Heroes 3

FYI. My announcement video from my other channel, Rando Calrissian.

I'm going to be doing a few things: 

1. Some more AI vs AI videos. Ostensibly to showcase the new (newish, I guess) Factory Town but also to mix it up with a few different heroes and terrains and stuff. The past series was pretty rigorous about attempting to level the playing field and just test the creature grown of each town against the creature growth of another. This time, I'll sorta do that, but relax the rigorousness a bit and do a few things just because I want to.
2. Showcase my customized Travis Savoie soundtrack and the various custom Hero portraits that I have while I'm at it. In fact, I need to do some major updates here on the ALTERNATE CHARACTER PORTRAITS tag as I've made a lot of updates to various characters since last posting there. Turned all of the minotaurs into sasquatches, for example, because I don't like the minotaur portraits of any of them. The more I change, the more bold in terms of actual changes I'm getting, I notice.
3. I should probably have another look at HIGH FANTASY X again, and maybe even consider renaming it, since my temporary X designation is gradually being phased out, starting (of course) with my main setting; DARK FANTASY X has been Shadow of Old Night for a while now. HIGH FANTASY X is the only other setting—well, that and SPACE OPERA X of course, although almost all of that was done when it had a different name anyway—that has a significant degree of work even done anyway. HFX is the one that I'm the most interested in seeing progress of the non-Shadow of Old Night settings.

Heroes 3 final portraits post

I said at the beginning of the year that I wasn't going to do this, but I am. One final post will have all of the alternative portraits that I've loaded into Heroes 3. Most of the alternates are from ensricks, but I do have some that I created myself from AI generated images, and I do have some that are taken from some VCMI alternate towns, especially the Tartarus and Death Valley towns. Since I don't really use VCMI, nor am I likely ever to do so again, those portraits won't have any conflict.

A few of the ensrick portraits that I'm using were actually developed for a different character, but I swapped them for one reason or another.

Anyway, without further ado...

CASTLE

RAMPART

TOWER

DUNGEON

INFERNO

NECROPOLIS

STRONGHOLD

FORTRESS

CONFLUX

COVE

UPDATE: And I've already updated a bunch of these, probably because I saw them here and remembered that I didn't really love them. I'm also thinking of redoing all of the minotaurs with a kind of ogre face that I have in a lot of varieties from Midjourney. I don't really like the minotaurs as Heroes.

UPDATE 2: I did replace all of the minotaurs with these big bulky "earth genasi" guys. Or at least, this is what Midjourney thought earth genasi look like. I guess they do kind of have rocky skin.

I had a few others that I didn't use, because I couldn't use them all.

EFX brainstorm update

After I made that post, I thought about it off and on for a few hours, and decided that there's no way I'm making all of those classes. For one thing, I don't want to be too overt about borrowing themes and tone from Heroes 3 (or at least, how I imagine it) I want it to be more subtle than that. For another thing, there's way too many of them. I can use optional classes adapted from some of the "advanced companion" style books that attempt to adapt Advanced D&D or even more modern class options into a more OSR or m20 style paradigm.

Speaking of which, I was amused but also intrigued by how Microlite20 Fifth Adamantium handled races; there were three groups; a tough group that had a bonus to STR, a magical group that had a bonus to MND and an agile group that had a bonus to DEX. Each group had a few races under it, which were all mechanically identical (and mechanically the change was so modest anyway that it hardly mattered.) Everything else came down to roleplaying rather than a mechanical reflection of your race. I'm not quite sure that I'm ready to be that reductionist, even though my racial benefits are also pretty modest, they're also not quite so bland either. But I can certainly appreciate the sentiment and even applaud it. 

I also don't want to be too overt about borrowing from Eberron, but I also haven't decided exactly yet how it will actually do so anyway. I've made some vague geographical correlations, and of course I love the tone and themes of Eberron (in fact, I've long been convinced that the system it was designed for serves those tones and themes poorly and it would have been better with a different system. Maybe Savage Worlds like Golarion eventually did, would have fit Eberron extremely well, actually. At least I've heard that from a lot of folks. I'm not a Savage Worlds guy myself, and I prefer to lean way more into rules light than Savage Worlds seems to be.)

Let me reiterate the geography and add a possible (optional, at this point—I'll wait and see if I take the option or not) place that can be "Factory-like". All of these correlations should be seen as only a vague correspondence, not that this nation is really all that exact compared to the Heroes 3 faction that I'm lining it up with, or the Eberron nation that I'm also correlating it with.

First, let's presume that there's a large landlocked sea in the center of the land. Big enough to be the Black and Caspian and (original) Aral Seas all put together, or the American Great Lakes all combined into a single sea. This will be called the Lanstall Sea. 

• Kingdom Protectorate of Rodach: similar in some ways to Breland, has Cliffgate, the city similar to Sharn. No Heroes 3 correlation, but is a fairly cosmopolitan place, so anyone from anywhere can be there. In fact... maybe Cliffgate is more like a city state and Rodach is more like the hinterlands that's under its protection. Rodach is south and a bit west of the Lanstall Sea.
• Kingdom of Hombarast: directly north of Rodach is the Kingdom of Hombarast. With lots of mountains, it stays fairly cold, except in the outer slopes and some deep valleys. Loosely based on the Tower faction and Aundair in Eberron, it is the source of most of the genies, ultimately, who entered the world many generations ago through in intermittent gate that has been quiescent for centuries now.
• Kingdom of Kharnimrion: cold steppes, forest steppes, "mammoth tundra", and boreal forest north of the Lanstall Sea, is a dark land where necromancers, vampires and liches rule openly--although benevolently enough that the human inhabitants don't just flee. That said, nobody else other than citizens of Kharnimrion can really stand their death-culture and their acceptance of necromancy, so they're a diplomatic pariah. Compare to Necropolis and Karrnath.
• Theocracy of Thamath: to the west of Hombarast, this country is most similar to the Castle and Thrane. Few non-humans live among them, and while they're welcome enough as long as they behave, they simply tend to stay in other places.
• Realm of Nevregel: This rebellious and monster-infested land was once the eastern frontier of Rodach, but it broke away and now claims to be an independent nation, under the leadership of a coven of witches. While viewed warily by pretty much everyone, and its become a home of criminals and monsters, mostly, nobody is in a position to challenge their claim, so they reluctantly accept it, or at least plead "no comment." Compare to Droaam (although put to the east rather than west of Breland) and the Dungeon faction.
• Dominion of Othlon: east of Nevregel, Othlon also lost territory south of the Lanstall Sea to its establishment, and therefore is more unhappy with Nevregel than most, and is in fact one of the few nations that refuses to recognize its legitimacy. Othlon is a dry place, has relatively little arable land, and in addition to hardy humans, it is also home to orcs and goblins. (i.e., similar to Stronghold and Darguun.)
• Reynhowe Frontier. the eastern side  of the Lanstall Sea is largely a trackless forest. After many past wars, it was left untamed and became a frontier that few could breach—but elves and dwarves have lived together in the forest for generations beyond counting. Once they welcomed some human refugees of past great wars into their home, they became a diplomatic nation on par with the others nearby, but they still remain pretty aloof and relatively uninvolved, if they can be, with their neighbors. However, as Kharnimrion became more overtly necromantic and expansionist, and as Nevregel started trying to gobble up new territory, they decided that they could no longer remain neutral and isolationist and have joined the rest of the nations to apply diplomatic (and when necessary) military pressure to accomplish their goals in protecting their land. Similar to Rampart and the Eldeen Reaches, although it's been moved geographically from my alt.Khorvaire style map.
• Valade Holds. A small and newly established state claiming some shoreline of the Lanstall Sea nestled between Kharnimrion and Reynhowe, the Valade Holds is home to an elemental gateway, so elemental personages are entering the world from outside. They tend to show up with limited memory of their past. Similar to Conflux and kinda sorta the Mror Holds.
• Kochbin: a new colony, mostly peopled by outcasts from Hombarast and displaced people who lived in Nevregel, against all odds these criminals, outlaws and more are forging a new nation in the harsh deserts of Kochbin. Protected by their constructs, they are watched warily by everyone else, because experiments that are illegal everywhere else are accepted here, Kochbin still lacks much in the way of recognition or respect from the other nations. However, luckily for them, nobody else really wants the territory that they claim. Similar to Factory. No real Eberron correspondence, although maybe its closer to Q'barra in the desert instead of the jungle than to anything else.
• Principality of Gothrastir: the island nation of Gothrastir is famous for their sailing prowess, and they are famous traders and merchants. However, they are just as often coming as raiders and pirates, and their relationship with everyone else on the continent is strained. Most similar to Cove and the Lhazaar Principalities.
• Giledzar: the northwestern extremity of the continent (I say continent; it's not a very big place, though. Australia is the biggest that I could claim that it is, but with a big interior sea, that's still not really comparable.) Volcanic activity is much more common here than anywhere else, and fire elementals (ifrits) and demons are common, as well as the cursed and possessed demoniac human tribes. Most similar to Inferno and the Demon Wastes.
• Doloth Marches. The final region of this setting is a swampy, forested frontier on the southeast extremity of the game. A nation of strange beastmasters and witches; barbaric savages who have little in common with the rest of the world, the Doloth Marches are most like the Fortress and the Shadow Marshes. It's a vast area, but is little populated, and full of all kinds of strange, mysterious ruins and mystical locations. 

I whipped up this schematic, which is mostly just to show the relative size and position of the various regions; it's not meant to be an actual map, by any means, but a schematic to be used to develop a map.

Since my EFX game, if I ever run one, is most likely to be centered around Cliffgate, the other nations might be overkill background rather than actually relevant information, but still. I like worldbuilding for its own sake. And in Eberron, at least, flitting around across the continent and even beyond is a feature of the setting, so sometimes you need to have that background in your back pocket.

EFX races, classes and systems brainstorm

I'm not as happy with these interpretations of Crag Hack and Axsis as I am with Solmyr and Mandigal. Which is fine, I suppose. They're not supposed to be exactly the same characters, because Elemental Fantasy X isn't supposed to be a conversion of Heroes of Might and Magic III, it's just meant to be somewhat inspired by at least some elements of HOMM3. That said, I may yet redo them. We'll see. I actually like Axsis in particular for how he turned out, but I don't think he turned out looking that much like Axsis. Here's their original portraits.

ensrick remade them for his portrait pack, and as usual, his portrait pack is the best alternate... that said, I think Crag Hack is best as is without modification. It's already one of the best portraits in the original game.

I also have upscaled versions of the portraits, since the originals are so small. Sadly, the upscaling AI wasn't super good and they don't look great. But they're not tiny, at least. I have both the ensrick alternate and the original upscaled.

I didn't really pay enough attention, but the upsized image of Axsis, at least the ensrick alternate portrait, doesn't have red skin at all, and arguably, even the original isn't really that red. I made my version of him pretty red, because overall that was my impression of the image. Curious. EDIT: As an aside, look at how the AI totally fubared the horns, though. The ensrick portrait looks worse when you upscale it and can see better exactly what it did. 

Anyway, here's my Hero Forge Axsis and Crag Hack. I tried to interpret ensrick's brow ridges and horns as a flaming crown. I'm also not necessarily thrilled with how that turned out either.

Well, regardless of whether or not they're great renditions of the HOMM3 characters, they're still interesting and it was fun to make the models. In fact, I liked the Axsis model well enough to make an alternate version of him for DFX too, as a kemling.

So anyway, what do I want to do with EFX exactly? I like my ruleset too much to consider making significant changes, but there are three things in particular where some changes will be required:

Elemental Fantasy X characters

For the heckuvit, I made two Heroes heroes as Hero Forge models. The first is Solmyr, via ensrick's modification of his look from Heroes of Might & Magic III and the second is Mandigal from Heroes of Might & Magic II. There is a fan wiki that suggests Mandigal is actually a vampire, but for my money, he just looks so funky because he's a Wizard, and Wizards are weird and magical.

Yes, I realize that the ensrick version with the turban makes him look more like Thane, but the rainbow hair Solmyr always was pretty stupid.

The ensrick version, which is the one I'm basing my version on.

The Heroes IV version of the character.

..

The original Heroes III version of the character.

Shiny because of the lightning in his hand right next to his face. See below.

The full version. Because Solmyr is famous for his Chain Lightning, I had to have lightning in his hand.

Mandigal's portrait from Heroes II

I don't know if he's supposed to be a vampire or not in Heroes, but he won't be in Elemental Fantasy X.

Full body Mandigal

Cliffgate will be my "Sharn"-like city name. I'm thinking about drawing out a draft sketchy map of the EFX setting. I know that's not a super brilliant name, but most names in the real world are either taken from the completely foreign language of whomever used to live there before, or they're prosaic. And if you translate the original old language names, they're usually prosaic too. The Mississippi is from an Ojibwe word that just means "great river" for instance.

And for some NPCs, I'll just use characters from Heroes III mostly, with an occasional Heroes II guy thrown in like Mandigal.

I'm not going to try and make it too Heroes III. It's just vaguely inspired by Heroes III and I'll have a few PC races that represent some of the Hero races in the game. It'll be at least as inspired by Eberron, and I've already drawn parallels between various Eberron nations and the Heroes III factions, which I'll be blending and remixing to come up with something new.

Microlite and the OSR

I've spent as much time as I can muster to go through the latest Microlite stuff. By latest, I don't mean to imply that most of it is actually recent; much of it is over a decade old already. But latest in the sense that it postdates the original Microlite and the Purest Essence Microlite. "Greywulf", or Robin Stacey, made the first Microlite game as a super rules-lite, stripped down take on the 3.5 SRD. Stacey eventually sold or gave or something the rights, such as they were, to Randall S. Stukey, who runs the Microlite site and maintains the system, such as it is, and its archive.

Of course, a lot of other people have made m20 games over time, including myself, but Randall himself seems to be the main guy, and he's made tons of variants. Of course, also, a lot of his variants overlap with only a few minor differences between them; many of them have literally the same text, as much as possible. Stukey is especially interested in the use of m20 to emulate old school games, and he's the author of the Microlite74 family, the closely related Microlite75, and Microlite78 and Microlite81. 74 is an OD&D emulator of sorts, with some of his own house rules from when those games were current, I suppose, whereas 75 is also OD&D, but more faithful to the OD&D than to the 3.5 SRD base from which the game varied in the first place. 78 adds in a bunch of AD&D material, and 81 is more closely based on B/X. He also created a Microlite2020, which updates the game to a more 5e SRD-like base, but then there's also a Microlite2020 Old School version. He also has a few other variants; a sword & sorcery one (with some dubious commentary on the genre, but it's still a fascinating study), a couple that are for a specific setting or two that he's used, and even one that uses 3d6 instead of a d20. There's another 5e SRD based Microlite20 "Fifth Adamantium Edition" that someone else made that has a 5e-like layout.

It's been fun poking around in these games and seeing how they're different from each other, although honestly they aren't all that different. Some of the house rules that Stukey seems to like a lot are kind of controversial in an OSR environment, no doubt, especially his implementation of what are essentially 3e era Wound/Vitality points, with a different name. He's got a Sanity system, very rules lite, although I think I like mine just a little bit better. He also uses the OSR fetish of removing even the regular skills, although he does have a (admittedly fairly clever) check that replaces it. If the whole point of skill checks is that they replace long-form discussion with a roll, then just about any other system; ability check, etc. has the same problem, and there's no reason not to have skills. He also seems to normally add back one of the ability scores; rather than Microlite's normal three, Strength, Dexterity and Mind, he has Strength, Dexterity, Mind and Charisma. Or maybe he renamed Mind back to Intelligence—can't remember offhand. Honestly, although I did that by inertia when I first started messing around with m20, I don't really see the point of cutting the ability scores from six to three. It doesn't really make the game any more or less clunky to have the six ability scores that everyone is pretty much already used to seeing. I also increased the skills to six, and although I think that's a good change, one of the reasons I did it was so that with six abilities and six skills, the character sheet just looked better. Dark Fantasy X, with the same six abilities as D&D, and an increase from 4-5 (depending on the version of m20 that you used) to 6 skills is still fabulously rules lite; it doesn't actually add any complexity to speak of to have those back in. In fact, because they are all so familiar, it may be faster and easier to have more but familiar abilities rather than fewer, but you have to convert in your mind what the D&D abilities are in m20 terms. MIND as a conglomeration of INT, WIS and CHA and STR having to do double duty for both STR and CON from D&D was actually more difficult for me than just having them all. And my slightly expanded skill list of Athletics, Bushcraft, Communication, Knowledge, Stealth and Tinker seems like the right amount and the right list. They're all sufficiently broad to get lots of use, and sufficiently different from each other to not really have any overlap.

Of course, with these changes to my game, I don't really consider it an m20 game anymore either. It's at least as similar to some other hybrid OSR/modern game like ShadowDark or Knave 2e as it is to the original m20 game. But it's funny how insignificant, really, the difference really is between them. 

Anyway, I've made a few changes to my Dark Fantasy X game file; mostly by adding a more detailed weapon and armor list as an alternate rule. I may trawl through the spell and monster lists to see if there's anything else that I want to add, but probably not. I think a lot of the monsters that I don't already have, or at least have close analogs to, are too D&Dish to really fit well into the Dark Fantasy X setting. 

And when I finally get around to doing Elemental Fantasy X, I may use a slightly more D&D-like magic system anyway. We'll see. But probably not the more D&Dish monster list. I quite like the monster list as it is. Because Elemental Fantasy X is a hybrid of sorts between my Eberron Remixed and Heroes of Might & Magic III, I might find that there are some monsters I want to add from the latter in particular, or possibly modify from my existing list to more closely resemble their HOMM3 variants.

Why do I use X in all of of my recent homebrews anyway? Actually, I created an alternate (which later became my main) YouTube account a couple of years ago, originally to post SWTOR playthrough videos on. I wanted something that sounded like old space opera, but had a tongue in cheek pop culture reference or something like that, and for whatever reason, I imagined a spaceman who was kind of like the mysterious and cool Racer X from the old Speed Racer re-runs that I used to watch when I was a kid in the mid to late 70s. Spacer X became that name. Because I also had a kind of mysterious conspiracy theory X-files like vibe to the settings I was working on at the time it double fit. I decided to call my game Space Opera X, my username was Spacer X, my fantasy game Dark Fantasy X, and later, my not-dark fantasy Elemental Fantasy X, because by that time having an X at the end was kind of the brand.

... I guess that story isn't really all that interesting now that I've typed it out. Oh, well. And sadly, I've occasionally had people assume that I'm an Elon Musk fan because of Spacer X, which isn't really true at all. Sigh.

Finally, I've got a few more updates to a few more Hero Forge models, so here they are. 

Germund de Bosque, an infamous bounty hunter

Bahram Khanwar, an iconic "anti-PC" surtur. Of course, I named him back when they were still called the djinn and had a more middle eastern background rather than an Icelandic one. I might want to consider renaming him.

I have a folder in my Hero Forge characters called "Prospects" where I have either cool minis that I got out of the library, or ones that I just made without having a specific idea in mind for them. This guy was a library model, but I modified him somewhat. The original also predates the face customizer, so I had to implement that if I wanted to touch anything on the face at all.

Originally Drylanders weren't specifically Cossack and Slavic like, but now that they are, some "historical" models, like this Kievan Rus' guy, are good analogs for Drylanders.

Blogging in 2024

The last few months have been a disaster in terms of blogging; I haven't been consistent, and my topics are all over the place. This probably inevitable for a variety of reasons; I don't want to be rigorous about blogging; it's meant to be fun and relaxing and I talk about whatever I feel like. I don't blog for an audience, I blog for myself. That said; I've felt pretty disorganized and chaotic.

The biggest part of that is that my life has been disorganized and chaotic the last few months. My youngest son came home from California a few months earlier than we expected him due to some health problems, and my oldest son moved in temporarily with his wife and three small children so he could finish his Masters degree, find a job, and then move back out again eventually. He was burning out trying to work full time to pay the bills and do all of this at the same time, so we were glad to help out. But, of course, it meant that my home life has become very chaotic since late August or early September when all of this started. On top of that, my new (it's not so new now, but still—after more than twenty years in one job, a little over a year in a second one still makes it seem new) job continues to be more stressful and busy than my old one, and bleeds over into my free time somewhat. Even if it didn't, I'm more in the market for "veging" as they say with my free time than doing anything productive. Even if by productive, I merely mean making blog posts.

So let's get a little bit organized for the new year, shall we? 

• I had a decent run the last few months of posts about Heroes of Might and Magic III. I haven't played that already now in more than two months, probably closer to three or four. I don't think it's likely that my picking up of that hobby is going to stick; I'm just over video games of any kind, even older strategy games like this one. I doubt I'll post about it anymore, or do anything with it anymore. I know my oldest son is going to be disappointed, but that's the way it is.
• I haven't really blogged about Star Wars related anything in a long time, and I doubt that I will anymore. Although I do still watch a fair bit of pop culture youtube commentary from guys like Nerdrotic, Ryan Kinnel, Midnight's Edge, etc. the reality is that I've become very disengaged from pop culture otherwise. Sometime last year, and I think it was the Boba Fett show that was the nail in the coffin for me, my attitude towards Star Wars completely changed to one of absolute apathy. I simply don't care about Star Wars anymore. That had been building for a long time, but now the conversion from Star Wars fan to ex-Star Wars fan is complete. I probably won't talk about it anymore. There's juicy commentary to make, about the execrable Obaid-Chinoy, or whatever her name is, being assigned to direct the up-coming Rey movie, but it's just tired commentary at this point. Yes, it will be terrible. Yes it will be woke. Yes it will directly insult the original long-time fans while generating absolutely no new ones. We already know all of this. I simply don't care.
• On a related note, although I never blogged much about it, my attitude towards Marvel has taken a similar trajectory.
• I don't have any concert plans this year, after having had a pretty busy concert schedule last year; we saw Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, Air Supply, and a few others that I can't even remember off-hand this last year. This year; probably nothing. Having my sons back home has been a noticeable drain on our budget for both money and time, and my wife's work has largely dried up for reasons that we haven't completely understood yet, so she's making less money than we're used to. Good excuse to tighten the belt. Realistically, we should be doing smarter things with our money than seeing a bunch of concerts anyway. My being laid off in 2022 really borked my retirement plans, and we're not saving more for retirement like we should be. That means that realistically I won't retire anytime too soon, of course, because I won't be able to afford it. If anyone can afford to retire in the future, which may be a debatable thing. I should also get my mortgage paid off, which would free up tons of cash, but will require throwing extra cash at it in the meantime first. This belt-tightening for various reasons means that we'll be doing less frivolous yet fun things to blog about, and even when we are making more again from my wife's babysitting, we should keep the belt tight for other reasons too. We also spent a ton of money just now on my son's wedding and the trip out of state to support it. Much of that cost we threw on a credit card, so we'll be paying it back down over the course of the next several months.
• That's probably more personal information than anyone needed to know, but still; that will be a theme for 2024. Doing less, saving and paying stuff off, rather than running around having lots of fun. We still have some big costs on the (relatively) near term horizon that we know will hit us soon, like one more wedding (not imminent), more grandkids, more kid moves, etc. Not saying that I expect any of these to be imminent or even in 2024, but we have at least two trips that are obligatory in the coming year, so we're doing our best to keep that contained and preparing for the future.
• All that said, I do blog from time to time about music, and no doubt still will.
• One hobby that I haven't done as much with as I'd like in the last couple of years is hiking in the Rocky Mountains, or the Southwestern deserts. I'd love to get back on the bandwagon this year, but I don't know if it'll be really feasible or not. I have done a lot of day hikes here locally with my wife and some of our friends, but hiking in the forested Northern Midwest is not really the same hobby at all, and I certainly don't backpack here. To be honest, I need a new backpack. I bought a bunch of cheap Amazon Basics backpacks a few years ago, and most of the cinch buckles have failed, making them almost unusable. Once I get a new backpack, I'll probably toss them entirely, since they're not really any good to anyone. What a disappointment those ended up being.
• To be fair, hiking and backpacking are not necessarily the same hobby. I might be able to do a bunch of low altitude desert red rock hikes after Easter Weekend. But I might be in too much of a hurry to get back home and work. It's not clear to me yet what I'll be able to pull off there, because that's a terrible time for work to be away, given that we have a April 1st fiscal year. Sigh. What I really want to do is a late July or August hike somewhere in the high elevation Rockies. I've got a lot of ideas in my head about where to go, but I don't yet know which (if any) will be feasible to actually do this year.
• In any case, as details start to flesh out, I'll probably talk more about them on my long-neglected hiking blog anyway.
• I ended up reading 39 books last year. While I didn't talk a lot about my reading, I set a goal more in line with my actual performance for 2024 of 30 books for the year with a 40 book stretch. I read several books at a time, usually if they're in very different formats or very different subjects so I don't get them mixed up. I'm already in the middle of two pdf gamebook, a regular hardcover gamebook, a slim hardcover neo-retro sword & sorcery novel or novella, an old Kindle adventure story, and I've got a regular fiction and non-fiction and religious book all queued up too. To hit my goal, I need to average 3 books a month, or more, but with any luck, I'll actually knock out half a dozen in January. I need to stay focused on that, though. With all of the craziness of the trip, year-end, the wedding, etc. I haven't read much since before Thanksgiving, so I need to buckle down on that.
• I've also pretty much bailed on Hero Forge. I haven't renewed the subscription (unless it auto renews; I should double check that, I guess) and I haven't played around with the app in quite a while.
• And finally, my fantasy gaming and science fiction setting design. The ostensible purpose of this blog, which I talk about increasingly infrequently. Sigh. I do not intend to not talk about this, but I need to come up with some specific plans of what I think I'll talk about relative to these topics, and soon. I have a few ideas:
• I do intend to get my campaign with my daughter and her husband, and my son and his wife going again. We've all been caught up in a lot of the exact same chaos, but the new year looks like it'll settle down into a routine, I hope, so there's hope that this will be easier than it ended up being in November and December.
• I do intend to finish the Races Deep Dive series, specifically by talking about the human ethnicities of Dark Fantasy X, which was my intention last time I actually posted on that. I think I've done all of the non-human races now, but I'll double check.
• I'm not sure if I'm going to do any more Space Opera X (formerly Ad Astra) data sheets or other setting development. Probably not. But, possibly. 

Hyenas and gnolls

I've never been a huge fan of the gnolls from the Fortress in Heroes3. Not a single gnoll hero carried forward to Heroes4 or beyond, as far as I know. But we have four gnolls and four lizardmen in Heroes3 as is. I've been tempted to replace them with humanoids, but I haven't yet done so, and may not get around to it. I am thinking about replacing (again) their portraits, however. I made a quick collage. 

The top row is the original portrait images of the four gnoll heroes, Alkin, Drakon, Merist and Rosic, in order. The second row is the ensrick replacement, which I have loaded in the game right now.

The third row our five of my potential alternates. While in general I'd say that I quite like the alternatives, I do also think that they are pretty generic, and there's nothing that causes any of them to either stand out from each other very much, or tie them back to the original hero portrait so that I can quickly recognize them. So, I'm on the fence if I like them or not. Or rather, I know that I like them, but I'm on the fence if I want to adopt them or not. I will probably. I'm finding that as I get further into this game again that I'm more bold and willing to make more drastic changes with the portraits. But for now, I'm won't load these new images, nor identify which of the new ones will be associated with which hero at this point, but I'll continue to think about it...

HOMM3 Modification - Caitlin the Cleric

Well, I feel foolish. I'd been running around with Caitlyn for some time, only to find out literally as I started typing this post that I'd mispelled it on all my filenames, my collage, and elsewhere. I decided not to do the collage image all over again, so you'll just have to look at Caitlyn instead of Caitlin and know who I'm talking about.

Caitlin... ahem... actually has a somewhat interesting look compared to the girl clerics. Whereas Sanya and Adela are severe monkesses (if that's even a word, which according my spellcheck it isn't) and Adelaide is the pretty one, Caitlin gets to look like a middle-aged battle-ax with a fancy Medieval headress with some gold brocade on it. While I won't say that her look is necessarily... attractive, it is at least somewhat unique (except for the Wizard Cyra who looks very similar) and individual. More of that is to be encouraged, in my opinion. So, again, I won't be looking to deviate too far from the Original vision, as long as there are options that don't deviate from it and which also look good. As it turns out, there are:

I've said before that the Stable Diffusion collections are clearly simple img2img jobs, and without taking some time to either run lots of iterations, or do some regional replacement, or manually do some work on the images, they often look funky, or lose resolution and detail. In this case, both of them lost all fo the detail from the brocaded headdress which is her most distinguishing feature. Stable Diffusion 2 arguably has a prettier (or at least smoother) face, plus she has a pleasant hint of a smile. I actually kind of like the more blank unsmiling look; if we're going to have warrior-nuns in the Castle faction, they shouldn't really be cute most of the time. That's sometimes my complaint with ensrick's girls; they almost invariably look prettier. Here, however, he captures the same stern middle-aged blank look of the original better than any, except maybe the melted butterface of the Stable Diffusion AI collection.

Her bio—not that anyone cares—makes some vague references to her being rumored to have been possessed by evil spirits, yet still making tons of money at the donations box. I have no idea what to make of that, since I see no evidence of it in her portrait. Also, she comes with the fairly boring Cure spell and the pretty useless Intelligence secondary skill. She also has the Gold specialty, though—if paired with Estates, she can be a pretty good passive money-maker. Maybe Intelligence isn't so bad for a character who may be holed up in a castle doing defense and being a passive money maker.

Curiously, given that, Pack 01 is a better choice than it otherwise might be, since I can see that face sporting that bio and weird backstory. I don't know why StrikerX looks like a belly dancer and Vallex looks like a pirate, but maybe they were both just trying to get that brocaded headdress represented somehow.

WINNER: once again, ensrick