May Update ! (Patreon)

Hello Friends,

Some more updates! 

Lets start with a fun sketch-page! this is me trying (eternally) to learn how to balance my blacks. But also having a lot of fun with expressions and detailing. I'm feeling recently like these sketch-pages strike a nice balance for me between testing out ideas and having something to share with my fans and supporters! Which is a thing i find myself still very much wanting to do even as I focus on my book project.

Secondly here is another little sketch of some character items I did for a game of Whitehack I played! (Whitehack is gonna come up again in this post this is what we in the business call foreshadowing). 

(This was for Missy! my gnoll merchant!)

Beyond some drawing, and some secret collab work i can't really talk about yet, my main focus has been on rules writing for my game. System was a big question for me on this RPG project as previously I'd only really hacked 5th edition to my needs (as with ink-stained) but this time around I knew 5th edition wasn't really going to cut it for this project. 

My challenge was that a pre-existing system felt like it would carry too much thematic and ludo-narrative weight into what was a very setting specific book but writing a totally new system to measure could easily get out of hand and crush me like a tiny ant. 

The main breakthrough came when i played a few delightful games of Whitehack. A system both very strong in it's fundamental maths and play principles, while also being very light and flexible in what you can portray with it. (it's magic system, for example, is completely free form, and would carry none of the thematic burden of a pre-existing spell list, nor the difficulty of me having to write a custom one).

Being based in the OSR (old school renaissance) school of design, it was also very location oriented in it's focus on moment to moment exploration of rooms and maps. This is a style of play I think really lends itself to settings that are less easily immediately collectively understood (its very easy for everyone to hold a shared vision of generic fantasy in their heads, less so for weird science fiction, or a dark suburban dreamscape). Room to room play solves this by miniaturising the setting in an experiential sense into what is immediately in-front of you, something that everyone can immediately understand and interact with.

So my main focus has been using the core logic of this system while designing everything else to the specific needs and themes of the game. I'm very happy with the result, which, untested as it is, I may be able to share with you after a few more passes. I expect the rules to be finished pretty soon, which means onto creative writing! then formatting! then drawing! and then the weird stuff I want to try like a dress up game character creator and a tiling system for maps. 

A long journey, but a very exciting one!

Okay! that's it for now! here is my favorite recent selfie to sign off with!

Love you all more soon!