Generic Terrain

[jugglingfool]

I love the look of the Wyrd terrain, but lets be serious I have some painting of figures to do. So aside from the look, is there any disadvantage to playing on generic terrain? (Read: The ruined gothic buildings that dominate the gamestores terrain pile.)

I ask because I can build terrain but would rather paint the minis.

Or is some of the paper terrain that is available quick and easy to make?

Basically terrain suggestions.

[nerdelemental]

It's, of course, always up to you and your players. You have to prioritize how you play and figure out how to get it done.

1. it's better to play with anything on the table than to not play at all.

2. better to have gorgeous, professional terrain than coke bottles and napkins.

3. better to have "false" terrain than coke bottles and napkins.

etc.

I would think that I'd just fudge it with what you have until such a time that you can make truly appropriate terrain to represent your game. However, some things are really very simple and fast and somewhat cheap.

This game setting provides for some wilderness settings in addition to the Wild West building settings, too. Mountainous, bayou, wilderness.... You can purchase a yard of different color fabric felt from your local craft store for under $5 and you can cut out tons of different sized/shaped terrain elements. Green ones for woods, gray ones for mountains, blue ones for ponds, etc. You could even get brown ones and cut them out in good squares and call one a "general store" with a sharpie down in the corner. (additional joy is that you can carry a whole table's worth of terrain in your gaming pack and play anywhere at all).

There's also very good paper templates out there on the web. And I do endorse the 3D ones you build into buildings, but there's 2D ones, too that have graphics for swamps, woods, overheads of buildings, etc. So that would cost you the time to find them (less than 20 minutes), ink to print them, and time to cut them out. For a more durable set, you could either mount them to foamcore and/or get them laminated at a Kinkos for not a ton of money.

Later, follow some of TheBugKing's tutorials here and on terrainthralls.com and make some amazingly real terrain.

[capcap]

Hit the FLGS if you have some cash most have some terrain you can use/buy or can tell you good websites. If you want to go on the cheap, I recommend foam core. Its easy to work with if you have a cutter and fairly cheap compared to kits. You can also get plastic card which makes very nice terrain as well but is more expensive. For hills, mountains, crags, foam insulation from the hardware store is great. Water effects can be made cheaply by using white "school" glue. I'm going to start building some buildings for scenery soon so we get more of the wild west feel.

[Keltheos]

Or just play with what you have.

If all you have access to is ruins, then you'll just be 'flipping' Slums/Quarantined Zones/Ruins on the location table.

[Scorpio]

Go for a walk in the woods. Keep an eye out for interesting rocks and bits of wood. Bring 'em home, wash 'em up. May not be perfect, but it's something.