Plans Within Plans

“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities.  Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.” – Gloria Steinem

The first OpenLOCK set that I am asking money for just went up on Cults3D yesterday.  I spent about 2 days painting the pieces I used in the example pictures.  Honestly, the process of painting is not my favorite, but the end result is satisfying and my players will be grateful for some color at the table!  After some research, I decided to use Krylon Matte Clear Finish (1311) to seal the pieces and lightly coated them twice with the finish.  Finally, I used my phone to take the pictures.  For the backdrop, I went with 4 pieces of white paper taped together and they are paper clipped to my DMs screen.  A world class setup!

OpenLOCK Stairs

I started with the stairs instead of floors and walls because I think they say something about the type of terrain I'm hoping to contribute to the community.  I really do not want to just repeat what others have already done, I want to add new ideas.  I know these are just stairs and there are a bazillion fantasy stairs already!  Yes, there are other stairs, but I think my approach to how these stairs can be as tall or wide as desired using bannisters is unique.  I also am fond of the tomees, they really do make tactical combat easier to run on a table with a lot of stairs.  I have plans to use the technique I employed on the stairs for a future bridge set that will allow for maximum modularity using OpenLOCK pieces.  These stairs can be used with other OpenLOCK terrain designed by others; I myself have used them interchangably with sets from Printable Scenery.

I want to build on the bricks I used on the stairs.  I've been fervishly creating the necessary walls and floors as these are a necessity to getting to where I want to be.  I'm going to run with the brick theme for now for my initial ideas.  A dais, a bridge, some interesting buildings!  All with the goal of adding something new.  I want to push the envelope just a bit to expand what is possible with the OpenLOCK system.

At some point, I will tackle working with other textures besides bricks.  My journey right now is just at the beginning.  I'm learning how to model using Blender and boy have I learned a lot already about that tool in a short time!  It has a steep learning curve and my first pieces took forever to create.  I nearly quit several times, but luckily Blender has a large community with ample documentation and videos so I was able to pick up on ways to do what I've done before faster.

I hope you stick around as I feel I'm just getting started.