Tag Archives: gallery

Old Signs for your Pulp Gaming

Old Signs for Pulp Gaming
Old Signs for Pulp Gaming

Inspired by my brother’s Fake Pulp Adverts post, I thought I would share one of my projects. Over the past few weeks I have been working on a series of old signs for pulp-era 28mm gaming. Designed for any era from the 1900’s to the 1940’s and in any part of the English-speaking world, these signs are fairly versatile.

You can also download the PDF version (Old Signs for Pulp Gaming) if you want a vectorized copy for scaling. As usual, these are designed in the superlative Inkscape, an Open Source vector editing program. The fonts used largely come from DaFont, which has a large set of free and Open Source fonts for use.

Where did the idea come from? The initial inspiration was this image of a locksmith shop in Winnipeg by one of my Flickr contacts:

Old locksmith shop in Winnipeg. Picture by rpaterso
Old locksmith shop in Winnipeg. Picture by rpaterso

After that I started to dive into the Shorpy image archive and came up with some gold. Images such as the one below are great for mining for re-creation:

Old Corner Bookstore: 1900 on Shorpy
Old Corner Bookstore: 1900 on Shorpy

The files are currently licensed for non-commercial, personal use, largely because not all the fonts used allow commercial publication.

Random Pulp Fake Adverts.

I’ve posted these on various forums, but never collected them into one place before. For your amusement, a batch of fake 1930s ads – grab the full size versions off Flickr to reproduce for your personal use on the sides of buildings, on billboards, or whatever!
Continue reading Random Pulp Fake Adverts.

Trebuchet!

Apparently not many people have webpages featuring working model trebuchets. Except the old version of this webpage! Transplanted and spruced up; it’s been many years since I’ve built this one (and it’s since been misplaced in a move) but the photos and story are still good, and I’ll try and update the links. Enjoy! — Brian, 12 Jan 2011.

One slow weekend, I built myself a siege engine of the ancient mold and threw rocks at the neighbours…

Actually, it wasn’t as bad as that – the beast is only about 40cm tall to the top of the frame, and the biggest rocks it throws are only maybe 8cm long. The counterweight is 4 pounds of lead fishing weights.

A trebuchet (tree-boo-shay) is a counterweight powered mechanical artillery piece, traditionally used for throwing huge rocks at castle walls or throwing dead horses over the walls. Mine is made entirely of 1×2 lumber, but the design is entirely traditional and historically accurate. The counterweight falls, pulling the far end of the arm up and over, which in turn propels the sling which actually contains the rock. The sling whips up and around, releasing when it comes over the top, sending the rock on its way. The trajectory can be changed by adjusting the sling’s release hook, on the end of the arm. The usual trajectory is fairly high and arcing, but a surprisingly flat, fast trajectory can also be achieved by careful adjustment of the hook.

Accuracy is quite good, providing you are slinging rocks of identical or similar weight. Firing the same rock, I landed 30 shots in the same 1.5m wide circular area. Range could also be quite long – firing a very small rock, one shot went over 25m, with the usual shot being around 10-15m.

The simple plans I used to build my treb used to be available on the Web from A Trebuchet Story (now sadly defunct, and possibly not in The Wayback Machine – Brian, 12 Jan 2011). These seem to be the only trebuchet plans actually available on the Web. There are loads more treb and engine site out there on the WWW – check out some of the following Trebuchet, Catapult, Siege Engine & Mechanical Artillery Links:

Igor Award Recipient: Goes to my brother Corey, who acted as mad scientist’s assistant during most of the firing of this beast. (then bugged me about giving him credit until I invented the Igor Award!)

And finally, the photos – click for complete views, although not that much larger, I’m afraid.

Photos from a Fantasy Rules! Battle

More old photos resurrected – this time a few from a Fantasy Rules! 2nd Edition game we played years ago. Human medieval knights & footmen vs orcs and goblins with necromancer help. I’m pretty sure this was the first outing of Tony’s undead; years later he’s finally got enough to field an all-undead army without help from my figure collection.
Continue reading Photos from a Fantasy Rules! Battle

Fantasy Gallery #1

15mm fantasy figures, based for Hordes of The Things (HOTT) or Fantasy Rules! (FR!). Many of the figures are long-out-of-production Ral Partha 15mm (from when they held the AD&D license, before WotC bought AD&D from TSR and started producing plastic crap); the rest are a mix of Reaper & Ral Partha 25mm monsters and Chariot 15mm (now produced by Magister Militum/Navigator.
Continue reading Fantasy Gallery #1

SG2 Gallery #3 – 25mm SF

These were the first 25mm figures I ever painted, sometime in the first half of 2002; I’ve still got them but haven’t used them in years. GZG never have published their “Full Metal Anorak” skirmish rules, either…

As always, click for full/larger view, but keep in mind that Old Web images ain’t that big! (if I ever find the original scan files, I’ll see about modern large images!)
Continue reading SG2 Gallery #3 – 25mm SF