#FRPG Art

[asdaricus]

They're supposed to be the college of wizards. They just look like upscale shoppers. Maybe that's what accomplished wizards look like? Well-heeled customers.

[natureintheory]

Made super-stylized real-time 3D art inspired by one of my favorite creatures in a certain fRPG.

Best viewed in 3D: https://skfb.ly/oOOKv

[fantasyfantasygames]

Several Donated Games

I recently had the good fortune to meet Lily Vers at ProseAndCon, a semi-yearly interactive fiction convention in the backwoods of Maine. I mentioned that I write reviews, the next thing I know she hands me a pile of books and offers to buy me a drink if I promise to never give them back. I think she just wanted them out of the house because she's moving. They're not that bad. Well, most of them.

These are short games (well, most of them), so here are some short reviews!

Edge: Blades in the Kill (Hurtful Press, 2021) Long-time followers of the blog will remember HellBlaster and whether I wasn't really sure whether the game was in on its own joke. E:BitK is absolutely in on the joke. The game's aesthetic is part emo, part Hannibal fanfic, part Black Adder. You are a group of serial killer assassins murdering for fun and profit, then getting stiffed on the profit part by your clueless employers who seem not to realize what's going to happen after they stiff a bunch of murderers. Cool stuff: Manages to boil down systems stolen from Blades in the Dark and Kill Edge to their very essence, accomplishing 90% of what they do in 20% of the combined space.

D.E.S.P.O.N.D.E.N.C.Y., A Friendship-Ending Role-Playing Experience (Delta Elf, 2020) Have you ever played Diplomacy? This is Diplomacy in RPG form. One-player RPG form, thankfully. You write the stories of a group of (initially) friends playing a diceless RPG that slowly escalates into a series of alliances and betrayals that eventually leave the entire group and hostile. It reminds me of an Amber game I ran once where people got a little too into the intrigue and backstabbing. Cool stuff: The prompts really get you into the heads of all the characters you make. All your decisions on their part have to come from part of the short backstories you write for them.

Unexamined Fantasy Racism (anonymous, 2018) Hoo boy this one sets you up right from the title and doesn't let up. The book is a 64-page clone of OD&D that provides an absolutely scathing commentary on exactly what the tin says. Anyone who goes on to play a standard D&D (or related) game after playing or reading this one is going to feel real uncomfortable, and for good reasons. I don't think the game is going to get much play, but it's designed more for reading. (See "queerweird" below for another "you might never actually play it" game.) Cool stuff: Never becomes its own target. It's easy to write something like UFR and fall into the "actually doing what you're trying to satirize" trap. UFR instead sets up extremely standard FRPG situations and then slams you right into the exact problem with them.

Hackerface 1999: Don't Roll A Hacker (Crack the Hacker, 2000) I'm not sure who the audience for Hackerface is. It's a parody of Cyberpunk 2020 with references to 1990s floppy game hacking, so you would normally be able to perfectly zero in on the target audience. The game does not treat that audience with any sort of love, affection, or respect, so you come away either not getting a lot of what it's trying to say or feeling uncomfortable. And not a productive UFR-type uncomfortable, just the kind of uncomfortable you get from bullies. Even the hacking rules aren't worth stealing. The book reads like it was written by the kind of person who stuffs nerds into lockers, and how in the hell does that person end up writing RPGs? Cool stuff: The art is pretty great, especially for an indie game in the year 2000. It's done in an extremely stylized approach, with plenty of black ink, chiaroscuro, and anatomy that looks like it belongs on an actual human.

This turned into a longer post than I thought, so I'm going to split it in half. Tune in next time.

[rustedashes]

MindANDLove¿

Drawing of my Mass Effect OC' salarian by name Vissa Telorn'hex Lazarr, but he is better known as the ''nasty type''. He is a pathomorphologist-geneticist who will destroy all your nerve cells in one conversation. Cynic; perfectionist; withdrawn, aloof with low empathy, partially sociopathic; intolerant of disorder, drinking and cheeky behavior.

Vissa has never loved, but an explosive (both literally, since she is a demolitionist, and figuratively) a quarian named Aela'Sia nar Moreh causes strange and previously unexperienced feelings in him, which he, being prone to cold analysis and inability to feel the whole spectrum emotions, is called ''Attachment'' as they both share a common past. But is it really so and maybe there is something more than just sympathy?

Sia © my friend and FRPG co-player Ilona Vissa and art © RustedAshes (i.e. me). It is forbidden to copy/use without my written permission.

[deadbeatscumbag]

[2dmax]

The player characters in my retrofuturefantasy homebrew ttrpg.

L to R: Gula Claye the ex-military airship mechanic, Maro “Ostanes” Sekir the rogue alchemist, and Key, the aeronaut emancipator.

[orwin-dm]

Making tons of not super strong magic items and doodles to go with.

[neverland-graphics]

Amanda Seyfried 250x400 avatars (223-231)

Please like or reblog if you use. Thnx 💕

[shamrockmouse]

This is Samedi, my character for the role playing game based on "The Gray House" book writer by Mariam Petrosyan. It's a story of a boarding school for disabled children and Samedi's life also wasn't good and easy.

[moonlightmaps]

Cliff Pass now available on Patreon (link in bio), with 8 variants! . The time has come to explore 🌙 . Battle maps? Battle maps I hear you scream? You got it! . Battle maps of all shapes and sizes will now be available on my Patreon. Go explore! 🌙 . . . . . . #Map #art #illustration #battlemap #encountermap #fantasymap #worldbuilding #dnd #dndmaps #handdrawn #pathfinder #fantasyrpg #frpg #storytelling #criticalrole #dungeonsanddragons #dungeonsanddragonsart #critters #cr #dndillustration #critrole #criticalrole #tabletoprpg #dndstories #ttrpg #custommap #patreon https://www.instagram.com/p/CCb4ULyBfmo/?igshid=aoqitspqodtu

[asdaricus]

Priests of various orders or colleges in the City of Brass

[angelelysium]

(via Multi-classing Art Print by RobertMKAngel) Redbubble SALE: FIVE DAYS, ALL THE STUFF: 20-60% off

[mergreze]

OC redesign

(lol almost self-portrait)

[kiabosm]

DrawTober Day 2 mixed with InkTober  - The Frog Witch + Tranquil

[teratoscope]

Loy Gheed

A long, shaggy neck arches from out of its hiding place among the azure reeds, trailing a sleek, pear-shaped body behind it. The creature sniffs the air; its scarlet compound eyes shine in the evening sun. It fans its tail, filling the air with tiny glimmering strands that drift on the wind. Flowering plants have been deeply woven into its pelt, breaking up the midnight blue with clusters of violet, yellow, and orange. It’s seen you. It drops to all fours, slinking around you. You feel its bone-plated head gently nudge your shoulder. Something about the whole experience feels terribly familiar. HD 9+3 MV 240’ AC chain & shield AT body slam (3d6, on hit exceeding AC by 4 or more target is grabbed and either thrown 360‘ or pinned), headbutt (1d8+4, 15’ reach) Special dazzling cloud, karma sight, mandala powerbomb, we’ve met before

dazzling cloud—a loy gheed may forgo one of its attack actions to produce a cloud of silvery filament in a 600’ cone. Anything caught in the area of effect must save or drop to the bottom of Initiative for 2d4 rounds. karma sight—on sight, a loy gheed can detect good/evil and read magic. It can also perform any one single-target divination spell of any level once per person per day. mandala powerbomb—any target a loy gheed brings to 0 hp with its natural attacks is subject to a reincarnation spell. we’ve met before—spending a full day resting, dining, and conversing with a loy gheed confers a 5% xp bonus that lasts until the subject reaches the next level of experience.

The loy gheed are probably distant, mellower cousins to dragonkind, but they aren’t telling. If there is one thing they share universally with dragons it is a deep and abiding fondness for cryptic horseshit. They are travelers by nature; they leave dens everywhere and tend to revisit them, but they never stick around in any one place for longer than a season. Vagrants of other species often circulate maps of known loy gheed holts; there are entire obscure pilgrimage routes built around hunting these places down and making camp until one swings by so they can pester it for ancient wisdom. The loy gheed have an alien relationship with mortality. They can read the pasts of things, tracing the paths their spirits traverse through time and space. It makes them difficult to talk to for any great length of time; often they pick up on conversational threads from exchanges they’ve had with prior incarnations of their petitioner. For the same reasons, they’re slow to anger but apocalyptic fighters. Monks the world over seek out the loy gheed to learn the secrets of karmic martial arts; most learn too late that their pedagogical approach hinges greatly on a “learn by doing” methodology and get leg-dropped into life as someone with more reasonable priorities, though rumor abounds of an anonymous empty-hand fighter and traveling herbalist who, in an unfortunate encounter with a renowned mountain bandit, quite literally punched him into next week. Many suspect he’s one of the rare living loy gheed disciples, but once again, they’re not telling. There is one martial artist known for sure to be one of their old students. She goes by the nom de guerre Laughing Skull, and is held prisoner in the Vault of Heretical Works alongside the thirteen unforgivably made swords of Cherno Khan and the anonymous paintings that contain the Unbidden Forest. With a touch she can transfer the moral weight of her deeds to another, and using her personal secret art whose name is still unknown to anyone living she stole the the sage of the north wind’s future reincarnations. She’s not an acceptable topic of conversation in the company of her old teachers.

[seabaggen]

@pottedfairies

“The water dragon keeps our river safe. Their legacy is sweet clear water and lush crops and Tar seeping from the blood of those that seek them out.  You can even see their work on their flesh. The poisons they’ve absorbed for centuries shift across their skin in bursts of color as they walk the festival, gently inspecting things with golden whiskers. The elders say to make our offerings pretty and our conversation pleasant as we give thanks.

But we must never touch them.

And we especially must never search out the source of the lovely, lonely, singing we hear during the summer rains.”

Ad Camp on patreon asked for something that was fun to look at, but not to touch. so have a dragon.