Consistent Baselines

Hey guys! Today I want to talk about finding some consistency for character art, enemies, and world elements and some plans that have been put in place to efficiently create them moving forward.

Ashle always wanted all the NPC and creature art to match wherever possible and is pretty passionate about that goal. Naturally with her willing to do that artwork, I agreed and didn't give it much thought. But, just because I'm not doing the art doesn't mean I won't have to spend a lot of time organizing what needs to be drawn ahead of time and developing structure for what will be needed. I can be spontaneous in what I decide a session needs -- you can't do that when you need the art for it. I can also be pretty picky with how things look, which has gotten me way more involved as an 'Art Director' or 'Lead Producer' type role than I anticipated. This downtime has been great for creating a better understanding of this workflow. 

This image is something I've been trying to set up to visually understand the things that are required a bit easier. The way things are being done here I've realized the best way to move forward is to group enemy types into "Squads" that are all mechanically different to make a fight against that enemy type interesting while also having a narrative reason for why they are associated with each other. This also prevents enemy types from 'overlapping'. Below is an image of a few of the older 'Amalgam' type enemies that have appeared... they all fit in the Melee category. That is a less efficient use of artwork when a full baseline of unique encounters have not even been made yet that fall under the Amalgam tree.

In D&D you may have a ton of Demons to choose from that are all pre-defined and live in whatever demon world, but I cant just pull 1 out of 100 demons out of a hat every single week with an ongoing campaign and have art done in time. So, there are a few mechanically distinct 'Demons' that all mesh well together and represent the whole. Any more elite or boss type creatures that the story specifically may require can be made later -- because the tricky part here in learning all this is that Ashle would be excited to draw whatever I needed that week for a session. But the reality of doing that was that we both worked 100% of the time.

The roles fit a scheme for mechanical creature design with expected consistent behavior. I've locked down exactly how I expect creature Declares -> Actions to work within combat so that I'm not scratching my head doing that design work every time an encounter is coming up on a new and unique way to do things. I tend to enjoy 'homebrewing' systems, but I'm already working within a system that is entirely unique. I still always feel the desire to have a creature or weapon bend the rules in some way or be different -- but players barely know the base set of rules yet. Sometimes I don't even know them -- so a lot of effort has gone into locking things down into these consistent baselines.

I also want viewers more aware of what's going on, so a creature who declares actions will have a little icon to display their general intention. The most important thing being that at a glance players and viewers can all tell what the immediate threats are and who is attacking. They need to be reacted to first. Many creatures have 'downtime' turns now where they may decide to defend based on the situation. For example, its normal for a ranged bow character to need to spend 1 turn 'reloading' after firing. Some enemies that appear in large numbers will detect how many allies they have. If they have too many allies, they'll have a % chance to buff the allies instead of attack for themselves, to avoid situations where 10 guys all pile onto one player and instantly kill them without any counter play.

I also plan to start representing dungeons with these abstract visuals I've made. A 'party' token is made out of all of the adventurers to combine all of their relevant skills (a player may be able to impact how many tiles you may move on a dungeon map). Every time the party moves, it increases the % chance of a random encounter -- generally the kind with enemies that need to be defeated. This way players wont endlessly wander and understand that each movement may disturb the creatures that lurk here and cause them issues. There will probably be a max amount of encounters so the players aren't endlessly looped into fighting -- I look forward to experimenting with this format early on with the Aegis Recruits group when we return. Whenever relevant, players will still go to a normal map to interact as normal.

This is great for efficiency because I don't need to make a gigantic dungeon map, most of which would be empty space walking from point A to B anyway. But also, I think this ultimately results in a better play experience for the game I'm trying to run. It is great to have a room perfectly visually laid out with a top down map and all the players walk into it and explore it at the same time as its revealed through the fog of war... but then they also tend to run around like headless chickens, stake out their territory on what their character saw first, and all simultaneously ask unrelated questions. You can see this happening in episode 5 of Aegis Recruits when they enter the room with the Altar and all the symbols on the table. 

With the dungeon map, I can take the time to explain things and it is clear to players the situation moves forward at the pace I can explain them. I've often looked down on D&D that doesn't always include a visual representation of where the players are (like Critical Role for example), but I've come to understand how much power the absence of those visuals actually give words and helps return some gameplay to imagination. The dungeon map still helps cover up the part I don't like about not visually understanding where players are, because it will still have the abstract location represented. 

The same extends to towns where simple icons can take you to a more accurate top down map of that specific location, but you are still able to understand the path that was taken to get there. This is a small town north of the Aegis Order castle the players currently reside in and may show up soon! This being the first attempt I made at a town map, there is still some refinement to be done on how I intend to create these each time so that they look good, but also don't take a lot of time. The most time is spent on figuring out how things should look in the first place. For example, the dungeon shown above. A lot of time was spent on the visual direction, but now that I have an understanding it is incredibly easy to through the tiles together. The tiles can be clicked on by me and contain anything I may need to read or remember -- and the creation of the party token that houses all the player information is convenient. The first draft of a city here.. I'm still not 100% sure how it'll be used, so the use cases aren't as baked into the design.

We've also had Deemee (@DeemeeArt) do some official character art (colored by Ashle). Ashle has had a lot of fun helping to teach him the particulars of matching the style for exactly what we need. Thankyou to all the patrons who have continued to support during this downtime so that I can do things like pay him for the excellent new art that is helping build a consistent world!