Friday, September 20, 2013

Art Improvement Meme

Here is an old art improvement meme that I finally decided to fill out . . .

-Ark


Thursday, September 19, 2013

Barbarella - Queen of the Galaxy


Okay - the colors are done.  Funny - for months now I've been almost exclusively working on figure drawing fundamentals - and somehow my coloring seems to have gotten better.  Odd. I'll never figure out this art thing. :)

- Ark

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Fear Her, Doctor Durand Durand



Now I just need to color her.  Barbarella, Barbarella with her hair all colored yella. :)

- Ark

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Accidental Art


I still am confused as to why most of the things I intend to draw end up as beg nasty meses, while the mindless sketches I make tend to be the ones I like.  Probably says something aboout my psychological make-up. :)

- Ark

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Friday, August 9, 2013

Cartographic Question


This map for my Star Wars players brought up a question from one of them.  Where is the land and where is the water?

So, what do you see?

- Ark

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Edge of the Empire Dark Side Slide Mechanics

In last night's Star Wars game, the PCs woke up and ancient Sith Lord who handed them their asses and walked over their bloody, crumpled  bodies as if they didn't exist.  (This wasn't the kids game - it's the, um, BIG kids game.)  Anyway, three of the PC's decided that they needed some force powers of their own and that reviving an ancient Sith Lord and having him suck the life out of you and then chop off your limbs and gouge out your eyes was the perfect 'trigger' for your latent force abilities to show up.

So they all bought themselves some force abilities.  Now the force abilities in Edge of the Empire are very pedestrian - convincing some strormtroopers that those are not the droids they are looking, tossing someone across the room, and reading someone's surface thought.  No 50 meter leaps or force lightning.  This is a Han/Boba style game.  The Force book won't be out for a long, long while.

But still - the game has a mechanic for dark and light sides, and using them.  Basically, you roll and could get some dark or light points to use, or some of both, for whatever power you are activating.  You can spend light and dark with little issue.  But Edge of the Empire is vague about the whole good/bad thing - except to day that maybe the GM should do something about it if he or she feels like it.

I felt like doing something about it.  In my opinion, the dark side is nothing to treat lightly - even if you are a murder hobo.  So I drew up a rough draft:
Characters may convert a number of dark side results into force points each session with no harm.  This number is equal to their Willpower + Discipline (between 1 and 12 with an average of 2.)  Past that, the character runs the risk of loosing control for a period of time, if not permanently.  This loss of control is up to the GM, but will involve the dark side emotions of fear, anger and hate.

When converting force points above their limit, characters must pass a Discipline check to stay in control of themselves.  If they fail, they loose control to the Dark Side (and GM) for 1 round plus another round for each Threat in the dice pool.  Times outside of combat would be minutes, not rounds.

A despair results hands over control to the DM for the rest of the combat (or encounter.)

Each failure PERMANENTLY increases the difficulty of the roll, from Simple, Easy, Average, etc. - thus adding another difficulty die to the Discipline check.  Past Formidable (five dice) there is the Impossible Task level, which also has five dice, but requires spending a Destiny point to attempt.  Failure of this Impossible Level Task makes the character an NPC for the GM to control permanently.

This mechanic is designed to allow the players to flirt with the dark side a bit. They can even train themselves to be able to dip into it more. But if the character goes beyond 'recreational use' and becomes a dark side addict, then some horrible things will happen. Not just to the character, but everyone around them.

Jedi Temple Younglings anyone?

- Ark