Play Unsafe

I've just read an interesting and inspirational little book called Play Unsafe by Graham Walmsley. The premise of the book is that using improvisation can change the way you roleplay.

This book is about finding the Zen of roleplaying. Cutting away the rules and 'work' until you are left with improvised play in its purest form. This isn't to every gamers taste, some feel safe within their framework of rules. But even if you only implement a few of the ideas in this book your roleplaying (and GM'ing) will become more spontaneous and open up unexpected possibilities for fun.

For example, in the chapter Play, Walmsley says don't plan ahead. "The stuff you make up on the fly is better. When you invent on the spot, we see the excitement on your face, hear the urgency of your voice...Without a plan, you lose control. Anything could happen".

Most of the ideas in this book are common sense but have been overlooked or pushed aside by traditional game styles. Some suggestions may go too far for some readers - such as running a game with no notes, no rulebooks and no story - but there are plenty of little gems of advice that can be incorporated into your playing style.

The Quote on the cover says it all "Quite, quite brilliant... there are few roleplaying games which wouldn't be better of they tore up a hundred or so pages of rules and replaced them with the text from Play Unsafe" (Source: RPG.Net)

This 82 page paperback is a little expensive at £12.99 from Leisure Games but must be measured against the fact that its self published (a feat in itself) and packed full of useful hints and tips.

Battlefield Robots

Yesterday the BBC ran an interesting article about the use of Battlefield Robots in modern theatres of war. The role of the Reaper Drone plane is well known but increasingly ground forces are resorting to the use of robots to venture into harms way instead of sending a soldier. Robots can be used to shoot down incoming artillery shells, attack buildings and deal with Improvised Explosive Devices (IED's).

The picture above is a weapon carrying Talon robot developed by QinetiQ. The amazing thing about these vehicles is that, in many ways, they are not a million miles from a vehicle that saw service in WWII! The Germans developed a remote control mini-tank called a Goliath which was essentially a tracked mine used for battlefield demolition. This picture shows three such vehicles captured by the allies after D-Day. There's a Goliath at the Tank Museum in Bovington.

Few people would disagree with the statement "If technology can be used to reduce the danger to service personnel on the battlefield, then it should be". In practice this has lead to the use of Drones in remote and dangerous parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan which have undoubtedly saved the lives of many soldiers. The flip side of course is the unknown number of civilian casualties that come with the use of such weapons.

A lot of what I have read in recent years suggests that military thinkers are loath to make battlefield robots fully independent of human operators. A 'driver' or 'pilot' has to make a judgement call at the end of the day, and they are accountable for their actions. But a robot can only carry out its function as well as the programming that controls it. I for one am not happy at the prospect of letting the machines make their own decisions - and not just because I grew up watching the Terminator movies!

We are entering an age of technological warfare that even a few short years ago would have seemed like science fiction. These new weapons bring with them a whole range of new ethical questions that need to be addressed before we get to the battlefield. I'm very much of the school of thought that says just because you can create a thing, does not mean you have to use a thing. Restraint and humanity are what separate us from our enemies and I don't think we should ever lose sight of that.

Alchemists Lab

When it comes to describing their laboratories it is all too easy to rely on clouds of coloured smoke to hide the details. Alchemists are inextricably linked to the obsessive search for a way to turn base metals into Gold. But the reality is that many were employed as doctors and philosophers, and their scientific skills were much in demand. Their laboratories were the setting in which many of the modern day lab techniques were first developed. These included:

• Distillation – heating 2 or more liquids (mixed together) so that the liquid with the lowest boiling point (the most volatile or mot easily evaporated) is turned to vapor which is then condensed (returned to liquid state) and collected in another container.
• Filtration – using some material which strains out solid particles from solution
• Crystallization – causing some solution to form crystals, usually by drying it.
• Coagulation – causing a liquid to become a soft, semi-solid mass.
• Evaporation – using heat to cause a liquid (or some part of liquid) to be changed into a vapor.
• Extraction – removing one liquid or solid from another mixture by using solvents that dissolve only one of the original substances, thus forming a separate layer or area where separation takes place.
• (Source: Alchemy Notes)

These early pioneers of chemistry and science are often used in fantasy settings like D&D as a way of providing characters with non-magical weapons and useful items. This painting from the 17th Century gives a much more realistic idea of what to expect when entering the world of the Alchemist.

Looking around this painting there are many items that could be incorporated into the description of an alchemists lab. Vessels of many different sizes, glass jars, scales and weights. All in all more interesting than the stereotypical smoke shrouded, wild eyed eccentric of most fantasy games.

Big Picture : Sutton Hoo

This weeks Big Picture is a replica of the Sutton Hoo helmet. This beautiful object is on display at the National Trust site in Suffolk. The real helmet - what's left of it - is in the British Museum.

From The Big Picture

The archaeologist Basil Brown started excavating the site in 1938 and what he found was one of the greatest Anglo-Saxon burial sites in the country.

Bad Dad

My youngest daughter wanted to paint today so I set her up (complete with plastic bags as splash covers!) and gave her some old models to paint. She's only five so the standard of painting is more enthusiasm than skill but I'm hoping she'll learn a few skills - like cleaning her brush and mixing colours - which will develop as she gets older. I took a few pictures for her school scrapbook and got a little close to her as I clicked away. "DAD!" she moaned "your jogging the table!! You always say "don't jog the table""...

She'd definitely going to be a model painter when she gets older.

Colour Scheme Inspiration

Until recently I mostly painted fantasy miniatures and always struggled with colour schemes for my projects. Unlike historical models the colour pallet used by the painter of a fantasy or sci-fi model is firmly in the hands of the artist. They are after all fantasy subjects and the sky, literally, is the limit. Mind you getting the colours right on historical models can also be a challenge to the newbie, so how do you get around this painting equivalent of writers block?

Inspiration can be found in lots of places; Magazines, Books, Museums, the Internet. I make it a point of collecting interesting examples of painted miniatures or real world objects so I can refer back to them at a later date. But I often also find myself thumbing through the model catalogues of various manufacturers, and I seldom resist buying a new catalogue when I come across one.

I should stress that the object of collecting catalogues isn't necessarily about copying the colour scheme for a particular model - although I have done that for challenging projects. The aim instead is to build up a database of images and ideas that can be reviewed when planning a new painting project.

Now I can't claim to paint as good as the examples inside the pages of these catalogues but the pictures certainly provide inspiration. More importantly they give you a chance to see which colour combinations work well for a given subject. I often find it hard to visualise what a given colour scheme will look like when completed so its always handy to have some reference material to refer to when working.

For example I painted half a dozen pirate models last year and needed some ideas to make each one stand out. I used pictures I downloaded from the Internet and from catalogues, pasted them to a large board and used it as a guide while I painted. I found this particularly helpful when painting striped trousers for the first time!

Miniatures painters are often presented with a multitude of options when starting a new project so its not surprising when inspiration runs dry. But many miniature manufacturers produce colour catalogues in a bid to secure their share of the market. Naturally these are painted to a very high standard and present the painter with an excellent resource that is often overlooked and undervalued.

New Layout Suggestions

Hi folks. I've just added a Painting Tally List to the sidebar. I made a New Year Resolution to paint more than last year so this tally will help keep me (and you, my conscience) informed how I am doing. I'll update it whenever I finish a new project.

I'm also considering adding new pages to my Blog. A recent new development of Blogger is the ability for users to create additional pages. This feature lets you easily publish static information - such as a Gallery for instance - on stand-alone pages. You can create ten such pages and Blogger lets you add links to them as tabs at the top of your blog, or as links in your blogs sidebar. The big question is, what to do with this new facility? So I'm throwing this out to my readers for suggestions. What pages would you like to see?

As always thanks for your feedback and ideas.

Halfling Barbarian Hut

I've finished another project and this is one that has been sitting in the sidelines for some time. I bought this resin model a couple of years ago at Salute with a very specific use in mind. Now that I'm writing the next part of my D&D Campaign game it's time I completed projects like this.

I can't give away too many details just in case my friends actually read my Blog (I live in hope).

The model is a single resin cast but was quite porous and soaked up two coats of primer before I could start painting. I then used a light brown wash to bring out the detail and help me identify what needed close detail. As always I used Vallejo Game Colour paints and gloss varnish before applying a layer of Testors Dullcote to finish.

Wind Cannon

I was surfing the Internet again yesterday, looking at random stuff and generally relaxing, when I came across this bizarre contraption. It purports to be a German Wind Cannon, designed to knock allied aircraft out of the sky with a directed vortex of air.

(Source: http://www.strange-mecha.com/cannone/wc.htm)

This devise was allegedly built in Stuttgart and was designed to fire a blast of highly pressured air and water vapour. Early experiments showed some promise with its effective range being about 200m.

"Experimental trials of the cannon at Hillersleben demonstrated that a 25mm-thick wooden board could be broken at a distance of 200m. Nitrogen peroxide was deployed in some of the experiments so that the brown color would allow the path and destination of the otherwise transparent projectile to be observed and photographed. The tests proved that a powerful region of compressed and high-velocity air could be deployed with sufficient force to inflict some damage.

However, the aerodynamics of a flying aircraft would almost surely neutralized the effectiveness of this cannon. In addition the effects of the cannon on a fast-flying aircraft was quite different from that on a fixed ground target. Still, the cannon was installed on a bridge over the Elbe, but with no significant results -- either because there were no aircraft or simply no successes (as one might suspect). The wind cannon was an interesting experiment but a practical failure."

(MilitaryImages.net)

I've since seen this picture on several other sites but they all repeat the same text (copied word for word but not credited to a source I might add) so its hard to tell if this is a genuine weapon or an Internet myth that has been copied and propagated (which of course is exactly what I'm doing!). The Nazis seemed to waste a lot of time and resources on their wonder weapons, many of which never came to fruition, so a wind cannon might not be all that improbable after all. Myth or not its intriguing.

Painting White

I recently had a couple of questions about how to paint white clothing. I've painted several figures over the last year or so that feature a significant element of white clothing or snow covered bases and I'm generally happy with the results I have achieved. Having written an explanation of my method I decided it would make a good mini-tutorial... so here it is.

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Painting White

White is a tricky colour to get right. My first attempts just looked like I'd forgotten to paint over a section of white base coat. The problem is that painting white is not as simple as it first seems and requires the same techniques as painting any other colour - laying down a base colour, emphasising shading and building up highlights - but with more emphasis on the shadows than the highlights. Its the shadows that define the finished effect because they 'frame' the white highlights.

First you need to decide what colour of white you want to finish with. This may sound a little strange but by this I mean do you want a Cold or Warm finish. For a cold white you want a hint of grey in the shadows. There are lost of greys to choose from but I like the Vallejo Wolf Grey (Game Colour Range, # 47) because it has a hint of blue in it. Another good alternative is Stonewall Grey (#49) which is a neutral colour. For a warm white use a yellowish brown colour (not red!) such as Leather Brown (#40).

Some painters I have spoken with suggest painting the whole area in the darker shade colour as the base and then building up the layers of white towards the highlights. In my experience this just tones down the final effect. To get white highlights that really shine you need to start with a white undercoat and work from that. I use Vallejo White primer for this as it gives a good solid base colour that will even cover a black undercoat without obscuring details.

Once I have the base coat in place I work my way out from the shadows to the highlights concentrating on the harder to reach areas first. The beauty of working with white is that it covers sloppy work in the early stages, so if you don't get your shading quite neat enough don't panic.

To apply the shadows I mix up a strong Wash of the Shade colour with one part paint to 4 parts Water (my mixing water is actually 20% Flow improver and 80% Water which stops the wash from pooling or forming beads of liquid). In then apply the wash sparingly to the recesses in several coats until I'm happy they are dark enough (I use the Wash more like a Glaze at this stage). Bare in mind that some shadows will be darker than others - under arms or in deep folds for instance. The beauty of using a wash in this way is that you can feather the colour up towards the highlights relatively easily.

The Highlights are for me more difficult as it is here that the final effect will be achieved. If you want a dirty white you need to keep the colour just a shade off of pure colour except for the extreme highlights. If you want crisp clean white you need to make the topmost highlights solid white. I use a mixture of dry brushing and paint applied directly with a fine brush to apply the highlights. I usually start by diluting the white with my special water mix but only to a 1:1 consistency. Application at this stage is critical, too much liquid on the brush and the paint will run into the shadows and ruin your earlier work. If you lay down several thin coats like this you can build up the highlights to a pure white.

White if often considered very hard for beginners to master. However in my experience its just a matter of taking the techniques you already know and being bold in your use of them. The contrast between shade and highlight is much greater with white and the greater the contrast the more striking the finished effect.