Morgenes's page

Your magnet idea is genius! No problems tearing stuff with that nasty velcro! How much does that stuff cost?

For my foam-core based pieces (minichunk and custom maps printed to scale), I bought a long strip of 1/4" magnet. I got it at my local A.C. Moore (Arts & Crafts store) for $6/25 feet. I cut it into 1/4" squares then use Zap-a-gap (or any other super glue) to glue it to the foam core. What's really nice is when I get the 40% off coupon (sent to your mailbox every week if you sign up on their web site) and use that to cut the cost of the more expensive supplies like that.

You mentioned a minichunk version of the Lotus Dragons base - have you posted any pictures of this anywhere? I'd love to see it.

I have posted my pics of Dead Dog Alley, using VillageWorks from World Works Games.

Gallery for Dead Dog Alley

I didn't have the time to pull together ground tiles for this, so used a plain vinyl mat for the ground.

I spent a good bit of time making interiors for all the houses based on discussions in the WWG's forums, which were extremely helpful. Of course, that meant my players didn't try and go inside.

For the special maps (the Taxidermist's shop and the Gauntlet) I blew the maps up from the PDFs and printed them at 1" squares. Then cut out and glued to foam board, then cut the foam board out. A couple of magnets and it was quick and easy to put together as they explored. You can see the start of the Gauntlet in the last picture (the warforged standing on the die is hanging from a rope, about to realize there is a carrion crawler waiting underneath the waters, as well as a bunch of crossbow weilding snipers). I did some extra careful cutting to make the illusory wall and arrow slits not 'as noticeable' so the players took a while to figure out how to get out of there. I made it so that when they did find the other side of the illusory wall, the cardstock floor at the wall overlapped onto the foam core of the lake portion, so that it worked right. I know...it's confusing to try and type it too. Needless to say, I thought a lot about how to hide that.

You mentioned a minichunk version of the Lotus Dragons base - have you posted any pictures of this anywhere? I'd love to see it.

I'll see if I can find what pictures I took, if nothing else I can throw it back out on the board and snap some pics. It's really not as visually exciting because we stopped using the wall pieces. When you're dealing with that twisting of a structure, with that narrow of gaps, it's really hard to work out all the walls that are needed as well as to even see what's going on. Minichunk (with walls) works best where your dungeon is relatively open, with large corridors. So I made a bunch of different sized corridors and room tiles attached to magnets that I could lay out as they explored. We actually got to the point where I'd call out what they needed and they would lay the tiles.

Also, as a teaser, I'm currently in the process of building the Vanderboren Estate, using Shellendrak Manor. It's a truly massive build, the first floor fitting on a 29 x 22 inch foam board base. I plan on building the three above ground floors and using Minichunk for the basement.

Hey what are odds I can get copies of you wyvern sails. Too cool. Would love to use them on my maiden.

Here's a link to some photos of my Maiden just to show I made one as well.

http://games.ph.groups.yahoo.com/group/savagetide-dc/photos

Later,

Shade325

Shoot me an email and we can talk about it (morgenes (at) gmail.com)

Chris I like your ship too!

FWIW, it's the 'Maiden of the Seas' from <a href="http://www.worldworksgames.com/">World Works Games</a>. I also built one for the STAP and have posted several articles here about using WWG's paper terrain (including the ship).

Note: Sorry about the links to images, I thought I could post the images here originally, but apparently not.

Hi, it's me again. I posted earlier here about using 3-D terrain from World Works Games to run the Savage Tide Adventure path. Well, it seems I completely missed posting pics from the Beneath Parrot Isle and Lotus Dragons portion of the first chapter. I did far more work on the Beneath Parrot Isle portion, even custom-drawing my own tile to handle a water area shown on the map. The Lotus Dragons portion I used the Minichunk 1" dungeon tile floor pieces to create the map. I tried using the doors from the Minichunk set, but the players still had issues with seeing over them, so I created door floor tiles that look a lot like the map symbol for doors.

The second chapter of the Savage Tide adventure path starts with the players trying to chase down Vanthus who has gone to Kracken's Cove to set fire to ships to later steal their contents. The players arrive too late, as told by the plume of smoke visible a mile from the cove. When they arrive, the find they were too late:

Image of fires burning on skull cove

Beyond the burning ships was the Sea Wyvern. It was far enough out that it wasn't caught in the flames. The Sea Wyvern will play an important part in future chapters of the story, and so I went ahead and photo-shopped the described blue wyvern onto the front sails of my Maiden of the High Seas model, turning her into the Wyvern of the Sea.

The Sea Wyvern at Skull Cove

I used 'Skullcove', 'Maiden of the High Seas' and 'Bits of Mayhem' (for the fire transparencies) sets to complete this set piece for the start of the 2nd chapter of the AP. The flat paper ships were downloaded from the Wizard of the Coast site, resized to 1" squares and printed out to represent the burning ships.

One of the things I've been working on is gluing the ground tiles to flat sheets of magnets rather than dealing with other suggested methods for keeping ground tiles together. It gives them a fairly good weight even if you didn't have a metal board to set them on, and almost works too well on a magnetic surface. Here's what one looks like:

Magnet Tile pic

And here it is being laid in:

Magnet tile being laid in pic

For more pictures, check out my gallery.

Ok, so my players are going through Bullywug's Gambit. Due to an unfortunate set of rolls, all the (non-warforged) pc's have acquired the Savage Tide disease from the savage monkeys in the first encounter. On top of the acid damage, and walking right into the savage dionysus, they needed to rest pretty quickly.

Since there's nothing about it, and they waited out the fire, they rested on the Sea Wyvern, I figured everyone on board was dead, and so didn't have any encounters there. The problem is they then decide to hole up on the boat for 2 days before re-entering the caves.

Should I adjust the caves further on for them taking longer? Obviously the lanterns that were low on fuel, lighting the caves would be extinguished, but what about Captain Harliss Javell? Should she have survived to this point, or should I have her as another victim of the Savage Tide?

What to do? The rest of the adventure is very time sensitive, and if they keep resting it'll take them forever to get through this. Although I guess it'd explain why the Bullywugs were able to get to the Vanderboren estate before them.

Any input you guys could provide would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Morgenes

Not that I know of but searching for a mpa revealed this http://wwgallery.pcinfoman.com/thumbnails.php?album=305 which is impressive on it's own.

I was the guy who posted those pics. It is the Maiden of the Seas from WorldWorksGames, as pointed out by other people on this thread.

It took me about 3 weeks of work to put that together, working 2-4 hours per night. Cost wise it was about $60 for materials & the PDF from WWG. However, note that building this ship is far from 'easy'. It is very time consuming, but the end result is very much worth it for the 'WOW' factor alone.

I plan on reusing the ship as the Sea Wyvern when they get to that chapter.

Note that I've also posted another thread on the Savage Tide in 3D featuring the Minichunk Dungeons from WWG creating the Vanderboren Vault in TINH. I have also done the same for Beneath Parrot Isle, the Lotus Dragons ambush (complete with buildings with roofs that the dragons attacked from) and their lair beneath Dead Dog Alley (and a model of the well that led down to it). I need to post the pics still, but do plan to do so.

So my players are nearing the end of the first chapter and last weekend they faced the crucible. The text describes the cavern of the crucible as being 20 feet high, but there's no mention of how tall the well is above it. I decided that the well itself was 30 feet deep before the cavern below it.

Of course, I didn't think to look up the jumping into water rules until after the session. You'd think the fact that Lotus Dragon thieves jumped into the well would tip me off that I should have. But, according to the d20 SRD, the first 20 feet of fall into at least 10 feet of water does no damage. After that the next 20 feet do 1d3/10 feet non-lethal damage.

So my guess is the well was supposed to be 10-20 feet before the cavern opened up for another 20 foot fall. This would give a 30-40 foot fall which should result in 1-6 points of non-lethal damage for the falling thief.

With a successful DC 15 tumble or swim check, they could have avoided all damage if it was a total of 30 feet from the well to the water.

My players (six level 2 pcs and one level 1 pc) ended up using the well's rope (and another rope they brought along) to climb down by twos, and after swinging, (DC13 strength) jump to land. They ended up pincushions from the four Lotus Dragons hiding behind the arrow slits and illusory wall and two of them were put under as they were trying to climb down, plunging them into the murky water below.

Anyone else run into this? How did your players handle the descent into the well?

Now that the Dragons are on alert, the text describes that there are seven of them in the barracks, sleeping unless they are on alert. It never says where those seven go if they're not sleeping. My thought was to use them as random encounters, or reinforce other positions (possibly the exit from the crucible as my players are currently hiding in the crocodile (in my case carrion crawler)'s den. Anyone else have any ideas on where they'd go?

If I was warforged I'd me more worried about falling overboard when the ships in deep ocean waters.

They can actually swim pretty well, and even then they can't drown. Not nearly as much of a threat as to the dwarf in half plate.

I just wanted to make sure the disadvantages in the race were already taken into account. (I personally love the race)

Yep. I've also been impressed with the roleplay level of my warforged players. We'll see how they do on the Isle and beyond.

Just curious, folks with warforged (except the artificer)are remembering that the cure spells are only half effective, right?

Yes, however they can craft and heal themselves overnight with a DC16+ roll. (15 is the minimum needed, you get 1 healing per point above 15). Since they need no sleep, and currently are in the city that's how they're healing themselves. Once they hit the remote areas and need to be helping with watches I have a feeling it'll go worse for them.

Paladins should be immune to savage fever. To say they're not makes an already relatively useless ability even worse. The same goes for warforged; they're immune to savage fever as well. In fact, they're immune to the savage tide itself since they're constructs, and you can't put the savage creature template on a construct.

If you want to make it so savage fever works on paladins and warforged, you shouldn't call it a disease at all. Call it a curse instead. Of course, that makes it slightly more powerful than before, since less creatures are immune to curses than diseases...

Thanks for the clarification and the level setting. If a paladin would be immune, so should a warforged. I think they'll see enough other challenges, plus trying to keep the other characters from getting infected to make it interesting all the same.

Here's a thought, perhaps the disease only affects the organic parts of the warforged--perhaps any wooden bits start sprouting nodules that erupt into sappy puss, maybe it gives them a split personality, or causes an arm to act independently, etc. Don't have any warforged in my game (we're in Mystara, though I'd work in a 'forged if somebody wanted to play one) but it's an interesting thing to consider.

Actually, if I remember right it doesn't affect plant matter. In Kracken's Cover the Violent Fungus is not affected by the Savage Tide. Good thought though.

I hadn't really thought that far ahead... I have one warforged artificer in my campaign... so it might not be a huge issue if only one of them is immune to the effects.

Ya, I've only got 2 out of 7 party members that are warforged. It is a racial benefit, and I have a feeling as they move along there will be worse issues than the fort saves from the tide.

But, I would like there to be some threat. Making it supernatural and not stopped by his immunities would make them freak out for sure... but I'm not sure if it's fair or not. It does take away from one of the benefits of their race. Even if they are a pretty powerful race.

Perhaps it only partially affects them?

Perhaps, but partially how?

BTW - I think I'm going to try my hand at some of the World Works stuff this holiday! Thanks for the inspiration the other thread!

That's what I was hoping for! Let me know if you want my plans for the dungeons in Excel and/or PDF format, I can shoot them your way. It includes my modified layouts and piece counts on how many pieces it takes to make each layout as well as how many pages you need to print to get that many pieces.

After having my warforged players negate two issues with their character traits in the first two sessions (walking on the bottom of the bay to reach the Blue Nixie and poison immunity) I was thinking about what's going to happen when they encounter the Savage Tide. Being immune to disease, the warforged will not really face any true threat from the Savage Tide.

My current plan is to say that the tide will affect any living being, being a supernatural disease, but I'm not sure my players will really buy it.

I'm wondering how other Eberron DMs are handling this, any insights?

It's been two weeks, so here's the progress report from our latest session.

My group descended into Castle Terkanian this week to help Lavinia get into her family Vault. This time I built World Works Games' (http://www.worldworksgames.com/) MiniChunk Dungeon 1" for this setting.

After having done the ship for the first adventure, doing this was practically a walk in the park. Except for the curved wall sections (which I added at the end because I wanted some more flair), everything was very straightforward, easy to cut out and glue with no fiddly bits (technical term) to cut out. Even the curved wall sections just had a somewhat harder glue to get the top to glue down. It definitely would have been much easier to have started my Card stock terrain building with this set.

Building this took me about 10-15 hours and took about 22 sheets of card stock. I was still using the ink, foam board, glue and markers I bought for the ship, so there was no additional cost there. I went against their instructions to use Velcro to secure my sections to the board, and instead used magnet strip cut into 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch squares and glued under each corner. I found that the adhesive of the strip I bought wasn't quite strong enough to hold up, so I went back and used super glue to attach them to the pieces.

I am running this for seven players, so I expanded the map a bit to allow for a bit more flow for the number of characters, so it's not a perfect match for the map in Dungeon. However, it would be a simple matter of removing a few floor tiles and rearranging walls to make it match completely.

Without further ado, here's the link to the gallery for the next installment in bringing Savage Tide in 3D using Card stock terrain:

http://wwgallery.pcinfoman.com/thumbnails.php?album=315

BTW - did you have to customize the model any in order to make it work for the Blue Nixie? By this, I mean things like take out decks or cabins. Or was it close enough to the ship as portrayed in the magazine to work without modification?

I created the model as detailed in the instructions. It is a close match to the Nixie as it stands, however there were a few notable changes. The captains quarters in the plans of the Nixie were very small and because of the way the Sea Maiden has the stairs up to the aft deck, there was no space for the extra rooms they describe. Instead I just made that entire section the 'master suite' where Vark was hanging out, 'entertaining' his lady friend. I dispersed the thugs that were supposed to be in that section below deck instead. The space in front of the Forecastle deck near the prow is not there in the Nixie's deck plans. This is actually how most of my PCs snuck on board, they swam the 100' from the pier and climbed up the anchor chain and entered through the forecastle into the sail locker.

The Sea Maiden itself comes with removable walls for the interior of the hull allowing multiple configurations for the interior of the ship. The only wall in the bottom section of the hull that was permanently there was the one separating the forecastle near the front of the ship and the back. The other two walls that you see in the pics slide in and out easily. When it comes to reusing this ship for the Wyvern, I'll rearrange the hull area, segregating it up more into living quarters for the various people on the ship. The cargo deck below will likely have to be the lower hull reused. I might create a separate cargo deck without walls if I have the time/inclination.

The Maiden also comes with two sets of sails, one with the sails up and the other with the sails down. I was planning on using this to show the thugs starting to get the ship ready to sail out in the evening. However, my pc's reacted faster than that and the thugs never started to set sail.

Holy Crap! You don't mess around. Nice job. How much for it?

Heh, not for sale :)

That looks amazing! Good work on that! Thanks for giving the idea on how much time/money/effort it takes to put it together too, I really appreciate that. Perhaps I'll put one together over the Christmas holidays before I start the campaign off.

Question: Are you going to use it as the model for the Sea Wyvern as well or will you make a modified version?

Thanks again,
Somnambulant.

Ya, with that much effort it will be reused in this campaign as the Wyvern. My players haven't seen it with the sails unfurled yet, so I likely will just use the existing sails for the Wyvern. I had grand designs on coming up with a way to switch out the name plate, but didn't get to that so didn't put a name plate on the ship.

Others on the WWG forums have created bigger and smaller versions of the ship, but I really think bumping up the Wyvern to be the bigger ship will be a lot more cost effective for me.

After re-finding World Works Games (http://www.worldworksgames.com/) from a post on this board, I purchased and built their Maiden of the Seas model. Since I found out about it here, I thought I'd go ahead and post my feedback that I also posted on their boards. Included below and in the linked gallery is some spoiler information about the first part of the first adventure. Don't read further if you haven't begun reading the first adventure.

Here's my post on the WWG forums:

The first part of the Savage Tide Adventure Path appearing in Dungeon magazine is a high stakes encounter onboard a sailing ship docked in the middle of the bay. Here is my gallery showing pics from the first adventure which ran last Saturday night.

http://wwgallery.pcinfoman.com/thumbnails.php?album=305

I took the Maiden of the Seas and pulled it together over 3 weeks of 2-4 hours per day working on it. I took a couple of days off over Thanksgiving, but it was probably about 40 hours of work easy. All told the project probably cost me about $60, including the PDF from WWG, ink, paper, foam board, glue and sharpees (I went through a brand new black sharpee completing the boat).

Based on how good it felt to have such a great prop and the stunned reaction from the players who had no clue what was coming, it was the best $60 I've ever spent on a gaming product.

To serve as the cage housing the exotic creatures that were being smuggled into town, I kitbashed together a 2"x2" cage using the outline of the cargo cubes and manipulated and overlayed the texture from the grates.

I have purchased several other sets (as can be seen in some of the decorations on the ship) and am now happily building the Vanderboren Vault for the next part of the adventure which will run in two weeks. I'm using a magnetic masterboard instead of the velcro and so far it works wonderfully. I'll post pictures of that after it runs.

Thanks to Denny of WWG for such a beautiful ship to build, it truly is a masterpiece. Thanks to all of the posters on WWG's forums who have really helped with their tips and discussions. As I've said before, the biggest tip is to edge before you glue. Edging after you glue makes it really hard to get in and cover all the white areas. Even then, as you can see in my pictures, there is still a good bit of white showing.

Anyone have a scaled down image of the Sea Wyvern? The poster is too big for my scanner. :(

I want to print it onto cardstock and paste it onto some foam to make a ship for the PCs. :)

I don't, however I did build the Maiden of the Seas from World Works Games (http://www.worldworksgames.com) and am using that in my campaign. It debuted last Saturday as the Blue Nixie and worked wonderfully. It will return as the Sea Wyvern in a few months when we get that far in the adventure.

MarkB, just let me say, you are a true saving grace. Without the official conversion notes, you're notes have been a real help in saving me work on converting this adventure to Eberron. Keep up the great work, and feel free to keep posting what you do.

Getting the art/map supplements caught up and getting the conversion notes online is in fact a priority for early next week. We just turned over the latest issue to Dungeon (actually... it'll be heading to the printer on Monday), which means we've got time to get caught up... usually takes us 2-3 months to get back on schedule after Gen Con.

So any hope for early next week?

Thanks for the links. I remember looking at World Works a long time ago, but at the time I wasn't running. I've already ordered my PDF, now to go to the craft store to get some supplies!

Out of curiosity, where did you get the card stock boat? Do you have an on-line URL to it?

Hey, I'd like a copy as well please: morgenes (at) gmail.com