wehavekookies

[wehavekookies]

Happy International Tiger Day

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This little shit again. I love him.

Mahadi, a character I play in our City of Mist campaign.

[wehavekookies]

Hey, hey! I was just reblogging one of your posts and I noticed it was City of Mists! That's a game I've been reading about to run for other people. Hope you don't mind me asking: How have you been finding the system? Anything you as a player like or dislike? Thanks and love your art always!

Hello!

In general I do like it a lot! The tag system was something that took me a moment to wrap my head around, not to understand because this is quite straightforward, but to understand the crunch behind it. But it grew on me and I really enjoy the more narrative / descriptive aspects of the stats. It is very flexible and lets you do tons with the character, and that's I think my favorite part of the game.

I am not entirely sure how I feel about the mechanics as such yet. We did play 20 sessions of our campaign, but we are quite heavy on the long roleplaying scenes so nuances of the mechanics don't come up as often. We had for example over that time only two combat encounters (actually one proper, the other one was more like a confrontation, but with a combat feel to it), one card crack and flip on one character and no one had a chance to even use stuff like Dynamite! or Stop. Holding. Back yet, so a lot is still ahead of us. But in general I do enjoy the mechanics, they are easy to grasp and fast to follow. I would perhaps miss a bit of a board game more strategic aspects of combat (the combat is much more narrative in this one), but we have a dnd campaign alongside this one so I'm good, lol.

I really like the Intro Monologue and Downtime aspects of the session structure. We don't entirely follow these within a single session (tho we do an Intro at the start of every game), usually its two session of investigations and then a session of downtime - so this one gets quite elaborate, not just a short wrap up as the book suggests. But in comparison to other campaigns I played where you mostly act as a party it is cool to have space to see characters living their lives outside of the crew, showing a bit of what not always makes it to the screen as a part of main action and such. I know it can be done in other systems too but this one introduces it as one of the core moves so it comes in as a more natural part of the gameplay. And the Intros are very fun! It's something I wasn't sure if I will like at the start but opening a session with character's inner thoughts or commentary really adds to the game. Love it.

The one thing I'm always unsure about with systems like these (CoM, or PbtA games) is the lack of milestone leveling up. It makes sense for CoM there isn't one and it's irrelevant in one-shots or mini campaigns, but with longer campaign it may happen that some players develop their characters much faster than others. These games are not about balance, so it's theoretically a secondary issue, but it is still an access to tools and toys and this may be noticeable after some time. And something like this may happen easily because a lot of things when it comes to level up is based on how stuff on your character sheets is worded vs the situations you can apply them to / confront them with. so for example if you word your weakness poorly you may feel lack of movement on your theme card. If you worded your Mystery or Identity so and so you may find it hard to crack or fade if that's what you'd like to do. Luckily you can always reword stuff or work with the Game Master on how to solve things with other tools (or just purely narratively if that fits) so it's perhaps something to keep an eye on but not a deal breaker.

BUT all in all i do super enjoy it! I think it is very much worth the try, there is a lot of really good and interesting stuff in there.

Cheers!

[wehavekookies]

a couple of out of context Mahadi (City of Mist) sketches.

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I haven't been posting much of practice stuff lately because i suddenly decided to actually get back to traditional and life drawing to walk out of my comfort zone a bit. And it has been walking out of my comfort zone A Lot XD so i didn't have much to post cos everything has been a mess lol. I haven't been drawing traditionally for a long time and hoo boi, and i haven't been drawing from life in like approximately million years, and hooooo boooooi.

But, a month and something has passed and.

Above is some stuff I am ok showing, still very far from were I would want to get, but i finally feel it's not as intimidating. I am making myself home in the nearby cafe, getting ruined on coffee and drawing customers, which is a lot of stepping out of a lot of comfort zones, but it's been a super pleasant experience.

And I'm pretty happy with how it's going considering the first cafe visit resulted in a super wonky stressed out this:

A little disclaimer: the one with the kids was sketched out in pencil and rendered in ink later with a support of a photo i took, because kids move so much -_-

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Some more random studies and sketches from May (plus some older ones i forgot to post here and left in my drafts so here they go now).

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Another batch of practice sketches and studies.

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Level 7 portrait of my hexblood boy Victoro, look at him, he finally grew horns 8)

Portraits from levels 3 to 6:

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He has some holes in his chest left after that shooting but look at him, he's fine.

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A bunch of random sketches and studies from recent weeks.

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A study of a man going down.

Some little drawings about Mahadi's intro session from the City of Mist campaign.

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Cat photos as a proof that I'm alive.

[wehavekookies]

What/Who is Mahadi the rift of? (Assuming he's a rift at all). I was assuming a Rakshasa after looking at the older images you posted of him, but wasn't sure if it was the same OC since it's a different campaign.

Yes! A Rakshasa :)

It's not quite the same character, but has the same inspiration base.

The previous version of Mahadi was based on an npc of the same name from the Descent Into Avernus module who was a Rakshasa, but remade to be playable. Of course over the course of the campaign he started to become his own thing, and now in the City of Mist he drifted away even further from the original and is now quite a different character, but still going under Mahadi name and connected to a Rakshasa theme.

I'm trying to push him a bit further away from the dnd version of a Rakshasa towards more mythology accurate, tho it is a bit of juggling the elements from both. Still focused on shapeshifting and illusion / sorcery, but the Hunger aspect is more relevant and he is more of a warrior / fighter coded too*.

Still have to draw his Rakshasa form too, but for sure no reversed hands on this one either -_-

[wehavekookies]

Hello! Long time no music, so have two playlists for Mahadi, for his City of Mist version I'm playing.

First one is the songs, second one is (mostly) jazz.

Enjoy!

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Victoro posting.

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edit: added a second sketch. Currently obsessed with the sequence that plays out in my head between these two pics.

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A bunch of sketches and studies from Dark.