A Company of Fools - Blog

[EvilGinger]

Building encounters & Random Encounters

some thoughts opinions and suggestions 

Random encounters 

first of I am not a fan of random encounters in the traditional sense as I feel that all encounters must serve as a part of the story you and your players are jointly creating so even of they have a random chance of happening, such as a hostile patrol being in the area,  they had better have some thought put into them and be a bit more than some extra experience to pick up on the way to the main event.

 

more to follow in a similar vein to the dungeon article

Source: Building encounters & Random Encounters

[EvilGinger]

Heromachine - building tokens

This is something for the morning now but I have been playing with both versions of heromachine to generate custom tokens & am begging to get the hang of them watch this space for examples

I will be using Hero Machine 3 for button tokens and Hero machine 2.5 for the full figure ones


as its back up here is a start

hero machine 2.5 full body female magic user with spear base image

hero machine 3

 Barbarian warrior with axe and shield - the axe needs fixing so its in his hand and the background needs to be cleaned up more

Source: Heromachine - building tokens

[EvilGinger]

Work gets in the way

With apologies for not getting any thing much done on outstanding projects today and I hope to reassure you that I am still going to be working on them so keep watching this space. I have I hope to get things some what under control some time tomorrow at which point I will turn my full efforts to bogging away like mad again.

Current projects on the go include

• Finishing all the Stub articles I posted recently in the belief that I was going to be able to do them the following day or soon after
• More work on Adventures Elsewhere and related material which would include going back thought the blog and updating  the Consolidated Elsewhere posts page and sorting the blog layout so that it appears on the Pages Menu and cleaning up that menu as there is at least one broken link on it to get rid of 
• Stating up the demonic monsters I started work on earlier 
• finishing the second crossbow article which I have noticed is just a stub Grrrr
• I will also be going into spirit games with my Web Camera and actually setting it up so that we can do a Pod Cast of a Company of Fools Episode 21 next Thursday evening, I have an evil plan where I will have the players identify them selves and say who they are playing. 

I will also be generating or modifying an existing character sheet for use on line as the current Roll d20 one is I find having used it quite a bit not all that Dyslexic friendly  and working out haw to do macro's for Roll d20 this is a daunting prospect as there is a very good reason I gave up coding many years ago.

Source: Work gets in the way

[EvilGinger]

Some other sorts of Encounter

posted by CEBrown based on an original post by Jtolman which is here

I would suggest categorizing this into sections:

• Distractions (no true threat or challenge intended (yeah, PCs can always "force an escalation" )  - just odd occurances like a flock of birds suddenly taking flight for  no apparent reason, odd rustling in the brush which proves to just be a  rabbit or maybe just the wind)
• Inconveniences (run out  of some non-essential (e.g. clean bandages, luxury items, cooking  utensils) supplies, raided by raccoons, fire keeps dying out or  threatening to go out of control), which would probably be the most  common results.
• Threats (poisonous animals slipping  into camp - like the spider or scorpion examples, or PCs find they built  their camp near where a hunter set up some traps, run out of essential  supplies like food or clean water) - about as common as "distractions";  together slightly more common than "Inconveniences".
• Encounters (shift to regular random encounter stuff).
  
  Reposted form the Kenzer Forums and something that I will be taking into  consideration when I am finishing off my encounter building Article
  
  

Source: Some other sorts of Encounter

[EvilGinger]

Full to bulging point

I had a pleasant surprise this evening I spent the first half of the  evening which should have been all the Alternate weeks Deus Vault game generation a replacement character for Larifus who as a rogue the player decided was too complicated to play until he got more familiarity with the game, he will become a protégé and  he will be replaced by a Brandobian Human fighter with an equestrian bent as well as two completely new characters for new players which turned out to be a Gnome Titan Fighter Thief  of minimal intellect and lower wisdom and a junior Priest of the Caregiver so the group is now eight Player characters. 

I am beginning to have to consider what to do with all the NPC protégé’s I created to fill out the roster when the where fewer players in the group and who by dint of being with the group so long have become important if secondary characters in their own right. However for now the major ones will I think remain even if they don’t play quite such a role in the story as they had to in the past.

Source: Full to bulging point

[EvilGinger]

Adventures Elsewhere Zen token and Portrait

In the full knowledge that these will be all wrong I did these with Hero machine as a base for the Protagonist in my forthcoming  on line solo game

These are the base images almost direct form HeroMachine

Token

Portrait

still need to be coloured and shaded but its a start I feel

Source: Adventures Elsewhere Zen token and Portrait

[EvilGinger]

Adventures Elsewhere Zen Token

Stating the process of colouring the token image

Its still at the early stages & I am regretting the choice of the elaborate cuirass of scales as its a pain to shade properly and the underlying mail shirt needs a texture which I now know you can add with HeroMachine but did not when I generated this image - you live and learn

Source: Adventures Elsewhere Zen Token

[EvilGinger]

Adventures Elsewhere Zen Token

Stating the process of colouring the token image

Its still at the early stages & I am regretting the choice of the elaborate cuirass of scales as its a pain to shade properly and the underlying mail shirt needs a texture which I now know you can add with HeroMachine but did not when I generated this image - you live and learn

Had another look at this one this morning and was not entirely happy with it to be honest so I went back to the original image which I had saved on HeroMachine unlike most of them and had a go at seeing what hppened if I used the built in colour it in feature at least as a base

I got this




and then I fiddled about with it for a bit in GIMP and ended up with this which I actually like enough to use

I do still  think the colours are a bit too primary but I have a plan for sorting that one out in future

Source: Adventures Elsewhere Zen Token

[EvilGinger]

Coradwin token for level 5 +

following on from working on Zen

Taking the idea of toning down an image by placing a new layer on top of it and lightly washing it out with an overall bucket fill of low opacity  and then going back and adding the intensity where I wanted it in the same step as I did all the other shading I got this which I think is rather cool and probably guarantees that poor Coradwin never reaches 5th level or learns the bouncing Betty fire ball he is shown casting either 

It does however mean I can make all my PC and NPC tokens for on line gaming and to illustrate things like the Significant NPC listings here as the transparency tool is a piece of cake on GIMP now I have found it

Source: Coradwin token for level 5 +

[EvilGinger]

A bit of an update

what have I been up to

Local area map for Adventures Elsewhere

I have spent much of the day messing about with all things on line and generally using it as a  lame excuse to avoid getting on with the blog as I should. However on the positive side I now know a lot more about roll20 & associated matters and I am nearer to being able to run something myself. & I also have the first couple of encounters set up for Adventures Elsewhere on Roll 20

I would post screen shots but i don't want to post spoilers

Source: A bit of an update

[EvilGinger]

Elf Queen of Elsewhere

The initial quest giver for adventures elsewhere - a great and powerful elf of considerable age despite her seeming youth and her simple attire. it is the custom of those great amongst elven kind to effect such disdaining the status symbols so beloved of other an to them lesser races

The image was produces and base coloured using HeroMachine 3 & then imported into GIMP for further work

Source: Elf Queen of Elsewhere

[EvilGinger]

Back to Bloging in thew morming

I will be back at actualy writing articles in the morning

Source: Back to Bloging in thew morming

[EvilGinger]

screen shot of First encounter map for Adventures Elsewhere

just to show you I have done something today

The base image which is one of the many swamp maplets I have got has been enhanced by token trees and bushes to give it more of a 3d feel

Source: screen shot of First encounter map for Adventures Elsewhere

[EvilGinger]

will be spending the day hunting down and finishing off the incomplete articles on the blog as far as I can so expect very litle new stuff just older stuff actually finished 


 Ginger

[EvilGinger]

Adventures Elsewhere

Character creation rules - Zen

Attributes

In order roll 4d6 & take the score highest three for the following

Str

Int

Wis

Con

Dex

App

Cha

Also roll a d100 for each in the same order and record it as

D6 roll/d100 roll in each case

You then have 40 build points +50 if you leave the results as rolled +25 if you just swap a pair & +0 if you rearrange the lot however you like

You also get to add the following adjustments as Zen is an Elsewhere High elf

Stat adjustment

Str                    +1

Int                    +2

Dex                  +4

Lks                  +2

Cha                  -3

You may also buy additional increments for the d100 part of the attribute at 1build point per 10 is the attribute is less than 9/100 and goes no higher than 10/09 between then and 16/04 the its one build point per 5 and above that its one build point per 3

However build points get used on lots of stuff that’s useful so consider what to spend them on, however it’s defiantly worth rounding attributes up to the next whole number and some times also over the xx/50 as well

Once that is done we need to determine Priors and Particulars

Elsewhere elves are as tall as humans and use the human height table in HackMaster – however they are still slimmer and more lithe so their BMI is determined from the elf table. `

Zen is for political reasons at least illegitimate her father is dead and her mother and half siblings chose to disown her – her up bringing was neither particularly loving nor unusually cruel by Elsewhere high Elven standards so that applies no alterations

Zen can chose to be cruel – for an additional  xx build points & can roll a d1000 to determine additional quirks and flaws resulting form that roll

Then we come onto class – Zen is a Hunter which is a variant of ranger

Details to follow

Source: Adventures Elsewhere