Re: (TFT) SciFi TFT

["David O. Miller" <davidomiller@verizon.net>]

> Very nice! This is the way I like to play. I firmly believe the window 
> dressing vastly improves the gaming experience. You did a beautiful 
> job of creating the atmosphere on Void Station 57. I've played through 
> this module and I can appreciate your effort. How did you create your 
> computer terminals? Care to share or is it a trade secret? ;-) =====

Absolutely. Not only is window dressing fun for game play it's a blast 
to both collect and create. I know it's not for everyone, but if you've 
got even just a small amount of creative talent you should give hobby 
modeling a try. And it doesn't have to be that expensive nor, in this 
day of pre-painted figures, require large amounts of time going blind 
trying to paint those little figures.

There are games, of course, that do not lend themselves to using 
miniatures. Cthulhu is one that readily springs to mind (as Tim can 
attest). Since that game is all about mood I want the adventure to play 
out in the imagination of the player, not on the game board. That's a 
case (IMHO) where miniatures destroy the mood by putting the focus on 
the set up and not the story.

To answer your question the computer terminals are small blocks of wood 
picked up at Michael's Arts and Crafts for something like a $1 a bag. I 
made sure that, size wise, two of them placed together would fit on a 
Heroscape hex. The two blocks are covered and held together with black 
electrician's tape forming the bottom. The panels I created in Adobe 
Illustrator and are just rows of squares and circles line up. I printed 
these out and glued them to a sheet of matt board. Next I trimmed them 
out with an exacto knife. I made them a little larger than the two 
blocks of wood so that they would overhang the edges like a desk. The 
last step was to take a red marker and go around the edges, giving it a 
"Star Trek" kinda look. If you look closely at the photos on my site 
you can see all of this. They are not very pretty in extreme close up 
but good enough for gaming purposes. Perhaps someday I'll post a jpeg 
of the desktops for others to printout and use.

David O. Miller
=====
Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com.
Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body
"unsubscribe tft"