photo saturday: wolf boy

There are some characters I think about a lot and some characters I hardly ever thing about.

Fenris is definitely the former. He was also one of the very first DnD Character Colouring Book entries.

And this redo wasn't the biggest of changes, although there is more than a little Photoshop fuckery in there too. But it was mostly just swapping out pants and boots, giving him an even more ridiculous axe, which makes absolutely no sense because I don't even know if someone of his build could attack with it. But also, screw it, he had the Strength score for it, and I'm working under Final Fantasy weapon design rules.

This version of the axe even gets a name... Solvarg... or Sun Wolf.

But, my teenaged wolf totem barbarian definitely sticks in my brain. It was an interesting build that was half accident, half beneficial to the rest of the party. And a very different kind of character than I often play. It's a shame I probably won't get to go back to him. Or at least not for a long while.

Anyway...

This week I made tuna mornay. And I will say that, for a while there, it was going probably as well as it's ever gone. The sauce thickened up nicely before I added in the last brine, it was spicy and flavourful in a way that I knew was going to settle nicely. The downside was that I started making it later than I probably should have, so I kind of ran out of time to thicken it up as much as I would have liked.

But it came out pretty nicely in the end.

Thursday's DnD had a chance of location, but we did finish up the adventure of the last few weeks. One left to go before we're done with this particular book. And next week, rather than skip a week since somebody is going to be away next week, we're going to discuss what's coming next.

Friday was Chiro Day... which was a pretty standard version of same. I did a little wandering afterwards, but nothing mind blowing.

Friday night DnD was good. It was interesting to see their reaction to an NPC that I had thought was fairly innocuous. I mean, yes, she's a mushroom dryad woman who has no eyes, clicks to echolocate and gives them little mushrooms that look slightly like them in order to share a dream-space.

Seems fine to me. Hahaha.

I was also happy making everything slightly more weird than a normal session since they're in the Feywild now... land of Faerie and all that.

It wasn't a super long session, but I left them on a cliffhanger for next week, so that's good too.

Anyway...

Today was fairly standard also.

Supermarket... then back here as normal, then we did the Big W, Kmart, back here loop. 

I wanted to look for a notebook for Lucky... and while I had four left over from all the ones I've bought over time, but none of them were... just right. Granted, the place that I used to get them from, Typo, doesn't do them to the amount or range that they used to, which is sad.

And while none of the ones I found today was perfect, there was one that will work nicely enough.

We also picked up a few little bits and pieces at Kmart, but that was about it really.

Current mood:

photo saturday: protectors

On the surface, it doesn't seem like there would be much of a parallel between today's D&D Character Colouring Book friends... beyond them both having recently benefitted from a do-over and them both being my characters.

But Macabe and Littlefoot (because she never went by her first name, only ever the surname) are both the protectors of their communities. Or were, before they headed off to seek their fortune in the world. They did leave others behind in their stead though.

Sadly, I couldn't remember how I did Macabe's tattoos originally. It must have all been hand done, but I honestly couldn't be arsed doing that again, although the amount of time I actually spent trying to get them right, I totally could have done and it would possibly have taken less time. But instead I went for a "reverse" tattoo, where the background is filled in, but the flowers and leaves and such are bare skin. It's not perfect, but I kinda dig it. And the sleeveless look was some Photoshop fuckery where I basically did a shirted and shirtless version of him and then Frankensteined them together.

I really like Littlefoot's makeover though. Part of which is just an upgrade to the actual pieces in Hero Forge in the time between when I originally made her and now. And as much as I liked the hat in the old version, it felt a little clunky and the hooded hat made more sense. Doubly so when you consider that she literally lost her head (and died) in game. She's fine, but I never had the opportunity to play her again, which was disappointing, because I liked her quite a bit.

What I have been finding as I redo some of these older models is that just changing the posing actually does quite a lot. And, in these cases, I feel like they tell you quite a bit about the characters. Also, that I'm really not a huge fan of action poses. 

Anyway...

This week's soup was... fine. It was basically chicken, veg and barley... but I used some Pho stock cubes, and the end result was... fine. But in no way mindblowing nor something I'm going to repeat.

I had the most fun ever (cue massive sarcasm) on Tuesday when I went it to update my drivers license. And yes, unsurprisingly, things were massively different between 2012 and 2022. And yes, while it was generally quicker and easier, there's something of an irony about a lack of service from a place called Service SA.

And again, not that people weren't attentive, it's just that the way of doing things now generally seems to be "do it your damn self". Which is fine, but when you can't even provide me with a copy of my temporary license or don't tell me that I can access the updated version of my licence through the Service SA app on my phone is... a problem.

But at the end of the day I got in, I got my photo took, I got out.

It also turned out that I didn't actually need my license at all for the rest of the week.

Because there was no Thursday D&D and no Friday D&D since Fluffy wasn't feeling well.

I could have gone to play board games with Mr and Mrs on Friday... but, honestly, by that point in the week, I just wasn't in the mood. So there's not a lot to report for this week.

Anyway.

Today we did the supermarket thing... and I'm going to give tuna mornay a try for the first time in the new place. Pray for me.

Afterwards we did a trip to Officeworks (I finally bought some printer ink... woot) and then did a stroll around Spotlight.

Not terribly exciting, but at least it was better than just sitting around and doing sweet fuck all.

Current mood:

photo saturday: thunder and lightning

If Masika El-Borak is looking at you like that, you should already be running... because you've clearly annoyed her and now it's time for lightning. Or thunder. Or both.

So... maybe I started doing slight tweaks to some of my Hero Forge character designs... and many I couldn't stop and maybe everybody got a little bit of a tweak. Welcome to this week's DnD Character Colouring Book.

And maybe Masika got redesigned (not for the first time) from the ground up. And quite possibly, now that she's canonically supposed to be a Responsible Business Owner in the fiction of the game, since she owns half of a shipping company with one of the other PCs, maybe she decided it was time for new threads.

One day there's going to be The Perfect Jacket and I can call the design finished. But until now, this will do. Likewise, normally I would have done some Photoshop fuckery and maybe given her a shirt under the breastplate... but I did play around with the idea, and I kind of like that she's more open now and more willing to show off her Lictenberg scars.

Because, as I've said many times, the women who went into the desert in her first adventure and the woman who eventually left the little town on the other side of the desert are two very different women.

Anyway.

So... Lasagne Soup. Two words that probably shouldn't be next to each other in a sentence. But, honestly, it wasn't bad. I mean, at worst it was either slightly sloppy lasagne or very, very thick soup. And, I think breaking up lasagne sheets into soup isn't the worst idea in the world. You know, in regular soup.

Most of this week was... forgettable. Or at least the bits before Thursday.

And I say forgettable, because it was both Ma and Owlgirl's birthdays and had Ma and I not had a conversation about it the previous Saturday, I would have forgotten both days. As it was I only remembered Owlgirl's birthday because she posted to Instagram about it... but I only saw that at like 11pm. So... there's that. I mean, I should fucking remember, it's the day after Ma's... but no... totally didn't.

Urgh.

Thursday night's DnD was... fine. We did have discussions about what we're potentially doing next. Or, rather, more discussions. The game itself was... well, I have opinions about it. Which aren't potentially useful for this campaign given how close to the end we are, but are definitely informing my thoughts for the next campaign.

But they're still a work in progress right now.

Friday night's DnD was... fucking fantastic.

I wasn't sure how many sessions they were going to spend in the carnival. Turns out the magic number was four. So Session 4 was subtitled "Things Take A Turn"... which works two ways... because they finally rode the carousel... but also, things got... serious.

And they said goodbye to the carnival. So next week the adventure really kicks into gear.

Once again though I wouldn't be prouder of all of them. They're asking the right questions so that I don't have to do an exposition dump later, they're wildly speculating on possible future events and connecting all the wrong dots (mostly), they're getting emotionally invested in NPCs they're never going to see again... LOL.

I will also say that the moment when you start Laying Down Lore and everyone around the table scrambles for their pencils and starts furiously taking notes... it's a powerful drug, I won't lie. Doubly so because some of it was stuff that I'd rewritten myself and not part of the book.

Of course, it also means I'm going to need to do some serious prep before next Friday, because they're in a whole new spot. I might also need to take a highlighter to my printed version of the adventure, just to help me find sections more easily.

But at the same time I don't know if we're going to be jumping back and forward around in my notes quite as much... or there's not as many little bits and pieces we might be jumping between. It's more larger sections.

We'll see. I don't know that it'll hurt if I just throw something random on the teevee and sit down with my notes and a highlighter one night.

Today was... different. And also a thing we should have fucking done before now. In that the thing we went to do finished last week. Urgh.

Anyway.

We did the supermarketness of it all. The plan is chicken soup. But, maybe with a bit of an Asian twist. And I say twist, but basically I think it's just going to be throwing a couple of Pho flavoured stock cubes in and some coriander and calling it a day. Oh, and some bok choy.

And then we went into the city to go to the Art Gallery.

To see the 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art... which, you guessed it, finished last Sunday. I would have sworn black and blue that it went until July... turns out I was incredibly wrong.

But we saw some nice art, including a really trippy (and tiny) exhibition... the return of one of my very favourite pieces of art in the whole gallery (and it's not just because he's very naked)... and several spots where I didn't necessarily love most of the artworks, but I did seriously dig the way the gallery was displaying them.

Also unsurprisingly, I really dig 1920's and 1930's sculpture. Well. Most of it.

It's also been a long time since Ma and I went into the city for anything. Together I mean. But, honestly, it's been a while since Ma's been in the city. And it was probably the most people I've been around in a hot minute. Or at least the most amount of people while not everyone was wearing a mask.

We didn't do a ton of wandering around, I took her to see the new Dymocks, then we went to Koko Black, the chocolate cafe, and had hot chocolate. Which, on the scale of "amazing hot chocolates I've had in my life" is probably not anywhere on the Top 10, but it was pretty decent. And I only say that because I've had a lot of that really thick, basically melted chocolate, hot chocolate... and I just like those better.

But that was it. Oh, there was a brief stop at the Haighs store in town, but then we called it a day.

Current mood:

photo saturday: feeling lucky

This is Lucky.

I'm currently very obsessed with Lucky. Lucky is what happens when I realise that I can't play my other potential rogue (Agent 13) because of bullshit reasons that don't really matter, but we live by them anyway in the Thursday game. And yes, my rant of several weeks back still stands and maybe I should take a break, but things are currently okay.

But back to the DnD Character Colouring Book entry for this week.

I thought about my dark, gothic Dhampir boy, Agent 13, and I said to myself "Self, what's the polar opposite of that". And I immediately knew the answer was "lean into that Feywild Bullshit". Which I adore.

So I did. He has the Feylost background, so he was lost in the Feywild as a child, he has the Fey Touched feat, which give him access to a couple of spells, and although he looks human, he's technically the "Custom Lineage" from Tasha's that lets me give him the ability to see in the dark.

Looking at the Feylost background there's a list of potential "Fey Marks", things that were altered about your physical body because of your time in the Feywild. A lot of them were cute, but the one that really stood out to me was a tail. And a rabbit tail or a fox tail, or those more obvious ideas. But no, I went with a lion's tail. Which then bled into the hair and it's colouring. The pendant came a lot later.

Once again a non-zero amount of Photoshop was used.

Speaking of going in the opposite direction from other potential characters, I wanted to go the opposite from Ghost as well. So, clearly, tall, well built, tanned. Blonde. Also, thinking about it, I think I need to give him my bad Southern accent. Partly because I haven't really done that with the Thursday group, and it just fits with the character I have in my head. Does that mean that the Fey have Southern accents? No idea.

And although I originally wanted to play a pure rogue, having stacked so much Fey Bullshit on him already, he absolutely needs to end up also being a Fey Wanderer Ranger. Which means he will end up with a stupid number of skill proficiencies and expertises without me even really trying.

I also made him a klepto. But less so for gold or things with monetary value, more for things he finds interesting. Which, given how he feels in my head, could be very changeable from session to session.

The backstory is one part Labyrinth, one part Tiffany Aching from Discworld, but without the older sister to come and rescue is ass. So, essentially he's Toby or Wentworth, left to his own devices in the Feywild.

How much of his character will survive first contact with the table I can't say. I'm going to give it a red hot go though.

Anyway.

Sunday I booked my flu vax at the pharmacy down the street. Because it's free until the end of the month. And I like things that are free. I could have actually had it then and there, but I'd left stuff in the oven and had planned to get it done on Monday, so I stuck to that.

I also made beef soup. Well, beef, barley and vegetable soup technically. I've never had a beef soup get quite so close to being what I want it to be before. So that was nice.

Monday I went down the street to get my flu vax. I was in and out within about 10 minutes and the whole thing was relatively painless. However it did knock me slightly on my ass for three or four days. Not horrifically, but I definitely felt it worse than other recent vaxs.

Or it's been a while since those and I forgot how those felt.

I ended up giving up on Monday night and went to bed at about 9:30. But mostly it was fine.

It also may be partially because I can't remember the last time I actually HAD a flu vax.

There was no Thursday DnD this week because people had other plans. Which was fine, because the weather has been cold and shitful and the aforementioned flu vax. So I was fine with that.

Friday night DnD was great. I've been naming the sessions afterwards, and I should record them for posterity.

So the first session was subtitled "Baam's Not Dead". The second was "Witch + Light = Witchlight?" and last night's session was "The Big Top Heist". And heist they did. Very successfully. They got what they needed, they have the proverbial keys to the next part of the adventure... but I'm not rushing them out they door of the carnival just yet.

What's interesting is I initially wasn't sure how long they would want to spend in the carnival. I thought maybe a couple of sessions. But not I'm thinking maybe 4 or 5. It's also not like we're playing for four hours at a time, so, they're shorter sessions, but yeah, they're going to be at the carnival for a while.

Which I'm fine with. I'm very much enjoying running this adventure so far. And those moments of just pure invention. Where you might have a brief description in the book or you need to come up with something on the fly and it just flows out of your mouth and works in the moment. Plus I'm very excited about What Comes Next.

Anyway.

Today was, once again, nothing much.

We did the supermarket thing. And I decided on the way home last night that I wanted to try something different soup-wise this week. Initially I thought about making tuna mornay, but honestly, I wasn't in the mood to actually make it. Eat it, yes. Make it, not so much.

So I'm trying a Lasagne Soup. I know, it sounds questionable, but I can't be fucked trying to make actual lasagne anymore. It takes too long and never comes out the way I want it to. So we'll see how this works. If it works.

After that we came back here and... basically did nothing. And then Ma went home some time later.

So there's that about that.

Current mood:

rainbow character template redux

So... this only actually occurred to me last weekend after I'd posted my dumpster fire cleric boy makeover.

It's been a minute (February 2020... ah memories... it was a different time) since I made the previous blog template image, and while I see it a lot, I don't often actually look at it, if that makes sense. But since I realised how much I hated the old version of the cleric once I had the new version, I knew the whole banner needed a refresh.

And I wanted to swap out some of the characters, make something that features more of the characters I've finished games with. Or, you know, characters that I'm feeling more than I was feeling some of the old ones. It did lead me to give one of the characters a bit of a mini-makeover, adding the cape to my tabaxi.

What hasn't changed other than the designs... with text lifted from the previous version.

• Whipmaster Demyan - human noble cleric of Loviatar, Goddess of Pain
  Demyan is my dumpster fire. He's a total disaster and I could not love him more. He's a noble, worships a Lawful Evil goddess, a Grave Domain cleric who will definitely let you go unconscious before he bothers to heal you, has the upmost of contempt for most people and as such considers himself above everyone else... in short he's a total prick. But he's also insightful as fuck and protective of children and people who have won his favour. He's also one of the first characters that appeared in my head after I invented an NPC in a game and he just never left, just sat there insisting that I make him into a character. His personality only appeared when I played in a game with way too many other people, about half of which I didn't especially like playing with for various reasons. So it was too much fun to not show my displeasure via my character (without being a dick about it). 
  
  
• Belben Beestinger - halfling arcane trickster rogue
  My very first character, Belben will always be my favourite. He's also the reason I'm obsessed with halflings and have played six different halflings so far. And although it doesn't show in who he is now, his original DNA came about because I was reading a lot of Dashiell Hammett books and wanted an investigator character. He's a member of the enormous Beestinger clan, grew up in a bakery (and that was before I learned how to make bread), has five older sisters (although he never feels like "the baby"). While he could rob you blind, he's not that kind of rogue, he's much more interested in your secrets. He can also walk into a room and totally "Sherlock Holmes" the shit out of it. And I will say that my decision to give him Winged Boots was the best decision I ever made. He's my little bumblebee. 
  
  
• Rain in the Night - tabaxi monk
  If all of my characters are some part of my personality turned all the way up to 15, Rain is my impulsiveness/impatience. He'll be fine up to a point and then he'll get bored and do the dumb thing. This is also aided by the fact that as a cheetah themed tabaxi (bipedal big-cat person) and a monk, he can, when necessary, run up to 270 feet inside six seconds (or 49km/h), which now includes along vertical surfaces and across water. I now tend to dig much deeper for character names, but he was literally named because I was making him at night during a big rainstorm.

The new faces...

• Leif Leatherbuckle - dwarf ranger
  I've talked about Leif's design before... he's a Beast Master ranger with an owl companion... although, just between you and me, I think I actually had more fun when I swapped over to the snow leopard companion. Or maybe it's just that I did more fighting with her in that form. He's also the first time I'd ever jumped into an ongoing story with a higher level class I hadn't really played before. It was also weird to have a different motivation than the rest of the party. The aim was the same, the reasoning was different. And it's still amazing to me that DM Fluffy and I made a whole group of NPCs that Leif was part of out of the fact I couldn't stop making potential replacement characters.
  
  
• Peregrin Swiftfoot - halfling paladin & rogue
  Pery really, really needed to be in the banner. My sweet, deceptive, charming little Oath of Redemption paladin and Swashbuckler rogue. He's one of those characters that still lingers. Not so much with me, but with one of the other players in the Thursday game who still hasn't forgiven me/Pery for walking away at the end of the game. It's been over two years at this point, and it still gets brought up on a regular basis. I've detailed the end of his in-game adventures before, but it makes me all kinds of happy knowing that he's just off in a small village somewhere living his very best life. And that I traumatised one of my fellow players... hahaha.
  
  
• Quillamina Silverthread - gnome druid
  I honestly don't remember what came first with Quill. I feel like I made a "sketch" of a character, a "what kind of character works for this subclass" kind of idea, mostly because the first version of her was just labelled "Star Circle Druid" rather than using her name. And the book with the final version of her subclass wasn't even officially out when I made her. I made her partially because gnome was one of the only two races I'd never played from the Players Handbook, and I really liked the sound of her subclass and was excited to play some of the higher levels.  Sadly, that wasn't to be with Quill either, and she bowed out of the game, letting Leif take her place. But, honestly, if ever where was a character who did what needed to be done, it was her. She didn't remain the soft character I originally envisioned, but then life was particularly hard on her during the campaign.
  
  
• Harland Honeypot - halfling bard
  The first character I ever designed live on the blog. Normally I would have done all that "off-screen", but I started talking about him and suddenly he tumbled out of my head mostly fully formed. I then refined those ideas into Harland. And as much as I love the mouthy little College of Eloquence fucker, Harland is where I realised why bards don't work for me. But we're coming to the end of the campaign that isn't really a campaign with him... and I think I know how it's going to wrap up for him. Given some of his experiences, and the ridiculous amount of gold he's currently carting around with him... his future plans occurred to me a week or so back and it seems only fitting. He just needs to live through the last couple of adventures.

Current mood: