Needles & Nilbogs

I’m working on redesigning a role playing game I wrote last year, Ensign of the Week (link is to the current final version of the rules, and the picture at the top of this entry is my sister’s art for a sample character), and it’s having some problems. Most notably, the magic system just isn’t working. I’ve solicited feedback from pretty much everyone I know who’s into rpgs, and everyone’s given me a different answer. From “keep it” to “cut it” to “simplify it” to “cut something else so it’s the easiest option”, they run the spectrum of opinions and options.  I need to decide on something to do about the magic system, so I’m going to ramble on about it here and see if it helps. (And as an aside, the title is with apologies to A. A. Milne and the Winnie the Pooh books.) Sorry this is so late in the day, but today has been high stress and no time.

This week’s been a little tiring and overwhelming, so I don’t have a nice polished blog entry. I’m fine, everything’s fine, it’s just a combination of technical difficulties, slight arm pain caused by sleeping on the side I got the covid vaccine on, and a big deadline coming up fast and hitting hard. Instead, I thought I’d follow in the fine tradition of the Yarn Harlot  (she’s a great writer, but hasn’t blogged much lately) and present a random collection of images and projects that I’m working on that aren’t enough to get their own entry but do deserve at least a mention. About half of this is rpg related, about half is yarn related, and all of this is theoretically at least half-decent. 

I don’t have much of a budget for yarn or rpgs. In fact, most of the time, my budget is best described as nonexistent, for a handful of reasons. In addition, I have highly limited space. These two things combined mean that I rarely buy things, and if I can, I will always try to make do with what I have. However, though it may seem like a bad thing, I actually love my situation (most of the time). The budget, and the fact that the budget is not easy to stretch, has taught me a lot of lessons about myself and my crafting and gaming.

 I haven’t done anything particularly noteworthy lately, just swatching for lace and trying to plan out a rpg campaign so it ends by the middle of August when we lose a dedicated player, so today you get a guide to the DnDBeyond character builder that’s mostly here because I’m tired of copy-pasting it into a really long email for new players in one of my games a couple times a month. This guide is tailored for people playing in the campaign I’m running through our local library (read: it details making a 5th level character for d&d5e) and uses the example of a 5th level fighter, because I don’t recommend playing a magic user of some kind as your first character (but the advice is applicable to anyone, I think).  Most of this is copied directly from an email thread with a completely new player trying to make her first character, an “elf who uses a bow” (actual description). This is going to be a really long post, so it may be best to read and follow along at the same time.

I finished this a few weeks ago, and I’m finally sharing both pictures and a free pattern for my new favorite shawl (and, hopefully, I might even be able to figure out ravelry posting)! I love shawls because they go with everything, and this one combines rainbow colors, a feathery border, and beautiful drapeiness.