The Mysterious Castle. Family Gaming pt1

It was a bit of a rainy Saturday at the weekend, so I gathered my kids together, brought out some of my scenery and models and quickly forged a simple scenario for them to play with me GMing.

They controlled two characters each - a model of themselves plus either mum, dad, grandparents or the cat (I just about made the cut, my daughters chose mum and the cat, my son, slightly reluctantly, chose me over grandad!)

The scenario was very simple: this band of adventurers had heard that the nearby villagers of North Campian had been harried out of their homes due to some Orcs who had started raiding the village. It seems they were based in the old, abandoned castle which perched on a hill overlooking the village. A reward of gold coins was offered by the town mayor if these Orcs could be "persuaded" to leave the area.

In terms of rules, I kept it very simple. For movement a stick was used that was divided into 3 lengths. The entire length of the stick meant that a character could sprint that distance but not perform any other actions. The second measurement on the stick (about halfway) was a brisk walk and the character could perform one other action. The shortest measurement was a cautious slow walk but two other actions could be performed. Finally the character could not move but perform 3 actions.

Possible actions included, but were not restricted too:

• searching
• fighting
• leaping
• throwing
• spellcasting
• hiding

Obviously I wanted my kids to explore their imaginations so as GM I guided them if they wanted to try a different type of action and I modified the dice roll needed on 2d6 depending on the difficulty of the task.

My oldest daughter was a mage and so could cast spells, but for them to be successful she had to make them rhyme. I would then ask her to roll two die and modify the roll according to difficulty.

My middle daughter could have one spell, which she chose to be "steal mind" (her idea!) which she could cast on any other character (but again modified by me depending on the difficulty ie. a troll would be easier, say 4+, than a orc shaman, say 9+). She was also able to throw knives from a distance.

My youngest. the son, was a fighter and had improved chances to hit in combat and could use a slingshot from a distance.

Here's the lineup of possible adventurers, from left to right: Tom the Cat, Mum, Grandad, oldest daughter the spellcaster, son the fighter, dad, middle daughter the steal mind specialist and grandma.





The enemy come out of the castle goading the adventurers



And release a captive, Harvey, who runs about squealing and waving his hands in the air "help me, brave adventurers, help me"! My middle daughter asks him some questions about what has been going on and he gives them a bit of advice "their chief keeps them together, get him and they'll run away - oh and beware of the stupid troll". My son asks if Harvey will join and fight with them (I was so impressed with this question!), but alas he is not a fighter. He does give my son the promise of new equipment if they succeed in their quest...

Sizing up the enemy. The castle was his birthday present back in June, so it's good that we both got to play with it together.

My middle daughter runs close enough to the two orcs who are furthest forward and recognises one as weaker than the other. She successfully casts steal mind on the weaker one who promptly attacks the tough guy! The tougher orc parries the attack and puts the upstart back into the earth with a swing of his flail. One down!

The fighters quickly close in on the enemy (as does the cat). The cat has some special rules: can sneak up on a character, can hide, can pounce for an additional attack with claws and teeth, or can use a spray attack. The real Tom the Cat has just been snipped!



My oldest, the spellcaster successfully casts a flight spell first on herself and then on Tom the Cat ("I know I'm Flying in the sky, but give my cat wings to fly") so that he could attack some of the orcs.

Combat ensures between our intrepid adventurers and the nasty orcs. Obviously I stack the odds in my kids favour, but encourage the youngest two to add up the numbers on the dice using mental arithmetic.

As the fighting ensues, the sorceress casts a new spell whilst flying: "Give me the power to swim in that swamp, to fight the fat monster with a kick and a stomp". It was successfully cast on the second time of asking and the troll starts taking a bit of a magical beating, much to his bemusement.

Father and son and pet cat, make short work of the stinky orcs.

Tom the cat sprays in the Orc chieftan's face, making him blind for a turn and holding up all the other orcs on the drawbridge.

Mum joins her daughter in the fetid moat to try and finish off the hulking troll.

The sorceress decides to not attack the troll, leaving that to mum, so that she can cast a spell at the orcs on the drawbridge: "I want to kill those monsters all, so pull up the drawbridge so I can watch them fall". Inventive magic, but unfortunately she failed to cast it thrice on a 7+! So father and son decide to take matters into their own hands, pick up the large boulder and fling it at the squabbling orcs on the drawbridge. A skilful throw sees a load of them skittled over!

Tom the Cat tries to finish off the few remaining orcs, including the leader with another spray, at which point Harvey the villager re-appears to offer some help (trying to gain some glory as the fight is almost done!)



A combined effort from all the family finally see the orc chief and the troll defeated and all the other orcs scarper down the hill and away from the triumphant adventurers. They cannot resist the temptation to explore the now empty castle and discover a secret trapdoor in the floor - will they investigate further...? To be continued!

It was a really fun game that lasted for almost two hours, until tea was ready and the conclusion sets up another game, for another rainy day, in the near future. The kids also want to do some painting with me, so I'll fish out a couple of old plastics for them to start on with the idea of using them in a future game. I think my oldest especially is old enough to have a go at some proper rules, so I may trial a game of Dragon Rampart, Frostgrave of Songs of Blades and Heroes with her..

My wife was slightly intrigued by what we were up to and observed parts of the game - we both realised that gaming such as this can help the kids personal development:

1. Quality time with dad!
2. Using and exploring their imaginations
3. Following rules and instructions (but also challenging them!)
4. Verbal reasoning when interacting with other characters and each other
5. Literacy for the eldest (she had to write down the spells in advance, ensuring they rhymed and made sense)
6. Showing an understanding of measurement
7. Numeracy for the youngest two, mental arithmetic and understanding a bit of probability.
8. Fun!



An unexpected discovery...

I had just dropped my bike off for a service and had begun the short journey home by foot. Walking past a local charity shop, my meanderings were slowly stopped as in the shop window I saw a load of old Citadel models on display! I actually carried on walking for a few strides until what I had just seen registered in my mind. On closer inspection there was a whole load of old models on display and more in a tatty basket amongst the usual tat on display in such a window; I gazed through that window like I used to as a young boy, peering through the reflections at the models as I did back at GW Reading in the late 80's. I still can't believe my good fortune. But there's a bittersweet element to this, yes I'm happy to have found this hoard, but there is obvious care, skill and humour in the models that once belonged to someone who probably had a similar passion as me for the characterful nature of these old Citadel sculpts. But it was actually the discovery of some milliputted bases and freehand banners that affected me the most - this collection is not just of a kid who had a fleeting involvement in the hobby, these belonged to someone who had obviously been quite immersed and clearly was inspired by White Dwarf and Golden Demon of the time, as some of the painting skills and attention to detail are really very good.


The price for the models was incredibly good and I selected only some of the models on display and the entire basket to buy, because at the time I felt greedy in taking it all, although I may go back today to have another look... The range of models spanned 40k and Fantasy, some of which are as early as 1985 and some of which I believe are quite collectible (Space Slann!) However none of them are useful for any of my many current projects, which led me to a bit of a dilemma. I shared these same photos on the Oldhammer Facebook Trading page to help with some identification, especially with the 40k models which I am not so au fait with and I was slightly overwhelmed with the repsonses in terms of successful identification, value but also collectors who were interested in particular models. My dilemma remains - shall I start up some new projects with some of these, shall I sell them to finance ongoing projects or keep them together to maintain the previous owners oeuvre? I'm still unsure and at any rate I'm in no rush to make up my mind.


I wanted to know a bit more about the provenence of these miniatures so I spoke to the store manager who was working there yesterday and she said that an older lady/mum had given her son's collection to the store only a few days ago. Other than that she knew nothing. She did know that these figures were collectable but had reduced the price as they had been painted so "thickly" - I paid very little for these, it has to be said. Now I just need to contemplate what to do next with them all, but if anyone knows anymore about these, as models or as a collection, I would be very interested.

Some wonderful Chaos Champions. I already own the bottom two and once used to have the bone armour chap.

I think this is a very old GW elf mage, that was accompanied by an apprentice.

Some Lords of Battle and a Citadel Fighter, I believe.

Some Ork Painboyz etc from '89.

A Rogue Trader ratling. He's tiny.

Some elves, including Marauder elves and a couple of wardnacers I think.

Two early Rogue Trader models - loving the milliputted base with cogs and tentacles.

Some Orcs - I'll definitely find a use for these.

A couple of Night Horrors, a gargoyle/demon and a ghoul.

A dwarf adventurer.

The MotherCrushers.

A Barbarian, with a slightly damaged helmet.

A couple of Eldar something or others..

Perry sculpted militia for Bretonians

A blue horror that's been painted pink?

Some Gothic Horror (I think) models that are quite old - '85.

Some very cool snotlings mounted onto a scratchbuilt, milliput base

A carrion (misding it's rider).

There's also 4 Space Slann, which have not uploaded here for some reason, but are probably the rarest out of the collection



And the banners. Someone on Facebook said they recognised the OrcBusters banner, but as you can see these are nicely designed and painted 

The Chef

Black Scorpion Miniatures provided me with this wonderful, resin sculpt to add to my growing npc troupe. He'll work in the kitchen of the dungeons (those minions need to be fed and even the prisoners need gruel) and double up as part of my imagined baggage train for a future project. So for now I present the chef, in his kitchen, brandishing some sharp kitchen tools. Fancy pilfering from his larder?:

Dungeons and Dollshouses

Continuing my foray into different manufacturers miniatures and scenery; I decided to get some sets of furniture from 4ground, which can be used as furniture for my dungeon tiles, I'm kinda building up a tavern scene in my mind... It's nice to have a few professionally made bits alongside my own scratchbuilt efforts, which are on-going and slightly laborious.


So I purchased a few sets of chairs, tables and stools and spent an evening putting them together. They are of course tiny and quite fiddly, so a pair of tweezers are essential. I found that the application of pva can make the smaller components even more fragile, especially if you use too much, as they moisture in the pva weakens the wood. But once dry they are pretty robust. Of course I had to make the tables a bit more interesting, so I added a chequerboard and card game using small bits of card and candles out of plastic tubing and some little brass whatevers which I found in my garage.


As I was putting these little kits together, it reminded me of when my eldest got her dolls house and the furniture and the correlations between her playing with her toys using her imagination and me doing the same, were not lost on me, in fact it spurred me on to buy some small dolls house rugs which could furnish the floor of my growing tavern scene.

I think I need to break up the blue tiling on this floor by adding another colour within the pattern. Note a few gold coins left on a stool (purely by accident, that fucking glitter gets everywhere)

A birds eye view to show the furniture off and to get a sense of the modularity of the vignette

And how they all look together, without any distractions, when viewed sideways

So next up I'd like to scratchbuild a bar and some large kegs to complete the little diorama, I may have to investigate dolls house furniture in more details for some ideas. I'm certainly thinking of putting a few paintings up and maybe positioning a little plant in the corner...
Of course I already have the relevant npc miniatures, ready to paint, but there's always something else jumping to the front of the queue so that my project ideas can be completed in the "correct order". You see I don't want to paint the miniatures and not have a completed bar/tavern to photograph them in.
I need to get a grip! Right lets look at some dolls houses on pinterest....

Dungeon doors

So with a-level results day done for another year (one of my department's most successful too), I've been able to come home to an empty house and have a bit of time to finish up some painting and take some documenting photos and a few show-off ones too. Over the last few posts on my dungeon project, I've been referring to a range of manufacturers models that I've used; for example Grendel Scotia for their scenery, Dark Arts Studios for their treasure chests and Milton-Bradley for their original Heroquest furniture. Today it's the turn of Mantic and their relatively new dungeon doors which I picked up recently from eBay (after some poor attempts at scratchbuilding). You can see that I've added a magnetic strip to the bottom of the doors so I can incorporate them to my modular dungeon tiles:

They are really nice simple sculpts and you can see you get two of each door design. I decided to add some detail from my bitz bix  on some of these, that may help add an extra narrative later to my games:

"..at the end of the dank corridor you see a small, aging door with a white cross painted crudely over the bare wood. If you wish to open the door turn to page 231, if you would like to blow your bone whistle, turn to page 94 or if you have spoken to the hunchback,  turn to the appropriate page  number".

I've been rereading some of the dungeon based Fighting Fantasy novels - Creature of Havoc, Deathtrap Dungeon, Trial of Champions - actually in numerical sequence from 1-300, just to pick up some nice detail from the written word as much as the illustrations to add to my dungeon oeuvre. I've written a whole list of ideas that i can add to my walls, future doors etc and I've also noted down all of the monster encounters with this vague idea of collecting, painting and gaming with some sort of combo of 3rd Ediion Warhammer, Frostgrave, Heroquest and Fihhting Fantasy stats. More on this in a seperate post. Needless to say that my copy of Out of the Pit has resurfaced to be left in different spots around the house as I pick it up and put it down.

So back to the doors. These were painted very quickly. A quick tidy up of some small mold lines. Primed grey (the actual pieces come on a brown plastic) and then black washes on the stone. When this is dry I drybrushed some lighter greys over the top with the lightest colour (almost white) applied to the corner edges of each stone. For the wood I used a combination of lots of different washes from chestnut ink for the redder doors, to sepia, Browns and greens for the other colours. I usually apply the washes after highlighting, but I decided to work the other way around, and it was actually much easier.. So after the washes on the wood were dry and then chose the appropriate wash colour, mixed in some white and painted on no more than three accessibly lighter lines that followed the grain of the wood. Done. Details that I added from my Bitzbox and that were already on the doors, like hinges etc needed a bit of time (I always curse my previous self for going over the top on adding extras when my current self has to paint the bastards) and then some wearhering washes using the same colours as on the doors were applied over the stone. Not including drying times, I reckon each door took 20minutes tops.

I will return to my scratchbuilt attempts of doors, but I need to move on to some other manufacturers stuff to add to my stuff....

Goldhammer. A noble and his dungeon coinage

All gamers need piles of gold, either to expand their collecting habits in the man-cave or for a gaming focus in a dragon's cave. The gold tokens and chests I've used here are a combination of Dark Arts studios and an old citadel lead one (a contrast in weight and detailed texture) and painted simply before the addition of some craft jewels and some gold glitter to add the sparkle that all adventurers seek. I've seen a few other blogs do something similar and the affect is very appealing and easy to achieve and will look great for games of Heroquest, Frostgrave or even for a 3rd edition WFB scenario...

I've also painted up a Citadel merchant/noble to accompany the coins, who'll act as an npc in games, I can imagine him counting the coins with real lust and then commanding some underling dungeon minions to distribute them across the dungeon on behalf of Baron Sukumvit or some such ....