Infinite Ideas: Building the Infinity Tower

3d printing is a new thing for me; I've been working on this for about a month. Most of this has been devoted to working on mods to enhance the printer, then a set of dungeon tiles for epic dungeon builds. More on that soon. Minis are a lot harder than tiles. Simple geometric shapes do really well with the printer and look good. Minis are so small and detailed that they are just a lot more difficult to print. There's also the printer to consider. A 3d printer lays down material on a bed, stacking layers. You can't just let it print into the ether. The print will fall and start to cool in a messy descent. In the case of a mini with suspended elements, you need to use supports. Some printers may have better control over this, or some settings that make it easier. My printer is cheap and easy to work on. That's what I bought it for. Here's a mini with supports 'on the build plate' printed in the usual orientation. As you can see it printed and kept the he...

Edit: this was a post that was made in response to a series of Twitter discussions about the place of popular livestream games like Critical Role in the world of RPGs. The core issue discussed was if these shows inflate player expectations and make it more difficult to run a game with confidence. At the time this was written, my reaction was largely emotional. I had just started livestreaming a game and was (still am) really enjoying the process. I love being a part of the online community and our little game isn't so much an attempt at fame as a way of sharing something that we love with the universe. I had originally titled this post 'Tiers of Play' because it seemed that there were very different levels of play that the people discussing the subject were comfortable with. I don't think there's a wrong way to play a RPG and there are definitely different skills and comfort levels for people running games. I can understand that. I also feel that it's impor...

The initial Infinity Tower concept was pretty basic. When we wanted to start streaming for Time2Tabletop, we wanted to start right away. One of the goals that we had was to do a Session Zero, which would give us a chance to show character creation and share some of our goals for the channel before we were really prepared for our stream. The Session Zero was supposed to give characters a chance to be created and get the players ready to work together. We also wanted a game session to take place and I like non-linear plots, so Session Zero became the part of the story that comes after Session One. As a DM, this was actually liberating for me because I knew where the story was going. For the players, they could make decisions that led them towards their Session Zero without feeling railroaded or forced.There was already an expectation that they would work together and get along because they had already done it. So there was a little space-time paradox going on in Session One, which was...

TLDR; I put my 'Why I do this at the end.' This is how I make a quick map/terrain for a game. Finished painted tiles, total time ~3h With good modular terrain I can lay out my map on my table at home,  take a picture if I need it for reference or sketch out a quick map with some game notes, then pack it up and get it ready for the store. For example, I made a sewer tile set last night. I estimate I spent about one and a half hours to cut the cardboard, assemble the tiles and spray paint them as a primer. Initial map idea before the tiles are assembled Tonight, I am painting the tiles. The method I'm using is a quick sponge paint with some light final detail. Painting the tiles with my totally cheap and quick setup In the end, painting took about one and a half hours too. Three hours seems pretty good for a set that can be used multiple times, changed as needed and put away in very little space. With this effort, I can run the sewer, put it away, run i...