Realmsheet, Minis, & Stuff

So you remember that realm sheet that this whole blog started about. Well, I've taken another stab at it... Here's some updates:

• Its definitely a booklet now.
• It's going to be a PFRPG Compatible thing. I'm adding some material based on the Game Mastery Guide's settlement construction.
• I'm trying to decide if the qualities and disadvantages I've come up with should go in it, or come out some other way.
• I still don't know if it'll be a fillable pdf or not. I have the stuff to make them now, but it takes forever still, and I paragraph areas that print lines if you leave them empty.
• There won't be any more free versions. The next one I plan to have up here available for somewhere between 3 and 10 USD.
• It will be preceded by a "Deluxe City Sheet" that I'm just about finished with that is fillable and saveable, right now I just need to ad a page for all the legal stuff.
  

Also, I'd picked up paints and such to try and paint some of my battletech minis (and support the trying-to-be-a-game-shop) a while back. I did some painting, didn't really like where it went, but it wasn't bad. A friend came over, and was bored and painted some, and we both agreed that the little paint kit didn't come with a good color selection and the starter brush just wasn't enough. Just today I went to Hobby Lobby and bought some more things and tried again, here's what I learned:

• How to make a "wash"
• The tubes of acryllic paints aren't that much thicker than the bottles of it for models...
• But they still work, and really will last me longer than the bottles would have...
• Lead's even softer than dried glue...
• I want another basic leatherman, so I have one for everyday stuff, and one for working on minis...
• That base coat of primer is really important on shiny metal, and shouldn't be done with the wash you accidentally made in your experiment...
• Using the wash on the mini after you've got it painted is really easy, and really does bring out all the little grove based detail if you weren't too heavy with your paint coats.
• Citadel glues still suck
• I really need to get a working camera

All in all, I might actually get the hang of painting minis at least well enough to make nice looking ones, never anything fantastic, but I shouldn't be going to battle tech games embarrassed anymore of my minis. On a really crappy note, a hard drive crash and the loss of TWO thumbdrives means I have lost a significant chunk of my work on the Snakes Among Us project. So I have no idea when it'll actually be ready. I cried a little when I realized it was all gone, which either means I'm really becoming a sap... or I'd really put a whole lot of effort into it.

On a more uplifting note, I got to drag a character or two from past games back to the surface for a game last weekend. It was fun having that big barbarian turning orcs to goo... and I can't wait to see what she'll be like (we're starting way before where we were last time) when she gets high enough for Frenzied Beserker in PFRPG, especially since I don't think we'll need that splatbook class anymore to show just how crazy she gets.