Floor talks about making props!
Today we got Floor to talk to us at Angry Hamster Publishing about making props. You may know Floor, because she helped a lot during our WITCH: Fated Souls Kickstarter campaign and is a regular over here at AHP HQ.Without further ado, here’s Floor:
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Liz has asked me to guest star in a blog post and of course that is epic and I said YES!
I was thinking a bit what to write about and then I got the flu and was bound to couch and bed for a couple of days. Super lame, especially because most of this was in my precious weekend. On a positive note, this led to me doing an absurd amount of prop making for the Ravenloft campaign that I will soon be running together with my friend Renée.
I think Liz may have introduced the art of prop making to our roleplay group. Sure, we used to make the incidental map or character drawing, but nothing too fancy. So when we got things like wooden pendants, “blood stained” origami flowers, and other magnificent items especially made or picked out for our characters you can imagine our joy and amazement.
Making things such as ‘authentic’ old letters and other appropriate paraphernalia for our long (and sometimes short campaigns) is something I’ve really come to enjoy doing. In my experience a well-placed item can sometimes really bring a story to life.
MINI TUTORIAL
For maps and letters I usually just make some black tea (earl grey or english breakfast tea) and put some normal printer paper in it for just a few minutes (the longer the darker). Let the paper dry (you can even flatten it with an iron if you don’t want it to crumpled) or for some quick drying use a blowdryer and BAM, you’ve got some super old looking paper. Ribbons and wax seals make things look even more authentic and awesome!
Those who backed the WITCH: Fated Souls Kickstarter at the LOOT tier have been able to get a taste of what I mean by props as each of them received a unique story item together with all the other awesome stuff. Curious what I’m talking about? You can find all of the items together with the description sent in by the backers right here: http://www.angryhamsterpublishing.com/madameza/