abyssalbrews

Socialite's Guise

Added 2022-01-06 17:01:08 +0000 UTC

Greetings everyone!

We begin our January releases with the first of our gothic fantasy themed items. Our Kollaborator tier patrons voted between four themes and that was the winner by quite a large margin. I would have been happy with any of the themes, but as I’m a huge fan of Monstress, Under the Pendulum Sun, the House of Salt & Sorrows, and many other titles in that genre, I’m quite excited to make some items in it!

Our patrons get early access to all of these items as well as additional formats that are easily usable in both physical and online play. Additionally they get high-res art exports, easy to use text exports, behind the scenes updates, and a lot more.

If that strikes your fancy, consider becoming a Patron

Design notes from Matthew:

Working with uncommon items is one of the most challenging, yet rewarding things. You have to be very careful with what benefits you can offer and in many cases, they need to be vague or key off of roleplay. That can be a much greater challenge than just throwing powerful and unique mechanics onto a weapon. Challenging myself to create an uncommon is something I take on quite a bit to stretch my design sensibilities.

I love the idea of masquerades, balls, and the social structures that can be present within them. When we were thinking about what to do with gothic fantasy, masquerades were one of the first things to enter my head. The idea of a magical masquerade mask is certainly not unique, but I thought we hit on a wonderful idea when the thought of social structures entered the arena.

This item originally had some other mechanics on it centered around combat, but it was really starting to feel far too bulky for an uncommon. We try to give combat benefits with most of our items, but sometimes a strong theme simply won’t allow it. I pulled back until it was just the pure ideas of observing, understanding, and taking part in social circles.

I really hope that some of these bonds and auras will reveal extremely interesting things to players. The scenario in my head is a player finding out via the mask that they have a bond with someone unexpected and what interesting RP that could bring. I hope you love this mask as much as I do.

Illustration notes from Fernando:

Gothic Fantasy and Masquerades, name a more iconic duo. In truth I struggled to find the right look for this item, it couldn’t just be any mask, it had to have a distinct gothic fantasy flavor which means ornate and beautiful with a little bit of a creepy factor.

After many concept sketches and iterations on masks that neither one of us was happy with, inspiration finally struck me and I made a concept of pretty much what the final result you see is.

It’s a mix between a porcelain face mask and a masquerade one, the cracks around the mouth add both a creepy element to it while also illustrating the power of the voice mimicry mechanic.

Lastly, I gave myself an extra level of challenge by posing it in a more interesting, dynamic angle than just a straight on shot. While a lot more work to get it looking right the end result is far more interesting to look at than if it was just facing directly forward.

Big shoutout to “Veronica”, one of Stan Prokopenko’s models from his figure drawing reference packs, studying one of her pictures really helped me nail down the proper perspective.

We begin this new year, and our second release cycle, in a great place. AbyssalBrews has grown so much since we initially launched it and we’re so proud of what that has meant for us and the community around us as well. It’s been fantastic taking part in it the last six months. We’re so excited to continue bringing the good stuff for more years to come.

We highly encourage you to join our Discord server where you’ll get access to exclusive channels that have sneak peeks, behind the scenes chatter, and more.