Locked In

We always get a little excited when we get the opportunity to circle back on a previous encounter build and improve one of the central scatter terrain pieces! So, let’s explore how we made a spooky hanging cage even better!

Let’s start with a quick refresher: there’s a Night Hag masquerading as an old woman and snatching up children in Waterdeep. She uses the youngling’s tears to keep her illusion up and magical powers at full power. Our adventurers are going to storm her cabin in The High Forest and if they’re victorious, have an opportunity to secure the deed to that property.

The group has to rescue one child in the basement and another in the backyard by using the right key in a hectic race to free them. We already built the creepy basement as well as the backyard but we want to improve upon what we already have.

3DRPG is leaning on Loot Studios today thanks to their super slick It’s a(nother) Trap set. We missed their Hanging Cage Trap print initially, but it caught our eye on rescan of their immense DnD content library.

We printed this scatter terrain piece on our resin printer as solid print and not hollowed. That judgment call definitely sucked up more resin, but we just like our scatter pieces to have some heft to them (and hollow pieces can be potentially messy later). Still, if you ever need a doorstopper, you’ve found one. 😉

There is nothing fancy in our paint steps here, as novice painter DM Ben took a stab at getting some colors on this bad boy. The print has excellent texture to it so it really made the details pop once our brushes got ahold of it.

• Prime Flat Black with a slapchop base.
• Rocks: Dwarven Forge Dungeon Gray heavy dry brush.
• Rocks: Craft Smart Grey light dry brush.
• Rocks: White very light dry brush.
• Rocks: Dwarven Forge Earth Stone, spot dry brush.
• Rocks: Dwarven Forge Moss Green, spot dry brush.
• Rocks: Citadel Contrast Flesh Terrors, splatter spot dry brush.
• Base: Craft Smart Burnt Umber, heavy dry brush.
• All: various flock materials for some personality.

So, obviously, the scale will be off with the cage, but this replacement piece just makes a better first impression on the table. We’re ok with that smaller cage because once the group interacts with this specific gameboard element, we’ll place the originally planned and larger Dungeon of Despair piece on an elevated clear stand for players to interact with. DM Ben is also keeping the amazing Dwarven Forest trees as supporting scatter.

Nothing to it, right guys?! It’s always a good feeling to circle back on a previously prepped DnD encounter (that hasn’t been played on quite yet) and make it even better. 🙂

Until next time!