The Theater!

Hi everybody,

the Theater release is finished! It is composed of three main parts:

- The Stage. Modular, multilevel and versatile, you can make highly decorated stages such as the one shown in the renders, or you can go for smaller and plainer ones, with a simper shape, no walls at all on the base and simple wood borders to fit a less "opera-like" structure. You can make them shorter (just using the top half of the walls), or taller (by stacking more on top), and you can even play beneath the stage itself, fighting close quarter battles under the supporting structure, accessible via trapdoors. From small town square stages to high brown opera house ones, this set should cover all the needs for theater terrain!

I knew I wanted to make a curtain for this theater, in case some people wanted to print it rather than make one with hobby materials or cloth (which is always a great idea, imo!). I tried many different ways (which failed!) to achieve the effect before landing on this final model. The result is a high detail large slate of resin, so I suggest printing it with care (be ready to do some bending and heating (hairdriers work great!) to get it to the intended shape). The many folds should help preserve the design, but the final result depends on printing condition, resin type, etc.. That said, it is easily removable as the fights begins thanks to magnets and rods. Any stage battlefield you prepare behind it will be hidden from players until that very moment, which in my opinion creates good, tense expectation at the table :) I imagine going dark with it: characters ventured into the town's theater by night, following the threads of a demonic or eldritch cult. They hear chanting and see lights behind the curtains, but a fight with cult members breaks out in front of the stage. As soon as the characters have the upper hand, the curtains open, revealing a sacrificed actor, a summoning circle and the monstrosity just called forth by cult sorcerers. The tides have shifted.

There is also a bonus: with pillars and columns given in the set you can build the boundaries of wooden buildings, which is always a good way to give an idea of a room in case you don't have time to place down all its parts.

If you want to go crazy you can even build different levels for the crowd sits to go in front of this stage, making a full stage and audience setup. It would be a perfect map for an assassin strike, carefully time at the moment of higher tension in the show enacted on the stage. I imagine bringing out this setup at the table will make the session memorable, as characters try to catch the assassin by jumping through chairs and climbing the stage. Or maybe it is the other way around and it is them that are sent to kill someone in the audience, or someone performing. Or, again, the group bard is performing on stage, a bait for the agents of the party's enemies. Will the heroes stop them in time?

- Stage Objects and Props. This objects and props set was a weird one, simply because most of what you can find on a stage would be a replica of objects and props that exist in the world you play in. This means that any object or prop from other releases could be on that stage - a Dwarven epic with themed objects, a comedy about Wizards and their towers, an ancient tragedy set in the Labyrinth, the list could go on and on. For this reason I decided to go for a few theater themed elements - masks, lecterns, etc. - and a ton of objects that can act as a backdrop for the play you want to set on this stage. This is the reason for the "volumes", with or without cloth covering them, and for the "background" objects. There are two versions of those. One version with cloth on top - if you just want to print things, those are the way to go - which can be painted as desired. One version, labelled "free", has only the wooden "scaffolding" on top of which you can glue or hang any printed image you want! I am soo excited to make a few of these for my games by printing cool artworks (someone said MTG cards?), staining them with coffee (to weather the white of the unprinted paper) and placing them on stage - basically reproducing hand painted background posters that would be used in a fantasy theater.

There are also a few classic references - a skull for that specific monologue, a poison bottle, the trappings of a king, the spade of the gravedigger, everything a bit exaggerated as it would be in a theater setting for the audience to see.

- Ancient Theater. Highly detailed, modular and completely hollowed to save resin, it comes also with columns of different heights and braziers to complete the look. The one shown in the render is just one example of the ancient theater shapes (and more!) that you can build with this set. By stacking more "Straight" pieces between the "45Deg" pieces you can make it larger, for example, or by stacking a row of "Straight" pieces on both sides of the semicircle that is shown in this render, you can make an ancient hippodrome, or you can just use those pieces to make a stairway to a temple, or you can complete the circle to make a sacred well, or a portal of some sort. These are just the first ideas that came to mind: there are a ton of possibilities with those basic blocks! The split parts require glue to assemble, but after that, given the nature of the model, you can keep it modular just by placing parts side by side at the table! You can even use foam blocks on the back of the circle shown in the render and place more blocks at a higher radius (e.g. by using straight pieces if you didn't put them between 45deg pieces on the lower level) to make a multi-level ancient theater - that's going to be a gargantuan project though!

Also, you can combine this set with similar themed previous releases (Avrean Oracle, The Labyrinth) to make even richer locations. I always strive not to make doubles of the same objects, and that's why I went with simpler columns for this one. Variety is always a nice plus!

Uh, that's a wall of text! This month has been really challenging in terms of the scope of the project, what I wanted to achieve with it and some new things I was trying - which mostly failed :'), but which taught me a lot (hence the extreme late upload!). There is a lot of usability built in this set that may not be shown by renders alone, but I hope that these words will help with showing the versatility of the release!

That's it for now! I'll be back in a few days with the next poll and WIP pictures of the Elven Town Square.

Thanks for the support, and I wish you a happy hobby time! :D