Kev's Lounge

Kev's Lounge Paper Minis: Champions Series

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Tue, 25 Jun 2019 18:46:00 +0000

We've started a Patreon page and have launched a new line of paper minis, the Champions Series!

What is this all about?
Minis are a wonderful tool to represent your character on a table top, and this fun new concept aims to take that to the next level! Rather than giving you a single mini in a dynamic, but fixed pose, we'll give you a kit containing the same character in a variety of poses so that you can use the appropriate mini for the encounter!

In each set, you'll find the character in the following poses:
• Battle pose
• Standing, at ease
• Seated
• Unconscious
• Mounted on a horse

You'll also get a mini of their horse, riderless, and you'll get a small portrait of the character that you can attach to your character sheet.

We've already released two characters, and there will be a third one coming out soon!

The Templar represents a human female fighter. Find out more and get a free paper mini

The Mage represents an elven male spellcaster. Find out more and get a free paper mini.

New Kev's Lounge Paper Minis - Terrors of the Dungeon!

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Sun, 13 Jan 2019 11:16:00 +0000

I've always tried to vary things up with my minis, covering all sorts of things from a variety of heroes, townsfolk and all kinds of villains, but it's been many years since I put out some good old fashioned deadly monsters, and I felt it was time to do something about that!

With this set, I aimed to focus on non-humanoid creatures that one might have the misfortune of stumbling across while exploring a dark and dank dungeon!

In the set you'll find:
• A Cockatrice
• A Rust Eater
• A Squid Worm
• A Carnage Caterpillar
• A Basilisk
• A Giant Rat

As long time fans of my work will know, each of the minis has a ton of customisability allowing you to create a huge variety of them! This should come in handy when your adventuring party stumbles into a large group of them! (There's also a secret hidden layer, that you may find useful, once you've found it!)

You can get your copy here:
Kev's Lounge Paper Minis - Terrors of the Dungeon at Papercraft Dungeon

or

Kev's Lounge Paper Minis - Terrors of the Dungeon at DriveThruRPG

New Kev's Lounge Battlegrounds: Cemetery!

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Wed, 05 Sep 2018 14:09:00 +0000

Recently released this set of fold-flat papercraft scenery for use with 28mm minis!
Whether you’re playing a horror campaign, a steampunk adventure, a modern superhero story or just good ol’ fantasy, you’re going to find yourself in graveyard at some point!
In this set:
• A crying angel gravestone
• 4 ornate gravestone designs
• 10 simple gravestones in a variety of shapes and sizes
• 75mm x 25mm slotted Kev’s Lounge style bases
• 50mm x 25mm slotted Kev’s Lounge style bases
• A large gnarly old tree
• A 6"x9" grass tile with various grid options
• Detailed, fully illustrated instructions

The headstones and tree are all customisable, and work similarly to Kev’s Lounge paper minis allowing you to set them up quickly for your game, and when you’re done you can easily disassemble them and fold them flat for compact storage.

The set is available now at Papercraft Dungeon and RPGNow! Go grab yourself a copy and add a touch of the macabre to your next adventure session!

Kev's Lounge Tokens for digital tabletop gaming on Roll20!

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Tue, 23 May 2017 17:15:00 +0000

If you're a fan of playing on the digital tabletop platform Roll20, and like the work we're doing, you'll be happy to know that we have several sets of tokens available on the Roll20 marketplace!

Roll 20 Tokens Set 1: Dramatis Personae
A pleasing variety of heroes and protagonist

Roll 20 Tokens Set 2: Dangerous Adversaries
A diverse collection of villains and antagonists

Roll 20 Tokens Set 3: Town Life

All sorts of interesting characters that one is likely to encounter during urban adventures

Roll 20 Tokens Set 4: Servants of the Serpentine Queen
A selection of snake-themed enemies from cultists and snake men to medusae and a marilith!

New Kev's Lounge Paper Minis: Wondrous & Magical

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 14:01:00 +0000

The time has once again come to bundle some of our wondrously magical paper minis into a single convenient pack! This set also contains a brand new exclusive mini, the Magnanimous Djinni, possibly our biggest paper mini yet!

This set, named Wondrous & Magical is packed with creatures and creations of a magical nature is perfect for adding a touch of the mystical to your fantasy roleplaying sessions!

Kev's Lounge Paper Minis: Wondrous & Magical!

We're extremely grateful to those of you who support us... It enables us to devote more time to these allowing us to put out better sets and release more stuff more often!

Miniatures in this set:
• Iron Guardian
• Water Elemental
• Rising Phoenix
• Magnanimous Djinni
• Foreboding Spirit
• Gargoyle
• Faerie Dragon

The set also includes an artbook which has lots of photos of the minis in action, and includes nice high resolution copies of the artwork for each character. The artbook also includes a lot of sketchbook art that explains a little of the design process that went into each character.

Cutfiles coming soon!

Paper Minis Set: A Day at the Market

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 11:06:00 +0000

Between clearing out dungeons and braving the wilderness, a party of adventurers needs to stop in at town to rest up and restock! Being within the walls of the city does not mean that the adventure is over though... There is a lot of room to throw in a challenging encounter while they're in the middle of their shopping sprees and this set includes a nice variety of merchant NPCs perfect for those situations!

The Basic Edition includes just a single version of each mini, giving you 6 unique designs for a nice low price. The Deluxe Edition has loads of customisation options allowing for a massive variety of minis, with tens of thousands of unique combinations.

Get them here:
• A Day at the Market: Deluxe Edition
• A Day at the Market: Basic Edition

This set includes an apothecary who can supply the party with potions and oils, a herbalist who can mix up some poultices and remedies, a baker who can supply them with rations and food, a smith to do a variety of metal work and repairs and a pair of clerks who can help them out at any other store they land up in!

The figures are scaled to 28mm, and will look good alongside most popular brands of miniatures and all manner of 28mm scaled scenery. Each model has a distinctive front and back, and both sides feature rich and gorgeous detail. The detail is boosted by the high resolution of the PDF, and the colours have good contrast to make them pop at a distance!

Cutfiles are being worked on and will be available soon!

Paper minis set: Touched by Darkness!

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 04:56:00 +0000

With Halloween just around the corner, we've packed a bunch of our wonderfully scary and dark villains into a single convenient pack! This set also contains a brand new exclusive mini, the demonic Serpentine Queen!

This set, name Touched by Darkness is perfect for adding some horror to the All Hallow's Eve sessions you undoubtedly have lined up!

Click here to get your copy!

We're extremely grateful to those of you who support us... It enables us to devote more time to these allowing us to put out better sets and release more stuff more often!

Miniatures in this set:
• Dark Elf Sniper
• Hierophant of Ixithulhu
• Diabolic Warlock
• Serpentine Queen
• Evoker
• Ophidian Zealot
• Vampire

The set also includes an artbook which has lots of photos of the minis in action, and includes nice high resolution copies of the artwork for each character. The artbook also includes a lot of sketchbook art that explains a little of the design process that went into each character.

Add this Fountain to your dungeons and towns!

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Sun, 25 Sep 2016 15:33:00 +0000

This set has been a very long time coming! It took hundreds of hours and suffered dozens of delays while we improved the buildability and the design, but the end result is a beautiful centrepiece that will really look great on your gaming table!

Add this beautiful fountain to your towns and dungeons by getting a copy at Papercraft Dungeon!

As with our other papercraft models, this set is incredibly customisable with literally thousands of possible colour combinations! We've also included a simplified build so that novice (or impatient) crafters aren't left out.

An example of the complex build

An example of the simple build

A preview of some of the possible colour combinations offered by this set.

There's a detailed 30 page instruction manual that is fully illustrated and takes you through every step of the building process.

Paper minis set: Constables on Patrol

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Tue, 09 Aug 2016 13:11:00 +0000

Any fantasy campaign is likely to have adventurers travelling through many villages, cities or towns, each with a squad of guards to patrol the streets, deal with crime and maintain law and order. With over half a billion colour possible combinations for each mini, this set allows you to create a completely unique set of guardsmen for each settlement they visit!

Get your copy of Constables on Patrol at Papercraft Dungeon!

This set includes 6 highly customisable guardsmen in a variety of poses!

The set also includes bases designed to match the floors of Mystic Mountain Productions' Watchtower, and includes a discount voucher for that set!

The set is also great for representing soldiers or mercenary companies, and is a must-have if you're starting a new campaign with a prison break!

The figures are scaled to 28mm, and will look good alongside most popular brands of miniatures and all manner of 28mm scaled scenery. Each model has a distinctive front and back, and both sides feature rich and gorgeous detail. The detail is boosted by the high resolution of the PDF, and the colours have good contrast to make them pop at a distance!

The models are designed with removable bases.

Paper minis set: Into the Wild!

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Tue, 12 Jul 2016 14:41:00 +0000

We've bundled several of the latest minis into a single convenient set. There's also a brand new exclusive figure in the form of a Young Green Dragon!
The set is named "Into the Wild" and is packed with things to encounter while travelling through the wilderness!

The set is available here: www.rpgnow.com/product/187731/Kevs-Lounge-Paper-Minis-Into-the-Wild

We're extremely grateful to those of you who support us... It enables us to devote more time to these allowing us to put out better sets and release more stuff more often!

Miniatures in this set:
• Froglodyte
• Ranger
• Wood Elf Sentinel
• Young Green Dragon
• Half-Orc Barbarian
• Satyr
• Leprechaun

The set also includes an artbook which has lots of photos of the minis in action, and includes nice high resolution copies of the artwork for each character. The artbook also includes a lot of sketchbook art that explains a little of the design process that went into each character.

Kev's Lounge Tokens now available for the digital tabletop!

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Mon, 11 Jul 2016 08:18:00 +0000

A bunch of our characters have made their way to the digital tabletop! We've just released a set of tokens for Roll20!

Have a look and get your copy here!

Paper minis set: Agents of the Gods

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Sat, 04 Jun 2016 22:56:00 +0000

If you haven't already checked out the Papercraft Dungeon Facebook page, you should! We put out a free mini there almost every week.

When we've got six or so that go together well, we bundle them into a set, and add a seventh mini exclusive to the set! The most recent one contains a a few priests, monks and the exclusive figure is swooping archangel! As the set is packed with clerics, priests and other messengers of the divine, this set is named "Agents of the Gods".

The set is available here!

We're extremely grateful to those of you who support us... It enables us to devote more time to these allowing us to put out better sets and release more stuff more often!

Miniatures in this set:

• Brother of the Fire
• Dark Elf Priestess
• Druid
• Dwarven Cleric
• Novice Cleric
• Prophet of Doom
• Swooping Archangel
The set also includes an artbook which has lots of photos of the minis in action, and includes nice high resolution copies of the artwork for each character. The artbook also includes a lot of sketchbook art that explains a little of the design process that went into each character.

New ultra-customisable paper minis: The Brotherhood!

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Mon, 16 May 2016 04:19:00 +0000

An impassioned monk delivers an emphatic sermon to his brothers!

(Scenery sold separately)

Any well-developed fantasy world is bound to be packed with hundreds of religious orders and cults. This set of 6 customisable high-quality paper miniatures is designed to allow you to easily create the devoted followers of virtually any cult or holy order you can imagine!

Get The Brotherhood set at Papercraft Dungeon!

The set includes monks/cultists in these 6 poses, along with a massive amount of optional details and a wide colour pallette to choose from, allowing you to create the members of virtually any cult you can imagine!

There are many different ways to use these guys in your games!

A group of Necromancers unleash a burning army of Skeletons upon the adventurers!

(Necromancers made with this set, other figures and scenery sold separately)

The vicious Snake Cult attacks some innocent monks!

(Cultists and Monks made with this set, other figures and scenery sold separately)

The models are designed with removable, interchangeable bases. This allows you to store the figures flat when not in use.

Get The Brotherhood set at Papercraft Dungeon!

New Paper Minis set out now! A Night at the Tavern...

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Tue, 29 Dec 2015 03:55:00 +0000

Some might say that the tavern is as important a setting as the dungeon in role-playing games... Indeed, many an adventure starts off in one, and more than a few end off in one. This new batch of paper minis was created to give life to encounters that take place in one of those interesting establishments!

Your tabletop tavern can now be home to a grouchy old innkeeper, 4 vivacious young barmaids and a rather imposing bouncer!

We're actually releasing two different editions of this set. The Basic Edition, which includes the 6 minis pictured above, has the nice, low price tag of only $1. There is also the Deluxe Edition which is customisable and offers an incredible amount of variety and diversity! In fact, there are almost half a million unique combinations meaning you could easily have a completely new set of employees at each tavern your party visits during their campaign!

Here we have just a small glimpse of the variety offered by the Deluxe edition:

That's just 4 out of ±78000 possible combinations for that barmaid!

The two editions of this set are available now on Papercraft Dungeon:

A Night at the Tavern (Basic edition)

A Night at the Tavern (Deluxe edition)

New improved dungeon corridor tiles!

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 17:50:00 +0000

Had a small break from crushing deadlines and massive projects so I've sat down and put some effort into trying to wrap up some of the many work-in-progress sets on my hard drive. The first one out is a set that people have been asking me for for ages. All of our premium sets have this great variety of textures to choose from, and until now we've not had a set of corridors with the same feature. As you can see from the video below, that has been corrected!

The set contains 8 pages of layered PDF goodness allowing you to easily make all sorts of corridor tiles. There are millions of possible unique combinations!

The set's half price at Papercraft Dungeon. Go grab yourself a copy!

Kev's Lounge Battlegrounds: The Meadow now officially released!

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Mon, 30 Mar 2015 03:04:00 +0000

Been quite a long while since I last officially released a new product, with last year being particularly demanding, but I've kept working at stuff whenever I've been able to find time and now I'm in a position to actually start releasing some of the stuff that's been sitting on my hard drive waiting to be completed. The first of many new sets, is a really great outdoor tiles set. The video below will tell you everything you need to know about it:

Get your copy of The Meadow now. Only $2.99!

The D12 Calendar Returns!

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Sat, 04 Jan 2014 00:50:00 +0000

Last year we released a d12 calendar to ring in the new year and it was a tremendous success! This year we're bringing it back a whole lot better! This set is themed to the 4 classic elements - Fire, Earth, Water and Air - plus a fifth one: Life.

This downloadable papercraft kit allows you to make a d12 that's about 10cm or 4 inches in diameter. It doubles as a 2013 desk calendar, so it's got an excuse to sit on your office desk in case you ever need to work out how much damage your barbarian's great axe would deal in the middle of a week day afternoon!

This free set, which I mostly made just for fun, also includes some cool bonuses:
• A really nifty customisable paper mini: This one's a flirtatious barmaid to keep the ale flowing for your heroes during their downtime at the tavern between dungeon crawls! There are several layers allowing you to change the colour of various parts of her outfit and her hair, with thousands of possible combinations!

• Keeping with the elemental theme, the set includes markers with the Elemental Icons in activated and deactivated states. You could use them as part of a puzzle where heroes need to activate them in order to unlock something, or simply as a decoration or power-up. Layers allow you to customise the base texture to match any of those in our dungeon tiles sets, or our forthcoming Meadow set.

Get it from Papercraft Dungeon now! It's completely free!

Interview on The Flying Goblin and other news

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 15:45:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, Terence Wood of The Flying Goblin, a YouTube channel focused on geek culture in South Africa, popped around and interviewed me about Papercraft Dungeon and Kev's Lounge.

The interview was quite long and he decided to break it up over a couple videos, the first of which is online now and you can watch it below!

Terence's channel can be found here. Have a look and subscribe if you enjoy it!

Been working hard on some new sets for the shop over the last month. I've added a couple new free alternative bases for our paper minis.
25mm Round - Meadow (based on my upcoming outdoor tiles set, find out more about it here)
50mm Round - Meadow
50mm Round - Dave Graffam's Gravel (based on Dave Graffam's Gravel texture, used on the ground of many of his sets)
50mm Round - Dave Graffam's Rough Ground (based on Dave Graffam's Rough Ground texture, used on the ground of many of his sets)
50mm Round - Dave Graffam's Mud (based on Dave Graffam's Mud texture, used on the ground of many of his sets)

I've also added a pre-release section on Papercraft Dungeon, where you can purchase Work-In-Progress products at a substantial discount. Buying any preview product will give you early access to upcoming products, and will allow you to upgrade to the full version free of charge, so it saves you money too!

Kev's Lounge Paper Minis: Terrors of the Rocklands

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 15:47:00 +0000

We've justed added a brand new set of paper miniatures over at Papercraft Dungeon. This set includes artwork for four different terrifying creatures for your adventuring parties to encounter while they trek through the wilderness! We have a Groundbreaker Wyrm, an Earth Elemental (or Garden Golem, if you prefer), a Crested Drake and a Deathbloom Worm.

Get your set of Kev's Lounge Paper Minis: Terrors of the Rocklands now! Only $1.99 until the end of July 2013!

The figures stand nearly 2" tall and are scaled to 28mm, so they will look good alongside most popular brands of miniatures and all manner of 28mm scaled scenery. Each model has a distinctive front and back, and both sides feature rich and gorgeous detail. The detail is boosted by the high resolution of the PDF, and the colours have good contrast to make them pop at a distance!

The models are designed with removable bases. This set includes a sets of interchangeable bases and more are available on this shop. Another bonus of this feature is that the flat components are really compact and very easy to store because they don't take up much room at all!

Cutfiles for this set are available here.

Kev's Lounge Dungeon Furniture Pack out now!

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 17:35:00 +0000

In the spirit of smaller sets like the Gothic Coffins, this set has foregone the dungeon tiles that usually make an appearance in our packs and has instead focused on a few pages packed with useful props and items with a bargain low price! This set has a focus on the kinds of common furniture that you'd expect to find in any area that's lived in, and can take an otherwise plain collection of rooms and turn it into a functional lair with beds where the inhabitants sleep, fires for them to cook their food and tables for them to eat at. The particular mix of elements here and the hundreds of possible combinations are not only great for making an inhabited dungeon, but would be perfect for furnishing even a very large tavern!

Get yourself a copy of Kev's Lounge Dungeon Furniture Pack now! Only $1.99

This incredibly useful set includes 4 pages, each covering a particular type of furniture. The set has a lot of options for customisation thanks to multiple layers, and the customisation is incredibly easy because it's all controlled by clickable buttons built into the PDF itself! There are 7 different floor textures to choose from, and several of the furniture pieces have their own customisation options, like the blankets on the bed. All this customisation allows for literally hundreds of unique options for some of the pieces, so to make things a little easier those pieces can be randomly customised at the click of a button.

What you'll find in the set:

Beds and carpets. The dormitory page includes a pair of beds with many multiple layers for the blanket combinations. Hundreds of unique beds can be created!

Chests. That classic staple of the genre! The loot's gotta be stored somewhere.

Sleeping mats for those not fortunate enough to have access to a bed. These make it very easy to set up a camp site. The set also includes a brand new crate cluster in the style of those seen in the Ominous Storeroom set. These are not only attractive, but they make for great barricades and obstacles for marksmen to seek cover behind

A nice mix of fires, from a simple campfire, to a cauldron of stew. There's also a pair of braziers to provide light and to add to the eerie mood of the dungeon.

Yes, that's a whole pig roasting away on a spit over a fire pit! Don't be intimidated by the complexity of the build... The model has multiple difficulty levels, so if you're not an expert at building complicated papercraft models, there are simpler versions in the PDF.

Folks need a place to eat their roast pork and stew so we've included a table and shelf to store their crockery. The table can have up to 4 chairs in a variety of positions. The chairs have two different designs to choose from, and their are a few possibilities for the table top clutter.

To help you build all these wonderful models, we've included a detailed fully illustrated instruction manual optimised for screen view. Every step is clearly depicted so that even a beginner will have no trouble getting great looking models at the end!

Get yourself a copy of Kev's Lounge Dungeon Furniture Pack now! Only $1.99

A Luxurious Lair: Council Chamber released!

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 03:06:00 +0000

This set contains brand new Kev's Lounge papercraft dungeon tiles, and markers, along with 3d papercraft furniture, and a pair of innovative spiral staircases to add a third dimension to your dungeon delves! With the various layer options this set will allow you to create hundreds of completely unique pieces that can be arranged in nearly infinite combinations. Perfect for table top wargames, skirmish games and RPGs.

Get your copy of A Luxurious Lair: Council Chamber now! Only $4.99

This wonderfully versatile set includes:
4 Brand new and highly customisable Kev's Lounge Dungeon Gigantic Round Rooms Tiles

These beautiful 6 x 6 inch papercraft dungeon tiles work seamlessly with all existing Kev's Lounge Dungeon tiles. They make use of the Kev's Lounge Starlinks System to keep them together, allowing you to create some enormous rooms for your most epic battles. The tiles are perfect for representing the various floors of a large tower, and can combine with the tiles in other sets to create large rooms with rounded corners.

Layered PDF gives the following awesome features:

7 Different Interior floor textures and 11 exterior floor textures which can also be left out entirely if you choose.
Multiple grid options, including gridless, 1 inch and 1.5 inch, with a variety of choices for the style of the grid lines
Additional optional details, like dirt and splatters that can be turned on and off giving you a huge range of control over the look of your tiles

Several 2.5D Hazard and Obstacle Markers

As with every other Kev's Lounge Dungeon Tile set, you will find a great variety of hazard markers, also taking advantage of the layered PDF system to give you control of the floor background, and to add and adjust details to your liking.

Innovative 3d Spiral Staircases

These papercraft staircases are designed to look good on the table, and allow miniatures to stand on the steps. Each staircase allows a simple build, or a challenging one, to suit your tastes and level of skill.
Layered PDF gives the following awesome features:

7 Floor textures: Damaged Flagstone, Herringbone Paving, Horizontal and Vertical Wooden Floors, Flagstone, Stonework Floor and Sandstone Slabs.
Multiple grid options, including gridless, 1 inch and 1.5 inch, with a variety of choices for the style of the grid lines
Additional optional details, like dirt and splatters that can be turned on and off giving you a huge range of control over the look of your tiles

Highly customisable furniture pieces.

Chairs, shelves and a big ol' table. You have a lot of control over what's on the shelves where you can choose between neatly stacked books, or untidy piles of them, or alchemy themed clutter, or weapon/trophy displays. You could even come up with your own unique combination! The table can be bare, or covered with your choice of clutter.
Layered PDF gives the following awesome features:

7 Floor textures: Damaged Flagstone, Herringbone Paving, Horizontal and Vertical Wooden Floors, Flagstone, Stonework Floor and Sandstone Slabs.
3 Wood Textures
Hundreds of combinations for the shelf, thousands for the table!

Easy customisation

A new feature for Kev's Lounge Sets, this one has control panels built right into the PDF page. Simply click the buttons til you find something you like and send it to the printer!

Fully illustrated, easy to follow instructions
36 page instruction manual, in PDF format, optimised for screen view to save you ink. Details every step of the process with clear, full colour illustrations.
Miniatures used in pictures are strictly for illustration purposes and are not included in the purchase. Photography by Photos by Mick.

Kev's Lounge Paper Miniatures: Blazin' Bones out now!

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 21:37:00 +0000

A brand new set of Kev's Lounge Paper Miniatures. This set of 20 exquisitely detailed flaming skeletons will look great on any gaming table.

Get your set of Blazin' Bones Paper Miniatures now! Only $1.99

The models are designed with removable bases. This set includes 2 sets of interchangeable bases and more are available on this shop. Another bonus of this feature is that the flat components are really compact and very easy to store because they don't take up much room at all!

Character Portrait: The Flirtatious Barmaid

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 16:50:00 +0000

Right Click > Open In New Tab to see full size

A bit of background on this drawing:

This young lady is a minor character in the first chapter of Live By The Sword, our newly started comic.She's already made a background appearance in the first panel of the first page. This particular drawing of her is a cleaned up version of her character concept sketch that I'll be using in an upcoming set of paper miniatures.

About the character:

Cassandra is one of the more popular young barmaids at the Green Dragon, a small tavern near the docks. Her friendly demeanour and innocently pretty face get her a lot of attention and affection, and are certainly among the chief reasons that the Green Dragon is never short on customers. She's not just a pretty face though, and she's not nearly as angelic as her virtuous smile suggests. She's cunning, educated and smart; and indeed, when she first realised that the boys found her attractive while growing up she thought to herself "I can use this to my advantage!" and she's never failed to do just that. Apart from all the coin she's garnered from overly-generous young sailors eager to please her, working at a dockside tavern puts her in a good position to gather a wealth of information, with so many travellers from so many lands passing through its doors. She realised early on that that kind of knowledge was very valuable to certain interested parties, and makes a very tidy profit on the side by selling it.

Kev's Lounge Friday Character Portraits is a weekly feature on this blog where I take a bit of art that I've created somewhere along the line for some or other purpose and present it along with a little bit of back story for you to use as in role playing games as hand-outs, or as inspiration for characters or NPCs. Here are some more in the series:
1. Town's Guard Captain
2. Female Rogue
3. Arch-Wizard
4. Pit Fighter
5. Skeleton Pirate
6. Serpent Cult Assassin
7. The Gambler
8. Flaming Skeleton

No character portrait next friday... Instead you get the second page of Live By The Sword, there will be another the week after however.

Before you go, have a look at some of the paper minis we've already released !

A Mini-Game of Chance: Quick gambling rules for RPGs (part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 12:30:00 +0000

If you're playing a low-fantasy, western or grungy modern role-playing game, gambling is likely to turn up at some point. It might even be a regular occurence in some campaigns. Occasionally you might find it worthwhile to play out the games with actual cards, but if you really wanted to sit down for a round of poker every other week, you'd just have poker night instead!

This mini-game is one way of simulating a round of gambling, or even an entire evening's worth, in a short space of time, with reasonably meaningful results. It determines the outcomes based on the characters' abilities and gambling skills, rather than that of the players, and with the advanced rules in part 2 (coming next week,) it allows for cheating and bluffing with mechanics. One last benefit of this version is that it allows for virtual characters to participate without the GM having to attempt to play multiple hands of cards simultaneously while attempting to be fair.

Note on mechanics: The basic version of the mini-game presented in this article is completely system agnostic, but the advanced rules for cheating and bluffing in next week's article will use example mechanics specific to d20 games, specifically Pathfinder and Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition. They are fairly intuitive, and should translate quite easily to whichever system you are using though.

You'll Need:

A set of Poker Dice:

These are standard d6s but with special faces representing card values instead of pips. The faces are 9, 10, J, Q, K and A. They come in sets of 5, and you'll need all 5 for this mini-game. If you don't happen to have a set, you can simply use 5 standard 6-sided dice, in which case, treat 1 as a 9, 2 as a 10 and so on, with 6 representing the ace.

Basic Mechanics:

Ante

Gambling is all about risking something to gain something bigger. To keep things simple, a single round of gambling with this mini-game requires each participant to pay an upfront fee to play. In poker, this initial forced bet is called "Ante" and even though this game doesn't necessarily represent poker, we're co-opting that word. They'd deduct this from their cash count on their character sheets before the game starts and it's considered spent. The prize is made up of the sum of all the Antes, and winner takes all.

The prize does not always have to be coin however. It could also be a magical treasure that's just been discovered, or it could be some privelege, like claim to the only decent bed in a dodgy tavern. In this event, skip the ante and just get down to business.

Turn Order

It's best practice to establish turn order before starting. It doesn't matter much in the basic version presented here, but with the advanced rules for cheating and bluffing in part 2, it can be slightly advantageous to go later than the other players. Turn order is simply initiative order, but in reverse, so the "slowest" player rolls first, and the "fastest" rolls last.

The Basic Game
Each player, in turn order, gets to roll the 5 poker dice once. Whatever they get is considered to be their Hand and they are stuck with it (Part 2's Advanced Mechanics do allow some modification). They should make a note of what their Hand is and pass the dice on. NPCs get rolled by the game master when their turn comes up in the order.

Once everyone's rolled, compare their Hands to this chart to determine who wins. If there's a tie, then the player with the highest card in his hand wins. If there's still a tie, then tied players should roll a single die each to break it.

Next tuesday we'll bring you Part 2 where we will go over the rules for cheating and bluffing and luck, and the following week, Part 3 detailing the rules for gambling houses and handling a night's worth of gambling.

The illustrations in this article come from our comic: Live by the Sword.
All Artwork and Characters appearing in this article © 2013 Kevin Richard John Berry

Character Portrait: Flaming Skeleton

noreply@blogger.com (Lounge Lizard Kev) — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 22:17:00 +0000

Right Click > Open In New Tab to see full size

A bit of background on this drawing:

This artwork was originally created specifically for a paper miniature included as a free bonus in our d12 calendars.

About the character:

Flaming skeletons have long been a staple of fantasy... The most obvious example rides a motor cycle with flaming wheels, but this guy's not related to him at all, I swear it!
Recently I had a lengthy chat with one of my friends about the phenomenon, and how it's a particularly odd sort of idea. I figure they came about because they're terrifying, both as symbols of death and as walking examples of a terrible way to die, but perhaps the main appeal from a gaming perspective is that they're actually pretty dangerous in comparison to their wimpier unignited counterparts. We also had a chat about how this would even be possible... Bones don't seem particularly combustible. He decided (and lamented) that we'd just have to settle for "a wizard did it." Personally, making a burning skeleton seems pretty easy to me, it just takes some bones, some kerosene and a flair for the dramatic. Making that guy walk around on his own... now that's the tricky part!

Kev's Lounge Friday Character Portraits is a weekly feature on this blog where I take a bit of art that I've created somewhere along the line for some or other purpose and present it along with a little bit of back story for you to use as in role playing games as hand-outs, or as inspiration for characters or NPCs. Here are some more in the series:
1. Town's Guard Captain
2. Female Rogue
3. Arch-Wizard
4. Pit Fighter
5. Skeleton Pirate
6. Serpent Cult Assassin
7. The Gambler
9. The Flirtatious Barmaid

There will be another character portrait up next friday!

As I mentioned before, this guy was designed as a paper miniature. That miniature's available completely free as part of our D12 Desk Calendar set, available for free download here. He's nice and easy to build and will look great on your gaming table. Go get yourself a copy and throw this guy up against your party in your next game!