BareBones Fantasy: The TableTop Day Session

30 March 2013 | Hisham | | Role Playing Games, RPG Actual Play, RPG Irfan Plays
 

For International TableTop Day, I thought I'd run another a continuation of BareBones Fantasy RPG campaign for Irfan. Thus, Irfan's Jake Hastur the halfling wizard and my GM-run NPC Finn Riverwyld the warrior-scholar go once more unto the breach in the city of Kingsbridge in the Keranak Kingdoms.

Jake's player
 

The game began at approximately 1000 hours local time on Saturday morning (+8 hours UTC) and we stopped for lunch at 1200 hours. We thought we could continue later at night, maybe after dinner, but it was not meant to be. We will continue tomorrow.

Session One: Journey to Netharak Island

BareBones Fantasy uses the d00 percentile system, with percentile Ability and Skill rolls, while damages are sum of d10 rolls.

Before we began, Finn bought a new longsword. Jake desired a spear, so Finn gave him his own which he had not enough Warrior (melee) skill to wield properly. Irfan spent his Development Points to bring Jake's Strength from 45 up to 50 so he can use his spear effectively and without any Strength penalty.

The story began with the duo being summoned to the House of Duchess Lyla Keranak at the swanky part of Kingsbridge.  The Duchess would pay them 250 gold pieces each (100 in advance) to search for her missing younger brother, the House's captain of the guard Kane Keranak. They are to return Kane back to the House, or if he was dead bring his ring back to her. He was last seen going on an unknown quest to the Isle of Netharak, which Duchess Lyla pointed out to them on the map. When they reach the island, they are to report to a Mr. Bonewall in the fishing village of Dronak, who will report of their arrival to the Duchess via a message hawk, and let them know where Kane Keranak journeyed off to.

After paying the stable 2 gold pieces for taking care of Jack the horse, they both rode for a day westward to the foothills of the mountain range know as the Shielding Wall. Finn's successful Scholar roll revealed that the mining town of Hammerclash was nearby.

 

Rafe's 15 Month Birthday

29 March 2013 | sila | | Family Pics
 

Adik is now 15 months old! One and a quarter years old! Since I'm always late with the entries and happily backdating it, I wonder if I should even mention that anymore. Ah well. :-)

Hi y'alls!

* Mouse over the pictures for captions

 

Hishgraphics Gallery v3.0

27 March 2013 | Hisham | | Artwork, Hishgraphics.com
 
The Louvre... or something

If you hadn't noticed, the gallery on this site had been out of commission for many, many months. Any links to it, such as the one at the top of the left column of this blog's index page, points to the DeviantArt gallery instead. It died because of my monkeying around with the v2.0 gallery's Coppermine CMS.

I have now rebuilt the gallery using Zenphoto, and have spent all last night and this morning populating gallery. I've also ensured that there are links to released products.

It's not nearly finished. There are some more customers'  gallery to set up and populate. Click here to check it out!

What's v1.0 gallery, you ask? It was the one before the Coppermine gallery, which was made from HTML files that I wrote. I remember at the time being sad I did not have any artwork I could post that anyone paid me to draw. I've been moderately busy since, and so I am very grateful that most of the work in v3.0 are all paid work.

 

Snivvian Long Distance Lovers

24 March 2013 | Hisham | | Artwork, Role Playing Games, Star Wars
 
Yay holograms!

Derf requested a pair of Snivvian lovers for his Star Wars RPG campaign. He plays a Snivvian student on Coruscant who has a long-distance relationship with a holodrama scenist back on Cadomai. Painted in monochome digitally with MyPaint, and coloured using GIMP 2.8.

Click here to check out the image (as well as Ryan's "DAWWWW") on DeviantArt.

 

Things To Do In BareBones Covert Ops

23 March 2013 | Hisham | | Artwork, Role Playing Games
 

Here are more interior artwork for DwD Studios's upcoming BareBones Covert Ops RPG. Covert Ops allow players to be part of a crack covert team of agents - military or civilians - and do a bunch of spy stuff. For research, I saw some 007 movies, Mission: Impossible movies, Person of Interest (for the civilian black ops angle) and Archer ("Well there's false flags, dead drops, drop outs, cut outs, active doubles, passive doubles, dangled moles. The often under appreciated honeypot. One of my favorites.") It also helped that I am in the midst of playing a Night's Black Agents campaign. Later, I also realised that Fast Five is a great heist movie that shows player characters as primarily wheel artists.

This batch of art shows activities you can do in the game, such as baking a cake, having a stroll, mowing the lawn, getting a mortgage for your secret island base:

Off Costa Rica!

Defeat a tank with a knife:

The tank's toast

Get your doctor mad at you for not adhering to your prescribed diet:

Always listen to your doctor

Ride on a train:

 

56 Months

22 March 2013 | sila | | Family Pics
 

Yaya is now four months away from her first half decade! 56 months now! Where did all that time go?

Marveling on the merry-go-round

* Mouse over the pictures for captions

 

Some Goblin Dude

17 March 2013 | Hisham | | Artwork
 

Been a while since I drew stuff for fun...

yo, machaaaa
 

Night's Black Agents: Zlatan's Story

12 March 2013 | Hisham | | GOKL Actual Play, Nights Black Agents, RPG Actual Play, Role Playing Games
 

This is not a full actual play report of the recent Night's Black Agents session gamemastered by Kai, but it highlights one of the reasons why I roleplay. One of the many descriptions of a tabletop RPG is a cooperative storytelling game where the gamemaster (GM) sets up a story and referees in-story conflicts and their outcomes. At the same time, players act accordingly as characters in that story and also provide foil for the GM to feed information and story points back at the players in a dramatically satisfactory way, if possible.

In a way, we are reading a spy novel or watching a spy movie as we are developing it together.

Here's what happened which involved me playing the Bosnian wheel artist Zlatan Kljujic:

But First, A Campaign Recap

Here's what happened beforehand during the first three game sessions of the "Eurovision Song Contest Job":

Sami Härkönen obtained two borzoi hounds which he trained and renamed Abraham Van Helsing and Abraham Lincoln.

The agents received information from Rose of the Camon Gang that they'd found a relative of Vin, their Romany hitter who displayed vampiric characteristics. This cousin is one Milla Cesarescu, a singer for a Romany punk band Half Kingdom who would be participating in Eurovision Song Contest 2013 in Malmö. Milla had publicly announced that she was going to unmask racist elements in the Swedish government and upon arriving at Malmö, Jacob, Sami, Abraham van Helsing discovered that a white supremacist terror group had targeted her.

Meanwhile Misha, Abraham Lincoln and a new addition to the company, the cleaner and medical examiner David Verdasco who stayed back in London to monitor the remnants of the Camon Gang witnessed the slaughter of Gary Camon and his men by an unknown group who displayed superhuman strength. The gang's terrified survivors, Rose and Mister Grey, joined up with the agents, informed them that Vin had been taken and wanted their help to leave the country.

Back in Sweden, while Jacob and his media contact Ebba Östberg investigated Milla, discovering that one of the terrorists named Mikko Mikkel-Mikkelsen displayed superhuman strength and limited mind control abilities. Sami and Abraham van Helsing shadowed Mikko while gaining a shadow themselves, one Snorre Dahlquist, a special agent for the Swedish Ministry of Health. Thanks to Sami, Snorre - who had also been investigating the terrorists as well - became an ally.

As Misha and David smuggled Grey and Rose out of England, Snorre, Sami and Zlatan tracked Mikko to a cottage in the woods near Nybro. In the cellar, viewed with a endoscope, Zlatan discovered Nova Lind, the aging mentor of Half Kingdom who disappeared some years ago, strapped to a chair being drained of blood, which is used to give the terrorists the superhuman strength.

Zlatan of course had made his mind up what these creatures are.

The Two Abrahams

But Second, A Zlatan Recap

 

Yaya and Adik's Snowy Adventure

10 March 2013 | sila | | Family Pics
 

So it started snowing the evening of March 5, 2013, and we ended up getting a significant amount (about 5 inches accumulation), and it stuck around for a few days before temperatures rose and everything melted. I, of course, cursed like the dickens, but Yaya was ecstatic and thoroughly enjoyed the snow. She finally got to go out and build a snowman! The other snowfalls this winter had either been too powdery to make snowmen, or too little snow had accumulated for proper snowman building, or we left town before Yaya could build one.

Snowy view from the upstairs front window

* Mouse over the pictures for captions

 

Issyka

07 March 2013 | Hisham | | Artwork, Role Playing Games
 

Issyka is The Secret DM's fantasy setting for a Play-by-Post game engine. Artwork commission for Issyka? Here you go:

Any guesses as to what this artwork is riffing off?
 

There is a hint of planetary romance with swapped gender tropes. Also, who is actually afraid of who in the drawing? The humans or the Illadon? Watch this space for more announcements on Issyka.

 

Westward Locations Artwork 2

06 March 2013 | Hisham | | Artwork, Role Playing Games
 

This is the second of two blog posts featuring location artwork of cities and prefectures on the planet Westward, where human colonists have been marooned for centuries with only an exotic steam-powered technology to run their machines. Over the years, new politics, allegiances and social dynamics have driven the inhabitants of Westward.

How would you play characters in an alien western steampunk setting?

Look out for the Westward RPG to be released soon!

A major city with a gambling centre

Brimstone

This city pumps out and distributes a lot of water

Aquarium

Most of the city is subterranean

Fort Gowchain

A militaristic settlement

Fort Darling

An abandoned fort with many dangers and a promise of treasure

Fort Spine

A well-defended fortress

Fort Amarell

There's even a sideslicer on the hillside beneath Fort Gowchain there. Click here to see part one of two.

 

Westward Locations Artwork 1

05 March 2013 | Hisham | | Artwork, Role Playing Games
 

More Westward RPG artwork were commissioned by Wicked North Games, and for this batch they have ordered location artwork of various cities and prefectures on Westward. Here is the first of two posts of the locations on the (mostly) dry and arid planet of Westward!

With the centuries-old crashed colony ship Chrysalis

Capital City

With a Weeping Angel?

Dunecreek

An old mining prefecture

Yewanrey

A major underground city

Caves

A major water pumping and distribution centre

Hollis

What adventures can players experience at these places? Check out Westward RPG to be released mid-year by Wicked North Games.

 

BareBones Covert Ops Archetypes

04 March 2013 | Hisham | | Artwork, Role Playing Games
 

The hardworking guys over at DwD Studios are developing their own espionage, counter-intelligence and paramilitary game using its BareBones roleplaying system.

Here are the artwork for archetypes that can be used either as PCs or NPCs right out of the box. Each and any of these characters can be found in tactical situations requiring them to use their wits as well as their gear to survive and complete their missions.

The Sharpshooter

The Combat Specialist

The Second Story Man

 

Rafe's 14 Month Birthday

02 March 2013 | sila | | Family Pics
 

And here it is not even a third of the way through March and Adik's 14 month entry is here! As always, thanks to the gods of backdated entries!

Look at all my teeth!

Adik has at least seven teeth, possibly eight (although the eighth is unconfirmed at this point).

* Mouse over the pictures for captions