Ostensible Cat

 Kia ora koutou! I've just launched my Ko-fi page, so if you'd like to follow my work and perhaps contribute a few coins to help me continue creating art and gaming projects, go check it out. Here's a bit from the cheesy about me intro post: Kia ora koutou! Welcome to my Ko-fi page. This page highlights both my TRPG and non-TTRPG creations, offering a glimpse into my evolving fascination with medieval aesthetics, horror, and the esoteric. These themes—rich with mythic undertones—are woven into the fabric of my latest undertaking, Beyond the Bleak Forest, a tabletop role-playing game that melds ominous positivity with the eerie grandeur of medieval horror. I've added some royalty-free stock art to my page, as well as the digital versions of the first three volumes of my new art zine, Strange as Angels. I'll look into doing some special stuff for members that support me over there, such as comp copies of Strange as Angels, stock art, and more. I hope you check it out....

  I do a lot of art that doesn't get published. Sometimes it is because I'm doing stuff for myself, practicing, or sometimes the thing I was commissioned for just never happens. In this instance, this piece was done as the frontispiece for Labyrinth Lord 2nd edition. Now, Labyrinth Lord has been around for a while in the indie Old School Renaissance games. It was the first real retro-clone" of the basic Dungeons and Dragons games (elf and dwarf were classes instead of races). LL has a soft spot for many, but has been eclipsed in recent years by the Old School Essentials game (I did a couple of pieces for that game, too). I jumped at the chance to illustrate the refreshed 2nd edition. Drawing pig-faced old school orcs was great fun. But alas, the game seems to have just been on hiatus for the past two years without word from the designer. Anyway, I'm happy to have done the art. Here are a few more of the coloured pieces. I feel like they deserve to be seen. Oh yeah, my ...

Wow, it's been three years since I’ve posted here. I’ll be honest, I’ve been doing a lot less gaming and a lot more art. Since my last post regarding gaming with my daughter, I think my daughter and I have found it very frustrating to make much progress in playing D&D 5e. Now, before this comes off as an old school gamer bashing newer systems, I think it has less to do with 5e and more to do with my evolving views on what works for me in gaming. It turns out that my preference in gaming is maybe moving away from class-and-race-based ttprgs as exemplified by D&D and its offspring. Now I’ve been playing TTRPGs since 1981, so none of these is new to me, but I think in that time, I have identified the aspects of gaming that really don’t flow well for me. Since I’ve been a late-life assessed neuro-spicy person, the masking and desire to just nug through things has just completely evaporated. Character creation seems to be a very challenging process for both my daughter and m...

  Tl;dr: Kia ora all! I don’t often post much about my personal life, but as a parent of two neurodiverse teens, I reckoned that I’d post some of my experience in gaming here on our journey. My daughter was diagnosed with autism almost a year ago and my son is dyslexic/dysgraphia with ADHD like presentation. Both are incredibly bright and very different from each other (my son has lots of friends and is very bright and gregarious if also very lazy while my daughter is very retreating and shy but incredibly driven and motivated). They both love fantasy and fantasy literature, movies and gaming has been a way for us all to connect. Though often what works for one, doesn’t necessarily work for the other. This brings me to my point, I am working on trying to best accommodate the needs of my neurodiverse daughter and include her in an experience that she very much wants to participate in, but often feels frustrated and overwhelmed by. This is an introduction to our journey so far. ...

 So for various reasons, I feel like social media platforms like Facebook, Mewe, Twitter, etc. don't really do it for me when it comes down to really getting into the nuts and bolts of the TTRPG gaming scene. I mean I really miss the OSR Blogosphere circa 2008-2012 or so and the various social media platforms don't scratch the itch for me the same way the blogs scene did a decade ago (holy crap, has it been that long). There was a great community where the blogs all kind of fed off each other. Not just that, the blog posts and content was much more substantive that what is viable over a social media post. I just flat out miss those days. Frankly, I just don't really feel like using social media as a tool to get my ideas out there anymore. Don't get me wrong, Facebook groups are great, and really good for interacting in short bursts. However, I feel like a jerk if I jump into a Facebook group and start with the "hey guys, look! Look at what I've got going on.....

I threw my hat in the ring this year for the One Page Dungeon contest and am pretty excited about it. Not for the thrill of winning, but for the sheer act of doing and completing something. That was pretty rewarding. I tend to be very ambitious about projects and they drag on far longer than they should. What can I say, I'm not a project manager, I'm an IT Architect and such is the way of things. But I digress! I did it! I was pretty happy with what I turned in. Mostly because it gave me a good model for what I want to do in my Basalt Keep adventure. More on that soon I promise! Anyway, here's a look at the artwork that forms the background for my one page dungeon submission. Cheers and happy gaming!