He's Not Bossk

I know that Boba Fett is everyone's boi, but my favorite bounty hunter was always Bossk (Greedo would be number one, but his death was so inglorious...) I like the design of Greedo better, but Bossk just struck me as the bounty hunter you would NOT want on your tail. I mean, nobody is afraid of Dengar, but Bossk has 'boss' as the root word. Dengar is an anagram for Er Dang. It's no contest.

That said, this is not Bossk, just a bounty hunter who will be appearing in the core rules as an NPC. I don't know what his name is yet, but it's not Bossk. I don't know why you keep saying that.

Third Time's The... Oh, You Know

I just kept drawing to drown my sorrows from Notre Dame's epic (but entirely Notre Damey) collapse in the Fiesta Bowl. I decided to give a starship a try, and I am very pleased with the results. As far as starship designs go, it is quite vanilla in basic design, but in terms of execution, I will take it. I'm thinking this is some sort of standard escort ship or light transport that would be ideal for junking and using for a group of heroes. It's got room for maybe eight, and opportunities for all sorts of upgrades. It's no Millennium Falcon, but then again, not many ships are... 

TP-35 Servo Bot

His name is TP-35 because Notre Dame played like toilet paper in the second half, and his head looks like a roll of toilet paper. And, Notre Dame scored 35 points, which was not enough. So, boo. As per this series (which it has suddenly become) I'm showing the progress from sketch (or in this case line drawing with base color selection) through the image that will appear somewhere in the book. Rather than trying to change my style for this game, I'm just leaning hard into what I already do. I felt like I made some significant (for me) changes in my approach to drawing for Stalwart Age... for this game, I'm just grooving on what I did there but with the space theme. I guess it's still giving the game a distinctive look from a sci-fantasy perspective, even if it isn't much different from what I've been doing for the last year or so...

Happy New Year - Here's a Bazzak Warbeast

Happy New Year!

I'm enjoying watching Notre Dame play well in the Fiesta Bowl as I do some drawing... I made some vague references to several creatures in the rulebook as I write (mostly just for flavor), and one of the first is a Bazzak. So, I thought I'd draw one. I figure that the rules might only have 10 or 15 exemplar beasts with a system to randomly generate your own beasts. Since there are thousands of creatures in the Cluster, I'd rather have the toolkit in place to make them and a few examples to get you started. The bazzak would be common pack and war beasts: easy to breed, easily trained, adaptable to a variety of environments, and foundational as a 'big lizard' archetype.

Right away, I can see these in some introductory adventures, too. Smuggle some Bazzak eggs to an outpost; steal some eggs from a nest; recover a bazzak that has gone missing; there are several decent starting options here.

 

Loyal Sidekick and Co-Pilot... or something something

 

So this file is called "Chewie" on my computer, which is totally a coincidence. The two species options are either "I Don't Know" or "Not A Wookie". However, I'll warn you now: this game has no 'official' species that you choose from. You roll up a species. The idea is that when you create your character, you also create the species he or she or it belongs to. You randomly roll up the things that make your species different from others. The game is the love child of Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy, so I keep asking questions like "could I make Rocket Raccoon with this" as much as I ask "could I make Chewie"? The answer to both has been yes so far, so that's good.

I have a 30-page draft of the game going right now, so that's a good bit of headway. I have no idea how big this book might be. Stalwart Age is 32 pages, Tales of the Splintered Realm is 48... this could hit one of those page counts, or I might just try to break the bank and go for 64. I know, crazy. I want enough setting and some starter adventures that the game world feels complete enough to start with. I have a dream of one day creating a massive 100+ page monster, but I don't know if this game is that... I mean it could be, but I'm not sure if it is. I plan to let the game tell me when it's done.

On the health front, I had a scan today that revealed the cancer appears confined a few lymph nodes on my neck, so the plan is surgery in a few weeks and radiation after that. It's a process I've been through before, and this is less intense than I already faced (my doctor said getting something off of my neck is easier than getting something out of my brain, and that seems legit). Thanks for the kind words and well wishes.

First Look: Venn Golrik

First, the bad news. It has been several months of really bad news, followed by more really bad news, but I guess the worst of it is that my cancer has returned; I am going for more testing this week, with surgery and radiation likely to follow, and more intensive interventions still on the table pending lab work. So, yay me.

Okay, the glass half full view is that I'm going to have some free time... and I need something to busy my mind so I don't spend all of my spare time staring into the void. So, I'll put that void into a game and let the heroes 'pew pew' at it for me. I'm big into the Star Wars Disney + show thing, and I got a 'Boba Fett's Starship" (Slave I to the rest of us) LEGO set for Christmas, so I'm all into this vibe right now. Enter a revised version of Shards of Tomorrow. I had some notes going, and pounded out more yesterday, and this morning put together my first character design for the game. Here's Venn Golrik, my Han Solo/ Peter Quill avatar. I gave you a process look in the four stages. I should have kept a sketcbook one, but deleted it before I thought about posting this way... here you go.

Oh, Look. I'm Blogging! A few Arcane Spells

It has been a ROUGH couple of months. Ugh. 

Maybe I'll talk about it at some point, but for now, let's just talk gaming, eh? I decided to try some solo gaming at a slow crawl just for something to occupy my mind, and made a level 1 bard. I figure he can build a team to go adventuring. I decided his first set of magic will be in arcane, but looking at the spell lists, I realized that the level 1 spells don't really have a lot of useful spells. My inclination has always been to make level 1 spells that are just introductory versions of more powerful spells ("this is just a really tiny version of fireball"), but for this character, I'm been leaning in to the idea of making level 1 spells (and maybe even some level 2 spells) more about utility. You can be useful as a caster rather than straight-out nuking foes. I drafted up three spells that I'll be trying out, considering my character is going to be a 'hit and run' kind of dude.

Evanesce (Arcane I; self) Use 1 action to produce a puff of smoke at your feet; you may immediately attempt a free sneak (or sneak at +4 with existing sneak) to travel up to your move in any direction (that you can normally reach). You cannot evanesce to the ceiling or through the floor, but you could evanesce behind a nearby rock or around a corner.

Extend Shadow (Arcane I; 30’) Use 1 action to grant one character +1D6 to sneak attack damage (as a thief) for 1 turn. If cast on a thief, this grants +1D6 to existing sneak attack damage.

Glamour Weapon (Arcane I; 30’) Use 1 action to provide an illusory effect upon one weapon that makes it appear exceedingly magical and powerful for 1 turn. Those struck by the weapon must attempt an immediate morale check at -2 or flee. Those who make a successful morale check do not need to attempt this again.