Brad and I pulled all of our LL stuff from Patreon and started over.

I'm kinda glad we did. While we haven't started posting again yet, I feel MUCH happier about the finished products. They feel more professional. We have more of them. They're better refined.

They're just way more gooder-er.

We also wanted a way to talk about the Pages without just copying and pasting the same stupid links to all our social media, and I kinda like the plan we developed.

We created a collection of 'NPCs' and they're going to be interacting across our social media in a variety of ways.

Lexx Keenleaf

Lexx is the one writing in her Location Lexicon which seems to lose Pages on occasion. Adventurer, Explorer, and Scribe, she's gathering information for Covenant Arcanum. She's also mentor to Sylas Emberwood.

Sylas Emberwood

Sylas is apprentice to Lexx, and avidly wishes to follow in her footsteps - literally. Still, he remains at the Arcanum since she took off recently to head back out into the wilds without a word to him. He suspects that the Powers That Be within the Arcanum are trying to pull her back home for some reason and so he's doing everything in his power to run interference. He knows what she wants is to be out exploring, not within the confining walls of the Arcanum.

Rione Vyrethorn

Rione has always felt herself an outsider - even within the Arcanum, and despite her uncle being one of the Archons. She feels she has much to prove, and she would just as soon do that 'out in the world'. So when her uncle tasked her with tracking down Lexx? She jumped at the opportunity. She will not be disuaded from her task.

The Blade of Mar

Little is known about the Blade of Mar, and that's just how he likes it. A sentient being, a master of illusions, and a magic device which grows in power by...

...well, I guess you'll just have to follow along to find out, won't you? ;)

So what questions do you have?

It's the new year, and it's time for new things.

After working on this concept for over a year, Brad and I have started the production season for IonQuest Games' Location Lexicon.

Anyone who has ever been a Dungeon Master has had the experience of trying to get something ready for their players in the Nth hour. Scrambling to getting something ready for them to play for the next game session and the (perhaps inevitable) writer's block that will go with such efforts.

It's stressful, it's frustrating, and it sours a lot of folks on the idea of being a DM in general.

That's okay, though. We got you.

The Location Lexicon is a series that we will be running for quite a while. We'll release one Location every week on the IonQuest Games Patreon page. One location every month will be free and public.

The Locations will have everything you need to cover a game session on a single page pdf. Each will have a challenge for the characters and everything the DM needs to run the session.

Simple, effective, and waiting to make the effort painless.

Oh, and my art to help bring each Location to life.

The teaser above just hints at everything in the full page pdf.

Right now we're only charging $3/month. We want to make it effortless for those who want to support us from the getgo. We will be upping those prices in the very near future (maybe even February 1st), but those who get in at the beginning will get to keep the lower rate. Kinda sending the love back and forth as it were.

Anyway. If you're into ttrpgs, and / or want to support Brad and myself doing this sort of thing, check out the Patreon page. Sign up for free even if you don't have the resources to pay - you'll still get one free location every month!

Any questions? Ask away!

There's some events unfolding in my regular D&D group which mean that my character may soon be 'kidnapped' (sorta) and removed from the story. I'm in cahoots with my DM and I'm helping to build a pretty intriquing storyline with him. My character is... a major element, and I'm all in.

So with my character being away, my DM said I could play a new character, or an old character - whatever I like. I elected to bring back the first character I played with my current game group (and really, the first character I've played in 5e).

He's a half orc barbarian berserker named Wulfric. The character type (right down to his half orc-ness) is nothing shy of a cliche and I'm fully okay with that. I chose him in order to 'simplify' things for my first time learning 5e.

But here's the thing - he kinda grew on me.

What's more, I kept encountering moments when I felt like I could play Wulfric to the hilt, and it felt goooood.

Moments like when our group was fighting a collection of enemies and one of them had an imp as a familiar. It kept vanishing, attacking us, and then vanishing again. Wulfric reached out and grabbed it by the leg when it appeared (I rolled a nat 20, if memory serves) and he proceeded to beat the Imp's master with his own familiar!

I'm reworking an image I did of Wulfric back when I was first playing him. I'll add it to this post when it's done, but in the meantime, here's the original version (up top).

Just a little something I cooked up since I just finished the first dozen characters for one of my clients. It's nothing really, but I thought he might be able to use it for promotional purposes and the like. Figured I would share it here in case you guys were curious. 

If any of you find yourself curious enough to want to try the game out, it's available on DriveThruRPG:

Tall Tales! Core Rules (Note, this does not contain any of my art, but is required for playing)

Tall Tales! More Classes (Note: This is available as a Pay What You Want product, does contain some of my artwork, and is a supplement to the Core Rules.)

This morning it's been rainy here, so I'm off the road. Decided it was a good time/opportunity to do some work on a little project that I've had brewing in my back brain for several years.

It all started when I fell in love with a program created by rpg game master Bruce Gulke called Tablesmith ( http://www.mythosa.net/p/tablesmith.html ). If you're a gamer who is using a Windows system, I highly recommend it. It's basically begware and well worth the money he asks for it if you can swing a few bucks.

That said, it's Windows only. I asked him a couple years ago about any interest he might have in creating a mobile app, and that conversation didn't really go anywhere.

If I had the time / inclination to do it properly, I would learn enough code to create the app myself, but I've never been a programmer - not really on any 'true' level.

I can figure out Google Spreadsheets though, and I just knew that there had to be a way to do what I'm looking for in there.

I'm here to say that I've figured it out!

Okay, maybe it's better to say that I've figured out a lumpy, hacked together with duct tape means of effecting something similar with a bit more effort on the part of the user. (Tablesmith is still a far superior product.)

I really think this will be useful to not just gamers, but also writers once I build out some parallel versions (this is for fantasy npcs, but could easily be tweaked to work for modern characters filling the background/environment of any genre). The concept could also be used to build out any kind of 'random' description you want - rooms, environments, scene backdrops, groups (organizations, religions, governmental crews...) the list of possibilities are absolutely endless.

If you would like to check it out the link is: 

This is a 'public' copy, so you can feel free to edit to your heart's content. The results auto generate any time there is a change to the sheet.

That's probably my next project for the sheet - to find a way to get the sheet to create a new entry without having to edit anything. I'm currently just changing an empty cell and then doing an undo/redo until I get a satisfactory response from the sheet. A push button in a cell would be perfect.

One of my primary purposes is to help myself get past those times when I'm feeling 'artist block' by creating a place I can auto generate an interesting sounding character to draw. A way to make it 'mindless' so I can just start working and let the ideas start flowing later.

Anyway - as always, I welcome thoughts/opinions/suggestions below or using the comments function on cells within the sheet itself.

Some feedback I'm especially interested in:

• Is this something you think you would use?
• Would you be more likely to use it if I made it more pretty/refined?
• Is there something you feel is missing from this version (the fantasy RPG character version)?
• Would you use a different version - i.e. Not for rpg work, but for generating some other random data for writing or...?