Updates & Chagrinspire

Im expanding and detailing my several hundred room Labyrinth for Ethyria Currently for Patreon which is doing well. The deeper I go the more cross referencing the slower it gets but I'm about half way through the surface level. Im still weaving plot and subplots throughout. Ive been reading current essays criticising minoar reconstructions which have increased since I formally studied it.

Anuranomicon first draft happening and art being prepped. Both drafts on Patreon this month.

I did a trial job for a company and made a very nice doc. Its in some ways easier to work with other peoples projects. Some art catalogues too so lots of InDesign time. Still working on getting my new work station operational and someone offered to put win10 instead of 11 which killed lots of my software. 

Ill have a bunch of reviews shortly too.
Im probably most awaiting Gods of the forbidden north.
Im finding new book in gunderholfen setting is the best I've read. Im not a puzzle guy but this is weird dungeon problem solving at its best.

Running D&D5/2024 has sharpened my players skill. Im using more of my abilities and most of my spells and reminding group to use opportunity attacks. Playing with a few older more tactical gamers has been good. I think lots of ppl I played dnd5 with would prefer a simpler system. Building characters feels a bit like building card games.   

I had my worst expectation of dnd5 happen. Tried to limit to phb and theros books (will consider bigby and extra cleric domains). Lots of "can I have this fan mod unrelated to setting or species or god unrelated to setting". Checking abilities and spells seems to be biggest combat slowing thing in game. So far players quite disciplined in combat vs my games as a player. Ive learned lots from them.

Trying to play online to learn - I'm a bit of a luddite and avoided video chats online. I feel like I need to spend an hour grooming.

Chagrinspire
The Party spends winter in the gatehouse and not travelling much as the ice and yetis who live on the upper thin air heights of the mighty tower into the heavens. They visited gnome town and the underground gnome civilisation and returned to their home base via rail.

While home, a purple star fell and the party rushed off to visit. A crystal structure of the star people had fallen and the party saw it was made of the crystal that fuelled their time machine. One note Ive been awaiting to use Gus L crystal adventures in my setting as most of what he does is pretty compatible with my settings. They very quickly became fearful of the crystal dust they had seen turn orcs into crystal zombies. They met infested scavengers and a horrible thing. They are wearing alchemist-made masks of cloth, charcoal and urine but have been slightly contaminated. They got about halfway and have picked up lots of clues about the star people and their conflicts. As its a published adventure, I won't go into it too much. Besides tomb robbers of the crystal frontier, check out these freebies from Gus. So a brief game log.

https://alldeadgenerations.blogspot.com/2022/09/gus-l-free-adventure-archive.html

Not much on this blog at the moment as I'm working on 2 books and stuff for clients.

Some new chagrinspire stuff coming too.