Train Tuesday Part 140: Signs, Signs, Everywhere, Signs

Greetings, fellow windowseaters. We decided to get our craft on and do a fun, creative project for all the right reasons, so Hovertrain riders have plenty of enticing scenery while they ride comfortably along. Let’s go!

DM Ben wanted some transitional, amusing scatter terrain for entering our campaign’s capital city of Waterdeep. Something that would get a good chuckle from the game group. This same terrain could also be used in combat tactics for ambushes, AC cover, etc.

Several 3DRPG team members come from an advertising agency background, and we love all those old billboards from the 1960s. We just think the creative style brings all the right feels. So, DM Ben asked us to make some billboards for The Forgotten Rails to dress up the game table whenever he lays down a mighty Hovertrain.

We found this really nifty billboard STL file by Greensman on Makerworld. Even better, it’s a free download, as its creator appears to be a train enthusiast. And certainly many 3D prints for traditional railroads translate to our Hovertrain environment. This piece certainly fulfills our gameboard needs. We just need to get creative.

We experimented with multiple sizes here: a smaller one, 3d20 long and 2d20 squares wide, and a larger one at 4d20 long by 3d20 wide. We’ll be using the larger size for more prominent medieval billboards, and the smaller for grander announcements or city entrances.

Wood paint steps here are nice and easy:

• Prime Flat Black
• Drybrush Craftsmart Dark Orange.
• Drybrush Craftsmart Brown.
• Make a wash 50-50 Craftsmart Golden Brown and water.
• Go back over with a light Blackwash until you get the desired tone.

This is an affordable craft paint scheme and the same one we used for our Tanker car. We use this wood scheme on larger DnD 3D prints (especially FDM ones, as those suck up a lot of paint).

Next up, we need to spin up some old-time billboard messages. Quick disclaimer: 3DRPG literally loses money every month, and we don’t charge for our little ol’ blog. The website ads don’t even cover monthly hosting. So we’ll periodically use Google Gemini for free, non-commercial content like article images, billboards, NPC cards, place cards, shop cards, item cards, etc. We don’t charge our readers for any of our ongoing content. We’re just having fun and simply want to grow the hobby and inspire you all for the good of the game.

Anyway, here’s an example billboard we made for Keanu Leaves, Waterdeep’s best herbalist and potion establishment. We plan on making more of these for some of our other reputable city vendors.

We wanted our DnD billboards to look weathered, so we ordered a small $9-ish jar of Mod Podge Crystal Clear Matte Glue to seal it onto the 3D print. Then, we used a sponge brush to apply the Mod Podge and a smoother tool to avoid unwanted creases and bubbles. Go slow here.

We made an MS Word document to paste our art into, with two printout sizes that matched our physical billboards: Height 2.25″ and Width 3.5″ for the small one, and Height 3″ and Width 4.5″ for the larger one. When we make an image, we place it in this doc and then size it accordingly before printing it out and gluing it onto the 3D printed billboard.

Here are our first two TTRPG billboard attempts. We learned a lot from these initial 3D prints. First, Mod Podge really lightens the color of your original printout. These look much better in person than our photos show, but we think the faded color gives them a sun-bleached, weathered look, which makes sense for outdoor billboards.

Also, we probably should have printed them on thicker card stock, since the Mod Podge lets the background color on the FDM 3D print show through a bit. None of those are deal-breakers, but we’re going to run a test piece and see whether applying a black or brown wash helps at all.

Here’s a shot from the backside so you can see how big they are, where you might have your adventurers (or monsters) do a Stealth check, etc. We considered doing the bigger stand portion on the back, in like an Army Painter Speedpaint Enchanted Steel color, but felt doing them all in wood would look better overall.

DM Ben wanted two large signs. One to show the adventurers are approaching the city of Waterdeep (partially inspired by the Welcome to Las Vegas sign). The second one will show the players are approaching Ocean View Station, the largest and main Hovertrain terminal in the city. We might do a couple of smaller billboards for smaller station stops in the wild.

We have some more creative ideas here, and we’ll show them off in future DnD blog posts. Until next time!