The masts can be extended with wooden dowels.  There are mounting points for the rigging on the sides of the deck.  The captain's quarters (along with any of the other quarters) can be outfitted with furniture. There are tons of possibilities. 

At least two of these decks (the lower hold and the bilge) would be underwater at sea, so when this is on the table, you might want to remove those layers most of the time. 

We've already started working on "The Man's Promise," which is a larger ship and the main setting for Skull and Shackles. We think most shipboard adventures need two so you can do ship-to-ship battles!

Grab them all on Thingiverse.

Carrion Crown: Another 4-year-long campaign complete

Our heroes fight the last of a long, brutal battle with the forsaken Lich in Carrion Crown. 

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE FINAL FIGHT IN CARRION CROWN. TURN BACK NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED.

Here we are wrapping up another 4-year-long campaign. Carrion Crown is a dark horror based in Ustalav, where the Whispering Tyrant is about to return to do the sorts of things Liches do. (They're really not nice people.)

Here, Devon's Inquisitor focuses on taking down the forsaken Lich's soul shield, which was making it impossible to do enough damage to kill the slippery little jerk. Lee's witch works on dispelling and summons magic, and Sierra (pictured here behind the laptop) has her druid transform into a giant fire elemental and heal, which became especially important after the cleric got bull-rushed 80 feet off the platform and spent five rounds getting back into action. . 

This shot was taken right before Sierra's fire elemental transformed into an air elemental that picked up Monica's paladin, at which point the righteous fury of Iomedae turned the would-be tyrant into a negative-energy pinata. 

Thanks to Scott for GMing and putting up with our shenanigans!

Nerds at play: Wrapping up Rise of the Runelords

Our gaming group in its natural habitat as we wrap up Rise of the Runelords. From left to right: Monica, Morgan, Scott, Lee and Peter. 

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR FINAL FIGHT OF RISE OF THE RUNELORDS. TURN BACK NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED. 



Like a boss fight should be, this one was brutal. Morgan's cleric died three times. Monica's bard died once. Lee's wizard died once.  Thoughts of a TPK ran through our minds more than once. 

As usual, Scott's ranger did a ton of ranged damage, not to mention brought our cleric and wizard back from the dead by destroying Karzoug's soul-sucker platform. It also brought a previously downed Rune Giant back to life, but since we were facing a TPK without our cleric and wizard, nobody was going to quibble.

Peter's barbarian rushed Karzoug's throne like the rage-monster he is. Morgan's cleric summoned Planetars that countered the worst of Karzoug's magic. Lee's wizard cast Maze on the dragon, which kept Big Blue out of the fight long enough for us to keep up with Karzoug's assault. (He also spent a lot of time raising the cleric from the dead.) Monica's bard sang "Hungry Like the Wolf" to keep everyone's morale up, and a well placed Pilfering Hand ripped that metamagic rod from Karzoug's greedy grasp. And Devon's dedication to gaming and 3D-printed gaming terrain made all of this possible. 

All that's left to do now is figure out how we're getting all this gold back to Sandpoint, and whether introducing it all at once will destabilize the regional economy.