pogre said:
Hey Ledded,
Just giving this baby a bit of a bump.
Listen, I'm running the first non-fantasy rpg for my group in a long time. I need some tips on scenery. I really do not want to spend tons of time on it - I want to focus my modeling, painting, etc. on the fantasy genre. Anything you can recommend? I need stuff for trailers and downtown cityscapes and stuff like that. I would have posted on your mini thread, but it's buried and I have not bothered to re-up my CS account.
The game is set in modern St. Louis - check out my website for an account of the first session.
Sorry I havent gotten around to answering, been too busy at work/home to do much on ENWorld.
I can certainly give you some advice; I love decent-to-good terrain that you can do with a minimum of money and/or effort.
Feel free to email me for more specific stuff, you can reach me at (phonetically spelled)
Jay Eye M Eye AT hiwaay DOT net
Here are some general tips:
1) Dont forget your fantasy stuff. With the right props, some of your Hirst Arts, etc can be very viable and even work well. Most major cities have older buildings, especially old churches and whatnot that are similar enough to be usuable.
2) Inexpensive and decent plastic stuff.
There are a few companies that make O-Scale (1/48) plastic buildings- Bachman, K-Line, etc under the product line like "Plasticville". O-Scale is, strictly speaking, a little big for the 28mm miniature scale, however I've had the best results with it; the doorways are sized appropriately and it fits the eye better than stuff that is 1/64. You can find this stuff on ebay for reasonable prices, and usually only requires a short paint-up. Very playable; they assemble so that you can keep the roof unglued and even easily add second floors to buildings that have more than one floor.
Also, start cruising the dollar stores, Wal Mart, sale isles in toy stores, etc for good stuff. You can get big sets of construction stuff that is very close in scale that will give you several vehicles, a ton of bitz like barrels, signs, etc, and big things like cranes or a giant power antenna for around 10 bucks at Toys-R-Us (our local store still has the ones we bought over 1 1/2 years ago). 1:50 scale diecast or plastic cars are good; I actually bought a 1:50 18-wheeler with it's trailer from a local Dollar store-like place for $3.00, and it has been a *very* good addition. Tons of diecast and whatnot that can cost anywhere from 50 cents to $5.00 each, and you can find them on ebay too in large "used" or played-with lots for extra value. 1:64 scale can work sometimes, but next to a 28mm mini they look a bit too small to the eye (it's an illusion, but it's the same reason why miniature manufacturers make minis so "thick" in the limbs and torso, so they will look "right" at that scale when viewed from a playable distance).
Cheap plastic military toy sets are a treasure trove of different bits and pieces that can be usefull; their scale varies so widely with their stuff (54mm army men most often come with tanks that fit 28-30mm minis quite well) that you can get some usable buildings and bits.
O-scale train accessory kits have been great for little details like mailboxes, garbage cans/dumpsters, phone booths, park benches/playground equipment, etc so on and so forth. Model Power, K-Line, and several others make them. Cruise the O-Scale accessories category on ebay under Toy Trains to get an idea of what you can find. Things like bridges, small towers, and all kinds of stuff you can get if you keep your eyes open for a good deal. I bought a big box of stuff for $20 (including shipping) that gave me a metal girdered bridge that is 4 inches wide by 18 inches long, support columns for it, several usuable street lights, a water tower, and a couple other very usable buildings.
Heroclix has a couple sets of terrain that are very cool to use (indoor and outdoor), but a little pricey (around $15.00 for a set with 4 items in it); however, if you keep an eye out at your FLGS, you can find those pieces in the 50 cent clix box and snap 'em up. And they're painted well enough to not need another paint job unlike a lot of the toy stuff.
3) Printable/punchout cardstock assembled buildings.
Even easier and cheaper are some of the cardboard-cutouts. I know, I know, most miniature purists dont like a lot of the card stuff, but some of it can save you a lot of work and time, and are just good enough for mixing in with "real" buildings to be usable.
We still use our oooolllddd Games Workship Mordheim card buildings (from a base set and the Blood on the Streets expansion) for ruined areas, mixing them in with "whole" buildings if it's a bad part of town, and they work ok. Not especially modern, but easy to put together and very *playable*. Their "thin-ness" can be a little unsettling, but they make up for it in rich colors and nice shapes/styles for ruins. If you base them on a piece of MDF/Tempered Hardboard and then flock that with a little extra detail, they are much nicer; be warned that you sometimes can't get as good of a tight-packed city block feel if you do that. I've even worked in a few Warhammer / WH 40k buildings, but they don't work quite as well. The people who make the Warzone game/line of minis and a company called 21st Century games both have some decent paper stuff also, but I think most of it is out of print and hard to find.
Another alternative are one like Microtactix makes, their Twilight Street 1 & 2 and Mad Lab 1 & 2 are great fun. They are a little flat and not quite as playable as the others, but nicely done graphically and fit very well together in a modern urban environment. I've heard their Dirt Cheep Skyscrapers are pretty decent also, though I've not used them. If you can print them on 110lb cardstock (I got a big packet at my local Office Depot for about $9.00 or something like that and still have plenty) they will be sturdy enough just putting together without extra reinforcement. We've used ours for over a year without crushing or mutilating a single one. Not the easiest things to cut out and assemble sometimes, but not hard, and about 5 hours of cutting-and-glue will give you enough buildings for a couple blocks. Some of the buildings have some nice 3-dimensional features like overhangs, fire escapes, etc that set off the fact that they are card cutouts quite nicely. They have been some of our favorites to mix in with the plasticville and Hirst stuff.
http://www.microtactix.com/newsite/ccrmain.shtml
Links to individual sets will send you to RPGNow, where you can purchase them.
There are other sets out there also, not specifically modern but possibly usable for you from WorldWyrks, the Whitewash City line (cant remember the manufacturer) etc, but Microtactix's Twilight City and Mad Labs have much better color/detail. Check out the paper miniature forums on RPGNow for lots of stuff, but beware some of the cheaper stuff that looks a bit crayon-ish in the pictures; in real life it's much worse
. Most of the good manufacturers have samples you can download, print, and assemble and I'd do that first to see if you like it.
4) Scratch build.
The easiest thing I did for scratch building was to download a couple Games Workshop Cityfight templates off of their site, cut out some foamcore like they said on their template, glue together. I actually sprayed mine with textured spray paint, then primed that black when it was dry, then some drybrushing and it looks pretty good. More work, but cheaper and easier. Dress them up with a decent base and some detailing like tiny printed color posters and other bits and they will look ok. You can also mix balsa/basswood "timbers" with pieces of foamcore to get a style similar to english Tudor; spread a little spackle here and there on the flat foamcore and you have some decent and fairly easy stuff.
That's it in a nutshell. O-scale plastic stuff, the better paper-cutout stuff, your original Hirst Arts with a few toy bits here and there, and scratch building with foamcore/balsa/etc are some of the best bargains for the buck. If you (or anyone else) have any other questions feel free to email me. A lot of this stuff is viewable in the minis thread whose link is in my sig; you'll see everything from Hirst Arts to Twilight Street to Plasticville all over in that stuff.
