Moving forward with my Arena game!

Well, it's only taken a year or so, but I've actually begun the polishing stages on my DarkSun Arena game. I've got a few set pieces to make, and have a little convention called Origins to go to... but before the end of summer, I'll have character creation and the first adventure underway.

First, I need to make the Cell Block for the slaves, and the Training Yard, and the Mess Hall. All three of these areas could end up being needed for tactical disagreements outside the arena.

Secondly, I need to make the first few combat set pieces... the king of the hill pyramid, and a forest of pillars.

I also need to write up a Player's Guide that describes the core issues (1st draft is done, needs polish), as well as give a little bit of info on how fame/infamy, glory/cowardice, showmanship, and other stats will work in the arena battles.

I'll post some of this stuff as soon as it's 'ready for primetime'.

Shots of the arena, as promised

And only a few hours late!

I grabbed my phone and clicked a few shots of the arena, which is still a work in progress (needs some more paint and finishing work done, plus all of the 'little things' added that will make it 'pop'.)

That said, here we go:

This is a (slightly blurry) full shot of the arena. It's sitting on a spare piece of styrofoam. As you can see, it turned out to be about 22x46 squares... almost 2 feet by 4 feet. The walls are about 3" high. Extrapolating the scale, the arena grounds are 110' x 230'... slightly smaller than a football field, with 15' high walls. I would have liked to go a little bigger, but this is really about as large as you can go and have it usable on a standard table.

Here you can see the details in the wall... the bricks were made by using a 'Makins Clay' mold, you simply push it down into the soft clay and you get the brick pattern. The cracking is making use of a feature of cheap craft clay... it shrinks when it dries. This was causing me fits initially, as it would dry, crack, fall off, and crumble. By using spray adhesive on the walls, the clay instead dries, cracks, and stays stuck. Much nicer, and I can use the cracking as a happy accident to add some character. The walls still need a lot of work... another coat of paint, at least, to contrast from the floor, as well as a coat of polyurethane to seal the clay and strengthen the entire structure, then a matte spray finish to cut the gloss of the poly.

Here's some detail on the arch (and you can see the sheets of molds I used to make the brick walls on the green packaging in the background. The steps were cut directly out of the styrofoam base, and topped with Hirst Arts flagstones for the steps. This part needs a lot of finishing work.

Here's another full shot, this time with a squad of Necromunda Delaque Gangers to show scale a little better. These guys were handy... all my D&D minis are still put away from the last session, so you get these instead.

And here's a closeup on the miniatures, to get a better feel for the gridlines.

Holy crap I got a comment!

So, I'd basically written this blog off, because it became more difficult to post to it during the day, and my passion for blogging turned out to be short lived.

But I got a comment, and so here I am. I was asked for pictures of my arena... sadly, I'm not at the arena, so no pictures yet, but I can give a brief update.

First: I tried to use balsa and basswood for the walls. This was a bad idea, as it was either too stiff, or too brittle. It ripped and tore repeatedly, and this caused me no end of fits. I finally came up with a solution, and that was long strips of foamcore, 4" taller than the height of the arena base. Using these, I cut score marks every half-inch or so, and wrapped it around the arena, using masking tape and craft glue to attach it.

I then covered all the score-lines with more tape, and used spackling material to stiffen the outer edge.

For the inside, I wanted a brick surface. I started out here by rolling out thin sheets of clay and using a mold to impress a brick surface onto it. This worked well, at first, until it dried. As soon as the clay dried, it cracked, crumbled, and fell apart. This frustrated and disheartened me for a couple of months. But finally, I decided to just finish it up, and had a brilliant thought.

I sprayed the wall with spray adhesive, and THEN used the clay on it, and instead of rolling it ultra-thin, I used a variable depth. These two things helped a lot in getting the clay onto the walls, and then, when it was only half-dry, I sprayed the whole thing with spray paint and fleckstone for texture. This appears to have done a remarkable job on keeping it all together.

I'll post some pictures tonight. Hopefully.

Arena Update

I should have pictures and a detailed post about making this after this weekend. I picked up filler, clay, and balsawood for the walls. All that's left now is, you know, working on it.

Brief Update on the Arena

The base arena is basically finished! I've done the following:

Purchased styrofoam
Drawn the basic shape
Cut out the shape with hot wire tools
Laid out a grid with masking tape and paint
Etched the grid with hot wire tools
Cut out a staircase up to the arena floor
Base-painted the arena
Sprayed the arean with Fleck-Stone texture
Inked the arena with darker paint
Painted several layers of highlights over the floor to give it a more organic look
Picked out Hirst Arts floor tiles for the stairs

Still to come:
Smooth and fill the stairs and mount the stairs
Smooth the stair walls
Wrap the entire arena in basswood or plastic to make a wall around the arena
Coat the wall with Makins Clay and then use a mold to texture the walls like brick
Mount a door to the wall where the stairs enter the arena
Decorate the wall with hirst arts columns and torches.

What got nixed:
Modular floor sections. I still like the idea, but it was clear that that wasn't going to wrok out the way I liked. So, instead, my modular sections will be mounted on board/styrofoam.

Building a Gladiatorial Arena (For real)

I picked up a 4'x8' sheet of 1.5" thick Formular pink styrofoam for $13 on sale at my local Home Depot, and brought it home. A few minutes with a razor blade later, and I had a sheet for my arena... I settled on a 24" x 46" rectangle, as that seemed the largest feasible size for my gaming table.

After cutting, I realized I failed to have a good way to grid the board. Due to the properties of styrofoam, I didn't have a perfect square, so using my T-square was failing. After realizing I wasn't going to be happy with this, I flipped the board and went at it again, and still wasn't happy.

So, I punted. And played a lot of Dragon Age. Tonight, I'll simply take some 1" thick masking tape, tape it off horizontally, and brush on gridlines with green paint. I'll let that dry, pull off the tape, mask it vertically, and grid it again. Then I'll etch the gridlines with my foam cutter.

Wish me luck.

Building a gladiatorial arena (layout and design)

Continuing my plan to build a large arena for my Dark Sun campaign, I wanted a play surface that would evoke a lot of potential concepts... the something that could be used for any type of gladiator combat, be it the Roman Colosseum, or the Battle Arena in Star Wars. So.. first off, graph paper.

Oh, the possibilities.

 For graph paper, if you don't have any handy, but do happen to have Photoshop, it's pretty easy to make a piece. I created a 30cm x 50cm canvas, filled it with white, and then turned gridlines on. I went into the grid options, set the grid lines to one per cm, colored them a nice shade of blue, and done... a perfect 30x50 grid.

Then, I used some very basic tools to layout the arena itself... after just a few minutes, I had this:

It's actually less interesting now, isn't it?

Here we have a very basic layout of my arena. I'll take a sheet of 30" x 50" 1.5 inch thick pink styrofoam insulation, and I'll grid the whole thing via a carpenter's square and a Sharpie. You can purchase this stuff at Lowe's or Home Depot... it's actually called 'Sheathing' and comes in 4'x8' sheets. 1.5" thickness sheets cost about $20 here, which is a huge piece that you can use for many, many projects. I'll be buying a sheet for my arena, and use the other 2/3 of the sheet to build various arena modules, and still have enough left over to do another huge project later.

This will get me a bright pink work surface with a battlegrid on top of it. I'll rough out the curve of the arena walls with a pencil, until I get the curves right, and I'll also mark out the 'light' areas. Once I've gotten my board marked up apropriately, it's time to get to work.

An Exacto knife along the edges a few times will cut deep enough that I can snap the pieces off the corners. I'll probably do this in three-four chunks per corner, just to keep the breaks clean. Then, for the harder parts.

First, I'll want to carve out the gridlines. I will use my Hotwire Foam Factory for this... I have an engraving tool, and I simply use it to gouge a shallow rivulet down each of the gridlines. You can use a guide for this, but I have fairly steady hands and like it to be a little organic, so I will do it free-hand.

The three large areas of lighter color are where I want my 'modules' for the arena. So, I need to cleanly and carefully cut these out. For this I'll use a straight craft saw, and cut them out along the grid lines. If I am very careful, you'll not really be able to tell they are removable.

At this point, I'll have a basic 1.5" thick battle surface with three removable pits. The other light areas are going to be the stairs the are used to enter the arena... I will carve out 1" wide steps, each step .5" high, so that you will walk up onto the battle surface. Now the structure of the arena floor will be done.

The next step will be relatively difficult, and I'm not certain how to handle it right now... I want a low wall around the entirety, with the two entrances with doors. Normally, I'd use Hirst Arts molds, but this is a huge surface... so I can either try to smoothly cut styrofoam in a curve (not likely), or use flexible material... plasticard, light cardboard, balsa or basswood. During the planning phases, I'm not really sure what I'll be using, so a trip to Hobby Lobby is clearly in order.

Before I do that, though, I'll want to paint everything. I paint every surface with a thick, brush-on primer. This will allow me to safely use aerosols (primers, paints, sealants, whatever) without melting the styrofoam. I'll take out the modules for this part, so I can get the sides as well. When I'm done, you'll no longer be able to tell it's bright pink home sheathing.

So that's it for theory... if I have time this weekend, I'll do this in reality and take some pictures so you can see it as it comes together in real life.