scrawling over the classics , planescape part 2, UMBERHULK

/celestials

Since celestials are pretty much only going to see very occasionally npc use, my urge to  try and upgrade these guys is slim. You have all the assimon and some other dudes to use as well and they are all kinda bland. Think it stems from the fact is evil is things going wrong, and good is generally things not going wrong. And there is a lot more ways things can go wrong. I hate that "without evil how, good would have no meaning" tripe. If no-one was fucking with anyones shit, people would just get on  with their lives and it would be fine. Like I'm eating a sweet sandwich, and I'm not going, wahey this sandwich tastes so good because murders are happening.

Anyway, 4th edition made angels more like manifestation of energy or something and they were like, divine smart holy robots and made it so way more likely to have to fight them. Or something.

And in that really annoying fantasy novel people wouldn't shut up about, angels are like this abstract force of awe, and are described like a burning wheel  or a human with 3 sets of wings, the wings covering the face and genitals. And the represent such absolutes that they are dangerous.

So there's that option of making   celestial fun to use. Like reverse demon thing.

say, I'm doing this quickly here, but roll d3 for how many times you roll on the form table( and if the results seem mutually exclusive roll on sub table) and then roll once on the power and what does it do?!!!?! table

d20

1 a glowing child with a echoing choral voice

2 a cat headed snake tracing a figure 8 with pretty rainbow eyes

3 a giant horse head, silver flamed

4 a muscular human with golden skin and stars for hair and eyes

5 a burning wheel

6 dizzying points of light rotating and forming complicated mandala patterns

7 a wise fox

8 some kind of farming implement formed from ice

9 a huge hand its voice coming from its palm

10 a sage with skin as black as the night sky and flaming hair

11 a hovering flame

12 an inverted tree floating above the ground

13 a naked lady but with no nipples or sauce grooves

14 rainbow coloured ribbons

15 a rotating flower head, alarmingly flat and symmetrical,

16 a cloud of tiny silver seahorses

17 It has Wings. If you roll only this result, it's just a pair of wings flapping in space, other than that stick the wings where-ever. If you roll this result as again, why that's another pair of wings.
 18: A pair of flaming eyes. If you are combining this with another result, you may give that result flaming eyes, or have flaming eyes looming behind it. Or whatever.

19 A great turtle gently swimming through the air, with a tiny city on its back

20 A bronze bell of vast age

1d6 combing forms

1: have one sitting atop the other, or carrying the other or riding the other

2: like a playing card, one is upside down and joined to the other

3; the celestial changes back and forth in a gentle manner

4 as above but rapidly , in an unnerving strobe effect

5: forms exist side by side , speaking with one voice

6: one form grows out of the other, in a way some how not completely hideous

What is its powers? roll 1d3 times

1 Its can yell causing an earthquake or sing causing a disintegrate effect

2: It can glow so bright, everything looking at has their eyes burst into flames

3:It has a weapon twice its body length that it uses with skill and fury

4: Its laugh causing healing to those it chooses and weakness and despair to some other people it chooses

5:magic spells as a wizard

6 magic spells as a cleric

7: long near invisible razor sharp threads

8:mighty gusts of winds and lightning

9: can liquefy stone, entombing people

10:turns people into animals/plants/bakedgoods/salt with a gaze

11:redirects spells at targets of its choosing

12: at will Command spell effect

13:freezing breathe

14: absurdly fast, natural blur effect

15: Re arrange gravity as it sees fit

16:Laser eyes

17:Blinks as blink dog, and can teleport opponents short distance

18: Can turn into flaming pillar

19:can sing a song that makes evil vomit up its organs

20:silence effect at will. Hold person with a touch

What it does!

d12

1:the party must be destroyed to prevent a great cosmic tragedy to happen. It is apologetic but ruthless

2:It will observe the party at distance, after announcing its intentions to do so, a hour later roll again on the table if the party has not done anything particularly foul or noble

3:It gives stern advices, and  heals moderate wounds and leaves. Roll again on this table a hour later.

4: It gives some cryptic advice , and attempts to confiscate something in the partys possession.

5:It flips out at the party in a icy fury, attempting to destroy them utterly

6:It engages the party in small talk, and if they seem friendly enough, offers a small favour

7:It demands a task to be completed or it will return in a week and destroy the party

8:It asks a complicated moral puzzle to the party Like "you find a bag of gold covered in blood, a sick child says he saw a crooked merchant drop it, the crooked merchant is nice to cats. What do you do?" . Roll again to determine the angels response to the partys answer

9:demands the party cast out one of their memebers, for being evil or being too good and needing testing. Will try and destroy the party if they do not obey

10: Offers the party richs. If they accept , it scold them and will try and fuck their shit up in a minor way later

11:Offers to accompany the party and will aid them in not in the next obstacle they face but the one after that. Celestial does not announce this until the first obstacle.

12:Demands party accompany it immediately to destroy some nearby evil, possible of a power level too great for the angel and the party. Roll again on this table if the party refuses.



Now that I have done those tables, I'm gonna say that I don't think that type of angel is suitable for planescape. Ties too much into the unknowable awe style stuff that "we nicked shit from the gods and got pissed with their servants " planescapeness  deviants from.

But hey knock your self out.

A quick fix for the celestials would be have the aasimon  being really fruity, sensual, slightly high, like 70s rock and roll groupies. And have them always positive and relaxed. If they have to kill the party, its like "Ah I'm sorry little dudes, I gotta get harsh on you all, but death is but a journey" and  if they are dying in hell, "I fought most excellently and now will join my planes substance, so sucks to be you bogus devil dude"

Fuck it , now I'm making them sound like bill and  ted from bill and teds excellent adventure.

That is entirely acceptable to me.

The archon, who I'm now making the Nephilim because I wanted to used the name archon for tyrannical chess bastards, play them like a paladin with such a stuck on their butts, and not in the good way, make them so pompous and overbearing and righteous. It wouldn't be boring, but will be annoying as hell. More about them when I go to Mt Celestial.

There's a magic super elf celestial race too, but I'll get to them when I get to the chaotic good plane. Ugh. Superelves, with super magicnature powers. I'm looking forward to it.

Guardinals ? lets go to Elysium to discuss them further
<portal noise>
Elysium

 

Okay the good planes, with Elysium being the really chill plane.

Guardinal are the dudes here, magic nice people with animal parts. This is keeping with the nature is nice nice animals good thing that's been a staple of fantasy ever since people did not have to deal with nature on a regular basis.

Which people are having fun with, and thats fiiiiiiiiine.

But, yeah, nah , lets give them absurd looking armour, keep the animal heads and make them like Jack Kirby norse gods. Enough said. Have floating space castles on the top/last layer of Elysium accessible by a rainbow bridge.

wahey there's actually exactly that picture!

HEY WE GOT ONLY ONE RULE AROUND AND ITS YOU BE A DICK I HAND YOU YOUR ASS BECAUSE THATS HOW NEUTRAL GOOOOOOD ROLLLLLL!!!!

The rest of Elysium, the happy meadows, the exciting forests, the sandy desert and the swamp planes, lets full with ruins and make it full of amazing blue lakes, and little islands so it looks like the greek islands. There's a Nan Goldin photograph ( that is not it above) of the sea there that's a blue I would be happy to die looking at. So its nice , warm, a jasmine scented breeze, and ruins.

Because Elysium is like this restful place, lets have the the guardinals and resisdent aasimon collect entire fallen citys to keep here as monuments to the ceasing of work and war. So have greek columns protruding from azure lakes, stone lion lady Egyptian temple in the desert etc.

Do these ruins have all the gold and treasure and shit still lying in them?

Why yes, yes they do. Are the residents preferring it to be left there as museum thing? Yes.

Will the party have to sneak past them, to engage in "archaeology"? hell yes.

Does every animal here have laser vision and this whole thing is a setup for an absurd running battle where the party are beseeched on all sides from eagles swooping done on them shooting lasers from their eyes, squirrels sniping them from trees with laser eyes, fish shooting lasers underwater at them with laser eyes, butterflys strafing them with lasers etc? Do you need to ask?

I can't decide if Hannah Barbara style energy blasts (with that classic sound effect) or continuous  burning red lines is funnier. conductive to an exciting adventure.

Back to the ruins, this would mean you could have all kinds of "oh this culture has been destroyed for ages, we'll never get to read the last half of mosaic that revels the secret weakness of the WorldEater wyrm, oh wait maybe there's some of their buildings in better shape in Elysium, I'm sure everyone there will understand that we are just some adventures wanting to look around and not touch anything"

Low level adventures? Have them find a portal, wander around, everything's lovely, they see some gold cups or junk in light dappled forest ruin, they steal it, a laser bear chases them , and you play yakty sax (that benny hill theme) as they run back to the portal. Have the portal activated by a poem that the player has to compose new everytime. To represent the effects of trying to compose a poem under stress, everyone gets to throw dice and pencils and biscuits at the player who's character is trying to come up with something.

those fishs have lasers

yeah this lots of this

AND THEN I FOUND SOME PICTURES  THAT RULE
so restating myself here Elysium can be all one big landscape and it starts as greek island lakes and the forest then desert then swamp and in the distance is the rainbow bridge to pure neutral good floating castle were the guardinals live: (and also I realised that I have to reskin something exactly like the eternals, so maybe the nephilium/archons? But then I don't want to be dicks? fuck it I'll just shove them in there somewhere)

this could not say neutral good any harder look at the guy on the eagle horse, he's like I like helping people and I wanna live in a house not being wild and shit, but I'll break any damn law I want if it means helping people

bonus round
UMBERHULLLLLLK!for another art trade for this writer that like is the best

planescape, scrawling on the classics

I have been thinking about planescape with my 6 orbiting brains.

I think planescape is " top shelf " and has some fine fine fine art and generally awesomeness.
But! I thought it was a liiiiitttle under done. Or maybe I got greedy with its cool bits and wanted more.

Any way here's me scribbling all over the classics:
spell keys? weapon bonuses that got weaker the further you went from the plane in which the weapon was made? Random spell modifiers depending on what planes you were on that  were just  like -2 to illusion type spells?
Did anyone remember that they were there? Did anyone use them?
These were some rules that were put to give some kind of flavour or something, but if you can't remember a flavour rule after reading it once it's no good.
By flavour rule maybe "tone" is a better phrase, you know any rule thrown in to keep characters reminded of a on going environmental/metaphysical/psychological factor.
Anyway some sharper than I could prob do a break down on what makes good mechanics and what does not . Planescape's spell key, plane modifers definitely fails. Bland, bean counting, and abstract.
Maybe if it was more like to use healing spells in Baator you have to kill something that day, but even then seems like dead weight. The fact that you are walking on a lake of frozen souls being chased by gelugons should be taking up enough presence of mind that some rules farting around making your spells more difficult, are just slowing things down.
I think there might of been some more rules like this , but I really can't remember them, and so they must of been even more naff.
anyway..
So in no particular order here's some thunks about this:
(note: this is actually going to have to be an ongoing series, I have notes I wanna share on ysgard, sigil, the upper planes, gehena, pandemonia, limbo as well, but this post feels like it's taking too long to do already, more over the next few days)
Gods
Planescape was making something new out of all this metaphysical detritus that various d&d products had left, but the weird thing (for me anyway) was even how this was the selling point , it was all the new stuff (the sigil dirty victorian , factions, and the like) that was really strong.
And I feel that a lot of the planar locations were pretty bland and got used as dumping ground for various pantheons . Which was meant to be a cool selling point, but I found it annoying having Greek gods, Chinese gods, Celtic gods and the like.
It's great to loot cultures shamelessly for campaign dressing, but having just pasting them all over the place without even filing the serial numbers off felt cluttered.
I mean I'm not too fond of gods full stop in campaign worlds, like its always feels wonky trying to get their power levels and involvement in the world right. Maybe having gods only being at the power of a demon lord and not having a immaterial form, just their avatar would work for me.
So basically having them be SuperKings. And while they would claim credit for making worlds and races, that shit just happens due to deeper blind forces.
I just don't like all powerfully invisible sky beards that can sculpt the world and what not and have all this interest in mortals but cannot directly intervene because of some blah blah blah.

So I would shift the focus of the outer planes away from all this pantheon bullshit.
I will repeat myself here how dull it is having Sigil and tieflings and factions and trees made of snakes and madness mazes and all this effort to make a unique tone and then having the party run around ancient Greece.
Maybe someone is thinking here "oh but that's the appeal, like the adventure starts in ancient Greece , but then they go to Valhalla, and then the kingdom of the elves" and I'm thinking wow, this is "Where in mythology is Carmen Santiago?"
Also a sizeable chunk of tolkien and western mythology has already been strip mined for the roots of d&d and there's not a lot left there that's of any interest.
Still bits and pieces of pure gold, but yah gotta dig further than togas and talking trees here.

Planes
Firstly all the planes should have some possible low level adventure nonsense . 
secondly  the planes need more fleshing up than just this cultural garage sale nonsense.
I'm a fan of symmetry , like if one plane has murderous hats tied to their plane, I like thinking of other planar equivalents of these murderous hats.
So I been doing about of this "murder hats of the alignment compass" as creative exercise.
Examples of fine murder hats include Baator, with the baatezu.
(oh an aside here, I liked that demons and devils got their own name for themselves, it was part of that throwing away of human-centricness that planescape had going for it , that I really liked. Demons don't exist to lure you to evil, and  don't just represent a force to oppose and strive against. They are not fallen angels , seething in bitterness, envious of the light. No, demons have existed for longer than your whole planet, your downfall is mere sandwich choosing, and they are a force for evil and destruction because to them, that's how things work, and anyone who is not out for carnage and power is weak, deluded, or a fool. Not that people aren't having hella  fun with the medival styles of demons, I just love the idealogically cluster fuck approach.)
The abyss with Tanar'ri, limbo with Slaadi (but you know, like how I do slaadi) and the githzerai apparently but I never got a handle on them, Mechanus with modrons etc.
But there are some gaps. Like there's no distinctive denizens for Gehenna , Ysgard, Acheron etc
Acheron could have ,damn I want to use archons , but that word is already in use for angels, so lets use um..
oh thanks wiki , Nephilim

"Nephilim" (נְפִילִים) probably derives from the Hebrew root npl (נָפַל), "to fall" which also includes "to cause to fall" and "to kill, to ruin". The Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon gives the meaning as "giants"^[1] Robert Baker Girdlestone^[2] argued the word comes from the Hiphil causative stem. Adam Clarke took it as passive, "fallen", "apostates". Ronald Hendel states that it is a passive form "ones who have fallen", equivalent grammatically to paqid "one who is appointed" (i.e. overseer), asir, "one who is bound", (i.e. prisoner) etc.^[3][4]

So the Nephilim are these (i still wanted to used Archon because grant morrison's invisibles has them being such great dirty shits from beyond) tarnished grey steel lords of war and strategy, ranked like chess pieces.
Nephilim pawns not is not working um.. okay lets make the celestial archons called nephilim and then
archons live in acheron.

Lets start again:
Acheron:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acheron_%28Dungeons_%26_Dragons%29
acheron is great. Big steel cubes floating a void with endless battles on their surfaces, some the size of mountains some the size of a house. Battleground discarded bodys and weapons gradually turn to metal and become part of the plane. Some of the cubes have little tunnels riddling them. There are great junkyards where rust dragons feed. There are other layers of the this plane that have great floating discs that are thin enough to cut a eyelid cleanly in 2. All of this is great.
Archons of Acheron:
The Archons are looming figures of pitted steel, corroded and dirty grey by the dirt and war of Acheron.
War and conflict to them are a pure fundamental things. They believe in order, strategy, logic and above all war. Unlike the fiends however, the Archons find concepts such a cruelty, corruption and destruction for destructions sake, utterly irrelevant. Archon can be found throughout the planes hired as mercanarys or strategic advisers. While safer to deal with than fiends, it is not with out precedence for Archons to subtly escalate or aggravate conflicts. Archons organize themselves in churchs named after the king of the church.
for example the "Church of Reprise Preceding Retribution " with Reprise Preceding Retribution being the Church king. Typical churchs normally have around 100 pawns, 5 castles, 10 knights,5 Bishops, 1 queen and
1 king. Churchs have extremely complicated greater allegiances to each other that, grouping them into OverChurchs ( about 20 churchs) and above that a (about 20 OverChurchs) Supremacy. When not united under/in a OverChurch or a Supremacy (generally towards an outside threat), Churchs of the Archons are in perpetually conflict with each other.
Archon care only for territory or wealth or power as means of winning conflicts. If no worthy conflicts are to be had , these trappings are quickly neglected or used as chips in the wars that immediately and formally start between Churches if no greater challenge  is present.

Archon Pawn
Standing about at about 2 metres tall, Pawns are gaunt figures of armour wielding long seemingly flimsy spear axes. They have no real insight or initiative of their own and more or less exist to follow orders. Under the armour there is nothing but black oil supersaturated with rust.
They do not talk, but any higher ranking archon of the same church can know anything a pawn knows if the pawn is close by and they spend a moment or 2 regarding the Pawn.

Archon  Knight
Knights are are joined with their steeds , a compact metal horse thing. Also one arm which can swivel along the chest to access either side with no hindrance. They have long curved horns on the helmets to designate their rank, and dozens of spears and tattered banners emerging from their backs , trophys of countless conflicts. While more comfortable taking orders, Knights are quite capable leading small squads of pawns, or other troops, and if under the service of particularly weak leader or summoner will attempt to replace them.
Unlike Pawns , Knights can talk, but do so only in the bare minimum to function efficiently as a military unit. They have limited powers beyond great speed and prowess with halberd, but can blink every 3rd round or so.

Archon Castle
Castles loom at 15 metres, but bigger ones have been reported. The appear as tower with a great cleft in its middle like a baleful eye, and they advance on a tripod of great  stone legs. They are faster than they look, and relentlessly trample opposing forces underfoot. They also have powers of gravity manipulation and can use this power once a hour to do one of the following:; flight on themselves and twice their weight in nearby units, a wall of force effect, or a "murder ball" where they create a spot of strong gravity, causing anything with in 60 feet of it to fall towards in the first round, and rounds thereafter the gravity effect no longer pulls anything towards it, but still traps whatever did on the first round. This murder ball maybe rolled around at 30 feet per round by telepathic command of the Castle, crushing and mangling anything too slow to get out of the way.
Castles have deeply resonate voices that can easily be heard even over the cacophony of battle and also can communicate silently with any other castle within a 100 mile radius. While they out rank Knights, they will take orders from them on the battle field.
If under the command of a non-Archon and not employed actively enough  they will attempt to over throw their commander or set off a war.

Bishop Archon
 standing at about 2 metres, and are hunched cloaked figure with a visage like the business end of a particular elaborate executioners axe. They use a perforated metal ball on a chain, to dispense a variety of killing, mind effecting, and morale boosting gas. They have access to cleric spells. They will always be in a command position if a Queen or King is not present.

Archon Queen
A terrible stilted wasp thing with a floating barbed ring for a face, Archon Queens are rare, and when not serving as a commander , rapidly fly around the battle field wielding a variety of battle magics, both cleric and wizard,and impaling with theri ovipositor. This ovipositor  is also used to turn stolen partitioners into pawns and worthy pawns into knights, knights into castles and castles into bishops.

Archon King
A twisted stunted thing atop a limbed  throne, while tough to destroy, the King is not particularly ferocious in combat, and will rely on summoning other archons, or cleric spells. They are of course master tacticians.

Further notes on Acheron
every plane should have some quick low level adventure areas, and battle ground scavenging on the floating metal cubes of acheron is a good one. Either the party could be after a particular item, or just generally greed. Tension can be mounted by having a time limit before the cube collides with another one, or the battle shifts and the spot the adventures are in becomes right in the middle of a conflict between 2 forces. Remember how the discards have a certain amount of time before becoming useless? Meaning the best lootings are from fresh battle fields, scouts might have to keep carefully watch for returning forces.  Escape could be through tunnels winding through the cube, allowing for a 3 dimensional (well more so than usual) dungeon crawl.
Also looting junkyards, especially a dungeonesque pile of old fused war machines, the gaps and spaces forming rooms and passage ways. Or having something like a battleship sticking straight up out of the ground like a tower, and the exploration would be vertical both below and above.


Carcerian Choir Slugs
I was thinking up something for carceri before I realized Demondands are hanging out there. But hey , here's choir slugs, foul congealed masses of evil squeezing themselves through the shells of the inclosed spheres that make up carceri.
They find partitioners of a particular brand and strength of evil and assimilate them , growing a new head and gaining power. They can only get a new head if the new soul is more evil than the last. 5 heads seems to be the natural, but not theoretical limit.
In the rare event they leave carceri they will attempt to corrupt or foster evil of the type they need to grow. Before they get their first head they are the size of a dog, and each additional head makes them double in size
Their are 3 types of Choir slugs:
Marauders feed off bullys, thugs, vandals, and then despoilers and warlords. Their slug like mass is composed of thick congealed blood, sweat and black mud. They can sing blasphemous words causing confusion, fear and enraging. Their heads flail and tear at flesh with their teeth and are venomous, the venom either causing weakness, or blind rage.
Like all choir slugs they can envelop and suffocate as well.
Torturers bodys are formed from tears , semen and pus and their heads chosen from the cruel; spousal abusers, animal molesters, torturers and sadists. They can gibber unclean words causing wounds to re-open, agonys to flower , and creation of visions of half forgotten terrors. They do not bite, but lick with razor rasp tongues, with the saliva lingering to either burn like acid, prevent healing, or cause horrible infections at a later date. They can also heal with these licks as well, to prolong the agonys of a victim.
Oppressor slug's sick mass is a festering clump of fat, oil and rotten half digested food. They source their heads from overbearing teachers, bosses, horrible kings and popes.
They attack not with direct physical attacks but by spitting up to 60 feet. The spit can burn, charm, blind, dominate or paralyse. 
They know words that cause fear, domination of the weak, and summoning.

Carceri

carceri seems to be lazy paste job of dante's inferno with some gods littering up the place.
It come across like a second rate baator or Abyss. The one thing it has going for it; is the name, and the greek titans stuff.
Evil giants in togas? I hear you yawn. That goya picture is awesome though. Okay lets make the titans more monstrous, like ones with a hundred arms or masses of snakes for legs or a neck that continually eats its head, and maybe carceri to be an all purpose dumping ground for conquered enemy monsters.
And make it really built into the landscape. Like huge angry half drowned faces the size of small mountains emerging from the muds of  Othrys. Mostly have these grotesques frozen and unmoving, but just when the party starts to think of them as set dressing, have , say, a giant face jutting from a cliff face they are traversing below, suddenly start screaming and screaming and screaming. Bonus points if you do this as the gm.  Basically have chunks of half dead and fully dead and dying or just plain nailed to something giants and monster everywhere. Big cages, and chains that would crush a city lying worryingly empty in the deserts of Minethys . Porphatys the mountainous volcanic one needs like cracks from which come angry, pleading voices, alternatively promising and threatening for release. The cracks however are very long and deep and the voices have travelled a way to the depths of the mountain were nightmares are trapped.
Low level adventures could be entirely inside giant bodys, maybe a whole dungeon of the empty veins, the party trying to find the heart to take a sample for some paying npc.
 Or trudging through the upper layers trying capturing the last of some abandoned species , that was relocated on mass to carceri because something needed its homeland. Basically a wilderness hex crawl with horrible monster parts the size of hills to mess with.
That swamp of depair with apathetic crazy but hella wise turtle from the never ending story should be found here as well. Holy balls was that some harsh horse murder for a kids movie. Speaking of which, I read animal farm as a kid, thinking it was kids book about some wacky animals running a farm. And then the second half happens and the pigs go corrupt and the draft horse / spirit of the Russian working class works himself to death and gets made into glue. The end. Ah well , built character I'm sure.

Okay that's the post. Will try and get the rest of the thunks I thunk up here soon.
Finally here's some early sketchs of the archons and a page of catalogue from the exhibition:

exhibition

The exhibition opening was last night, I have photos and all but have misplaced the camera like a fool.
It was only a small selection of creatures, and some other stuff.
From a friends suggestion I did some loose sketches and blew the up to a1 and stuck them behind the monsters so they did not get lost against the walls.
The posters are popular and I am printing off a bunch more to sell. Maybe gonna be the only thing that sells?
also drew on the catalogue size comparison pictures of the monsters . I'll scan that and put that up later.
Anyway I'll find that rascally camera soon and y'all can see it all for yourselves.

Camera found, enjoy!

Ditto and what is up with the princess in castle town

Yeah I got's  a umberhulk nearly done , and another flail snail dice bag nearly done, and am getting a tad busy for Goo fest in weekend, which is a Dunedin DIY arts/music/whatevs festival, and is mostly unrelated to other meanings of goo fest I have found on the net.
I'm running a couple of workshops at it. One one knot tying, the other on punching people in the throat with a tube of mascara and running away self defense.
Also showing some of the creatures I been making, playing some music and properly some other stuff I have forgotten. Oh yep making more patches for goo fest and some for me to sell at the art market that's also part of it. ANd there's an exhibition at the house/gallery
Oh and I got a tooth removed! It was awesome! I recommend it to everyone! The local anesthetic did not even hurt much, and the dentist had to really rip that fucker out, I could feel it grinding against the jaw bone and stuff, and he was straining and twisting away. Next time I want a mirror on the ceiling so I can see what's going on!
Here's the posters. I drew them and other people did the text bits

The first game of flux engine got played, Jez Gordon played, John White played (of mestar) and Christine , a german tourist staying at the house, who had never played before and was vague on what the hell roleplaying actually was. Chrissy picked it up like a champion though, and I was impressed to see as a rogue in her first game she was already hording stuff she found and not telling other party members what she found. Excellent!
It was hella interesting seeing what the homebrew system played like; actually it did not matter much because I found myself only loosely using it, and more just making up shit on the fly.
It's funny have spend a fair chuck of time thinking about how stuff is going to work, and finding in actually play that I just roll a d6 and 1-3 yes the elephant does not stay around to finish you off.
Also? Writing up a whole island to discover 2 random encounters , character generation and diving for treasure use up a hella lot of time.
Nearly had one player death due to a pygmy stilt elephant, an encounter I thought was going to be just a bit of colour. THe player I thought least likely to kill everything he saw promptly charged it and started wailing on it. Everyone preceded to roll rubbish, the elephant used the elephancidal player as shield inbetween stabbing him with tusks but Jez (playing a mutant Hunter s thompson based on a duran duran song) dragged his ass away and the elephant ran away.
Other thoughts, I can now see why Zak loves just roll under stat checks rather than vs d.c's. Well no wait I can see why I love it and can presume he has his own more sinister reasons  .
My reasons are : even if you have a good roll of thumb d.c list (d.c 5 is trivial, d.c 20 is bastard hard d.c10 is a passenger aircraft) it's annoying to think of the number, rather than just go, yeah roll stat check. I'm not even considering a detailed table of modifiers ala pathfinder.
And.. something with trying to keep track of what the increasing numbers of skills actually relate to in real world effect is kinda wonky.
MAy be there's a D&d with porn stars post that explains it.
Anyway I got 2 other variant home brew systems which I'm now keen to test out, The Blue rose enhanced for max fun overloaded system  , which uses roll under stat checks with an exploding d6 and has stat numbers a lot closer linked to the punching people numbers than Flux Engine which is has these kinda arbitrary set numbers to attack with, eg attacking someone with a sword is your brawl which for a starting rogue is 12 plus the dice roll, and blah blah I'll go into some other time when I convinced myself it's deeply fascinating. The   80s princess mayhem: Pretty fight down system has pretty much feng shui system with all the dumb filed off.
It's actually really insightful having 3 homebrew systems running side by side. Like grey hounds with master segrees in economics and spraycans for feet.

So other peeps are doing hey this art rules its what I like roleplay head feed with make merry time hallelujah hallelujah Johnny bottle of rum bottle of rum.
POST PADDING ! GO!

  okay lots was screen grabs look art there too