A thing a week 2020, week 13

Week 3 of liftships.  I need a couple of these for next episode so here's one that I built instead of the stuff I was supposed to be doing (aka building a level for today's game).  There's probably another one on the way next week unless a) I can find a good one someone else built, or b) I end up with a lot more unencumbered time than I expect and I do something else.

One really nice thing about these is that they're way easier than building in foam or Lego or something.  Someday, when all of this isolation crap is over, I'll need to build these as props so I got that to look forward to.

Feel free to use for your home games (c) me 2020.

A thing a week 2020, week 12

This week we have another airship liftship.  These are fun to build and like the last one a) it was built from scratch except the wood texture, and b) you're free to use it in your home games but please don't redistribute (c) me 2020. 

This is a single deck knarr, both rugged and practical.  I imagine these as low-cost versions of the fancier liftships in the realm operated by a smaller crew.  It was inspired by the old middle-age sailing ship of the same name.

My copious free time has been ruinously constrained in the last few week but hopefully we're coming outta that tunnel stunned but alive. 

A thing a week 2020, week 11

Yesterday I started a new campaign.  With that campaign I needed an airship, so I built one!  Outside of the wood texture and hex map, everything here was built from scratch.  Eventually I'll build a hero prop for it but as we're stuck in quarantine for the next little but, I didn't need one.  Granted, at normal scale, this prop would be, um, big.

Not shown is the rudder underneath or the weird sails on top but this gives the tactical bits for play that we needed.  Feel free to use this in your own home games as usual.  This image (c) me 2020.

A thing a week 2020, week 10

This week it's tool time and not just tool time, it's Lego tool time.  A long time ago (more than three years ago, apparently) I built a bunch of status trays for tracking bleeds and buffs and whatnot.  These have worked pretty well (pictured here). 

In the intervening chunk of time, my game has shifted considerably from tracking numbers on paper to counting values with chips.   I bought a bunch of cheap acrylic chip holders that work OK but I've never really been happy with them since the nice deluxe chips don't fit very well and small numbers of chips tip over and fall out and are generally unruly.

These trays are built mostly from plates, faded stuff from my collection, and other parts I have in extra abundance from the pick a brick wall.  They also combine two things that would otherwise float around the table taking up space and getting in the way.  We'll probably iterate on them a few times before we're through.

A thing a week 2020, week 9

I collect a lot of concept art for the many games I run.  Organizing this stuff is a real pain in the butt especially when their names are random strings of letters and numbers impossible for most people to remember.  What if there existed a tool that would a) preview this art, b) allow tagging of this art, and c) could display it faster than Windows Photos and without chewing through all available RAM?  Well, I wrote that tool. 

It's a super basic HTML server built in C#.  You hand it a config file with the tags you care about which it throws in checkboxes at the top.  It remembers tags per image (stored in a handy json file) and allows re-tagging if, like me, you often file things while drunk.

This is not a fancy tool and it's got some seriously bad usability issues but it's already saved me a pile of time starting my new campaign. 

meta:  forgot to post this on Sunday but it's backdated through the power of technology!