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. 

OMG! It's Finally Here!!

If you've been around here a while, you might remember when my husband wrote about writing the Anime RPG book. It was written in March of 2011, was the 5th post ever in this blog, and was the first guest post--although does it technically count as a guest post? I mean technically, my husband is part of Gothic Panda Studios, and a lot of what shows up on my art table is a collaborative effort between the two of us. On the other hand, I am the primary contributor to this blog and tend to think of it as my blog (not our blog). XD Anyways... getting off topic there. About a year ago, we sold our last print copy of that book. We talked briefly about doing a second print run, but unless we get huge numbers of people demanding it (as in willing to put down money on a preorder), we're not going to go the print route with this book again. But that's not the point of this post... although the point is related to the Anime RPG book. I'm just taking my sweet time getting to it, cause that's how I do things. =P

Earlier this week we finished assembling a revised version of the Anime RPG book and it can not be purchased via Etsy as a PDF download! =D We're working on re-editing (well mostly reformatting) it for Kindle. Once that's done it'll also be available through the Kindle store. This will probably take a couple more weeks (maybe a couple more months--cause this is also how we do things; it comes from having work and responsibilities beyond Gothic Panda Studios and Team Sidequest game production). So, yeah. That's the point of this post. Anime RPG is now available as a digital download. We're going to spend the fall hopefully wrapping up a Pathfinder version. Then we might just take a break to prepare for a 5th edition D&D version. Maybe. Expect it right around when the announce 6th edition... cause that's how we do things here.

WIP Volume 37

This is going to be a longish post. =P I've been busy since my last WIP post. First up blanket progress. I've finished all the "squares". Now I'm assembling them. The second picture is progress on that.

 

Final Fantasy IV Buttons + 1 bookmark/postcard design.

Flutterplush

Anime RPG art clean up: The original sketch, and lineart progress.

Hobbit movie poster parody

Totebag projects--I made a Fluttershy bag, and now I'm making a few other bags. #1: White Mage inspired bag, #2 Purple and Black quilted bag--I plan on appliqueing a panda on it, #3: Black quilted bag cause I think it'll be pretty.

MLP Mashup set 1

More What Would ___ Do designs.

The New Normal

For my last post, I talked about getting back to normal and how I have come to the conclusion that I don't think there will ever be a normal like the normal I want to get back to. That said, I think there's going to be some good stuff coming from 2013.

I've had to come to terms with the high probability that I won't see everything I'd love to see done finished in 2013 (or even 2014 or 2015). So, you might ask: what exactly do we expect to see from 2013 (realistically). Well, my husband and I started the year off by listing all the projects (or in some cases types of projects) we wanted to spend our year working on. We narrowed the list down to five things--actually it was only supposed to be three, but I made the argument that one project was going to be just my husband's (even though it really isn't) and I added another as an afterthought because I forgot to put it on the original list, so that one sneaked in through the back door so to speak. =P Yeah, I think we can see a little bit of my ADD personality mixed with my inability to commit to getting one thing done at a time.

Here's what's on our list, at least to start with. First up is the Anime RPG book (and other Team Sidequest, the game company, related stuff like that new card game we had at Magfest). There is some art I really really want to redo. Plus we're editing and making some adjustments based on feedback we have received since the book's initial release. I am looking for some print-on-demand options, but aside from that we won't be releasing the book in print again. We are looking at getting the book released digitally in a variety of ebook formats. This is the project that's supposed to be just my husband's. =P

Next up, we are planning on making extensive use of our new buttonmaker (you can find our current design selection in the button section on the gallery page of my website). For me buttons are going to be my outlet for drawing for all of my favorite things in epic quantities (like Full Metal Alchemist). At the top of my drawing list right now is Code Geass and My Little Pony. Those will be followed by lots and lots of Final Fantasy (I, IV, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XII, and XIII to start with XD). There will also be lots of FMA. I am planning a giant marathon session where I will draw pretty much anyone and everyone from that series. XD I'm only a little obsessed with it. There will be others, but that's where I'm starting (that's probably more than enough to start with). Some of these designs will go to bookmark or postcard-size print instead of as a button, but most will be buttons.

After buttons, we have cosplay. We made cosplay it's on section and although I have a blue-zillion plans and ideas, we've settled on Halo as the one project we're actually going to try and finish first. Team Sidequest (our D&D/cosplay/game/whatever else group) is planning on going to Animazement with a lot of helmets from the Halo armor costumes. These will eventually be followed by the full suits of armor and we will be cosplaying from Red vs. Blue, which I should probably sit down and watch at some point. XD The Halo cosplay project will be followed by finishing the Mare Do Well cosplay I wanted to make for Halloween. There will be more...much more...but this is a start.

The fourth project choice (my third *cough*) is still waffling. I want to make some more movie poster parodies along the lines of The Dark Mare Rises print. I have ideas for a Hobbit/Bioshock cross and Full Metal Alchemist/Avengers cross. On the other hand, I also have lots of ideas for drawing ponies...lots and lots of ponies...lots and lots of things that should not be drawn as ponies but I really really want to draw as ponies. XD This might be one of those things I go back and forth on for a little bit.

The final project thing I'll be working on is a list of gifts and personal projects. I have several baby blankets to make for friends (ideally to be finished while their kids are still babies =P). I also have some things I want to make for the house and for Sophie and stuff like that, so yeah.

Anyways, that's what we're going to be working on to start with. There's of course lots of other things I want to work on. I can't do it all though, so some of it will have to wait. =P

Did I Forget Yesterday's Post?

Did I forget yesterday's post? No, of course not... Well, okay, maybe... To be honest, yes, I did. Yesterday, we held our first "official" Team Sidequest work meeting. This consisted of myself, my husband, and our mechanics editor (good friend who knows rules for most games inside and out and has a good eye for whether certain game mechanics will work or not, but that title seemed a bit long so we call him mechanics editor). Way back in the very beginning of this blog, I mentioned that along with Gothic Panda Studios work, I might be posting on the things we're doing with Team Sidequest. Team Sidequest, for those who don't know, is a fledgling table top game company run primarily by my husband and I with occasional assistance from a couple of friends. Not much to it yet, but for now it's run by volunteer staff. Maybe one day it'll become something epically awesome and we'll actually get paid and be able to hire some other people. =D I can hope right?

Anyways, yesterday, we started work on editing the Anime RPG book we published last year (because surely we weren't the only ones who thought it might be fun to play a dwarf magic girl). We're about out of the first print run of books, so it seemed like a good time to do some editing--plus, over the last year of playing around with it and from some feedback from people who purchased copies of the book we have a list of things we feel could be made better. Our first step: review the mechanics. At our meeting, we made a rough list of general things to address. Over the next week we will each sit down with a copy of the book and go through every power, every feat, and every item in the book. We'll each make a list of specific adjustments we think should be made. Technically, I'll probably be leaving this task up to my husband and our mechanics editor, since I've also been tasked with editing some of the art. Once this step is done, we'll meet again and compare our lists of specific changes and determine as a group what we will actually change--these changes will be recorded to be posted on the Team Sidequest website for people who have already purchased a copy of the book. After that we'll make changes, check for grammar and spelling errors, correct formatting and other things like that. Our goal is to have the book ready for a second print run by mid-August.

In theory, by mid-August, we will also have Anime RPG ready for e-book release. One on-going request I have received regarding this book, second only to a version for Pathfinder, is an electronic version. This is the big reason why I am editing art. For the e-book version, all the art can be in color, as opposed to the black and white for the print version (color printing would make the book way too expensive). Once we get the 4th edition book completely edited and ready for release, we'll tackle adjusting the system for Pathfinder. Sometime in the next month we'll also be getting the Team Sidequest website up and functioning as well, so, you know, we have a place to post that list of changes. XD

Adventures of Team Sidequest, Vol. 1

Since I spent most of my weekend enjoying the antics of my awesome D&D group, Team Sidequest, I thought I'd spend today's blog retelling some of Saturday's adventure which happened to involve chasing a rather long sidequest that didn't have much to do with the main plot. I'm going to try writing this as a journal-style narrative from my character's point of view, so we'll see how that goes. My character is a Buddhist Monk elf runt (4'2" tall, about even with the halfling and gnome) who is always hungry. She carries a small arsenal of dual wielded weapons. I think they're hidden in the sleeves of her monk robes, and since this is an anime-themed game, I think that's more than reasonable. =P Basic synopsis up till now: We are in Ravenloft chasing a kidnapped little girl with weird blue tattoos on her back and facing down a series of Egyptian-themed mini-gods who are part of the kidnapping scheme. Added into the mix is a horde of modified zombies that come out only in the day time. We've defeated the pig god and the bat god, and there are supposedly 10 more. Anyways, hope you enjoy this. =)

Tuesday
We are in a small trade town just on the other side of the gorge where we defeated the bat-god. It's kind of dull, and the food's not all that great. Sinedentas [dragonborn avenger, basically Toothless] just got an orange kitten. Jim [half orc samurai] got word that a group of priests were seen with a little girl heading toward some port town. I hope the food there is better.

We waited till dusk to leave town since the zombies here don't come out at night. We're crossing a desert right now. It's very dull, and there's no food. I'm so hungry.

Wednesday
I got the best meal ever last night! Near the edge of the desert we encountered a dwarf and his daughter, who happens to be an elf--she was amazing; she could eat without even removing her ninja mask. =O When we found the dwarf he was just off the road hollering. Although that wasn't too unusual, since dwarfs yell a lot normally, Jim and Treviac [blind teifling wizard, with Tyresius, an owl familiar] wanted to investigate. Whatever. I'm glad they did because it turned out that the dwarf, whose name was Gregor, I think, was being attacked by what he called a bullette. It was this giant thing that would bury itself in the sand and jump out and try and eat people. =D We dispatched it, and the best part: Gregor was a great chef. With some help pulling apart the bullette's crunchy exterior we carved it up and cooked it in malt liquor. As a bonus we found a not-yet-digested lamb in the bulette's stomach and Gregor made it into a tasty stew. There's nothing like a full stomach; I find it very enlightening.

The town we are in today is more interesting than the last town, but the people here are not so nice. I sat in the town square famished for 2 hours, and no one was willing to offer food to the poor starving elf girl. T_T It looks like we're going to be here a few days while we wait for the next ferry to come in. On the plus side, Ralph [half-orc martial artist] got a temporary job hunting for river crocodiles. That was fun, and I got some croc stew out of it. =D It was an easy job too; he just had to get in the water and thrash about for a bit, and then poof, a crocodile would pop up and the fishermen with us would spear it.

Later in the evening, the rest of our traveling group came by and said that Sinedentas had gotten word of a temple not far from here that they were going to check out. I was full of croc stew, so I saw no reason to stick around. Ralph and I joined up with everyone else.

Thursday
It's almost dawn, but we're finally here. I'm hungry again. As usual, no one brought any food. Meh. Guess we'll go look around the place.

Friday
So the temple ended up being more interesting than it looked. There were four sections branching off from the central chamber, each with an elemental theme. First we went down the water side. It was really cold down there and we got into a battle with a ton of weird fish people. I passed out half way through the battle; I was so hungry, I couldn't really focus on the things. Kira (gnome cleric) said I almost drowned. That's possible since the room was pretty much a giant cavern lake. I don't really remember much of anything, although I dreamed that I'd visited the Eternal Emperor and he gave me a great banquet. It was sad waking up from that dream, but on the plus side, when I woke up, all the fishy people were dead, and since they were more fish than people, I saw no reason why I couldn't cook a couple of them up for a snack.

We took the fire section next. It was guarded by a great fire elemental, but Ralph booted it in the head. The elemental made a o.O face, like it had never received such a powerful boot to the head before, which it probably hadn't. I don't think most people try kicking fire elementals in the face, if that's what you could really call it. The earth section had a gorgon. I really wanted to climb up on it's back and use this pressure point power I have to immobilize something--kind of like acupuncture, only more useful. It would have looked really cool, but the gorgon wouldn't stay still long enough. It was dead before I could catch up to it. Sadly, neither the fire elemental nor the gorgon were edible. I was starting to get hungry again. In the air section, Treviac found an air archon and negotiated a way to send it back to its plain of existence. That was easy, and I don't think I could have eaten the archon anyways.

Each section had a key. In the water section, the key was held by a man encased in ice floating in the middle of the lake. We melted the ice to get to it, but unfortunately we melted the key too. Using a ritual Kira determined that if we could collect the water from the ice key, it'd still work. We had plenty of empty waterskins so that wasn't a problem. The fire and earth keys were pretty simple. The air key was interesting; it was essentially incorporeal, so we couldn't pick it up. Treviac sucked it into his mouth and spit it into a bottle. I wonder what it tasted like?

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that when we got to the temple Sinedentas's kitten couldn't come in the temple. She said she was leaving it near the entrance so it'd be safe, but it turned out that it really could not enter because the temple was warded against it. It also turned out that the kitten could talk and had told Sinedentas that it was really a 20,000 year old gold dragon and was cursed to look like a kitten. So, this was really why Sinedentas had told us to come to this temple. The kitten told us that we needed to use the keys to access an artifact that would change her back into a dragon. Although most everyone was a little grumpy at not being told the real reason we'd run through the temple, the kitten was so adorable that it was hard to stay angry at it for long--except for Kuroshi [human goth/emo/creepy magic girl] who claimed it was a horrific abomination and needed to die.

When we went to use the keys, a ghost of a pretty young lady appeared--the same one that had appeared a week or so ago while we were camped out. Interestingly enough, there were statues and frescos in the temple that looked like her. She kept waving her hands around--telling us that this was something we shouldn't do. The kitten said that she was the King's wife in life and that she was the one responsible for trapping her in a kitten form, so of course she wouldn't want us to get the artifact. Since pretty much every temple we've been to since arriving in this world has been evil, and one even tried to sacrifice us, really, why would we trust the ghost lady? So, we recovered the artifact, which was an ornate dagger. Kira said it was evil, and I guess she'd know, but that made sense since the temple was evil, so we gave it to the cat, except she wasn't really a cat, but she wasn't a gold dragon either; she was Bastet, one of the twelve (now ten) mini-gods here. We tried attacking her, but that didn't go over so well. She was a lot stronger and faster than the other two gods we'd faced before. We settled for snatching the dagger from her and returning it to the temple, which she conveniently still couldn't enter. Boy was she pissed at us. She summoned a swarm of cats to come into the temple after us, and by swarm I mean thousands upon thousands of cats. We retreated to the giant lake. The cats wouldn't follow us into the lake--good thing because I think they would have eaten us. We did eventually find an alternative exit via an outlet where the water from the lake washed into another cave. Long story short, we pissed off a nasty god--although we at least kept her from keeping the artifact--and discovered that the ghost lady was possibly on our side (the enemy of our enemy is our friend), but otherwise didn't accomplish anything useful. I'm still hungry, and we haven't gotten any closer to finding the kidnapped girl.

The Blog Entry I Almost Forgot to Write

My husband and two oldest sons are off on a trip, and it's just been me and Logan here today. It's been a great day for getting things done, but otherwise it's thrown my daily grove off a bit. Here it is, 10:00 p.m., and I was thinking about going to bed, when I realized I hadn't yet written my blog entry for today. Yep, that pretty much summarizes how today has gone.

Looking down my list of possible topics to write about, two stood out as good bets for today's topic. First was World of Warcraft. The second was D&D narratives and anecdotes. WoW drew my attention because I've been playing it this evening. D&D narratives stood out because I was thinking informal stories, kind of like those told in taverns in D&D, and I have been drinking--not much. =P However, I haven't been drinking mead or elvish wine or anything remotely D&Dish, so I think I'm going to rule out writing about D&D. That's another one to save for next week *after* our D&D game for September. One of these weeks I'm going to post a special Saturday entry narrating our game as it happens, just to give you a taste of Team Sidequest craziness.

Thus, tonight's topic is World of Warcraft. Now, to make things clear right from the start, I am not a diehard WoW fan. I've been playing off and on for maybe 2 years  now. My husband likes it better than I do; I personally still prefer Ragnarok Online, except not how Ragnarok Online is right now, but how it was, and isn't anymore which is why I'm not playing it anymore. You know that was probably a run-on sentence, but I'm tired so I'm not going back to fix it. =P Back on topic... XD Let's start with a brief overview of how I got started playing WoW. Shortly after WoW was initially released, several of our friends started playing it--these were members of Team Sidequest before we called ourselves Team Sidequest. A year later, my husband and I started playing Ragnarok Online--he wanted to write a paper for some class or another while working on his masters degree on an MMORPG game. We picked RO because my cousins played it (also members of Team Sidequest, even though we didn't call ourselves Team Sidequest at that time, except they weren't part of it then) and I really liked the art and character designs. I'd found wallpaper art for the Priest and Knight classes and resolved to cosplay them about 1.5-2 years before we ever picked up the game. For the record, I have cosplayed as the Priest and High Priest classes. I still haven't gotten to do the Knight, and probably won't. XD

For many years, WoW was the game several of our friends played but we didn't, and we'd take turns trying to argue each other away from one game and lure them to the other. During that time, we moved; Shaun finished his masters degree and moved on to his doctoral studies. RO went through various changes, some good, some bad, and most the good came too late, as is sadly the case with many good games. For a little while it was still a decent game; I played mainly for the social atmosphere. However, once my friends from RO and I connected on Facebook and other places, our time on RO faded. Then during his dissertation work, Shaun decided he wanted to use 5 case studies featuring 5 different games from 5 different systems and 5 different genres. He studied Tetris--the cell phone release version, Halo, Wii Sports, Final Fantasy VII, and for the PC he chose World of Warcraft, which at the time was probably the most played PC game around--although it might have been 2nd to The Sims. Given his personal tastes, he chose WoW. And there was much rejoicing, among our friends. So, they set Shaun up with an account, and I borrowed my best friend's account. We poked around played for a little over a month, then quit. Shaun wrote his paper--although really, it was more of a book than a paper since it was made up of chapters and was more than 300 pages long.

Then, several months later, my mom decided she wanted to play WoW, and she wanted someone to play with her, so she gave me one of the trial account things she had so I could start up an account and help walk her through the interface and show her how to play. I played for a couple of weeks until the trial expired. Several more months passed, and everything (literally, everything) was in storage since Shaun had graduated and we were moving to be close to where he worked. We had computers, but no games to play, and for lack of anything better to do, we renewed our WoW accounts. We've been playing off and on since then. We're about to let our accounts expire again--they'll be up in a couple of weeks.

That's basically our history playing the game. Shaun and I like MMO's like WoW because they are games that we can play cooperatively together. There are other games where that kind of play is possible, but I greatly dislike first-person shooters and most any game that requires hand-eye coordination with a few exceptions; that rules out a lot of games. My favorite type of game has been and will always be the fantasy-themed turn-based rpg. WoW works; Shaun and I can play together, and it's close to a genre I really like, so I can forgive the fact that it requires some hand-eye coordination. We tend to compliment each other well in games like WoW, too. He likes wizards, and I like playing healer/tank hybrids. In Ragnarok Online, I played a priestess and eventually a high priestess who could function as both tank and healer for small 2-3 person parties--my husband played a wizard/high wizard, and between the 2 of us we made an awesome team. In WoW, I play a Paladin, and he plays a mage. We still make a pretty good team--questing is easy with a combo like that, and we can even manage to go through at-level instances--maybe a little slower than with a full 5-person group--with just the two of us.

This is really why we play; we like doing things where we work together to achieve a common goal. Part of why we're letting our accounts expire is we're trying to cut expenses and put any extra money we can toward paying off student loans, since we have a lot of those--that's the downside to being over-educated. XD The other reason is that we're really digging into some of the projects for Team Sidequest, the game company. We've got the makings of a zombie card game that should be ready for basic play-testing in the next week, and *might* even be ready to release by the end of the year. We get the same kind of fun out of these projects as we do playing WoW or RO or any other game like that together. One day, it's my dream that we can make a decent living off of making games and comics and our creativity in general. We really love what we do.

The Origins of ... Oh Look, Shiny!!

A few weeks ago, I published a post about where the name Gothic Panda came from. Today, I thought I'd do the same for the name of our gaming company, Team Sidequest. Currently this name belongs to our D&D group, the invisible sponsors of Physics Not Included, the WoW guild led by one of our illustrious D&D group members, and the game company consisting mostly of my husband and I and occasionally a couple of other members of our D&D group. Of all of these manifestations of Team Sidequest, the name has belonged to our D&D group the longest.

Over the years, our D&D group has become notorious for ignoring the main plot and instead would wander off on side quest after side quest. Between 4-5 years ago, we started to jokingly refer to ourselves as Team Sidequest when recapping adventures, since usually it involved describing how we got distracted by the shiny side quest and completely missed the obvious main plot. Sometimes we'd see the plot. We'd know deep down that we should follow the plot. In the end, however, the side quests always drew us away. They were shiny nuggets of goodness added by our Dungeon Master to make the world we played in more well-rounded and exciting. There were many nights where our D.M. would watch us in bewildered wonder as we turned what should have been a 15-30 minute role-playing side adventure into a 3-4 hour fiasco. To make communication between members easier, we started a private Facebook group with the name Team Sidequest, except Facebook failed and in general at least half the group would miss notifications and information on the next game and other such important details. It's worth noting because the Facebook group was when our group officially adopted Team Sidequest as our name.

In that vein, Team Sidequest seemed an appropriate name to apply to the game company my husband and I have been trying to put together. Our only product to date is the Anime RPG book, currently in its beta version. Team Sidequest, the D&D group, has played a large part in the evolution of this book. It is true that my husband wrote the entire thing, and only one other group member really took the time to sit down and hash through the mechanics for the powers (he is rewarded for his time and effort with credit on the cover, and if we ever turn a profit with Team Sidequest, the game company, we might even pay him). Although most of our D&D group had nothing directly to do with the book, they were our faithful guinea pigs when it came to play-testing. They suffered through the alpha version of the book, which never existed in any published format. They still play and offer feedback on the beta version, which helps us as we are editing and preparing the next version. We also expect they will be willing sacrifices when it comes to play-testing future game products we put together.

Team Sidequest also makes an appropriate name for our company as both my husband and I--well mostly me--are easily distracted and tend to wander off on cool ideas we have and neglect whatever our current projects are. We currently have plans for at least two supplements to the Anime RPG along with a revision to the current book--including looking into the Pathfinder system and including a version for that for 3.5 fans plus an e-book release of some kind. Moving away from D&D, we also have plans for nearly a dozen different games--board games, card games, and even a phone app or two. Thankfully, my husband is not nearly as easy to distract as I am; he helps keep us at least a little focused on 1-2 projects at a time, or else we'd probably never actually finish anything.

So, that's where we got the name from and why we chose to apply it to our game company. The logo of the dragon with the crescent moon I actually borrowed from my old cosplay commission business. The commission business was named Lunar Dragon and was my 4th attempt at running a business--Gothic Panda qualifies as #6 and Team Sidequest makes #7 (maybe one of these days I'll write a post about all my various adventures and mis-adventures in the entrepreneurial world). Incidentally this was before the Lunar Dragon game was released--I think it was for Play Station, but I'm not sure and I'm going to be lazy and not look it up right now. =P I really liked the logo we'd designed for that business, so we saw no reason why we couldn't just recycle it into the Team Sidequest logo for the game company since as of yet no other version of Team Sidequest has a logo we might have wanted to reference. So that's where we got the logo you can see printed on the back of the Anime RPG book.