This post is how I used a Reverse Storyboard technique to choreograph the encounter.
The scenario?
Kraken A is attacking our Adventurer's ship, the H.M.S. Intrepid,
but then another Kraken (B) starts attacking A, leaving the ship caught in the middle.
It wasn't until I was done setting up the scene that I realized it parallels the plot of the 1979 movie, Kramer vs. Kramer (which, ironically, I have never seen).
So the title of our movie is (drumroll please...)
Kraken
vs.
Kraken
(not a spike lee joint)
KvK: The Climax ... and the beginning?
You may ask yourself "How did I get here?"
To begin the process, I took all the parts and pieces that I had assembled and put them ALL on the board. I included all the extra critters just to see how many could fit on the board. (When I was a little kid, this is how I frequently played with my Fisher Price Little People sets and later my Star Wars toys)
One piece of advice I heard from an author was "write the ending of a book first, then reverse engineer how you got there throughout your writing process." I'm going to use a variation of that advice with all of the pieces - keeping in mind that I want to trick the party into thinking that they're fighting one Kraken until it's too late.
Step by step, I removed pieces from the board, reversing time. Then I snapped a picture.
Removed another piece. Snapped a picture.
Wash, rinse and repeat until only one piece was left on the board - the Beige Shark.
To establish the timeline of the encounter, I then reversed the sequence of pictures
so it shows the buildup from an empty field to a very crowded one.
If you want to see the original order, go to the bottom of the page then scroll up.
KvK Step 1: Beige Shark as Red Herring
KvK Step 2: Enter the Kraken!
KvK Step 3: 2 arms, 1st attack
KvK Step 4: 3 arms, 2nd attack
KvK Step 5: 3 arms, Head & Claw
KvK Step 6: 4 arms, Head & Claw. Arm vs Arm?? WTF?!
KvK Step 7 : All Hell Breaks Loose - Kraken vs. Kraken, Salamander and Snake!
KvK Step 8: All the pieces are on the board - but wait, where's the 8th arm?
It turns out that I forgot the last tentacle on the board (I'd left it in my backpack).
No problem - plot twist! Kraken A lost one of his tentacles, Kraken B knows it and is looking to challenge the older male. If your players overthink it, they'll be expecting the last tentacle for the entire encounter, possibly holding back when they don't need to.
So here is the end (that was actually the beginning) seen from three angles.
With all of these components, we're going to need help keeping track of all of it.
Next post - my next cheap project - the initiative/turn tracker!
(Starting with these cute clothespins I got at Target for 2 bucks)
The first part of this adventure was detailed in the post Kraken Week mini.
So, one of the themes of TabulaSordida (the Dirty Slate), is that Re-cycling, Re-Using, and Re-mixing stuff is cool. For my entire life, I've been dumpster-diving, thrift store-shopping and re-imagining my toys for something else. This post is all about my little adventure with crafting this scenario and doing it as cheaply as possible. I am fortunate (for me, but not my pocketbook, as cheap as it is) to live down the street from the absolute bestest craft store in the universe - The Center for Creative Re-Use, where they have shelves and shelves and bins and barrels of vintage, surplus, and second-hand supplies of, well, everything. It is attached to Construction Junction, an equally wonderful warehouse of salvaged, vintage, and surplus building supplies. I also visit cheap dollar stores for stuff, and we begin the adventure there, at Dollar Tree.
These 3 toys above were actually the last pieces that I purchased while buying some art supplies. I couldn't resist the shark (30') nor the salamander (45'), nor the snake from Kung Fu Panda (5' x 10' base and 25' long uncoiled) (total cost - 3 x. $1.25). Staining the wood pieces later is going to be fun. There were also bags of cheap tiny multi-colored feathers there, but I'll get them next time to attach to the salamander - to turn it into a coatl-something.
At the Center for Creative Re-Use, they have barrels and barrels full of old trophies, and the parts that go into making them. In the above picture, you see the trophy bases (10' x 15' if you care), the screws (I have a large handful of various lengths, the tallest of which is to the far right) and a ferrule, the silver piece, in which you screw the posts and then mount to the trophy base (I learned a new word today). I got at least a baker's dozen of everything. The trophy parts are in the bulk supplies section, so the price is measured by volume, not weight or number of items (a small gift-bag is 6 bucks, max). But not today! Little did I know that the trophy supplies were on Secret Sale that week. Secret Sale? That meant they were all free! Seriously. Because they had such a surplus, they were thinning out inventory. Many of the bases are traditional marble, but some are rubber and some are plastic, so lightweight.
They have bags of shells at the Craft Store too. They'll be nice random decor and eventually I'll glue them to tiles (sized to the trophy bases, with an added hole in the center). I'm not gluing them to the bases themselves, because then I can swap them out with other terrain that I make later.
The light-blue thingies (seen above and below) are also from the Re-Use store - in the science supplies section. I wanted to get corks that have holes in them (I have a few from a previous visit), but they were out of them. Instead, I found a bag of Rubber Bulbs from Fisher Scientific (used for eye droppers) - they're squishy rubber, with a hole in the bottom and are the perfect size to fit into the bottom of the finger puppets (like a finger tip), and the ferrule trophy parts fit into the bottom of the bulbs as snug as a bug in a rug. When assembled no glue, bolts or anything else is needed - I didn't even need the screws. A bag of 24 Bulbs was 8 bucks - 33 cents apiece and I only need a dozen (for 12 finger puppets - 8 tentacles, 2 claws, and 2 brains - 2.50 apiece for a total of 30 bucks). I'll have a full accounting of what I've spent at the end of the series.
Just below where I found the animals at Dollar Tree, there were cheap balls of yarn. I was originally going to buy a ball of string for the encounter (more on that later), but the yarn ball laying on top looked exactly like seaweed to me. ($1.25 and more yards than I need). It looks so 'effin cool hanging from a tentacle - they are measured to the same length as the uncoiled tentacles - 40' (plus a little to wrap around the base) but you can make them any length you want if the dimensions of your creature are different. We're using them to symbolize the reach of each tentacle, like you would in free-form wargaming.
Again, at Dollar Tree, I found these light metal Adhesive Rinks (whatever those are). The bracket is the same diameter as the trophy ferrules, so the screws also fit (loosely). They're going to be the bases for the two masts and the two crow's nests (eventually - I'm not making them today).
And lastly, I grabbed one of the Deco Squares (plastic adhesive fake wood-looking panels) that I got at a Family Dollar years ago that I use as shelf liners for my milk-crate paperback-bookshelves (more Re-Use!). I quickly sacrificed one square and cut it up into their panel parts. This is for our Intrepid Adventurers' boat. Eventually I'll make some permanent bases and peel off the adhesive backing, but they'll do for now. I was going to draw a grid on them, but I put it off and have since changed my mind altogether, for reasons you'll see later (each of the long panels is 15' x 45' - they'll be arranged to be 30' x 90').
This last photo was actually taken at the very end of the day, after I put all the pieces and parts back in the box - it's just a typical delivery box, perfect height for the bases on their side. (10 x 13 x 2") It takes up less storage space than a typical board game, and I still have room for more small accessories.
I'll end today's post with a time-jump to the climactic Infinity-War-esque moment whence all of the pieces are assembled and on the board, and it's clobberin' time. Why the time jump? Because that's how the encounter actually started. The next post is going to be about how I set up what I can only call a "Reverse Storyboard."
P.S. If your OCD has been irritated by the third column from the left being out of synch with the rest of the tiles, you're not alone, and I apologize. I didn't notice it until all the pieces were on the board, and I wasn't about to go back and fix it - especially because in the end, they just don't matter for the rules of this encounter.
This is my little oddball contribution to Kraken Week 2024: a narrated step-by-step pictorial of putting together some toys that I have purchased from gift, thrift and dollar stores. These are excellent pieces to use with your miniatures. I love to go shopping on-the-cheap for things that can be used as set pieces. I just happened to buy these a couple weeks ago.
I wrote a version of this article yesterday, but like an idiot, I misspelled Kraken as Karken in the title, and Blogger is a pain when it comes to fixing title links. I was going to fix it today, when I saw that Treantmonk posted a video describing a Kraken encounter, so I incorporated some lessons from him and added some links and republished it today.
The complete Kraken Week '24 YouTube playlist is embedded here. Over 100 videos to date!
I got the toys at a locally owned card, game and gift shop (Kards Unlimited) a few weeks ago, before I knew anything about Kraken Week. They're finger puppets of octopus tentacles, as well as crab claws and a disembodied brain. They were $2.50 apiece (so don't pay any more than that - I've seen them both cheaper and more expensive.)
Naturally, I bought eight tentacles, two claws, and two brains to make an octopus and a crab.
I wanted to buy a brain for each tentacle (like octopi have), but I was spending enough money as it was for an impulse buy (30 bucks, my largest expense for the whole caper)!
I did some further googling, and it looks like a lot of different companies make these finger puppets, but Handicat and McPhee are the brand names/import companies that pop up the most often.
They're 40 ft long if I adhere to scale - but you don't need to stick to that length for the actual purpose of measuring 'reach' - make it anywhere from 10-40 ft. during combat, depending on your need - these figures are not literal, just special effects. I straightened out the tentacle below to show the full outstretched length by inserting a chopstick into it. In the future, I may use something like a wire coat hanger if I want to change the shape, but I don't think it's worth the trouble because again, representational, not literal.
I do want to make a base for them, weighted so that it doesn't tip easily.
I figure a heavy 10' square base with a pedestal insert would work.
A nice blue ceramic tile would be perfect, but I have a better idea,
and I know exactly where to get the pieces.
I'll let you know what I find in a later post, when I actually make them.
I happen to live down the street from two excellent stores that specialize in the salvage of construction and other crafting materials. I visit them weekly for oddball supplies to create gaming accessories.
Check in your area to see if you have any wonderful organizations like these:
Construction Junction:
https://cjreuse.org/
Pittsburgh Center for Creative Re-Use
https://pccr.org/
(edit: went to the craft store that afternoon and found all that I needed, and much much more.)
Back to the Kraken mini:
A Kraken this size would easily overpower and destroy the typical ship on which our adventurers would find themselves. To spice things up, I'm going to use the props to create two Kraken. Four of them mounted vertically with a nearby claw surrounding the ship would be gnarly, dude.
This Kraken is not a typical octopus. It is a creature that not only has tentacles, but also claws. For purposes of combat, only one claw is large enough and equipped for battle, much like a Fiddler Crab, or this relative of it:
Illustration of a modern-day southern giant crab, Pseudocarcinus gigas, which can reach the weight of a small child.
The Picture Art Collection/Alamy Stock Photo
It is unknown how many tentacles this Kraken actually possesses, but only four at a time are ever used for grabbing and combat. The rest are presumably being used for propulsion and swimming underwater, or are legs. Instead, substitute the four front legs on the Fiddler crab for tentacles. So from bottom to top, it has four legs, four tentacles, a large combat-claw, and a beaked brain case at the head of the shell.
The brain pieces can represent the approximate location of the head/brain case for purposes of combat, or the location of the bite attack, if you decide to give it one. Describe the head of the tentacled crab above like a grell - a brain-looking shell with a large beak on the front.
This is one Gnarly Kraken.
I'm not a combat encounter designer, so the rest of this is just spitballing random narrative ideas for how to treat combat.
The-Kraken-attacking-the-ship is an obvious scenario, and therefore quite boring. Let's mix it up - these are two male Kraken battling each other for territory or mates (4 tentacles and a claw apiece) and our intrepid explorers' ship is caught in the middle of a fight (but the party doesn't necessarily need to know that). In fact, start the scenario with just two to four tentacles, leading the characters to think it's one Kraken attacking them, before the tentacles start attacking each other (WTF?!) and splits off to reveal it's actually two Kraken fighting over their meal of the ship.
Treat each tentacle as a separate creature with its own HP, but if the pool of HP drops below a certain percentage, all tentacles begin to suffer attack penalties. Every 25% of damage per tentacle reduces the reach and movement accordingly (the tentacles are retreating) Since the head/brain case is an obvious target, hold off on revealing its location for a couple rounds of combat. This helps drain the party of resources at the beginning, but provides a quick method of ending the fight towards the end if the party works well together.
Stat blocks are not my forte, so go to town making your own!
Or better yet, watch Treantmonk's excellent video that he just released today for Kraken Week (I wrote the bulk of this article last night, and I've already edited it based on his video, fixed a spelling error in my title and republished this today.). His Kraken has ten tentacles - so in my case, since I only 8 tentacles and 2 claws, I could treat the claws as arms instead, or adjust my monster accordingly. It's a mythical creature that has never been seen in its entirety - you can make it anything you want! I still like my original idea of two 4-armed, 1-clawed feuding males, though.
https://youtu.be/4401XqsP5J8
This is my first post showing my homebrew crafty ideas from stuff I find. I've been procrastinating doing this for sometime, but Kraken Week is a good excuse to get the series started. I just uploaded the next post where I do more shopping and put stuff together here:
This is my little oddball contribution to Kraken Week. A pictorial of some of the toys that I have purchased from gift, thrift and dollar stores. These are excellent pieces to use with your miniatures. I love to go shopping on-the-cheap for things that can be used as set pieces.
I got them at a locally owned card, game and gift shop (Kards Unlimited). They're finger puppets of octopus tentacles, as well as crab claws and a disembodied brain. They were $2.50 apiece (so don't pay any more than that online - I've seen them both cheaper and more expensive.)
I naturally bought eight tentacles, two claws, and two brains.
I wanted to buy a brain for each tentacle (like octopi have), but I was spending enough money as it was.
I did some further googling, and it looks like a lot of different companies make them, but handicat and mcphee are the brand names and import companies that pop up the most (for all of the finger puppets - there were other kinds at the store.)
They're 40 ft long if I adhere to scale - but you don't need to stick to that length for actual purposes of measuring 'reach' - make it anywhere from 10-40 ft. during combat, depending on your need - these figures are representational, not literal. I straightened out the tentacle below to show the full outstretched length by inserting a chopstick into it. In the future, I may use something like a wire coat hanger if I want to change the shape, but I don't think it's worth the trouble, again, representational.
I do want to make a base for them, weighted so that it doesn't tip easily.
I figure a 20' or 30' square base with a pedestal insert would work.
A nice blue ceramic tile would be perfect.
Four of them mounted vertically with a nearby claw surrounding the ship would be gnarly, dude.
A Kraken this size would easily overpower and destroy the typical ship on which our adventurers would find themselves. To spice things up, I'm going to use the props to create two Kraken.
This Kraken is not a typical octopus. It is a creature that not only has tentacles, but claws. For purposes of combat, only one claw is large enough and equipped for battle, much like a Fiddler Crab, or this, a relative of it.
Illustration of a modern-day southern giant crab, Pseudocarcinus gigas, which can reach the weight of a small child.
The Picture Art Collection/Alamy Stock Photo
It is unknown how many tentacles this Kraken actually possesses, but only four at a time are ever used for grabbing and combat.
The rest are presumably being used for propulsion and swimming underwater.
The brain pieces can represent the approximate location of the head/brain case for purposes of combat.
The-Kraken-attacking-the-ship is an obvious scenario, and therefore quite boring. Let's mix it up - these are two male Kraken battling each other (4 tentacles and a claw apiece) and our intrepid explorers' ship is caught in the middle of a fight for territory or mates (but the party doesn't necessarily need to know that). In fact, start the scenario with two to four tentacles, leading the characters to think it's one Kraken attacking them, before it splits off to reveal it's actually two.
Treat each tentacle as a separate creature with its own HP, but if the pool of HP drops below a certain percentage, all tentacles begin to suffer attack penalties. Since the brain case is an obvious target, hold off on revealing its location for a couple rounds of combat. This helps drain the party of resources at the beginning, but provides a quick method of ending the fight towards the end if the party works well together.
Stat blocks are not my forte, so go to town making your own!
This is my first post showing my homebrew crafty ideas from stuff I find. I've been procrastinating doing this for sometime, but Kraken Week is a good excuse to get the series started. Keep checking back.
This is a special post in my Pittsburgh Has No Hills Only Valleys series. At the foot of the Homestead Grays Bridge. I have crossed those tracks that border the Waterfront hundreds of times, most of the time at proper crossings, oft' times not! (Notice the path of to the right?) That oncoming train means that I'll be five minutes later (if not more!) for work, at which time I and my co-workers would simply text <Train!> to each other if we were caught on the wrong side.
But back to the topic - The only flat places left in pgh (other than the horizon line!) are the riverfronts. It's the reason the steel mills and farmlands and the highways and rail lines were located there. Now it's an island of commerce. From this angle, The Homestead Stacks (truly massive when you stand next to them) kiss the flat top of the surrounding valley, as does the Whemco Steel Casings building to the left (I think the tallest building left on the flats?). But it's only because of the perspective that they seem even that tall - their immense height is dwarfed and it's incredible to think just how "underground" you truly are!
