Wandering Wednesday: Cat Burglar

Let’s saunter in to Wandering Wednesday with another traveling miniature that just so happens to fit perfectly into our current 3D print gameboard project! Just be sure to hold on to your valuables.

We’re really enjoying populating our new Hovertrain Hostel encampment. So much so that we couldn’t even wait til the next Train Tuesday installment to do another post. One of the coolest aspects of a 3D printer is how quickly you can introduce new non-player-characters into your next DnD sesh, and today is a perfect example.

Our delightful printing hobby offers us numerous amazing miniature options. We’re like a kid in a candy store whenever we need a new piece of scatter terrain or mini for our next encounter. Our 3D printers might not be Star Trek replicators, but they’re still insanely powerful for TTRPG enthusiasts to elevate their game!

If you need a quick recap of what we’re currently making 3D-printed miniatures for, check out our fun campground NPC post from earlier this week. We’re trying to add a nice mix of NPCs that our game group will utilize in a big surprise ambush encounter. We have six players in our office DnD campaign, so we need to come away with at least that many. This way, everyone at the table gets an additional character to play during that unexpected fight.

To recap:

• Proprietor: Briar Thorne.
• Ground Security: Haldor Stormcaller & Helga Armjaw.
• Patreon 1: Joris Root & his faithful hound, Grit.
• Patreon 2: Today’s featured print.
• Patreon 3: Coming soon.

This list will ultimately give us a total of six NPCs. DM Ben is going to let everyone roll a d20 to determine the order of picking who gets whom.

Our only prerequisite for these Hostel patrons is that each one looked like a weary traveler, with basically their whole life on their wandering backs. Thankfully, the 3D printing hobby space offers us an abundance of options when it comes to this type of mini description.

Today’s featured creator, EC3D Designs, is a master in this NPC space, and it’s clear CCO Evan Carothers loves this mini category just as much as we do. We snagged today’s Catfolk Traveler from his superb Everyday Folk Part 2 Kickstarter.

Resident Painter Kimmy Utah was today’s colorist, and she made this DnD mini purrrrrr, baby! We love the white fur coupled with the subtle pink nose and ears. The clothing and bulky backpack paint choices were spot on here. You can practically hear its bulky gear clunking around as this feline friend moseys towards your party.

We’re going to name our newest catfolk NPC traveler Renn Sly. He’s a rogue for hire and just wanders from town to town looking for new work. He prefers to steal from the rich and corrupt, but sometimes a cat’s gotta eat and can’t be too picky on what contract to take next.

We especially love how that long white tail twists in the wind with a full pack of stuff on its back. We often think of the European backpacker stereotypes that roam from Hostel to Hostel, toting these bulky, oversized haversacks on their aching backs. Hence, it’s a key trait we want to utilize in these last two mini selections.

For situations where our miniature doesn’t come with a large knapsack as part of its sculpt, we will use a simple piece of scatter terrain to represent the train traveler’s gear. These more generic pieces of scatter terrain are extremely difficult to source, but it wasn’t for a lack of effort. We searched our bursty MMF library, conducted a Google Image Search, and reached out to some sleuths on Discord. Still, if you want to 3D print something similiar, be sure to check out the STL Miniatures’ Halfling Hostel set.

Until next time!