Tag Archives: ship

Set Sail in a Miniature Ship — Mini Monday, Ep 4

19 August 2019 Rodney

It’s Mini Monday, where I share customizing, scratch building, kitbashing, and miniature painting projects for your roleplaying table. This week we’ll build a miniature ship to go with your Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign or Undersea Sourcebook inspired adventures.

Wind Runner Ship Complete — “Yo ho ho, a pirate’s life for Smee!”

This little boat is very easy to make, looks great on the table, and is highly customizable. I’m planning to make a small armada for my undersea pirate campaign, which won’t take much time or break the bank with this technique.

Wind Runner Miniature Ship — “Arr, tis a ghost ship!”

Building the Ship

I used foam board, which I marked out to be an inch wide and 5 inches long. I then cut it and shaped the bow and stern.

For the gunwales, I used cardboard strips, which I glued to the sides of the foam board. The prow and rudder is made from balsa wood, and the tiller is a match stick. The deck was left plain, except for four struts, which are used to mark the squares off for models to stand on. The mast is a bamboo skewer, with thick yarn glued around the bottom of it.

I then undercoated the miniature ship in white, and painted the hull and prow a dark red. The rest was either painted dark brown to resemble wood, or light brown to resemble rope.

When the paint was dry, I rolled up a thin strip of linen and tied it to the mast. I then glued it in place and painted the yarn. To finish up, I painted the whole thing, including the sail, with matt varnish.

Full Stats Coming Soon

The wind runner, which this is a model of, will appear with full stats in our forthecoming Undersea Sourcebook: Feats & Equipment, which includes two new ships, two submersibles, and an airship.

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

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Tips and Tricks

Random Table – Trading Ship Names

6 March 2014 Rodney

In my last games session the party boarded a random trading ship and wanted to know it’s name. Since I had nothing in my notes, I came up with the coolest name I could think of; The Umbral Fury. Then one of my players asked if it was a war ship. “Er…, well…, it was recommissioned after taking damage in a major battle.”

Galleon — The *Umbral Fury* sets sail, ready for *war…* um… *trade*?! Image courtesy of wpclipart.com

Afterwards I built this handy random table. Roll once for each column then combine the two results to get your seaworthy name:

Random Table – Trading Ship Names
d10		d10
1. Dawn		1. Flower
2. Dew		2. Runner
3. Swift		3. Wind
4. Northern		4. Queen
5. Southern		5. Princess
6. Eastern		6. Lady
7. Western		7. Maiden
8. Eve		8. Deliverance
9. Autumn		9. Breeze
10. Spring		10. Trader

May your Western Queen or Dew Trader find fair seas and full sails.

For more nautical nonsense check out Tok, the Port of Storms, in the Avernos Wiki.

Uncategorized

UPCON 2012 Module – Death in the Deep

23 March 2012 Rodney

I could trace the origin of this blog back to many sources, but one of the most prominent must be when I started writing modules for the convention circuit back in Gauteng South Africa, specifically for UPCON and ICON. ICON was actually the first convention I ever attended, going there for comic books (Spider-Man mostly). I came out of that convention with a box of Warhammer 40k, which eventually lead to role-playing. So I kind of think ICON was where most things began for me in a way. But enough rambling, this year again I’m submitting a Pathfinder Roleplaying Game adventure, Death in the Deep.

So, wouldn’t it be neat if players and GM’s could get additional information about the module online? Wouldn’t it be great if other interested readers could get a taste of the adventure? Well, that’s what this page is all about. I’m posting it now, but it’s sure to change as more information and downloads become available here.

#NEWS FLASH! – 30 March 2012# Just submitted the module and all the character sheets. I’m pretty proud of the outcome. I reckon this is my best work so far.

#NEWS FLASH! – 13-14 April 2012 Play Test# Our Japan group, who were a witch, wizard, fighter and stow away rouge (she only joined the fight when the Loreley split in two, managed to wound the sea serpent so badly that it ended up with a Dex of 8 and made it’s escape. The adventurers then made it to land where they sheltered for the night, uncomfortably close to a boggard camp. They then made their way on foot and by horse to Dead Mans Landing, passing the town of Gold Bridge, ruled by Duke One-Eye. They found Lantern Tower to be trapped, a store house for the 8-9-3.

Gear Up

It pays to be ready. All the following items are not required, but may prove useful to GM’s running the module.

A pirate costume, because pirates are cool, nuff said.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Ultimate Combat, a great supplement for battles at sea.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: The Pathfinder Bestiary, includes all the monsters in the module.
Game Mastery’s Pirate Ship Flip Mat. We’re working on including our own ship map, but this is a super map. You can also check out these cheaper options:
Battle Map: Pirate & Ghost Ship, which includes a nice ghostly version of the same ship.
Fantastic Maps: Pirate Ship, which I think does a good job of showing where all the rigging is supposed to be.
Disposable Heroes Pirate Statix 1: I’ve never used Disposable Heroes before, but these don’t look too shabby. And it doesn’t matter if these mini’s get totally destroyed at the con.
For music check out this little Amazon widget for some ideas.

Player Characters

You can check out the player character sheets here. Please note, check the files for viruses, I can’t be held responsible if your computer crashes and burns.

Cromin Rist (male human wizard) (link to PDF 80KB)
Druan Firecrag (male dwarf fighter) (74 KB)
Elondeen (female elf ranger) (74 KB)
Grushic (female half-orc barbarian) (71 KB)
Jerry Aldridge (male human duellist) (71 KB)
Laura Lightshanks (female halfling rouge) (72 KB)

Avernos

Read more about Avernos, the setting of Death in the Deep, here.