Dungeon Pets

Dungeon Pets

My second offering for Zinequest 2 is a project that I have working towards for over a year now. It is an offshoot of my weekly monster drawings, but made up of Monster, you can train and take as pets in a D&D game.

I launched the Kickstarter today to see if I can get it in print. You can click on the Dungeon Pets name above, and it will take you to the Kickstart page. Some of what I am going to talk about here is repeated on the KS page.

Dungeon Pets is an RPG art zine full of strange and fantastic creatures that adventurers in a roleplaying game can take on as pets. These creatures are similar to animal companions but have no class or level restrictions in regards to who can be their owners. Just like a house cat or a dog, an adventurer can purchase these pets and, with time, train them for many different takes to make them valuable companions while out on an adventure.

What is a Dungeon Pet?

These strange and fantastic creatures that exist in a living fantasy world. They are not Monsters that attack villages and adventurers seeking gold, blood, or power. But are just cute critters that live in the world who are a bit more amazing than the typical cat or dog. 

One such pet is the Necro-Hamster. These undead critters make the best pets for those who often forget to feed or water other pets. Though many religious groups might frown upon their existence, these cute monsters only use their necromantic powers for the good of their owners.

Sample of the Books Layout:

The zine has few game mechanics. There are rules for training your pet, what kind of skills they can acquire, and rules on pet health. They do not have the standard 5e monster stats but instead are left open for easy conversion to other game systems, only using D&D terminology to help guide a Gamemaster in using these creatures in their games.

Pet Health.

Exploring the deadly regions with your owner can be dangerous. Below is an explanation of how a Dungeon Pets health works.  Every pet has two parts to their health; a select number of Heart Boxes and a Hit Die type, these range between D4 and D12, which are used in place of tracking Hit Points.

This idea comes from Matt Colville's Strongholds and Followers book, but in this case, I simplified the process by making it an HD roll instead of a CON Saving Throw.

Final Thoughts.

The Kickstarter will be going on for 2 weeks and will hopefully be as well-received as The Black Pyramid has been. I am looking forward to a full spring of proofreading and publishing. As the Kickstarter moves ticks long, I'll be making more posts talking about a few of the pets to give you an idea of what to expect from the zine.

The Rise of the Black Pyramid - A Mothership 3rd party Module.

Zinequest

Zinequest 2 is happening right now and fortunately, one of the many projects I was working on fits the requirements of this fun community effort. A lot of amazing RPG zines came out of the first Zinequest last year and this year is looking to be even better. If everything works out, I'll be adding at least one, if not two Zines to this year's Zinquest.

Mothership

The Zine I hope to release first is a module I wrote and designed for the game Mothership, by Tuesday Knight Games. If you have not heard of this game, then you need to check it out. Mothership is a Scifi Horror game inspired by movies like Alien, Event Horizon, and The Thing. Its a game of exploration into the unknown, set in the greatest location of unknown possibilities; space. Here you'll explore derelict ships, strange alien worlds, and confront the horrors you find out in the black and maybe even survive the experience. I feel in love with this game and see so much potential for it. So much so that for the 2019 One Page Dungeon Contest, I designed a one-page Dungeon for Mothership and over on my icht account you can download this one-page dungeon with all the extra Mothership content that was not part of the original submission I sent in for the contest. A lot of people have checked out the one-page dungeon and really enjoyed it and this has inspired me to create more content for this game. 

Enter the Black Pyramid

My next Mothership project is more than a single map. It is 36 pages of Inspiration, Story, NPCs, Random Roll Tables, Artwork, and Three Great Maps ( if I can toot my own horn ;) ) called The Black Pyramid.

The premise is pretty simple but full of possibilities. A large unknown superstructure is found out in deep space. A superstructure that has perfect geometry and recognizable shape of a pyramid. No analysis can be made because it resists any scans. It is so completely undetectable that even navigational systems will never notice its existence until the ship has already crashed into it. Fortunately, for the trucker who discovered it, he noticed the odd patch of black blocking out the distant stars. The module is about the specially selected team put together at the last moment to explore this new discovery. They are tasked with discovering what this structure is and what is inside the Black Pyramid.

One of the best things about the OSR and the RPG Zine is that they encourage people to take their content and use it in any way they want. And this module follows that same tradition. I'm looking forward to releasing this module and seeing what everyone thinks. And I am looking forward to designing more adventures for this game that I can share with everyone. Currently, I am waiting to hear back about the 3rd party product agreement that I sent Tuesday Knight games, but I'll make a post when I put the Zine up on KS. Below you can check out some of the Art I made for this to give you a taste.

All Art by Josh Skul

First Post and Monstrous Layout

Press Start to Begin...

I have tried the blog thing before, a long time ago when I was in college. I tried doing a daily art thing, which was a trend that was going around at the time, and I failed. I do draw every day, but they are not all finished pieces or even things I would want to share with everyone. As an art student, I was under the false thinking that the only Art people want to see were finished art and good art. No one wants to see your failures. But now I know that is not true at all. Failure is an important step that and facing it and excepting failure helps young artists grow confident. We all have our failures. It is a step we all need to remember that it happens and we learn from them every time. So if I did have an art blog today, I would approach it differently.

This is and is not an Art Blog. This blog is more focused than my previous one. This blog will cover my thoughts, experiences, and artwork for tabletop role-playing games. I have been playing RPGs since 1996 and have been inspired by them ever since. I have made tons of artwork of my characters, and of other people's characters; dipping into the worlds and actions of those experiences. I have also been experimenting with game mechanics for nearly as long and I remember the first time I saw a D&D player's handbook, and this was before I started to play, I thought to myself, "I could make something like this". Roleplaying games are just inspiring no matter the genre or game system.

Most of the artwork I will be posting will be from the weekly Monster drawings that I do. Most of the time I live stream my drawing session over on twitch. It's fun to chat with people as I draw something random and just chill. I don't have a set schedule for when I get on to twitch, but I do post up on twitter beforehand. That way, if anyone is on and interested they can come to hang out. 

The other stuff I will be posting about is stuff I create to be used in roleplaying games. That's what this post is about. Today I want to talk about the book I am working on based on some of the Monsters I drew over the last two years. I made a book last year, called Here Be Monsters, which you can find up online to buy. This year's book is similar to the Here Be Monsters, except instead of a book made for Gamemasters, this one is for players. 

Dungeon Pets is a book of Monsters, creatures, that the players can buy/find and train. The book will have my simple rules for training the pets and what they can be trained to do. Each page of the book will be a pet, each with their own abilities, armor rating, habits, etc. Lots of useful information for both Gms and Players alike. Right now, I am finalizing the writing while I work on the layout for the book.

The Layout for the previous book was done as landscape. I did this because when I draw all of these creatures, I draw them in a landscape format on the computer. As a professional animator, this format is just kind of natural for me at this point. But this time I am going for a Zine sized layout. Which brought me to the first stumbling block. How do you show everything I drew for these while keeping every creature to a single page. 

Like above, you can see I drew some actions to show what this little guy can do. I hope I can have enough space left over to add this drawing at the bottom or maybe even at the beginning of the book where all the rules and such will be housed. 

Anyway, here is the layout I am currently playing with. I like the last two the best but still think I'm, not sure if they will be the right way to go. 

As you can see, I tried to do a two-page setup, which is similar to what I did with Here Be Monsters Vol 1. But with the following two, I moved away from that because I rather keep everything to one page this time around. You can easily print or copy one page of the book and hand it to a player if they got one of these pets. On the second page's layout, you can see me experimenting with whether or not I want to use more graphic symbols to express different ideas. I think this works for the Pet's health but not so much for the Gold Coin for cost. I think I rather have the cost written out instead. the other thing I am working out is if I want to stick to the 5.5 x 8.5 Zibe size for the book. I think if I move it up to 6x9, I can get more on the single page that I could be for. Because one of the things I have to keep in mind is how much space the Description of the Pet takes up. Currently, with the last two layouts, if the description text is more than what it is here, then I will easily run out of room for everything.

I'm not a graphic designer, but I do know a few things about layout from when I went to college. While I am doing all of this I am also thinking about legibility and the use of negative space. I want the book to be easy to read while also easy on the eyes. To much white space and too little can strain the eyes. I think this is one of the issues that people have with reading whole gamebooks. the books are designed around the idea of getting as much content on a page than making it easy and enjoyable to read. But that is a different post for another day.

 So that is where I am at the moment. I'll post more as I get further along into this process.