We're halfway through August and halfway through #RPGaDAY2025. I've been a bit too busy to post daily, but I've been trying to keep up - especially more tricky with my foolish decision to draw a quick doodle for every day.
I kinda wanted #RPGaDAY this year to be used any multiple ways – you could use it to design an adventure, using each day's prompt to lead you through a story. Or, you could even use it like Inktober and use them to prompt a piece of art... and I've been trying to draw more recently. Heck, I used to write and draw, and publish comics, and I really haven't drawn much for a while. I did some preliminary art designs for the WILD Tarot cards, but after a few sketches for the Major Arcana, I left Gareth Sleightholme to do the amazing art himself.
I wanted to get back into the habit of drawing, to get better, and improve. I'm really rusty, so it was good to get the pens and pencils out again. So here we go, the first 16 days of #RPGaDAY2025.
Day 1 - Patron
I wanted to do something that tied into the game I had mulling around in the back of my head. I wanted to do a cat person mage, but my art just wasn't what I had in my head, but I tried... It was a specific character I had in mind who was the 'patron' of the player characters, but... ho well...
Day 2 - Prompt
I wonder if anyone noticed that the black books are for the weekends? Day 2's prompt was 'Prompt', and when I'd put it on the list I saw it as a "what prompted you to start the adventure". I was still hung up on weird anthropomorphic people to populate the setting, and I thought of someone who made sure you were on time (or being 'prompt') and it made me think of a hall monitor. Once I had that in my head, I couldn't help but draw a hall monitor lizard... I know, awful pun.
Day 3 - Tavern
Again, I wanted to continue building the setting I had in my head, but I just came up with a crooked and weird pub called "The Tattered Scroll" but again, my art wasn't what I had in mind.
Day 4 - Message
Day 4's prompt is 'Message', and I really struggled to come up with a good idea for this one. And then, it hit me. Or rather, it hit this dude...
Day 5 - Ancient
Again, I couldn't think of anything to do for this one, so I thought of the most ancient thing I could think of. Not the actual Cthulhu himself, but an artefact almost as old. The fabled sculpture of the ancient one.
Day 6 - Motive
The word 'motive' made me think of those detective shows I like watching, which made me think of the coolest detective gaming we've had for a long while. The Blade Runner RPG we played a while ago was brilliant, and had one of the coolest rug-pulls I've experienced as a player. Great stuff. So, I had to draw something inspired by the Blade Runner game.
Day 7 - Journey
The word 'journey' just made me think of our many games of The One Ring, where there was lots of travelling (usually to Bree and back). Lots of walking, lots of stumbling across orcs and so many 'total party kills' you wouldn't believe. We kept getting our butts kicked!!
Day 8 - Explore
We've done some dungeon delving in our time gaming, so for 'Explore' I had to go with something deeper, exploring into the depths of the earth. Felt a lot like Tomb Raider... Did not like how this one came out.
Day 9 - Inspire
For Day Nine, I wanted to mention two people who are a great inspiration. David Lynch and David Bowie. Neither of them compromised their artistic vision. They just did what they wanted, what drove them to create, and didn't worry about how commercial it was going to be, or whether people understood it. It was what they wanted to do, and it's what I aspire to. I drew when Bowie was in Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, as the legendarily weird Phillip Jeffries. Before he became a talking kettle.
Day 10 - Origin
For Origin, I thought I'd go back to that first RPG game I played. Back in 1983, when Crud (sorry) said we weren't going to spend the Saturday afternoon programming ZX Spectrums to play "lightcycles", and we went to JR's and I experienced Traveller for the first time.
Day 11 - Flavour
For Flavour, I thought I'd show my preferred 'flavour' of game. I'll play just about anything, but I really love modern urban fantasy horror mysteries. Just my thing I guess. A holdover from my old World of Darkness / Kult / WitchCraft games.
Day 12 - Path
The word 'Path', for some reason, made me think of being stuck on a path, and how sometimes you just want to do something different. I guess it didn't help that I was watching music videos at the time, and one always really resonates with me.
Day 13 - Darkness
When it comes to 'Darkness' there's only one possible response to this and that's World of Darkness. When my regular gaming group had mostly gone off to University, and I'd kinda got out of the habit of gaming, the World of Darkness is what got me back into gaming. Vampire the Masquerade became an instant addiction, and I GM'd Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, and Wraith in a massive crossover campaign.
It's how I met Debs, and we even joined the Camarilla. Debs became head of Clan Toreador for the UK, and I was second in command for Clan Tremere for a while. We left and turned away from it all when we started getting hassle out of character by grumpy and power-hungry players. So I drew us in our Camarilla days. Such goth. So long ago. Back in the 'hair days'.
Day 14 - Mystery
Day Fourteen was 'Mystery' and it made me think of a game I'm keen to try called Brindlewood Bay (or one of the games it powers). Brindlewood Bay sounds a lot like the Thursday Murder Club but they're investigating Cthulhu, and it made me think of Murder She Wrote. So I doodled, Jessica Fletcher and some tentacles. It wasn't very good.
Day 15 - Deceive
There are a lot of times when the Gamemaster deceives the players - one that really sprung to mind was back in the 80s when Pete was GMing a game. He said he was doing a murder mystery game, modern day, and we all played regular people who won tickets on a cruise. Classic Agatha Christie style game. By the end of the first session, the ship had capsized, and we were washed up on the shore of an island... with superpowers. Inspired by the old 'Elementals' comics, we were actually in a superhero game. Surprise!
I struggled to get that on paper, and after a few attempts, I gave up and just drew the classic deceiver of fantasy gaming... the mimic.
Day 16 - Overcome
Day 16, and I tried to think of an instance when we've overcome something massive. And you couldn't get more massive than the Kaiju sized Owlbear we tackled in our D&D game. It was the size of Godzilla. Magic users fired spells while we climbed its legs to attack it. The combat lasted two sessions...
--
That's the first half of #RPGaDAY2025. I hope you're joining in!
Stay tuned for the second half at the end of the month, and follow along on the Tabletop Industry Network Discord, the Facebook page, and on sites like Bluesky (lots of #RPGaDAY stuff going on there!).
No comments:
Post a Comment