nullprogram.com/blog/2010/07/19/
I've been looking for a nearby tabletop gaming group for awhile now. I
asked people I knew. I asked around at work. I just couldn't find
anyone. Luckily, a new thing that Wizards of the Coast has been doing
is
D&D Encounters where prepared adventures are run every week
openly at local gaming stores. The purpose is for casual players or
beginners to be able to freely to play some D&D without needing
any commitment, preparation, or equipment. Characters are
pre-generated, so no spending a half hour creating some new player
characters every week.
I hopped into it
for
season two, which just started 6 weeks ago. Each weekly session is
a 1.5 to 2 hour combat encounter. I've been having fun, but honestly
it's not all that exciting compared to what a real campaign can
bring. There is no role-playing, practically no NPC interaction, no
puzzles, and no exploration. It also doesn't help that the adventures
and
characters are riddled with mistakes and very unbalanced. For an
example of unbalanced, the character I've been playing, Barcan (or
Barqan depending on where you are in the character sheet), could
be killed — and I'm not talking about unconscious dying but
negative bloodied value dead — by a monster critical strike in just
about every encounter so far. Every time a monster attacked me there
was a 1 in 20 chance, even at full health, that I might be done
playing for the week.
But the great part is that it got me connected to other players in my
area, which I think is the most valuable part of Encounters. One of my
fellow players was just starting a regular gaming group and invited me
to come along, so we've been playing on weekends now, with the
intention of taking turns as the DM among those who are
interested. And for a little irony, everyone except one person in the
group also works at the lab. I guess I didn't ask around enough!
So I'm going to be DMing a 4e Dungeons and Dragons campaign sometime
in the near future, and I'm quite excited about it!
Anyway, what does that have to do with drawing
a space
elevator in the GIMP? First of all, if you're one of the
players in my group who found their way here stop reading
now. You'll find out all this in the first session, so come back
after that. So, I've had this campaign idea in my head for a couple of
years now, and it involves a skyhook of sorts constructed by a
combination of careful engineering and powerful arcane magic. It
leads somewhere, not space, but somewhere. Since that somewhere
is part of the mystery I won't reveal where that is, but if the
campaign goes well I'll write about it more in the future.
When I run the first session I want to illustrate the skyhook to the
players. Show, not tell they say. I like some of the work
people
do
imitating Bob Ross in the GIMP. I've done a few of these to try
it out, and it's surprising how well it can turn out even from a
beginner. I employed this new art education to draw my skyhook for my
game. The GIMP undo history reveals how I did it,
Full Size Video
And the result,
In retrospect I should have drawn the skyhook right after I finished
those first clouds, since it's behind everything else in the
scene. Oh, and that thing on the bottom left is a twisted scar left
behind from a previous attempt at building the skyhook, but it
collapsed. It's a dangerous place to be.