Where to begin (again)? My *Humble* Return?

 Wow... so this thing is still on, huh? Feels weird, posting on my RPG Blog again. I honestly didn't really think this site was still publicly viewable, but I guess it's still active. Shocked to see that I somehow got a content strike on my post homebrewing the Vierna race from FFXII for DnD 3.5 that I made in 2010...  how'd anyone find that here in 2023??? It's been 13 years. There's been like at least 4 final fantasy games, and a few remakes since have come out since then.

But I digress.

On a personal side, if you're reading this, and you used to follow me from the RPG Blogger Carnival, I guess I should update about my life, since I used to do that once in a while.

In 2015, I moved back to the United States. My marriage ended, fucking me up pretty good, and to top it off, I was pretty much terminally ill (one of the main reasons that the marriage ended as one would have it). I had what ammounts to basically 1 HP and was rolling negative on all my saving throws. There was little hope I would last through the end of the year - doctors gave me about 2 weeks to live in November when I was being processed at a University Hospital in Tokyo.

Fast-forward 8ish years and now I'm pretty much fully recovered. Remission baby. Oooooh yea!

Thank you modern medicine and suck it Japanese doctors. We built tough.

After a few very hectic surgeries where they removed the vast majority of my internal organs (don't worry they put them back again, mostly), several years on experimental meds requiring outrageous hoops to get approved, and a few years of bed rest, I'm basically back on my feet, working  *nearly* full-time again too; in what basically ammounts to my childhood dream job - a video game retail store; a pretty famous chain one too (you've definitely heard of it, though it shant be named here lest I summon the HR).

Sadly, I've not had much time, or energy to devote to TTRPG anymore. All of the friends I had that I once played with have long gone and moved onto other things. My circle has vanished. I don't have access to trusty feed reader anymore, so I've not seen much of whats been going on in the RPG community these days either. Every now and then I'll get an update sent to my g-mail, but I've not really paid much attention to the content.

But, it's a relief to find that most of THIS  *waves hands* is still here, getting at least a little bit of traffic to some extent.

So now I'm left wondering if this is something maybe I want to come back to, here in the latter half of my thirties. I've been getting sentimental about DnD lately, so maybe it's something I'll want to dip my feet into again. Anyone gonna go see the new movie? I'm hearing pretty good things... also heard something about an update to the OGL??? What's that about?? 

The one source I do check regularly for hobby related news... well, more like SALE news, is Humble Bundle, specifically their book bundles. They have some really good ones every once in a while for manga [ my newly revitalized obsession since about 2019 ], so I'll stop in there and check to see what they've got going on each month.

Oh, wow! March is pretty loaded.

46 Item Warhammer 40K RPG Bundle

$25. Woah...

LINK HERE

Not sure I'll pick this one up unless Henry Cavill's gonna RSVP to be the GM since I'm not versed enough in the lore.

But wait...

There's more...

There's also a 17 item Shadowrun bundle for just $18... not bad, not bad.

LINK HERE

This one is actually pretty appealing to me tbh. The whole Shadowrun mythos is fascinating to me, and we're basically living in a dystopian cyberpunk hellscape these days anyay...

Wait, maybe this one's too real.

And a third one... this one's for Castles and Crusades. $18 for 37 different books. Woah. That's a ton of content.

LINK HERE

This is some serious classic TTRPG action right here. Troll Lord Games publishes some of the most old-school RPG books I've seen in forever. May go down this nostalgia trip and see where it takes me.

But, not to leave their software bundles out in the cold, Humble also has a great map making software bundle this month too, coinciding with the trio of book bundles. Almost like they planned this... 

LINK HERE

So, I'm not exaclty sure which of these I'll buy, if I decide to buy any of them. Right now, I've got no group to play with, and don't really see myself having the time to actively search for one, but if one happened to fall into my lap I'm not about to turn them away. But, in the event that one DOES find me, and I find myself falling back into old habits, perhaps I'll be picking one of these up.

If not, you can find me at my new blog, where I write about Anime and Manga!! YAY! 

Post Japan I went through major withrdrawls, so now I've devoled into being a complete and utter otaku. All hope is truly lost.

So, If you've made it this far. Why? Why read to the end? Are you nutty? Do you remember me? If this was YouTuber's I'd tell you to like, comment, and subscribe, but instead, I'll just ask you to reply with which of the bundles you think you'd like to pick up, or if you grabbed one already, what made you decide on that one?
\

Anyways, may your dice always come up 20's. 

-ShinobiCow 

The Art of RPG

Here is my long due first blog post, and I though I should give a little introduction about myself and my relationship with RPGs.

I am a french Ballroom Dance Teacher living and working in the fantastic city of New York, USA. I grew up a big fan of the Star Wars universe and when I was introduced to the Star Wars RPG in 1992 I discovered the joy of being part of that beloved universe. I also was lucky enough to have a group of good friend sharing the same passion and together we made the Star Wars universe a part of our teenage and later life. No toys, costumes or conventions for us; just our imagination and some good old pens, paper and six-sided dice.

An attribute of mine, I tend to go overboard once I set my mind and dedication on something, so it wasn't long before I own almost every rulebooks, handbooks, complements and journals from the Star Wars D6 line. The best in my opinion. I, or should I say we -my friend and I- only strayed away from this game on the occasion, having a try at Dungeon and Dragon of course, 2ed, and I discovered a great interest in other genres, particularly the universe of Shadowrun, being more on the sci-fi side, but we never got to develop more than a curious eye in these different games.

I left France in 2000, and to fulfill my interest in RPG I turned toward Pbp games. It was much later, in 2008 that I started doing artwork, inspired by my years of gaming, by my imagination and maybe desire to hang to it.

You see, for me RPGs are more about storytelling than stats and rolls. Though I wouldn't do without the former two, for it brings a sense of scale and randomness, and helps at the identification of a character, what I love is the creativity of a group put together to build a story, with its drama, action, twists, laughs, loses and victories in a given universe.

And in my case it usually starts with a picture. I see a piece of artwork -a character, a landscape, a scenery- and let my imagination run its course. I let the story begin. And I found myself frustrated when I was lacking this image that would start it all. Whether it's a character I would not find any interest in, or a place where a tentative description only would not inspire me to act in it.

In a sense I could say I was frustrated at my own lack of imagination. And it's a funny thought process to realize that lack of imagination lead to the creation of artwork, perfect medium for expressing what is in one's mind. So instead of surfing the web to find the perfect picture that would inspire me for the development of a character I though, why not make it yourself?
But I am to this day still a lousy drawer, so digital art has pretty much been my only option. I discovered in 2008 the tools that would help me create my art, and fell in love with the result.


So since RPG brought art to me, I am happy to help other gamers spring their imagination by bringing art to them. And if my specialty has been more sci-fi related, mostly Star Wars, I'm open to put my skills to different genre, and make characters and games come more alive with a simple piece of art.

More Shadowrun Campaign Art by Obidancer Pt.2

So, more campaign art up today.  Pretty cool images this time around.  This round is all contacts and such, so very cool.  You can check out all of his other artwork at his home page! Obidancer.com

More Shadowrun Campaign Art by Obidancer

Well, I couldn't resist.  I had to post some of the other awesome character artwork that our guy Obidancer has done for our ongoing Play-by-Post Shadowrun campaign.  They just keep getting better and better.  Very cool stuff.  I feel like I'm practically doing an ad campaign for Obidancer at this point, but I'm not getting paid anything.  I'm just becoming a big fan.  I believe that he does actually do commission work, so if you are looking for somebody to do art for your campaign, or your game, or whatever, you should definitely contact this guy.  Check out his RPG Table Talk Profile for his contact info. I'd post his e-mail up here, but I don't want him getting all spammed.

Here are a couple of full body shots of two of the characters in this game.  Very cool.

But, that isn't all our guy Obidancer has thrown together.  He has also put together some images for the various known contacts of our players.  These NPC portraits are also full of win.

Shadowrun Play by Post Art by Obidancer - The New Guy

Awesome.  He looks a bit like my character from way back when I used to play EVE Online.  Those were some fun times.  As you can see, our player Obidancer continues to put out top class artwork for our Shadowrun PbP.  Feel free to contact him if you have commission work that needs doing.  Check out his profile on the RPG Table Talk forums for his e-mail and contact info.

Awesome Shadowrun Character Art Continues

I have some more awesome pics by Obidancer to show off today, this time of our techie Nazira.  Here she is in both her formal day to day where on the left, and her Shadowrunning techie gear on the right (the camo is more of a fashion statement, when it comes time for the running though, Nazira is all business).

Aren't these just awesome.  I will have to, at some point, ask him to teach me how he does it.  I dig this very, very much. 

Some more new art from my PbP Shadowrun game

Not much to tell here.  This artwork comes from the same guy that did our earlier artwork.  It just keeps getting better and better.  Loving it.  Hope you all do to.

Shadowrun: Cyberpunk F/X

You may recall that some time ago I was recruiting for a new Shadowrun game that I had started up as a Play by Post game on the RPG Table talk forums. Well, it looks like this blog post, and some posts on twitter were very successful. I now have 5 players all eager to dive into the net and work their way around a wonderfully cyberpunk world.


This experience has been a very fun one. I haven’t looked at my Corporate Enclaves book in a long time, so It has been collecting a lot of dust, but I opened it up after we decided that the game was going to be taking place in LA. What a fun time this is going to be. I don’t know if they are prepared to swim or not, but they will most likely have to ford some rivers *ahem* freeways in their upcoming adventure.

The premise of the group right now is that they are a group of Special F/X guys working in Hollywood. They have a little studio which they used to make movies the old fashioned way, not on the net. There is still a small following for this kind of entertainment in LA, since it is definitely old-school and everything that was once popular in Hollywood becomes popular again.

I don’t want to give away too much about their adventures, but I will say that it bodes to be a very, very fun time. We have a new page on Obsidian Portal for the campaign which I will post up under the Shadowrun link in the navigation bar at the top. Feel free to give it a look see and comment on people’s adventures.

This Play by Post is being held on the RPG Table Talk forum. If you time it right, there is a link that comes around at the top of this page as well. I like it that way. Go give it a look see. There are a few play by post games running there now and most of them are either being run, or have players, who you might know from the RPG Bloggers Network. I have a new Gamma World game which I am going to start trying to run there as well. Give it a look see. If you want to play, we are still welcoming new people for that, but the Shadowrun game has officially closed. IC will begin soon.

Shadowrun Play by Post Art by Obidancer

Apparently one of the players in my Play by Post Shadowrun game, Obidancer, is an artist (not as a job, but as a hobby) He did some fantastic Character portraits for all of the players in our game as well as an awesome banner image for the campaign. We will be using these extensively on Obsidian Portal. Here they are below.

Recruiting for Play by Post Shadowrun

Hey, hey, hey everybody. I wanted to remind everybody that I will be running a Play by Post Shadowrun game over at the RPG Table Talk forums. It is going to be a good time, you should go there and join in. We are still looking for new players to get this game off the ground. I hope a few more people will join in for the fun. It will be my first time running a PbP game, so help a fellow blogger out!

Running back to Shadowrun Pt. 1 - GMing a PbP

In my quest to go back to some games other than 4e, I have been taking another look at Shadowrun 4e. Shadowrun has always been pretty much my go to #2 game. If my friends and plan to get together for a game, it usually ends up being D&D in either 4e or 3.5, but the close second has always been Shadowrun.

When I was studying abroad, one of my German friends played a lot of Shadowrun with me. He and I had a really good time messing around with character generation and doing a couple of mini-adventures. At one point, we recruited another friend of mine, new to gaming, and tried to do a bit of Shadowrun play. This mutual friend didn't really understand that he couldn't go around slapping and shooting anything he darn well pleased. The game ended in blood and bullets, mostly our blood, but not our bullets.

I have been really dying to play a new game of Shadowrun. I did some searching around the web for some PbP, but I am always leary about getting into a PbP on a big forum. But, right now, at the RPG Table Talk forum, my post about doing a game of Shadowrun there has turned up some interest, so, with any luck, I will be putting my Shadowrun GM hat on for the very first time and will be running a little Shadowrun PbP.

Right now, we have 2 players willing and able to play in this game, but we are looking for a few more. I would like to get about 4 players signed up before I start adventure building. If you are interested, you should go over to the RPG Table Talk forum and check out the Shadowrun PbP thread here: http://www.rpgtabletalk.com/index.php?topic=132.0