Movie Night Pregens

Four boys in a small town in the 80s who are about to have their world turned upside down!

Here are some pregenerated characters for my Movie Night RPG so you can get straight into Season One of your own adventures.

Might be cool if they meet a Companion with special powers...

Grab the game now on DriveThruRPG

Hack Wars

Here is a quick and dirty black hack star wars homage. Strictly a fan appreciation of both.

I highly recommend you check out The Black Hack 2E RPG.

HACK WARS

Movie Night Resources

Here is a link to the free pdf of Movie Night as well as the Character Sheet, Shooting Script and Clapperboards.

The intention was always that this would be an accessible game. That kids, schools or other groups wouldn't have to worry about money if they wanted to have some fun.

To that end, the pdf is free to all. This is all about people sharing and playing.

If you like the game, and I hope you do, you can buy a copy from Lulu for only £3.99 (the price is kept low as you can see). You could buy one copy to run it and give everyone else access to the pdf if you wanted.

The pdf isn't fancy- it's not bookmarked or hyperlinked. Read it on your mobile device, print copies out if you like.

I hope someone gets some enjoyment out of it.

Please share this with your friends.

BUY IT HERE!

Movie Night Clapperboards

Here is a link to the clapperboards for movie night. You can use them to detail your scenes for easy access.

Movie Night Shooting Script

Here is a link to the Shooting Script for Movie Night which you can use to plan out your adventures.

Handy if you want to make something up in a hurry.

Movie Night Character Sheet

Here's a link to the character sheet if you want to print out some more copies.

Have fun!

Movie Night!

Now available in print from Lulu!

Please play around with it, take it apart. Get rid of the stuff you don't like.

It's cheap (£3.99), so don't expect the world from it. It's meant to be a bit of fun.

I'll post up links to character sheets and so on later.

Buy it!

Movie Night

I've made a little roleplaying game.

I was a bit bored of running games like D+D and getting bogged down in round after round of combat rolls and the like. Sometimes you just want to tell and experience a story.

So I came up with a basic system for resolving 'scenes' as a whole. I played it with my daughter, Kitty (who's currently 7, but was 6 when we started). She played a classic fantasy game.

The idea behind the game is a simple way to tell cinematic stories. It's presented as being a way to do classic 80s style films like ET, Monster Squad, The Last Starfighter, Gremlins, Goonies and so on, with a little Stranger Things thrown in for good measure, but includes several story ideas, a full adventure and different settings.

One of my friends is a teacher- he managed to get his kids to play it at school (thanks, Baz!). They enjoyed it and ran it on their own.

I put it through some edits and the like following feedback. The intention is that kids and teachers, etc. can access it at any time. I'll keep the pdf freely accessible and the print version low cost.

It's just over 50 pages of printer-friendly layout. A5 with a full colour cover.

I'm just waiting for a proof print to turn up before I release it to the wild.

The art was done in sketchbook (that's my daughter in silhouette by the way). Logos and layout in inkscape then the textures overlaid in photoshop.

Woodland Warriors

I got a chance to do the cover for the new edition of the Woodland Warriors RPG for Beyond Belief Games (brought to you by the visionary Simon Washbourne of Barbarians of Lemuria, etc.) so I jumped at the chance. It was an opportunity to try something different in a fun style (plus, something I could show my daughter that she might like!)

The concept came out pretty full-formed, even down to the colour palette. I wanted to try and catch an 80s Bakshi, Saturday morning kind of vibe, with a hint of Ghibli thrown in.

The foreground was done with solid linework and mostly flats with one overlay layer of dropshadow. The character designs kept simple and distinct so they would work in a cartoon.

I took the bold step of not drawing the background and fully painted it. Which I think worked out ok. I am really please with those clouds.

There ar a couple of layers of noise and blue over the top for a slight accent to the cartoony feel.

I designed the logo- working up from a font in sketchbook by hand and then converting it to a vector in inkscape.

I think it came out pretty well. I sure had a lot of fun doing it!

You can get a hold of a copy of it here.

More Monkey

The Monkey RPG is kickstarting now so here are a few little insights into the character design process for you.

With such an iconic character as Monkey, you are blessed with both limitations and benefits. You can get away with leaving out a lot of detail as the character pretty much speaks for himself, BUT you do have to make sure you get a few essential  'markers' in there.

Here is an early first pass at him (my very first pass isn't here- those were pretty hardcore. Maybe you'll get to see them someday if I do an interpretation of 'Journey to the West'..)

There are also a couple of detail shots and a linework pic. It's important to always try to capture his humour. He should always look like he's planning something. Or amused at the prospect of what he's planning.

On the detail shots you can see that his belt is a kind of 'championship' belt. A bit  Hercules meets WWE(/F). It speaks to his martial aspect and it bears the symbol for immortality.

His big loin cloth (I do like these. Belts and cloths. Too much Conan, I guess?) says simply 'Monkey King'. He's THAT guy. He has his own name on his crotch.

You also get to see the legendary cloud-jumping/stepping slippers here. I decided to keep them pretty simple.

He wears his tiger pelt. It's one of those 'markers' that he just has to have. I made it an off-the-shoulder affair and have the tail on so I can play with it in movement.

And his eyes "are lit as if with the fires of heaven". He's a god, remember. The kind of god that knows stuff. The kind of god that f@cks sh!t up. He needs to look insightful, devious and cheeky all at once at all times.

If we get enough backers I'll share some more stuff with you. But in the meantime; check out the link, back the game and spread the word...

Monkey

Monkey!

The Kickstarter for this RPG is now live!

Check it out, share it about if you can.

Back it and I get to draw more pictures!

MONKEY!

Character Illustrations

Recent pieces done for various games.

Planeswalker 5E

Due to the release of the very cool Planeshift guide to Zendikar by Wizards (available here) I was inspired to try my hand at a character class for use as a Planeswalker for an epic Magic campaign.

My initial thought was to have it as a Prestige Class to multiclass into to allow for diversity, but I decided to do it as a full class should anyone choose to follow it all the way through.

It makes great use of both mana types and summoning as its main focus. There are a lot of mana powers to choose from to allow for diversity- to be honest I could have gone on here, but I wanted to keep the amount of powers available to each colour the same. People can easily make up their own powers using this framework- it would be cool to see a Devotion ability, Dmir powers or other particular planeswalker tap abilities.

This is all just for fun. Hopefully someone will find some use in it.

Appologies for the hasty formatting- I made it without access to my editing suite.

Obviously, everything in here is copyright of WOTC. Everything. The art is randomly grabbed to fit and is all copyright of the artists.

New Version: 29/07/16

 

The Riddle of Steel

"What is best in life?"

I was kindly approached to do the cover for the Collector's Edition of Barbarians of Lemuria. This one was for the hardcore fans who had backed the kickstarter at high levels.

Out of many concepts, the simple sword on black was chosen. No text. The people who have this would know what it was.

This is the sword of thr main hero, Krongar (essentially Conan). It is engraved with runes down its blade. I draped some teal beads around the hilt for some colour and interest (they're from a princess which he saved from a sea beast).

I rendered it quite highly, with loads of layers of textures painted on. I also added a little dynamism with some flames sparking out. I used a two-tone light effect to increase the depth. There is a blue light on one side and a red light on the other.

I'm pleased with how this came out.

Crimson Blades illustrations

Director's cut! Or Deleted Scenes!

Here are the internal inages which I did for the fantastic Crimson Blades 2nd Edition.

These are the unedited versions. The final pieces were all framed to fit into the same sized landscape and panoramic panels so they could slot straight into the final layout.

(I tweaked the final castle pic on the go, so it's sized into its border, hence no alternate version).

The game is a very 60/70's dark fantasy one and we focused on trying to maintain an aspect of that in the art.

It's fun getting to play with heavy blacks again.

Crimson Blades

Crimson Blades

Here is a blow-by-blow of process shots for the Crimson Blades cover which I did for Beyond Belief Games.

We wanted to invoke a classic pulp feel. Strong blacks, red and white were on the mood board.

I chose to overlay a painted texture on the blacks to give it more of a 60s/70s feel. To suggest the magic and mystery in the game. It also served to unify the design by bringing it together more. The original blacks popped a little too much.

All work done in Sketchbook on Galaxy Note.

The process is hopefully fairly clear from the shots, but if anyone has any questions, let me know.