The Story So Far -1

We play D&D one Saturday almost every month. Once upon a time we met and played every week, but we don't anymore mostly because of life. We play with almost the same group as when we started playing together in 2000. We've had some people come and go. Most of our friends now live in different parts of our state, so meeting more often now just isn't practical. 

We go by the name of Team Sidequest. I don't remember when we started applying that name to our group. It is a fairly accurate description. Our very first campaign, our goal was to travel to the dwarven lands to do something--I don't remember what. We played for 2.5 years every week, and we never made it to the dwarven lands, and, in fact, spent half the time going in the exact opposite direction. 

Right now, we are running through a series of adventures that Shaun and I are writing together. I personally think it's going to be epic, should they ever manage to get through it. This has been an interesting challenge, learning to work together to run the game together. Our party, should everyone show up, consists of a teifling warlock, half-elf bard, elf paladin, human cleric, fire genasi eldrich knight (I think), rogue/bard (I don't remember the race), gnome cleric, and barbarian (also don't remember the race--I know, I'm a bad DM). That sounds like a lot, but usually a couple people aren't able to come each time we meet (because adulting sucks). We are playing in the same homebrew world the original campaign from 2000 was run in. It takes place 200 years after the end of that campaign. It's a high fantasy world with some steampunk level technology. The technology is fairly new to the world. We had the early framework of it in the original game, but it was only a few neat gadgets here and there. Things have grown and developed over the years. This seemed logical to us. A lot of the new technology is highly steeped in magic because it makes sense to us and because it seems like that could be a lot of fun. This world was originally created in second edition, which means that both teiflings and fire genasi were not playable races. We generally didn't allow gnomes for no reason other than we did not like gnomes, and we felt they did not add much to the world. Occasional gnome oddities have shown up (including our current gnome). The current gnome is both a student and a specimen in the university in the main city of the area our group is in. The fire genesi's story and existence is going to be worked into the campaign, so I will not say much about that at this time, other than he was raised as an orphan, and does not know if there are any others of his race--whether he is the result of genetic manipulation and magical experimentation or if he is part of a race of people that is very seclusive, or whatever. The teifling has decided to be an indirect descendant of the human knight from the original story. The knight's neice/great-neice (I can't remember) married Rhom Corsith, a demon villain from the original campaign, and  the teifling is their offspring. He is on a quest to destroy the knight from the original story (who is alive still because he is Sulis' whipping boy--Sulis is the goddess of life in our world--as established in the original campaign). Interestingly enough, we'd already written a role for the old knight into our current campaign, so that should make for some fun roleplaying.

That was a lot... And now for a recap of the story so far, which will also take a bit because we've played several sessions. Our group started on an airship travelling to Whitestone (the urban center of the country they are in)--we told our players they would start there, and they would need to come up with a reason to travel to Whitestone. The goal of this session was to introduce the world as it would be for this campaign. There were airships, with electric lighting. They had a radio box on the ship for music that ran off a mix of magic and technology. And so on. It was a murder mystery. Someone on the ship was trying to steal some of the cargo by redirecting the ship to another location. In the end, the party caught the pawn, but not the true culprit. She escaped, but they did prevent the ship from diverting and saved the cargo. They arrive in Whitestone. Whitestone is a city run by the most lawful of lawful paladins. They have rules for everything. They have systems and organizations for everything. You have to be there for a reason. Tourists and travelers are allowed to register and stay for short periods of time, and have very limited access to the city. You can register as a researcher at the library (this is what the fire genasi did). You can join an adventuring guild. You could register with any number of crafting guilds or merchant groups. The point is: they track everything in this city. Our party joined a guild called the Wild Cards. For fans of The Slayers, this guild is run by retired adventurers Rina Universe and Gary. There was also another guild called The Devoted, led by Marigold, the daughter of Martina and Xangulus. Not major plot points, but fun. They spent the next session running side quests. Obvious side quests. As in on the bulletin board in their guild obvious side quest, which even included the cliche "rats in the basement" quest. 

The last 2 sessions have picked up the main plot. They got a preview of the cargo from the airship during a public demonstration in the Whitestone amphitheater. The cargo was what the wizards' guild is calling a Dragon Heartstone and it connects to a functionally crude mechanical dragon, which is about the size of a backyard storage shed, is clunky, but can still fly. They also find that a small team of adventurers sent by the wizards' guild to bring back historical artifacts (non-magical) from an ancient ruins related to a legend that inspired the creation of the mechanical dragon and the heartstone power source has not returned after several weeks. Conveniently the team is from The Wild Cards. So, our party gears up and travels to the Everclear Swamp. In the swamp is an ancient city overgrown by the swamp/jungle (think Cambodian style ruins). This dungeon was a maze (literally) of traps and impassible terrain because of flooding and the age of the buildings. 

I created the map for this dungeon by designing the ancient town and placing it over a maze. The maze indicated the passable terrain. They could cross the other areas where flooded, but risked random encounters with native creatures. These ruins had been taken over by Histherians, lizardmen (the dragonborn of our world as dragonborn were not things when we created this world in 2000, inspired by the draconians of the Dragonlance world). The Histherians were running a cult worshiping the green dragon, Acida. Acida was young and vain, and also lazy, since the Histherians were pretty much providing her with food through their collection of captives. The ruins came up to cliffs on one side and beach and ocean on another. On the ocean side, the Histherians had a boat that they used to engage in piracy to collect money to fund their community and their dragon, as well as collect captives to feed their dragon. Our players wandered haphazardly through the dungeon. We finished the first session with our players overwhelmed and captured. We started last weekend's session with our party in prison (minus the rogue that had been captured at an earlier time, but had managed to free himself and two members of the group they had come to rescue). 

Our human cleric joined our rogue to come to the group's rescue. The cleric had been absent for several sessions reference holidays. We wrote him back in by telling him he has to go to this temple in the ruins in the Everclear Swamp and obtain a green amulet. They meet up with the rest of the group, right after they finish breaking out of the caves. The party now has a better idea of what they're up against. They also know there is someone or something the Histherians are working for, and that whatever it is likes sacrifices--one of our players was only pretending to be unconscious when they were captured at the end of last session and also conveniently spoke draconic. They clear the temple, where the prison was. They discover that there is a tunnel in the cliffs behind the city that leads to the "Master." They've also deduced that the Master is probably a dragon. They go to the dragon's layer and defeat the dragon, which was not played to the most ruthless it could have been because we'd determined that she had grown lazy and complacent. She was used to being provided with food. She hadn't had to hunt or take care of herself in years. We played her as if her combat skills were rusty. This is because the base dragon stats in the Monster Manual were meant for a slightly high leveled party. Now scattered around the ruins, along with mosaics of dragons in several different colors standing with people (although maybe a few with just green dragons), the party found several pendants with a particular symbol on it. They found an indentation that matched the pendant in the ground next to the dragon's hoard. Inside they find a tunnel and a glowing green portal. Inside the portal is a circular room with no visible floor except a narrow walkway. Green mist comes up from the pits on either side of the walkway. The walkway extends to the center of the room where suspended over a pedestal is a gold amulet with a green gemstone set in it. The gemstone has the same symbol that's on the pendants inscribed inside the gem. 

Clearly this amulet is going to be a powerful magical object (and it is), but they have only been able to determine that it provides protection against and resistance to poison. It has other abilities, that should come out as we go through this campaign.

That's the game so far in as much of a nutshell as my rambling self could put it in. Future episodes will only cover events from one session and not need the introductory stuff. 

WIP Wednesday 2019 Vol 4

So I lied, and it looks like I might be finishing these. I'm still not happy with them, except for the Hogwarts student. I like that one. Also there was no post Monday because I forgot to write it... Oops. But to be honest, losing track of my days is very easy to do with the "day" job I'm working now. It follows an alternating schedule (2 days on, 2 off, 3 on, 2 off, 2 on, 3 off) every two weeks, and instead of days, I actually work nights. So, on the off days, I'm adjusting to a day schedule because everything else in life exists on a day schedule, while on my on days, I'm on a night schedule. This is also why you will see posts from me on Twitter and other places at all hours of the day or night.

Misadventures in Streaming

So, I wrote Monday that we were going to be trying to stream some things, and it's definitely been an adventure. 

We spent a week preparing. We tested all the things. We had a secondary monitor set up to connect with my laptop. Everything worked. When we got to Thursday afternoon, we decided to connect my older laptop because it has a larger monitor, and it should have been fine for what we needed. We tested it, and everything seemed to be working. Well, we got to 7 o'clock, and the audio wasn't working right, and the video started freezing. So, we switched to my newer laptop.

I don't generally use this laptop for gaming, so I didn't even have Steam installed. So, installed that and Doki Doki Literature Club, which honestly didn't take too long. Still, it was a nuisance. Things should have gone well from there. I had the streaming software installed and configured because I intend to stream art from here. But then we connected this laptop to the second monitor. It was a little wonky to start with, and somehow the second monitor got set as the primary. Fixed that, but then the game screen was only the size of a thumb nail. I couldn't read anything on the screen, which makes this game, in particular, functionally difficult to play. I didn't want to bother trying to figure out how to fix that since we were already supposed to be streaming the game at that point.

Take 3. We got my husband's laptop, which is a Mac. T_T It has streaming software, but it isn't the software I was using, so the configuration was different; it also wasn't connected to the Twitch account because we hadn't planned on using it at all, so I had to fix that. Whatever, it at least worked, but it was frustrating not being able to see the chat log. I solved that problem by using my laptop logged into Twitch and just tried to periodically check the chat. 

I think we'll be using the Mac to finish the Doki Doki Literature Club play through, but I'm hoping we can figure out what's wrong with my gaming laptop for future games because the specs should be more than enough to handle streaming-- I mean it has better hardware for that than this laptop, which I use primarily because it is more portable and I can draw on the screen. Hoping for no problems when I try to stream art next week. I mean there weren't any problems streaming that from this laptop when we were testing, but that doesn't seem to be any indication of whether things will actually work or not.

WIP Wednesday 2019 Vol 3

Not as much for this week. Some scribbly sketchy things. I'm not sure I'm happy with any of them, except maybe the last one. I'm probably going to throw the other two out. Or not. XD These are all badge designs. The first is the male version of Capricorn. The second is an elf sorcerer, which might become a sample for the DnD character cards/badges we are putting together. The third is a Hogwarts student, no specific character, for our Hogwarts student ID cards.

Something New

During Animazement last year, one of the lovely people who came by our table gave us the idea to start putting together some videos. That was several months ago. Some of our plans were delayed by my health problems. We have been throwing around some ideas on what we might do. 

Per request, we have considered doing some recorded play-throughs of video games. We have also considered recording my drawing process, tabletop game instructional videos, or recording Team Sidequest playing D&D. We've thought about making a vlog. Most of this would be peppered with our sense of humor, which can be seen in many of the things we create.

We have debated whether we should stream on Twitch or just record videos for YouTube. What we are leaning toward right now is a bit of both: stream and record on Twitch, but we will put an edited version of what we do on YouTube. YouTube will have our more polished product, but for those interested in the process or seeing raw footage, there will be Twitch. 

So, when will we be streaming and/or posting these videos. Well, we are still working on a schedule. The most awkward part is finding something we can do consistently. My work schedule is a bit weird and follows a two week rotating schedule. It basically works so that if I'm off one Monday, I will work the next, and it's like that for every day of the week. This means that I will not be available to stream every week on the same day. Whatever schedule we decide to stream on will probably follow a similar 2-week rotating pattern. So, for example, if I decide to stream on Wednesday one week, I will not be streaming on Wednesday the next week, but maybe I'll stream on Thursday that next week. The week after that, I will stream on Wednesday again. This may sound a little confusing, but to make things simple, I will keep a schedule of upcoming streams posted on our website and on the Twitch channel. Videos will go up on YouTube ever couple of weeks, as we get them put together. Ideally this will be more often, but I'm keeping my expectations conservative at this time, since I'm not sure what kind of time commitment this will take. Looking forward to having some fun with this.

You can find us at GothicPandaArt at both locations: 

https://www.twitch.tv/gothicpandaart and 
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeJdfJRAw6l18x7wjO3AEzw

She-Ra

As a child, She-Ra was one of my favorite TV shows. I did not watch it religiously, in fact I probably never watched more than a dozen episodes. I did not watch a lot of TV as a child. I do have fond memories of this series. I collected a lot of the toys for it, and I spent many hours playing with those toys. I can probably trace my fascination with magical girls back to this series. 

Art by Daekazu.
Original can be found on
his DeviantArt

In this light, I was fairly excited when Netflix announced it's new original She-Ra series. They'd redone Voltron and most people seemed to like what they did with it, even some of the most devoted fans of the original Voltron in my acquaintance. So, naturally, I expected they'd do just to a She-Ra remake. 

I just finished watching all 13 episodes, and I have to say that I am pretty disappointed. I really did not like the new series at all. There were a few things I liked--mostly Catra. Beyond those things, I did not enjoy watching the series. I did not like the new animation style. I did not like the character designs (beyond Catra). I did not like the characters... any of them really... except Catra. I did not like the new lore behind the new series.

Maybe I expected too much from the series, but the whole thing really just fell flat for me. It had some redeeming moments, a few good lines here and there. Maybe there just wasn't enough for them to work with to make a good series, because if I'm honest, the original series wasn't anything amazing either. I just feel like the new series didn't have any of the elements that I truly loved about the original. The new series felt like something else skinned to look like my favorite childhood series. It kind of reminds me of how I felt after watching Final Fantasy: Spirits Within, which should not have had the Final Fantasy title. 

WIP Wednesday 2019 Vol 2

These projects are going to badges and/or buttons. They may also be turned into stickers (because stickers are my new obsession). You can see older WIP pictures of Capricorn on my WIP post from last week.

Capricorn mostly finished

Belle Sketch

Maleficent started inking

She Ra started inking

She Ra Sketch

The Real MAGFest 2019 Reflections Post

Magfest was a lot of fun this year. That's pretty standard. I was a lot more tired going into the convention this year because of an intense vacation near the end of December--you know, one of those vacations where you come home more exhausted than before you left and you want a real vacation from the vacation.

Anyways, I think I spent most of this convention in panels. I'm going to go off on a bit of a "Magfest is the best" thing here. I really feel that Magfest goes out of its way to have outstanding programming. Their events are good. Their panels are great, and cover a wide variety of topics. There is always something interesting going on. This year I attended a mix of cosplay makerspace panels, tabletop panels, and MAGES panels. I gave a panel in MAGES on tabletop roleplaying and relationships with Shaun as a follow-up to last year's panel on gaming in general as a couple. We got a bunch of questions related to roleplaying games after that panel, so we put together one on that topic. He gave two other panels that went over well. I think the only thing I've ever been super meh about was the Marketplace. There were many years where the vendor space was too small. This year, there just wasn't much that I wanted to see. I think my favorite vendor was the leather vendor in the very back of the room, who sadly does not have a website to share with everyone. They had some really cool binders and DM screens in tooled leather, and I really need to get one of the leather tunics they have... one of these years, when I have more money.

Anyways, most of the panels and events I attended this year were fantastic. They were either interesting or informative, and bonus if they were both. I came home super motivated to get back into cosplaying, which I've wanted to do for awhile now. I have ideas for several original cosplay designs, plus I have a long list of characters I want to cosplay. I'm also really excited about pushing forward on several of our larger (and smaller) projects. I'm not going to say a lot about them right now, since they've technically been on the board for a couple of years now, and although close to completion now (relatively), I don't have a clear idea of when exactly they will be done. Assuming I can stay out of the hospital this year and have no more major issues, then I'm pretty sure we'll start seeing some of these things wrap up early this year, but I've been saying that for a couple years now, and so far it hasn't worked. =P Anyways, I'll post when things actually happen. 

All in all, Magfest was the best way to start 2019.

Octopath Traveler

My family got a Switch for Christmas two years ago. It's been monopolized primarily by my kids and my husband, but I recently picked up Octopath Traveler to play on it. I loved Bravely Default, and Octopath Traveler seems to be cut from the same mold--I'm a big fan of old-style RPG games. I never transitioned well to the 3-D environments, so I appreciate games like these that are throwbacks to older graphical styles. I had high expectations for Octopath Traveler, and this post is going to be my opinion on the game, at least as far as I've played.

I have played through each character's first chapter. I have been struggling through the second chapters and side quests. I'm not sure if the combat system just didn't click--I mean, I understand the break system with the weapon/elemental weaknesses, but there also seems to be bias toward certain characters in certain parts of the game. For example, I played through Tressa's second chapter. Clearly Tressa is required, but my impression was that the other three character slots could be filled with whoever I wanted (true) and it would be decently effective (false). In this example, you cannot complete this chapter without Ophilia. I am getting the idea I will be wanting Ophilia in most of my parties in this game. That frustrates me because I don't particularly like playing with that character. 

I've also found some of the side quests frustrating because the recommended level does not seem to match the actual difficulty of the quest. Or maybe this goes back to not understanding how the characters work together, and I need to be playing with a different group. I think I've gotten decent equipment for my party, but maybe not. I feel like I'm missing something with it, and it shouldn't be this frustrating. 

I'm going to put it down for a little bit, but I do plan on eventually trying to finish it. Another potential problem is that I do tend to play the game around 3 a.m., which is probably not the best time to do anything that requires any amount of coherence. =P Maybe I'll have better luck when I have a little more time to play the game.

WIP Wednesday 2019 Vol 1

I'm attempting to move away from using Photoshop and using Clip Studio entirely. I recently invested in a Microsoft Surface Pro, and Clip Studio runs better on it. Normally I use Photoshop to do all my coloring, but I am attempting to learn to use Clip Studio for that now. This means that I am moving a little slower than I'd like. 

Like I said last week, I will be working primarily on smaller things. This is going to be released as a badge and a button (and maybe a sticker too, but doing stickers might be chasing squirrels at this time). 

The Post That Was Going to be MAGFest Musings

I meant to publish a post reflecting on Magfest, which was this past weekend. So, this post is just going to be a quick summary of my last couple of days. 

To provide some context, we broke our van while we were in vacation in Florida, Orlando area, in December, and we had to leave it in Florida for repairs. And that's all the backstory we need for this post. =P

Fast forward to last Sunday. We packed up to leave Magfest mid-morning and drove to North Carolina -- we live in the south central part of the state. This was about 6 hours give or take. Once we reached NC, I changed cars and people I was riding with and left again. From NC, we drove to the north part of Orlando, FL. I did this because I had received word while at Magfest that our van would be fixed and ready to pick up Monday. Monday morning, we drove to the car place where we dropped the van off, because I had been repeatedly told to pick up the van where we dropped it off. We got there and the receptionist gave me an odd look and said, "Ooh, I'm sorry, but your vehicle is in another castle [location]." I knew that they had sent the van to another location to complete repairs because they had an earlier opening to start the repairs. They were supposed to have sent it back to the original location. Communication clearly broke down because the van was not returned, and I was not informed of the change in pick-up location. This was mostly a nuisance and a lot of extra driving. Moving on, I finally got the van yesterday around lunch time, and I spent the rest of my Monday driving back to North Carolina.

Needless to say, I am very tired of being in the car. I did not get time to put together a post for Magfest, because I'm pretty sure driving and typing are incompatible activities. XD Anyways, I'll put up a reflection on Magfest in a week or so.

MAGFest Panels

Shaun and I will be at MAGFest this year as attendees and panelists. We have two panels this year!

Shaun will be on a panel this morning at 10:30 on Heroes. This is a group discussion on how video game heroes have changed over the years. Many of the tropes that characterized the heroes of our childhood no longer apply to the game heroes of today. Why? What makes a hero now? He and his fellow panelists will be addressing these and other questions.

Tomorrow (Saturday) at 11:30, Shaun and I will be giving a panel together on relationships and tabletop RPG gaming. We've been married for almost 19 years, and playing RPG games like Dungeons and Dragons has been a big part of our relationship. We're going to address topics like playing together as a couple and how that might affect game dynamics. We're going to look at how other players might perceive the impact of the relationship, especially if one involved is the GM. We're also going to look at how to handle couples when they are inattentive and distracted or when things are going south in the relationship and the toxicity is spreading into the game. This is a more focused version of the panel we gave last year. I'm looking forward to it. Yay! My second panel. 

If you're going to be at MAGFest, please stop by our panels! Of course, if these topics don't interest you, don't come. =P We won't be offended. Both panels will be in the MAGES section.

Welcome Back

It's been a while. I've been ill, and it turns out I'm allergic to most of the meds they like to put you on for the stuff I've been dealing with. Shaun has been ill. Shaun had to work an overload at work--as a teacher, this means he's teaching more than a full load of classes. 2018 was not a great year for us. All of this has also made it difficult to keep working on art or anything fun while keeping up with our day jobs. That also made 2018 a not so fun year because doing nothing but being sick or working sucks. I have high hopes that 2019 will be a better year. I'm trying to keep my goals and plans reasonable because at this time we both still have full time jobs, and we are still dealing with some of the medical issues from 2018 (better than last year, but it's the kind of thing that takes time to manage/recover from). So, here are some things we're going to be doing (or trying to do this year). I'm excited to see what actually happens.

1. Blogging: We are going to try and get the blog back up (again). I want to go back to regular posting Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. 

2. YouTube: We are going to try and put together some YouTube videos. Especially for the first part of the year, this will be experimental and something we will be playing around with, seeing what works and what doesn't, but since Shaun's field and area of interest is in film, he's been itching to get back into production. We may do some Vlogging. I may do some live drawing or crafting or whatever. We may do some game play throughs--we have gotten a request to do Doki Doki Literature Club. All in all, not sure what exactly will show up here or will come from it, but I'm definitely curious. I will post here if/when we get this up.

3. Art: Since this is an art studio, I, of course, plan on creating some art. Because I am limited on my ability to travel this year and taking everything is also difficult, I am going to be limiting most of my new creations this year to smaller items: badges, buttons, and bookmarks. I think this will keep my table space from being so cluttered because I am going to keep it to just 1 table. It's also easier to travel with the smaller items. Most larger items (mostly prints) will be available online only. Ideally, I'll be able to get 1 new piece done each week, since I will be mostly working on smaller pieces. That may be a bit ambitious, but we'll see. 

4. Other things: There are, of course, a lot of other things I'd love to work on. I have a lot of print ideas, and I may work on a few of those even if they're not my focus for this year. We also have a couple of games we are working on (a card game, a 5e version of Anime D20, and an app). I would also love to make some costumes because I miss cosplay. I'm also going to try to post more regularly on Social Media. I'm not really a Social Media kind of person, but since I won't be attending very many conventions, this will be my only way to interact with people, so I'm going to have to figure this stuff out. Ideally I'll post consistently around Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr, which are the sites I have accounts on for now, but right now, posting at all could be considered an accomplishment. =P I'd also love to see my website regularly updated, so that the content on it is more accurate. This would be good since I've been moving away from Etsy, and I plan on selling directly from my website. 

5. Manic Mysteries: This will be a 6-12 episode (at least 6, but we might write more) audio series. This is one of those just for fun projects that we've been working on off and on for the last year. Hopefully we will have the first 6 episodes ready for release starting this summer.