Friday Fun Day: Subtle Touches

Greetings, weekend warriors! Another work week conquered, so the only thing left to do is let the good times roll with some hot dice and great DnD adventures.

We’ve got a nice mix of DnD miniatures and scatter terrain today, and we think these nifty 3D prints deserve a spot on your gameboard for one of your upcoming encounters. We’ll also share how we plan to integrate them into our own adventures in case you need a few thought starters.

We’ll start with another free, fab download from mz4250 insane DnD miniatures library. This imposing Violet Fungus Necrohulk is certain to bring forth some “WTF is that?” responses. You can scale this one to fit your planned encounter. We kept it simple and just did a 2×2 d20 square, but we recall the default size being pretty insane.

DM Ben was the colorist here, and this one was a breeze to paint. Even though this mini is categorized as a Violet Fungus by name, it looked and felt more like an animated tree to us. Hence, that’s how we painted it up:

• Prime Flat Black | Slapchop Base.
• Tree Layer: ASP Dark Wood + Vallejo Ochre Brown drybrush.
• Tree Edging: FAN Emerald Forest edging (for moss).
• Skulls: ASP Pallid Bone.

The star of this show is the forest base as the woodland ground cover makes all those encased skulls scream, baby! For its DnD 5e stats, the Internet has everything. We’ll probably add this one to our free Wilderness Trek Wandering Monster Table.

Next up, we’re updating one of our scatter terrain pieces from earlier this week, which featured our new Rum Runner Dwarven Trio NPCs. The Soddy Buddy Boys make a particular moonshine that is highly sought after on the Waterdeep Black Market. Beyond the cool miniatures, we showcased a big Ale cask, but the problem was that the barrel was way too big for a gang that is constantly trying to stay one step ahead of the law.

So, we decided to go with a much smaller set of barrels that could easily be hoisted onto their shoulders if they had to make a break for it. And for that scatter, we 3D-printed a piece from EC3D Designs’ Depths of Savage Atoll Kickstarter.

Nothing too tricky to paint up, as all you need is your go-to wood color and some metal banding. Our sneaky Dwarves mixed one of their moonshine barrels with two other everyday liquid barrels and grab it from the wrack whenever they have to make a quick exit. Another idea would be to include an even smaller crate of bottles. This STL was either by Cast n Play or STL Miniatures, but you get the idea here.

We snapped a quick pic so you can see how much better this fits in our Hovertrain car than the larger one we originally highlighted. But again, this wasn’t about the amount of space the scatter took up, but more about it making sense in the NPC’s storyline.

Lastly, we’re also circling back to our Train Tuesday post from earlier this week. We made a really fun Hovertrain Ticket Counter by Cast n Play, but it occurred to us that we didn’t have someone behind the counter to collect the fare and issue a boarding pass.

Brite Minis made this choice easy with this supportless Gnome Wizard miniature. He’s from their monthly Patreon and had all the details we needed to fit our train-ticket-seller scenarios.

Sunrise Sven was Chief Colorist here, and boy howdy, did this cranky little fella turn out great. The blue robe fits The Forgotten Rails’ colors. The book in his hand certainly could be taken as a ticket log and ledger. His raised hand and scowl definitely give off a how-many-tickets and let’s keep-er-movin’ vibe.

Here’s a quick shot of him inside his woodland Ticket Office. Fits like an absolute glove, like this lil’ dude was meant to be.

This weekend is a momentous occasion for DM Ben as his daughter is graduating from NAU! We’re driving up to Flagstaff on Saturday for her ceremony and won’t be back till the weekend is well over, so there won’t be much time for him to prep next week’s articles. Still, we’ll do our best to sneak in a post or two next week.

Until next time!