Sharing with Others

One of they joys of playing RPGs is the collaboration. Sitting with other creating a story, or world or even just creating the characters can be such fun. As I said I didn't play until  college and in the years since I haven't gotten to play too much. A few years back I listened to the Penny Arcade, PVP, Wil Wheaton podcasts. Those lead me to the Major Spoilers Critical Hit podcasts.

Critical Hit is really good as they keep it clean and I was able to let my son listen. He then became intersted in play D&D too. I'm not much of a DM but I was able to do a few simple campaigns with him and his less interested sister. My wife even played once with us.

So below is my son's first character, Heskan, the dragonborn warrior.

First Characters

Well D&D month is coming to a close and I'm only getting around to my second post. Maybe this blogging thing isn't for me. Well if there is anyone still reading, hello internet peoples.

I dug up an old sketch book to show the first few characters I made. These drawing would have  been from 1994 or 95. As any artist will tell you it's a bit rough looking back at old art, but all these pieces lead me to the artist I am now.

First up is Kauch, elven thief. As I mentioned in the previous post the first setting I played in was Dark Sun. Elf in the Dark Sun world were very tall and tended to have dreadlocks. They were desert people. The beginning of the game had all the player characters being transported on a slave ship. They then attempted to take over the ship until they were captured again. The most notable part was that my character attempted to hold on to a weapon by clenching it between his but cheeks. It was a cross bow bolt and of no use. Even when the team eventually found a crossbow, no one wanted the bolt.

Next was Tal Jepel, human cleric of lightening. I spent a lot more time working on the back story for this character. The DM and even developed the version of religion he followed. It was primarily based on speed and Tal had an exceptionally high dexterity. His main focus was to have thought and action be one. Sadly after all that work I only got to play him once. 
Back when I drew this picture and the one above I did all of my inking with a tech pen with a tiny point. Tech pens are in my opinion the worst thing to ink with. They give you a dead line with no weight or feeling. You also spend much of your time unclogging them. Thank goodness I eventually discovered brushes.

Finally we Taruk Jepel, human ranger. I thought it was a fun idea to have my characters be related. Taruk was the character that I got to play the longest. By then end his group had slayed a dragon and the decision was made to turn in into a paladin an specifically a dragon slayer. We only played one more game with him in that roll, before the group fell apart. We did play several other one shots, but nothing was as grand or epic as the adventures as Taruk, Reefe and Posius.

To end this post here is a recent drawing of Taruk, Reefe, and Posius. Hopefully you can see that I've improved over the years.

Real men can calculate Thac0

My first set of dice.  Any gamer will tell you picking out your dice is as important as picking your character class.

And now for something completely different. Instead of the usual action figure, I am going to talk about another sort of toy, the polyhedral dice. Specifically those used in the playing of Dungeons and Dragons and other RPGs.

The mighty d20

Now like most kids I was aware of D&D, but had never played it. I knew some kids in high school who played and my school even had a gamers club. Being a shy fellow, I never asked if I could play too. I secretly wanted to though. It wasn't until college, specifically my sophomore year, that I began hanging out with a group of like minded nerds and one proposed a gaming session.

d6s

We went through two sessions with a large group of people. Each had a different DM and a different setting. The first was Dark Sun, in which I played an elven thief, and the second was Ravenloft, in which I played a human cleric. The group eventually whittled down to four and a new game was begun, one that would last most of the year.

Do they even make percentile dice anymore?

The new game was set in just the generic D&D realm. I played a human ranger name Taruk. The co-other of this blog played Reefe, a halfling fight thief. (Yes D&D is how Kir and I became friends The 3rd player was a Minotaur mage. Finally there was our DM, who  to this day is still one of the best DMs I have played with. He was good and both planing things out and playing off the cuff.

So in honor of the good times I had and the friendships I have made, I am kicking off D&D month. I'll be posting pictures of the various characters I've played and the various groups I played in. I may even see if I can scrounge up old drawings from when the characters were first made.

d4 friend of daggers and lower mage spells