A Rouge

It has been a while, school seems to be getting in the way of me drawing as much as I would like. Although I am taking a drawing class so maybe I will post things from that.

Here is a Rouge I drew as commissioned by another player in my D&D group. I showed her Kilic and she asked me if I would draw her character. So here it is! The best part? In payment, I get a cake. I finished a little early, I still have another fortnight before it needs to be done (at our next D&D session), but I had the time and the inspiration so I just went at it.

I always like including a story behind my pictures. Her character is a little money driven, (by that I mean she decided to raid the basement of a haunted house with demon dolls to try and get 10gp that somebody owed her) so I tried showing her love... or addiction... of gold.

Cheers.

A Study in Green (Final)

I was on the right track, I really liked my Goblin design! But looking back at the Troll I had sketched for the concept, and the goblin I now had, they did not look very similar at all. Plus, I didn't like that troll a whole lot. So I decided to go backwards, sketch my troll, based off my goblin. I liked the goblin nose, so I made it bigger and rounded it, I kept the pointed ears, and his head shape is actually quite close (I made it by styling it off of my goblin head- in the pencil sketch he still had an oval for a lower head). I made him hunched-back, gave him clawed hands, and he still has those teeth. To show how clever he is, I gave him better clothes than the MM gives their trolls, but the clothes are tarnished because he doesn't get many opportunities for sewing new ones.

A very drastic change from the D&D troll indeed, but I think he looks good. He certainly reminds me of the trolls from when I was younger. As for magic, I think D&D covers it really well with the regeneration. Although my troll caves are likely to have some dangerous magic in them to reflect that aspect not really covered in combat.

And then there were ogres. This guy was very simple. Take the toll, give it a more human head, add a bit more neck, and make it look a little dim. Voila.

The fact that he looks like a polka player is purely by chance. I had the individual pieces of clothes in mind, but didn't look at it as a whole until I had already drawn it down. Then I fell over laughing. It's probably why this guy is so mad, maybe somebody just insulted his sense of style. I gave the ogre tattered clothes and a dinky piece of armor, since that is what people tend to give ogres.

Final thoughts? Well I really like how they turned out, it's what I was aiming for when I set out to draw these monsters. However, I have... a nagging doubt playing in the back of my head about the troll. I love how he turned out, and he really does look like the trolls I had always pictured while growing up and listening to those stories, but does that make him a good troll for D&D? I still don't like the D&D trolls however. They're too big and stupid, and not related to the mythology which they are supposed to come from. There may have to be more work done on this in the future... probably when our party actually faces a troll.

These are actually to scale with each another. The ogre should maybe be a bit smaller, but I figure he is just a large ogre, and the troll is on the short side. As for the goblin, I made him slightly larger on purpose, so you could see him in better detail, and so he would be less pixelated.

Cheers.

A Study in Green (Part 2)

These were my first concept drawings. Not great, but hey, they're not supposed to be yet. You may be able to tell where I was going/coming from with these. I was still looking at the MM for ideas, so I tried giving the Troll a pointed chin, I kept the big nose which is a staple, and I tried a little scrawnier look with the arms. I then made the Ogre. I gave him a more rounded head, higher up on the shoulders, I checked his nose, and made his eyes a little smaller and dimwitted. The Goblin I modeled off of the troll, I gave the goblin a chin like the troll's, made the nose a little smaller and pointed it, and made the ears a little bigger. I liked the end result on this one, but it just didn't seem very... goblin-y. Again, I went to mythology for an assessment. Goblins are small household spirits with a tendency towards mischievous, and sometimes wicked tricks. Goblins should be witty and impish, and my goblin sketch didn't look particularly witty or impish. Much to serious. I really like these kind of goblins:

But they just aren't quite right for D&D. This is a household spirit, not a wondering monster who likes to stir up trouble. For me, the pathfinder goblins really fit the bill, plus they are a special kind of adorable-evil. If you look at my finished goblin you can clearly see some similarities, while at the same time there are some differences. The teeth are not like the Pathfinder goblins, and my goblin's ears are not as over the top. Also, my goblins have a pointed nose, which I personally think is a staple, and a hunched back like their troll relatives.

And that was my next issue: If my goblins looked like this, what should I do with trolls?

Cheers.

A Study in Green (Part 1)

For a while I have been wondering what certain creatures look like. Specifically Trolls and Ogres, but also how Goblins fit into the picture, and how the different types of goblins work/look. I flipped through the Monster Manual to find some pictures, but the trolls did not fit the trolls I knew as a kid. (When I was growing up I was told many stories from Norse Mythology- albeit rewritten for children.) So I went to refresh my memory and googled trolls. I read the wiki article, but I also went on to read more stories from Scandinavian Mythology featuring these creatures. What I found was that trolls were not the brutes which the MM seems to show them as. Most stories depict them as rather human. Sometimes they weren't even much bigger than humans. Most interestingly I found that many were adept magic users.

Ok, sounds a lot more like the trolls I knew as a kid, and far more interesting than trolls described in the MM. But how do they look? And what is the difference between a troll and an ogre? So I googled ogre. I was surprised to find that ogres do not refer to a particular mythology, rather, they are a type of role. Wikipedia describes them as being featured in myths across the world, which would mean that a troll is really a type of ogre. Which leaves me in a bit of a jam. After all, if they are the same creature then I cannot use both in games. So I decide that rather than ogres and trolls being the same creatures, an ogre would just be a sort of, lesser troll. Like a troll, but not quite. That sat well with me, but it still left me with a the problem of drawing the beasties. I pondered how the two would differ for some time, and kept coming back to the same idea: that ogres were a lesser being of sorts. Which would mean that there must be some sort of tree, like a family tree, but for species. I remembered that the Wikipedia article said ogres and giants were very close, almost interchangeable, so I decided that ogres were a mix of trolls and giants. Which accounts for why they are a little slower than trolls mentally. The rest of this tree sprang from that. Why do orcs and ogres often appear in groups (according to the MM)? What the heck is a Hobgoblin? Where do bugbears fit in? Well, I have my answers.

Which just leaves drawing them...

Cheers.

My World

As it is. Of course, such things are subject to change. I have in mind another lake or two to add. I am working on the lore for this world, although I already have a good deal of it. I want to make it seem truly real to my players, so I am going region by region and working out the different cultures present there. Luckily that isn't as difficult as it seems. There are not many cultures present in this world, yet. It is quite new (as worlds go) so there are still few enough people that mankind largely sticks together. Since the world is so new, that also means there is not as much history that I have to write.

If I had to pick a time period from our history which corresponds with this world, then I would say that this world is most like our world at the time of the decline of ancient Egypt and the rise of ancient Greece, about 600BC during the early Iron Age. However, the technology in this world has been accelerated to early Dark Ages technology where people are beginning to use steel weapons. There is also some difference in technology between races. Dwarfs can make better armor than humans, but eladrin can make better armor than dwarfs. Some races don't have metal smithing technology at all.

Without diving into the details too much, the world is definitely in a dark age. The central power of the world has collapsed, famine is spreading, and trade is at an all time low. While there used to be great trading networks connecting the west and east, these are nearly vanished. With growing hunger, small villages cannot support themselves and are fleeing to larger towns for protection. Only the largest towns have survived, leaving large expanses of wasteland between small pockets of civilization. I have specifically prepared this world as a perilous wilderness, ready for exploration and adventure.

I will post more updates about this world soon.

Cheers.

Its The Truth, It's Natural...

I have two posts for today because I saw this! I haven't laughed so hard in a good long while.

Cheers!

Yorric Torrkson

A dwarf of royal blood. His father was a champion among his people, known for his greatest deed of slaying a dragon. Yorric was going to be one of my characters for a game, but unfortunately the game was never started. He was a very interesting character, vastly different from my first D&D character (who was a pacifist cleric). His helmet was that of his father's, as was a very special ability he had. At the time I did not have the 4e books, so I went online to find my feats. I found a home-brew website and thought that one particular feat made sense for my character (I could provide a decent back-story as to why he would have such an ability), then showed my DM. The person who was going to DM that campaign was a friend of mine and knew from experience I didn't like to break the game. I am mostly there for the role-playing. So he agreed to let me have the power.

After Yorric's father, Torrk, slew the fell dragon which had laid waste to a small army of dwarfs, and destroyed vast portions of the great dwarfen city, he made ready to burn the corpse. He was stopped, however, by his uncle, a very old dwarf who had seen much and knew much. His uncle, Rouric Whitebelt, instructed Torrk to take out the heart of the dragon and bade him eat it. Next, he filled a golden goblet with the beast's blood and instructed Torrk to drink of it. When this was done, Torrk's stomach filled with heat, his skin grew harder, and his eyes blazed with light. He found he could understand the speech of dragons, and of their kin, but most of all, he could breath fire! When his son was born, he too had some of these traits. Yorric therefore was granted a special ability in combat, that once per encounter he could breath upon his foes the dragons' breath.

I was very proud of this back-story, and not only because I had a fire breathing dwarf. I borrowed this idea from an old Norse tale which I had heard of as a little kid. I cannot believe I remembered it but when I saw the ability on the home-brew site I immediately thought of that story. It's a shame I never got to play him.

Cheers.

Concerning Dragons

 
D&D stands for Dungeons and Dragons, so naturally dragons are an important part of the D&D game. So it sucks when I really do not like how D&D portraits dragons. Different color dragons, each with different powers, sounds less like an epic fantasy setting and more like a children's show. Maybe it is just me? But I think it's very cheesy.

However... dragons are AWESOME! They are by far one of my favorite monsters in any game, story, or film. Dragons are why if someone asked me whether I liked The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings better I would never be able to answer them. So when I create a world in which to set my players, you can bet there are going to be dragons. Even if I were to create a world devoid of any magic or magical creatures, it would still have dragons in it. Still, I do not want to use D&D dragons.

So I changed them to fit my tastes. Here is the dragon lore for my D&D world:

Dragons are born from eggs about the size of a dinner plate. The dragon will usually lay many hundreds of eggs, but few young ones will ever survive long enough to hatch. Of those that do, very few survive their time in the nest. When born a dragon's scales are green, much like any other lizard. He will have small, boney bumps on his back: extensions of his shoulder blade which will become his wings. The young dragon grows at an extraordinary rate over a two week period. At the end of this two week period the young dragon will be about the size of a small elephant. At this point two things happen. One,  the dragon's wings will have matured to a point at which the dragon can now fly with them. Two, the growing process for the dragon will come nearly to a stand still. From this point on, the young dragon will grow very slowly, but continue growing the rest of his life. Once a dragon reaches adulthood his scales will change color very quickly. They will go from green to yellow (for a very short while) and then from yellow to red. His scales will remain red until he is much older, at which point they will begin to darken until finally, when he is very old, his scales will become black. Dragons only breath fire, although once they attain their black scales, the fire reaches a new fierceness and gains acidic like properties.

 

If you have dragon lore which differs from the D&D manual then please share! If anyone would like to use this lore for their own games then by all means go ahead.

 

Cheers.