Battlefield 4 Girl

So I pretty much entirely forgot that there was going to be an actual story in BF4. I wasn't reaaally looking forward to it at all until the story trailer came out today. I'm going to look at it as a little bonus, or something to do if the servers ever go down.
I heard there is DRM in the game now that doesn't allow you to play multiplayer if you don't have an internet connection. How ludicrous is that? What are they gonna do next? Make it so you can't play the game if you're graphics card isn't up to their standards? Penalize us with lag if our CPU and ram aren't up to scratch? Total BS.
I don't know the name of the female protagonist yet, so we're just gonna settle with "girl" for now. The main dude we can call "American Browny" and the rest we can call "White Cannon Fodder".
If you dig the 8bit thing you should check out my interpretation of Bee from Bee & Puppycat, or maybe the chicks from Tekken I did.

Bee & Puppycat

I did this mostly because of how awesomely they did her hair on the cartoon. Bee & Puppycat is now doing a kickstarter to do more. If you dig the vid (and its second half) you should totally support it. If you think that this looks a little like Adventure Time then you wouldn't be to surprised to find that Natasha Allegri (creator) worked as a character designer and storyboard artist for it

Also if you dig the 8bit stuff you should go check out the Tekken girls I did.

Gravity

1920x1080 Background. It looks pretty shit when it's this small.

Gravity is easily the best movie I've seen this year. I spent 30 bucks to go see it, and I'm considering paying even more to see it in 3D. I thought Elysium would be my movie. And if you're lame you probably think Pacific Rim is your movie, but it isn't, Gravity is. If you haven't seen it yet, don't go out and steal it, because your shitty little TV won't be able to do it justice, and yes, no matter how big your TV is it is still going to be a "shitty little TV" for this film.
Becky did a mint illustration of how foxy Sandra Bullock is. I heard somewhere that it was inaccurate that she wasn't wearing space diapers, to that guy I say take your diaper fetish elsewhere.
Also I was surprised to suddenly start wondering who's the coolest space herion out of Bullock and Sigourney Weaver. Sigourney has the 80's hairdo and robot thing to go off, which is admittedly pretty hard to top. Man it's crazy to think that Alien came out in 1979.

Well I hope that Gravity spawns some sweet movies by people hoping to get a cut of the realistic space drama pie. Europa Report next perhaps? I've heard it goes for a found footage/documentary type style and everything. Sounds like my cup of do you get this? tea.

Details shot

D&D: Temple of the Fates

So I was building an adventure for my group, they were setting off to meet the Raven Queen and ask her a couple questions. I keep most of my mythology and locations canon (although that hasn't stopped me from being flexible), so my players get the real D&D experience. I've been running our campaign in the Nentir Vale, which I'm totally in love with as an adventure location. Simple but classy history in a well rounded cosy locale that I could plug anything into and my players could mess shit up to their hearts content.
Anyway, I was researching the Raven Queen. So there are no shrines to the Raven Queen in Fallcrest. And the only place I could find her in relation to anyone on the normal planes of existence is in one small sentence along with Avandra and Ioun in what's simply called "Temple of the Fates".
I couldn't find any mention of it in the online magazines either, maybe it is there and I missed it.
So in lieu of that I decided to create the temple myself.
Location: Anywhere you need it to be in your campaign.
State: I dropped it into a forest, and has been overrun by foliage long ago. It has a tall facade but quickly drops away into the ground. deeper into the forest a spire can be seen poking out over the canopy of the trees. If the players check out the spire there is no way in and it has no doors.
The Entrance: The players go down the stairs and enter a large foyer. in front of them is three doors. Each with a carving of each of the gods that are worshiped there above the door frame, Avandra, Ioun & The Raven Queen. DC11 Religion check to jog the players memories for who each symbol belongs for. Maybe make it a bit harder for the Raven Queen and perhaps Avandra's is an auto success, her icon is everywhere it seems.

Inked digitally, my players got just shoddy pencils for this bit.

In elvish carved below each of the symbols is a quick mantra of each god.
Avandra “Delight in Freedom. Luck favours the bold. Take your fate in your own Hands.”
Ioun “Seek the perfection of your mind by bringing reason, perception, and emotion into balance with one another.”
Raven Queen “Hold no pity for those who Suffer and die, for death is the natural end of life.”

Each room leads to a trial of the respective god, and each mantra gives a clue into what sort of trial they shall be facing. Neither of my players knew elvish and they left their lacky at a nearby village, so they missed out on this tidbit.

Avandra's Trial: This room is set up with traps and is really a place for the more dexterious party members to shine.

I got two views of the map for you to make up for my horrible iphone photo. If I had an A3 printer this wouldn't be a problem.
The players arrive from the right hand side and see a tall spire, one segment of which has collapsed. At the top of the spire is a floating glowing key. Obviously for the door on the other side. this spire sites in the center of a pit which drops down out of sight, not due to depth, but rather mist that's floating around. A wooden bridge leads over to the spire. On either sides of the bridge are poles or old columns which go up to the same height as the bridge. Standing on the two tiles directly in front of the bridge on the spire island makes the bridge fall down. In the even of this the players stranded will be forced to do some pretty accurate jumping across the pillars to get across.
If the players are attentive enough they'l notice a ladder going down into the mist on the northern edge of the spire.
As they round the spire, on the southern edge is another tile trap. If a player sets it off the wall in the spire shunts out into that single tile, pushing them into the mist.
If they avoid this then there is a crumbled gap on the eastern edge. Falling results in some fall damage and forces them to go around again.
After these challenges it's a clear run up to the floating key. Once grabbed it's light dims and gravity kicks in again for the key. Leaving it pretty plain and ordinary. It unlocks the door on the far western side of the room.

Falling into the mist

Through the mist is a leaking aspect of the feywild. It's pretty much a tropical paradise. Large flowers are blooming and everywhere there is lush foliage and springs of water oozing out the walls. If a player is lucky enough they could land in a bush and cut down on some fall damage.
I populated this area with two twig Blight Swarm. (p.109 Threats to the Nentir Vale)
But feel free to stick whatever exotic beasties are appropriate for this location. It can be assumed they slipped through accidentally from the Feywild or summoned by Avandra so adventurers get to appreciate being free and living another day.

Ioun's Challenge
Ioun is all about logic and stuff, so this room was really for the sorts of players who like solving puzzles and riddles.

The room is predominantly murky green water, stagnant with age. The sort of water that has gross stuff at the bottom which touches your feet. Entering from the eastern side of the map the players decend a short flight of stairs to a concrete path which is only a few inches above water level. The water is calm with no ripples or disturbances from the air on it. a small bridge allows the water to enter the bottom southern half of the map, or maybe the other way round, who knows which way water want's to go.
On the western side of the map is a weird ass statue flanked by two doors.

Art by Becky

They appear to be two guards, bearing the sign of Ioun. Without moving their voices's emanate out to the adventurers. "One tells truths, the other lies, pick the door of fortune and continue. Pick the door of death... And die. You may ask one of us one question."
This is that classic logic riddle. Hopefully you haven't already blown it in one of your adventures already.
Chances are your players have heard it already, but I was working on the assumption that having a room full of consequences would make them sweat about it and actually think twice about the whole thing.
The question to ask is of course "If I wanna get out, which room would the OTHER one tell me to go in?" if the right door is door 1, the Lier would lie and say "The other guy would say door 2 for sure." and the truth sayer would say "The other guy will tell you to go through door 2." so either way, go through the OTHER door.
I stocked door two with a black dragon (Monster Vault p.68) which would do really well in the water.
Also feel free to fill the water with ghastly stuff if you're trying to string the encounters out a bit longer.

The Raven Queens Challenge
This challenge is the most freeform and harrowing on you as a GM. I don't have a map for this one since it wouldn't be very interesting.
Upon entering the room the players can see the door out directly in front of them in a clear line across what appears to be a large cavernous room. The door one the opposite side is lit up, but apart from that it is dark. To the players left and right is darkness and you can't be certain whether there is a wall let alone an end to the room. As the players step out into the room images flicker up on either side of them.
On the left hand side they see moments of death that they regret, but could have stopped and were able to.
On the Right they see the same scene, moments before the unfortunate incidents. They notice that the only thing missing from the scenes are themselves.
If they step over to the left they stand amongst the mirages, but nothing changes. If they move over to the right the scenes become more solid and eventually the players appear in these moments of time and are able to attempt an encounter or whatever to save the persons life.
This assumes that your players have had these moments, mine sure have, so I had a bunch of key encounters already primed and ready to go assuming my players went for it.

Doing an encounter and saving a life brings them back to the darkened room. It is up to you whether the life has been saved. But it should be noted that the Raven Queen has dominion over death, and not the dead.
Doing one of these encounters fails the challenge of the Raven Queen as the players aren't respecting fate and are in fact reversing a death. Pretty much everything the Raven Queen isn't into.
Passing the challenge is as easy as walking to other side of the room and continuing forth.

The Spire
After the players have completed one or all of these challenges they are led up a spiral stone staircase that has three shrines and effigies of the gods at the top. The room is rounded and a few windows look out over the trees. From here they can conduct their business with the god of their choice.

Hope this has come in handy. If you liked that painted piece you should go check out its creator, Becky. She'd totally do commissions for your games and adventures if you wanted.

Inktober Robot

Got suggestions for what I should draw from G+. I was really just waiting for someone to say what I wanted to draw so then there would be only a pretence of choice and interaction. Who doesn't dig a good robot. I'm really getting into doing my squat little ones at the moment. I guess it's harking back to my only gundam experiences, which was with the little chibi ones. I used to play with them when I was little even though they were far too delicate for rough housing... Man I want to get a bunch now.

Cheers.org.nz Vector logo

Download the Postscript file here

Figured I'd put this up for anyone who needs it. I couldn't find it anywhere on their website, and I know at some point some poor kid is gonna be scrabbling around for it to stick up on a mockup of a beer bottle or drink responsibly ad.
While we're on the subject they have a pretty cool website and quiz that they've thrown together. I may have miscalculated a little but what the quiz says about me sounds about right.
"You drink more than most New Zealanders, but you drink slowly. This is great because it gives your body time to process what you’re drinking, and helps you stay in control."
I was one drink over the average, and that would have been the unusual wine I had in the afternoon on Saturday.
For anyone who's unfamiliar with Postscript files, they work fine in Illustrator and Indesign and all that jazz, calm down. Jeeze.

Battlefield 3 Multiplayer

Huh, I'm somewhat surprised. I thought I did a review of Battlefield 3 single player. Oh well. Here goes.

Single player, a big Meh Fest, nothing new and pretty short. Don't buy Battlefield for single player (Something I knew going into it). Although the lighting stylisation was awesome, even if it was shining in your face the whole time.

To be honest the single player does a disservice to the multiplayer. It's like covering the outside of a building with shit when the inside is an amazing joy land. It may be joyland, but only the most adventurous will look past the exterior.

I decided not to talk about the game here until I'd successfully played as many hours as I had payed as many dollars. 60 bucks is a sweet deal for premium, especially considering that BF4 is going for 160 at the moment.

You can check out my account if you really care about that stuff. I reached my goal of Rank 41 in 59 and a half hours. I spent the last half hour site seeing and taking screenshots. Feel free to compare these with my BF4 screenshots I took of the Beta the other day.

It's moments like these that crack me up. This is possibly the only game that has made me laugh and swear out loud. Seriously it's a hilarious game to watch people mess up in spectacular ways.

Me just wrapped up in the wheels of my good friend Burny Wreckage.

From the very first moment I started multiplayer I was blown away by how cinematic it felt. It had better moments than in the hand crafted campaign. One of my first games was in Rush mode. One team is tasked with taking out an objective while the other half has to defend it at all costs. We were all trooping over hills in a lined convoy, running along as helicopters flew over head and bullets whizzed up the ridge. It was beautiful. I was a medic so I was mostly making sure any guys that went down I'd quickly bring back. It was that first game that really got its hooks into me.

I saw some guy mucking around in a tiny bulldozer in the battlefield. He was truly a glorious individual.

The great thing about this game is that if you get bored of running and gunning you can take on a new occupation. I went through a stage of being what I like to think of as a flight engineer. Often it led to my death if I didn't notice that the pilot had hopped out and I was in fact repairing an abandoned helicopter which was quickly plummeting into the cold unforgiving ground. Already in BF4 I've found that being a truck driver is a completely legitimate use of my time.

So it turns out of you throw a med pack on to the face of a fallen comrade it won't do him a lot of good.

Fly you majestic creature! The other day some guy was trying to kill me with a helicopter, but I was far to sneaky for his aerial ways, so he came down to land to try and take me out on foot. Instead he landed on a landmine which promptly blew the helicopter to pieces. Stick to what you know helicopter, the ground is no place for you.

When we aren't running around durka durka land we fight in Skyrim as well.

This was an amazing game that fulfilled everything you want in a multiplayer shooter and more. I recommend it or its sequels.

Battlefield 4 Open Beta impressions

I was super stoked when I came home today and found out I could jump into the open beta, I preloaded it last night, but expected another day of waiting because of being a whole day ahead of America. I got the updates on my iPad and iPhone as well, and man, the apps are super awesome. I was able to browse and swap servers on my iPad while I was in the middle of a game on my PC. It's definitely gonna be something I use a lot to play with my loadouts while I'm at work or lunch.

My settings weren't all on "ultra" but the auto settings set a few of them to the top, which was good. I was worried it would lag hardcore. There was a couple hiccups at one point, but I think everyone got it. FPS issues or something.

The shanghai building was actually collapsing as I parachuted off it. I swung around in front of it to get some screenshots, shortly after this one it totally crushed me.

Watching some noob smash into the ground in his helicopter made me crack up. I have to say flying around in the city in a heli is a bit of a challenge, but it's super fun, and the most tense I've ever been while flying. The swooping and stuff feels a lot more out of your control than in BF3, but the heli's feel like they have more weight now, and you can almost feel the G's while trying to desperately not to fly into an apartment complex.
Also sprinting feels a bit different now, you don't immediately go into a full tit run, you kind of ease into it.

America's Cup Vector Silhouette

Download Vector Here

To celebrate our amazing defeat at the hands of Cheater Oracle Team USA I decided to make this vector. It's a little late I guess in terms of relevance. But I'm sure by the time the next America's Cup comes around someone will find this handy.
This Vector comes under the WTFPL Licence restrictions.

Here it is used in print.