TTRPG writeups: WoD Modern 2 - Mercenaries #1

Mild content warning: occasional swearing and mild adult themes

We had a slight derailment right at the outset as S was unable to make the session. I only do character driven stories so players not being able to make sessions can make things fall apart, so normally we would just skip (I had previously tried to encourage the kids to make Redcaps that we could use in a casual drop-in/out filler game as a Redcap gang lends itself well to that, plus they could get any murderhobo/random dickishness/silly out, but the older boys had decided “Changeling is cringe”). However in this case seeing as it was early on, I managed to restructure stuff in my head (and later on in my notes) enough to postpone S to the next session.

TTRPG writeups: WoD Modern 2 - Mercenaries #0

System: World of Darkness (edition uncertain as the sourcebooks are all over the joint and also I fudge and homebrew a lot)

All players except S were in Modern 1. T reprised his character, the others wanted to try something else. They decided on being a mercenary group comprised of ex-military buddies, except that for some reason which I don’t think even they can explain, they all decided that they were going to be from different countries and not emigrate to one so that they could easily be army buddies -- (the character party is comprised of one Australian, one Greek, one British who seems to have retconned to Irish, and two Russians) I had done individual preludes with each player so we could all get a feel for the character, and decided to use a group prelude to bring them all together as well as give them the shared history and for them to figure out how they would work together as a team so they would have an easier time fitting together as a team (rather than having to work it out) in the actual game. The group prelude ended up turning into a 2-session mini-campaign because sometimes things like that just happen when I get ideas, so this prelude post is really, really long (I didn’t split it). Future writeups should (hopefully) be less long ^^;

November ProgBlog #2: distractions

There are many and some of them are just things I’ve decided to add on because I’m not very smart like that.

After WoDMod1 finished I started hacking on a dice system I’d written for AER two decades ago x_x when I was roleplaying a lot more. It mostly worked out fine when I was playtesting it with the friends I roleplayed with frequently back then because it was a fork of World of Darkness with a lot of my fudges and homebrew built in (it’s actually more or less the system I run now when we’re playing World of Darkness, just closer to the original than my fork so the children reading the sourcebooks know what’s going on).

November ProgBlog #1: legitimate reasons

I actually had them for the delay for once, and that was going out for birthday churros (not mine, but someone’s).

After that I was trying to render out some super quick and dirty walk cycles (which are literally just hands and feet approximating walking motions, no refinements or personality injected whatsoever, which partially accounts for the jerkiness and the other part is only vaguely remembering how to do looping gifs and animated gifs in general and couldn’t get the timing right when making the gif, I haven’t done one for game engines yet and I don’t use them at all for animations) and my computer crashed three times while rendering the first one (I’m a bit extra so I did three different views because of course I did).

October ProgBlog #4: "I just wanted a nice render..."

Late progblog is late again but that’s nothing new. This time was an interesting combination of I had to go in to work early and completely forgot to start (I’ll usually make a start on writing in the morning, pick at it throughout the day and then finish up at night when I get back from work and do super basic if any edits) and then because I’m really close, figured I’ll just get a render done to use as a cover image because I’ve been doing my usual doing a lot but nothing to show for it thing.

August ProgBlog #3: where did that week go?

It was starting and I had plans and then other stuff happened and I just kind of tried to deal with things (generally failing) so kind of just buried into music (generally looping my project playlists) and did stuff (not nearly as much as I wanted, yeh I know that’s the usual story, but it’s even less done than usual as brain is not functioning correctly at the moment, I borked) and then suddenly it was the weekend.

August ProgBlog #2: stalls and tools

It’s been a few weeks.

And then I finally got around to writing this thing, and was making some half-decent progress (while chatting to sibling dearest in our inaugural hopefully weekly project chat and progressing some other stuff as well) and then had one of those infuriating semi-frequent crashes that refuses under any circumstances to be diagnosed (it’s probably hardware because there is literally nothing that I am doing that can reproduce them reliably).

August ProgBlog #1: branching out

The scales are still going. The only thing that’s changed is that I’m now in the yellow PURPLE section! XD

And I realised after actually looking at ko-fi that I haven’t updated for over two weeks, oops x_x (I only paid attention because they said they were letting gold members trial the tiers and that I had early access to be able to provide feedback, it was supposed to be for gold members but I’m not one so I guess there was either a slow rollout or a trial group, either way it seems to be open for everyone now). Part of the reason for that is because I was doing very short update posts on Tuesday which has now changed to working on something else day (other project or cameos which I really need to get back to as well) and I quite often will work on the Fridays til really late before I actually do and post the progblog (Friday being my designated progblog posting day) so after I’ve posted it I usually just go to bed (because it’s between midnight and 2am by then) and then forget to update when I wake up again.

July ProgBlog #4: eternal scales

I feel like I’ve been doing this forever.

Have I mentioned how much I didn’t want to be doing this again?

On the bright side it is at least organised a lot better this time even if it’s probably overkill as far as textures are concerned, and I hope it looks better, and I’m about two thirds of the way through the yellow so I’m approaching halfway?

July ProgBlog #3: why does it have to be scales

Once again, doing a bit more work on character portraits than 3d, because my brain just doesn’t want to deal with the scales. I eventually decided to keep my character consistent with the other ones (Captain Gundry and Bricky Steve) rather than doing the different headshots (partly because I’m kind of designing the outfit and the “weapon” which isn’t an actual weapon, just something she uses to beat people up with when she isn’t riding around on it, on the fly and mostly because it is going to take the better part of forever if I do it that way, now at least I have some idea of when I might finish).