TARGA on Tuesday & The Eye Guy!

 I joined TARGA today.  TARGA stands for Traditional Adventure Roleplaying Games Association.  I put a link to TARGA on the sidebar.  Go check it out.  They also have a discussion group on Yahoo, and a facebook page.  TARGA is all about promoting 'traditional RPGs'.  Now you may ask what IS a tradition role-playing game?  Well, some feel it's all about the old school renaissance, and perhaps a bit of the DIY, homebrew/ house rule paradigm.  Me?  I think if it's a game, where you take on the role of a different person, character, monster, whatever, for the purposes of entertainment, roll dice to resolve things, or use other methods, then to me that's a traditional RPG.

How do you join TARGA? Well, go join the Yahoo group and/or the facebook page and you are a member.  It's that simple.

The Eye Guy

The "Eye Guy" ( yeah, I know, he looks like a crappy beholder ) was a quick sketch I was doing while trying to figure out a topic for todays blog post.  He started out like this...

This is a black and white scan of the sketch.  It was on blue graph paper.  This was all I was going to post. but I thought I should add a bit of color.  Now, the only graphics program I have is Paint, but it worked out okay.  I erased the grids, and cleaned Eye Guy up a bit.  This is a bit later in the process...

I should have drawn it on blank paper...

I've got a couple more "process" pictures, but you should be able to get the idea.  This really isn't a tutorial.  It's more about use what you have, because you can't use what you don't have.  So many times I've wanted certain "things", to be able do certain projects "better".  I want to make great maps, but I can't really justify buying Campaign Cartographer, or any of the expensive graphics programs, so I try to find a good alternative, but still delay creating things, because in my mind, this program, or that tool, would make things so much easier, and better.  In the end, I don't get many things accomplished.  Use what you have, and when you get the nicer alternative, you will not only appreciate it more, but should be able to use it better, and get more bang for your buck, so to speak.

I could have just posted the sketch as it was and be done with it.  But I decided to see what I could do with what I had, and while it's not great.  I think it's fairly good, if not a tad bit cartoonish.  I changed a few things, the arrow was replaced and I added another arrow.  I added quite a bit of detail.  The nice things is, when I was adding details I wasn't worried about mistakes, because sometimes the mistakes look better than what I had planned.  Drawing with a mouse isn't easy, but I use what I have.  It's my new philosophy.

I could have worked on Eye Guy for a long time, but sometimes you have to find a stopping point.

Eye Guy actually has a back story, but that'll be for another day.

I've actually got a few things started for HDWT.  One is an article about campaign/world creation, the other is the Texicon interview, and the third is a kind of mapping experiment.

So until next time, keep rolling those dice!