Shangilar

Creatures of Azamar Part Two

As mentioned earlier, here are some more artwork commissioned for the Azamar fantasy setting sourcebook for the Cinema6 RPG system from Wicked North Games, this time in alphabetical order. The intelligent Asazis are fearsome arachnid-like creatures with a centaur-like torso, but hardly any human-like features. Twisted by the Fracturing a magical event in Azamar, these creatures come in many shapes though most appear as or close to the illustrated image. Gaunts are faceless, bony and winged creatures with a scorpion-like tail. Although quilled and scaled, Shangilars look like large wolves with six eyes. The venomous uumul are as large as humans and are thought to be long-lived – centuries old. Weth are mounts of the local Wyvine race that resemble a giant beaked worm with many feet and large wings. Wind stalkers are massive beasts that soar and glide the skies of Azamar, but it can also dive and submerge […]

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Therians

Creatures of Azamar Part One

Here are five new artwork for creatures of the Azamar roleplaying setting, commissioned by Wicked North Games. The bear sloth is a large furry predator. Twice the height of a human, the fiend devourer grabs its victims and stuff them into its mouth on top of its body. The crossbow-armed Skeleton Sentinels are undead creatures cursed to be the guardians of a place or an item. Human-sized predators, Harriers are not only fast, they also hunt in packs and are invisible to the naked eye. Therians are shapeshifters that can take the form of any living thing they touch, except for dragons. More artwork from the book will be posted soon.

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Azamar Dragonrider

Azamar Dragonrider

Here’s the first creature artwork commissioned by Wicked North Games for their Azamar sourcebook to be used with their Cinema6 RPG system. Dragons, I think are one of the least exotic fantasy beasts to grace the land of Azamar. Watch this space for more creature artwork. Click here to download the Cinema6 beta R2 version of the rules.

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Imagine it making Flipper noises

A Dhohanoid Dolphin

Cthulhutech is a role-playing game that combines elements from the Cthulhu Mythos with a bit of Macross and Neon Genesis Evangelion; a post-apocalyptic, cosmic horror with a dash of freaking giant mecha throwdown. One of the creatures in the world of Cthulhutech is a dhohanoid, a lethal, horrifying, shape-changing monster which hides itself by shape-changing into a regular human. I was commissioned to illustrate a new dhohanoid by Kai for the scenario he was running. I was to play in this scenario too, but the flu got the better of me. Click here for a larger picture.

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The City of Guradiin Ithural

Cinema 6 is a new D6-based role-playing game produced by Wicked North Games, which uses the OpenD6 initiative released by West End Games. The D6 system, of course, is a long standing tabletop RPG engine which had its origins in the Ghostbusters RPG and developed further with the Star Wars RPG. The first setting book for Cinema 6 to be released will be the sourcebook for the fantasy setting named Azamar. Here’s an excerpt from the chapter “Understanding Azamar”. The co-founders of Wicked North Games have given me the task of coming up with some black-and-white illustrations for Azamar. The first artwork I was assigned with was the exterior view of the Immyr city of Guradiin Ithural. Here’s a brief description of the city: The surface capital of the Immyr, Guradiin Ithural is a work of stone crafting mastery. The entrance to the city, inlaid deep within the southern mountains […]

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Shari-Dae Elore

Saviours of the Light

Back in 2002, I was commissioned by Ian Houlihan to come up with five character illustrations for a Star Wars roleplaying game d20 one-shot scenario called Savours of the Light: The Soul Child. The scenario, set during the Dark Times, was to be run at The BIG Weekend. BIG was an acronym for Brisbane Indoor Games, which was obviously held indoors in the city of Brisbane, Australia. The characters were members of a music band who had to protect a Jedi padawan. The padawan had an infant in her care, who was strong in the Force. Not an easy task, for Imperial Inquisitors naturally are also hunting for the baby. I’ve found the five player characters I drew in a directory somewhere, but it appears the original files are lost forever. Here are the artwork I drew: Shari-Dae Elore, the Jedi Padawan, with the infant Tristan Forseti given to her […]

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The crew of the Fastball Special

The Fastball Express Gang

The Eclipse Phase RPG campaign I’ve been gaming in, gamemastered by Ivan, has been real fun. The posthuman campaign involves the players as “pre-emptive retrieval specialists” who have been plying their trade between Luna, Mars and the asteroid belt. And although I’ve drawn Hokusai before, as well as Billy Cable Jr. and Bishop-6 in vac suits, here is the first ever visual representation of the entire crew of the cargo ship Fastball Special. Here are the elements that made up the composite image above, according to alphabetical order:

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Three employees of Fastball Express Inc

Drawing from After the Fall

Eclipse Phase was on today. I played Hokusai Tarnungshaut the uplifted octopus once again. As we played, I sketched the final scenario as we played it. Here we were, Bishop Six, Billy Cable Jr. and I had to rescue Maria, the advisor to the von Trapp family in spaaaace (a bunch of neotenics, really) from the Nine Lives crime syndicate. We all wore vac suits because we infiltrated the bad guys’ base from outside the space habitat, where I lost my Groucho Marx glasses. I wielded a pair of heavy railgun pistols, the neurachem-stimulated Bishop Six had a sniper rifle slung on his back and Billy wore a pickelhaube helmet for some reason and tried to bluff some guards with a dazzler in his hand. Ultimately, we figured out how one does solve a problem like Maria.

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Pistol and grenades

Strike Force 7 Spot Illustrations

Recently I was given the task to come up with some spot illustrations for Strike Force 7 – Savaged! from Super Genius Games, the role-playing game that uses the Savage Worlds system. It’s currently available for sale as a pdf on RPGNow and DriveThruRPG, but Super Genius Games will soon be releasing a print edition. Strike Force 7 is basically America’s daring special missions force, with a special purpose to defeat “Skorpion”, a ruthless terrorist organisation determined to take over the world. These are just minor black and white spot illustrations, so these aren’t the best or the biggest illustrations on the book. I can’t wait to see the final copy which must be filled with a host of great images.   Look for Strike Force 7 – Savaged! print edition coming in August to a book or hobby store near you!

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Torchwood Penny Dreadful

A Penny Dreadful

… is a penny earned. Or something. Here is an image of a penny dreadful cover I made based on the three characters in the previous entry’s Doctor Who RPG game that chose to stay in the alternate timeline of Victorian London filled with strange alien refugees and hybridised alien technology from the future. Click here to view a larger version of the illustration at DeviantArt.

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The Tenth Doctor

Adventures In Time, Space and Victorian London

On Sunday I played in Cubicle 7’s Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space role-playing game. Usually Doug GMs, but Kai guest-GMed the game I was in. Kai deliberately GMed the session rules lite and with a more free-form style which allowed for cinematic fast play. You have Attributes and Skills which allow you to do pretty much everything with an allocated number from 0-5 or above, 5 being a something you’re exceptionally good at. To perform a task, a player rolls 2d6 + the appropriate Attribute + the appropriate Skill. You roll against a target number. The harder the task, the higher the target number. You also have Traits, giving you some special abilities or bonuses to your rolls. Traits can be good or bad, with names that range from the simple Attractive, Brave and Charming to the more esoteric Time Traveller and Run for your Life! If you […]

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Artoo faces off a B1 battle droid

Irfan’s Player Character Saves The Day

Irfan played his first complete Star Wars Role-Playing Game adventure today, as everyone’s favourite intrepid astromech droid Artoo-Detoo. He was awesome at figuring out solutions to simple problems that were presented in the scenario that I cooked up. He even role-played Artoo well by having in-character conversations in regular robotic beeps. We played on the living room carpet and I used the gamemaster (GM) screen for the first time ever, with the D6 rules and stats inserts I made. My coterie of white D6 were arrayed on the floor, while the singe red D6 served as a Wild Die. The scenario was designed to be short and with minimal story twists. Shortly after the Battle of Hypori that, Artoo-Detoo, the lone player character (PC), was sent by Clone Commander Cody for a mission. Orbiting the planet, say for story’s sake, Eiattu 6, Artoo’s task was to be flown from the […]

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Hokusai Tarnungshaut grayscale

In My Garden, In The Shade

My player character in Eclipse Phase is named Hokusai Tarnungshaut. He is an octopus. Specifically, he is a North Pacific Giant Octopus with an uplifted human-like intelligence. He comes with the regular eight arm, a beak and a camouflage skin. He was uplifted by a scientist in a hypercorp during the fall. The hypercorp was destroyed but Doctor Kyle Hoo the scientist took Hokusai away and taught him about the world. The scientist also used his resources to fit a whole bunch of cyberware – including a basic mesh insert, deadly cyberclaws and a cortical stack – in Hokusai. Because the body of the octopus lives only as long as two years, the scientist have been cloning his body and resleeving him in a fresh cloned body every couple of years. Over the years, he’s come to appreciate the arts, specifically drawing and painting. One day, he was invited to […]

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Bonus: Blasters for the player side screen

This Is What A DL-18 Blaster Look Like

So the other day I made three pages of rules and stats for a SWRPG GM screen. Those face inward, to the gamemaster who has to refer to rules and tables and some stats at a moment’s notice during a game session. What about the other side? you may ask. What do the players see? So people print out photos and artwork of scenes of whatever game they use. There are hundreds of official and fan artwork of Star Wars in the internet wilds. If you download the Pirates of the Spanish Main GM screen inserts for Savage Worlds, they also come with inserts for the player side with artwork and map. Here’s one insert I’ve made for SWRPG on the player side: A blaster visual reference guide. No longer do you need to tell other players, “I have that blaster pistol that Han uses to shoot at the sarlacc […]

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From Industrial Automatons

Paper Minis: Astromech Droids

Do you know what any Star Wars RPG campaign requires? A liberal sprinkling of astromech droids all over the landscape. Indoors and outdoors, working or hanging out, moving or stationary, hyperactive or depressed, driven or apathetic. You’d especially want the ubiquitous R-series astromech droids from the manufacturer Industrial Automatons. I’ve had these made up for more than two weeks now and here they are for download! Download these astromech droids from Google Drive here.

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Combat & Movement

Star Wars RPG D6 GM Screen

Here’s something I’ve been working on for the last year or so, created over long periods of nothingness punctuated by brief periods of activity. My very own design for a full-colour Star Wars RPG Gamemaster’s Screen in D6 rules – using Inkscape. There are three pages of inserts, each US Letter sized. They work great with the Savage Worlds Customizable GM Screen. The first are tables for combat (injury, scaling, damage, healing, etc.), movements (manoeuvre modifiers, character & vehicle) and astrogation mishaps. The second are tables for Force Powers with modifier tables, and charts for weapons and gear. The last insert are nothing but stock NPCs to be used in a Rebellion-era campaign. That is, no Jedi and clone. Only Imps, fringer-types, droids (some from the Clone Wars which might have survived to the Rebellion era), and creatures that can kill you. I wish there was space for more stuff […]

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