Owl warrior

Leftover elements from other drawings put together: a owl and some magic eggs on a well.

Gaming & blog activities updates

• Not much time to draw or post lately. But I want to try to draw backgrounds in my illustrations. I also want to try inking my drawings to add shadows. Oh and I want to try to draw player characters. 

• Our Vornheim campaign is still running. Last session was very interesting, the dice indirectly shaped the events of the campaign. I want to post game reports, but I find it hard to write gaming reports, especially in English. Tonight we are playing our 11th session. The group have to deal with the dog cult arena. 

• I wanted to try to illustrate a hex of Hexenbracken a day. But I was not able to let myself to just drawn, no... I had to try to draw "perfect" drawings and I ended up looking for reference material on the internet and what was supposed to be a casual activity became complicated and I choked at the first hex trying to draw those 3 crocodiles! 

• My mega dungeon forest project is on hold. I tried to start drawing the map and I blocked. Again I think I am trying too much to be procedural and I don't trust myself to just improvise. But I should! I think that I am generally not bad at improvising (when I let myself to). 

• I am reading books about speleology. One of the book was by a french speleologist that explored caves in the 1910. His tale about exploring a cavern complex with only candles fascinated me. Now I want to write and play a natural caves dungeons. But I wonder how to make the speleology and the natural obstacles interesting without using skill rolls (or at least without only or over using skill rolls).

• I won't be GMing a second campaign. Since I knew that my friend Dominic wished to run a campaign, I asked him if he would like to run Dungeon of the Unknown in the Isle of the Unknown. So this is nice, I am a player again. Since it Lamentations of the Flame Princess, I am hoping to roll a mage. 

• I will try Ragnarok at the Roludothon, our local micro gaming convention (organized by Roludo, our Montreal based gaming forum)

• I want to finish the cloud dungeon map that I started with How to Host a Dungeon. 

Red Mushroom City

Helms of Transfiguration

In a room there is three helms of transfiguration.
Do they grant wisdom and visions? Do they talk and cast cleric spells?
Or maybe they store and trade experiences, personality and appearance?
But what happen if you wear the damaged helm?

My next campaign.

The GM of my second group had to leave because of family duty. I enjoyed being a player again and it was super interesting to try Dungeon Crawl Classic and to to venture into Stonehell for three sessions. Being a player I noticed some stuff that I will discuss about in a future post.

My second group want to continue dungeon delving so I will take the role of the GM and I will referee a second campaign.

This time I want to run a campaign inspired from the manuscript of Storming the Wizard Tower. I want to focus the campaign on a village as a "natural group" and the dark influence of it near dungeon. I will use the Storming the Wizard Tower setup to start my prep. I also want to make random tables to determine who from your relations in the community are potential adventurer replacement. I will also try some house rules like the stress rules. I will award Xp for Gold & Goals.

So overall I have a good idea of how I want to organize things, but I posted a email to the group to let the players choose the setting.

My suggestions:

1. A village of vikings near the Barrowmaze or Death Frost Doom.
2. Peasants living near a classic vampire castle like Ravenloft. 
3. Halfling cheese maker village near natural caves used to keep their cheese. (Wheel of Evil)
4. Dwarf settlers who have to reclaim a ancient dwarven fortress. 
5. A tribe of savannah hunters living near a lost city. 
6. A tribe of eskuit living near the ruins of a frozen city in the Weird New World. 
7. The crew of a ship exploring the Weird New World in search of a legendary lost city.

The idea is to combine a local community and a adventure location.  

The power of symmetry

Mirror copy paste a sketch book drawing over itself and you end up with something nice looking.

My city encounters

I check for encounters for each new streets pattern that the group map.
When the group travel between two known location I check once by neighborhood.

Chance of encounters:

• Day: 1 on d6
• Night: 2 on d6
• Festival: +1 chance of encounter

If there is a encounter, I roll to on my encounter type table:

• 1-3 Street event (happen in the largest street)  
• 4-5 Trouble (happen in the smallest street) 
• 6 Weird / Supernatural (GM choose the street) 

Night: +1 on roll

Street events involve a crowd of people that block a street (d20):

1. Religious procession of Vorn / Tittivilla
2. Marriage / Funeral
3. Public judgement / execution
4. Public contestation / debate / scandal / humiliation 
5. Cultist / Priest preaching
6. Nobles celebrating / parading exotic slow pets
7. Street Crier / Artist attracting a large crowd 
8. Ambassador / city officials / military procession
9. Caravan stuck / Large cattle delivery  
10. Street auction / market 
11. Constructions 
12. Crowd watching a accident or fight on a bridge
13. Fire!
14. Stone or ice sheet fall
15. Street closed for Investigation / Plague
16. -  20.  Special / unique event (a other table) 

The Neighborhood wealth determine the type of trouble (d6):

• Wealthy: 1-4 Law or Nobles, 5-6 Crime or vermin 
• Middle: 1-3 Law or Nobles, 4-6 Crime or vermin
• Poor: 1-2 Law or Nobles, 3-6 Crime or vermin

Trouble involve a pool of HD equal to the group size + 1d6.

For the weird/supernatural stuff I roll on a table of unique encounters.

The encounter distance is the street length in map unit in d6 (x 10').
So a 3 square length street give a 3d6 x 10' encounter distance.

The group can always choose to take a alternate route to try to avoid a encounter.
This way encounters often push the group into unexplored parts of the city.

Oh also when there is a fight I check to see if the city guard intervene after each 6 rounds.
(with a cumulative +1 chance by test)

Neighborhood wealth:

• Rich: 1 on d6
• Middle: 1 on d8  
• Poor: 1 on d10

• Large street: +2 chance
• Night or alleyway: +1 die step

The night at the inn

To keep with the concept that Vornheim is like a mega-dungeon, when the group pass the night in a inn I check for encounters.

The chance of having a encounter depend of the quality of the inn:

• Luxury: 3 on 6 (+1 to reaction bonus) 
• Secure: 1 on 6
• Standard: 2 on 6
• Poor: 2 on 6 (-1 to reaction bonus)
• Piss poor: 3 on 6 (-2 to reaction bonus)

(Carousing add +1 to the chance of having a encounter) 

Next I roll a d6 to determine the nature of the encounter:

• 1 Witness something weird or supernatural.
• 2-3 Get in trouble.
• 4-5 Hear a interesting rumor or superstition.
• 6 Meet someone that could be a interesting contact or ally.

And I improvise from there. 

I also roll on the same table when the group pass through a large crowd of people in the city.

Swarm of Psychomycosis Megaspores

I tried to illustrate the Psychomycosis Megaspores from False Machine.

I imagine them more as lone stalkers, but I guess that sometime you can encounter swarm of those beautiful horrors.
I also imagine a assassin cult secretly planting a megaspore into a target household.

Bird Knight

I din't had anything game related in head, so I drew a bird knight.

Bat Goblinoids Underground Dwellers

I don't really know what they do, but I have drawn those bat like goblinoids. Well they seem to love rings.