The Blog of Michael T. Murphy and his lifelong obsession with "little army men" and their imaginary glory, miniature wargaming, and other things...

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Building Crabtree: Barber Shop, Signs, and some backstory ramblings....


Well it's official that I will NOT be going to Little Wars this year....
I had to grit my teeth and send in my cancellation notice simply because of work.
But that is not stopping me from building my town, nosiree....
So I am continuing and am presenting the next building: "The Barber Shop".
This is yet another Knuckleduster building, and in doing this one I decided to go with a "blue color", to give some appeal and attraction.
Naturally the harsh climate of the Old West has weathered the blue paint, as well as the weathering and wear on the wooden walk-boards outside.








And while working with this building, I have decided to start previewing some of the signs and perhaps the back history (stories) of some of them.
My players know that one of my greatest joys is creating NPC's/Characters that are simply more than "walking bait" for murderhobos. Too often in games we see "Joe" walking along carrying a sack, and a full money purse displayed from his belt. The characters have no idea or concern over who he is, what he is doing, etc, and usually neither does the GM. They just need "a hook".
So I try to give some atmosphere (as well as possible future story-lines), in with my characters.

An example of this is for the Barber Sign below.
This sign will be on the previously displayed building.
But there is a history to the barber....aka "Barber Joe", (more on that later)....




 And I'll be posting more signs and backstories for my town soon....


3 comments:

Jay said...

Great job on the faded glory of the old wooden building. Cool sign too.

Anonymous said...

I have been thinking of doing a few more western buildings during our Southern Hemisphere winter. I don't have a barber shop...
Thanks for the inspiration.

Alia parker said...

Quality Shop Signs can make a shop more attractive. People love to see an attractive thing and business technique is always make something good for the audience so that the audience love to visit your shop. You can give a short brief about your shop by a Shop Signs too.