DIY vs. BUY BUY BUY

              Early this weekend I was inspired to work on a new aspect of my hobby, namely making terrain. I'd previously sprung a few pretty pennies for a set of latex brick moulds which could be used to cast bricks out of plaster of paris, and then glued together to form any variety of dungeon settings with enough time and patience, and plaster.

                I'd hedged my bets on the first order, buying the bare minimum because I wasn't sure the hobby would be for me. With the most basic moulds, working on the most basic beginner project, there was a prospective 14 casts per mould I'd have to complete to get the bricks necessary for assembly. I proceeded to put the moulds on my shelf and forget about them for about a year.

                Well, this weekend I was fired up, so I resolved to get those moulds out and make them work for me. I'd already done some prep work, purchasing the plaster for when I was ready to finally dedicate the time to the casting process. I soon realized I'd need a few more tools like a putty knife to smoothe things out, but I'll be damned if I was gonna let something like that stop me now that I was finally in the mood to cast some bricks.

                I spent the whole day casting, waiting, removing, and refining the process. I got more efficient at it, but it was still a ~30minute interruption every time a batch was ready to remove from the moulds, between popping them out, carefully setting them aside, mixing new plaster, pouring the moulds, and hammering air bubbles out. It was also messy work, so that forced me to keep casting later into the night than I otherwise would have- I wasn't about to clean all that junk up just to drag it all out again tomorrow.

                I noticed a few troubling things. The website for the moulds did warn that plaster was probably the lesser of the materials you could cast the blocks from, but also stated that it was totally viable for smaller projects. I found the plaster blocks to be incredibly flimsy, some of the finer detail pieces just couldn't survive removal from the casts no matter what I did. I worked around the issue and made due with what I could get.

 

Sunday morning rolled around, and after pouring my 10th casting (out of the prescribed 14), I decided I'd best get some of these things glued down and assembled to see if I even liked the other half of this new hobby. We'd gone out the night before to pick up a putty knife as well as some foam insulation to mount the pieces on, so I was ready to glue some blocks together.

 

               Assembly was an unmitigated disaster. Many of the blocks broke, even after curing all night they were still somewhat damp to the touch. The glue (which was recommended on the website), was difficult to use, and slopped all over the place between blocks when I pushed them together, but if I used too little glue there was just no good connection. I was caked in glue, and lost track of time and almost ruined my 10th casting by leaving the moulds too long without scraping them level (the plaster had to set a bit before you could scrape effectively).

 

                Now, admittedly, I wasn't using the top of the line dental plaster recommended by the website, but I had expected better results than what I had sitting in front of me. Some of the blocks were so lopsided that there were visible gaps on one side but not the other, and the archways were both crooked. Sure, I could dump more cash into additional moulds to speed up the casting process, and I could pay outrageous prices to ship 50 kg bags of dental cement up to Canada and try again. Hell, I could even drill holes in some of the key structural pieces to ensure stability.

 

                At this point I stopped. Why would I put all that effort into something I wasn't really enjoying? Sure, the blocks looked cool, and the photo examples on the site looked really impressive, but I've been painting miniatures long enough to know that my own output wouldn't approach levels like those pictured for years. Did I really want to double down on this?

                I recently took up running ad&d rules-as-written, after seeing successful campaigns with friends take off and create powerful lives of their own. Re-reading those books, and putting the philosophy of the game into practice, has been an incredibly freeing experience. Every irksome issue I had with modules I'd been running, or rules-light systems where a bit of elaboration could have avoided headaches and arguments, dissolved at once when I read ad&d. It gave me the freedom to generate the content me and my players want, unconstrained by the design philosophy of module authors, or over-simplification rounding off rough edges.

                Why, then, should I doggedly try to fix the problems with this casting and assembly thing that I was so luke-warm on that I'd put it off for months, for fear of the work involved? Wouldn't it be better for me to take up a different approach more suited to my skillset? Why not just carve the terrain free-hand and assemble it as I see fit?

                The results would surely be less impressive, at first. But learning to carve material by hand, rather than slamming together pre-fab elements, must be a more rewarding pursuit in the long run. With carving my own terrain, the only restrictions are personal skill and raw material. I wouldn't need to wait weeks, pay 35 USD + Shipping for every additional mould (as a rule, pretty much double the price of anything you want to ship up to canada lately). Sure, there will always be hurdles and setbacks, but the cost to entry and engagement is so much lower. If I want to stop carving something, just place it on the workbench and leave it alone. No fiddly plaster to work with, just to have the pieces fall apart later anyway.

                Had it been a few years ago, I'd be incentivised to double-down and make things work because I saw it as a failure of my own to follow the guides. But I did invest in the supplies, tools, and the time to read the techniques, and I still fell flat on my face. Would I improve with practice? Yes. But the same could be said of just doing the damn thing myself from scratch.

 

                With the casts, under the best circumstances all I've done is follow a guide and used a product the same way as anyone else who's ever bought it. Better to spend that time working on a more rudimentary and universal skillset, such as freehand carving of foam to make terrain. Similar results, maybe a little less pretty at first, but in exchange it offers total freedom and control. Ball's entirely in my court, for weal or for woe. Both methods take practice, but wouldn't it be so much more satisfying to do it myself, with as few aids as possible? I think so.

                If I were to create a fantastic diorama from the bricks of those moulds, all it shows is that I can follow instructions and use their product really well. With the moulds, the failure is all mine, but I share in none of the success. The beautifully cast bricks are thanks to the incredible moulds latex moulds I bought. They say nothing about my own skillset. If I carve it myself, the triumph is all mine. I'd be proud every time I look at my durdly little foam castle, knowing everyhing on the table came from me, my own skills, and if I want it to be better all I need to do is refine my technique. Its MINE.

                It boils down to this: Do I want to fix a problem myself, or do I want to pay another man to fix it for me, and learn nothing. This is a key difference between mindlessly consuming products, and participating in a hobby. If I've got 8 hours of prep, do I want to spend it reading someone else's creative output, modifying it and adjusting it to fit into my campaign, or do I want to just crank something out of my own, which I will know like the back of my hand, be more confident in running, and is guaranteed to fit my style because I made it? A lot of that philosophy carries over here, and I think I'm going to be looking at a lot of my hobbies in the same light going forward.

 

                Create, don't consoom.