Day: 06/05/2023

Getting Funko

Tim MaidmentLeave a comment

I’ve been finding it hard to settle today, so I turned my attention to our office/spare bedroom and the towering mountain of Funko boxes piled behind the door. There seems, generally, to be two schools of thought when it comes to keeping and displaying these vinyl figures. The first is that they are bought to be displayed and the boxes are discarded as there is no intention of selling them on. The second is closely tied to the myth of rarity and the collector’s mindset and mandates that the figures should be preserved in pristine form in their boxes and displayed in them.

I am generally of the first persuasion, while Lady M has picked a third option – that of keeping the boxes so that figures can be put back in their boxes if needed. There’s still no intention of selling them, but perhaps there’s half an eye to how often over the years we moved and therefore a thought of transporting them.

As more than one person has remarked, this does take up a lot of space – and so in recent months I’ve been looking at how stably and neatly I can rearrange these boxes to perhaps have some degree of aesthetic in their stacking as well. I conquered the cupboard containing our boiler, various tools, folding chairs, and a stack of funko pop boxes that now stands some seven foot tall and is braced for stability.

Today therefore, to keep busy, I turned my eyes to the great stack and took the lessons learned from the cupboard. Now there are no mismatched boxes on different alignments unless needed to brace or tuck with boxes from other things – and it all feels far less precarious now. It no longer feels like the door might be keeping the boxes in place.

It’s a rock and roll lifestyle here. Apparently someone in a hat sat on a chair today…

Map – Winter Graveyard

Tim MaidmentLeave a comment

This is another new map that probably won’t see any immediate use in the game as it isn’t really the direction that the DDC or the Librarians are going, but it was fun to do. I went back to an old file I did when I first got Dungeon Alchemy, and reworked it. It wasn’t just a chance to bring in new textures and items, but also to enlarge the original small battlemap based on how I use them these days.

The original layout was a plain flat area of land with a large tomb and a nearby graveyard, separated by a river with a bridge over it. In this new version I’ve kept the basic layout but made a better bridge, edited the river, and manually reworked the landscape to give it more height and variety. The graveyard has been reworked to add some bigger monuments and features, while the large tomb has been turned into a mausoleum that someone has set up home in, complete with writing desk, tables and workshop items. A bed and some lighting complete the feel of an expansive place of study.

Overhead map shot of a snowbound graveyard and mausoleum in the middle of dense forest. A river divides the two with a stone bridge linking them. It is a nighttime scene with blooms of illumination from a number of small light sources and the overall glow of the moonlight

I also made use of the better tools now available to paint trees and rocks, and to layer the scene in snow as it is a winter scene. It also has the effect of making the light sources (various torches, braziers, and candles) stand out more. I envisage the map as either being one of investigation of mysterious sights, or the tracking of someone to a hideout so there’s all sorts of environmental storytelling built in.

I’ve created a zip file ( graveyard.zip ) with the map jpg and the text file with Roll20 lighting and wall information so you can import it to your Roll20 tabletop if you like – let me know if you use it and how it goes!