Fat Fountains

Today, we’re featuring some marvelous FDM-printed scatter terrain and adding it to our next featured D&D gameboard, while showcasing a talented 3D-print creator who doesn’t receive nearly enough recognition.

We’re a bit puzzled as to why 3DRPG hasn’t done more DnD posts on all their great 3D-print content, especially for all the FDM enthusiasts out there. We’ve done a few spotlights, but honestly, not nearly enough. Let’s fix that.

We’ve prepped four marvelous fountains from their Realm of the Goblin King Kickstarter. You can either do a late pledge or pick this specific scatter terrain pack over at DriveThruRPG as a Crypt Classics set.

For context, we’re currently prepping the mini-dungeon below Tresendar Manor inside the free D&D Beyond Acquisitions Incorporated module. This mysterious underground hideout features a total of 12 rooms, and the party is tasked with clearing it out and obtaining answers to who sacked The Fellowship of the Golden Mongoose AI Franchise.

We already took care of the initial above-ground encounter, but we think it will be fun to build this map out together over the next few weeks. Hopefully, we’ll inspire fellow Dungeon Masters and give you some nifty new STL ideas.

So, let’s kick it off with the first room: The Cellar. The main scatter terrain feature of this encounter is a cistern located at the opposite end of the room. To maintain our sanity, we never take a module’s description at face value. Besides, everything is open to interpretation, right?! Always do what you can, given the time and resources available between game sessions.

DM Ben reads it as, “We need a terrain piece that can hold water.” So, we check our ever-growing library to see what we already have, and lo and behold, we already featured the Fat Dragon Games Fountains back in 2023, but we never had a need to paint them until now. Wonderful start.

Once again, we asked DM Ben to color these beauties, as we needed to get them into our game sooner rather than later. Necessary clarification: We never claim to be a professional paint website. We follow the Arm’s Length Rule and want to get our joyous 3D prints into our ongoing D&D games as soon as possible.

Additionally, we believe our final pieces are visually appealing (e.g., “good enough”) and designed to cater to the average painter, giving them the confidence to reduce their piles of shame. We watch endless YouTube videos and continually strive to learn and improve our brush skills.

With that said, here are our fountains in all their colorful glory. We’re big into batch painting here at 3DRPG, simply because there never seem to be enough hours in the hobby day. We only need one of these for our cellar, but now we have four options to choose from in the future. #love

A brilliant design feature by Fat Dragon Games for these Crypt Fountains is the incredibly handy water inserts. Modularity always gets us right in the heartstrings. These sit on the top of a fountain’s base, so you can change them up based on the TTRPG scenario.

We did a blood one and an acid one for starters, but we plan to print and paint several more, so they’re always at the ready.

Let’s briefly review the paint colors used so you can try them out or refine our suggestions.

• Prime Flat Black.
• Apply Slapchop base.
• Stone: ASP Runic Grey (which sings on Slapchop)
• Water Base: ASP Tidal Wave.
• Stone Decor Base: FAN Ancient Stone.
• Stone Decor Edging: FAN Tomb King.
• Skeleton Base: Citadel Contrast Skeleton Horde.
• Skeleton Edging: Citadel Palid Witch Flesh.
• Blood Insert: ASP Blood Red.
• Acid Insert: FAN Electric Lime + FAN Disgusting Slime Effect.

We’re primarily an Army Painter shop, along with several Citadel Contrast paints. So, ASP stands for Army Painter Speedpaint, and FAN stands for Army Painter Fanatic paints.

For the water effect itself, we use AK’s Still Water Effect. We’re not the greatest at properly utilizing this material, mainly because the instructions require us to pour such a small amount for each layer — a painfully restrictive 3mm limit. And then we have to let each layer dry for 24 hours – ugh. Still, it’s our fav water effect product out there, so we just do our best.

You can see a little pooling and cracking in our super-zoomed-in picture here. That’s because these fountains are relatively deep, and so you have to be careful in your initial pour. Still, at Arm’s Length, these fountains just sing, baby!

For our Cellar, we opted for the Art Deco design version, as it gives the fountain a sense of innocence and peace. We want the players to trust the water fountain before them (wink, wink).

Now, we’ve got our focal point scatter terrain piece for the first room, and we’re off to the races! Next, we’ll build out room 2: Storage.

Until next time!