Brick Pilgrim

@BrickJagger and @connyx: Thanks for the welcome I'm considering giving up composing as it takes a long time for me and I'm not that great at it. That being said, here are two songs I composed: This first one was heavily influenced by GOT theme (even though I've never actually read the books or watched the show, I like the music). It was meant to be a theme for a story I was writing but it never took off (The RPG I was writing for eventually died): https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xnSkhJHE6bHDYkl5MTz9m99POJeMixqG This second one I composed as a praise song and it has lyrics, however this is a version with the French Horn playing the melody as I am terrible at singing. I also experimented with counterpoint in the third stanza. (I just listened to it again, and it seams that the French Horn is a bit off-time. Sorry about that, I might correct it later): https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UZJ-yAIrIfSoBnfTO4wp2oawnwtDhbY4 Note: both these links are shared Google Drive links and will take you off of Eurobricks.

Yeah, I'm not too surprised someone else discovered this connection before me. I've actually been told it's been used in official Lego sets (see this thread). The supplies on the horse was one part of the build that I tried a few times before getting something I liked, I'm glad you liked it too. Thanks for the comments. I don't have enough grey connections to make the tree much taller, but I could have made the trunk taller and then branched out further up. I appreciate your suggestion, though: It helps me think more about my builds as a whole rather than individual portions.

I'm surprised to see this connection in an official model, though I'm not shocked that someone else had though of it before. I just happened upon it when thinking of what different ways I could connect my pieces. @MAB, @imvanya is right when he says the connection is not as strong (not as much friction) + it just uses a different piece which I happen to have more of. Yeah all the clip and hinge pieces make finding the right connection for your model fairly easy and this particular connection works well instead of a click-hinge for what I was using it in.

I already posted this technique in the History Theme section along with the MOC I used it in, but I thought this technique could be highly useful in many other themes so I'm posting it here. As far as I know, this is new and nobody has done this before. Correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway, I came up with this on my own while I was toying around with my connections. The ratcheted hinge piece and the clip fit together naturally and they form a smooth hinge (really nice for me as I do not have the old hinges).

In this MOC of the departure from Rivendell described in The Fellowship of the Ring (Book), I tried to capture the grey feel of the scene. I also wanted to experiment with making a tree from various connections. I'm pretty happy about how it came out and I discovered a new technique* * Somebody may have done this before, but if so, I discovered it independently so it's a new technique to me: The ratcheted hinge piece and the clip fit together naturally and they form a smooth hinge (really nice for me as I do not have the old hinges).

Good idea.

Yeah, I agree. We castle fans definitely miss our minifigs. And you hit the mark perfectly, IMO, about the licensed figures being too distinctive: I use them because that's what I have, but if Lego could come out with a new unlicensed Castle line with distinct characters, I'd love to switch from using fleshies to yellow faces. I guess my main problem with switching won't be solved by that anyway, though: I only have a few hair pieces that don't clash with yellow, but if Lego releases a Castle line, they'll probably use mostly helmets and other headgear so you wouldn't get hairpieces that way anyway (I guess BL is the way to go for me). As for your last paragraph, I'm definitely with you on that. I don't mind it being modern, as long as we get pieces that work nicely (and realistically) in a medieval setting. Welcome to the forums and to the Historic Themes community @leafan!

@MAB: Well I guess you completely dismantled my argument, good for you... and me. It's good to be told you're wrong every once in a while. And I think a lot of us castle builders do realize we can take parts out of these sets (such as HP) and create our own stories. I guess what we're looking for are sets that have more useful pieces rather than just having a few particularly good ones, and then a bunch of pieces we have no use for. That being said, I must make two caveats: 1) I am a bit excited about HP. I never got into the actual stories behind the sets but I can see that these sets could have many useful parts (it all depends on how they're made) and 2) Perhaps even that argument could be dismantled by a statement such as, "If you want to be truly creative, find uses for those parts you think are 'not useful'" (although some pieces are undeniably more useful in castle-building than others). I'm not against licensed themes, I just messed up when on my mini-rant (and I'm putting my foot in my mouth ). I do wish that there would be at least one theme (licensed or unlicensed) every so often (2 years or so) that has a castle theme to it (and I mean truly medieval-style castle, not modern-day stuff). Agreed!

Yeah, it's sad how Lego has shifted to more and more licensed stuff. What happened to the days when Lego was all about creativity? Not so any more! I guess kids these days would prefer to have their toys handed to them on a silver platter ready to "play" (whatever that means) rather than actually enjoy the creative process and the feeling of "I made this". Just a small rant. I've been holding on telling myself, "Now surely they can't go a whole 5 years without making any castle themed sets", but I guess they can

@KamalMYafi, @LM71Blackbird, @deraven, @dr_spock, and @Littleworlds: Thanks for the warm welcome!

Thanks for the summary, @mccoyed. Yes, I like RPGs because they give many builders a chance to intertwine stories and even gain a few more views of their MOCs (they even help some of the less creative story tellers come up with cool stories). The down side is that the creative story tellers never know just exactly where the world story is headed which makes it very difficult to tell a good story. I've come up with one possible solution, but it's not perfect: For any decisions that would be made by other people, we could mentally construct two different story-lines (sometimes you can even make the outcome be the same for a certain character). Say, for instance, that there is civil war within Avalonia and within a county in Avalonia. One of your characters is the Lord of that county but he is unpopular and most of his subjects are now sieging his castle. If he calls for help from the faction he has allied with in the overall civil war, that help could come or not - a decision others would have to make. So you could make the following scenarios just sketching them lightly: Help does not come: Eventually the siege is ended and the rebellion invade the Lord's city and execute him to set up their own government. Help comes: The help arrives and starts relieving the siege (at which point they may ask for there own help). However, once they have gotten rid of there common enemies, the Lord's allies and he don't get along to well (he has never helped them) and you can guess who's the first to go. So the Lord dies either way and you can have an idea which way your story moves independent of others' decisions. It does take some work, and it only really works for the near future story events. However, you don't need to plan details until you know the decisions of the other players which relieves a bit of the work. This was kinda hard to describe, are you guys understanding me?

Hi guys, I recently joined Eurobricks with Guilds of Historica being one of the main attractions. I've been a fan of all things Medieval for quite a while as well as a Lego fan. I have a few questions before joining the Guilds: What book are we currently in? Can someone give me a short summary of the events following Book I (which I've read the summary of) up to the current day?* Is there a current challenge? If so, what is the current challenge? Thank you to anyone who is willing and able to answer these questions. *P.S.: This does not have to be exhaustive, I just need to get a feel for what is going on right now and what a character might reasonably expect to happen in the near future (based on the past).

Hi There, Eurobricks community, My name is, well, you can call me Brick Pilgrim or just Pilgrim for short. I joined a couple days ago and have had a look 'round. However, this is my first post in the forum. I have many hobbies (which is probably why I don't get around to doing much in any of them): Lego Reading Writting Music (Performance and Composing) Watching YouTube (okay, I'm not sure that's a hobby, but I do enjoy watching videos with a critical mind especially documentaries and movies) and many more I've considered narrowing them down a bit and Lego is at the top of my list so we'll see if I can finally come out of the mini-dark ages I've been slipping into every once and a while. Well that's about it. Happy building everyone!

It's impressive how it seems that most of these posts are not actually from new members Oh. That's a bit scary... Alright, I'm sure he was just kidding... wasn't he... hopefully he was... I think I got the gist of it Guess I was just looking at the first page