Hey everyone! I was working on this little side project during Mobtober and it’s finally done!
My City Generator is 15 pages of tables, outlines, and word banks you can use to create an entire city! I originally made this for my own use but figured it would be the perfect thing to make it usable for everyone else, too!
It also comes with a two-page worksheet at the end of the guide to help you keep tabs on your decisions and results.
As an experiment, I’ve put on the DMs Guild, the first thing I’ve put up there. It’s pay-what-you-want, so have at it!
it’s worth it. for both you and your players, but especially for new players who can see the game in different ways than you
examples I’ve written that you should feel free to use:
-orcs: rather than give in to the weird “tribal savages who fight all the time,” consider connecting orcs and their inate strength/constitution to the earth. in my most recent campaign setting, orcs are descended from a human champion who bested an earth primordial; the primordial, impressed with their strength, blessed them and their descendents with powerful tusks and a greater constitution.
-drow: instead of the entire drow narrative being “they’re dark skinned and bad because they betrayed the fair skinned elves and their gods,” consider playing up their connection to spiders. perhaps they worshiped a spider God who gave them the ability to blend into their darkened surroundings. if you’re married to their current aesthetic appearance, take care to present multiple drow societies that have different outlooks; not a homogenous race of black skinned slavers. consider pigmentless drow, who’ve lost all skin color because they never see the light of day. drow who use echolocation? distancing your drow from the bad connotations carried by the current zeitgeist is a useful endeavor
-include elves of color in your game
-drop the ‘tribal’ aesthetic and the connotations that goblins and other monstrous races have. it’s lazy (note, tribes and other similar social structures are still perfectly valid social structures; but if the only example of them in your game world is the violent, monstrous people who seek to destory “civilized communities” that sends a bad message about real life tribes and their validity
-focus less on race and more on societies; a society can be evil or good, but a race cannot
-consider that fantasy races have no reason to conform to any gendered structures (especially our current human binary). dwarvish societies who express their varied and fluid genders through beard braiding. elvish societies who reproduce asexually. don’t limit yourself to what you can relate to from a 21st century human perspective
it takes a bit of elbow grease to decolonize your d&d, and the process is never done, but in my own experience, it’s only ever lead to more innovative and engaging experiences!
OKAY SO PEOPLE WANTED TO KNOW SO I DID MY BEST TO REWRITE IT!
(I HOPE IT MAKES SENSE I AM VERY TIRED AND THIS IS A LOT OF TEXT.)
My HC for Dwarf Beards and Gender Presentation
So the first thing you need to know is the average dwarf will have a primary braid and a secondary pair of braids to either side of it. These two sets of braids denote different things so
Primary Braid
The Primary Braid is the large braid down the center of the beard. Traditionally there are three recognized genders in Dwarven Society, though they do acknowledge an individual’s desire to express themselves in new ways. A traditional 3-strand braid denotes male preferred pronouns, a 4-strand braid denotes female preferred pronouns, and a 2-strand twist denotes a non-binary dwarf with gender-neutral pronouns. These are entirely based on gender expression and not related to sex or genitalia of the dwarf, which is considered a private matter that matters to no one but the dwarf and their mate.
It is possible for a dwarf not to have a primary braid, but this style is considered a time of transition or change in a dwarf’s life, and gender-neutral pronouns should be used until otherwise stated. Some dwarves cut off their primary braid when moving away from their home so as to reevaluate and reinvent themselves in their new residence, but it is not something all dwarves do.
The majority of dwarves use he/him pronouns outside of all-dwarven societies due to gender stigma against female presenting dwarves by other species, but in an all-dwarven society the mix of genders will be fairly even.
To save timelines I put the rest under the cut, but I talk about more below!
I’m risking tumblr jail to post a pair of woods witch girlfriends! @fromzebeswithlove ‘s half-elf warlock Frinain and My gnome trickster cleric Marionette!
Esmé Libelli was but a child when her parents were exiled across the ocean. Only the faintest memories remain of the luxurious manses and manicured gardens. Her parents struggled in the new land, but Esmé flourished, and she grew to be beautiful with wonderful raven curls, and emerald eyes that warmed the heart. Quite the promiscuous thing she was, but she was friends with a woods witch named Heldrig who would sing the songs of the fey while she made moon tea so Esmé wouldn’t come with child. After her parent’s death, Esmé made money as a weaver, and she was quite good. Some say Esmé’s fabrics could win the heart of any man. Bards even made songs of her skills after she made a gift to them, and elves… Elves were Esmé’s favorite. It is said she was seen with an elven man the night she disappeared into the woods. Her house was abandoned, and the town thought her to be gone. Thirteen years later, Esmé returned, and she hadn’t aged a day. She looked exactly the same except her belly was swollen with child. Esmé didn’t seek the town’s midwife for help, but went to the woods witch Heldrig, and gave birth in the crone’s secluded hut.
Frinain Libelli was as beautiful as a child could be and clearly not quite human. She was fair where her mother was dark, and she had striking violet eyes. Where Esmé’s eyes could warm any heart, Frinain’s would turn it to ice. She never got along well with the other children, all of whom aged much more quickly. The town didn’t like her presence, but they profited from Esmé’s trade. Frinain would lie on the floor as her mother would weave some of the most beautiful fabrics the human world had ever seen while singing the songs of the fey. Every seven days, Heldrig would come and take the child away. Frinain would return to her mother, and tell her the crafts she was learning with the witch. Esmé would smile proudly and tell her child how happy her father would be. She would never answer any questions about Frinain’s father. She would only say that he was the most handsome man, and that one day he would return to take Frinain away
Over time, Esmé grew older and Frinain did not. The child was a child of the woods, and she felt more at home there. She would spend more and more time with Heldrig until she was staying weeks away from her mother. Then months. Then years. Frinain took residence in that hut when the crone passed. She was gifted with the craft in a way Heldrig could never have been. Heldrig would tell her she was blessed by an archfey, whom Frinain assumed was her father. She lived her life away from humans, among the people of the woods. She knew the halflings and gnomes, and of course the elves. She felt more kinship with them than humans, but even among them, she felt separate. In town, stories about Heldrig the witch turned into stories about Frinain the witch. Every so often, a girl would come with an offering asking for moon tea, and Frinain would make it for them while singing the songs of the fey.
I’ve been waiting to write this post for … I don’t know, 4 years? That’s why I’m that much more delighted to finally tell you that Pixel Logic: A Guide to Pixel Art (@pixel-logic), a digital book that started its way on Indiegogo all the way back at the end of 2014, is finally fully released!
Written by Michael ‘@michafrar’ Azzi (and a dozen of guest artists … @unseven, @jinndevil, @pixosprout to name just a few), Pixel Logic is your ultimate tome of knowledge about all things specific to the art of tiny squares.
Weighing in at 242 pages, Pixel Logic spans 9 chapters which quickly leave introductory basics behind for a deep dive into things that make pixel art a unique art form: anti-aliasing, dithering, sub-pixeling, and less talked about—but just as crucial—topics of readability and clean-up.
While it won’t teach you how to draw in terms of shading and anatomy (for that you can use hundreds of resources on art fundamentals out there already), the book does attack foundational areas that matter a great deal in video games, namely graphical projections and animation.
All topics are neatly illustrated with Michael’s art, guest artists’ work, useful diagrams, and plenty of examples from classic and modern pixel art games. Thanks to the colorful design by Jenna ‘@cyanatar’ Brown, working your way through the content is just as charming as it is super useful.
If you ever wanted all major areas of pixel art knowledge neatly gathered in one place, your wish has been granted (and then some). Pixel Logic is available in both English and French for the very affordable price of $9 or more, and even comes with an enhanced PDF of the Animation chapter that has GIFs embedded right into the book. You can get the first chapter as a free preview, in case you want to get a taste before you buy.
This is now a must-have in your artist arsenal, right next to the $1 kindle title Learning Pixel Art, which I also always recommend for intermediate/advanced pixel artists. It’s not the end of the story for pixel art books though; Make Your Own Pixel Art by Jennifer Dawe is already looming on the horizon. See you back in March!
