UselessTriviaMan
Explorer
It began with a doodle on a piece of graph paper during a ridiculously boring weekly sales meeting. I'd been thinking about running a convention game for a while, and I remembered how much fun I'd had playing in a convention grand melee game I'd participated in about twenty years ago.
I mulled over that initial design for a few weeks (I think I actually improved on it in later sales meetings). The concept: What if I built an arena with actual moving parts? Say, concentric rings around a central tower, and each ring would actually move? I thought it would be a pretty cool thing, if I could figure out how to make it work. I knew I'd probably want to make it out of something really solid; cardboard or paper wouldn't hold up well enough, so I chose plywood. It's easy to work with, and I have full access to dad's garage woodworking shop. And there'd be a central tower...
I knew early on that if I did this, it would have to be for something more than a home campaign; I've made elaborate maps before, but nothing on THIS scale. No, something this big would have to be for a convention game. Maybe... an annual event, even??
Eventually, this all jelled into an actual rough blueprint. I discussed it with my (completely non-gamer) dad, explained what I was essentially trying to do, and used his input to help me make this:
(Of course, UTM Jr. had to help test it out. A lot.)
Two layers of plywood for the base, and the rings were all cut out of the top layer. They're just lying in place, with nothing to hold them in or help them move. Yet.
I had a specific idea about how to construct the tower so character figures could actually climb the sides: I have numerous tackle boxes, and I realized that the little flat plastic dividers would work great for wedging into the cuts I'd made in the tower to represent the ladders on all four sides:
UTM Jr had to help again:
So the wood was cut; it was now time to start painting. I first covered everything in black primer, then wound string around the base, forming one-inch squares:
Then I added a liberal coat of that stony-texture paint (the exact name escapes me at the moment), and after it dried I peeled off all the string, neatly leaving the whole thing covered in one-inch squares. A black sharpie was used to touch up anywhere that the black lines were a bit light.
The rings were much trickier; it wasn't hard to wrap the string around them in (roughly) one-inch intervals, but each ring is three inches across. I had to get creative to get those two middle circular lines on each ring - I hand-drew those lines in pencil, then used a lot of rubber cement to glue down string onto the line for each circle. Once these were sufficiently accurate and fully dry, I then wrapped the rest of the strings around to complete the grids on each ring. It was time-consuming, but it worked out pretty well. And again, after the paint dried the strings peeled right off, leaving reasonably-close renderings of one-inch squares:
As for the shiny bits, I came up with a plan for two squat metal posts to be on opposite sides of each ring (see above). These would be both functional and game-related; they're handles for turning the rings, and in-game they're magical trap generators. I drilled holes, and added a bit of hardware I picked up from my local hardware store:
I painted the caps metallic red and blue (red for fireball generators, blue for lightning generators).
And here's what it looks like with the tower in place (note the case of minis to the side - those were all the available gladiators the players could choose from):
Somewhere early in the process of dreaming up and making this beastie, I saw a video clip of an industrial shredder. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJzG7CSYg3U&feature=related]an industrial shredder[/ame] I was impressed enough that I decided some very enthusiastic gnomish/dwarvish engineers built a monumental stone shredder under this arena, and if anyone falls through a trap door in the floor they'd get turned into a cloud of fine red mist in mere seconds. Thus, the name. I swear, it had nothing at ALL to do with any Tarantino flicks. Honest.
I made a simple black-and-gray pattern that kinda resembled the shredder cylinders and printed 'em out on 3x5 cards, then cut them to size to represent the pits. (I did discover though that the heavy amounts of ink on those cards made them curl up; next time I'll use heavier card stock.) I wanted the trap doors to be completely random, but in early playtests we decided to streamline things a bit by pre-rolling the random trap doors. (The little red and yellow numbers on the rings were added so the GM could count spaces more easily.)
I found green glass gemstones at a local Hobby Lobby, and scooped 'em up to use as treasure chest "loot generators." (Gladiators that reach into a gem find two magic items, but they're only allowed to take one of them. The other stays in place, and a PC can't reach back into a gem until after someone else takes an item from that generator.) Rubber cement holds them in place.
And finally, I used Bendy Walls to create the various walls throughout the arena, and again used rubber cement to temporarily glue them into place.
Here's the finished product, with my good friend AzureTalon running the show:
In this one, they're in the process of rotating the rings. The rings moved in opposite directions, and to simulate constant movement we moved them twice per round, 20' per move. These things were bookin'.
Also, note that the inner ring of wall actually has two layers - entries into the center would periodically get blocked, forcing players to find alternate routes or risk standing still...
And that's the story of the house that UTM built. Next post, I'll go into the creation of 56 gladiator PCs, how I wound up using over 2500 3x5 cards, and what we experienced when we ran it at a local convention last weekend...
One last thing.
Somewhere in the midst of making this monstrosity, I realized that there was simply too much for one GM. Someone had to keep the action moving, but there also had to be someone to answer questions for interested gamers, and get those new players ready to hit the ground running. I asked my good friend AzureTalon, and he graciously stepped in to help me run the event. I owe my pal big for this - we were at it for seven and a half hours (and if we hadn't had dinner plans, I would have been totally willing to run longer). It was epic, and I couldn't have done it without him.
Thanks, bud.
I mulled over that initial design for a few weeks (I think I actually improved on it in later sales meetings). The concept: What if I built an arena with actual moving parts? Say, concentric rings around a central tower, and each ring would actually move? I thought it would be a pretty cool thing, if I could figure out how to make it work. I knew I'd probably want to make it out of something really solid; cardboard or paper wouldn't hold up well enough, so I chose plywood. It's easy to work with, and I have full access to dad's garage woodworking shop. And there'd be a central tower...
I knew early on that if I did this, it would have to be for something more than a home campaign; I've made elaborate maps before, but nothing on THIS scale. No, something this big would have to be for a convention game. Maybe... an annual event, even??
Eventually, this all jelled into an actual rough blueprint. I discussed it with my (completely non-gamer) dad, explained what I was essentially trying to do, and used his input to help me make this:
(Of course, UTM Jr. had to help test it out. A lot.)
Two layers of plywood for the base, and the rings were all cut out of the top layer. They're just lying in place, with nothing to hold them in or help them move. Yet.
I had a specific idea about how to construct the tower so character figures could actually climb the sides: I have numerous tackle boxes, and I realized that the little flat plastic dividers would work great for wedging into the cuts I'd made in the tower to represent the ladders on all four sides:
UTM Jr had to help again:
So the wood was cut; it was now time to start painting. I first covered everything in black primer, then wound string around the base, forming one-inch squares:
Then I added a liberal coat of that stony-texture paint (the exact name escapes me at the moment), and after it dried I peeled off all the string, neatly leaving the whole thing covered in one-inch squares. A black sharpie was used to touch up anywhere that the black lines were a bit light.
The rings were much trickier; it wasn't hard to wrap the string around them in (roughly) one-inch intervals, but each ring is three inches across. I had to get creative to get those two middle circular lines on each ring - I hand-drew those lines in pencil, then used a lot of rubber cement to glue down string onto the line for each circle. Once these were sufficiently accurate and fully dry, I then wrapped the rest of the strings around to complete the grids on each ring. It was time-consuming, but it worked out pretty well. And again, after the paint dried the strings peeled right off, leaving reasonably-close renderings of one-inch squares:
As for the shiny bits, I came up with a plan for two squat metal posts to be on opposite sides of each ring (see above). These would be both functional and game-related; they're handles for turning the rings, and in-game they're magical trap generators. I drilled holes, and added a bit of hardware I picked up from my local hardware store:
I painted the caps metallic red and blue (red for fireball generators, blue for lightning generators).
And here's what it looks like with the tower in place (note the case of minis to the side - those were all the available gladiators the players could choose from):
Somewhere early in the process of dreaming up and making this beastie, I saw a video clip of an industrial shredder. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJzG7CSYg3U&feature=related]an industrial shredder[/ame] I was impressed enough that I decided some very enthusiastic gnomish/dwarvish engineers built a monumental stone shredder under this arena, and if anyone falls through a trap door in the floor they'd get turned into a cloud of fine red mist in mere seconds. Thus, the name. I swear, it had nothing at ALL to do with any Tarantino flicks. Honest.
I made a simple black-and-gray pattern that kinda resembled the shredder cylinders and printed 'em out on 3x5 cards, then cut them to size to represent the pits. (I did discover though that the heavy amounts of ink on those cards made them curl up; next time I'll use heavier card stock.) I wanted the trap doors to be completely random, but in early playtests we decided to streamline things a bit by pre-rolling the random trap doors. (The little red and yellow numbers on the rings were added so the GM could count spaces more easily.)
I found green glass gemstones at a local Hobby Lobby, and scooped 'em up to use as treasure chest "loot generators." (Gladiators that reach into a gem find two magic items, but they're only allowed to take one of them. The other stays in place, and a PC can't reach back into a gem until after someone else takes an item from that generator.) Rubber cement holds them in place.
And finally, I used Bendy Walls to create the various walls throughout the arena, and again used rubber cement to temporarily glue them into place.
Here's the finished product, with my good friend AzureTalon running the show:
In this one, they're in the process of rotating the rings. The rings moved in opposite directions, and to simulate constant movement we moved them twice per round, 20' per move. These things were bookin'.
Also, note that the inner ring of wall actually has two layers - entries into the center would periodically get blocked, forcing players to find alternate routes or risk standing still...
And that's the story of the house that UTM built. Next post, I'll go into the creation of 56 gladiator PCs, how I wound up using over 2500 3x5 cards, and what we experienced when we ran it at a local convention last weekend...
One last thing.
Somewhere in the midst of making this monstrosity, I realized that there was simply too much for one GM. Someone had to keep the action moving, but there also had to be someone to answer questions for interested gamers, and get those new players ready to hit the ground running. I asked my good friend AzureTalon, and he graciously stepped in to help me run the event. I owe my pal big for this - we were at it for seven and a half hours (and if we hadn't had dinner plans, I would have been totally willing to run longer). It was epic, and I couldn't have done it without him.
Thanks, bud.
