Oakbound 2016- A return to The Woods

Back in the summer of 2014 Oakbound's first Kickstarter was successfully funded and we released a range of Celtic-themed wargaming miniatures to accompany the background to a boardgame that had been designed the previous year. These miniatures had been in the pipeline at least a year previous to that, dating back to when the Myeri Marsh Demons marked the birth of Oakbound- at the request of members of the Oldhammer community who wanted the models for their Fimir warbands. Since that time The Woods as a setting has been largely ignored, not for lack of love but because other projects were occupying our limited time and resources.

The world wasn't entirely neglected however. It was always the intention that this land of Celtic folklore should have a Roleplaying game attached, one that focused less on the classic dungeon-bash formula of heroes versus monsters and more on the ambiguous characterisations and fairytale intrigue inherent in so-called Celtic mythology. A couple of collaborations with other writers and companies attempted this during 2015, but they all lead to a dead-end.

The funds from the successful Kickstarter we'd hoped would allow us to go to print with another project, however, due to problems in the casting of the miniatures (not from our side), there was very little left after the orders had been fulfilled. That meant we had to take the next project "Legends of British Steampunk" to kickstarter and fortunately it looks (so far) like we will have some leftover funds to take into our next 2016 project.

I think crowd-funding is a brilliant idea. I love how it means that people who would otherwise not be able to raise capital to try out their idea without getting massively into debt or giving a hefty chunk of their proceeds to venture Capitalists can see its popularity and give it a go. What I don't support, however, is established companies going to Kickstarter because of the publicity it gives them. If your company is up and running you really should know your client base well enough and have enough funds in the bank to go into production without crowd-funding. Leave the crowd-funders for the little guys who are just starting and do need the help to fund their projects. Now Oakbound is hardly minted, but if we manage resources well we should be able to manage the next release without crowd-funding. In order for us to carry on after that, however, the next release itself needs to be successful. So before Christmas we asked our supporters and Facebook page subscribers to fill in a quick survey on what they'd like to see, and the results are in!

It was a close-run contest between The Woods and our dystopian, near-future sci-fi, Factious Waste. The Woods just came out in front, but only by a couple of votes. A couple of people helpfully commented that Factious Waste is probably more commercially viable right now as sci-fi is a lot more popular than fantasy settings, but also that there isn't a lot in the world of fantasy that's drawing on the Celtic folklore so that would make for a more distinctive product. In mentioned above how we've had a couple of aborted efforts to put The Woods into an RPG and the upshot of that is that we have a lot of material to draw on and refine into our own product now, whereas Factious Waste has very little material developed. The decision has been taken, therefore, to use and add to the existing material for The Woods for the next release and in the meantime work on fleshing out Factious Waste. Legends of British Steampunk has not been forgotten, in fact earlier this week I added another dimension to the world which will give a good basis for a sourcebook, but it was noticeably less popular than the other two.

Another question we asked was regarding whether people would like to see miniatures, a sourcebook or a boxed game. Surprisingly (for us anyway) the boxed game came out more popular. The plan is, therefore, to release a large book full of source material, modelling guides and scenarios and to have it available either by itself or in a boxed set with a selection of new miniatures (by popular demand these will focus on the Fae and the Myeri- the sourcebook will feature the conflict between the two races but also give a detailed overview of a section of the world and root the background in the story of the Tuatha). We'll be reviewing the existing range and discontinuing some miniatures as we move through spring.

When we went to Dragonmeet in December we noticed that many people were confused we were selling miniatures that didn't have a specific game attached. Modelling and painting has always been my passion so I was surprised how much confusion there was that miniatures might exist by themselves to be slotted into any game system, but there you are. Now this is something that Factious Waste does have over The Woods, a rules set that has been tested over a period of two years. So, over Christmas, we decided to strip out the rules from Factious Waste into a stand-alone game mechanic we're calling SystemMech. This is a dice-free, cards-free tabletop roleplay system which we can plug any world into and we will be compiling the sourcebook to use this system. We'll also arrange the profiles in the book in such a way that they can themselves be plugged into the most popular tabletop and RPG systems.

Which leads me on to the ways you can help if you'd be interested!

SystemMech has had extensive testing in a sci-fi environment, but we've only done limited tests so far in a fantasy setting. We'd love for a few more gaming groups to be trying it out and feeding back what does and doesn't work.

We're also looking for people to contribute towards the fleshing out of the Factious Waste world and would like to speak to artists, writers and anyone who would like to be involved. We don't have much money to pay for services but are very happy to talk about profit-share arrangements.

If you'd like to get in touch please leave a comment, find us on Facebook or email me at Geoff@propworkshop.co.uk Thanks for reading!

Oakbound 2016- A return to The Woods

the Circle of Chaos opens!

Remember this little dude from a while back?

Well, he was done as part of a group project with Curtis from Ramshackle Games, Jason Wiebe from Cargo Cult, Christian Af Bjargo, Andy Atom Taylor, James Sherriff (who may be known to you as Chilled Monkeybrains), Ross Whitehorn and Warlord Paul Mitchell. This project is now live for the next fortnight on kickstarter and is already past funding in two hours so there's something big and nasty (in a good way) looming in the background ready to pounce on all backers later in the week!

CIRCLE OF CHAOS KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN

the Circle of Chaos opens!

Collected Warhammer Volumes part 7: Step through binding part 3- Board yet?

Quick update with about as far as I'm likely to get before buzzing off to New Zealand.

This bit is optional, but to give the spine some interest I'm going to recreate the look of ancient bound books and put bars on the spine. This replicates the old practice of sewing gathers around thick twine which is then fixed into the boards.

The bars on my books are 5mm wide strips cut from some leftover thick hide I used to make some leather armour once.

These strips are glued at the desired intervals across the spine using PVA. Later on the title labels will fit between the strips.

Using a sharp scalpel the ends of the strips are tapered towards the edges of the spine...

...and the square edges are removed so that the leather that will be stretched over the top will have a nice curved contour.

Wrap clingfilm around the text block and secure with masking tape to make a kind of book condom. This will protect the text block from glue whilst you attach the boards.

The boards are 1000gsm recycled greyboard. Ideally I'd have gone for something a bit thicker, but these are OK and I struggled to find anything a bit chunkier without buying large quantities. For previous volumes I've got good covers from lever arch files and even recycling the boards from books I've dissected (like the WHFB3 and Armies boards).

Apply a liberal amount of glue to the fabric hinge, leaving a strip of 5-10mm between the board and spine so it can open freely. Apply glue to the same area of the board and press together. Use plenty of glue so that if (when!) you need to remove the board again because it's not straight or evenly spaced you will be able to.

Open the board and smooth down the fabric onto it. Then close it again, turn the book over and check you have an even amount of board all round the text block and it is sitting square to the spine. If not, peel it off and reapply. Keep the board pulled away from the spine, it's important the fabric doesn't stick to the edge of the board. Repeat with the other board, trying to keep it evenly aligned to the front one.

Once the boards are in places press the book firmly. I stack other books on top to keep it all pressed together. Remember to place something under the book you are binding and have the spine hanging over the end to prevent pressing it at an odd angle.

That's all for now. Hoepfully sometime soon into the new year I'll actually get the leather and covers on. Happy New Year!

Collected Warhammer Volumes part 7: Step through binding part 3- Board yet?

Wintering in the swamps

It's been quiet in the workshops for the past couple of weeks with the students away, so I've been 'upcycling' some old metal shelving into modular terrain boards- swampy on one side and cobbled on the other.

There are 9 boards here making an area about 3' by 5'. The finished board will be 12 sections measuring 4' square (or other combinations). The three that aren't here have more advanced cobbling on and were used for demo games of Systemmech at Steampunks In Space recently:

The cobbles start off as 4mm Depron foam sheet, glued to the smooth side of the metal shelf with copydex. Then I mark a 25mm square grid on the board, keeping the cobbles to squares means I can use the boards for Heroquest, AHQ, Warhammer Quest etc. Hopefully when the Twisting Catacombs scenery finally arrives I'll have a lovely big dungeon to keep it in!

The cobbles are drawn in with a ballpoint pen. Then a couple of layers of PVA are applied to protect the foam, followed by a black spray undercoat and successive drybrushing. I'm currently clocking in at 2 hours per board drawing cobbles, so it'll be a while before this side is finished!

Now, the other side... the fun, swampy side for the Marsh Demons! These metal shelves are about 20mm deep formed of aluminium sheet bent around at the edges, leaving a cavity underneath. This cavity I have been using to sink marshy pools by building up inside the shelves with Styrofoam blocks sanded to the same depth as the shelf. Using a hotwire foam carver and rough sandpaper I then dug out some hollows for the pools, cut a grass-effect mat to the size of the shelves and glued it over the top of the boards with copydex.

The decoration on the boards to break up the even green of the mat is a combination of scenic leaves, lichen, static grass builders' sand, cat litter, bristles from an old paintbrush, ears of corn, tea and branches from an artificial Christmas tree. The lichen I've glued mainly around the edges of the pools and have then glued static grass onto it to give it a thorny, gorse look.

The corn, bristles and Christmas tree needles make grasses for the pools, I've had to keep them short because the boards have to lie flat when turned upside down to use the cobbled side. There are a few animals dotted around the board, like this thrush opening a snail on a rock. There's also a squirrel, an owl and a hedgehog, all from the Oakbound Studio Woods Accessories pack.

Once the decoration was done I used a polyurethane yacht varnish to paint in the areas where the swampy pools will be. I'm using polyester clear resin to make the pools and don't want the resin soaking through the mat and eating away the polystyrene. The polyurethane varnish helps hold together the lichen, cat litter etc. and also makes good wet areas of ground by just painting it into the mat. It's high gloss so I've also used it over dappled green and blue on the cobbled side to create a nice river effect. It takes about 16 hours to dry.

The polyester resin is much cheaper than other artificial water effects, and cures in about 5 hours which is far quicker than any clear epoxy resins I've used in the past. There doesn't seem to be much shrinkage, but I am only pouring pools about 10mm deep. It is more viscous than the epoxies I've used previously, which is good in this case as it helps protect against seepage. It does mean, however, that I've needed to 'tease' the edges into the mat with a mixing stick to prevent domed edges.

I experimented with a couple of pools leaving the metal shelf exposed at the bottom to give the high-reflective look often seen in pictures of marshes. These pools I imagine are much deeper and have been walled around in stone by the inhabitants of the marsh in an attempt to create reliable reservoirs. I'm pleased with the effect of these pools, although the polyester resin did an odd thing. When I poured into the pools the first time the resin ended up with an almost choppy looking lumpy surface. I can only think it reacted in some odd way. Pouring a second layer over the top smoothed the pools out, and has left an interesting mottled effect.

Now, back to cobbles! Oh, and the edges of the boards will be a bit more blended together with the help of some extra static grass!

Wintering in the swamps