March Monster drawings. A backlog.

I didn't put up many posts for the monster drawings I made this month. So to remedy this situation, I'll just make one big post about them.
Another thing I have not done yet this month is giving my Patrons on Patreon their monthly monster writeup. So They're receiving two for April to make up for this error on my part. I've been so caught up with the two Kickstarters and getting everything prepared for those and now all this Covid-19 stuff that I kept forgetting to sit down and do the writeup.

Marches Monsters and Pets

We only have three monsters so far this month. I plan to make another one tomorrow so that we can have 4 all together. Then do the first one for April this Friday like normal. The monsters I have been mostly focusing on this month and into next month are all Backer requests for the Dungeon Pets zine. I have 5 more of these to make and one of them took longer than I thought it would. 

But first....

No name for this yet.

And the idea of calling a Saurian seems too on the nose and overdone.

As a kid, I enjoyed a little show called Dinosaucers. I think fondly back on that show, but I have not seen it in several decades. Anyway, the first monster drawing for March reminds me of this show a lot. My usual method for drawing my monsters is to come to the drawing board with no idea of what I am about to draw and just make something. I start with a weirdly shaped silhouette and see what kind of creature that inspires out of me. Not the typical high fantasy stuff I normally make, but its good to break away into other genres. I see this guy as more as a race option than a monster. 

The Ice Raven

My first Backer Suggested Dungeon Pet; this one suggested by my friend Sophia. The Ice Raven is a flying bird-like elemental from another plane. A lite costing of frost covers any surface that they touch and they can create small currents of freezing winds and hale. This was fun to create. I had the basic shape set in my mind when I started to draw but did not know much more than that. the contrast between Icicles on the chest and head was a spur of the moment idea that paired well with the prefect planes of Ice that made up the beak and wing feathers. If anything, when I go back and clean this up for the zine, I'll add some more color variation to this to make it pop more. It's still too blue in my opinion.

I don't have a name for this one either.

Another Backer suggested pet was a Shapechanging pet. So I made some weirdly shaped silhouettes and pick one that I thought would make a cute pet. I knew setting out that this one was going to look weird. As a shapechanger, its normal form should look like its borrowed from a few other creatures.  I think this guy, for the most part, turned out well. I might change up the color a little. I'm not completely sold on it yet. I also need to figure out a name - changeling is already taken and I don't want it to be called anything Mimic adjacent. this cute tiny pet can turn into anything that it has seen before that is also of a tiny size. They can walk on two legs or on all fours and the tentacles on its head appear to be mostly decorative since it cannot use them like appendages. 

That's it, for March. Three monsters; each drawing and colored in a period of 2-3 hours each. I'll have more of these to show in the future and I'll try to post them the same week that I make them on this blog. See you next time. Be safe and keep at least 6ft away from each other.

Role Playing games and the Story Circle

The Cambellian Monomyth and a Dungeon walk into a bar...

Recently Ben Milton, also known as QuestingBeast wrote a tweet examining a few published books on the subject of "How to be a Good GM/DM". The Tweet in Question. I am guessing a few of these books strongly suggest the use of Joseph Campbells, "The heroes Journey", as an outline for designing a good adventure/game. Some even going as far as to say that the GM must adhere to the monomyth, railroading their players onto a single file path in order to create an engaging story. Gygax, himself, even felt that in order to create a good game you needed to trick the players into following along the path you set for them and to treat them like children when they don't see eye to eye with you. I can only guess he developed this opinion about players because he ran a lot of games with his own children and after time, just saw all players in the same light. I can only guess, though.

There are a lot of comments on this string of tweets that agree with Ben; that all of this advice is destined for the burning heap. I, personally don't see Gygax as a model to live up to or even to give a lot of praise to. I respect that he help create the hobby we all enjoy, but I also think he was wrong about a lot of things. I imagine he didn't do improve very well if he felt that he had to force his players down a path. This is also probably why he liked Dungeons. Dungeons are, overall, very linear. The most a player can do is take a right instead of a left, ignore doors, sneak past enemies, or even leave early and gain nothing for the trying. 

Over a decade ago, I found a copy of his book; Roleplaying Mastery. I was still pretty new at being a GM at the time and thought it might have a few helpful hints that I could use to improve my skills. I wouldn't go a far as to say that it was trash, but it is not great either. 

Maybe I should go back to reread it, I still own it, but I have too many other books I need to finish and not enough time to waste on a useless relic. But anyway, I'm getting off point.

I agree with Ben that the books he was citing were giving some bad advice. Honestly, the gaming community is full of bad advice going back to the creation of the game. I think we are all just trying to figure out the how and the why and use points of reference as best as we can. We as a community have gotten better at explaining this, but even now the process of being a GM ultimately comes down to - you can read all the books but you can really only learn by doing. Sink or swim, as it were. When the adventure transitioned from just being about weirdo's sneaking around in dungeons and turned into heroes galavanting around the countryside, fighting monsters in city streets, investigating mysteries in small villages, and making pacts in secret groves, I imagine many of the old school Gms continued to run their game like they did when it was just about Dungeon crawling. City streets or forest paths were just more dungeon hallways. Except there were no walls to keep the players hemmed in. Now the players could just do whatever, and these GMs experience the same stuff we all experience at one point or another. Frustration. They never learned to improve, to go with the flow, because that not how they learned to run a game. This is not a general All of them. Not all GMs are the same. Some transitioned out of the dungeon easily, for some, it was a struggle, and for others, they never made it out of this musty catacombs. 

There is a reason why we all Start out running RPG by sending characters into a dungeon. It's easy and simple; these first baby steps of becoming a good GM allow you to slowly ease into it. It very much like putting Ikea furniture together. Once you figure it out, you can do it and afterward, you say, "Well that wasn't as hard as I thought it would be." It allows you to make mistakes without any big stakes being involved. You can add a story or just run the dungeon as is. It's a great way to learn the early ropes. But at some point, you should leave the dungeon and expand your horizons. 

Getting back to the Cambellien Monomyth. It's a great analysis of how a story or myth is structured and why and how we respond to those stories. Personally, I use the boiled down version envisioned by Dan Harmon - of Community, Harmontown, and Harmonquest called The Story Circle. It's just a simplified version. I like to think about the Story Circle when I design adventures. I'm a professional Storyboard artist and animator and so the story is something I spend a lot of time thinking about and learning how to structure a good or great story is pretty important. So I try to bring it into everything I write.

So here is the core of this post. I agree with Ben but I also disagree with Ben. I believe you can use the Cambellian Monomyth or the Story Circle to build a great adventure. But only as a guide. The problem he was seeing, that I think should be highlighted, is that all those advice books were treating the monomyth not as a guide but as a stringent, unyielding structure. This structure is great for creating a novel, a comic, a movie. Something where one person is telling a story. RPGs are different in that they are games where a group is telling a story. In a good game the players have as much control over the story as the GM. Using the Monomyth as the end all be all, this is the only way to tell a story is how you get bad movies that are cookie-cutter and its how you get bad games because everything is forced and players have no authority. But as a guide, the monomyth has key points that can help you and particularly new GMs structure an adventure.

So if you use it as a guide it's pretty straightforward. So here is how I look at it and maybe this will be helpful for others.

1. The starting point - The Call to Aventure. This is your hook. The characters find a map, they are asked for help by a stranger, are given a quest by the king. This is the Before they go into the unknown and risk them own lives to overcome the hidden dangers that lay ahead.
2. Supernatural Aid. This comes in many forms. it could be a fortune teller that gives them insight before they journey into the unknown or it could be a merchant that sells them a few healing potions. Skies the limit, but its before they really begin. Its a pretty normal point in the adventure for many games. it's not unheard of for the PCs to seek out guidance or lore from someone they know. All of that fits within this area. This can be approached in two ways. 1) the players choose to seek help or items to assist them on their adventure, or 2) someone or thing will seek them out to give the party assistance and will have their own motives for doing so. 
3. The Threshold and Threshold Guardians. This is when the players set fully into the adventure and have left the normal day to day behind. They take their first steps down the path of adventure where ever it might lead them. How they take these steps is up to them. The threshold is simply the line between the safety of home or normalcy and the dangers on the road ahead. Its nothing fancy. The Threshold Guardians are supposed to be NPCs who travel with and help the characters, they are often mentors and people who have been at this for a time. This I can see adding to the adventure if you were running first level characters and it's their first time on an adventure. They can show them the ropes and give guidance. Seth Skorkowsky has a great video up about this that everyone should check out. But if the party has been on adventures before, then we can skip this part. I mean, the monomyth is a guide, so if it doesn't make sense to the adventure then don't include it.
4. Challenges and Temptations. This is the meat of the adventure. It is where the players discover clues, fight monsters, and discover treasure. This is also a great point in which to use the rule of three. Setup three challenges for the players to overcome using player skills and character abilities. Each one is more challenging than the last. A good way to approach challenges is to have One Physical Challenge, One Mental Challenge, and One Ethical Challenge (which is usually a mix of the other two).
5. Then the Characters Enter the Abyss. This is not a literal Abyss (all the time), it's where the adventures meet the villain. But it ultimately is where the adventure's conflict is resolved. its where the McGuffin is found or the princess is tied up, or the prince is about to be sacrificed at. Its where the Why of the adventure is found.
6. Then from there is going back to where you started. Pretty straightforward stuff.
7. The last step is the characters returning to the normal world and I don't think this is a step that's fully possible for adventurers. I never played a game where the player characters returned home and went back to something normal. Usually, they just move on to the next adventure. The Adventure for Adventurers is the norm. So this also does not apply to most fantasy games.

IF you view this as a guide it can hep a New GM design an adventure. But I think the problem arises when the Gm tried to run a very Co-operative experience like its a Novel like it was just their story alone. That's the issue.

I haven't read a lot of published sources on "How to GM". I tend to be a hands-on learner and a lot I know comes from experience and from sources found on youtube.

Anyway, food for thought.

Kickstarter Thoughts and Feelings.

The Black Pyramid

I meant to write this post sooner but that didn't happen. better late than never, I guess.

Two weeks ago, the Kickstarter for my zine, The Back Pyramid, an RPG scenario for the game Mothership, came to a satisfying end. Wednesday, February 19th, I launched the Kickstarter and then took my daughter to her doctor's appointment and by the time I got home an hour and a half later the project was fully funded. its been a few years since the last time I tried to launch a project on Kickstarter and that previous campaign failed. So having The Black Pyramid fully funded and supported to such a degree was an amazing experience. Every hour and every day that passed I was continuously surprised and thrilled. As a person who has chosen to be a professional creative, having others respond positively to something you created is always reassuring. I can not say this enough. To be supported by strangers who are all excited for something you created is the most amazing feeling - words cannot fully encompass those feelings in a way that can satisfy. 

We broke through all of our stretch goals. We got the full-color double-sided map and the extra Space Pirate content, which I'm still working on. That last stretch goal was $1200. Originally, I thought there was a small chance of reaching that last stretch goal, but we hit that in the first 3-4 days. People were asking if I had other stretch goals planned, but I didn't. I never expected the campaign to be this successful. So I thought about it for a good while before deciding not to. I was giving some good advice before coming to that decision. I had a few people in the OSR discord advise me to not fall into the trap of adding more and more work to your load chasing stretch goals. A lot of people have fallen into that with other Kickstarter and rarely has it help them. They often end up in a hole or worse afterward. At the time I was thinking of putting up a stretch goal for a 2-minute animated Mothership Animated Short if the KS got to 4,000 or 5,000, but in the end, agreed with the advice and didn't post more. 

It was probably a good idea because when the Kickstarter ended last week, it ended at $4,098 with 463 backers. A 2-minute animated short, by the by, can take 4-6 months for one person to make. I already have client animations I am working on so I really don't have the time to squeeze int he extra animation work of that scope. Maybe down the road, I think it would be great to do that, but right now. No. Plus I have the second Kickstarter zine to finish writing and putting together. But more on that in a bit. Let's just say, I am glad I did not add more stretch goals. I already have a full plate at the moment.

So Black Pyramid is currently going through its last proofreading and revision phase while I wait for the money to process. In about a week or so from today, I'll be sending the files to print and getting all my shipping supplies together. And with the Coronavirus outbreak going on, I'll have my kid home all day for the next two weeks since they closed the schools. I'll put her to work sealing packages and such.

Dungeon Pets

A week after Launching The Black Pyramid, I launched the Kickstarter for my other zine, Dungeon Pets. Which is a zine fully of creature designs that have come out of my Weekly Monster drawing sessions. I have been making these monster drawings for 3 years now and planning this Dungeon zine for well over a year now. I was already planning to launch this zine, but Zinequest seemed like the best time to launch it. I'm not sure how well RPG Zines do on Kickstarter when Zinequest is not going on. Zinequest is a huge free advertising event that helps put your Kickstarter in front of people's eyes. 

On February 25th I launched Dungeon Pets and was hoping to get a similar response to it that I got from The Black Pyramid. I did not. I assume this is more due to the fact that Black Pyramid is a scenario for the hugely popular indie ROG Mothership, whereas Dungeon Pets is somewhat system neutral. In either event, my experience with dungeon Pets was a little different than it was with The Black Pyramid. Dungeon pets was a slow crawl towards the finish line. For the first week, I thought it wasn't going to make it. Honestly, I thought, if a week passes and it doesn't get to gaol, I'll cancel this Kickstarter and come back another time and try again or just put it up online as a PDF. I worried about reason though. After a week the campaign was funded. Then I thought Well I guess we won't get to the stretch goal - Dungeon Pets sticker pack. And that was a slow roll as well, it was not until 2 days before the end of the campaign that we unlocked that goal. Watching Dungeon pets succeed was very affirming, much like Black Pyramid was, but in a completely different way. I really quested if I was offering something or just deluding myself. Don't get me wrong, I like my own ideas, I'm just never sure other people will like those ideas too. I can say that people do like my ideas now that Zine is fully funded at $1,106 with 124 backers. It was just nerve-racking to watch. I am thrilled that it will be printed and be (hopefully) use din other people's games. Plus Stickers! I'm really excited about making Stickers.

Conclusion

I'm still processing all the emotions that come from the success of a Kickstarter. I'm sure I'll have more to say down the road about all of this. More observations when this is all done an all the backers have their zines. I am looking forwards to hearing back from the backers once they've sunk their teeth into these zines on whether thy love or hate what I made. As an artist, it's important to get feedback so you can improve on what you are making so that you can continue to push yourself.

One of the next posts on this subject will also be about fulfillment. I am setting up a storefront attached to my website and plan to use this to handle all of the shipping for these two zines. Once I have the shop setup and the zines back, I'll have the backers go to the link and add fill out their order and pay for shipping then. They will also be able to pick up extra copies too. But more on this later.

See you next time.

Dungeon Pets as Steeds

Dungeon Pets as Steeds

A number of Dungeon Pets are cute and cuddly creatures small enough to hold in your arms or ride on your shoulders. But Dungeon Pets don't have to be small creatures. They can be large enough to ride on, to use as steeds. In the last two weeks, I draw two new monsters for my weekly Monster drawings that fit into this category and I wanted to share.

The Water Horse

How often has your adventurer bought a horse and rode it out to the middle of nowhere, tied it up to a tree or bush and entered a dark dungeon, only to return and find that some monster has come along and eaten your steed as a mid-day snack? Too often I say.

The Dungeon Pets: Water Horse is a steed like no other. Just like any horse, you can ride your water horse out into the unknown seeking fortune. However, y=once you find a dungeon to explore you can pull out the Water Horses special container and say the command word. Upon this command, the Water Horse will retreat into its vessel, where it will remain until summoned again. No longer will you return from searching a dungeon laden down with loot to find that you ave to leave some of it behind because you no longer have a horse to help carry the treasure back to town. With a simple command, the Water Horse will pour out of its container, ready to be of use to its master again.

Forest Hound

Maybe Horses are not your preferred mode of transportation, Maybe where you will be journeying will be too difficult for a horse to traverse with ease, slowing your progress down to a crawl. The Forest Hound, an element-kin of the earth plane, is a great pet option for traveling through difficult terrain. This large dogged beast won't allow pesty undergrowth, dense foliage, or troublesome footing slow down it and its owner. It will ignore all these difficulties as if they don't exist so that its owner can get to the dungeons and ruins as soon as possible.

Hex Chicken

This colorful fowl with a small saddle on its back is not only easy to transport in its normal small size but also can be commanded to grow into a larger size so that the owner can ride it like any other steed. The little magic saddle that comes with all of these Hex Chicken will shrink and grow with the chicken, giving the owner a comfortable seat for those long rides.


You can check out the Kickstarter Campaign here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/black-pyramid/dungeon-pets