Ahdok @ ahdok @ttrpg.network

I make comics sometimes: https://linktr.ee/ahdok

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2 yr. ago

Well... "ethical" is a thorny subject. The underlying imagenet technology was still built on mturk, and usage still drives up the usage figures for these billion dollar art-thieves to use in their investment rounds. It's still environmentally catastrophic compared to regular image searches, and it's still used by proponents of the technology to normalize its use, so they can promote it to replace jobs.

A good deal of the "ethical" problems with generative-AI are baked into the technology itself... but it's certainly more acceptable than other uses.

Boot

I think with Tiamat, the best answer is just to go along with whatever she wants.

...Best not to worry about it.

Yeah. I also sometimes break the panel borders this way too, to avoid tangenting. Addis' fingers in the first panel actually break out of it very slightly here.

In Making Comics Scott McCloud talks about these techniques as "fourth wall breaks" - if your characters significantly overlap the framework scaffolding of the comic itself (speech bubbles, panel borders, gutters, other panels etc) it can serve to build up dramatic intensity, especially when combined with other techniques like oversized letters, or dramatic panel shapes, or intense forshortening.

Here, the purpose is much less grandiose... I have a limited size for the panel on the page, and speech bubbles take up a LOT of real estate (especially with this much dialogue.) This forces me to squish my art into the remaining space, but I can get a little more of it out if I disrespect the panel apparatus.

Yes. One of the benefits of this is that it makes my visual style rather unique - I often get asked what digital brushes I'm using to get these pencil textures, and the answer is "pencils." One of the downsides is it means it's quite slow to make new pictures.

I used to hand-letter, but lettering is a surprisingly slow and taxing job, and I found myself spending a lot of time touching it up digitally, so now I use a font I made from my own handwriting.

Here's an image showing many of the physical media brands and tools I use. Notes:

• The primary pigment liner width I use is 0.2, I use the 0.05 for very fine lines sometimes.
• I have replaced the pentel p203 pencil with a Spoke-4-Titanium, although the Spoke pencil still uses a P203 mechanism

Here's a step-by-step showing how it looks as I go

And, here's a photo of the pencilwork for this specific comic :D

I am!

Like this?

Yep.

As best I can find, rooting through old Forgotten Realms lore, the colours of the Tymoran church are normally blue and silver.

For my comics, I made the Tower of Luck use green as it's main colour for stuff, to mimic the green baize of gambling tables. Gold accents to symbolize wealth - since the Tower of Luck is much more focused on luck and gambling than the good fortune and karma focus that the rest of the faith normally has. It's my general intention to slip gambling references and symbology into the church whenever the characters are there.

Oh, Scoops has a token, in case your campaign needs a Tabaxi journalist for some reason.

I've found that almost every one-shot I played in took 2-3 sessions.

I've managed to run 100% of my one-shots to time though, Here are some tips that can help with that.

• Always schedule an encounter before the final battle that's an optional scene, take it out if you're over-running.
• Make sure to have NPCs around who can hurry the characters along if they're dawdling too much.
• Write plotlines that contain an element that motivates the characters to solve them soon (e.g. kidnapping, escaping villains, deadlines for results.)
• Make regular sacrifices to Chronos, the god of time.
• Try to run scenarios where the characters start already knowing each other, so introductions can be sorted out in summary during the introduction, rather than at the table during play.
• Release a swarm of ravenous goats into the room 15 minutes before the session is supposed to end.
• Make sure your that your one-shot is planned to take about half the time that your group could spend at the table, so you can over-run a little without trouble.
• Try to keep table-talk to a minimum, request players put their phones away before you start.
• Plan to have food after the one-shot finishes, so people start getting hungry and push the game along.

That's a fair assessment - although Rime of the Frostmaiden takes place just north of the coloured region (the ten towns aren't really on that map at all.)

Of course, one of the advantages of this is that you have a vast amount of "undefined" space to grow your campaign into if you want to make something up. Need to set your game in a kingdom with a monarch and political dealings? Why not Cormyr or Sembia? It's not like there's any published materials on what's been going on there in the last 200 years. Want a place where the Zhentharim are in charge and the local towns and villages are under the control of warring mercenary groups? How about the north Moonsea area, where Zenthil Keep is? Want to convert your game to a steampunk campaign without leaving Forgotten Realms? Boy do I have boat tickets to Lantan that you would love.

While none of this stuff has recent lore, the Forgotten Realms wiki has some surface level detail for everywhere, mostly cribbed from older editions. It's a really good resource if you want to take your campaign somewhere more exploratory, just have a read of what was there, and build your campaign ideas on top of it. Works a treat I think.

It's sort of Tiamat-stuck-to-the-head-of-a-very-large-angry-lady.

If you want a real blast from the past, the old gold box TSR videogames (which have remasters available on modern hardware) tend to take place around the Moonsea area, with Hillsfar and Philan.

I saw this "remembered realms" map about half a year ago, and managed to determine that I have 8 DnD characters for 5e, in various on-and-off campaigns. Currently NONE of them are in the coloured area.

heh, no worries :)

I did already workshop this one through about 20,000 people, so I'm pretty happy with it :D

Unfortunately, I was writing descriptions that a D&D DM might adapt into rules, and "venomous" isn't a damage type.

the ultimate d***head.

It's a good way to get more... :)