Well this month, I wanted to do something different. As we approached the 4,000 slab and board mark I wanted to do a special shout out to the entire TaleSpire Community as well as the team at Bouncy Rock. So as we got closer I was monitoring the counts, and with the normal pace I had expected us to reach the goal in a few days.
Well as life would have it (surgery for me, ER visit for my son), what was supposed to take about a week took four days. We got 57 new slabs and boards within the span of four days, over double the standard pace which was already good.
So here we are, as we write this we’re already at 4,038 slabs and boards and growing. I’d love to point out some highlights but there are so many it’s virtually impossible. I’m so proud to be part of this community, to see it grow, and see the amazing creations and creativity this community offers. From the Bouncy Rock team who has done an incredible job, to the incredible builders, the modding community, and all the players.
On a personal note, I’ve been excited since the kickstarter about this, and as with any kickstarter I wasn’t sure if it would really happen. I’m so glad it did and proud to be part of this community.
Welcome to February! This month we’re featuring Scarnor as our creator of the month.
Scarnor has been building since beta and ever since early access and as we get closer to a full scale launch has been more proactively building.
He’s also a good friend of fellow creator, Istallri, and so they’ve worked together on a number of big projects.
He’s a big RPG video game player, and has lost endless hours to mods on Skyrim and Oblivion (so many CTD). The TES series has a big impact on his building style and visions he brings to life in TaleSpire. He keeps in mind how dungeons work in TES and then tries to reproduce the same in TaleSpire.
Outside Talespire, he’s an illustrator and a concept artist. He loves drawing monsters, maps and even character sheets! A part of his work can be seen here : https://www.instagram.com/antoine_amelin/ . Personally I find this very impressive.
Well congratulations Scarnor for being our February 2022 Creator of the Month. Great work, and can’t wait to see what you create next.
Happy New Year from Tales Tavern! This month we’re featuring PsiaBaba as our creator of the month.
PsiaBaba joined the TaleSpire creation bandwagon back in June of 2021. He missed the kickstarter by a day, and kicked himself ever since until he could finally get it in Early Access.
A map building enthusiast from childhood he would draw battle maps and tape them together for his toy soldiers, and it hasn’t gone away. Theme Hospital, Rollercoaster Tycoon all the way up to Cities Skylines fed his need.
Well now he finally got TaleSpire and we’re so glad he has. The constant perfectionist has to fight his urge to nitpick his way through things and so intentionally pushes to release things before he would ‘consider them done’, because, they’d never be done.
Hey also loves drawing, chess, and apparently can never have enough tea.
Well we just want to say congratulations to PsiaBaba for being our January 2022 Creator of the Month. Great work, and can’t wait to see what you create next.
December, the last month of the year. And the end of our first year with creator of the month awards. This month we’re taking a different tact. As TaleSpire grows and develops the community around it grows and changes. Part of that is the TaleSpire modding community that is doing amazing things and bringing things to life in new and exciting ways.
HolloFox, is an avid gamer for over 20 years and has been in to TTRPGs for almost 10 years. He loves fantasy and sci-fi settings and can’t get enough of Starfinder. But more related to TaleSpire, he has been running the modding community since before Early Access. He’s been responsible for liaising with Thunderstore and the community to get hosting. He builds primarily framework plugins that give future mod developers the ability to expand and write their own mods with his tools. His goal is to really streamline the mods and continue to lower the barrier to using them. All his projects are currently open source and driven by demand in the community.
He’s well connected in the TaleSpire community having good connections with Demongund, BlueBoxRPG, and of course modders like Lord Ashes. One of his biggest projects with Lord Ashes is the Extra Assets framework which allows importing of custom assets such as Minis and Particle Effects. He’s also develops a lot of quality of life plugins to improve the entire experience.
For those interested, make sure to check the TaleSpire modding discord where he posts bounties and gives support for anyone who asks. He also has a Patreon if you’d like to support his great work. And even if not, check out his mods on ThunderStore
HolloFox, we just want to say a personal thanks from us and the community for all you’ve done and all you continue to do. It’s impressive and we can’t wait to see all the things coming that you build, or that your work has helped foster.
We’ve reached November and our next to the last creator of the month for the year! This month we feature a creator who doesn’t just think outside the box, he isn’t anywhere near it.
BrotherHanan, dubbed Lord of Kinetics after a petition in the TaleSpire Discord, is the incredible mind behind some of the most notable and unique creations you’ll see in TaleSpire. He started an entire discord group who developed a modular system for quickly building modern cities (Mod City) which was impressive enough. But he also built giant monsters, huge and creative vehicles, and eccentric structures like Baba Yaga’s Walking Hut. Months ago he went dark…. Turns out that he and Istallri were busy collaborating with College Humor’s popular D&D Show, Dimension 20: The Seven!
Well now he’s BACK in action with a fistful of new creations to share, and all of the official Dimension 20 battlemaps are now available for you to sink your claws into– along with the rest of his ridiculous constructions! He’s also recently discovered a love for live-streaming, where he has just crafted a crazy Dwarven City Set, complete with Statues!
BrotherHanan wants to thank you for being a part of TaleSpire, and is sending lots of love from Canada. 🍁
It’s October! Okay, yeah you probably already knew that. But what you didn’t know, until you read the title, is that Demongund is our October creator of the month. If you’ve been around TaleSpire for any length of time you’ve probably heard him, seen him, seen his work or any of the above.
He has been around here since the start of Beta, and has created some of the highest quality work in his builds. Forge of Fury and Curse of Strahd are his standouts and he’s got full collections you can check out. Curse of Strahd Collection and Forge of Fury Collection.
He’s collaborated with Istallri, Hollofox and the modding community, worked with John from BlueBoxRPG and has an incredible patreon where he interacts and creates incredible encounter boards. He has two youtube channels one for Demongund and one for Virtual Tabletop Journey, plus we even have some things going on with him that are in the works now and can’t wait to see them. So he’s one busy guy.
But who is Demongund? He’s a dad and long time video gamer. He loves building maps and creating quality work for TaleSpire and it shows.
Great job again and congratulations Demongund! Keep up the good work.
The month of August and early September brought us so much more in the world of TaleSpire and Tales Tavern. So much I can barely keep it all straight, but let’s give it a go anyways!
Hero Forge Integration Coming
Hero Forge Integration Confirmed!
On September 1st, Bouncy Rock officially confirmed that Hero Forge integration is coming to TaleSpire. We don’t have an official release date yet and there is much to be done, but it’s coming. They’ve told us there will be more information about this awesome partnership coming later this month.
Now one concern that has been brought up is the cost, so let’s clarify a few things: First, Hero Forge integration is NOT Tale Weaver or a replacement for it. Tale Weaver is still to come and will allow you to create in-game items for free. So if you don’t want to spend, you don’t have to. Hero Forge integration is simply an additional feature in the software.
Second, at present there aren’t any known discounts for Hero Forge minis. Hero Forge is still a separate business and so pricing is theirs to control. Minis can be bought one at a time or through subscriptions if you want to get a bunch and save some.
Dimension 20 now using TaleSpire
We mentioned this announcement last month but wanted to give a quick update. Dimension 20‘s new season “The Seven” began a few weeks back, but this week they finally showed off TaleSpire in live seesion. The combat began as the heroes raced for their (and their beautiful horse’s) lives. Luckily the warrior geese arrived as well to help them. If you want to check it out, subscribe to Dropout TV to catch up on all the story and see the beauty of TaleSpire and Hero Forge in action.
Demiplane for TaleSpire LFG
Bouncy Rock also announced that they are partnering with Demiplane to help players find games to play using TaleSpire. You can connect with it at https://demiplane.talespire.com/ . It’s still fairly new so we’ll see how it grows, but fingers crossed that it will another good resource besides Reddit and the TaleSpire Discord.
New TaleSpire Status Effects, Coloring and Bookmarks
Knockdown and Colored Status Rings
Yes, as if that all wasn’t enough, in the last month we’ve had a number of exciting announcements about updates to TaleSpire.
First, we got bookmarks. You can create create personal markers which allow you to search in the board panel or even create web links that go directly to a location in TaleSpire. This is definitely a great addition for players and builders alike.
Next came knockdowns, the first persistent miniature effect in TaleSpire. Now you can knock a creature prone for whatever reason, whether they were grappled and shoved, or completely knocked out. Thanks to the first of hopefully many mini updates, you can now visibly see this inside the game.
On top of that, we got colored base rings. Now the rim of your minis can be colored, not only just for fun but also to denote certain status effects if you want. This is a fantastic quality of life addition to help with the bookkeeping that is involved in any tabletop roleplaying game.
New Creator of the Month
Just a quick shout-out to Gogots as our new September creator of the month. He’s done a fantastic job and you can read all about him in our formal announcement. Stellar building and keep up the good work!
Asset Replacer Released to the Public
Phew, as if we didn’t have enough going on this month. We’re releasing our asset replacement tool to the public. Visit a slab and it will tell you every asset within, moreover you can replace existing assets using this wonderful little piece of tech! Full disclosure, it’s still early so if you run into issues please don’t hesitate to let us know. Also, not all assets have the same layout and rotation, so while the current version simply replaces, it doesn’t add rotation or movement to the items being replaced (that will be in a future version). So have at it and turn those taverns into dungeons (well sort of) quickly and easily!
Coming Soon! Tales Tavern Store
Yes, that’s right: we’re soon going to be launching a new online store! Buy your Tales Tavern gear and the proceeds go to supporting the site so we can keep it running and add sweeter features. Or you can even design your own gear and purchase it, which we’ll have sent directly to you. If you don’t need gear and still want to support the site, we also have our Patreon which helps fund the tavern and keep the lights on. This is a labor of love but anything to help is more than appreciated!
New Tales Tavern Layout
After a very long time of being focused primarily on slabs and boards, we felt it was time to start helping promote new things that are coming in the world of TaleSpire. In order to foster that we’ve added some new categorization on the Tales Tavern home page, with pages devoted not only to TaleSpire slabs and boards but also to TaleSpire Campaigns and Collections, TaleSpire Creators and TaleSpire Resources. We have a lot more planned (including a new Mini database coming, Updated FAQs, New Tools, and possibly Modding info) but this starting step will help expose more of this one of a kind group of people to each other!
This is all a work in progress so if there are things you’d like to see more of or other ideas you think would help, please come join us on the Tales Tavern Discord. We’re open to hearing it all in hopes of making the best site possible for players, GMs, creators and all of the TaleSpire community.
Thanks for being a Great Community
To close out, I just wanted to post another shoutout for this awesome group of people. Without everyone doing their part – from GMs running games, players playing, creators building fantastical creations, streamers getting the word out, and of course the team at Bouncy Rock – TaleSpire wouldn’t be what it is today. I know I personally can’t wait to see where this goes.
Thanks for your time and passion, we look forward to being your online VTTRPG home for many sessions to come!
We’ve made it to September and we’re excited to announce our fifth creator of the month. Gogots is a new creator who was chomping at the bit during Beta and jumped on TaleSpire as soon as Early Access went live. He’s come out of the gate guns blazing and has an impressive array of slabs and boards already with 48 slabs and boards and many of them put into some great collections of modular pieces.
Gogots has been creating maps for role playing games for a long time. First of course in 2d, but now with TaleSpire he’s moved on to 3d and we’re glad to have him. He loves being able to share what he creates as it’s something he’s always done and TaleSpire lets him continue this tradition.
As mentioned he’s created a lot of modular slabs such as the set at https://talestavern.com/collections/modular-tiles-2/ and we’re excited to see more to come. He also creates many complex slabs for his games that you can see some featured below or check out his profile for more.
As always we’ll be sending him a Tales Tavern mug and T-Shirt in appreciation for all his hard work. Great job again and congratulations Gogots!
Welcome to Tales Tavern and the world of TaleSpire. As many of you Dimension 20 fans may be experiencing this for the first time we wanted to make sure you got a warm welcome and some good tips on TaleSpire.
What is TaleSpire?
TaleSpire is a 3D Online Virtual Tabletop Simulator built for playing Tabletop Role Playing Games, most often D&D 5e or Pathfinder. Anything is possible/ We’ve even seen some creators build boards for games like Warhammer. One benefit, among the many that exist, is truly being able to visualize the scenes when playing. You can watch your characters (and monsters) explore the world like never before instead of imagining tall buildings, chasms, and dungeons. When your Tabaxi rogue runs up the wall to swing off the rafters, it happens in front of your friends.
What is Tales Tavern?
Well besides the site you’re on now, it’s a place where creators post boards, slabs, campaigns and much more for players and GMs alike to share and reuse. You don’t have to build everything yourself: just copy, paste, and start playing. Why work when you can be lazy and cheat recycle other boards?
How do I get started?
Well I don’t want to bore you with too much, but we put together a few guides that may help you get going quicker. Once you’ve bought TaleSpire (or even before) you can go through some of these to understand how the game works with our website.
TaleSpire Players Guide – Just want to play? Learn what you need essentially to help your game run smoother and so you won’t look like a newb.
Dimension 20 Board Creators
You may have come here wondering about who created the wonderful boards used in Dimension 20, well, you’ve found the right place. Those beautiful boards were created by Istallri Astra and Brother Hanan. You may want to check out some of the amazing boards on their profiles.
We’re so excited to announce that Tales Tavern now contains over 2,500 slabs and boards from beta and early access. It’s been fun to see us close in on this milestone. The initial burst from Early Access was particularly interesting to watch. Gengus, one of our very own builder’s of the month, pushed us over the top with a simple selection of houses slab.
It’s great to see that we average nearly 14 slabs and boards each day. Although some days fluctuate, this amazing community continues to grow. My next goal is to see us hit 5,000 slabs and boards. We also want to achieve 100 campaigns built (we’ve got a ways to go on that one). In case you missed it, our TaleSpire Campaign Library is a hub for more resources beyond a single slab. A campaign is helpful for easily finding every slab, board, and guide/walk-through in the same place. Ideally, these are published campaigns such as Rime of the Frostmaiden, or homebrew campaigns created by some of the amazing creators in the community.
It’s been a great run and we’re so excited to see what the future holds. As we roll out our next series of changes, look for us push to get more Campaigns loaded, new fun statistics, and more ways for you to show your TaleSpire love.
Welcome to August! It’s another great month for TaleSpire and Tales Tavern and we’ve got a bunch of great updates. New badges, some exciting results from July’s charity stream, and big announcements for this month and beyond!
Badges! Get your badges here!
This month we wanted to add a bit more fun to the site. Starting soon Tales Tavern accounts have achievements you can complete to earn badges to show on your creator profile. Simply head over to your profile page and you can see what you’ve earned, as well as what you have yet to earn. You can also view other creators’ profiles and see what they’ve done so far. We have designed one special badge for the creator of the month that shows up next to the creator name throughout the site. And that brings us to…
Istallri Astra named August Creator of the Month
Yes, it’s been a long time coming…okay a few months really. If you don’t know who he is, or haven’t seen his work, then where have you been? You can read a bit more about him at https://talestavern.com/august-creator-of-the-month-istallri-astra/ or on his wonderful TT profile. Istallri is an amazing, creative, fantastic builder and a long-time friend of the Tavern. We’re glad to feature him and highlight his incredible work!
Need a guide? We’ve got one for you.
We’ve had a few guides out for a while but never officially listed them anywhere, so the new TaleSpire Guides Page has been made public and added to both the home page and in our navigation menu. Right now the main guides are for those starting new with TaleSpire (terminology, players guide, and sharing guides) but we hope to have more in the future.
Asset Replacer Officially out for Patrons
Last month we mentioned this but we put a few more tweaks in our asset replacer tool. You can find it at https://talestavern.com/asset-replacer/. Currently as we work through any potential issues, we have it available to all our patreon supporters, which you can join at https://patreon.com/talestavern. One of our goals is going to be working on new enhancements to this tool and then taking it public for everyone to use, though patrons will have an enhanced version available as we get that working.
Tales Tavern Tweaks
Well besides the bigger tasks, we did a number of tweaks and bug fixes to the site. One of those is adding the ability for collections and campaigns to now have multiple images. This is mostly going to be of use for campaigns and soon we’ll be rolling out some more pages and layout changes to more properly display our Campaign Page. We’ll also be rolling out additional changes in August such as new pages to feature slabs/boards, campaigns/collections, creators and much more.
St. Jude Children’s Hospital Charity Event and Minis!
Last month, BlueBoxRPG and LordGosumba hosted a charity event to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Hospital. We’re proud to announce the stream raised over $8,000 (double the goal) for this wonderful charity. During this very special event Demongund, Istallri, Jonny Ree and Jason (Dwarf) from Bouncy Rock, and myself played in TaleSpire as the “Company of the Bounding Boulder” . It was a great time, some serious shenanigans and a special rock were involved. Plus, Bouncy Rock released a new Bounding Boulder mini asset pack just for the event.
And now for probably the biggest news of all. If you haven’t heard, Dimension 20 will be using TaleSpire for their new season, which starts on August 18th! You won’t want to miss the dnd shenanigans.
Not only is this exciting for TaleSpire, but our own Istallri and Brother Hanaan created the battle boards they’re using. You can see the trailer below with some of their great creations.
But wait, there’s more! If you haven’t already noticed, there’s new minis in the trailer. Many of these were imported from HeroForge. There’s no official date yet, but Bouncy Rock confirmed they are working with HeroForge and so something is coming soon to allow import of minis! I told you we had big news!
That’s all we have for this month’s Tales Tavern update! Keep your eyes peeled for quality of life changes to the website and if you have questions talk to us in the community Discord. Thanks for your everlasting support adventurers!
Welcome to August! And another featured creator of the month. This month we’re back to covering one of our creators that has been here since the beginning of the TaleSpire Beta. Istallri is not only one of our more prolific creators, he’s also given back so much to the community we just want to do him justice, and no matter how much we say, it won’t be enough.
Istallri is definitely a big time geek and cocktail lover, but he’s done so much more for the TaleSpire Community, lets see if we can list some of it.
YouTube – First he has an Amazing youtube channel with build tips, guides, trailers for TaleSpire packs, and much more. Whether you need building tips, photo tips, or simply want to watch his amazing visuals on his creations, you must check it out!
Charity – Istallri not only played in the BlueBox RPG Charity Stream for St. Judes Childrens Research Hospital but also helped to create the video of the whole charity stream
Community – Not only is Istallri got great tutorials but he helps out others though his amazing video editing skills and even helped create our logo and a few graphics for Tales Tavern.
What can we say? This community wouldn’t be the same without him and we here are proud to feature him as the creator of the month. Great job Istallri! We’ll be in touch to get you your Tales Tavern mug and t-shirt.
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