Traveller Reskins: 10 dTon Fighter

Count the 20 squares!

After the Scouts and Trader, I encountered a designer's block with the Far Trader design, and decided to try something smaller and simpler for a change. That proved to be a bad decision, as the Small Crafts are very vaguely defined in the Traveller main rulebook, and the plans still manage to contain all kind of contradictions. Of course, it could be asked that is there even a point in trying to come up with a top-down floorplan for a single-seat spacecraft such as the fighter, but that is another kettle of fish altogether.

Since there is an online version of Traveller SRD that includes the High Guard supplement, my next step was to go there and try to figure out whether the apparent contradictions could be solved using that resource. Instead, things just got muddier, and I realized that although I could use High Guard to craft the kind of ships I wanted, they would eventually end up resembling nothing like the ships in the main rulebook, stat-wise. For example, a 10 dTon ship with a power plant big enough to power a single laser could have a Thrust of 12, whereas in the main rulebook the Thrust of a fighter is only 6. But my plan was not to redesign the ships from the ground-up, just to provide upgraded visuals. So after some headscratching, I went back to the original designs, and decided just to approximate them, making sure that the things like Cargo space would match the tonnage given in the rulebook, and just roughly eyeball the rest.

In the end, I came up with two designs I liked, and with a different function to boot. The Aerospace Fighter is quite close in design to the the in the rulebook, and performs much the same role, having a streamlined hull and thus the ability to perform both planetary and system-wide missions. The Interceptor, on the other hand is a pure starfighter, with a distributed hull and not having even landing gear. What it does have, however, is an airlock, so that it can dock with other spacecraft easily, and of course the airlock can be used as an extra transport space.

D&D 5th Character Cards - Shimmie, 3rd level Fighter

Next up on the Oldgate Constabulary, I deemed that the PCs might need some extra muscle from time to time, and decided to give them a fighter companion. Here I had a bit of a problem with the ability scores, as I did not quite want to go with the 'tough, dumb brute' archetype, although Shimmie here clearly veers to that direction. But rather than being the drooling 'Yes, Boss' doorstop, Shimmie is streetwise rather than booksmart, and although he bores easily with theory and extensive planning, he can and does use tactics. I also see him actually reinforcing the stereotype intentionally, to gain edge against less savvy opponents. I am somewhat tempted to actually bump up the mental stats a bit, and lower the Dexterity score.

Shimmie was also created using the default ability scores. And since his backstory was inspired by the Midnight Oil song Jimmy Sharman's Boxers, I gave him a slightly modified  Gladiator background, although in a way a Folk Hero might have worked as well. And like with Wilf, for the ease of play I chose him the Champion fighter archetype, which gives mostly static bonuses.

Although Shimmie is rather easy-going and even cheerful in familiar company, he's quite reluctant to talk about his past before joining the Watch, for which he has quite respect for.

I'm also considering implementing a house rule that allows the final blow to render the target unconscious rather that dead to only apply to weapons causing bludgeoning damage. Any other weapon can be used in this way too, but they are less suited for it and thus attacks to knock out are done with disadvantage with these weapons.

Quick Vrusk sketch

While finally doing some other Travellers of the Frontier -stuff (more of that later), I needed to take a break, and felt like I needed some freeform after all that meticulous design work I had been doing. While going through my files for the spacecraft re-design project, I came across some of my early drafts for converting - or rather, re-imagining, the insectoid Vrusk species (as well as the rest of the major alien races) from TSR's Star Frontiers RPG to Mongoose Traveller, and felt like trying my hand in drawing one. I've previously done some miniature conversions of the Vrusk in 28mm scale, and the image is loosely based on those figures. I ran out of space on the sketchpad, and thus the abdomen/leg section is quite a bit contracted here, as the Vrusk should stand as tall as a human.

The draft seriously needs some expanding and editing, but I think I can get something out of this. And I think I might try the other species as well. Yazirian, most likely, as I have the the miniatures for those as well.

D&D 5th Character Cards - Wilf Mulberry, 3rd level Rogue

Even before I had the books, I had decided that I would try an urban campaign this time. And rather than having the PCs be some miscellaneous vagrants who just happen to stumble upon stuff, I wanted them to be a part of the establishment, in order to give them clear reasons to investigate the strange goings-on in the city. Thus was born Constabulary of Oldgate of the Highcliffe City Watch.

For the first character, I wanted a rogue who would work on the right side of the law. Initially I was on the fence whether Detective Wilf Mulberry was to be a Halfling or a Gnome, but then the tinkerer aspect of Rock Gnomes sealed the deal. And the +2 to intelligence was not to be scoffed at, either.

I gave Wilf a modified Acolyte background, being brought up by the church of Hieronymus, the God of Knowledge, with his sister, thus gaining proficiency in History and Insight. However, unlike his sister, Wilf never felt that his calling was to devote his whole life to the church, and although he still is quite reverent towards the ideals of his patron God, he wanted to find another way to utilize his skills and knowledge in the wider world.

Wilf is quite serious and a bit of an introvert, and tends to get carried away in finding mechanical solutions to problems both in his career and in his personal life, to the consternation of his colleagues and Captain Anneke in particular. He is easy to be underestimated or even ignored, a fact that he has used to his advantage in several occasions. He is usually moderately but neatly dressed, but rather than his own fastidiousness, this has to do with the diligence of his landlady, an elderly Coastlander widow who seems to have taken Wilf as her pet project.

Wilf was built using the default ability scores, as I wanted to see what kind of characters these would yield. He is also not very optimized, as I did not want NPCs that would easily outshine the PCs, and also ones that would be relatively easy to play, mechanically speaking. Had I made Wilf a PC, I think I would have gone the Arcane Trickster route rather than the Thief, and would probably have made him a Forest Gnome instead. But to round up the group of investigators that make up the Constabulary of Oldgate, he's a fine addition.

D&D 5th edition Character Cards

Ever since we pried open the 'Holmes' D&D box back in the day, and jotted down our very first RPG characters, DIY was the name of the game. I'm not sure if that edition even had any pre-printed character sheets, and if it did, photocopying them would not have been a walk in the park it is today. But we had pencils, and paper, and later whole notebooks to fill up with all the character details. So maybe it's a remnant from those days, or maybe it's just the way my brain functions, but even today if I need to really grasp how a RPG system - well, at least the character generation aspect of it - works, I do it best by designing a character sheet. For me, that is the way to see what is essential, and how the different parts mesh up with each other.

So, as my interest towards the 5th edition of D&D increased end eventually led me to purchase the rulebooks - first full core rules of any version of D&D I've had, by the way - the first thing I needed was some character sheets. At first I toyed with the idea of using some pre-made sheets, but then I remembered an idea I had had for Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, character cards for the NPCs where at the front side would be the name, picture, and similar information that the players could see, and at the other side there would be all the relevant game statistics for the GM. Of course, in WFRP the game mechanics are much more easily condensed than in D&D, but that just added one extra bit of challenge to the project. Of course I could not hope to cram everything in a space that would be slightly smaller than a regular postcard, but I figured that I could fit enough shorthand notes of the relevant information, and to find the rest of the stuff from the rules during the game.

The watercolour splash background for the character illustrations is a visual cue from the rulebooks which I liked; it also frees me from trying to come up with backgrounds for each image. In fact I made a couple of such shapes, and saved them as a mask layer in a PhotoShop document, so that I can easily give each splash a colour scheme that fits whatever character they are used for.

On the game mechanics side, I tried to keep the information simple and modular, so that a character would have only those weapons they are likely to use, spellcasting stats are of course class-dependant, and so on. I would of course need to have a separate sheet to keep track of current Hit Points, used HD, and spells and Spell Slots for casters, but other that that, I think most things are being covered.

One way to take this even further would be have the same style for the 'Name' side of cards, but have a different reverse side for detailed NPCs (antagonists or those likely to tag along), background NPCs (with motivations and RP cues), and monsters (mostly combat stats and tactics).

Wilf Mulberry - Digital colouring

After I was satisfied with the outlines, it was time to splash on some colour. In Photoshop, this usually involves building a whole bunch of masks to isolate different areas, and their numbers tend to go up as the drawing is in progress. In Procreate, this kind of process is fortunately not needed, as it is very simple to just turn an area you have just coloured into masked, isolated instance.

So instead of creating masks, I first made separate layers for each piece of clothing, skin, hair, etc. After everything was applied a flat colour base, I then alpha-locked each layer, essentially masking out everything else from that layer. In this way no matter what I would thereafter do with the colouring of that particular item, the results would be applied only to that predetermined area, and it made using texture bushes for example very neat and simple. And although I could not find a way to set a brush to Multiply or Screen as I used to in PhotoShop, it was just as easy to make new layer, make a selection based on the layer I wanted, and then to set the whole layer on Multiply, Overlay or whatever I wanted, and then merge that layer with the previous one. Working with layers instead of masks felt a bit weird at first, but pretty soon it became a natural way to work.

And just as with PhotoShop, I found that I tinkered way too much with minutea. I need to devise a simpler, more efficient way to apply shadows and highlights to the base colour, be done with it, and then texture it for my liking. But apart from that, I find Procreate a very user-friendly tool, and I especially like the fact that I can use it wherever I have iPad with me. For example, I dabbled with this image a bit while waiting for my wife in a car. I did not have my stylus with me, but colouring works quite well even with just your fingers, especially if the layers are properly alpha-locked beforehand. But as with any digital painting tool so far, the hardest thing for me is to realize when a piece is ready, when it is time to stop.

Horn-cry of Buckland T-shirt design

Occasionally, I get ideas for a t-shirt, but seldom do anything about them, and even more rarely have them finalized. This one breaks the mold, as I even got it printed. Twice, even, as the first shirt had a small print error on it, and I got the second, corrected one for free after reclamation. Nice service, and I fully intend to do more t-shirts by this company, when I get around to design them.

The phrase "Awake! Fear, Fire, Foes! Awake!" is of course from the chapter The Scouring of the Shire from the Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien, where it is used to transliterate a horn-call in times of trouble. I had had the text design ready for a while in InDesign, and initially my intention was to make the shirt just by using the ring design. It did not feel complete, though, and eventually I realized what was lacking. Still, it took a while until I finally managed to muster myself to draw the horn design. My first draft was a bit more heraldric in design, but it drifted towards the more naturalistic one during the sketching process. And yes, I realize that the name of the Shire province, Buckland, most likely refers to the bucks of the deer variety. However as in the Finnish translation the region is called 'Pukinmaa', the land of the ram, I instinctively went for the more domesticated species. In either case, the shape of the horn itself is pure fantasy. The drawing itself is traditional black ink on paper, although for the design I had to invert it for it to work as a negative. The colours are those traditionally favoured by Hobbits, and also inspired by the fact that my wife has a Riverdance t-shirt that utilized this colour scheme.

So, I now have a t-shirt that say I like Lord of the Rings. But most importantly, it also says that I Liked Lord of the Rings Way Before It Was Cool and if You Have Only Seen The Movies You Won't Most Likely Even Get The Reference. Which, of course, is the most important thing ;-p

Digital Inks - Wilf Mulberry, take two

After the - let’s say less than stellar - first outing with the Jot Touch, I’ve had more experience with the stylus, and have grown more accustomed to it’s qualities. There’s still a bit disconnect with how I would like it to perform, and what it actually does, but I’ve grown a lot more confident with it, and the variance of style compared to traditional ink and paper does not bother me that much anymore. One thing I found that was quite a good exercise for both fiddling with the brush styles and the flow of the strokes was to try some calligraphy with the stylus. These exercises helped to drive home the differences and how to alleviate them.

But although the process - and the result - was smoother than before, there’s still a lot of room for improvement. I still had to do some lines several times over, although a big reason for this was that the sketch was less clear than I could hoped for. Also I still haven’t had to nerve to tear off the screen protector, partially because it might not be the cause of some of the issues I’m having, and for other uses the iPad is utilized, I think the protector is a good idea. Although it is starting to peel off at the edges a bit already, so I guess I’m just waiting for an organic moment to remove the protector film and then to see if it has any effect.

So, here’s the second attempt at Wilf Mulberry. Besides the difference in style, I also this time tried to account for the fact that I intend to colour the drawing at a later date, and thus the detailing and texturing was left to minimum. In a way, I kind of like the rougher, less polished first attempt, and that sort of style might work pretty well for some purely black&white drawings, perhaps with some rougher set of brushes as well. But for as a base for the coloured artwork, the more polished style works better, I think.

Digital Inks - Wilf Mulberry, take one

Getting the Adonit Jot Touch Pixelpoint stylus was one thing - learning to draw with it was whole thing entirely. As I have mentioned, I'm not a complete stranger to digital drawing tools, having had a small Vacom pad back in the day when Macs still had their own interface for peripherals. But even then I did not even dream of actually drawing with it, at least for anything like line art. One of the reasons was simply that I liked - and still do - the tactile feel of using a real ink pen on paper, and those early Vacoms just could not offer that kind of precision and feedback I wanted. It had it's uses in colouring the illustrations, sure, but I never took the steps required to take it any further.

With Procreate, I decided to give the digital drawing another shot. Even though I mostly do stuff just to amuse myself these days, more often than not I end up using my drawings in one digital format or another, so getting there as soon as possible just makes sense. Well, okay, I also thought that I was perhaps a bit behind the times. Can't have that, now, can I?

The sketch layer if in light blue.
This way, I found it was easier
to tell the sketch apart from the inks.

So there I was, sitting with a stylus in hand, trying to find the courage to begin. 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons had rekindled my interest in RPGs, so I thought that the most natural thing for me to get my feet wet was to draw a character portrait. I had made a quick sketch of a Gnome investigator, Wilf Mulberry, scanned it and imported it to the iPad. Then, using the stylus just as I would a regular ink pen, I started to draw the ink lines.

Pretty soon I realized that although drawing with stylus was kind of similar to traditional drawing, it still was a totally different tool and would take some time to master. The first hurdle was to was to customize a brush that would function somewhat similarly to the ink pens I'm used to. I also noticed that unlike pen and paper, fast strokes are easier to make and trace much more smoothly that slow, long ones. This is something I have found hard to adjust to, as it is quite counterintuitive to me.

Also, at times when I change drawing angle or orientation of the pad, new lines after that may be a couple of millimeters off. Since this happens also when I'm using my finger, this might be a limitation in the iPad itself, or might have something to do with the screen protector I've applied. It's annoying, but not a dealbreaker, especially as it is so easy to undo any 'wrong' lines. Too easy, in fact. I'm a bit worried that I grow too accustomed to 'editing' the lines. That's one thing I like about traditional inks, every line you make is a commitment.

These are, however, just minor niggles. Although the first drawing was a bit rough, it was still manageable and most importantly, ended up looking like something drawn by me. Inking in Procreate does take some adjustments to my regular style, but for example the fact that I need to learn to make more faster and decisive lines is something that will likely improve my style and workmanship on the whole. I also noticed that I might need to make my initial pencil sketches a bit more accurately than previously, so that I don't have to guess and redraw so much during the inking. The whole process was perhaps not as smooth as I would have hoped for, but neither was it discouraging, and I'm pretty sure this will not be the last time I'll dabble with digital inks.