#Inktober2019 Day One

I'm warming up today. Just a simple geometric pattern in ink. I won't finish it, it's not the sort of thing to finish. It is just play while my brain and hand warms up. Sometimes work is just play with a purpose. I kind of like the design.

Anyway, this is my first Inktober. I wish I could do a drawing everyday, but I won't. I want to do one or more projects to completion this month. I want to go back to the way I used to draw.

I picked my first subject, Magik from the New Mutants. I particularly love/hate the version of her on the cover of the 50th issue. The style is very nineties, jagged, slashy, primal. It seems to fit with the character. In this particular issue, is not sexed up, but actually reverted to a younger child. There is a sense of disquiet as she battles her way through her demons. I like the fact that they are "her demons".

Anyway, I want to do a copy of this cover but in my own style. It won't be anything like the drawings I have done recently. It will be part experiment and part return to where I started. I'll
be posting updates throughout the month as it proceeds.

If I get to another work, I post that here, too.

Here is to beginnings.

Truth or Tall Tale Tuesday (TOT3) - Who the Hell is Mr. Archer?

Several years ago, I started a new career in education. I made mistakes along the way, but somehow I turned some of them into wonderful memories.

On my first day at work in a special education school, there was a dance. The gym was jam packed with kids dancing their hearts out. As a trainee, the only expectation placed on me was to mingle, to get to know the kids. So I gave it a shot and totally failed. 

The first student I met asked me something over the pounding music. All I herd was "What... all?" I realized that he had some sort of speech issue, and STUPIDLY assumed he asked me what the song was called. 

Well, the song was Cupid Shuffle, which will be important later. 

The next day, I was permanently assigned to classroom with teenagers. Everything was going well until we got to lunch. In the middle of the cafeteria, the student from the day before came up and greeted me. 

"What up? Oopid!" he shouted. 

With dawning horror, I realized exactly what was happening. He had asked me my name, not the name of the song and thought that I was named "Cupid Shuffle", a pair of words he couldn't render correctly. 

"Oh, f---. That kid just called Mr. Phil 'stupid'." chuckled one of my teenage students. Yes, let's not put to fine a point on it. That was exactly what was happening. 

Teachers, aides, speech therapists and OT worked their hearts out to help this kid say "Cupid" correctly. He couldn't. Nor could anyone convince him to called by my real name, "Phil". Add in the fact that every new person who encountered this kid thought he hated me and needed to be corrected. Actually, he liked me so much, he wanted to greet me by name at every encounter. I really liked him. He became my favorite despite the communication glitch. 

As I mentioned, every effort to get him to render "oopid" as "Cupid" failed. The best anyone could do was teach him the sign for "Cupid" in American Sign Langue and then teach all new staff that sign, too. It eliminated much of the shock because at least everyone knew what he meant. The sign looks like firing an arrow followed by a flapping of arms like wings. It is literally "Archer+Wings". 

Fast forward 2 years. A class of new trainee staff toured the building. Near the gym, they met my favorite little guy and he had them bottled up with all his cuteness. He was that kid. He was so charming they took their time talking to him, one by one. 

As I walked past he shouted out, "Hey!" and gave a quick version of my name in sign language, just the arrow part. Months before, he stopped trying to say my "name". 

The kids play football in the gym heard him and they copied him: "Hey!" and the sign.  

"Whoa! You have your own sign?" asked one of the trainees. 

"Well, yeah," I answered. 

"That is so cool," they muttered appreciatively. 

A few days later, there was a bit of an uproar in HR. Apparently, the new training class loved "Mr. Archer" but there was no staff or student by that name. 

Truth or Tall Tale? This one is true! 

The Tek - September 2019 Stats

September 2019 Downloads via DriveThruRPG:
AD&D Character Sheet For Use with Unearthed Arcana - 5
Compass Rose Inn Minisetting - 5
Kobold Folly Minisetting - 7
Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners - 4
Swashbucklers Character Class - 17

Webstats:
Google Analytics Pageviews - 1,098
Google Analytics Sessions - 740
Pageviews per Session - 1.48

Ok, this month I am no longer reporting Blogger stats as they are provably wrong. All of my Amazon Stats are 0, so I am giving them one more month before dumping the Amazon ads. I will still carry the "Most Favored Products" as that is possibly drumming up activity for other people.

EDIT - One more stat. I hope to get 750 Pageviews. I really got 1098, which is a 14% increase over last month. I am thrilled with that.

I haven't done stats for DrivethruRPG ads, but they totally cover my operating costs for a year. At $186 and change for a year's worth of referrals, it doesn't contribute much to my bottom line. Nor does sales on my products, which is about $23 a year. I've had 551 downloads over the same time period, so that works out to 4.1 cents per download. This is great considering I don't like to host my stuff.

Now, throwing it back on me. Can I come up with a perfect product that I can sell for a specific price? That is my intent by December 2019. If that pans out, I will probably rework many of my prior products, expand on them, and offer them for sale. The originals will still be PWYW, but going forward, I plan to create items of worth (even if lowly worth) and start selling instead of using the tip jar method of PWYW. I will never completely step away from PWYW, but I'd like to have some products with very high production quality. I feel like I am getting there, but still need to refine my work to get there.

Just so the reader is aware, I post on the last day of the month. This means that some stats are low by a few hours. I update them later as the final results are in. For example, in August I said I had 1003 page views. In reality it was 1006. That is too small of a difference to matter, but I updated it. These slight changes are not too offensive to me. The point of this data is so that other bloggers know where they might be in relation to something or other or me. Sometimes, you aren't as small time as you think, which is great to know.

UPDATE Jan. 12, 2020. I've decided to at some images of my Google Analytics to this post.

August 2019

September 2019

October 2019

AD&D to 3.5 and Beyond. What Alignment to Be When You Can't Decide?

Picking an alignment can be difficult if you game style revolves around roleplay. Many of the alignments have a certain give and take within them which causes ethical dilemmas... except one.

Neutral Evil, by the definitions in the book, doesn't really contemplate ethics. The Neutral Evil character doesn't really debate ethics, they debate outcomes. They want what they want and they know how to get it.

Neutral Evil people are evil because they are selfish and see the world as an evil place. Why not do what you like?

Most well adjusted people look at evil characters with trepidation. Evil for the sake of evil is bad. However, when it comes to party dynamics, the Neutral Evil character seems to be the most stable. They are always up to the same old crap, only the prizes changing. What is interesting about this is they want stuff for themselves, they are not necessarily there to cause problems. Especially when a problem interferes with obtaining an objective.

The classic Neutral Evil move is to cause conflict in others. "Am I really going along with this?" Why, yes. You are.  Neutral Evil characters are somewhat the core of the parties ethics. They see an objective, they get the objective. But by causing these ethical conundrums within the party, they do some arm twisting while also turning their own tactics on their head.

If a Neutral Evil character knew that they could have an amazing, priceless tool they would want to have it. If it meant donating a 100, 1,000 or even 10,000 gold pieces to a lawful good temple, they'd weigh the cost of killing everyone in their way, then fork over the money. Who cares if they just funded an orphanage, they got some great out of the bargain. Neutral Evil characters believe the world is evil, so backing a good cause is a meaningless thing to do because they believe it will end poorly. It's aligned with what they believe. They don't have to try to pay evil unto evil, because they really think everything is evil, all choices are selfish in the long run. 

Neutral Evils are sort of suckers, while they imagine that everyone else is the fool. Within the group, they have a tendency of currying favor to get what they want. They might be the person healing every day or handing out potions of healing to make sure they, themselves, don't die. They might forego some immediate benefit because it serves the cause of getting something better later. And they tend to drag the party with them.

By picking the path of Neutral Evil, you have reduced your character's complexity and dropped that dynamic in someone else's lap. The paladin, ooo, he hates you for being right so often.

Remember, people want to believe things are relative. Sometimes they are not. You don't have to be some axe-crazed killer to be evil. You can be an affable, kind person with some really bad habits and goals. This is the role of Neutral Evil. They think, plot and plan to get the most out of any situation, which is oddly exactly what the rest of the party, regardless of alignment are probably doing.