Tauster's Toadstools, or: Mushroom Mayhem

I wanted some relatively simple and small dungeon dressing tiles that represented mosses and lichen, but large enough for the PC to sumble over them and alien enough to make them think twice if they really want to step on that stuff.

I found some growth in the garden on an old willow and on dead wood that fit perfectly. I hotglued it on mosaic tiles (2x2 cm) that come cheap and that make excellent bases. You'll get those tiles in all kinds of colors and textures, even some that look like ancient bone. *drool*

The following was inspired by Miniwargaming’s wicked idea of making alien vegetation our of straws:


However 'inspired’ is the wrong word, as I blatantly copied the whole thang. The only idea I added was to glue small magnets to the bottom of the plants and to the bases, creating two major advantages:

1) Much better portability. Now you can stack the relatively flat bases and keep the plants in a small box.
2) Better flexibility: You can use the bases together with other decoration and you can stick the plants to other things.

I’ll post pictures of the complete tiles later on.











The holes in the stems, with their orange-red rim, almost look like screaming mouths. I plan to use that in-game, making these weirdos into a kind of underdark reed that got mutated byTorog's madness left behind as some kind of divine background radiation of evil/madness/pain, so these plants now telepathically scream the pain of their warped bodies out. Let's see the party fight against themselves and/or imaginary foes!

On my list of videos to do are these...

Very simple using only the standard materials shown so far. Cardstock, Kebab skewers, hot glue and paint and waterbased gloss varnish.

The magnet idea for breakdown/storage/modularity is really cool. Your unpainted mushrooms looked great, and the "reeds-in-psychic-pain" tile looked totally otherwordly. Great job!

Great idea, soon to be stolen...

...guess what: 'nother kind'o fungus!
(I think I might have an unhealthy funghi obsession.)

Try to find some dried lotus pods. Like the funnel-shaped mushrooms, they are used by florists and as decoration material and come quiet cheap. I got a box of 50 pods, prepainted (burgundy, i.e. red/brown) for 13 euro, shipping costs already included: i.imgur.com/HUonjLD.jpg

You don't really have to do much - they already look wicked enough.





The brown 'stump' i sculpted from modelling paste, but paper maché should do the job equally well. Just form a little cone, press the small end of the lotus pod in to form the crater, add some texture on the sides (I pressed a piece of bark in the still-malleable modelling paste), let it dry and paint it up and you're done.

They're ideal as mushrooms (the harmless variant), but I prefer to use them as brood chambers for critters. Seriously, this stuff looks like the organic kindergarden for tyranids or aliens, or whatever swarming creatures you want to throw at your players. You don't even have to come up with some foreboding text to read or tell your players - when you put up the dungeon terrain (with the usual descriptions, you put the lotus piece on the table last (after the party's miniatures) and fall silent. Don't describe it, let the optics of this thing do the job. Look ominously, or try to make no speciaol expression at all. I think the players will be scared like hell.

He is a fun guy...

Got another batch finished, and some of the previous batch re-done (I didn't like the green & brown color scheme). Some pictures below, with a few comments (I try to keep myself from rambling, lets see if I succeed).


With these I kept the original color scheme, but only for the heads: i.imgur.com/T8hwcGO.jpg

The classic red-with-white-dots variant: i.imgur.com/MHOFpbz.jpg
You can see it not very well in the shot, but I varied the red: The two in the background have a lighter shade, while the other two have another, slightly darker red layer painted on. Plus, I like the stems in the foreground much better (more on these below).

The two reds in the foreground look a bit like chilis. I started with a dark orange and added a rather thick red layer: i.imgur.com/jcL3snr.jpg

The brown ones are not really bad, but nothing exciting either. The large mushroom on the right was the center stem of a garlic buld in it's former life. i.imgur.com/KA5HWBa.jpg

I left some models unfinished so that in case I stumble over a nice idea in the future, I don't have to start from scratch. Having some blank 'shrooms left over gives me a head-start, saves a lot of work and thus keep the threshold low for trying out new fungus stuff. i.imgur.com/x6cn85u.jpg

This is my favourite batch: i.imgur.com/mYq4yNl.jpg



They started out as the green-brown variants that I wanted to modify. I fired up the hotglue gun and pressed the nozzle in the cap's glue when it was only warm but not extremly hot. This leaves a nice crater-like impression in the cap. I think it looks organic (in the sense of grown) but unnatural at the same time, making them ideal for terrain in the Feydark (underdark meets faerie plane). I will probably convert some (or all) of the blanks to this, but maye with a different color scheme.

I'm still looking for some cool name for the different kinds... I think the cratered ones will be called faerie eyes, eye-caps...
And they should have some magical effect, or at least be used in a way connected to magic... for example growing only in the presence of strong faerie magic like a gate between the two worlds, or somesuch. Ideas are welcome!

I absolutely love how the stems turned out. You can get this in the usual way (drawing the nozzle of the gluegun over the glue to create texture), and then touching the glue while it hasn't completely settled - which does exactly what you usually want to avoid: Drawing glue whisps. Here, the whisps and filaments are a desired result. Basepaint the whole stem in a dark brown, add a much lighter, sand- or mud-colored tone with a heavy stroke of the brush and drybrush it with an off-white, light grey or white.

I can very well see underdark races using these mushroom stems as building materials, the way that surfacers use wood (only that in the underdark, this 'fungus ersatz wood' should be much rarer). So if I ever build some underdark terrain that involve pieces that the native races had crafted, I could use this technique for the fungus wood. The downside is that is is much more work- and thus time-consuming that simply using a wooden variant like in DMG's doors & bokcases. But who cares if the end result looks better?

...so there you have it: I rambled again.

Your mosses and mushrooms are superb! Lots of excellent ideas. 

The lotus pods are fantastic.