Four Color Studios

 Progress continues apace on the great rebasing project. It's...a lot. I've got to keep beavering away at it, and I am almost through the alphabet of the heroes.  Meanwhile, here's a quick pic of some finished villains!  Rhino, Shocker, Leader, Blizard, & Beetle mug for the camera! The real chore will come when I have to begin in earnest on the many minion groups--AIM soldiers, SHIELD agents, Lava men, etc.  The journey continues! 

 I am pretty lucky to have the opportunity to attend my third straight Gary Con. Held in Lake Geneva, WI, it's the birthplace of D&D, and arguably, of the entire TTRPG hobby. And what a great little Midwest town Lake Geneva is!  Whenever I travel to a town I like to walk around and get the lay of the land, and this town is super-quaint and filled with homages to Mr. Gygax. Case in point, the public library:  That dragon guards the front entrance to the Lake Geneva public library.  A brisk walk from my Air B&B took me lake side.  The con has been a blast so far! I will not leave the dealer hall today without a few zines!  It has been a great time so far! My buddy and I will leave tomorrow morning to head back to Chicago to do some dollar bin hunting at Comics For Less, the single greatest spot for finding mid-grade reader copies of my favorite comics from the 1970s and 1980s. It will all be worth the long drive back to Steel City, PA come early Sunda...

 I got samples of the dustjacket POD for VMF from Lulu and I am really pleased with quality and look of this book! Of course, the pictures tell the tale.  I went with a matte cover, and it's easy on the eyes. I am really happy with how the back cover sells VMF's central premise.  I went with handsome hunter green for the cloth binding.  William Caddell crushed the art for these heads.  This back flap features really useful game info.  The spiral binding samples came too, but I will show them in a later post. These POD options should be ready for sale as soon as next week. Check back here for more news on that front.  I am off to Gary Con for the rest of week, so maybe I will share some pics from there in the meantime.  Thanks for reading!  --Scott

Today (1700 EST) I am running the first installment of my Villain Mission Force ongoing RPG Series. I am super excited to see how the rules work in a true TTRPG setting. I have run dozens of skirmish games  with these rules, and I have run dozens of VMF games using my older, 3D6 engine.  This trimmed down 2D6 version is player facing and should play very fast at the table.  To prep for it I have carried forward using the notebook method I adopted from Professor Dungeon Master on Youtube. I used this to great success during my monthly Shadowdark RPG campaign that ran two years. This time around I have gone with a larger notebook.  Check it out:  This spread and the rules will be all I need! The idea will be to build each session around two separate Issues, or encounters. Ideally the events of the first issue will flow into the action of the second issue. Since VMF relies on the conceit that the PCs are sprung from prison to perform dangerous missions for a p...

Anytime I finish a project I like to generate my own print version. There will be Lulu (and hopefully Drivethru) POD versions of Villain Mission Force , but I never want to wait. And I am actually running my first VMF RPG session this weekend, so I need a table copy of the rules.  My local print shop, Copies On Carson here in Pittsburgh does great work. I elected to go with the parchment style paper because I love the texture and the look of it.  I love the way Jan & William's cover pops. Layout artist Todd Tuttle did a great job putting it all together. One of my fav ever William Caddell pieces.  Those silhouettes really pop! Now that I have my table copy, I need to get to work on my prep work for Saturday's game. More on that in the next post.  Thanks for reading!  --Scott

 I am a sucker for corner boxes on comics, especially those populated by the floating heads of the characters from the comic. There are many reasons why I am a bigger Marvel fan than I am a DC fan, but Marvel's employment of corner boxes is certainly one of them! How cool are these two examples?  Classic Byrne FF! Byrne Avengers!  It's no surprise that most of my supers rule books over the last few years have featured corner boxes of our own. VMF is no different!  William H. Caddell crushed it on these heads! William made so many cool heads for this project that I had to feature more of them on the back cover. The computer console was the perfect vehicle for this.  Who doesn't want to go on a mission with Chi-Chimp?  What are your favorite corner boxes or floating heads? Sound off!  Thanks for reading!  --Scott

Villain Mission Force: Solo / Co-Op Anti-Heroic Skirmish RPG  is now available in PDF! Get it here ! Here's the key info:  From nobody to nemesis?  Villain Mission Force (VMF) allows players to run a small team of low-level supervillains through a gauntlet of challenges that will make or break their villainous reps. Utilizing easy 2D6 mechanics, VMF’s multiple play modes include solo, co-op, PvP, or RPG. VMF offers rules for character origins and backgrounds, a versatile power system for varied character design, and a campaign system that will carry them from third-stringers to major threats. VMF also provides dozens of write-ups for foes that you can run using flexible, archetype-based mechanics. All you need to play are some figures from any manufacturer, a tape measure marked in inches, a handful of six-sided dice, around ten numbered chits or cards, and a suitable play area. Are you ready to build your team and join the infamous ranks of the VMF? Villainy awaits! Ch...

 During the pandemic I amassed a gigantic collection of Heroclix miniatures--Marvel, DC, Indie, Horror, etc.  I ripped them off of their proprietary bases and rebased them using the following method:  Simple and effective, if a bit uninspired. It's basically resin sand, paint, and drybrush. Hundreds of figures in my collection are based this way.  When I started the VMF project, I found a small pack of Litko clear acrylic bases laying around from an abandoned project. I took some 'Clix I hadn't rebased yet, and I glued them on. I really liked it. For modern minis, and maybe even sci-fi, I think this is the way to go. For me anyway.  So I had to ask myself the hard question: do I rebase my entire collection? After delaying, I decided the answer was yes. So I placed a larger order with Litko, and had the means to begin within a week. They really are great. Buy stuff from them!  And so it indeed has begun!  Mostly heroes in this first batch. Villains are...