Damn I Am Pretty Art Laboratories

Sexuality, Marriage And Crux 1 Each culture in Crux has its own particular views on sexuality, each being the result of different causes. Othebea: The Othebeans have long regarded sex as a necessary evil, regarding lust of any kind to be a carnal sin.  However, Othebea unlike Maliph makes no qualms about the nature of procreation.  The act of physical lust is the sin, not who one is in love with.  Othebea believe that love can occur between any number of people, but marriage exists to confirm a sacred love between two people, as they have recorded from Othebes account at the beginning of their realm. Acts of carnal lust of any kind are regarded as a sin.  Worse, the Othebeans have a long list of things they regard as foul acts of sexual deviance.  More than a few believe arcane magic is tied to having intercourse with corrupt beings of one kind or another.  Betrayals of marriage with any form of lust is only seen as being cured through rigorous self-f...

Here is a session report of the Crux game I ran for my group last Saturday.  The Keepers faced off with a mutated Tiefling, licked their wounds and then tracked down where an ancient abolethic device had been taken. The Fight with the Monster Scene Question: "Does the Monster survive its encounter with the Keepers?" The Keepers fought a hard-paced skirmish with a mutated tiefling assassin.  The monster bashed at them hard.  At the end of the last session, a monster had teleported in, attacking Professor Sepia Wiseowl.  It's toothless mouth attacked her, leaving neon green polyps in its wake. "For Shraxessss!" It hissed at her. The aberration had a twelve-foot elongated body. A blend of tapeworm and infernal monster, with unholy glowing red eyes. The monster's maw dripped a neon green ichor.  It had no teeth; just a hard jawless sucker filled with glowing polyps.  Eggs.  Long demonic horns crowned the creature's head. Covered in a dark purplis...

"Imprisoned long each year, a hundred and one demons wait: All children of Shraxes, they wait for the opening of that Gate; To take the wicked, the unwanted and cruel- And grant wishes to the worthy, their just due. Beware those who walk in red, that night when they tread: But have great cheer! For- The Demonwalk but comes just once a year!" The Demonwalk is an event set during a week of gift giving and cheer, wherein wishes are said to come true: the Wish Festival.  During the wish festival, worshippers of Shraxes the Caged One hide presents and gifts for those who've asked her for them.  They engage in acts of all sorts of charity, encouraging others to follow their example.  To them, each wish granted only helps to break their god's sorrow during her imprisonment. The Demonwalk is an event the Church of Shraxes frowns upon.  The claim the practice ended centuries ago.  But each year during the Wish Festival, the Demonwalk still occurs.  Fanatic...

I need to create NPCs of sorts for Fate Core.  Seeing as I need some way to quickly roll them up, and I managed to well, complicate my iteration of Fate Core by using both Approaches and Skills, I need a system to device them fast-like.  Because it is faster for me to create a method of generation than to generate pre-gens. Odd how that works. This method creates a series of Modes (as first noted in the Fate Toolkit).  I've decided to break it down to the four big class blocks Crux (the setting my Fate Core game runs in) uses into Modes.  Arcane, Divine, Martial and Finesse. All I have to do is use them to stat out a NPC in a flash. Arcane: Crafts, Investigate, Knowledge, Sorcery, Wealth Divine: Empathy, Faith, Notice, Provoke, Rapport, Will Martial: Athletics, Brawl, Physique, Ride, Shoot, Weaponry Finesse: Burglary, Contacts, Deceive, Performance, Reflexes, Stealth There is a fifth mode, Racial.  Since each race in Crux has its own skill, it feels...

Page the 4th of Oddfellow.  No words or text this time.  I experimented this time, using digital inking and a texture.  Still, work in progress. First Page | Previous Page | The Story: Oddfellow is a Android and a Paladin- he seeks Piscatore, in a cove of the City of Curses, Crux.  In a city where androids usually are slaves and vampires are protected citizens, how does a Paladin keep on the righteous path?

Betrixt the major criminal syndicates of the Prince and the Demon's Orphans, are various small gangs that remain independent of their influence.  In Poorfellows are the most of these tiny gangs.  Because of its slums and crowded nature, each neighborhood has its own personal gang.  The city watch avoids Poorfellows. Here are just a handful of the kinds of gangs that live in Poorfellows outside the grasp of the Prince or other Icons. Ainesian Refugees: Between exiled nobility and those who lost much during the Revolution Wars, refugees fill these neighborhoods.  Gangs in these neighborhoods are of either the Publisher's persuasion (trying to spark revolution among them) while others focus on finding allies that might help them survive (such as the Prince or the Voice).  Native Tomasi often find more trouble from the refugees, as they've taken more jobs and space away from their own families, often at a cost to the Tomasi.  The Archwitch and Archdrui...

Previous (24) "Is there a path before us?  Or have we chosen to make ourselves blind to all other possibilities?" Sighter Savka Vlog 5/23/20UE; The Sighter Savka Vlogs SAM I held up my sword.  The others stared at me.  "Who started the fire?" The Spring Prince gave me a toothy grin.  "'Twas best way out of that predicament." "Riiight."  I didn't trust the little fey royal. "The Deathwalkers keep pursuing him- What do they want with you?" Aurora asked the Spring Prince.  She took a step forward, her white tiger companion circling toward the Fey's left. "They are here."  The Spring Prince edged closer toward us.  His eyes pleaded at me.  "They are violating the temple.  You must protect me, dame knight." I didn't like the idea of being told what to do.  I looked around.  All of the Heartshields were readying for a fight. He continued.  "They seek my ending.  Death walks with th...

So Wolves At the Gates continues as the first story arc in my first Crux game.  I was down one player (whose character Ash just popped into the background rather than over complicate the plot I think), but we continued on.  The last session ended at a cliffhanger, you can find that session report here. Last time I asked one player to name one Truth about something that would happen in the next session.  He said: "Pyro will throw a bomb."  So, I had to work that into this session somehow.  Okay. The Opener The Keepers had found a set of splattered Ursyklon corpses on Bellamy's Stair, on the Skullmount in the center of Crux.  Before they could act on any information they had found, they had been interrupted by the arrival of someone moving up the Stair, Ono (a Tengu and former ninja, as well as rival of Ishida) and a posse of Crow (members of the Eternal Order of the Eagle and the Crow to be precise).  Ono calls Ishida (A PC) out, determined to "...

The Story: Oddfellow is a Android and a Paladin- he seeks Piscatore, in a cove of the City of Curses, Crux.  In a city where androids usually are slaves and vampires are protected citizens, how does a Paladin keep on the righteous path? Here is Page 3: Page 1 | Page 2|   Page 4 This is mainly an experiment, seeing how well I stay on task with a comic.  Comment if you like it.  Feedback will always cause me to do more.  Also: these are shaded but uncolored comics.  I've decided to leave coloring off for now.

A trope in Sci Fi I worry about is the fear of robotic insurrection.  Yes, Artificial Intelligence has the potential to be dangerous.  But we humans have to stop from creating a self-fulfilling prophecy: the Machine is not the enemy, and we have a history of treating The Other in horrible terms. This is more of an attempt to put the nature of artificial intelligence into context.  From media I see a lot of stories promoting "warnings against A.I."  I don't like it as a news story about tech, because its fear mongering.  Automated tech has the potential to revolutionize the world, possibly helping to bring us close to a post-scarcity society.  Robots are nearing the same stage early personal computers were in the 70s.  We are about to enter an era of robots.  Asimov's dream era. But there are always warnings.  Fears raised.  Shudders given.  "We welcome our future robot overlords" is a notable meme.  Sometimes they seem to...

After playing this game the fourth time, I understood what I love about it.  Beautiful and snazzy.  Belle of the Ball is great quick set matching game- that I've found interesting depth under its surface. Tabletop card games are a favorite of mine.  They turn out to be a brilliant addition to any RPG session, as card games can rebuild group cohesion.  A fun card game can get a session's ball rolling, the quicker the better.  And they are a great palette cleanser after playing other board games. Sometimes one might think of card games as lacking the strategic depth or complexity of their bigger cousins.  This isn't always true.  I've found that games like Fluxx or Chrononauts can take up the same time of some bigger games, often having emergent game content that keeps my group entertained.  This is where I find Belle of the Ball is beautiful.  It was designed with variable depth and difficulty. After our initial game, we thought Belle...

Previous (23) "Sam Maenad choose a new identity for herself.  Psychology teaches us that we will become what we want to be.  Sam Maenad didn't want to be hero, she wanted to prove humans could be better when challenged.   "She wanted to prove herself to be a better person, not to impress others." Whisperer, Roosevelt Psych Meditations on Shiloh's War SAM I squirmed in my seat. "You've had an eventful week."  Whisperer began.  She gave her gentle understanding nod.  "The livestreams say you saved Kensha's life." "Did they mention that was because I grew up training to use nerve gas?"  I calmly replied.  I still felt disgusted with myself.  Why did it take me so long to realize what I had been training to do?  Why didn't I see how wrong it'd been? "But you used that knowledge to save her life.  Information that Eleanor and other AI weren't able to provide to her at the time."  Whisperer t...

Page 2 of an experiment/practice run on a comic.  Mainly I'm trying to see how well I stick to producing these.  I want to aim for at least once a week. The Story: Oddfellow is a Android and a Paladin- he seeks Piscatore, in a cove of the City of Curses, Crux.  In a city where androids usually are slaves and vampires are protected citizens, how does a Paladin keep on the righteous path? Click Here For Page 1 Page 3 Going to get around to releasing a creative commons license for this: noncommercial sharealike.  Modify/color if you want, please don't sell and credit me.  And yes, I do commission work. Please comment if you enjoy, I'll try to think up a schedule if I feel like there is enough clamor for these.

Page 1 of a experiment, will probably watermark this or something later as Creative Commons Non-commercial license for the curious, but I haven't yet.  Enjoy. Page 2 can be found here. If you like this, please comment.  Feedback determines if I'm going to do more of these or not.

Using Pandemic for Political/Social Mechanics My first thought is to use Dread as a basic model.  This could also be useful for Severance as well.  Questions as setting up Replacing the Jenga Tower in Dread (an idea for a mechanic on the same principles).  Because a Jenga tower has inevitability built in: the tower is going to fall eventually, this same principle needs to be built into any mechanic trying to mirror it.  I want tension that crescendos: welp, my first thought is to look at other board games that have similar mechanics I could steal. In Pandemic, the tension comes from cubes that grow.  For Pandemic, this represents diseases growing and overflowing cities as the game goes on.  Mechanically: 3 cubes of the same color make a city "full."  Any more cubes of that color, and they "outbreak": a cube goes to each city connected to that city.  Well, that's the visual tension that affects players: they plan and work based on these cubes...

Previous (22) "Ideas do not die.  The memes that comprise them exist forever more.  But like everything else they can change.  You never kill an idea: you force it to adapt to what you want it to become.  An old idea, if mutated enough, looks nothing like the original." Dr. Hannah Maenad Studies of Shiloh CHARON The filtration system looked like a hellscape.  Something out of the divine comedy or something.  The drone body I'd swiped stopped, I realized I'd been using it to stare at the sight before me. "Really?  You have to be fekking with me." The water filtration system had been overrun with varmints.  The little bots had once looked like animals, but had altered themselves.  Burnt fur, twisted limbs and insane customizations ruled.  Each varmint had mutilated itself.  Their eyes glowed with a insane glimmer.  The filtration was just a mess of pipes, hoses and storage tanks. The little monsters had turned t...