My group also went with a Diamond Lake themed name:
The Diamond Guard
Search Posts
Wow. Good stuff Trevor! Those long curved walls must have been a b+@#$! Nice touch with the fire in the arena too. I wish I thought of that! Alas, the heroes have just left the city of Greyhawk and are about to get up close and personal with a nasty black dragon. Post more pics if you make more. I love seeing this stuff. -Derek
Oh yeah... I made the Ulgurstasta out of stacked pink foam insulation, glued together and then shaped using a hot-wire foam-cutter. The legs I bastardized from a kit of Starship Troopers bug box from Mongoose Publishing. The eyes are round topped push-pins, and that's pretty much it. Slap on a coat of paint and you're done :) By the way, after I posted this I saw the one made by Tasmanian_tiger at:
Awesome job Tas... now THAT is a gorgeous (and incredibly accurate) looking Ulgurstasta!!!
Nice Luz! I'd love to see the stuff you've done! I need some inspiration myself for some of those upcoming adventures. I'm not positive, but I think http://photobucket.com hosts images for free if you just sign up.
Hi all, I thought you might enjoy some pictures of my custom made Apostle of Kyuss Ulgurstasta set against the backdrop of our custom made Greyhawk Free City Arena! http://www.battlegroundgames.com/greyhawk/images/DSCF0019.JPG
Derek Lloyd
I decided to enlarge the dimensions of Blackwall Keep (I think mine was almost four times as big). I had a hard time understanding how all those soldiers lived in that tiny little keep provided on the map that came with the magazine. My decision to build the keep came the moment I looked at the opening picture for Encounter at Blackwall Keep, with the lizardmen looking at the keep in the background. The provided map seemed way too small and that picture was just way too cool. I also made two changes to how I ran the encounter. First, Allustan didn't flee. This made absolutely no sense to me at all (this point has been well-covered in other threads on the board). Instead, I had him fly out into the swamp to attack a group of lizardmen (off-screen, so to speak), while the players made the charge towards the keep to save the guardsmen stationed there. For added excitement, I made character sheets for each of the guards in the keep and had the players assume their roles - while their own characters had to cover the long distance toward the keep (it was something like 10 or 12 rounds that they had to run to reach attacking distance). The players really took to it and almost immediately grew attached to their "guardsman characters" and fought fiercely to defend the keep. In the end, only one casualty occured for the defenders (poor Eusibo). Several were knocked unconscious but were saved from death. Of course, once the PCs got there, the lizardfolk got STOMPED! Lots of fun!
Primarily it's made out of pink foam insulation. You can pick it up at any Home Depot or Lowes or similar type store. The keep was then coated with a layer of joint compound (literally just smeared it on with a flat stick), then painted. The floor of the arena was done with two coats of a glue/water/sand mixture, then painted.
The Keep I worked on alone here and there over the course of maybe 3 weeks. I would guess maybe 8 hours total, give or take. The arena is actually still a work in progress. The pictures we posted are without any of the detail touches that will come later (weaponry along the walls, shields, banners, flags, etc.). There are two of us working on it currently and we've probably put roughly the same amount of hours as the keep up to this point. The detail work will probably add maybe another 2-4 hours. The first arena battle was very cool. The four-way fight with Arcane Auriga, Badlands Revenge, and the Sapphire Squad ended with two really nasty deaths (Greataxe crit FTW). Poor Korush from Sapphire Squad took it hard and one of the elven archers from Arcane Auriga died likewise. A few gnolls also bit the dust, but nobody much cared :) The players had a shining victory with no casualties.
I've provided two links below with some pictures of two "over-the-top" moments from our Age of Worms game. I figured everyone might be interested in checking them out. The most recent is a few shots of the arena we built for the Champion's Belt adventure: http://www.battlegroundgames.com/greyhawk/arena The second link is from a while back that show our "Encounter at Blackwall Keep" adventure: http://www.battlegroundgames.com/greyhawk/blackwallkeep These pages will become much more involved later. One of the guys in the group is quite an artist and he's been drawing pictures of all the greatest moments (and some of the not-so-great moments) from the campaign. Eventually it will be much more in depth, but for now I figured some people would like to see some of what we've done.
Am I correct that Joren should not be able to use his shield AND wield either of his two weapons? The +1 spear is a two-handed weapon and the sling requires two hands to reload. Am I missing something or is this a mistake?
"Aliens" is probably the single best soundtrack for several of the creepier moments of AoW. Perfect tracks for a battle with some really wormy undead horror and extremely creepy "exploration" music for delving into ancient cairns and tombs. You can download it off of iTunes. The most badass track is "Bishop's Countdown." It's a really powerful musical piece that paints the picture of a party locked in mortal combat with some monstrous, horrible beast. It begins with really evil sounding horror-action music and then slowly turns to what I envision as the heroes gaining the edge until finally bringing the beast down! Incredible track.
I'm a huge fan of soundtracks while gaming. The right music, subtely played, can make any RPG session very memorable. I tend to avoid music by bands, but that's just a personal preference, it works just as well if everyone is into it. I have a pretty long list of film soundtracks that I draw upon. The more obscure ones are better, that way no one identifies the music with a particular scene they love. Here are some: Aliens
There's a lot more but that's all I can think of at the moment.
I HIGHLY recommend running the "alternate" Kyuss zombie encounter proposed by Peter Fuesz. I totally agree, and fully intend to run this in the manner Peter suggested. It will take on even more meaning now that the players are familiar with the keep's defenders.
I thought you all might like to check out how our Age of Worms group experienced the "Encounter at Blackwall Keep." Before I go into the explanation of how the battle went down, I just want to take a minute to say how awesome this message board is. I'm not sure if everyone realizes this, but this is quite an extraordinary event in the history of D&D. I don't believe I've ever seen a discussion about a campaign on this scale before. Literally thousands and thousands of posts about the trials and errors of hundreds and hundreds of gaming groups on one campaign path. Amazing. I just want to thank everyone for their incredible input, ideas, stories, and experiences that have helped me better prepare my own game - which I rank among the most rewarding gaming experiences in my 26 years of gaming. It's just so cool to see so much feedback from so many people! I mean how great is it that the game designers and writers are actually filling in the details on how they intended certain encounters to be run! Okay, on with our handling of Blackwall Keep. I decided early on that the encounter at Blackwall Keep was going to have to be changed considerably from how it was written in the adventure. First of all, there are seven players in my group. If I had left the encounter as written, the party would literally have rolled over the 30 or so lizardfolk that the adventure includes. Upping the numbers to 56 lizardfolk was a no-brainer. Second, I really didn't like the idea of Allustan taking off on the group. I felt that the ten minutes or so he might save by teleporting back at the beginning of the fight as opposed to helping the group and THEN teleporting back to Diamond Lake would not sit well with my players. It just didn't seem to make sense to me. After all, it's going to be DAYS before Allustan gets back with more reinforcements, what difference is ten minutes going to make at that point? So, I included an additional batch of lizardfolk camped a little ways out into the swamp. That way, Allustan can tell the group to handle the rescue of the guardsmen in the keep while he flies out into the swamp to drop some fireballs and scorching rays on the camp to kill and/or scatter the reinforcements. This way, you don't have to steal the player's thunder by having Allustan drop the big bombs while the party acts as backup, and you also don't paint the picture of a very cowardly Allustan. This worked very well and I highly reccomend this change to anyone who hasn't run Blackwall Keep yet. The other big difference from the adventure is that I allowed the players to not only play their characters but also the guardsman who are within the keep itself. I went all out and printed up character sheets for each guardsman and handed two sheets to each of the seven players. They each had their own names and personalities and it made the players care a little more about getting to the keep and saving the poor, underequipped guardsmen. This definitley made the encounter way more exciting, especially since the characters had a lot of ground to cover before they got to the keep itself. Finally, and most importantly, we made the encounter at Blackwall Keep a three-dimensional extravaganza. I have the good fortune of owning a game store in Abington, Massachusetts (shameless plug: Battleground Games & Hobbies) and so I was able to use the store's resources to build a replica Blackwall Keep and surrounding countryside. I have posted pictures of the keep and the event as it transpired here: http://www.battlegroundgames.com/blackwallkeep We weren't able to finish the entire assault in one session so I'll have to update later with more pictures and the final death count for the soldiers within the keep. As you can see, I made the keep considerably larger than the one depicted on the map with the adventure. It just seemed WAY too small to me. I understand the good folks at Paizo would be limited on providing a map any bigger than the one supplied, but I just couldn't bear putting that little map on the table and have the player's faces drop - especially after showing them the really cool cover page of the adventure with the lizardfolk in the foreground the keep in the distance. I would also like to thank sobusTooms for giving me the idea of making Blackwall Keep a 3-dimensional encounter. I was inspired by the photos of how you handled it in your game. Thanks again everyone for all the suggestions and comments on the AoW message boards. This is my first post, but I've been reading since the beginning. Keep 'em coming! |