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Campaign 1 - Legend of Vox Machina

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by  Timur Mutsaev

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vox machina fashion  ✨

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hewwo!

some new items, hope y’all are staying safe

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If you could make an invocation, what would it be?

If I were to make an eldritch invocation, it’d probably be something that adds more a “celestial” flavor to the celestial warlock’s toolkit, I suppose? Beyond 5e’s holy fire and all that. Something like the following: Astral Direction Prerequisite: 9th level Celestial pact, Eldritch Blast Eldritch blast may now be precisely guided around obstacles so long as it is within range. If the caster cannot see the target it gains -5 to hit. Additionally, the caster may choose to make the Eldritch blast deal radiant damage. I’m no expert when it comes to homebrewing so this may be horribly overtuned or undertuned, but in short, just something that adds flavor. I feel like Eldritch invocations could do with more of that.

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Up next, the Druid! Click for better quality, other class lists can be found on my blog.

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Critical Role is one of my favorite things on this planet and I can’t quite do them all justice, but I can sure try. 

Much love!

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Adventures of Cat-leb part 3: no rest for the wizard

I have a bit of a headcanon that whenever Caleb feels tired from studying magic he just turns into a cat that looks like frumpkin and goes to chill somewhere comfortable. Sometimes the M9 spot him tho.

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So, I have created the Archdruid Patron in the past for a commission and decided to remake it. New features and things have been rearranged. 

If you would like access to exclusive content, please make a pledge to My Patreon!

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It’s Not Working: Character Troubleshooting

Welcome to It’s Not Working, a troubleshooting series that I’m uniquely qualified to run because I write things that don’t work all the time. This week, we study characters-why they don’t work, how to know, and what to do about it. 

Question time

Think of a character that’s been giving you some difficulty, and answer these questions:

Are you unsure of their motivations, both scene by scene and in the whole plot?

Do they start and end with the same motivations, perspectives, personality, and outlook?

Does it feel like their lines could’ve been spoken by any other character?

Do you have trouble describing their personality, even to yourself? 

If you answered yes to these questions, you may have an underdeveloped character. 

Do they tend to act differently scene to scene?

Do you not know what to do with them in scenes?

Do they not have a part to play in the plot?

If you answered yes to these, you may have an unmotivated character. 

Did you answer no to all of the above questions, but beta readers and critique partners are disagreeing? 

Readers can’t understand their personality, motivations, or effect on the plot?

Then you may have an misrepresented character.

Why don’t they work?

Underdeveloped character: We’ve all heard of them before. They come off as bland. There’s no significant development or change to them throughout the story. Characters are your readers’ foothold into the story. If they feel like empty bottles, its going to be a lot harder for people to become invested in the plot. 

Unmotivated characters lack one thing: yes, it is motivation. It’s the ultimate reason for your characters to do anything. Why do they feel like they have to save the city? Why do they get upset at that one joke? Without proper and consistent motivation, your readers are gonna get whiplash trying to figure out all the why’s of the character’s actions. And if they’re too busy worrying about that, then they’re gonna lose interest in the plot and the book as a whole. 

Misrepresented characters are fully formed, at least to the author. They know everything about them, from their MBTI to the color of their second favorite rain boots. The writer has charts of how their motivations shift throughout the story, diagrams of their highs and lows, but for some reason, when readers get their hands on it, they give feed back like ‘flat’, ‘boring’, ‘generic’. Something needs to bridge that gap between the writers knowledge and what’s on the page. 

The Fixes

Underdeveloped characters:

Find character questionnaires, follow character prompt blogs, take personality tests as your character. Really explore who they are as a person. 

Make a chart of where they start and where they end. What happens in the plot that can significantly change them and the way they think? 

Write scenes from their first person voice. Yes, even if you write in third. Write it like diary entry, write it obnoxiously first person, so first person even first person writers would cringe. Every spelling mistake you’d think they’d make, all the tangents, everything. Get a feel for the way they sound and think.

What makes them unique? What makes them so interesting that you would rather write them than a whole different character? Let this shine through. 

Consider cutting them or combining them with another character if they really aren’t doing anything for your plot. I know, it hurts. You can always save pieces of them to use in another project, but sometimes it’s for the greater good.

Unmotivated characters: 

Answer the questions: Why are they my main character, and why are they taking part in this plot? If you can’t answer those, then you either have the wrong main character, or the wrong plot. 

Fill in this triangle and refer to them whenever you’re unsure of how they should react to something: 

Write an elaborate backstory for the character. Why do they come off as stoic all the time, except when they shriek around antique dolls? There’s a story there. You don’t necessarily have to write it in the text, but the more you know about your character, the more credible these choices will feel to the reader.

Have inconsistencies addressed in the story. If they say that they don’t care about anyone on the team, and then run into a burning building to save them, it should be noted. Not necessarily flat out said, but noted.

Tone down big reactions. The wailing, screeching, jumping for joy. Some characters might do some of these things. Some might do some of them sometimes. But one character will very rarely bounce around the peak of every emotion all the time. If you do write that character, it needs to happen very intentionally. 

Misrepresented character

Take a good look at the character’s introduction. Are you telling instead of showing? Is the reader distracted by larger plot things during their first scene? Do they have chances to prove their personality traits to the reader through actions or dialogue? 

Can you hear them? Do they have a specific voice? Mannerisms? Quirks you can show the reader? 

Are you leaving too much in subtext? I love assuming my readers will be scouring my books for clues and subtleties one day. But for major character traits, it’s better to be upfront about it. No one can assume your characters backstory out of thin air. Sometimes you have to be upfront about their motivations

Have you given an accurate, and somehow not boring, character description? If this is where you’re stuck, I understand, I’ve been there. But think of it as a chance not to list off eye color and hair length, but as a chance for each element to tell the reader something about the character. A ‘severe’ haircut gives us a different tone than ‘soft curls’. ‘Enough dirt in their nail beds to give an archaeologist chills’ give us one impression, ‘a smile that knows how high her cheekbones are’ gives us another. Play with it. Have fun. 

Are you using them in each scene they’re in? Not only as an effect on the plot, but also using the scene to showcase who they are. It should be a symbiotic relationship, scenes and characters. 

Some last few pieces of advice:

Don’t kill off a character or make them leave for the rest of the book because you don’t know what to do with them. If they stop having a purpose after a certain point, consider combining that purpose with a character that sticks around. 

Don’t kill off a character just because you think you have to

There’s no such thing as ‘needing’ a love interest. If you have a character that is exclusively there as a love interest, they’re probably gonna come off as flat (unless it’s a straight up romance novel, in which case, have a blast). 

Don’t feel like you need certain tropes. ‘Funny best friend’. ‘School bully’. ‘Evil dictator’. Don’t put them in unless they actually have something to do with the plot of your book. 

We could take about characters for weeks. Months. Years. But hopefully this not so brief overview gave you some ways to rethink any problem characters you might have. 

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Bloodborne Monster Handbook: Central Yharnam Part 1

So i guess october will be Bloodborne Month on my blog. Legit though, i have a good pipeline set up (which is why there was no content last month) to work on these things. So more will come in the following weeks for sure! (Also i will get those trap rooms ready for the DMs Guild)

Cover Artwork by Victoe Garcia All Artwork except Scourge Beast by From Software Scourge Beast Artwork by EdwardDelandre

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I couldn’t work out how to draw my comics properly so I tried to get back into it with a little comic of events from the last ep of Critical Role

A part of me forgot how hard it is to draw comics hsdjkfhjksdhfjk I don’t think it came out *amazingly* but it’s not bad either so… yay???

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Brian tricking Sam into thinking he had glitter on his cheek in episode 79

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Here's ur apparently necessary and irritatingly regular reminder that Beau is brown and you now have TWO animated songs and TWO sets of official art to use for swatching and referencing in order to make it looked like you at least ATTEMPTED to pick an accurate skin tone for her

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In our Pathfinder game, our rogue had been away for almost a year’s worth of sessions. She’s a no nonsense street tough who specced heavily into Bluff and Disguise. One of the players who joined since she’s been gone is a dwarf cleric who is devoted to his homebrew deity, a goat man named Gunther, The following conversation took place shortly after the two met and learned about their new mission.

Rogue: Ok, so I guess we’re off to find the mayor?

Cleric: Yes, but first…have you heard the good news about Gunther?

Rogue(not wanted to be proselytized to): Uh…yes. I’m a follower of Gunther, in fact. Anyways, I think the Mayor’s place is this way…

DM: Roll Bluff against everyone else’s Sense Motive.

Rogue: *Succeeds phenomenally.*

DM: Ok, you all believe her.

Cleric: What really? Where did you even hear about Gunther?

Rogue (without missing a beat): Oh you know. He came to me in a dream, told me I’m the chosen one, that whole deal. Listen, we really need to get going-

DM: Roll Bluff.

Rogue: *Succeeds again.*

The group loses it. The cleric now gloms onto the Rogue because he sees her as the infallible voice of his extremely personal deity.

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“I don’t know, do you have detect invisibility?” “No - wait, yes! Remember that flour I bought? I take it out and sprinkle it in the casket!”

“…Yes, there’s a body in there.”

(It was a paladin in stasis. If we’d cast See Invisible, we’d have seen an illusion of a vampire, but flour isn’t fooled by illusions, so we did not stake a paladin.)

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Art by Kyra Pescador (https://linktr.ee/kyrartz)