crys-makes-art

[crys-makes-art]

And a closeup of her very beautiful face and kind, bright eyes c:

If there is one thing I hate doing - it would be character ref sheets, but since I wanted to add Measse (or Chainsinger as she would be listed there) to my Artfight profile I kind of needed to make one.

Portrait still upcoming and I will probably sketch out two wing options AND her metal chimera form, but good grief it takes far too much time already.

[crys-makes-art]

If there is one thing I hate doing - it would be character ref sheets, but since I wanted to add Measse (or Chainsinger as she would be listed there) to my Artfight profile I kind of needed to make one.

Portrait still upcoming and I will probably sketch out two wing options AND her metal chimera form, but good grief it takes far too much time already.

[crys-makes-art]

Starting the Artfight this year with a revenge against @rowscara featuring our beloved Halthwyn! Tragically - so little free time this year for art, so AF pictures are likely all going to be these simple headshots

[crys-makes-art]

Can't promise anything, but I am dutifully crawling towards Artfight. Might even add a dew new characters - specifically from WoW and from the Crys Cinematic Universe

[crys-makes-art]

Some sketches I have done for both Uluthana setting guide as well as for the one-shot game I am preparing for my IRL friends!

[crys-makes-art]

Still slowly chipping at this project, almost done with the general system overview and ready to delve into outlining play structure, character creation and, of course, need to also write down quite a bit about playable lineages - one for now, Wave-Tamers c:

This is going to be so unplayable!

Crys Makes a Game (II)

Some more updates from me working on various bits related to the Uluthana TTRPG, as a continuation of THIS POST

Not counting some minor additions or changes to the previously written text I have done some work with writing down some things regarding equipment. Selection so far is, of course, very bare bones, but acts more as a proof of concept on how it exactly works and looks

Another thing I was thinking about is consumable equipment, both as something that is simply used up and as something with charges that can be replenished. So fair I am fairly fond of regulating this with the Usage Die mechanic I have definitely seen used in some games

Another thing, however, I am working on is translating this brainstorming and work-in-progress document into a cleaned up Word document to act as a proper system reference document, here are some of stuff I have done so far :D

As you can see there are also mentions of Luck and Attitude Dice.

More or less Luck Die is used to see the chance of something being true when no answer is immediately obvious, it is not something covered by character skills and when either random stroke of luck won't make or break the situation or only blind luck can really save the day. Not to be overused, but something to have handy.

Example I: Character is wondering if bookkeeper they are visiting in Baylar would have any Drakkan culinary books. While not something terribly out of ordinary it would be a curious find, so d20 is rolled and comes up at 14. They do have one, it is from the Heartlands.

Example II: Character is escaping from a pursuit and aims to hide in one of the crates near the warehouses in the docks. Luck Die is rolled to see what they find in the first crate they check. It comes up at 7 to reveal a crate full of metal ingots

Attitude Die (modified by situational bonuses) is used when the initial disposition of an NPC towards the player characters is not immediately obvious to the gamemaster. Only worst and best results respectively would mean immediately hostile or helpful person, while the rest would mean either neutrality or certain degrees of sympathy or negativity.

Example: party have met a traveling bard on the backcountry road and look to ask him about the area. As his attitude is not immediately obvious gamemaster rolls a d8 with no modifiers - it comes up at 2, oh noes. He is not immediately hostile, but definitely very wary of the group of armed individuals approaching him!

[crys-makes-art]

[crys-makes-art]

I have been working more on making a... functional and readable (and hyperlinked!) Word document as well as making some additions to my WIP notes and happy to share!

In my WIP file the most significant additions so far were my notes on enemy tiers and some notes on crafting!

Crys Makes a Game (II)

Some more updates from me working on various bits related to the Uluthana TTRPG, as a continuation of THIS POST

Not counting some minor additions or changes to the previously written text I have done some work with writing down some things regarding equipment. Selection so far is, of course, very bare bones, but acts more as a proof of concept on how it exactly works and looks

Another thing I was thinking about is consumable equipment, both as something that is simply used up and as something with charges that can be replenished. So fair I am fairly fond of regulating this with the Usage Die mechanic I have definitely seen used in some games

Another thing, however, I am working on is translating this brainstorming and work-in-progress document into a cleaned up Word document to act as a proper system reference document, here are some of stuff I have done so far :D

As you can see there are also mentions of Luck and Attitude Dice.

More or less Luck Die is used to see the chance of something being true when no answer is immediately obvious, it is not something covered by character skills and when either random stroke of luck won't make or break the situation or only blind luck can really save the day. Not to be overused, but something to have handy.

Example I: Character is wondering if bookkeeper they are visiting in Baylar would have any Drakkan culinary books. While not something terribly out of ordinary it would be a curious find, so d20 is rolled and comes up at 14. They do have one, it is from the Heartlands.

Example II: Character is escaping from a pursuit and aims to hide in one of the crates near the warehouses in the docks. Luck Die is rolled to see what they find in the first crate they check. It comes up at 7 to reveal a crate full of metal ingots

Attitude Die (modified by situational bonuses) is used when the initial disposition of an NPC towards the player characters is not immediately obvious to the gamemaster. Only worst and best results respectively would mean immediately hostile or helpful person, while the rest would mean either neutrality or certain degrees of sympathy or negativity.

Example: party have met a traveling bard on the backcountry road and look to ask him about the area. As his attitude is not immediately obvious gamemaster rolls a d8 with no modifiers - it comes up at 2, oh noes. He is not immediately hostile, but definitely very wary of the group of armed individuals approaching him!

[crys-makes-art]

Crys Makes a Game (II)

Some more updates from me working on various bits related to the Uluthana TTRPG, as a continuation of THIS POST

Not counting some minor additions or changes to the previously written text I have done some work with writing down some things regarding equipment. Selection so far is, of course, very bare bones, but acts more as a proof of concept on how it exactly works and looks

Another thing I was thinking about is consumable equipment, both as something that is simply used up and as something with charges that can be replenished. So fair I am fairly fond of regulating this with the Usage Die mechanic I have definitely seen used in some games

Another thing, however, I am working on is translating this brainstorming and work-in-progress document into a cleaned up Word document to act as a proper system reference document, here are some of stuff I have done so far :D

As you can see there are also mentions of Luck and Attitude Dice.

More or less Luck Die is used to see the chance of something being true when no answer is immediately obvious, it is not something covered by character skills and when either random stroke of luck won't make or break the situation or only blind luck can really save the day. Not to be overused, but something to have handy.

Example I: Character is wondering if bookkeeper they are visiting in Baylar would have any Drakkan culinary books. While not something terribly out of ordinary it would be a curious find, so d20 is rolled and comes up at 14. They do have one, it is from the Heartlands.

Example II: Character is escaping from a pursuit and aims to hide in one of the crates near the warehouses in the docks. Luck Die is rolled to see what they find in the first crate they check. It comes up at 7 to reveal a crate full of metal ingots

Attitude Die (modified by situational bonuses) is used when the initial disposition of an NPC towards the player characters is not immediately obvious to the gamemaster. Only worst and best results respectively would mean immediately hostile or helpful person, while the rest would mean either neutrality or certain degrees of sympathy or negativity.

Example: party have met a traveling bard on the backcountry road and look to ask him about the area. As his attitude is not immediately obvious gamemaster rolls a d8 with no modifiers - it comes up at 2, oh noes. He is not immediately hostile, but definitely very wary of the group of armed individuals approaching him!

[crys-makes-art]

Finally, another update!

Showing some things I have talked previously in one of the reblogs c:

Equipment and economic system! For those who would like to have a more detailed approach to simulating economics the explanatory lore text in finished document will provide information on how economic works for various places in the world!

As a consequence of my approach to assume hit points to be more of a "fatigue" or "stamina" if you want to put it this way, the existing healing magic and items are mostly geared at dealing with wounds, illnesses and curses, rather than actively healing HP in combat.

It also makes situation of "Our Fighter got chewed by a dragon, skewered by a death knight and fell from a tower, but they got 8 hours of sleep to help it" less of an issue.

General overview of the combat system. With the initiative rolling I think the most important part is "makes sense". I don't think it makes a lot of sense to roll separate initiatives for five mindless undead, just one to see if they or party act first would suffice.

A quick look at basic weapon and armor types. Weapons beyond this separate into types (say, daggers, longswords, rifles or something more unique to particular region like dragonhorn longbows, psychic whips or kesal-feather war fans)

In terms of heavy armour possibly dragging out the fight with damage reduction, well, yes, this is the point of it, to make damaging wearer harder, but it also, normally, has no effect on spell damage and several types of weapon would in fact have their special trait unlocked by specializing in this type to bypass some of it.

I have also adjusted lineage and universal traits shown previously to all count as universal and instead added this three uniquely Wave-Tamer traits. I think most of "character perk" traits unrelated to particular talent trees should be universal, while perks for specific lineages should be a bit more... Fancy? Flavourful? Very unique?

Next stop? Probably outline so specific examples for the weapons and armour to start with, then add up some optional rulesand clarifications, information on how trainers for the skills work and take a look at skill system a bit closer with how it works in combat, world interactions and social sphere.

Crys makes a... game?

One of my little project for this year, that I will hopefully be focused enough to see through the end is making a homebrew TTRPG system specifically to run Uluthana adventures.

Current goalpost is to make functioning prototype for one of the available lineages with the playtest adventure to throw with it. I think I will be sharing and documenting process here using the "uluthana chronicles the game" as a tag

As of now I have a few notes on the character creation, level advancement and overall idea for the first to be playable lineage to share. Next stop is to outline character traits for them, skills and take a look at combat, magic and equipment systems.

A lot of numerical values are obviously up for a review as I will be going with putting things together. Ultimately I want to keep the whole thing relatively simple and straightforward. No 300 page rulebooks with hundreds of spells and a ton of combat information.

[crys-makes-art]

Today is the birthday of yours truly. Hooray to me finishing another celestial rotation.

If you want to do something nice in celebration of me being annoying here for another full year here are some suggestions:

Deposit your birthday wishes on this post if you want ;u;

Check out my art and worldbuilding here at @crys-makes-art or on my Boosty, send asks about those even

Send me your favourite memes. The weirder and more specific - the better

There is a youtuber I really enjoy - Lemon with The Backlogs channel, who does challenge runs of games. The saddest thing for me in relation to YouTube not working well in Russia these days is that I can't receive updates on the Firebomb Academy shenanigans. Go show Lemon some love, will you?

Donate to some kind of charity with a good cause or help someone out today. Maybe treat yourself

[crys-makes-art]

Aight *cracks knuckles* what do people *eat*?

Trade offer - send me a topic and I will provide an insight into Uluthana based on it

Hohoho! This is actually something I have wrote about on Discord previously and need to eventually rework into a longform articles, but to give you a general rundown about some of the cultures from the standpoint of "reasonably average experience"

Drakkan (artificially created dragonkin)

Northern, main area is hills, mountains, tundra - most carnivorous among them, diet is heavily based on meat, innards, bones and blood heavily utilised in cooking

Western, main area is an archipelago - diet is heavily based on seafood, both meat and plant sides, do a lot of salting

Eastern, main area is mixed forests, hills, etc - most vegetarian among them, rich and wide selection of spices, cooking can be amazingly good - or amazingly bad, ymmw

Southern, main area is plains and prairie, warm - a lot of fruits and vegetables, generally refreshing and small-portioned dishes

Continental, main area is heartland in the middle - typically a mix of several regional approaches. Pickle fiends, will pickle the unpickleable

Wave-Tamers (near-human culture from the far North, techno-vikings with elementals)

Due to their circumstances of heavy resource preservation and efficiency a lot of their food is very practical and filling, not necessarily restaurant-presentable.

They do practice eating things very fresh and do have more celebratory exciting food this often being either something exotic from the South or impressively complicated seafood dishes. Ice-wraith sea serpent is considered a very expensive delicacy.

Starkin (mostly nomadic antho-canine with deep ties to celestial magic)

A lot of very varied approaches to food preservation for the journey and access to extremely varied arrange of ingredients due to trading.

Starkin are so-so omnivorous, but do better with meat available. As they do travel with their livestock they do have a lot of things related to dairy in their rations.

Their robust physique does allow them to enjoy sauces and spices that would be dangerous for many other species!

Hish-Shai (very religious anthro-serpents with a penchant for blood magic)

Due to the whole snake thing they do swallow their food whole which does affect the style of preparation quite a bit. They do love their eggs, their soups and making their food into neat chunks or bundles to don't have need to chew.

They also do eat less frequently and often have only one big meal a day (closer to midday) and a much smaller oner (around sunset)

Forest Folk (symbiotic life forms between anthro-felines and plants)

As symbiosis bit implies they do have a lot of plant stuff going on and their main way of regaining energy and eating is to photosynthesize, drink mineral rich water and maybe eat something meaty now and then.

But most of them do go to take a good sunbath here and now, doing a little catnap in a particularly nice spots.

[crys-makes-art]

Trade offer

You: send me any sort of ask or topic as specific or broad as you want

I: will give a short rundown of this topic in relation to Uluthana, my original setting.

(Currently I am chipping at longform articles about social stratification in different cultures there at the request of a player from my DnD group and about different economic systems - for the Uluthana ttrpg)

[crys-makes-art]

Buckle up because...

[crys-makes-art]

Following the conclusion of the Raccoon Poll on my main blog - (CLICK) I am very excited to present you the...

Tumblr-accurate Raccoon!

As opposed to, say, scientifically-accurate.

[crys-makes-art]

Some more progress to share today! Outline of rules for the skill testing and spellcasting - yes, I love magic, you can use magic a lot, however...

Also as you can see some of rules and idea I will introduce would be optional that can be tacked onto the main system or removed if you don't particularly vibe with them

Then we have a closer look on the outline for Wave-Tamer basic suggested skills as well as a bit of an explanation for how Skill (General) works compared to Skill (Specific) on the example of weapon usage.

It works in the overall same way for any other skill, really. General ones would give an overall grasp of the topic or field and in many cases just having a general idea how Free Cities work would be fairly enough, but having a more specific knowledge of certain social classes there or specific organizations would make interacting with specifically them much easier!

Here you can also take a look at three premade backgrounds and an overall template I have made to cook those up at home. In essence you pick one thing your character is really good at, two things they have a decent amount of training in and two things they don't really know much about.

Medic from the example below is focused on knowing things and decently good at interacting with people and knowing their way around magic, but they are bad with actual combat and don't have any particularly unusual skills.

Guard on the other hand is their best with combat and has some useful skill outside of the typical groups, while being okay at magic and really not that great with social side or, god forbid, academia.

And here are some background traits being referenced, as another group of traits alongside the ones related to either of two branches of talents and powers related to the lineage.

Crys makes a... game?

One of my little project for this year, that I will hopefully be focused enough to see through the end is making a homebrew TTRPG system specifically to run Uluthana adventures.

Current goalpost is to make functioning prototype for one of the available lineages with the playtest adventure to throw with it. I think I will be sharing and documenting process here using the "uluthana chronicles the game" as a tag

As of now I have a few notes on the character creation, level advancement and overall idea for the first to be playable lineage to share. Next stop is to outline character traits for them, skills and take a look at combat, magic and equipment systems.

A lot of numerical values are obviously up for a review as I will be going with putting things together. Ultimately I want to keep the whole thing relatively simple and straightforward. No 300 page rulebooks with hundreds of spells and a ton of combat information.

[crys-makes-art]

For today I have outlined character traits related to elemental power and the artifice, next stop - skills and backgrounds plus a selection of universal traits.

Those would be the powers mentioned with the elementals and traits related to them - how I so far envision magic is to make it more... Free-form? And more focused on "tell me what you want to do and we will go from there", because it both makes more sense for how I see the setting, will save me from codifying hundreds of spells and, idk, feels a bit more fun to me.

And those are outlined traits related to the artifice branch of the Wave-Tamers talents: some about making new things, some about having signature item and the other about interacting with the old tech. Yes, there are power armor if you know where to find it, yes.

Crys makes a... game?

One of my little project for this year, that I will hopefully be focused enough to see through the end is making a homebrew TTRPG system specifically to run Uluthana adventures.

Current goalpost is to make functioning prototype for one of the available lineages with the playtest adventure to throw with it. I think I will be sharing and documenting process here using the "uluthana chronicles the game" as a tag

As of now I have a few notes on the character creation, level advancement and overall idea for the first to be playable lineage to share. Next stop is to outline character traits for them, skills and take a look at combat, magic and equipment systems.

A lot of numerical values are obviously up for a review as I will be going with putting things together. Ultimately I want to keep the whole thing relatively simple and straightforward. No 300 page rulebooks with hundreds of spells and a ton of combat information.