08-15.11.2021 Update, Concept Art, "Danger?"

08.11.2021

Started doing a little more concept art today (I miss drawing regularly), mostly to keep y brain from going crazy with all of the typing and secondly to finally pin down what the Summer Cultists generally look like.

The story behind them is that the remaining denizens who chose not to flee and were loyal to the Sun-King found a way to reincarnate themselves over and over again. The problem is, they need a body each time to do it and the only “bodies” they can come up with are the bodies of the hag-fish and cave hares that live in the dark with them. So, they frankenstein their new bodies from a bunch of carved up animals, do the magic bit and “boom” add another 10-50 years to their life expectancy (depending upon how well the body was put together).

Also got some typing done on the Summer Quarter, used the Alarm rules from Raid on the Decadent Spires since the place is swarming with cultists.

I’m hoping to do more drawing tomorrow, hell, maybe even some artwork for the thing.

09.11.2021

Worked on a “spot sheet” (a sheet of miscellaneous illustrations used to fill gaps in layout and reduce white space) and goddamn if it didn’t feel good.

I stand by my claim of “I am an illustrator first, a designer second,” because while I enjoy making games the rush of joy I get from making art does not compare.

So… it was a good day. I’ll get back to typing tomorrow.

11.11.2021 Armistice Day

Finished typing up the Living Quarters (11 rooms), also started to do some design work for the pages. They look too bland and the master pages need spruced up with at least a little bit of artistic flare.

11.15.2021

Got back from a weekend camping trip, snowed in the beginning, finding firewood was a bit of a chore; fun otherwise. Finished the Temple area and did an illustration for the Living quarters.

Today felt like it dragged on and writing was hard. I want to get back to making art but the thing has to get typed first. Blech.

Upside is I managed to make a rather difficult boss encounter that doesn’t rely on “meat sponge” enemies. Instead I made a room filled with a mind-altering gas (causes those inside to become charmed) and a small cluster of spellcasters, one with two particularly dangerous spells.

“Difficulty” in an RPG sense gets weird when you’re not dealing with hit points or damage. Instead difficulty seems to mean “danger,” but can’t be so dangerous that the players are killed the second they enter an area because they didn’t do “that one thing” that might have kept them alive; yet it also has to be just dangerous ENOUGH that the players don’t steamroll it with a weird tactic they’ve come up with and it stops being “fun”. I like the OSR for its reliance on tactical and cautious approaches to combat and encounters, but I’m trying to find that soft spot of “fun and dangerous.”

Eh, maybe I should just say to hell with it and let the clever players steamroll encounters if they can. If that’s what’s fun for them, so be it.