Val'Ruvina Series of Minis (Patreon)

You might notice a few new entries in the website catalog with the "Val'Ruvina" banner.

These are part of a series of minis I'm doing in collaboration with a local Portland company called TPK Brewing Co. You can read more about them in their own words here.

They're an incredibly lovely group of talented folks who have made it part of their mission to employ an even larger group of talented folks to try and create a hub for TTRPG gaming in Portland Oregon. A mission I whole heartedly support.

None of that is especially relevant unless you happen to live in/near Portland Oregon, however what is relevant is that I'll be collaborating with them to make a few sets of minis for their Leyfarer's Chronicle campaign set in their world of Val'Ruvina, and releasing the minis through my Patreon and PrintableHeroes website catalog.

So yeah, that's basically it, really just trying out something new with the Banners on the catalog preview - it seems like a fun way to make 'em stand out and I could see potentially doing something like that with future collaborations/sets of minis.

I have a bit more I wanted to say about collaborations and why I decided to work with the TPK Brewing folks, but I'm putting it here at the end for an optional read because it's the end of the year and I feel like waxing poetically.

Now, anyone who knows me or has reach out to me about collaborations knows that I live in a persistent state of never having enough time for all of the cool things I want to work on and that I usually pass on these kind of projects/collaborations.  I'd pretty much promised myself that unless WotC, MCDM, or an incredible rare exception comes along I'm going to say no to any project that required me to make new minis because I just have so many minis I already know I want to make to fill out the Printable Heroes catalog - there's just never enough time.

What's that saying? I'm paraphrasing, but it's something like,

"Sometimes you spend so much time looking up at the stars that you miss what shines around you."

Portland has such a vibrate TTRPG creator scene - how could we not living as we do in the shadow of WotC up in Seattle. I've danced around the scene over the years, occasionally showing up to a TTRPG creator's gathering, popped on the odd local podcast, or grabbed a beers over a board game, etc. but I've always been a bit of a workaholic homebody and I've never made the time to collaborate, to really contribute to the local scene.

There was a gaming pub down the street called Game Knight, the cook was one of the best DMs I've ever played with (he wrote the Cult of the Maw adventure and even ran it for my birthday one year), they used to host Dinner and D&D game sessions. I'd pop in every now and then.

Anyways, they closed during the pandemic, I'd had beers with one of the owners a couple times, but I wasn't close enough with them to know they were even in trouble.  

A lot of places closed during the pandemic, but the Game Knight closing really hit me. I didn't spend a lot of time there, but I spent enough to see it for the TTRPG hub that it was. It really made me realize that I wasn't investing in my local community enough, wasn't involved enough.

Cue TPK Brewing reaching out to local creators last year to share what their goals were and see what was possible. It wasn't until this fall that we got back in touch about commissioning some miniatures from me. Their Creative Director and Game Manager showed me a bunch of the concept they had (created by another local Portland artist, SpiderLair), which were all these awesome feywild-esque creatures and explain in a bit more detail what they were hoping for.

Anyways, all this to say that I really like these people, what they're trying to build and what they're trying to be for the local community of TTRPG artists, writers, creators, and players etc. It's cool. I'm excited to contribute in my own small way, it's been really fun working on some more exotic/interesting minis designs, and I'm really hopeful you all will enjoy them and find them useful.

Thanks for reading all this XD

Cheers,
-Marshall