The Hero’s Journey: Art & Graphics

I am in the process of building an Old School Revival (OSR) fan site, titled Humble Beginnings and Bold Adventures, dedicated to James M. Spahn’s The Hero’s Journey: Fantasy Roleplaying (second edition).  Using a digital pen and drawing tablet, I created illustrations and graphics for the website. These include illustrations of brave heroes (a human knight and a dwarf warrior) battling vile monsters (an ogre and goblins).  As well, I created a heraldic design (logo) specific for Humble Beginnings and Bold Adventures.

 

The Heraldry for Humble Beginnings & Bold Adventures

 

Heraldry.  The Heraldry for Humble Beginnings & Bold Adventures was adapted from the heraldry designs I created for Sorcery & Mighty Deeds and the Fantastic Adventures & the Disgruntled Gong Farmer Companion Site; two fantasy RPG websites I designed in the recent past.  Essentially, I combined the two heraldic designs, and selected a new colour pattern, giving the heraldry a distinctive look.

 

The Knight and the Goblin Minion

The Knight.  The knight was the first illustration I created specifically for this site.  I liked the blue and white colour pattern of the knight, which inspired the look of the heraldry and overall colour scheme for the site.

 

Dwarf Warrior

The Mighty Ogre versus the Burglar

 

The Mighty Ogre versus the Dwarf Warrior

 

The Mighty Ogre.  For one of the illustrations, I wanted a powerful foe to battle the adventurers.  Thus, I illustrated the ogre, a monstrous enemy towering over the adventurers.  To emphasis the might of the ogre, I drew the ogre clutching a halfling with a single hand. The goblin mount was added to show the alliance between the goblins and ogres in this battle.

 

Humble Beginnings & Bold Adventures.  I am planning to launch Humble Beginnings & Bold Adventures in the next few days (early August).  As with my other OSR fan sites, Humble Beginnings & Bold Adventures will be an ongoing ‘work-in-progress’, whereby I will be continually adding new materials and resources to the site.

MCC Zero Level Character Generator: Version 4

Every Mutant Crawl Classics Adventurer starts out from a humble beginning. Adventurers are not born as heroes; rather, they start life out as everyday ordinary folk (or as ordinary as one can be in a world filled with mutants, talking animals and sentient plants), who undergo a Rite of Passage as part of their coming of age initiation. In this initiation, the would-be adventurers will leave their tribe, their home since their birth, and venture into a strange new world searching for strange and wondrous artifacts from the Ancient Ones: an ancient and advanced civilization who dominated the world countless millennia ago. Most will perish on this journey; the fortunate few who survive to return to their home tribes bearing the artifacts of the ancients, will undergo major transformations granting them special powers and abilities, allowing them to become first level characters.

 

MCC Zero-Level Generator Version 4 Screenshot

 

Back in 2017, with the launch of Artifacts of the Ancient Ones, a fan-site dedicated to Goodman Games’ Mutant Crawl Classics (MCC), the first iterated of the MCC zero-level character generator was created.  This iteration featured a character sheet containing two randomly generated zero-level characters.  In early 2018, I created a second iteration (version 2) of the MCC zero-level character generator featuring four randomly generated characters per sheet.  The third iteration of MCC zero-level character generator was created later that year, featuring a pencil and paper hand-drawn character sheet.  I just finished the newest iteration (version 4) of the MCC zero-level character generator, building upon the previous character generators, featuring additional options allowing for greater customization of the randomly generated zero-level characters.  The character sheet for this iteration was designed using a digital pen and drawing tablet, emulating the hand-drawn style of the previous zero-level character sheet (version 3).

 

Zero-Level Character Sheet Version 4

 

MCC Zero-Level Character Sheet.  The Zero-Level Character Generator randomly generates four zero-level characters per sheet.  Players typically use multiple zero-level characters for the Rites of Passage; the deadly adventure at the start of the campaign, where zero-level characters will put their skills and lucky to the test to see if they have what it takes to become first level adventurers.

 

Screenshot of a Randomly Generated Character Sheet

 

Single Zero-Level Character Sheet

Artifacts of the Ancient Ones is a fan created website, dedicated to the Mutant Crawl Classics role-playing system.  Created by the talented Jim Wampler, Mutant Crawl Classics tailors the ‘old school’ game mechanics of Dungeon Crawl Classics to a far future post apocalypse game world, filled with mutants, artifacts, and lost technologies.

Warhammer 40K Iron Warriors Traitor Guard: Part 2

Seduced by the temptations of the Ruinous Powers, the Iron Warriors Traitor Guard were once loyal servants of the God-Emperor, who have sworn allegiance to the Iron Warriors Chaos Space Marines Chapter. Unlike the rabble that forms the ranks of the Chaos cults, the Iron Warriors Traitor Guard are professional soldiers, trained in warfare and military tactics. As such, the Iron Warriors Traitor Guard are not seen as expandable troops, as the Chaos cultists and mutant followers are. Rather, they hold a greater level of prestigious and value among the followers of the Iron Warriors Chaos Space Marines Chapter.

 

Iron Warriors Traitor Guard (front)

Iron Warriors Traitor Guard (back)

Iron Warriors Traitor Guard (front)

Iron Warriors Traitor Guard (back)

 

I finished painting a group of eight Iron Warriors Traitor Guardsmen using components from a variety of kits.  These kits include the plastic Catachan Jungle Fighters and Cadian Shock Troops sets and resin Forge World (torsos) and Anvil Industries (bionic arms) components.  As well, components from the Frostgrave Cultist set were added to represent the heretical gear and ‘trophies’ (human skull) carried by these Traitor Guardsmen.

For more images of these miniatures, please visit the Iron Warrior Traitor Guard section of the Old Guard; a website dedicated to Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40K miniatures, with a focus on the classic range of Imperial Guard models from the 1990s.