Wednesday, August 28, 2019

#RPGaDay2019 - Engage - "Engage!"

From '87 to '94, all of our games, D&D or otherwise, started with the word: "Engage!" We would gather at a friends house and do all of our housekeeping while watching Star Trek: The Next Generation.

More often than not the episode ended with Picard saying "Engage!" and the end credits rolled. We complied.



RPGaDay2019 - Unique - Red Spot

Every campaign is unique. A friend based his campaign on the Chronicles of Naria and no one noticed, we were all bemused by a serious, somber Father Christmas needing help. 

Another DM determined that all red Will-o-Wisps were good and helpful creatures. They became ubiquitous in his campaign and even had their own sound effects. After a while, we all noticed that they were the Red Spots from the 7-Up ads.





#RPGaDay2019: First - Jaime the Fearsome

The first character I ever had was Jaime. He had a sword, chaimail armor and few other items from the Red Box set equipment list. He made it to 2nd level before AD&D happened, and he went away.

I have a character named Jaime in every D&D campaign I run, either as a PC or an NPC. The stats for the current, 2019 Jaime are below. You can download the entire sheet here.














This current iteration was intended to be a woman, but for whatever reason the player interpreted the "gown" on the character sheet as a "dressing gown", like Author Dent.


Sketching in Ink

Sometimes, I like to go right to ink. All of these sketches were just thrown down on the paper with little regard to outcome. I love the scratchy feel of pen on paper. Usually, I draw pencil outlines, but not with theses. It helps build control, comfort, confidence and skill. 

A few of the weapons towards the end have pencil marks, to show the comparison. The symbol of Sol Invictus was penciled quickly and those flaws showed right up in ink. 










Sketching

Sketching with plain old pencils is a fun activity and builds certain skills.







Inklings

I like working in black and white, with a fine marker. Sometimes it works for me and other times, it doesn't. Most of the time, I lay down fine pencil lines to control the ink and erase later. The two Stave Churches on this page were direct to ink while the rest were inked over pencil.