Happy Christmas

Hetaroi goes Questing

A great write up of Knights' Quest from the blog of veteran blogger and prolific painter, Hetaroi, can be found here.

Have a sneak preview of what he did with my basic Goblin Quest cards; nice, aren't they?

Do follow the link above and have a read. It gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside that he used my rules for the first game with his son.

Rab

A little bedside reading

I'm starting to realise why designers and artists can (and should!) command a living from their skills. I really want Knights' Quest to both be completely my own creation (feedback always welcome, but I think you know what I mean), and to look good with a consistent design ethic. "I have a vision" and all that. Reconciling these two desires is proving a lot more time consuming than I thought. A lot more!

So, to keep me in the right direction I've been scavenging ideas from pinterest, increasingly esoteric Google image searches, and even looking at things in books! An almost subversively niche activity it would seem from the looks I get when I suggest reading for pleasure to some of my students. Anyway, here's the current bedside table pile. I've not (yet!) bought any reference books to help me in this project, but I do have a bestiary on my Christmas list...

The Osmiroid title on the top is proving the most useful today, containing loads of great advice and techniques for illuminating letters.

What are you reading?

Rab

Stuff from the interwebz #5 - CP Models

One of the more interesting, and frankly unexpected, outcomes from the resurgence of interest in scenario-based fantasy and sci-fi gaming with an 80s aesthetic (i.e. Oldhammer) is that not only are old molds having the dust knocked off them but new models in a sympathetic style are being sculpted.

The latest lot to catch my eye are these horrible little gribblies from CP Models:

Character card - take 2 (and 3)

The great thing about sharing my nearly-ready "art" with you lot is that I get really useful and rapid feedback, both here and on the FB page I've set up for Knights' Quest, and so here are a couple of what I hope you will think are improvements. Firstly, I've taken DonsSword's advice and replaced the pentagon with a hexagon - good call! A definite improvement in old-school cool. Second, JB (he of the missing ass) suggested that more contrast was needed between the parchment and the border, so I've tried one with simply a wider border, and one with a black bleed fill to the edge of the card.

Which do you prefer?

Card A:

Card B:

Pop your preference in the comment section below, if you'd be so kind.

Rab

Character card

A whole week since posting? Madness! Well, that's working in a school for you...

Still, I got a chance to finish a version of the Character Cards for Knight's Quest that I'm please with. Character name at the top and Combat Track down the right hand edge both remain the same. I've removed the descriptive text to allow a larger character image, removed the Maximum label above the top dice circle, changed the coin image surrounding the character value to a hand sketched version, and put the movement value into a pentagon (I like the shape!) so that I could remove the "Move" label and still differentiate it from the combat track. I have had an idea about representing it with a spoked wheel, with the number of shaded spoke sections representing the move allowance, but that might be (a) difficult, and (b) not immediately obvious to read. It's scaled to print out at the same size as CCG cards (Magic: The Gathering and so forth) and I snapped up a set of 100 card protectors for £1.20 delivered to give it the full prototype treatment.

Her Majesty's Airship "Ennaychess Vombowl"

Sometimes, just sometimes, one of my boys gets a homework that I really want to get involved in. This week the elder lad had to invent a new form of transport, draw it and then go to town using adjectives and similes to describe it. So far, so educational. However, the chip off the old block wasn't content with a picture, oh no, he wanted to build it. The invention? A flying boat!

Schroedinger's miniatures

When a parcel arrived at work at the end of a long and trying week, there was joy. Joy that my ebay bargain was with me, and I could savour the satisfaction of the hunter after bringing down his prey. Wallow in the nostalgia-laden fantasy world to which the figures belonged. Imagine the future glorious victories and ignominious defeats the figures would be part of. Practise the modest smile that would be needed when my sudden and unexpected transcendence into Golden Demon winner would draw every eye at a future BOYL to the paintjob that would grace the figures inside the parcel.

The figures inside.

And all of a sudden, the world of collecting little lead monsters for pretendy-fun-time elf-games collides with theoretical quantum mechanics. Either the miniatures inside the parcel were as pristine as described, having been carefully wrapped and well-packaged. Or they were recasts. Or chucked in together and scrunched up in a single sheet of loo roll. Or their weapons were all snapped. Or or or.... Thanks to Schroedinger, I knew they were BOTH perfect, AND ruined - AT THE SAME TIME! The only way to make the universe collapse into a single reality was to open the parcel.

Manuscript theme take 2 - now with removed colour!

First of all, thank you to everyone who took the time to give such positive and constructive feedback on my last post about art. A combination of stylistic commentary, practical "which button to press" guidance, and a little while fiddling around with the graphics tablet I've borrowed from work means I have an updated coloured version, now with 50% less colour. Less is more and all that...

Manuscript theme

From my own experience, and from reading around places like BoardGame Geek, one of the charges levelled against less highly-regarded games is that they don't implement their theme consistently. Whether it's modern slang in a game about the Ancient Greeks, or art nouveau illustrations in a game set in the Napoleonic era, these things break the immersion and therefore reduce the enjoyability of the whole gaming experience.

Blueholme looks like a great set of rules, btw, have a look at their G+ pages