Portrait of Brynmore "Mouse" Skweaken, the Deep Gnome

In my current D&D group, we're stuck in the Underdark.  To those who are uninitiated, it's just an underground world, with darkness-dwelling races, such as the deep gnomes.  My previous character, an English thug, didn't quite fit in this world.  So I've created this new guy, and had to create a portrait to go with it.

And frankly, I'm pretty proud of him.  I mean look at him, that's pretty awesome, right?  I don't do as much digital painting as I do animating, but I'm glad to see something really cool come out of it every so often.

Below is the original painting, before the parchment effects.  He's a slightly hairy deep gnome, and his thing is that he's whole-y plain.  He's not SUPPOSED to stand out in any dramatic way.  That's how he gets away with being a spy.

Dungeon World and Fate campaigns have come to a close

Well, the campaign has come to a close!

Throughout this campaign, I have been listening to a lot of podcasts on being a game master, and I have been learning a lot of great techniques.

One really cool point that I listened to was how if system designer is like a game designer, then the GM's are all level designers.  They have to not only create the world that the players play in, but they have to craft experiences for their players.  It's like it's only their job to create the fun; all of the players are responsible for that; but the GM has the power to cater to their players.  The players of a video game pick the game that matches their tastes, but in a tabletop game, you have five players who may all have different tastes.  If you're lucky, your playstyles align to a degree, but it's also up to the level designer to make sure the spotlight can pass from player to player, week to week.

By the end of the game, I think the players all had opportunities to play to their strengths.  In the final sessions, they revisted Aleria, the city that they visited way back during the second session.  I have to say, I'm extremely proud of myself, and my players, for following a breadcrumb trail I set up.  Amidst the now demon-infested city, the mystery played out perfectly, with them finding the right pieces of information to find the right location.

Unfortunately, the ending wasn't all happy sunshine and demon blood.  By the end, we had lost the lives of both the NPC they were traveling with, and the wizard who was with us from the beginning.  We did a quick epilogue, where the bodies were brought back to the academy to be laid to rest, then the remaining two players, the paladin and druid, went back to close the portal, from the inside out.  But that, is another story.

And what about the Fate game, you ask?  It too has come to a close, just before the end of the year.  We lost two along the way, but the three other players were plenty to finish out the campaign.  I learned a few things from this game, as well.

To start, I wasn't able to give them the same freedom as my other players, because newbies often just don't know what to do with the freedom.  Fate is an extremely improvisational system too, which I now realize, would work much better with experienced role-players.  My normal methods of "what do you do in response" didn't always pan out, as they were stuck deciding among too many options.  Though the improvisation occasionally got really interesting and even threw me off a number of times.

All the same, there were some really fun subtle puzzles to solve and history to piece together.  They explored some high-tech ruins (which I had fun designing) and the campaign came to an interesting close, when the Bureau they were working for was ransacked -- and the kind director went missing.  The group disbanded and the scholar character went into hiding with the artifacts... for now.

Clearly, I like my endings open ended.  I blame Miyazaki's influence.

Dungeon World and Fate

Our team has expanded once again. We've added Bartuc the Warrior (played by Chris) and Dagulus the Paladin (played by Mike) to the party, so if someone couldn't make it, we could still run the game. Their introductory mission gave us a chance to explore out the non-campaign locations of the world a bit more, and thus Rivends was founded in just one session.

But on the main front, at this point, our merry bunch has made it to New Gareth, the capital city and arcane fount of this coastal area. I only expected them to spend a session, and maybe half of another, in this location, but they've been here for three. A fun little sewer dungeon left them with some dark items, and a misunderstanding with a guard left them as bunch of murderers. And that led to a trial, three sessions later. AND it turns out that one of the characters follows a false arcane patron, the same as the big bad evil guy.

If only they had left, as I had expected them to, this would have all been avoided. I learned something interesting, in that players don't always get what you think is very obvious, and even when I spelled out "if you go with the guards, you will have a trial for murder, and they will find your dark patron, which you know is grounds for execution," that the evil-aligned player would still go along with it.

So now one of them is free, one of them is in jail, one of them is permanently locked in a high tower, to be executed in 2 days. This has become incredibly interesting; and to think, originally I wanted them to leave.

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On lighter news, I've also started a second group, running a system called Fate. (I love Fate too, by the way.) This group has been interesting because it's several strangers I've never met. I barely know their real names.

There were some issues from the get-go. Since nobody had webcams, it was hard to tell when people were not paying attention, or just thinking. That was doubly difficult with some people having microphone problems and being forced to communicate by typing. But these players, mostly new to tabletop games, have given me some really interesting stories as well. It's a very different experience as the Dungeon World group.

Homemade Minis Case

Well, I never painted these dear minis, but I DID finally get a proper case for them.  With some left over foam from a computer parts shipment, a Sucrets container from last cough-drop season, and some clean knifework (and not-so-clean markerwork), and little Nassa and normal-dwarf-sized Loren have a safe home.

Sleep tight.

Dungeon World, where cool players do cool things

"The story I tell will never ever compare to the story we all tell together."



We are a couple months into the campaign, and I've come across two moments that really made Dungeon World shine. I get it now.

Click Read More below for the stories:

Dungeon World, the adventure begins!

I just started DMing a new system called Dungeon World, and I'm in love. It's very narrative focused and the events play out like a conversation. Or at least that's how it's supposed to work.

We're still getting our feet wet and getting used to the system. It has allowed the players to contribute their own improv onto the world, which I think is just amazing. The downside is, as the dungeon master, I have had to be on my improv game a lot more too. Easy for the 3 players, they don't have to be speaking for a collective 60% of the time. This game lets them talk way more often than others though, which is appreciated all around.

So far, they've avoided some of my combat hooks, but the one that they did come across, while traveling between cities, played out in a very interesting manner. The back and forth between players and DM was pretty natural. I jumped back and forth between players, usually in an order, but I wasn't forced into the same order every round. Hell, there weren't even rounds. I'd declare something that was happening, and they'd react to it, sometimes diving behind a tree, or risk trading blows by trying to get the shot off first. Neat.

Our players are Radagast the mage (played by Aaron), Fuln the druid (played by Sean), and Meatball the ranger (played by Anthony).

Nassa Color Schemes

As I'm moving towards texturing my character, I painted up a bunch of options for color schemes.  I'm exploring the first two further.  While I really like the colors of the third and fifth, neither fit the character as well, and character comes first.

The next step was some variations on the chosen color.  The second one ended up being the favorite.

Nassa the Gnome, Version 2

I wanted to experiment with animated textures for facial features, which was my original plan with the old Nassa model.  I've been on a low-poly model kick for a little while, so I decided this is the ideal time to create a new model.  The goal was to stay under 1000 tris.  I also intend to take this one through textures so I can test using animated textures for the face in Maya and in Unity.

I did consider working from my older model, but I really wanted to try applying everything I've learned over the past few months.  It's interesting to see how similar it is to my old model, but how the shapes are so much better now, with fewer polys, too.

The picture above is the newer sketch I was working off of for this new model.  I fleshed out my original idea and design, visually describing the materials her clothes were made of, and the individual layers of the clothing.  I leaned towards a more cartoony look, since I wanted to push the designs of our three DnD characters; one short cute female gnome, one big beefy human/vryloka, and one fat stocky dwarf.

D&D Campaign Session Sketches

These are notecard sketches I did during our first four sessions of Dungeons and Dragons.  These are events that happened during the adventure.  I have my own Nassa the Gnome, Robert playing Norgar the Human (Vryloka), and Cole playing Audrik the Dwarf.

If you're interested in following along, I've been taking notes and uploading them to D&D Short Tales.

Nassa the Gnome - Final

I just finished my Nassa the Gnome mini!  Unfortunately, our DM couldn't play this week, so I got to work on this instead.  I added the clothes in on Wednesday, and I went over to Sean's today (Thursday) to finish up.

I got some Super Sculpey Firm, to see what it was like, and it ended up making the head a lot easier.  It still wasn't perfect, especially because I barely left any armature up there, but I was able to hack it together long enough to bake it.  The Firm Sculpey did really help keep enough details in there for baking (as opposed to the regular Sculpey.)  From there, I did a bunch of Xacto-carving to refine the details.  And in the last step, I added the ears, hands, and daggers.

In the end, I'm quite happy with it, largely because it is so ridiculously small, but mostly because the pose is so twisty and dynamic.  The clothes really accent the turn, and the arms have a real attitude to them.  I'm having so much fun with this; I think my next one will be around 3" using Sculpey firm, and I'm getting excited to try ProCreate in the near future.

My next step is to paint this handsome gentleman and fine lady, and then give them fancy bases.  That macro lens really makes them look gritty, but it will all be cleaned up in the next versions.

Nassa the Gnome - WIP

I must say, she was quite fun to play last week.  She's a Gnome, who wears elven clothes, and appears to be some sort of rogue - appears to be.   I'm really looking forward to the next Dungeons and Dragons session.

But since I wasn't running the dwarf, I had to sculpt a new character.  I started this little piece today at Sean's place.  I was actually able to get some good progress shots on this one.  She's quite difficult to work on because she's even smaller than the dwarf, currently at about 20mm.

It also doesn't help that I'm using regular Super Sculpey modeling clay.  Sean mentioned Sculpey Firm might be a little easier for me to work with.  Nonetheless, using my multiple-bake layer method seems to work alright.  I just have to do a bit of Xacto work in there as well.  I don't work fast enough for the 2 hour window using ProCreate or Green Stuff... yet.

 Armature ready after two tries.

In-progress shots.  The clothing layer will be the next session.

 The sketches I was working off of for the character's designs.

Loren the Dwarf - Sculpt Complete

He's sculpted, baked, and ready for painting.

I used a method of baking and working in layers.  I made the base body, oven baked it for a short time, and used an Xacto knife to shape him a bit better.  Then I did the armor and cape, and baked it so it wouldn't fold.  The final step was the head, hands, feet, and bow.  I accidentally broke the a piece of the cape at this point, but it was fixable by cutting off a little more.  I had no clue how I was going to manage the head while working on it, but it ended up coming together well.

The funny thing is that I ended up rolling a different character to fit into the group better.  On the downside, I don't get to use this handsome piece, or the cool Scottish accent I've been working on.  But on the other side, I get an excuse to make another one!

Loren the Dwarf

This little fella is going to become Loren the Dwarf, my character for an upcoming D&D campaign.

I'm excited to get back into physical sculpture.  I really enjoyed working on the Flower Story maquettes last year, and it has been just as fun this time around.  I headed over to my friend Sean's place today, and got quite a lot of progress on this little guy (though I didn't take any more pictures).  Right now, he stands 23mm high, and it will probably be closer to 28mm by the end.  I don't know how I'm going to get any detail on something this tiny, but we'll see how it comes out.