Vecna slightly reimagined

Watched a lore video about Vecna recently. Most of it I knew because I've been a gamer for a long time, but I'd never really attempted to pull his story together the same way older Warhammer stuff pulled together the (kind of similar) lore about Nagash.

I do, however, feel like visually Vecna hasn't always been super visually interesting. I've been more and more enamored recently with the idea of liches and wights with the remnants of beards hanging from their skeletal faces, which is a cool but still kind of unusual. Give him an eye patch instead of just a blank skeletal socket, and a pirate hook instead of just a missing boney hand, and he's really kind of a unique looking character all of a sudden.

Hero Forge Updates

It's sometimes hard not to go around updating older Hero Forge images. For the most part, I don't want to get into the business of chasing that particular dragon. But, occasionally I find an error or some piece on an older mini that just doesn't look good anymore. And sometimes I open an older one and it prompts me to update an out of date piece, so I end up having to make at least minor updates anyway. Here's a few, as well as a new one, an edited library grab or two, and some stuff like that. 

It looks like I'll be playing and running on Saturday, after being out of town from tomorrow evening until Saturday around lunch time or so. And then I have to travel to Mexico for work early next week. But next week—I promise! I'll finish the new Cult of Undeath 5x5, or at least a drafty version thereof.

An iconic kemling villain

An iconic kemling criminal, keeping a casual watch on the Thieves' Guild hideout

Woodwose

Bertram Hardmont, Hero Forge style

Updated Fredegar de Vend

Updated Guarg Dreghu

Updated Anstal Tane

Updated Sir Liamond Wreldane

Stilton Kingsfax

Tabitha Gamcott. I don't know what prompted the Scottishness, but I like it.

Some library wendigo thingamajig

Being turned

Ratling sorcerer

Hero Forge vs DALL-E 3

In theory I have more control over Hero Forge models, but sometimes they don't quite turn out like you want. The reality is that you have limited assets to use and sometimes it's harder than you think to get the look you want.

Meanwhile with AI you have limited control over the results and sometimes can't get what you want either, but that often leads to serendipitously cool results.

Here's Stilton Kingsfax and Guarg Dreghu in both Hero Forge and DALL-E 3 versions. These are interesting because the former was an AI image first, which I've had some limited success in recreating as HF, whereas the other went the other way and had now been somewhat modified to better match some details of the AI model.

Hero Forge and my D&D games

I thought my drow crime lord was too dark and you couldn't see his facial features very well. Also, here's a soulknife (official D&D never could get the mechanics right for that) and my fire genasi sorcerer character.

Hero Forge D&D

I found out one of my players in my store game... reasonably successful first session, but the way, in spite of the system and some of the characters that were an odd for to the tone... is kind of into Hero Forge. He made his character and posted it to the group text. I don't think he has a pro account and he certainly doesn't use decals or a few other things that make the hero Forge digital models look way better. In any case, he also wanted to come up with a character from his back story. I recolored and changed the clothing on my Madrigal model to make him work. Also ended up decided to superimpose him against an AI backdrop. Why didn't I think of that earlier?

Anyway, a drow crime lord from the Free City. Sigh. Not the concept I would have thought of, but he looks cool and I'm trying to roll with the D&Disms without letting them get me down too much.

And here's one of the PCs, or at least my interpretation of him. Kinda the same pose, actually... But still quite different 

If I ever adapt the concept of troll slayers, I like this look better... 

Banners

You may think that I'm overly obsessed with the branding of banner images, and that's certainly a fair criticism. Getting excited about putting what is basically Word Art in GIMP and adding a lens flair is probably kind of silly. But there you have it. Here's the final banners for all modules that I'll be "working" on for the foreseeable future.

Clicking on them to bring them up will not only make them bigger but also put them against a dark background, so you can see them against both dark and light. I'll also officially create the tags for all of these now; I've had DFX for some time. EFX is now retired, to be replaced by HFX, then we've got HMX, LTKX, SOX and WWX.

And I've got to decide what (if anything) to do with my Space Opera X blog. When I was only going to do the two, it made sense to keep them on separate blogs. Now, probably not so much.

Sigh.

Modules

As promised, here's the titles. Espionage X, Old West X and Cthulhu X have all hit the road and are no longer under consideration.

First, the horror ones.

I can redo Eldritch and Macabre slightly; the drop shadow goes just off the image, and the text is bold, which doesn't look quit as good. I don't think. I'm undecided. None of these names is striking me as the clear favorite on seeing them as banners. Sigh.

Next, weird west.

I think I'm leaning slightly towards Weird West X, but we'll see. If nothing else, it at least has a different acronym than Dark Fantasy X.

How about the espionage techno-thrillers?

I'm honestly leaning towards License to Kill X right now. But I do like both of the other options quite a bit.

Just for completeness' sake, here's the ones that weren't under discussion:

I think I need to redo Space Opera X too. The drop shadow is a bit cut off on the right. Same on the bottom of the big X of High Fantasy X.

Sigh. That's what I get for doing them fast and then looking closely later.