Slab & Board News

Castle Ravenloft – TaleSpire Edition – Kickstarter is Live!

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John (Demongund) and Tony (Heimdahlr) over at Virtual Tabletop Journey are launching the long awaited Castle Ravenloft – Talespire Edition Kickstarter! They have already created iconic maps such as the Bonegrinder Windmill, Werewolf Den, Death House and Amber Temple, now they need your support to bring Castle Ravenloft to life in 3D!

Pledge Now!

With these Talespire maps, your gaming group is just a few clicks away from beginning your Curse of Strahd epic. All maps are designed for ease of use and quick map transitions, spend less time doing setup and more on glorious combat… I mean roleplay!

Death House, showcased on the BlueBoxRPG stream.

In addition to the Castle Ravenloft map, the Kickstarter will feature 5e Adventures PDFs! These 20 page modules contain gorgeous 2D resources and also have fully complete Talespire maps!

FREE 5e Adventure – To celebrate the Kickstarter, the Mystery in Bludmist Swamp 5e Adventure is free to download during the campaign!

The Castle Ravenloft Talespire map will be published at Talestavern for everyone and there are also great rewards, stretch goals and add-ons, including:

  • 5e Adventure PDFs, complete with Talespire support
  • Additional Curse of Strahd Talespire maps such as…
    • Argynvostholt, City of Villaki, Van Richten’s Tower
  • A custom two-shot adventure through Death House with up to five of your friends
Pledge to bring Castle Ravenloft to life in 3D!

March 2022 Creator of the Month – TaleSpire Community

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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.

Community Builds Then and Now

Slab
City Water Fountain
67 Assets7w x 4.5d x 7h
Slab
Mountain Board – The Mount St Mikkel
4052 Assets66w x 29.5d x 34h
Slab
🧹 Baba Yaga’s Walking House
800 Assets18w x 18d x 25.75h
Slab
Travel Encounter Goblin Ambush
by H@x0r
337 Assets21w x 10d x 25h
Board
Port Nyanzaru – Tomb of Annihilation
Board
dragons mountain
by GENGUS
Board
The Aberrant Temple of Kn’aan
Board
Castle full scale of Kaer Morhen – The Witcher

February 2022 Creator of the Month – Scarnor

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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.

Featured Scarnor Slabs & Boards

Slab
Asterman Encampment – Roman Camp (Updated)
4438 Assets68.25w x 43.75d x 13.25h
Slab
Age of Empires II – Modular Slab – Feudal Age
5878 Assets73.5w x 48.25d x 12h
Board
The Tribule Manor
Board
Salt & Wind – Village
Board
Salt and Wind – Dungeon
Board
Secrets and Manor

January Creator of the Month – PsiaBaba

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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.

Featured PsiaBaba Slabs & Boards

Board
Mansion on a cliff
Board
Cursed Tree
Slab
Weary Wyvern Tavern & Inn
5443 Assets32.75w x 24.5d x 17.25h
Slab
Sawmill
4493 Assets63.75w x 45.25d x 18.75h
Board
Silbernvein WIP

November Creator of the Month – BrotherHanan

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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. 🍁

You can click Here to join his Discord Community, or enjoy some extra perks and support him on Patreon by Clicking Here!

And keep up to date through your favorite social media:
YouTube.com/BrotherHanan
Twitter.com/BrotherHanan
Twitch.tv/BrotherHanan
Instagram.com/BrotherHanan

Featured BrotherHanan Slabs & Boards

Board
VOLCANO ARENA – Dimension 20: The Seven
Board
MOUNTAIN PILLARS – Dimension 20: The Seven Ep 4
Board
THE AIRSHIP – Dimension 20: The Seven ( Maiden’s Voyage / Rumbosa )
Slab
🧊 ModCity Sewers: [ Modular ]
2069 Assets56w x 7d x 76h
Slab
🧊 ModCity Sewers: Encounters [ Modular ]
2109 Assets57w x 7d x 47h
Slab
🧊 Mod City – Magic Store [ Modular ]
4383 Assets90w x 64d x 17.5h
Slab
🐢 Dragon Turtle – Colossal
3295 Assets60w x 20.5d x 78h
Slab
Crane / Giant Mechanical Claw
1500 Assets19w x 22.75d x 25h
Slab
🧙🏾‍♂️ Statue: The Mad Wizard (HUGE)
497 Assets6.5w x 6d x 10.25h
Slab
🧊 ModCity – Weapon & Armor Store + Legendary Items & Extra Modules [ Modular ]
4582 Assets89w x 65d x 13h
Board
The Aguefort Adventuring Academy (Work In Progress)
Slab
⛄ Avalanche Primordial
142 Assets9w x 8.75d x 9.25h

October Creator of the Month – Demongund

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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.

Featured Demongund Slabs & Boards

Board
Curse of Strahd – Death House – Game Ready
6013 Assets26w x 32d x 30.25h
Slab
Forge of Fury – Glitterhame – Main
6480 Assets75w x 66d x 38.5h
Slab
Forge of Fury – The Foundry – Main
5954 Assets71w x 60d x 18.75h
Board
Curse of Strahd – Church of Barovia
4110 Assets56.25w x 25.5d x 59h
Board
Curse of Strahd – Old Bonegrinder
3773 Assets64w x 65d x 21.75h

Tales Tavern now over 2,500 slabs and boards

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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.

Enter to win a Steam Gift card and more!

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July is an exciting month here at the Tavern. We’ve got a lot in the works and wanted to give you a heads up on it all. Check what we have below. There’s something for everyone:

St. Jude Children’s Hospital Charity Event

BlueBoxRPG is hosting a charity streaming event with LordGosumba to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Hospital. We’ll be providing more details soon, but block out time on your calendar on Saturday, July 17th at 2 PM CST (Noon PST/3 PM EST). During this very special event you can see Demongund, Istallri, Jonny Ree and Jason (Dwarf) from Bouncy Rock, and myself, the Mad Wizard of Tales Tavern as we play D&D and support a very worthwhile charity. Come to watch the fun, or if just to see what kind of stupid crazy moves we make.

Tales Tavern Author Search

On the Tavern you’ve always been able to search for slabs and boards by creators by searching their names. To further simplify finding your favorite creator, there is an option to search for creator profiles, specifically. Just change the drop down to ‘search creators’ on the ‘results’ page or on the ‘browse by creator’ page. You can easily find your favorite creator by typing their name. It displays their four most liked submissions and you can click to their profile as well.

Need some Ko-fi? Coffee?

Ko-fi is another way to support your favorite creators. Besides the links to their twitch, youtube, and patreon pages, creators can now add a link to their Ko-fi page on their creator profile. Because any creator can use more Ko-fi !

Slab Asset Replacement Tool in Beta

Last month we rolled out our Slabalyzer tool that analyzes and optimizes (mostly removing duplicate) assets, but now we’ve got more cooking. Our Slab Asset Replacement Tool will allow you to remove or replace tiles and props in a slab. This tool also updates the slab format from V1 to V2 (it does not replace the actual deprecated assets at this point).

We’ve got a lot of plans for this tool with both a free version and an enhanced Patreon only version. For now we’re rolling out this in beta to our Patreons at any support level. If you want to check it out and help support this site in developing new tools, you can find our Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/talestavern .

Note this is a very first blush and there are a lot of hiccups we’ll have to work through, but wanted to get it out so you can play with it and help us make sure we catch them all and we make this as useful as possible.

Badges! I do need stinking badges! And a chance at a Steam Gift Card

Well, enough serious work, we wanted to add some more fun interactivity on the site. So we’re rolling out new badges you can earn later this month. Post a slab, earn a badge. Post a lot of slabs, get another. Like something, comment, etc. now you’ll get rewarded (if only in a small way) for being active on the site.

Before we do that, we want your input. We could spend all our creative juices coming up with titles, images, etc. for the badges. But why do that when we can bribe you to do the work? Simply take the survey below, and let us know your creative ideas for what badges we should give out, what they should be named, and what images should be used. We’re using TaleSpire asset pics for the badges, so it will take some creativity. And come up with your best D&D or TTRPG names for the badges. Let’s have some fun with this.

Everyone who fills out the survey will get entered. And if we use any part of your idea (name, image, etc) we’ll give you extra entries into the drawing. Go crazy, have fun, we can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with.

The deadline to enter is July 16th so we can review and pick a winner and announce it the weekend of July 17-18. Thanks in advance for everyone who enters!

Click here for the Tales Tavern Badge Survey

New Tool: The Tales Tavern Slabalyzer!

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The days of wondering about the size of map files in BouncyRock’s digital tabletop simulator are over! As of today, TalesTavern will now show detailed statistics attached to every slab posted on the site. Each thumbnail will accurately display the number of assets used in a particular slab, as well as their overall dimensions:

Thumbnail view.

A more detailed breakdown is available when viewing an individual slab. This breakdown shows how many assets are used, as well as the number of unique assets in its composition. Most importantly, the site shows how much data is contained within each slab, shown in the example below:

Slab page.

This functionality goes beyond a posted slab however. Any user can access this information by using the Slabalyzer, which is located under the Slabs and Boards tab from the home page here: https://talestavern.com/talespire-slab-analyzer-optimizer/

This fantastic tab displays the details on a slab string, while removing duplicate assets and minimizing the overall codelength. This is helpful for understanding how large a single slab is before it gets posted to the archive. Consider running kitbashed assets through the Slabalyzer before mass producing the object, as they may take up more space than expected.

As of this moment, there is no way for the site’s tools to reveal the same data sets for posted boards. A board uses an in-game URL instead of a string of characters, so for now the site automatically optimizes every posted slab as though it was run through the Slabalyzer. There’s more exciting work coming around the corner, so stay tuned for all things TalesTavern!

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