Foon

Oh nice, I love Gloomhaven! (and other massive cooperative campaign games.) Which class are you playing? (let's keep it spoiler-friendly.)

I meant the fireball itself! Object source lighting is tricky, and while I dabble in it, I don't feel comfortable giving tips about it.. But the yellow on the fireball can at least give it the effect of looking like it's glowing :)

These minis look great, and I love the writeup of exactly how you got them this way!

I'm a huge fan of the skin of the Spined Devils, that's pretty perfect. What kind of purple did you use as a base there?

Also really love the peg leg devil, such a clever way to deal with a failed print! And at least in the picture you really can't tell it wasn't supposed to look that way at first.

And about the fireball: my advice would be to get bright/light yellow in the recesses. LIke a wash, but then to lighten it instead of darken. It can be a bit tricky depending on what's underneath it, getting the light colors opaque enough. But for me, that works wonder in giving glow effects.

Really cool work, thanks for sharing!

I like it a lot! I don't have experience using such mechanics in TTRPGs, though I feel the same way about the disappointment of rolling low. However there's a few boardgames that come to mind that use similar mechanics, which are great. In Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood you have lots of tokens that you can use to buff your rolls/draws, but if you fail you get back everything you spent and you get to pick a new one on top of that. It actually has an extra sort of luck mitigation on top of that; random results are determined by custom dice, but all dice have a deck of cards equivalent that has all dice sides 3 times. You don't shuffle them in between draws, so as you go the results get more and more predictable. Would really enjoy having more games with such (bad) luck mitigating mechanics!

That's wonderful! It's so good to be able to share something you enjoy, and have others be excited about it too.

I'm curious about your mini one shots though, is that just your partner DMing for you as 1 player? How does that work out?

That sounds fun! A lot of campaigns seem to be way too low on dungeons, and dragons (regardless of the system!) Have you been playing together long?

I'm not opposed to crowdfunding tabletop games in principle. Even bigger companies might need some guaranteed cash up front before ordering a huge print run of their product. In that respect, it's basically a preorder.

However, there's a lot of habits surrounding kickstarters that I could really do without. Arbitrary funding goals and contrived stretch goals ("we can make a game if we get funded at 40k, but now that we have 2m we can give you ~~the game as intended~~ all these extra bits!"), preying on FOMO, overpromising and underdelivering, launching half baked and undeveloped ideas as a kickstarter, etc. All of that just screams to me that their main goal is taking my money, instead of creating an awesome game and being solvent while doing so.

I don't really do crowdfunding games anymore. Instead I wait until it hits retail, pick up a second hand copy if it doesn't, or just don't buy it. There are exceptions to this of companies I trust to deliver, but they're few and far between.

That said, I kind of like what Cephalofair is doing with their current Gloomhaven campaign on Backerkit. It's basically a preorder for a bunch of new products that'll go in production soon, clear information, no extra FOMO bullshit, lots of content creation and events around the new products, and a really good deal compared to MRSP (and historically, their crowdfunding campaigns have been by far the cheapest way to get their products).

Ooh I'm not familiar with this game but it looks pretty cool! In what way would you say it is like Gloomhaven?

Yeah it's been really fun so far! I mean we're only 2 sessions in so I don't know much about where it's gonna go yet, but so far it's a really different experience. I'm excited to play on, just gotta wait for people to get back from their holidays..

I painted up a bunch of army dudes for Bolt Action, on commission, and they came out great.

Ooh you paint miniatures? Do share! I'd love to see more painted minis.

I've had a bit of a low gaming week, only played

D&D 5e (1x 4p): We're taking a bit of a break from our main campaign that's been running for 5 or 6 years, and one of the players is DMing a few sessions of something from the Wild Beyond the Witchlight book. We're enjoying the very strange Witchlight Carnaval! I play a Fairy druid, and as I discovered as we started playing, my character has ADHD. I'm really enjoying the silliness of the setting, and the DM is fantastic at doing silly voices which fits so well!

Bonus question of the week: one game I recommend to almost anyone is The Crew. Cooperative games are enjoyed by almost anyone, the rules are so simple to explain and fit pretty much everyone's attention span, games are short but you can play it for hours too, and depending on experience and skill you can dramatically adjust the difficulty. And it's cheap and small and easy to bring places. Great game all round!

I don't play solo RPGs myself either, but just like solo board games, there's loads of people who enjoy them (such as OP). Just because they don't appeal to you, that does not invalidate someone else's game experience and enjoyment :)

Anything you want to share about Risus and what makes it fun in your opinion?