Art & Life Advice

OK, Nuna text is finished. Just need to add a half dozen sketches at important points, redesign the covers, and it is off to the printer. I'll also have to get the gameshop launch party planned, as well as online sales set up.

But feels great to have come this far.

My whole life I have been called a Dreamer, but that is how I have made so many of my dreams come true.

I wanted to live in Japan. Spent 22 years there.

I wanted to be a professor. I got tenure in Japan, but quit to care for sonny.

I wanted to be a martial artist. I got blackbelt in karate, then won 2nd place in my city in Japan.

I wanted to learn Japanese. I taught myself to the JLPT level 1, the highest you can get.

I wanted to get my son out of Japan. Now we enjoy life in Vancouver.

I wanted to be a game designer. Now here I am.

In my life, people have mostly been supportive of my dreams. But there are always negative voices, and our inner voice often sides with them against our own dreams.

So I say to you, Dream big!

Don't listen to the naysayers.

Keep at it with incremental action.

And whatever dream you have, you can make it reality.

Nekmek!

First Character Complete

 

This was a detailed process of addition and modification. But I like how it turned out.

Time for a walk and a snack.

Skills might seem meager to modern players, but are made up for by Cultural abilities and impresses the need for cooperation and community instead of maxed out individuals.

NUNA Character sheet Sneak Peek

BRP character sheets have always staggered under the burden of all the information they have to hold. So with NUNA, I tried to simplify in three ways.

First, a sheet that helps with character generation so you don't have to look through the rulebook so much.

Next, a sheet that just asks you for the essentials.

Last, a sheet that is function over form. I would like to produce a creative or artistic sheet at some point, but bigger fish to fry at the moment.

ENJOY!

NUNA Update, Game Designer ADD, and Elric's Secret Part Three

 Greetings!

I've gone silent running mode the past few days as I have been editing and rewriting NUNA Quickstart.

It is 99.99% done.

WHEW!

I still have to rejigger the PC stats (they were a bit underpowered) and add art. Then it is off to the printers! Then the social media blitz and networking begins.

Exciting. There are so many facets to making an RPG. The making is just the start of it. The connecting to community and getting your name out there is a much bigger part of the process, I have learned.

Wish me all the luck I wish you.

One thing I have noticed, is that Gamer ADD, ie having so many games you don't know which to play, extends to designing games as well. My game of Japan, Giri-Ninjo, is next in my sights. But I have plans for a Call of Cthulhu series of adventures with recurring characters, as well as a Coyote & Crow adventure I ran here in Vancouver.

But as a designer you will NEVER get anything done if you don't commit to finish one game before you work on the next.

In preparation for the final artwork of NUNA, here is the next chapter in Elric's Secret, my satirical mashup of Elric and old time bodybuilding ads.

(NB Had to re-upload the pic as the mesh shirt didn't show)

Are role-playing games art?

I’m pretty much entirely centred on finishing off the NUNA Quickstart right now, so time for a mental (procrastination) break to think of something larger.

New NUNA art!

So the titular question, are role-playing games art? Here are my thoughts.

They are definitely spaces for art. From their inception, they supported writers and world builders, and gave a discernible boost to fantasy fiction. I won’t get into the downside, which is the D&Difucation of the fantasy genre, and how fantasy without any dungeon exploring tropes is now hard to come by. Just look at the history of D&D novels and current domination of works like Dungeon Crawler Carl and Frieren. Role-playing games have definitely contributed much to the continuance of the publishing industry during the digital age, both in the form of novels and gamebooks. And there are many role-playing games that are equally important as pieces of art than as playable games, from Stormbringer to the art books of Tales From the Loop and Alien.

In return, role-playing games have also given a huge boost to visual artists. In Japan especially, the master of fantasy art, Yoshitaka Amano, cut his teeth on art he did for the Japanese edition of Stormbringer, as well as the original Sword World RPG and the CRPG Final Fantasy. Frank Brunner's Stormbringer cover is equally iconic, and I will fight anyone who says its deeply atmospheric depiction of Elric isn't art.

Russel's shadowing and mastery of form here is breathtaking

Amano did both the game and novel translations, and adds a dreamlike quality

If you are a gamesmaster, then you’ve served as both script, writer and director for your own narratives. Josh Whedon reportedly based Firefly on a college Traveller campaign, which could explain his career success in those roles.

Similarly, players are also actors, and the role-playing table is a space that allows people to polish their acting chops without fear of sanction. The professional actors I know have all had to deal with a high level of criticism for pursuing their art, whereas playing in an RPG is decidedly nonjudgmental. Go look at Audrey Plaza's performance in the Harmonquest series, and you can see what heights an unfettered actor at a gaming table can aspire to.

With all these examples, it is pretty clear that rpgs are an integral and modern inspiration for many artists, from a variety of art forms. They may not have the cachet of exclusive high art, but that is an elitist domain and thus not a great loss.

But I think asking the question Are role-playing games art is actually an example of looking in the wrong direction, barking up the wrong tree.

Instead, if we see role-play games as essential incubation spaces for various genres of art, then we can see both their social and artistic relevance. And at this moment of history, rpgs are also an important canary in the coal mine in the conflict between AI and human art. The debate over AI art in games, the rise of AI GMs who will run your game for you, both point out the danger of not defending art - that we will be cut off from others and turned into captive individual audiences for corporate AI products.

And that would be the end of art, of games, and of our humanity, which is rooted in interaction with others.

NUNA Summer Schedule Update

I have killed off the day job and my exhaustion from the day job and ready to roll up my sleeves.

The plan.

Finish all mechanics and story this week.

Do art all next week

Launch this baby into the world

Exciting.

Now reading David Suzuki for inspiration. NUNA is a decolonial game, but doesn’t try to preach or hit you over the head with things. After the fall, the land regrows and regenerates and people recalibrate to it. It’s the opposite of Mad Max, where people mourn for capitalism and the exploitive system that drove them to the end of the world.

Instead of warring peoples there are communities knitting together. Instead of gritty realism, magic seeps back into the world. Suzuki notes that if we disappeared, the world would heal at an amazing pace. I agree, but we were originally in harmony with that world, and so what if we just shifted our alignment back towards it?

Elric's Secret Part Deux

 Work is ended, time for ART ATTACK!

Anyone know what this is based on?

FREE LEAGUE and/or GOODMAN, I am open for commissions!